Eleanor Arnason - A Woman of the Iron People

“Amazing!”

“It certainly is that.” He sat down and leaned his shoulders into the chair. “It explains some oddities in the information from home.”

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“Drink this wine, then go to bed.”

I frowned.

“He isn’t going to have his confrontation tonight. Eddie is there and Mr. Fang. He’ll want to get Ivanova alone.” He drank a little wine. A bug with scarlet wings drifted down into the light. It landed on the rim of his wine glass. He smiled. The bug remained for a minute or so, waving its wings. Then it took off again, floating over the railing into the darkness above the river.

“I think—tomorrow—we had better tell Eddie. We owe him that. If Mesrop is right, the messages are going to change how people think about this planet. It’s possible that we may be looking for a new home.”

“Here?” I asked.

“Maybe. The trip home is over a hundred years. We’ll be two and a half centuries out-of-date. Maybe things will have swung back by then. I doubt it. History may be a helix. It is not a circle. We never return to the place where we began.”

“You sound like a Marxist.”

He stood up, grinning. “Those sad out-of-date people?” He set down his glass. It was still half-full of wine. “Poor stupid Agopian! Good night.”

He entered the cabin. I finished my drink, then followed him, shutting off the lights.

I undressed in darkness, unfolded a bed, and lay down. How could I sleep? I listened to the breathing of my companions and thought about home. The Free State of Hawaii. The Great Lakes Confederation. Alta California. Nuevo Mexico. Gone. All gone. The nations and tribes of North America.

I woke and found the cabin empty, got dressed and went outside. Eddie and Derek sat drinking coffee. There was a pot on the table and an empty cup. I filled the cup, then sat down.

A lovely morning! Clouds floated over the valley, bright in the early sunlight. The river was in shadow. It gleamed dark brown, like bronze.

“Where is the oracle?” I asked.

“Up at the village,” Derek said. “He’s getting food. Tatiana went with him. She wanted another look at the natives in situ.”

I glanced at Eddie. His expression was unusually somber. “Have you told him?”

Derek made the gesture of affirmation.

“What are we going to do?”

Eddie said, “I’d like to keep the story quiet, but I don’t think it’s possible.”

“You would?” I drank a little coffee, then leaned back in my chair. Was there any pleasure equal to coffee on a cool summer morning?

Well, yes. But this wasn’t the time to make a list.

“If I understand correctly, Mesrop says we won’t fit in on Earth. I think we are going to hear arguments in favor of staying here and establishing a colony.” He paused. “They must have been crazy. It doesn’t make sense to me. There was no way they could keep a secret that big. There was no way they could succeed in rewriting that much history.” He paused again. “I think I can understand what Agopian is doing now. He’s pushing us toward intervention.”

I made the gesture of disagreement. “I don’t think he’s plotting. I think he’s trying to get out of a plot.”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t underestimate him,” Derek said. “And never think he does anything for simple reasons. He’s a dangerous man. He thinks ideas are important.”

“Don’t you?” I asked.

“Ideas are fine to play with in a university. But they don’t have a lot to do with life. I can’t imagine killing for any kind of abstraction. And I certainly would not sacrifice myself. Agopian would. He has.”

Eddie said, “What are you and Derek going to do? That’s what I want to know.”

I looked at him.

“Are you going to tell this story to the people at the camp?”

“No.”

Eddie looked surprised—and hopeful, if I was reading his expression right.

“That’s up to Agopian. If he decides to keep quiet, or if anything happens to him, Derek and I will tell. Otherwise, no.”

“Scratch plan A,” said Derek. “Which is to shut up Agopian in one way or another. Lixia, you’re closer to the coffee.”

I refilled his cup.

“There’s no escape, Eddie. Agopian’s going to make his big confession. And we’re going to start to think about staying on this planet. He made Earth sound really unpleasant.”

“He might be wrong,” said Eddie. “Or lying. There’s no reason to believe him.”

I leaned forward. “He kept copies of the messages. The original ones. The data is—are—there.”

“He must have the biggest personal file on the ship,” said Derek.

“He could have altered those messages. Maybe they’re the fake ones.”

Derek said, “You’re suggesting that Agopian’s story is a lie, and that he has been spending his spare time creating a fake history of Earth—which he’ll now present as the real, suppressed history.”

“Why not?” asked Eddie.

“It’s a wonderful paranoid fantasy. But when we start looking, we’re going to find his instructions to the comm system. We’ll delete them and then we’ll start to get messages that have not been changed. There’s no way Agopian can fix the information that’s still in transit. He may have been able to change the past. He can’t change the future.”

Eddie shook his head. “I still don’t understand why they did it. If Agopian is telling the truth.”

“Why did you ask us to change what Ivanova said when we translated for her?” I asked.

He looked angry. After a moment he said, “I will do what I have to, to keep the people here from suffering the way my people have suffered.”

“They were trying to save the expedition,” Derek said. “And—I think—they were trying to save what they could from the past. They didn’t want us to lose what had been lost on Earth.” He stood up. “I think it’s time for breakfast.” He went into the cabin.

Eddie and I sat in silence, drinking coffee.

Derek came back out with muffins, butter, jam, and a fresh pot of coffee.

We ate. When we were done, Eddie stood. “I’m going to talk to Ivanova and Mr. Fang. We have to decide when we’re going to leave.”

I gathered the dishes and took them to the galley, washed up and went back on deck. Derek had gone off somewhere. My early morning happiness had disappeared. Now I felt tense and a bit depressed. I wasn’t looking forward to going back to camp. There was going to be a truly enormous fight. I liked Agopian. Now he had turned into someone I didn’t recognize. I had thought I knew my planet’s history. But it was changing and vanishing—like what? Fog or mist. My past was burning off.

I decided to go up to the village.

It felt different today. There was an undercurrent of tension. Nothing I could point to exactly. Something in the way that people moved, something in the way they spoke or didn’t speak.

It made me uncomfortable. I went to the edge of the village and wandered there, avoiding people and watching the bugs in the vegetation. The day grew hot. The air smelled of dung and the dry plain. Now and then the wind blew the odor of wood smoke to me.

So much beauty!

So much beauty!

Why do we waste our time?

I did my yoga, looking out at the plain, then turned and saw a dozen children. There were little ones like cubs—round and fat and naked except for their fur—and lanky ones like colts—edgy, full of energy, ready to run. These last wore clothes: faded tunics and ragged kilts. Play clothes.

One of the older children asked, “What are you doing?”

I didn’t know the word for “exercise” or the word for “meditation.”

“I am pulling out my body and pulling in my mind.”