The Power of Time

by Josephine Saxton

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Time Travel

Synopsis

14 science fiction shorts covering topics such as the rebuilding of Manhattan in the heart of Leicestershire, seeking help from an angel, enlivening Utopia by taking a demon lover, changing rivals into animals. A fascinating collection from one of the leading lights of feminist SF.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 222

Sample

‘It shouldn’t present much difficulty if you approach it in a positive way,’ I said to the Chief of the Mohawks, Flying Spider. ‘Your tribe is expert in this kind of thing. All you have to do is number the parts, get it translated in terms of a computer jigsaw multi-dimensional complex, get the land measured out and prepared in advance – new sewage systems and so on, flood the Trent and the Soar to form an island – aw, c’mon Spider, you can do it …’

My power complex that I never thought about, working on his power complex that he nurtured and lived by. He was very powerful and his tribe had worked for five hundred years to make it so, and other tribes too; time was when Flying Spider’s ancestors had been a very small minority, working high above the streets of New York, building on higher bits, repairing, cleaning. Work other people would not do, nor could do; the Mohawks took naturally to heights.

Yes, Flying Spider was powerful all right: he owned the whole of Manhattan Island. His ancestors had sold out for twenty-four dollars’ worth of trinkets, and he had bought it back for an unimaginable sum. He didn’t only own the land, either, but every bit of every building, and all the companies too except for DuPont on the eleventh floor of the Empire State Building who had a special concession for making all the tribal costumes free of charge and before any other order. Like Spider for instance always wore full regalia, masses of gorgeous feathers but rain-and-stain proofed; you could have poured printing ink all over him and it would have brushed off when dry. Not that anyone would do such a thing, not to Flying Spider.

So Spider was powerful and rich and so was I. There were only about a hundred of us as rich as that, all descended from former depressed peoples and groups, like about five generations back my great multi-great grandmother was secretary to the Stir-Crazy Housewives League Ltd, England. That’s what I call progress, I mean, out of the sixteen million or so people left on this planet after the Great Emigrations, I should end up being one of the Elite. Everybody else lived well too, but we hundred or so Top People decided how well. I not only wanted to get one up on Spider though (that’s just a kind of hobby we had, buying things from each other and then proving it more valuable than the price paid), I wanted Manhattan Island for myself. You see, my family have always had a kind of thing about Manhattan, it’s been a kind of Mecca for them, although I can’t say quite why. It has been a tradition to sit at mother’s knee and listen to tales of Manhattan. But I had never been there. Yes I know it sounds a bit odd what with travel so easy, anti-grav sledge would have got me there in half an hour but not only had I always been rich and powerful, I had always been – well, English Eccentric, which is a type you have probably never heard of but in my case it took the form of never leaving the village where I was born. Travel never appealed to me; three-D teevee was as much of the outside world as I wanted to experience. I had everything I wanted right there in East Leake which was Reservation Country for the Ancient Britons, a small village that made two leaps in its development. First in the thirteenth century when it got itself built around the church, and second around the twentieth when they added a few thousand horrible houses, a supermarket, a library for those that could read and a health centre for those going crazy from loneliness and boredom. Only the privileged and eccentric could survive such a place, I then thought.

So in that situation it was not surprising that I became the victim of a whim. It was a kind of nostalgia for something I had not seen, something almost genetic, passed on from that female ancestor – for it was said that she had actually been there for a visit. I have a pair of her false eyelashes set in lucite and they look like underwater caterpillars … they had some very bizarre fashions at times in the past.

I had better explain it quite straight now just in case you haven’t got it. What I wanted to do was buy the whole of Manhattan Island and have it re-erected on the site of East Leake, a village between Nottingham and Loughborough, in England. It was only a matter of marking every piece correctly and sticking piece A on to piece B.

‘Okay okay, it’s a challenge. I’ll transact. Let’s say the entire thing including inhabitants within six weeks, in working order?’

‘That’s what I had in mind, Spider. Is that your earliest delivery date?’

She finished typing the last letter of the day as Secretary of the Stir-Crazy League and went to look out of the window for a while, through the cotton mandalas of Nottingham lace. Mailman should be due, more mail, please let there be more mail. There was.

Congratulations on being winner of one week in New York City. Your guess number of Sugar Tweeties in one ton accurate absolutely not counting plastic turkeys which was the catch. Our rep will call to arrange tickets reservations escorts to suit you.

After the initial shock and fuss there were envious goodbyes, passionate kisses that were at once expressions of perfect trust in fidelity and betrayals of trust – after all she’s a good-looking woman, all those escorts laid on, standing in line to take her out. Manhattan at her feet for a week. Brand new clothes, lovely shoes which were really seconds, a lot of care and attention to health and looks. Lucky woman zooming up to thirty thousand feet, far above the cat-spit of the rest of the Stir-Crazies. She was full of silly worries and frightened of flying, but the man in the next seat, who was really a boastful bore, kept her amused by telling what it was like to spend a month on a Greek island. Oh, she thought, it must be marvellous to be a rich American and travel a lot. He was stopping over in New York to take in some culture in the form of off-Broadway plays, one must not allow the mind to stagnate. Secretly she thought it was too late for him, but said out loud ‘Nossir’. In American.

The JFK Airport, two valises at her feet, hand clutching purse, raincoat, passport, tickets, just standing there wondering what to do. More people in one place than she had ever seen before. The temperature was in the nineties and humid, she prickled. With fear as well as heat, for she sensed something horrible. What was it that was evil? It vibrated everywhere in the very breath of the place. The organisers of the competition arrived to whisk her off in a yellow taxi driven by a huge handsome black man, somewhat oblivious of the fact that there were other cars on the street. The noise was incredible, car horns going all the time, tyres screeching – a thing one never heard in England, but in America they always seemed to corner on two wheels and brakes, people calling, traffic rumble, subway roar, police sirens. Police sirens, did that mean a murder? Could be. And then it seemed to her that she could smell and hear the vibrations of Hell, she could see how it had all come to be, suddenly one day the lid of the Pit had crumbled up because of the pressure, and all this had come oozing out, out of the earth, materialised as City. She wanted to go home, she wished she had never come …

But she never said so aloud, kept smiling and looking and asking, kept the false eyelashes fluttering. The hotel room they gave her was clean and comfortable and very much too hot, and she expected to be fetched in the morning to go on a tour of Fifth Avenue dress shops followed by lunch in the Russian Tea Rooms near Carnegie Hall. No sleep to speak of because of being confused and feeling strange. She didn’t know, but it was jet lag. Her home and family seemed like faded photographs already. The next day after some rest, everything improved.

For lunch there was a pancake stuffed with goatsmilk cream-cheese, caviar and sour cream, and vodka. She began to feel better, the centre of a great deal of unaccustomed attention, and it was all very pleasant. The escort for that day was charming and intelligent with a golden silky beard and impeccable manners. They discussed Russian literature and she blessed the time she had spent long ago reading Crime and Punishment for she could recall some things about that he could not and thereby avoided looking stupid. He told her that the witch-balls on the chandelier were Christmas trimmings from six years previous. So, they were fallible and human in America, even if this was a Russian place. It certainly was not all noise and rush and bustle and food in cans.

A conducted tour of the East Fifty-Seventh Street art galleries in the afternoon, an introduction to kinetic art. Glass globe on black cube, inside the globe a long symmetrical loop of neon moving back and forth and changing from red to blue regularly. She found it particularly hypnotic and compelling and found that it was trying to say something to her in between hooting bleeps. Buy me and take me home. But it cost an immense sum of money and the cash she had with her prize was meant to be spent in dress and cosmetic shops. A woman didn’t want a piece of sculpture – she was a piece of sculpture. Not quite understanding how insulting this tortured compliment was, she went along with the escort on the schedule.

The city was wonderful and everything seemed exciting. Nowhere else exactly like it ever on Earth. And that in itself was exciting.

‘Yes, sure, Spider. It’s the perfect site for it. A disused gypsum mine right under the hill, stretches over an area approximately three hundred square miles, you can use what you like of it to suspend the new sewers and subways and all of that in, it’ll be a cinch, I mean, East Leake is built over a vast cavern, you won’t have any blasting to do at all and it’s like the Rock of Ages for strength, they don’t even get a split in the wallpaper from subsidence, and you won’t need to flood much of Nottingham to get it all in, I was talking to the surveyors only this morning, you see, there’s no problem at all, don’t make any. Down to the eleventh floor and DuPont giving trouble? Build them a solid concrete base with elevator, and when the whole building is transported put DuPont’s floor back on to that, they’ll have everything they’re legally entitled to but who else will care? Anybody else grumble at coming to England, offer them the same treatment, tell ’em they can stay behind. They’ll come to their senses, what business are they going to do on Manhattan Desert Island?’

I was really flying with the idea, it was taking shape already, only a couple of days after I had signed the deal with Spider. I had had to sell out thousands of square miles of Finland to do it but as I had no intention of going there I did not care. I had never been to Manhattan, it was coming to me! I sorted it out with the town councils and started on the evacuation of all the inhabitants in the area, and when we actually got the measurements it included West Leake, Sutton Bonington, Hoton and Costock, Stanford and part of Bunny. But as I pointed out to them – what was their problem? They would benefit. I was having it seen to that everyone got a better house than the one they were leaving, that new factories and shops would be built, that their whole standard of living would improve not to mention the retirement pensions for everybody, not just heads of households. They might have been Ancient Britons on Reservation Country, but they were open to reason if it smelled of comfort. By the time I had finished talking to them they couldn’t wait for the subsonic rasers to move in.

Everybody stand back! The alarm hooters making all of Sherwood Forest tremble, all of Charnwood shake. And then, the strange drone that was almost a silence, quite quickly, the whole area I needed became dust which was of course siphoned off to my breeze-block factory in Yorkshire. ‘I may seem to create chaos but I don’t like waste,’ I said to a Flying Spider who was stunned with admiration.

‘I do believe you have genius,’ he said to me. That’s what I call progress, I thought, it had only been a matter of weeks since our first head-on meetings and he had thought me unadventurous and neurotic with my dislike of travel, and hopeless at buying and selling. That compliment from him gave me a boost – he was a powerful fella.

The escort for the day was a delight to be with: he was a large young man with unconventional clothes and hair and a wild grin which frightened some people, but not her. He bought her lots of vodkas and Camparis on the expense account, and when she looked around at the city she felt that she was falling in love with it all. Something in the air was like those evenings out with her husband before they were married. What had happened to that? Once, they had had such splendid times, and felt so good.

‘Well if DuPont won’t come across and it means that there will be only one hundred and nineteen floors to the Empire State, then I have to have it built right on top of the hill, on the site of Adastral House you know? Appropriate name, no? Yes, I do insist, I want it to be as tall as it was, higher above sea-level than its original site. Think of the view! On a clear day I’ll be able to see as far as Northampton or Derby, depending on which way I look. No, I’m not interested in the fact that there are other taller buildings. The Empire State is historic, which is why I suppose it had been so carefully preserved – and must be so again. By the way, the flooding of the new rivers went perfectly, there’s not a ripple difference in the shape of the water around New Manhattan, the currents run exactly right, you can move the ferry tomorrow, check that the toll-gates on the tunnels and bridges are sorted out properly, like the Pennsylvania lane will now be the lane for North Wales. We’ll make a tuppence or so too, people will drive down from Edinburgh to ride on the ferry at night, it’s quite spectacular, I hear.’

Spider was delighted with me, I could tell from the way he laughed. He liked women with imagination. He told me that already the city was in pieces and stored on the Palisades and the Poconos in the order of re-erection and that whole blocks were on their way across the Atlantic by anti-grav sledge. They had been obliged to use subsonic rasers on whole tracts of forest which I would not have allowed, but Spider said that the method of storage and shuttle was essential if I wanted fast delivery, and there was nowhere else near enough. I ordered replanting at the earliest time possible.

I took a two-seat sledge to watch the foundations of the Empire State being relaid right on the site I had specified. I hovered around for hours and could hardly explain why I felt so scared. I put it down to excitement. After all, it was no mean thing I had set in motion. It was a First all right. I couldn’t sleep that night even though the luxury houseboat I had fixed up on the East River, formerly known as the Trent, was as comfortable a place as any I had ever known. I was not to sleep properly for many nights. It was soundproofed against the twenty-four-hour activity of anti-grav sledges homing in with the next bit of the jig-saw, armies of fibreglass and old-time concrete mixers, the clang of scaffolding, blowtorches, cranes, lorries, drills and other machinery. No it wasn’t the noise that kept me awake. Every day I went floating out over the growing city to watch, checking the avenues with a map just for fun. It looked like scum and lichen at first with square mushrooms sprouting but as time passed it rapidly took on a coherent shape. Glossy yellow sunrises would reflect off flight after flight of glass, some of the smaller buildings even had flags flying and people began to move in. Every hour a new sledge arrived and furniture and boxes and people began to settle in, back into their homes and shops and offices. Faces appeared at the windows to see what the view was like from the new location. Most looked disappointed for they looked out on exactly the same bricks as they ever had. One old fellow in an apartment on West Eighty-Eighth complained that we had been the cause of the death of his cat. He accused us of planting his acacia tree out of place, because his cat had been used to jumping from the fifth-floor window on to a certain branch, and the first time it tried it in the new location, it fell to its death. We showed him the plans to prove that every stone was in place – the cat must have lost its touch. I was sorry about that, but everything above ground was exactly as before. Below ground there was the new sewage system with a built-in rat-gassing system. My idea of course but I had paid to have it invented. Offer enough money and people can invent anything. So, no rats and no spillage. The people of Manhattan would like me, I thought, and even as it was they did not seem too perturbed. Life for them would go on much as usual, and if they wanted vacations in the States, I paid. I had all that kind of detail covered.

What I particularly liked to watch were the spidermen high up. They were better than cats, height just did not scare them. They were both sexes all doing similar jobs. Spider’s tribe didn’t have to work of course, but it was a tradition and they liked the work.

There was a thrilling time when the Big One was finally up and I floated past and there was a blazing sunset behind me and the reflection flung back at me was like scarlet fluorescent blood, and then blue sky, and I flashed back and forth to get the sight again and again until the greenish clouds of early night came and I descended away from my tower of glass, out of my mind with exultation that I owned the most beautiful city ever built. I lay in bed that night feeling that someone was trying to get a message to me, but I knew I was overtired and ignored it. I got up before dawn and looked out on to the river. Somewhere near the island there should have been a thing called the Statue of Liberty, but I had forgotten to include it in the deal. Anyway, I thought, who wants sculpture that size, I had the whole of the Guggenheim and all that stuff if I wanted Art.

I was just a little depressed about the whole project around that time I must admit, but I put it down to extended impatience which made me feel ill. Six weeks seemed a long time to realise a dream, but as Spider said: ‘You don’t want the Chase Manhattan in Battery Park or the Penn Station under the elephants in the Natural History, do you?’ He put me down properly by saying, ‘It’s organised.’ It was the way he said that word. He outpowered me, but I was still the one with the imagination.

‘What shall we do next when this is over?’

‘Suggest something,’ I said nonchalantly.

‘How about a merger?’ I shrugged but not rudely. Secretly I was shattered with pleasure. A merger with Flying Spider was a great project. It was as if I had been dreaming a dream for centuries and it had suddenly come true.

There were two days of the Competition Trip left, and she was feeling wonderful. She wondered how she could ever have thought the city frightful, it did not now seem possible. She was with an escort in a superb restaurant, slightly drunk and very happy. He was a pleasant companion and very attractive. He poured vintage claret which she was not used to (‘actually at home we usually have plonk’) and they drank it with squabs in a delicious sauce full of olives. The salad was perfect. By the time they got around to fruit salad in Kirsch and then the excellent coffee she was truly flying with well-being, happiness, joy. Her companion was beautiful and had a fabulous tan. She asked him where he had got it and he smiled without annoyance. Not a tan, he was a full-blooded Mohawk Indian. By day he worked as a spiderman high up on girders, and he only did the escort job to make extra money. His wife was very ill and medical bills were exorbitant. But, he said, they were not to talk of that. He had something wonderful to show her. The sixty-fifth floor, the Rainbow Room. Huge windows through which he indicated a fabulous view. Somehow at that moment they had clasped hands, and she could hardly breathe for the shock of what she saw, it was so beautiful. The mist was below them in the canyons, moving towards them menacing and amorphous was the Empire State Building like an insect presence from Outer Space, a glittering treasure in the sky. Just coming in to land, perpetually coming nearer. She spread out her hands to it, stunned by the mystery of architecture th. . .