Emma Bull - Bone Dance

“You’re not going to die,” I said. It would be harder than that to squeeze sympathy out of me.

“Ah. That explains it. Though I can’t imagine why I’m not.”

“Because there’s a cure for overwork. More’s the pity.”

She closed her eyes at that. “Do you know, I think I agree?”

I stood up with a lurch and went to pour more water into my mug.

“For what it’s worth—which I suspect is not a lot—I’m sorry,” she added. “When I have a little more energy, I’ll endeavor to grovel, if you want.”

“Don’t put yourself out on my account.” I thought about going into another room. But it would have looked, and felt, like retreat. And there was the possibility, small but non-zero, that if I stayed I might be able to make her uncomfortable. I sat down again. “So, did you have a nice time? Did you get everything you wanted?”

“Out of you? No, since what I wanted was to find out you were Tom Worecski. Does it make you feel better, or worse, to know that you went through that for nothing?”

“Only from your point of view. It makes me feel better that I’m still alive.”

“Ah, yes. Everyone’s first desire. To stay alive.”

I suppose what happened was that we were both made uncomfortable. At any rate, the conversation faltered there.

It was she who broke the silence. “You were in Louisiana?”

At the word, I remembered: waking disoriented and empty of thought, chilly and stiff-limbed, to a steady sound I didn’t recognize. I’d struggled up on one elbow, discomfort in my eyes until I’d realized I could rub them with my fingers and the feeling would go away. Running water, that’s what the sound had been. I flinched and splashed my tea.

“I am sorry,” Frances said. “Whatever that was, it was probably my fault. Memory is like silt, sometimes. It may be a while before it settles.”

“No. I just—I didn’t know I remembered it.”

“What was it?”

“The first thing I ever… Coming up, the first time.”

She looked amused. “The first time for what?”

“No, the first time for anything. When I woke up.”

“It can’t have been the first time, you know,” she said. “You must be one of us, riding a cheval. You’ve mislaid your identity, but it may turn up.”

“You’re the one who went through my head with a crowbar. Didn’t you find it?”

She frowned. “No. Nothing older than a bunker down south.”

“How much of that did you sample?”

She winced; at my tone, I suppose; so I added in the same one, bright and pointy, “Not that

I object. I just don’t want to bore you with things you already know.”

I must have reached the limits of her apologetic mood, because she said, “If you bore me, you’ll know. I’m going to get off the floor and sit in this chair. Unless you plan to shoot me if I do.”

And that, I swear, was the first time I remembered the rifle abandoned on the desk. In her hands it had been a malevolent, ticking presence. Out of them, it was a paperweight. Something had happened in the room, something I couldn’t fathom, that had made it unlikely that any of the three of us would shoot the others.

She settled into the slingshot chair like an old woman, and the leather creaked. “What happened to Mick, by the way?”

Had that last been too casual? Was she worried? If so, what about? “He’s gone to get supplies to restore your depleted self.”

Frances looked up at that. “Has he?” she said mildly. “If he has a yen to play Saint Theresa, he can lavish his talents on a more appreciative audience.”

“Since you’ve proven you can take care of yourself.”

“Given the state you were in when I made your acquaintance,” Frances said, “you should talk.”

I shrugged. “I couldn’t help it. Your pal Mick left me lying in the sun.”

“And you warped. I understand. Tell me about Louisiana.”

“It’s very wet.”

“No, I mean waking up in Louisiana.” I stood up again. I was beginning to feel spring-loaded. I stalked to the sink, put my mug in it, and turned around. “Why in hell do you want to know?”

“Maybe I’ll be able to figure out who you are.”

“I know who I am.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Really.”

“All right. I don’t, particularly. But are you surprised that I’d rather be the palace eunuch than one of the great boogeymen of our age?”

“If we were only boogeymen,” she said, echoing my earlier words, “no one would care.” In the way she spoke, I heard again what she’d said to Dusty: Probably. I have a damnably long memory. Indeed. Nobody should have one that long.

“ Have you ever done anything that Mick hasn’t?” I asked.

“Did he say that?”

“More or less.”

She laughed a little. Then she said, “He was mistaken.” She raised her eyes to mine. “But don’t tell him. He’ll find out eventually.”

“Are you going to kill him?”

“The future is a land unmapped, from which no expedition has returned. I don’t think so. He had nothing to do with the Bang. Strange as it seems, he is, as these things go, a passable human being.”

“Are you going to kill me?” In spite of my conviction, it seemed reasonable to ask.

“I told you I was sorry. No. I’m not.”

“But you’re still going to get this Whatsisname.”

“Yes,” she said, “I am. In the best tradition of vigilantism, I’ve filled all the appointive offices myself: judge, jury, prosecutor, and she-who-pulls-the-trigger.”

“It’s a long time since the Big Bang,” I said uncertainly. I’d been almost at ease with her for a few minutes—or pleasurably uneasy, caught up in the heightened reality of verbal sparring. But her last declaration reminded me of the woman she’d been before she fell down.

“Sparrow, Tom Worecski is responsible for more deaths than Hitler. Does time wipe that clean? How much time? Does remorse? I don’t know if he’s sorry for murdering millions of people and making large areas of the Western Hemisphere uninhabitable, but tell me, how sorry ought he to be before I say, ‘Oh, never mind, I guess that makes it all right’?”

I stared at her, and she stared back. “Is that what I’m supposed to say when you apologize?” I asked.

She pressed her lips together. “Point to your side. But believe me, Tom has to die. And I have to do it. There’s no one else.”

“Chango, you could assemble a posse in five minutes if you told ‘em what you wanted them for.”

“And shall I tell them how I come by my information? That I know Tom from way back, that we worked together, et cetera? No. There really is no one else.”

This time she didn’t sound as if she took pride in the fact. Or maybe the phrase meant something else, now. She sat staring at her strong hands crossed in her lap, as if images of the long, terrible, unchangeable past were shining up between her fingers.

I pumped the teakettle full of water and put it on the flame. Then I dumped the rest of the chamomile in my chipped enamel teapot and went back to the wing chair.

“Louisiana was wet,” I said. “And getting wetter.” I told the whole story without looking up. I had never told it to anyone. I’d been so careful never to even want to tell it that I’d mostly forgotten it myself. After all, no one else I knew remembered being born.

I’d heard the sound, rubbed my eyes, and recognized the hiss and bubble as running water before I’d seen anything. My vision had been slow to clear; the room revealed itself with each blink, each scrubbing pass with my fingers. The lighting was bluish and uneven. I was surrounded by metal boxes, large ones, with tops that caught the light: glass. I squinted past the reflections into the nearest one.