The Year of the Fruit Cake Read online

  I note this in writing, so that I can return to it each day for the next week and assess what I am presented.

  Seven days.

  Ten reasons.

  I live and they die. Or they live and I remain with them until my hundredth birthday. Then I die. Early and unfulfilled.

  I’m supposed to argue that humanity is worth the sacrifice of my life. I can’t do that. I don’t know if I want there to be ten reasons, and for me to return to the rest of my long life, or if I’m happy to sacrifice myself for them. My hand was forced. It’s still being forced.

  I have to Judge. I cannot use the errors of others and the plots of others as an excuse to escape. There is no escape.

  I don’t have to know. This is the whole reason for my blankness of mind. I cannot weigh my life against theirs. It’s hubris to make me. I’m not given the opportunity to weigh my own race’s hubris. We don’t do that.

  Countdown.

  Day Seven

  Diana woke up like a lizard. That’s how she thought of it, anyhow. Techs woke up like that. It had been so many years since she’d seen any species other than humans that this ought to have faded, but some things were easier to remember than others. Whenever she saw a skink on the footpath in summer, she remembered that lizards woke up the same way she did. The memory became part of her life and so she knew, even if other things were perpetually vague, that she woke up like a lizard.

  Her eyes blinked a few times and Diana stayed very still. This was a habit she got into around 2016. When she moved, her husband would know she was awake and would start talking. Lying still gave her quiet time to discover just how much memory she was waking up to, every day. She then would look for her husband, but he, of course, was gone now. Except it was never of course. Her bed felt cold and lonely and she moved quickly. Every day.

  This day only had one small difference. When Diana tallied her memory, she thought: “How the hell do I Judge?”

  Every movement she made, every thought she had, contained Judgement. Every second that was missing one of the ten reasons for humanity to live, brought Earth closer to the end of its human occupants.

  This idea did not please her. At all.

  Today she creaked a little. Just a little. Enough to remind her that she wasn’t middle-aged any longer. A mature woman. Capable of mature judgements. Old enough for people to ignore and not yet old enough to qualify as a little old lady or to be treated as something from a different species. She refused to consider the potential irony in reaching little old lady status as an alien. At that moment, her hand hovered near the toaster. She was anxious to get breakfast over.

  She’d given up worrying about the impossible fixedness of her gender some years before, but she never forgot the safety of her burrow or the feeling of belonging to a clan or the poise one carried everywhere when one mattered. She missed mattering. She missed it all the more because of Judgement. Judgement was not the same as being essential to one’s own society. Judgement was so lacking in ethics, in fact, that it felt like a betrayal of all Diana had ever stood for. It had taken her a long time to remember enough about her earlier life to deduce this, but now that she had that in her mind, it was a perpetual humiliation.

  She had been planning for this week for twenty years. And now that it was here, she didn’t want to waste time on breakfast. She ate it, however, for she had trained herself to put her physical health first. Even if this body were gone in a week, she would leave it well-treated. And if it wasn’t gone in a week, she wanted to avoid illnesses. The last ten years had been better than the ten before, and she was determined to keep it that way.

  However she Judged, this body was hers and she was going to respect it, even though her arthritis didn’t make pouring milk into her coffee as easy as it once had been.

  Today was a good day and the body merely twitched and twinged.

  Maybe a good day meant a good omen? She’d given up on miracles. She gave up the day her husband died. She was stuck following the lizards’ agenda. Omens mattered. Fears and guesses and omens had been her only support on matters extra-terrestrial for so long that she automatically read her horoscope, calculated the odds, delivered her own mind a constant barrage of assessment and hope and fear based on everything from how long the traffic lights took to change, to whether the coins in her purse would have an even or odd number of twenty cent pieces.

  Diana had changed. She knew it. It was too late to change back. This was the person who was Judge. At this point, nothing else mattered.

  Diana checked the news. Nothing good. There was not a thing that redeemed humanity. There was more flooding after the tsunami and the last of the citizens moved from yet another low-lying island. Deaths, destruction—news as usual, but not a good omen for humans. She resolved at that moment to leave omens behind, and to leave counting behind. This was not the week for evaluation: that came at the end.

  This was not what she thought she was going to do. She had been entirely certain that she’d analyse consciously, carefully and clearly and make an argued case for and against humanity. But that wouldn’t work. All she’d do would be to talk herself into a result, and that result would depend on her mood, on her aches, on the weather, on if she’d eaten enough or too much. This is why she’d resolved on ten things originally. Best to stick to that.

  Diana went old-fashioned. She found a scrap of paper (which wasn’t easy) and her calligraphy pen and she packed them in her handbag. Each time she saw something that counted, she’d note it down. Make a simple mark on the page. She wouldn’t assess it or question it. And she’d try not to tally up the numbers until the time was right.

  This was the best way she could think of to make herself the impartial Judge she ought to be. The impartial Judge that was an impossibility.

  Why do we do this to ourselves? She asked herself about herself and about her people, and didn’t specify which people. This was why Judges remained on a planet for years, in theory, to achieve a perfect equilibrium between their host species and their home species. Diana had achieved it in her way. She wondered if she should be proud, but instead she decided to return to half-hearted self-castigation.

  Was this whole week going to be quiet and contemplative? She hoped so. She hoped not. Her equilibrium was too perfect and she had no idea what she wanted to do or how she wanted to do it. At least she was dressed and had eaten and was ready to go out. Even though she had no idea where she wanted to go.

  Humans past, she decided. That would give her fuel for contemplation.

  Diana took a taxi to the Museum of Democracy. Janet had stopped volunteering there a decade ago. Leanne had joined her for a while, for the company, but Leanne was not around any longer. Leanne wouldn’t see the end of humanity. This was the real reason Diana took that taxi. She didn’t want to face this week without all her friends. One at a time, she would touch base. She could have visited Leanne’s little box at the cemetery, but she always found Leanne’s caged ashes disturbing. The Museum was safe.

  The taxi was less safe. The driver had decided that it was too small a fare, or that Diana was too slow at getting in, or something. He didn’t say what. He was difficult the whole way. He wanted to take her to the wrong museum, then he wanted to take her the scenic route (how he could have mistaken her for a tourist, when he’d picked her up at her own home, was a mystery); either way, Diana was thoroughly annoyed by the time she reached the museum.

  She’d forgotten that it was a school day. Did I even know? she wondered as she saw the hordes of uniformed youngsters lining up dutifully, crowding everyone else off the white steps into the building. She decided her best port of call was the restaurant across the road.

  It had developed the history mania that was sweeping the country, and listed its previous names on the flickering plaque at its entrance. Pork Barrel, it said, The Lobby. When it had been the Pork Barrel, it had particularly good danis
hes, she remembered. That was a long time ago. She ordered a danish in memory, but it wasn’t right. Too crisp, and not enough blueberries and custard. Those danishes had really not been danishes at all, but something else pretending to be a danish. Something with much yeast and custard. One couldn’t do that these days. Labelling laws were very precise.

  I expected everything to be so big and important this week, she thought, and here I am miserable about a taxi driver and schoolchildren and the texture of a pastry. There’s nothing here to base a decision on.

  The whole day was like that. Small things, one after another. The only thing she achieved that was worth doing was chatting with one of the current educators.

  “One of my close friends used to do your job,” she said. “Twenty years ago.” Oh God, I sound like one of those old ladies, forever reminiscing. But I miss Leanne, I’m allowed to talk about her work. It keeps her alive. “She used to tell us all about it.”

  The young lady was perhaps tired of schoolchildren, but she was very kind. Diana and she swapped anecdotes about teaching in the old Parliament House and wandered up and down, comparing today with yesterday and the day before.

  At the end of the day, that was the only positive that Diana remembered. Being taken care of by the young educator. Being talked to as if she mattered and as if her memories counted. Being able to laugh about her friends’ jokes and to explain the chocolate club.

  Is this a point? Diana wondered. Yes, I think it is. It changed my day and it did more than that. I think humankind should be judged on kindness and respect and attention. Half a point then, for so many other people were rude or condescending or shoved past me. Half a point is a beginning.

  In the end, she allocated a full point. Talking about Leanne had moved her from feeling terribly alone to realising that she still had friends. She messaged those friends and arranged to meet for lunch the next day. She wasn’t actually playing with Judgement. She was simply meeting her friends for lunch.

  She went to bed feeling as if, maybe, she wasn’t quite alone. That the universe wasn’t as vast as she had remembered. That Judgement might not be an impossible burden.

  Day Six

  Why was a jackhammer rack-rack-rack-racketing outside her bedroom window? Diana didn’t want to know. What she wanted was an hour’s sleep. She’d stayed up a little late the night before, reading, and felt under the weather. The jackhammer didn’t help.

  Should she scream at it? The trouble was, she was not the scream­ing sort. She sighed and got out of bed.

  As she made her essential first cup of coffee for the day, she heard her phone ring. It was her friends: lunch tomorrow. Two of them had difficulties with today.

  “Will explain,” promised Trina.

  “Will do better,” said Antoinette, “Will bring home-made choc­olate cake.” Antoinette had taken over cake duty from Leanne. Cakes and slices had become so very much one of their little traditions that they felt the need to maintain it. No cake also meant Leanne was missing.

  “Yay! Cake tomorrow,” Janet’s message said. “I don’t mind a quiet day today. See you then.”

  See them then, repeated Diana, and sighed. It was going to be one of those days. Like that time she melted her saucepan. There was no way of making the day go right, not even by going back to bed, given the noise outside. All she could do was minimise the damage.

  She decided to go to Mt Ainslie and walk a bit. That would be soothing. So she did. And a jogger ran into her. He held himself as if he owned the world and he ran as if he owned the path. This meant he didn’t watch for others and he didn’t do more than say “Watch out!” and then went his oblivious way. Diana found herself sprawling on the ground.

  Nothing was broken, but her ankle hurt and so did her right arm. In fact, her whole right side hurt. She walked very, very slowly back to the car and sat there for a bit, until the shock wore off. Then she went home.

  Home was no help. The jackhammer’s wielder had obviously been careless, for there was no electricity. She used her phone to great effect and found that it would be four hours before electricity was restored, and that someone was probably sorry. She decided that it was a jackhammer and not a person, for otherwise humanity would be judged on her state of hurt and would be condemned. There were no positive points in any of this.

  She decided to catch a bus and go somewhere safe. The city shops. She could buy something nice and cheer herself up.

  Diana didn’t notice the date or the time. The date was too close to Christmas. And public service payday. And public service lunchtime. The shops were frantic and heedless. Instead of being comforted, she was jostled beyond her capacity to deal, and she ended up sitting down in the chemist being fed painkillers and water by an almost-understanding pharmacist.

  “Why don’t you go home?” he suggested. “Take a taxi. You can finish your shopping another day.”

  Diana was so subdued that she didn’t say “Because I have a job to do”, or “Because home is where the jackhammer is and the power isn’t” or any of the other replies she could have made. She didn’t deduct the one point humanity had earned, due to the pharmacist being sensible and doing his job. But she wouldn’t’ve minded if an asteroid hit everyone who walked past her and jostled her, or shoved her, or made her stumble. A very specific asteroid that broke into pieces and hit only individuals who annoyed her.

  Diana wished she were God rather than alien and had the powers of natural selection rather than unnatural genocide. She was silent in the taxi. She was silent when she reached home. She didn’t ring anyone or send messages.

  Eventually the jackhammer stopped. An hour later, she had power. Humanity didn’t earn any points the rest of the day, however, because Diana spent most of it recumbent on the couch, reading Georgette Heyer. Humanity received half a point for Georgette Heyer, but lost it when the electricity went off again and didn’t come on until morning. Cold showers and home- delivered pizzas were not Diana’s idea of civilisation.

  “I should ring someone,” she half-thought, but gave up on it as a bad idea and went to bed. When she woke up two hours later with a nightmare about the world coming to an end because she was crushed under the steps of a thousand careless joggers, she took emergency measures.

  Diana had sleeping tablets for bad nights. She would have to deal with a mild hangover from the tablet the next day, but that was better than carrying the effects of the bad day into a second day. She only had five more days, after all. Humanity had to be given a fair go. Most of humanity. Not the shoppers or joggers, obviously. She took this thought back to bed with her and slept like a baby.

  Day Five

  “Today’s got to be better,” Diana told herself, almost desperately.

  A few years ago, she would have perjured her soul and sacrificed her life to allow humans to survive. But a few years ago she had a husband, and she had been visiting Leanne four times a week and sitting quietly with her, dealing with the fallout of ageing.

  When Leanne’s nephew had visited, Diana was called in to run damage control.

  There was no damage to control. This middle-aged man had no notion of the fear Leanne had lived in whenever she visited home. He only knew that it seemed like a good idea to drop in on his aunt while he was in Canberra.

  “He just had no idea,” marvelled Diana. “But he’s so very simple in his approach to life. He must find Canberra difficult.”

  “That’s why I left. Simple approaches. Everything not open and black and white was silenced. Abuse can’t be challenged if it can’t be spoken about. It can’t be stopped if one lives in a simple universe of straightforward rights and wrongs.”

  They were silent for a while.

  It was this silence that remained with Diana and that was haunting her today. How could she Judge silences and hurt? Did she Judge Earth on survivors and how they dealt? Or on abusers and how common they
were? Was private crime a cause to delete an entire race from the universe?

  What I need is to find out how the humans taken off-planet adapted to being specimens and in enclosures. That would help determine what makes up humans. Or maybe it won’t. Maybe it’d demonstrate how a few hundred humans handle being treated as semi-sentient beings by aliens. Isn’t it funny that the first thing I think of when Judging beings like us is how to make them behave like beings that aren’t like us at all?

  It was more inevitable than funny. The sort of universal Judgement she would perform in a few days was simply not something that worked for this species. None of the checks and balances that would have prevented the Judge being pulled in had worked. Probably because of this. Probably because they, the species Judging, wanted to find differences.

  Colonialism, Diana thought. And also, I’ve had all these thoughts before. Over and again. The time to agonise in this way is past. Long past. I need…

  Who she needed, she realised, was Leanne. Leanne had turned that abuse inside out and upside down. She’d not confronted the abuser, but she’d confronted her reaction to it. She’d reconstructed her life. Her last thirty years had been very good. Her preachiness, her wish to solve everyone else’s problems, would have helped Diana now. And Leanne was gone, because human lives were short.

  There was only one answer to this, really, and that was to see the others.

  Diana checked for messages. And there they were. Multitudes of messages. None of them good.

  Antoinette was in hospital.

  Janet and Trina had agreed to meet there and then go to lunch. They had checked visiting hours, They had found out what they could about what had gone wrong. Diana added her “Will be there in 20 minutes,” and hurried to join them.