The Year of the Fruit Cake Read online

  This was the simple turning point, however. Very soon after the “We are family” meeting, Diana gently let her friends know that her husband was dying, but that she’d been advised not to tell him.

  “We don’t know when, is the thing, and quality of life is important. It could be a long time before he dies. I don’t agree with this. I want to share it with him and find solutions. But I’m not being given a choice. It’s…political, in its way.”

  That was a bold thing to admit. If anyone had any notion that she was an alien observer or that the death was not so much diagnosed as induced, it might have opened her up to all kinds of problems. Her confidence says something about that group of friends that we hadn’t realised in the initial examination. This was the moment that led to my team being formed.

  An alert raised from that statement changed the equations, not simply the interpretation of the equations. The situation was modified from “failed” to “fruitcake”. All hell broke loose.

  We know that there were various people on various planets looking for Diana and trying to influence her. We even know that some visited Earth to do so. Only one played the old trick of being seen intentionally and letting humans yell “alien sighting”. That one—and most of the others—didn’t even know what continent she was on. Those who had the continent right got the city wrong. She was in no danger of being discovered.

  Judges are hidden largely because it’s the only way they can do their job without everyone jumping in and influencing. She knew that. The moment she knew she was a Judge, she knew that, anyhow. By this time, she knew what she was and that she was at risk, and yet she announced herself. Game changed. Instantly. Then her friends respected her confidence. Game changed again.

  She should have been pulled. The process should have been aborted.

  The moment the technical errors became obvious, she should have been sent home. Also, that Memory trick messes with the situation, more than I realised. And it was a messy enough situation already.

  That didn’t happen because the damn techs were doing far too well from “The Earth will be finished soon. Judgement is imminent. Buy some of these handy little souvenirs.” And Earth porn was more popular than other porn. So many of the anthropologists had been turned into sex-seekers and their experiences sold.

  At that moment, pornography became obscenity.

  We had fruitcake.

  The woman’s slow voice...

  was counting again

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty, forty-one, forty-two, fifty-three, forty-four, forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty, sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four, sixty-five, sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy.

  Three score years and ten. This is the length of time a human has to live. Thus said the early advisers on the race. It’s not a time based on their physical bodies, but a time that literature thought was appropriate. An ecumenical length for a human life.

  The day of Judgement will be on my seventieth birthday.

  This is what the Plan says.

  I can find no way out of it. No way to save my husband’s life. I can do none of the things that are of real importance to me.

  Nothing. There is no justice for me. There is no joy in my future, either, whatever way I look.

  I fear for my seventieth birthday. I do not want it to happen.

  If other aliens came to visit, those little grey men from human stories, I’d open my arms to them and say “Take me now.” If suicide were an option, I’d be tempted by that, too. Given the lack of a failsafe, I can’t assume that suicide would solve anything. Not even suicide is open to me.

  Not that it’s an option I’d take. I look at humanity and envy them their capacity to choose death. It’s not a good choice to make, but they have it. We don’t. We plan. We fix our lives and then we have to live them. I used to think this was right and proper and safe and happy.

  Now it’s the worst thing imaginable.

  I do not want to see my life rolled out before me, inexorably giving the lie, year by year to my deepest understanding of the universe, that place where we have the right to choose our futures and decide the futures of others. On the surface, I have both of these. In reality, I have nothing. I am nothing.

  The Observer’s Notes

  Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity.

  —Alexander Solzhenitsyn, read online (quotation not verified)

  Now that I am emerging from that state of Memory, the colours are all wrong. I can see differences between home and here, finally. It’s taken a long time, but it’s generally reassuring. It means that I’m retaining more of myself for longer each day. Today it’s less reassuring. Becoming myself is a mixed blessing.

  Mostly my eyes are adjusted, and they see what they need to see. Mostly I don’t care that there are two spectra missing, or that there are shadows and intensity but not a level of glow or texture. Mostly.

  Most days, too, the scent and tastes don’t overwhelm me. Today the world is drab with rain, and the Australian landscape does what it does and looks as if green is emerging in a way that suggests that glow is possible. That green is pale and brown and dusty and won’t endure. And the taste of the air is too strong after the rain and there is no place with familiar scents. In that moment, always in that moment, I miss both glow and safe senses.

  I can just about see glow out of these round eyes. Just a little faceting in my vision and I’d be able to distinguish between metals and plant matter by texture and glow, not merely by the surface colours. Just a little. But my human eyes are not facetted at all, and I can’t.

  The world is faded and so am I.

  My friends wonder why I’m depressed. They’re very supportive and very kind and I want to tell them the truth. So very much I want to. How could I possibly tell them that I have memories of a brighter, more vivid, more complex world, that if my vision caught the light in precisely the right way I could play with glow and my eye facets would send the universe whirling? I can’t tell my friends that when my life gets too big, I used to have my burrow, with its muted scents and sounds. Safest place anywhere. I can’t even tell my husband why there are times I need to be away from people.

  Over the years I’ve learned to lie.

  “I have a migraine,” I say.

  “Is there anything I can do?” he asks.

  “I just need solitude and dark until it’s gone.”

  “OK,” he says. “Call me if you need anything.”

  And I never do, because what I needed was to have that time and place that most resembles home.

  I can’t tell my husband or my friends anything important, really.

  I wonder how my body would react to drugs. I wonder if LSD would enable me to see glow and to whirl the universe. I’d belong here then. Really belong.

  I’m fine with most other things, I think. I became accustomed to them while I was overlaid with the anthropologist personality. I miss playing with sight, though. I really miss it. My words here are a faint, unfaceted shadow of the depth of my feeling on this.

  Notes towards an

  Understanding of the Problem

  It was a champagne evening. The stars sparkled, the table sparkled, even the trees in the courtyard sparkled. This is why it didn’t surprise anyone at all when Antoinette ordered a bottle of bubbly. They were meeting after dinner, at her r
equest, and the night was obviously something very special to her. She’d texted to say she was running late. Ten more minutes.

  “Why us?” Janet wondered, not really expecting an answer. She just wanted to fill in the time. Her tone of voice suggests this to me, anyhow. I can’t see why she’d ask that, otherwise. Ten more minutes and she could have asked directly. “Not that I’m objecting, but it’s a bit of a change and I normally don’t do change easily.”

  “She’ll tell us…or not,” said Trina. Her voice was warm and comfortable. Self-satisfied in its flexibility. Tonight her hair was fringed with deep pink, and she wore matching earrings and a matching skirt.

  “Besides, you took change by the throat and shook it hard the first day we met.”

  “There’s that, Leanne,” Janet replied, looking her in eye, as if it would stop her friend from playing with uncomfortable truths. “Except that it was Trina who changed us all. I merely followed.”

  “Pretend you’re merely following now. Make it easy on yourself,” suggested that lady.

  “I will,” said Janet in a surprised tone. “I didn’t make the call or book the table, after all.”

  “You and I are the followers,” Diana reinforced. “We accept good new things and are otherwise set in our ways.”

  Leanne snorted. “And just how did that weekend with your husband turn out, anyway? Was it romantic in that zoo hotel? With the lions?”

  And then came Antoinette. She was dressed stylishly. Much black lace. Some sparkle. And of course she ordered that champagne.

  “Why are we here?” asked ever-subtle Leanne.

  Antoinette laughed, but it wasn’t a happy noise. This laugh had the effect of causing her friends to shuffle in their seats and twist until they had all found different positions. Leanne and Janet slumped back, Diana took on her watchful pose and Trina leaned forward, all sympathy. They were now ready for a different evening to the one they had prepared for.

  “Some years ago, I wiped the slate clean. I sent my sorrows out into the universe and I refused to accept them back.”

  “So now we have champers to celebrate!” said Trina.

  “Not so fast,” suggested Diana. “She’s only just started. Give her time to tell her story.”

  The look Antoinette gave Diana was one of relief. This had the effect on all the women of pushing them a half-inch closer to her and also adopting their various listening poses. It’s funny how humans mimic physical habits when they’re friends or allies. It’s not funny, however, that Diana became the group arbiter on how to demonstrate sympathetic listening when a subject is serious. That, to me, is ironic.

  “Thanks,” said Antoinette, and they were interrupted by champagne and the pouring of it.

  “What are we toasting if not the clean slate?” asked Janet.

  “A very special woman I never met, who helped me when I really needed it. Every year I toast her.”

  “To this wonderful woman, wherever she is,” said Diana.

  “I’ll tell you about her shortly. Let’s start with the bubbles and drink them in happiness, first.”

  “To your friend, then, whoever she may be” said Leanne, and raised her glass. Everyone followed and clinked in her honour and sipped cautiously at their drinks.

  “So cold!” said Trina.

  “Almost ice,” agreed Leanne.

  “Bubbly ice,” said Janet, and they giggled like teens on the town.

  “Tell us,” suggested Diana.

  “It’s not at all easy to tell. And it’s not happy,” said Antoinette.

  “We guessed,” Janet replied, “When you wanted to toast her first. If it’s easier, tell it as a once-upon-a-time.”

  “Maybe not that,” but Antoinette smiled. “Maybe I’ll storify it a little.”

  “In five years,” opined Trina, “That will date you.”

  “What?”

  “Storify.”

  “Oh,” Antoinette said, a bit abashed. “I do tend to live on Twitter.”

  She spoke very softly and her friends leaned in. At other tables, people looked curious. Secrets. Special secrets.

  “Before I did the ‘all my past is forgotten’ thing, I had a great deal of counselling. It’s not so easy to fix one’s life when it’s so very wrong. Anyhow, this woman, who I never actually met, made a lot of things possible for me. For me to be seen as me. When I was attacked, I was able to report it. When I was hated, I was able to get help. There was always the possibility that going for help would leave me open to more hate and more attacks. It happens a lot, these waves. I grow tired of them, but this is part of my life. But without Elbe, there would be nothing. Since my family didn’t support me. Hell, since most of them don’t even speak to me. Since most of my friends walked out. I was so very alone. Having a famous predecessor, well, it helped.”

  “Once, when I went to see my counsellor, someone else walked out as I walked in. This is not supposed to happen. The psychologist apologised profusely about the painting that stopped the second door being used, but didn’t get it. Hadn’t tried to make other arrangements. Put his clients at risk because upkeep was more important than we were. I stopped seeing that counsellor. I had to. There are enough problems without creating some for myself. If he didn’t understand that that people like me are more likely to be murdered than any other group in the community then, hell, I wasn’t going to accept it. I had statistics to prove it. My friends were being murdered. I was seeking help and…he still didn’t quite believe me.

  “This was part of my clean slate. Not accepting the unacceptable. Never, ever even thinking of accepting the unacceptable. Doing hard yards rather than getting help when the help was likely to hurt was one of those things. It transformed my life. For the first time ever I was only myself in public and in private. I didn’t have to be someone else’s token trans woman, or someone’s hurt pigeon, or someone’s failed man, or any of the things I’m not. I’m not token, I’m not hurt, and I’m not failed. It’s very straightforward. And listening to the voice of a dead woman helped me understand this.”

  “How did she die?” asked Diana.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never asked. I want to celebrate her life. I want to toast the gift she gave me. She never knew me and she never knew about that gift, but she’s made my life possible, without even knowing.”

  “That’s a big gift,” marvelled Trina.

  “I think…” Diana was hesitant. “I think I understand about the starting fresh thing. I am not so good at the clean slate. I find my baggage keeps reappearing and making me into a person I didn’t think I was, but I love it that you did that.”

  “Do you want to?” asked Antoinette.

  “I don’t know. I’m not like you,” Diana answered. “You’re so clear on who you are.”

  “I got to this the hard way,” Antoinette pointed out. “And the person I am has a bunch of stuff to bear from outsiders.”

  “I know,” said Diana. “It’s hard-earned, and you pay for being yourself all the time. That doesn’t mean you’re not clear on who you are, though.”

  “She’s right,” said Leanne. “Your soul resonates like a bell.”

  Antoinette looked flummoxed.

  “I can’t be you,” Diana continued, ignoring Antoinette’s bewilderment. “It’s not just my husband. It’s me. Things within my life, within my mind. I am never going to be one of those people whose soul resonates like a bell. I love it that you are this person, however, and I admire it beyond almost anything, and I’m proud you chose me as one of the people to help toast this important woman.”

  “Me too,” said Janet.

  And it was Leanne who said the obvious. “I’d really like to know her name,” she hinted.

  Antoinette’s eyes took on a glint of humour. Leanne loved to know everything, and the lack of concrete details was obviously killing her. “Maybe nex
t year,” she suggested.

  “I think we should toast Antoinette,” Trina interjected. “It’s a champagne kind of evening, and we need to observe that.”

  “You always find the spirit of an occasion,” noted Diana.

  “And you always footnote it,” commented Leanne.

  “And you always note things scientifically,” Janet pointed out.

  “And if you’re going to toast me, just do it!”

  And they did.

  They toasted Antoinette three times, because, as Trina said, “You’re worth fifty toasts, but the drink driving laws get in the way.”

  “We should have champagne nights more often,” said Janet.

  “Only when there’s a full moon and many stars and the trees are lit.”

  “I thought it was bright outside!” said Antoinette. “I read about the lighting this morning and completely forgot. Then I was in such a hurry I didn’t notice the trees.”

  “Why don’t we see them properly now,” suggested Diana. “Why don’t we pretend they’re cherry blossoms and walk among them, gazing upwards contemplatively?”

  “We could write poetry about their beauty.”

  “You can write poetry,” Trina said. “I can do mood. I can picture it in my mind and I can colour my hair and decide on my outfit to match it. I can’t pin words to it. Not ever. I’ve tried. The mood goes away and I’m left deflated.”

  “We don’t want to lose the mood—no poetry,” declared Antoinette. “Cherry blossom time.”

  There was another occasion when they talked about this dead woman. I don’t know who she is, but I have to admire her. On that occasion, Antoinette talked about things other than the cancelling of all her vows and promises to the world, and of starting again. On that occasion she talked about living. I don’t know if I want to explore that episode at all.