Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [96]
She did not like to be lectured by him, for he reminded her of other men, authorities in her time, even though she could see that in this setting he had no edge on the others. “But you exist.” Still she waited for the price, the stinger.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Luciente smiled, her eyes liquid and sad. “It’s not clear. We’re struggling to exist.”
“I don’t understand,” she said resentfully.
“You move your hand. You wave it. Do you understand how?” Barbarossa too smiled, his blue eyes asking her to listen. “How does the decision in your brain fire your hand? Yet you move.”
Her glance fell on Dawn, pouting in her chair. “I wish I could let you fly away into the past with me. For a visit. You’d fix things for me anyhow. Make me so happy. But not to where I’m kept. No!” That child being wheeled to electroshock, her fine brown hair plastered to her scalp with sweat, her eyes so wide open staring at the ceiling that a ring of white circled her pupils.
“Dawn, it isn’t bad to want to help, to want to work, to seize history,” Luciente said, getting up to caress her. “But to want to do it alone is less good. To hand history to someone like a cake you baked.”
Connie looked across the table at Bee, meeting his gaze for the first time. “Are you really in danger?”
“Yes.” His big head nodded in cordial agreement. “You may fail us.”
“Me? How?”
“You of your time. You individually may fail to understand us or to struggle in your own life and time. You of your time may fail to struggle together.” His voice was warm, almost teasing, yet his eyes told her he was speaking seriously. “We must fight to come to exist, to remain in existence, to be the future that happens. That’s why we reached you.”
“I may not continue to exist if I don’t check back … . What good can I do? Who could have less power? I’m a prisoner. A patient. I can’t even carry a book of matches or keep my own money. You picked the wrong savior this time!”
“The powerful don’t make revolutions,” Sojourner said with a broad yellow grin.
“Oh, revolution!” She grimaced. “Honchos marching around in imitation uniforms. Big talk and bad-mouthing everybody else. Noise in the streets and nothing changes.”
“No, Connie! It’s the people who worked out the labor-and-land intensive farming we do. It’s all the people who changed how people bought food, raised children, went to school!” Otter was so excited she leaned far forward over the table till one of her fat braids dipped into the yogurt. As she argued Hawk picked Otter’s braid out and wiped it with a cloth napkin without Otter even noticing. Hawk smiled. Her smile still said mother. For a moment her glance rested on Dawn wistfully. “Who made new unions, withheld rent, refused to go to wars, wrote and educated and made speeches.”
“But there was a thirty-year war that culminated in a revolution that set up what we have. Or else there wasn’t and we don’t exist.” Luciente held her hands up, her eyes big and laughing.
“You’re not talking much this morning,” Connie said warily. Was Luciente sore at her about Bee?
“Oh, grasp, Luciente’s still half buzzy,” Otter said teasingly. “Jackrabbit and I had to go in delegation last night to fetch per home from Treefrog to do cleanup.”
Jackrabbit roused and waved in response, traces of paint and something shiny on his arms as if he had not quite cleaned up.
“Take Connie to the museum,” Luxembourg said. “Then person can understand us and our history better.”
“No!” Luciente woke up. “Guidelines set in grandcil by everyone call for no specific history in this proj.”
“How can a person understand without understanding?”
“That argument belongs to meeting,” Luciente said firmly. “I wait you to raise it there, Luxembourg. Until, no blurring!”
“Zo, you shook Luciente awake,” Jackrabbit said, grinning. “Charging into righteous battle with a grandcil ruling in per teeth.”
Luciente rubbed her cheek, embarrassed. “Maybe we can have coffee this morning? All this talk about it I could use