Michael Bishop: No Enemy But Time

“She’s feeling better, I think,” Timothy told me.

“What about Mr. Akuj from Uganda?”

Tim nodded at the door.

“He’s still with her?” I was incredulous.

“Unless he jumped from the balcony, sir. There’s no place else for him to go.” Tim correctly read my disapproving look. “Miss Monicah insisted, Mr. Kampa, and today is certainly her birthday.”

“Yesterday was certainly her birthday.”

I went inside and found to my relief that Dirk Akuj was boiling water in a small ceramic kettle on my hotplate, a pair of piddling WaBenzi luxuries about which I never suffered any guilt pangs, not even in establishments prohibiting their use. He had shed his phosphorescent tuxedo jacket but was otherwise fully attired. Although that meant nothing five hours after my last sight of him, I pretended that it did.

Lying on the colorful cloak she had worn around her shoulders that evening, Monicah was snoozing in her Sambusai maiden’s outfit. Her tiny breasts were exposed, and her shaven skull gleamed like an obsidian egg. A twenty-year-old photograph of President Tharaka kept watch over her from the wall above the bedstead. I put my daughter’s telegrams down next to her outstretched hand and turned to face the intruder.

Dirk Akuj toasted me with a demitasse cup of tea and asked me if I would care to join him. I declined.

“Why are you still here?” An astringent medicinal scent pervaded the room, probably from his tea.

“I wanted to talk to you in a more hospitable setting than the protectorate, sir.”

I took off my coat and shoes and slumped into the chair. I hoped that my posture would convey my weariness.

Dirk Akuj said, “You never spirit-travel anymore, do you?”

“The flesh is willing, but the spirit’s weak.”

“Have you ever wondered why, sir?”

“Why the spirit’s weak?”

“Why you’ve been ‘cured’ of the dreams that set you apart from your fellows as a child.”

“Because Woody Kaprow and White Sphinx used my attunement to make me live those dreams, that’s why. I got them out of my system, and for the past fourteen years I’ve been an ordinary person.”

“Ordinary celebrity, sir.”

I conceded this stickling emendation with a grimace.

“Have you ever considered that your spirit-traveling, your dreamfaring, was predictive ?”

“Of what?”

“Of what happened to you during one long month in the late summer of 1987. Your dreams were premonitions of the time-travel experience that finally took place through the agency of White Sphinx. You had been seeing the future as well as the past. Do you understand?”

“It’s too late for this, Mr. Akuj.”

“Has none of this ever occurred to you, sir?”

“No, none of it ever has. My spirit-traveling episodes didn’t correspond to what happened to me once I’d been physically displaced into the past. So they weren’t predictive, you see.”

Dirk Akuj sipped whatever was in his cup and strolled past the wall-sized window overlooking the lake.

My annoyance did not discomfit him. His manner suggested that the satisfaction of his curiosity was more important than the satisfaction of mine. What did he want? What was he driving at? I wanted to shout these questions at him but did not like to disclose so nakedly my eagerness for answers. Monicah stirred in her sleep.

“How do you feel about what happened to you back there?” he asked, gesturing at the window with his cup. “I mean, how do you feel today about the strange interruption of your life?”

“I try not to think about it, Mr. Akuj.”

“Why, sir?”

“Because it’s grown more and more remote with each passing year, and I’m half afraid none of it ever really happened.”

“Paradise Lost?”

I raised my eyebrows. What was that supposed to mean?

“But there’s your daughter, Mr. Kampa.” Dirk Akuj nodded at the bed. “To doubt her reality would be akin to doubting the world’s.”

“I’d doubt the world’s first, let me assure you.”

“It’s interesting you should feel so. Dr. Kaprow often used to displace himself into the past for brief stays. He kept them brief to prevent using up his ability to make the transition. But upon coming back, Mr. Kampa, he would sometimes say that he had returned to a ‘simulacrum’ of the present. His very word, simulacrum .”

Pensive, Dirk Akuj touched his lips to the rim of his cup, then drew them back.

“Even continuous transcordion contact did not reassure Dr. Kaprow. When he reemerged from our displacement vehicle, he feared that he had given himself into the society of ghosts and Doppelgängers .

Each trip, he once informed me, put him at a further remove from the real. Eventually the horrifying past of the martyrs became his prime reality, and he chose to stay there.”

This little narrative frightened me. If I lay down to sleep beside Monicah, might I awaken to find that the Sambusai Sands had disappeared into mist, that the world itself had evaporated? Where would I be then? A limbo in which the terms of my ghostliness prohibited any further contact with the people who had played a part in my life? The lateness of the hour, the champagne I had drunk, and the disorienting presence of Dirk Akuj set me trembling.

“Do you believe yourself to be a ghost?” I asked my nemesis.

“Certainly, most certainly, Mr. Kampa, but not perhaps in the way that Dr. Kaprow meant to imply.

Each one of us is a ghost of every other, I think. Each one of us is possessed by the spirits of our ancestors, living and dead. Otherwise, how could we dream? Not to believe ourselves ghosts in this sense would be to cut ourselves adrift from our beginnings.”

It’s too late for this, I thought, not understanding.

Aloud I said, “What do you want, Mr. Akuj? What is this all about?”

On the carven sideboard fronting the window he set his demitasse cup. A highlight twinkling on its handle mocked the glittering of the stars above the mountains on the western side of the Rift.

“White Sphinx has been revived, Mr. Kampa, but with a different emphasis. Now we choose to go forward instead of back.”

“No pursuable resonances,” I murmured.

“Despite what Dr. Kaprow may once have told you, it’s possible, sir. The chief requirement is a chrononaut whose spirit-traveling episodes propagate along advancing world lines.”

Dismayed by this intelligence, I looked at my daughter.

“I’ve discussed this matter with Monicah, Mr. Kampa. She’s eager to participate. The rewards are many.”

“WaBenzi rewards!” I exclaimed, rising and going to the bed. “I won’t let her.” I sat down beside Monicah and took her hand, which was warm and poignantly soft. How could I commend her into the custody of Dirk Akuj, whose interest in her was probably carnal as well as mentorly? Monicah’s eyes opened, and for a moment they were transparent, luminescent, bottomless, like the Grub’s before our return.

“Spiritual rewards,” countered Dirk Akuj, hoisting himself onto the sideboard and crossing his feet at the ankles. “Not only for herself, but for all those who survive to make the future their present.”

Monicah drew up her knees and scooted away from my touch. Her face wore a startling expression.

Although her appearance had always been more human than habiline, as if my blood had overwhelmed her mother’s, tonight she looked like Helen. The strange glint in her eye bewitched as well as terrified me.

“You need parental permission for this,” I told Dirk Akuj. “Monicah’s still a minor, and you need my consent for her participation.”

“You’ll give it to us, sir.”

“The hell I will.”