Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [95]
“You don’t have coffee?”
“To start meetings. In the middle if they run long. Same with tea.” Luciente yawned. “When we get up running early, to harvest.”
“But you don’t drink it every day?”
Bee shifted as if he might respond, but Barbarossa was ready with an answer. “Coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco, they all took land needed to feed local people who were starving. Now some land is used for world luxuries, but most for necessary crops. Imagine the plantation system, people starving while big fincas owned by foreigners grew for wealthy countries as cash crops a liquid without food value, bad for kidneys, hearts, if drunk in excess.”
“I couldn’t face the day without coffee! That’s the worst thing I’ve heard about your way of living.”
Everyone looked glum and even Jackrabbit stopped staring at the offending panel. Five people started at once talking about protein and underdevelopment and the creation of hunger, when Dawn piped up, “People, listen! I have a dream this morning.”
Other conversation stopped. She preened in the attention, making her face serious. Morningstar’s head bobbed over her like a pale sun. “I dreamed I flew into the past. I flew to that river and kept that nuclear power plant from killing everybody in Philadelphia.”
“This was a waking dream or a sleeping dream?” Otter gave her a skeptical smile, arching her brows.
“Well, I was kind of asleep.”
“There’s nothing wrong with waking dreams,” Sojourner said in a reedy voice. “To want to save lives is a good desire.”
“Everyone has been making too much fuss about connecting with the past.” Luciente exchanged a wry look with Otter. “I myself am guilty.” They both smiled.
“Magdalena says it’s important,” Dawn insisted. “Says we may wink out!”
Bee—whose gaze Connie had carefully not met—rumbled from deep in his chest, “To plant beans correctly is important. To smoke fish so it doesn’t rot. To store food in vacuum. To fight well, as you did Saturday. To make good decisions in meeting. To be kind to each other.”
“But some things are more important!” Dawn stuck out her soft chin. “I want to do something very important. Like fly into the past to make it come out right.”
“Nobody can make things come out right,” Hawk said, her straight nose wrinkled in disgust. “Pass the honey.”
“No one is helpless. No one controls.” Sojourner had a flattened leathery face and eyes that twinkled with a lively pleasure. “We can’t make things come out in the past. We can only speak to those who listen.” She winked at Connie.
“Are there many of us?” Connie asked. “Many who come here?”
“Mmmm … what?” Luciente was yawning again. “Who come? Only five so far. It’s odd.” Luciente’s hand made boxes in the air. “Most we’ve reached are females, and many of those in mental hospitals and prisons. We find people whose minds open for an instant, but at the first real contact, they shrink in terror.”
“Why are you contacting us? You said I’d understand but I forgot to think about it. It’s kind of a vacation from the hospital.”
A surge of discomfort passed around the table. “It’s hard to explain,” Bee said, frowning. “Nobody’s supposed to discuss advances in science with you. It might be dangerous—for you, for us. Your scientists were so … childish? Carefully brought up through a course of study entered on early never to ask consequences, never to consider a broad range of effects, never to ask on whose behalf …”
“But I’m no scientist. What do you want from me?” Her eyes touched Bee and withdrew as if burned, after-image of black on her retina. Suppose there was a price? Suppose they wanted something from her, something, anything. Vaguely she imagined herself smuggling back a weapon, a bomb disguised as a toothbrush. Why should they have been so nice to her if they didn’t want something? In her lap under the table her hands sought each other, coldly sweating.
Barbarossa cleared his throat. “We could put it: at certain cruxes of history … forces are in conflict. Technology is imbalanced. Too few have