Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #211 Page 13

  And after a pause, the male voice added, “At least not for a couple of hours."

  * * * *

  Mainstream

  "My teacher is going to the moon on the space elevator,” John informed his parents at supper.

  "There ain't no such thing as a space elevator,” growled his father. “It's all a hoax."

  Copyright © 2007 Ahmed A. Khan

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  KNOWLEDGE—Grace Dugan

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Illustrated by David Gentry

  * * * *

  Grace Dugan lives in Brisbane and teaches creative writing at Queensland University of Technology. She has a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies and is a graduate of Clarion East and a co-founder of Brisbane's Clarion South workshop. Her first novel, The Silver Road, was published by Penguin Australia in 2006; her next novel will be called The Motherland Garden.

  * * * *

  Janine first sees the numbers on a Monday afternoon, in week seven of semester two. She is sitting in her Peace, Morality and Justice lecture and Dr Mayerhofer is saying that the massacre of Srebrenica could be taken as the failure of cosmopolitan values in the face of ethnic hatred. She sees the number 1468.953 appear above his head.

  It's not very large, in fact if it were any smaller she probably couldn't make it out from where she's sitting. Nor is it very dark, only as if a shadow has gathered together and formed itself into a read-out above his head.

  She blinks. The number doesn't go away. It changes to 1468.952.

  "Up until Srebrenica,” he says, “the international community seemed genuinely committed to upholding human rights. The New World Order of the post-Cold War period looked as if it might become a reality.” He pauses for emphasis, looks out across the lecture theatre. The students lean forward, frown, scribble notes and chew the ends of their pens. Janine has stopped taking notes.

  She looks at the boy sitting next to her, ready to ask him what that number is and where it's come from, then she sees that he has one too, 3.689. Before she can say anything, the lecture finishes and everyone noisily packs away their notebooks and pens. The boy stands and shuffles out between the narrow white benches, the number still floating over his head.

  Dr Mayerhofer stops the hum of the projector with a click, and gathers up his transparencies. A girl in high heels and a short red skirt asks him a question. The fluoro lights are very bright.

  He nods and speaks and gives her a paternal smile.

  The girl has a number too, 22264.982.

  Janine looks down at the white bench, then she closes her eyes. When she opens them again, the number is 22264.981.

  A skinny boy in black walks in front of them: 20809.004. The middle-aged woman with the briefcase who walks so briskly up the stairs has 10228.997 above her. And the bloke with the denim jacket and the goatee, standing by the wall waiting for the red skirt girl, has 3.688.

  Janine hurries out into the late afternoon warmth. The crowd of students carries her up the slope from Hawken and she sits on the bench by the road.

  She wants to lie down for a moment, close her eyes and think, but she is too self-conscious in this crowd of people, hurrying this way and that in their fashionable clothes. Every one has a number floating over their heads.

  A middle-aged man sits on the bench on the other side of the road. His number is 7343.075. After a time it changes to 7343.074. Then, to 7343.073. She watches it until it reaches 7343.069, then gets up.

  She puts on her sunglasses and, mercifully, everything looks normal again.

  At the bus stop she finds her friend Pablo, lining up for the four-two-eight.

  "Hi Janine,” he says. His usual glowing smile. “How's it going?"

  "Were you in that lecture today?” she asks.

  "Yeah. I was sitting up the back. Heavy stuff, hey. I'd never even heard of that Sre-bren-ick-a thing before."

  "Me neither."

  "But I only came in halfway through, maybe that's why you didn't see me."

  To say that Pablo is her friend is an overstatement. But they share two lectures and one tutorial and catch the same bus, so he is really the next best thing.

  "Were you there for all of the second half?” she asks.

  "Yep."

  "Can I look at your notes?"

  Pablo fishes an exercise book out of his surf-brand backpack and opens it to the appropriate page.

  Janine takes off her sunnies and reads his high-school boy handwriting.

  "Can I copy these tomorrow?” She looks up and sees 0.209 above his head. The bus roars into the stop.

  "Sure,” he says. “We can go to the library after the tute. Hey, we should also get together to study for that exam for North-East Asia."

  The line is moving.

  "Janine.” He waves a hand in front of her eyes.

  "Yeah, that's a good idea."

  She puts the ten trip saver into the slot upside down, and fumbles with it while the people behind her shift impatiently.

  The bus is packed and they stand up the back, holding on to the chrome bars.

  "Everyone move back,” the driver yells. Janine steps back into the tall guy who is hunched behind her and Pablo moves closer to her. She puts her sunnies back on.

  Why is his number so low? Every one she's seen so far is at least three figures.

  Her stomach lurches when the bus screeches around the roundabout. She pushes her sunglasses up onto her head. 0.207. 0.206.

  What will happen when it reaches zero?

  "So what have you been up to lately?” she asks.

  "Not much, actually. A bit of work. Trying to find somewhere else to live.” 0.205. “What about you?"

  "Just uni stuff."

  "How are the evil flatmates?"

  "Still evil.” She smiles, even though she is confused.

  He looks at her, black eyes, boy-eyebrows, gives her his full attention. “We should hang out more,” he says. “Don't you think?"

  The bus rounds a corner and Janine falls into him.

  "Whoa, Janine.” He helps her right herself and somehow this involves his hand on her hip.

  "Sorry."

  "No problem.” He is grinning. His look is too intense. “Anyway, maybe we should get a coffee some time at uni.” 0.203.

  "Yeah, maybe.” She presses the button. “This is my stop.” But of course he knows that.

  "Well, I'll see you tomorrow then,” he says. “We can talk after the tute."

  "Yeah, tomorrow."

  The bus slows and then jolts to a stop.

  "Excuse me, excuse me,” she says as she weaves her way through the passengers to the door.

  The bus roars away, leaving her on the grass. She stands there, looks out over Kings Road towards the city, which is just beginning to glow under the darkening sky. Inside her, something feels not quite right.

  She heads down Clarence Road into Indooroopilly. Unfortunately, both her flatmates are home. Suzanne (28469.055) is standing in the brown kitchen serving up curry and rice for two and Terri (23725.465) is watching the news.

  "Hi guys."

  "Oh, hi, Janine,” Suzanne says. “I wasn't sure what time you were going to be home. I'm sorry, I've only made enough dinner for two."

  "That's all right,” Janine says, though she knows she sounds resentful. She is almost always home by six-twenty.

  Terri shifts noisily in her beanbag and turns her head. “How was your day, Janine?"

  "Not bad.” She unplugs the kettle and shoves the spout under the tap.

  "Still saving the world?"

  Janine turns the tap on too strong and water sprays onto her T-shirt. She lowers the pressure and fills up the kettle.

  "It was just lectures,” she says, trying to keep her voice level.

  "Oh well. Everyone's got to start somewhere."

  Suzanne clears out of the kitchen and the two of them sit in front of the TV, eating their curry with sporks.

  Janine finds some chee
se in the fridge and makes cheese on toast. While waiting for it to grill, she stares at the news over her flatmates’ heads. A woman has been murdered in Geebung, possibly by her uncle. Three people have drowned at a beach in Western Australia.

  Her head is filled with two thoughts. One is that Pablo's number will still be going down, as the bus makes its way through Indooroopilly and out to Chapel Hill. The other is that he might have been cracking onto her. And she's not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

  She takes her watch off and holds it up so its close to Suzanne's number in her field of vision. She times it as it changes from 28469.053 to 28469.052 to 28469.051, and each time it takes just over one minute and twenty-five seconds.

  Why is she seeing numbers?

  Her mother calls. Janine sits on the carpet next to the phone with the plate on her lap and her tea next to her.

  "How are the girls?” Mum asks. “Are you all getting on well?"

  "Yes, it's fine.” Janine glances over to Terri and Suzanne, whose heads are leaning together in some whispered conversation. Now they are watching Everybody Loves Raymond.

  "We're coming to Brisbane tomorrow, blossom."

  "Really? What for?"

  "To visit Grandma. You haven't been to see her recently, have you?"

  "No, I haven't had time. It's two buses, so it takes me almost an hour to get there.” She doesn't mention how much the dementia-specific nursing home where her Grandma lives depresses her.

  "Well, we'll take you with us. Will you have time tomorrow afternoon?"

  "Yep. No problem."

  When she hangs up, she looks over at Terri and Suzanne and sees that the numbers have each gone down by more than one hundredth. She gets out her old high school calculator. If a number goes down one thousandth every 86 seconds or so, then Pablo's number will reach zero in 17630 seconds, or in just under five hours.

  * * * *

  She doesn't see him on the bus the next morning, so she figures that he came in earlier to go to the library.

  The tute room is in the depths of the old sandstone Michie building, windowless and with air-conditioning that sounds like rain on a distant tin roof. The tutor (dreadlocks, faded Jabiluka T-shirt, 15130.122) calls Pablo's name as she goes through the roll, but there's no answer.

  "Okay,” she says, shuffling her notes. “What I want to focus on today is Boutros-Ghali's suggestion that the UN is ‘struggling against the culture of death'."

  Janine watches the door, listens to footsteps in the corridor.

  "Janine, what do you think about this man Ahmed Ould Abdallah and the preventive diplomacy he's doing in Burundi?"

  She hesitates. She remembers this from the reading, an ambassador who spends his time ringing up politicians and telling them to act like grown-ups, trying to convince warlords not to kill each other.

  "I thinks it's very impressive,” she says at last. “It sounds as if, by what he's doing, he's managed to prevent thousands of deaths."

  "What a tough job, though,” a girl in a smart jacket says (2.893). Murmurs of agreement around the room.

  After the tute, she goes to the library and lines up for fifteen minutes to use an email terminal. Hi Pablo, just wondering what happened to you this morning. We had an interesting tute. Do you still want to catch up to study for POLS2205? Cheers, Janine.

  She has a prearranged lunch meeting every Tuesday with her friend Michelle and she walks the long way to the refec, around the childcare centre.

  Through the gaps in the tall fence, she can see the little kids running around between plastic play equipment. One girl with fuzzy black hair sits on a small plastic table plaiting a doll's hair. Janine pushes her sunnies up onto her head. The girl's number is 29941.665. That's the highest she's seen yet.

  Janine tries to remember what it was like to be a little kid. She can't recall much before grade one, when her family moved from Brisbane to Stanthorpe. Little kids always look so cute and happy, even when they are upset. But she remembers how much she used to cry when she was left out of games. She remembers the shame she felt after having bitten another girl at school, the fear of the bush at night on the farm—emotions so powerful they almost drowned her.

  Most of the other children have big numbers, too, the majority of them over twenty-thousand, except for a chubby blond boy with only 3740.325, a very small girl with soft red hair who has 12050.332, and a drooling toddler with 743.330.

  Michelle doesn't show up, so Janine eats her sandwich alone in the refec, wishing she'd brought something to read.

  She gets out her calculator. Fifteen thousand (the tutor's number) divided by 365 is 41 point something.

  So perhaps the number is in days.

  If 24 hours is 86400 seconds, then it would make sense that the figure went down one thousandth every 86.4 seconds.

  Around her people chat and complain to each other. She notes their numbers, hanging over them, and calculates quickly. Old guy in tweed jacket saying “The Bendigo Bank is a really interesting case": 17.9 years. A blonde, tanned girl she recognises from one of her lectures: a fraction of a year. Two international students wearing floral veils, chattering and laughing: just over three years for both of them. Their numbers are only a day apart, so she wonders if they'll be together.

  If they'll be together when they die. Because that's what it is. That's what it must be.

  Janine's chair screeches as she stands up and packs away her lunchbox. She hurries to the bathroom, throws open the door and marches up to the mirror. But there is nothing, no number above her own head.

  Of course there isn't. She would have seen it last night when she was brushing her teeth, or this morning.

  She stares at her face for a long time, until its shapes lose all meaning.

  * * * *

  When Dad arrives in the afternoon, she is pleased to see that he has more than 12000 days, 33 years. He is already fifty-six, so this is really the best she could have hoped for. Mum is already at the home, he says. She had a few things to pick up in town, and she's playing Scrabble with Grandma.

  As they drive along the inner-city bypass, a knot of fear twists in Janine's stomach.

  At the old people's home dad has to look in his wallet for the piece of paper with the access code written on it. Just inside a woman stands behind a walking frame. She stares at Janine as Dad opens and closes the door. 15.843. Her white hair is a light fluff over her blotchy scalp. The hands on the frame tremble.

  Dad leads Janine down a corridor, through the TV lounge where old, desiccated women stare at the news (three dead in a road accident on the New England Highway; a man in the Netherlands euthanised). They round the corner to the sitting room where her mother and grandmother will be. Janine's heart is pounding.

  They are sitting on brown couches arranged at right angles. Grandma is wearing a shapeless floral dress and a brown cardigan. Her white hair hangs lank around her face.

  Janine almost melts with relief. Grandma has 3329.950, almost ten years. That is more than they could ever have hoped for.

  But Mum has only 123.897.

  "Janine!” Mum cries. She rises from the couch, enfolds her daughter in a hug. Her perfume fills Janine's head.

  "What's wrong, blossom?” she asks, stepping back. “You look like you've seen a ghost."

  "I'm fine. Nothing wrong.” Janine forces a smile.

  "I don't know, darl,” Dad says. “We saw a pretty ghostly-looking person at the front door."

  Something cold and hard solidifies in Janine's chest.

  "John! You shouldn't say things like that."

  Dad smiles, then sits down next to Grandma. Janine sits next to Mum, watching the number.

  "I think it's my move, Deborah,” Grandma says.

  "Yes, Mum, go ahead."

  Grandma slowly lays out the word furry. She sits back and smiles with satisfaction.

  "Mum, you know who this is,” Mum says, putting her hand on Janine's shoulder. “It's our daughter, Janine."

&
nbsp; This is a moment Janine usually hates, but right now it's almost comfortingly routine. Grandma looks at her, frowns, and says, “Of course it is. I didn't recognise her at first because she's grown so much. You really are a big girl now.” She turns away and fishes more Scrabble pieces out of the upturned box.

  Another old woman approaches (1276.098). She shuffles towards Grandma and points at the pieces.

  "Can I have one of those?” she says. “Just to put in my mouth?"

  "They're made of plastic, dear,” Mum says. “They're not for eating."

  After a few moments, the woman says, “Oh. They look so nice. Can I have one to put in my mouth?” She reaches out with a veined and shaking hand.

  Grandma lifts the box and moves it to her other side. “No, you can't, you bitch!” she says. “I wish you would just bloody well piss off."

  "Mum,” Janine's mother says.

  "Don't “Mum” me, Deborah. She's completely fucking mad. I shouldn't have to put up with this. This place is a complete madhouse."

  The old woman stands, her face fixed on the Scrabble pieces. Grandma gives her a death-stare. Eventually she shuffles off towards the TV lounge.

  Mum and Dad take Janine to a café in St Lucia for dinner, where she tries to answer their questions about uni and her flatmates, and Mum keeps asking her if she's feeling all right and if there isn't something wrong that she's not telling them about.

  They drop her off at the flat and stand outside to say goodbye.

  "Take care of yourself, blossom,” Mum says, hugging her.

  "I will. You take care of yourself."

  Again the familiar perfume, which makes it seem as if Janine couldn't be right. She is going mad. There are no numbers, she's crazy, making it all up, stressed, over-tired, lacking in vitamin B.

  Mum steps back and smiles at her, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening. “When are you going to come home and see us, darling?"

  Janine clears her throat. “I don't know. Maybe not until the holidays. I've got a couple of midsemesters and then I've got all these assignments."

  "Well, it will be really nice to see you when you do come home."

  "Don't worry. I'll come."

  Mum hugs her one last time and they get into the car and drive off.