Blue Shifting (27 page)

They left the room in the early evening and strolled along the banks of the river. They dined at a local restaurant, hurrying the meal when they were both suddenly overcome by the need for intimacy.

They made love on the bed with the windows open and the wind blowing in from the river, the experience for Janner an expression of physical gratitude after so many years of self-denial.

Later, he asked Katia why the 15th was significant to her.

She was a long time before replying.

"I nursed my father for the last fifteen years of his life, and then five years ago, on this day, he passed away. I did not grieve for him – he was ill and in pain, and death was merciful. But I was resentful of all the years I had ceased to live, never doing what I wanted to do, wasting my life. For the past five years I have taught at school, but it is like I have missed a part of my life, of learning and maturing, that was vital to me. I found it impossible to make friends, to trust people. I could speak to no-one about my pain."

They were silent for a time. Then Katia said, "For Tan and LJ this day was terrible, and in its own way, so it was for me too." She paused. "And for you?"

"For me it was different," Janner told her, "the culmination of many years of..." How could he put it without sounding maudlin? "... of unhappiness."

"Tell me, Greg."

He wondered where to begin.

~

Later, as five o'clock rapidly approached, they gathered their belongings and sat face to face on the bed. Katia tried to return the dollars he had given her.

"No, please – keep them."

"I think I will not need money, where I am going."

Janner laughed, gently. "And where is that?"

She whispered, "I truly think we are being judged by God. Maybe this is a hallucination which everyone on Earth goes through in the seconds before they die. Perhaps we are being judged by the most significant incidents of our pasts, made to confront the consequences – and having confronted them, pass on."

"Pass on...?" he said, "to where?"

"Oh," she smiled, shrugged. "You know – Heaven, Hell..."

He reached out and thumbed tears from her cheeks. The religiosity aside, he asked himself, perhaps she was right. Perhaps we are being judged –
by ourselves
– and will pass on to... to
what
?

The thought of oblivion terrified him.

He felt his entire body tingle.

They held each other in an embrace almost aggressive.

"Don't go!" Katia cried. "Please, Greg..."

Her light glowed, like diamond with blue fire at its heart. For a second he could look through the light encompassing him, watch Katia as she was taken. From an expression of anguish, her face calmed suddenly, and then she smiled in joy. Her light became blinding, and Janner closed his eyes.

He knew that, when he opened them, he would be alone. Katia had gone to confront whatever fate had in store for her, a fate that still awaited him.

7

He felt warm sand beneath him, hot sun on his exposed skin. He heard the gentle lapping of waves. He envisaged a scene of tropical paradise, and when he opened his eyes the view before him perfectly matched his vision. He was on a golden beach with the brightest of blue seas before him, a blue sky arching overhead without a cloud to mar its perfection. He turned his head. Behind the island, destroying the illusion that this was a sequestered desert isle, was the foreshore of a town or city. Tall buildings rose against the sky.

He climbed to his feet, left his rucksack in the sand. From the acute curve of the beach he guessed that the island was small. He moved from the deep, fine sand which impeded his step, to the dark expanse made firm by the incoming waves. Then he set off to circumnavigate the island.

Halfway around, he stopped. He stood and stared across the narrow channel of bright water to the mainland. Now he could make out a multitude of small figures on the street that ran the length of the waterfront. They appeared busy to him, absorbed in their own activity – oblivious of his presence. He looked for a means by which to cross to the mainland, but there was neither a causeway or bridge, or any other way, of leaving his tiny isle. Janner turned and began walking again.

Thirty minutes after setting out, he observed an irregularity in the sea-darkened sand ahead. As he approached, he realised that they were his own footprints. There is nothing more lonely, he thought, than a set of footprints marching off by themselves into the distance. Or, rather, there is – when those same footprints join up to form a cycle that is forever one and continuous.

His heart ached for something he had never, until now, realised he was without.

He made himself a shaded canopy from broad fern leaves in the margin of undergrowth bordering the shore. Fitfully he slept all day, as the burning sun rose, arc'd overhead and set behind the city. Tan haunted his dreams, the size of her eyes in the sheer fall of her cheek, the sound of his name on her lips in the side-street in Africa. LJ was there, too; his clumsy, childlike demeanour filling Janner, even in sleep, with a compassion that was almost painful. And Katia... Katia was so real in his dreams that, when he awoke beneath the stars, he grieved anew at the fact of her absence.

He had no watch with which to mark the passing hours, but when five o'clock approached it was as if his body, his metabolism, was aware of the fact. For a panic-stricken second it came to him that he did not want to die – that he had many years ahead of him, and much to do. How cruel it would be to die now, to end a life so unsatisfactorily spent.

Then he felt a subcutaneous boiling sensation, as if his blood was charged with dancing particles of fire. The sense of well-being, which had visited him at this time before, returned now, multiplied. He raised his arms as the blue light poured from him, brightened and occluded the sight of his surroundings. He threw back his head and cried out in rapture.

8

When Janner opened his eyes, he found himself sitting in his old leather armchair before the plate-glass window with a view of the forested mountain-side below. A bowl of porridge and a mug of steaming coffee sat on the low table before him. The clock on the window-ledge read one minute past five. He glanced to his right, at the digital calendar on the wall.

It was the 15th of July.

He looked around for his rucksack, the other possessions he had gathered on his journey – but this time they had not come with him. But his memories had; he thought of Tan and LJ, and he thought of Katia. He wondered if she, too, had returned to her point of origin, and if so...

Janner climbed from his chair, moved to the window and stared out, as he had done for so many years in the past. Winding down the mountain-side between the firs and the pines was the rough track that left his lodge and led, eventually, to the nearest township, and beyond.

About the Author

Eric Brown
has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short fiction and has published forty books and over a hundred stories. His latest books include the novel
Guardians of the Phoenix
and the children’s book
A Monster Ate My Marmite
. His work has been translated into sixteen languages and he writes a monthly science fiction review column for
The
Guardian
. He lives in Scotland, with his wife and daughter. His website can be found at:
www.ericbrownsf.co.uk
.

About the Cover Artist

Dominic Harman
was born in 1974 and is one of the finest cover artists in the business, with his spectacular art work gracing books from all the major publishers in Britain, Europe and the States. He lives in East Sussex and his website is at:

http://bleedingdreams.com/BleedingDreams/
.