The Rock

. An agent disappears in the past. Another agent in return for being allowed to save a child is sent after him.

                 Chapter Three

                    The Rock

              Most people called it the rock.  An ancient volcanic plug lost in the vastness of the Pacific, it derived its name from a Major in the Royal Marines.  Major Pitcairn never saw the island.  His son, being the first known European to see it, named it after him. Twenty-two years later Fletcher Christian, leading a mixed crew of English mutineers and restless Tahitians chose the rock as their refuge. For the next two hundred and fifty years their descendants called the rock their home.  Wars and revolutions swept the world.  On Pitcairn they made little more impression than did the waves of the Pacific beating against its coast.

               Visitors came bringing new ideas and new beliefs.  American missionaries converted the Islanders from nominal Anglicanism to Seven-Day Adventism.  Twice the Pitcairners had evacuated their island, once to Tahiti, once to Norfolk Island. Twice they had returned. The island had its moments of blood and murder.  It had even boasted a dictator; a lunatic named Joshua Hill.  Coming ashore from a passing ship he had persuaded the Islanders that the British government had appointed him governor of Pitcairn. They had accepted his rule until the Royal Navy removed him six years later.  After the departure of Governor Hill the Islanders returned to administering their own affairs, working their small farms, and selling provisions and fish to passing ships.

                By 1857 the 187 Pitcairners faced a serious shortage of land. The British government offered them Norfolk Island, a former penal colony off the coast of Australia.  Most Pitcairners took to the new island. Some did not.  Two years after the evacuation, sixteen Pitcairners returned home.  They rebuilt their houses and their society.  The history of Pitcairn began again.  Four years later another thirty-one Pitcairners returned home.  Evacuations, returns, missionaries, and visitors sprinkled the history of the island.  The great bulk of that history consisted of farming and fishing, births and deaths, of the small events that mark human life. That history ended the day the copters landed.

             Everyone knew that the end was coming.  Pictairn’s population had been declining for years.  The sounds of radio, the images from the cinema video and internet besieged the young people. They left to find the world beamed at the island.  None returned.  By the day that the copter landed the island’s population had fallen to thirty-six. Most of them were old or middle-aged.  Seven were children.  Within another generation Pitcairn would be left to the birds and the goats.

               Five of the children were in the tiny school listening to their teacher, Jane Christian reading John Masefield’s “Sea Fever” when the copter landed. Although they could not know it at the time the teacher and children were holding the last class in the school. The copter landed beside the row of low white buildings that served as parliament, community hall and store.  Out of the copter stepped two men.  They waved at the children tumbling out of the schoolhouse.   The children waved back and began giggling amongst themselves.  Jane hushed them.  She stood beside the door looking at the strange machine and at the two men in dour silence.  She noticed the circle of stars painted on the side of the copter.  The men had come as emissaries of the European Union, the island’s owner.  Until now the Union had been content to ignore them. 

When Jane saw the copter she knew that the long years blessed indifference were over.

These strangers with their unheralded descent into her little world had shown contempt for the way of the island.  Visitors had always announced their approach. Permission to step on Pitcairn had to be sought from the island council.  That had always been the way.  These men in their machine had not bothered to ask confidant of their strength.  Pitcairn would not dare turn them away.  Their arrogance she found even more irritating because it was true.  Pitcairn could no longer pretend it could keep the world out.

           In front of the tiny co-op, stood a small bulletin board.  On it the younger of the two men pinned a brightly colored note.  The older man looked at the Bounty anchor and ship bell that sat in front of the hall.  He patted an anchor fluke.  Two of the bolder children, Margaret and Sam Quintal, asked him his name.

                “Doctor Foley,” he said smiling.

               “My mum hurt her foot yesterday,” Margaret piped.

              The man shook his head.  “Sorry.  I’m not that kind of a doctor.”  Afraid that he might have disappointed the child he fumbled in his coat pocket for the sweets he sucked on when nervous.

              The children were puzzled.  What kind of a doctor did not know how to treat a sore foot?

Miss Jane knew how to do that and she was not a doctor.  Margaret was about to ask him what kind of a doctor he was when Jane called to her. Margaret and Sam hurried away just as Doctor Foley succeeded in pulling a packet of lemon drops from out of his pocket.

                  Foley smiled at the woman.  She stood with her arms folded. A stocky woman, her Polynesian features frowned in disapproval.  He had meant no harm he told her.  She said nothing.  He offered her a lemon drop.  She continued to stare at him ignoring the gesture.

                   The notice having been pinned the other man took a last look at the small huddle of white buildings.  He waved at the gawking children and then clambered back into the copter.  Doctor Foley followed.  The machine ascended and turned towards the ocean scudding off towards the north.

             Jane could not keep from marvelling at the ease of their coming and going.  It had taken her ancestors weeks of travelling to find this island.  Those who found it never left.  Every long boat leaving and entering the island had to work its way through the rocks into Bounty Bay.  Every trip had been a test of courage and skill. The danger of the trip and the remoteness of their island had been their defences.  Now those defences were gone.  She did not join the adults beginning to gather in front of the poster.  Neither did she call the students back to class. She did not have the heart for it.  Instead she sat at her desk and finished reading her poem. 

             Edna Brown bustled into the schoolroom. “Big meeting tonight.  Mainlanders are returning, seven o’clock the sign says.  Evacuation maybe?”

             Jane did not look up from her book. “Maybe” she nodded.

           “Maybe they’ll take us to Papeete or Wellington.  What do you think Jane?”

           “They’ll take us away,” Jane agreed. “Most of us.”

Jane could not disagree with the principle of evacuation.  Pitcairn was dying. Her students needed a future.

“Wellington would be nice. Lots of shops, cinemas, eating-places.  Everything.”

              “Costs money, things like that.  What are you going to do for money?  You think the mainlanders will just give it to you?”

“They’ll have to pay us for our houses and land.  That’s what Da says. I’ll get a job in a shop.  I’d like that, meeting all the people.”

“You’re an island girl.  You know nothing.”

Edna pouted.  “I’ll go to college.  I can do anything once I’m off this rock.  You’re a bright woman Jane.  You can go to college.”

Jane shook her head.  “I will die on this island.”

“How come you want to talk like that.   You think maybe you’re too ugly to catch a man anywhere except here?”

As Edna flounced out enjoying her triumph, Jane adjusted her spectacles and turned back to her book.

***

All thirty-six islanders sat in the church.  The empty pews showed how much the population had declined during the century since the church had been built.  The islanders gathered in the front pews. They waited in polite silence for the mainlanders to speak.

For years messages concerning the future of Pitcairn had circulated between Brussels, Wellington and Adamstown.  Proposals for tourism, a fish plant, a small airstrip had all foundered on the problems of expense and remoteness.  Economists suggested that islanders invest their income from the sale of postage stamps, the islands one regular source of income, in property in New Zealand or Australia.  Pitcairners spoke of eventual reunion with distant relatives in Norfolk Island.  It all came to nothing.  The European Union while unwilling to invest in the island was also reluctant to let it go.  With the independence of Tahiti and New Caledonia, Pitcairn’s two square miles and its tiny dependencies the uninhabited islands Henderson and Oeneo were the only toeholds the union had left in the South Pacific.  That, coupled with the Islanders natural reluctance to disrupt their daily routine, delayed any resolutions. Then the European Minister of Science approached the Secretary-general. 

Three months before the copter’s landing the island’s magistrate and leading landowner, Thursday Young received a letter embossed with the seal of the European Union. Included with the letter was a long form which Thursday, as the island magistrate, was asked to distribute to all households on the island. Each property owner was to state their preferred place of resettlement and estimate the value of their land and house. Thursday had spent a morning struggling through his form with help from Jane.  Finished he had then rung the ship bell to summon the islanders to a meeting.  The information having been collected Thursday placed the finished replies in a large envelope and posted it on the next passing ship three weeks later.  Eight people had refused to fill out their forms.  One of these eight had been Jane’s Uncle William.

As Jane settled into her pew between her Aunt Mary and Uncle William she knew that for her evacuation was not possible.  Her uncle and aunt both in their late sixties had no desire to leave their home. In his twenties William had left the island.  He had found a job in a canning factory in Auckland.  He had travelled all over New Zealand and Australia.  At the age of thirty-three he had returned to Pitcairn and had not left it since.  When asked why he had come back he would tell people he had been born a Pitcairner.  He would always be one. His two sons had left for Australia. The other elders agreed with William and Mary. Evacuation was for the young with children.  The old people were content to live out their lives surrounded by what was familiar to them. 

The notice told the islanders that the meeting would begin at seven o’clock.  Usually that would mean that the first speaker would begin about eight.  However given the importance of the meeting and that mainlanders were present, the Pitcairners acted upon the assumption that seven o’clock actually meant seven o’clock.

Doctor Foley did not speak.  He left it to the United Nations emissary. Roger Delisle enjoyed public speaking as much as Foley hated it.  As he listened to Delisle Foley thought the offer extended by the Union to be a fair one. They would be given full value for their land and all possessions and livestock left behind. The islanders would receive a resettlement allowance based upon the size of the family.  Tuition would be provided for vocational training.  The union would pay all costs involved in resettling them to the destination of their choice. No one would be forced to leave.  Anyone who wished to stay would be free to do so.  Anyone who wished to return could arrange passage on ships passing by Pitcairn.

Foley allowed Delisle’s voice to drift away fading with the slow turning of the ceiling fan.  He studied the small group sitting in front of him. Thirty-six people including an infant were scattered among twenty-four rows of high-backed black pews. This tiny band represented the combined genetics of the greatest seafaring races the world had ever known.  The genetic combination had an odd effect.   The men carried the height and slim build of the English.  Pitcairn women carried the Polynesian heaviness.

A pity that after what their race had been through, they had to face exile. A matter of evolution he told himself.  Nations were born. Nations die.  Seeing it happen was sad even on such a tiny scale as Pitcairn, Still, the race would survive.  The descendants of Pitcairn Island numbered in the thousands.  They could be found living in New Zealand, Tahiti and Australia. Pitcairners had always bred well except on Pitcairn.

At least it would end with dignity.  No one would be hurt.  The union would try to respect the cultural and individual rights of the evacuees. The union had promised him that. It was fitting that the final gathering was taking place in this church. To the Pitcairners it represented what Westminster Abbey represented to the English, the heart of a nation.  Unlike most Pitcairn homes it remained spotless, the wood polished and protected from the termites, the greatest pests on the island.  Behind him, above the pulpit at which Delisle stood preaching the virtues of the union, were words painted over a century before, “Holiness unto the Lord.”  Below it, directly behind Foley was a painting of Christian’s Cave.  At the bottom of the painting he had read a passage from the psalms, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress.”

The cave.  Foley recalled his history of the island.  Fletcher Christian had spent much of his exile brooding in a small cave, thinking of his crime and the land that he had lost.  Most Pitcairners did not think much of Fletcher Christian.  Their hero had been John Adams who had organised the survivors of the colony into a self-sustaining community.  Foley agreed with the Pitcairners.   An overrated man, Fletcher Christian, he had been a failure as a naval officer, a failure as a friend, a failure as a leader.  Foley thought of John Brown.  Another failure.  Yet we remembered them, more than most of their successful contemporaries.  In their very failures they had changed history.

When Delisle finished he asked if there were any questions.  After a moment's hesitation the first came.  Thursday asked about the details involved in the evacuation.  Behind Thursday, Foley recognised a woman.  The schoolteacher he thought.

In response to Thursday’s question Delisle explained that they would not be taken out the way they had expected, by ship.  Copters would fly them out to ships waiting beyond the horizon.  One islander, Peter Brown a septuagenarian, who had opted to stay, asked what the union would do with Pitcairn.  A reasonable question thought Foley.  Delisle told them the island would come under the protection of the United Nations.  Pitcairn would become a natural and scientific preserve.  Scientists, and here he indicated his companion such as Doctor Foley, would come to it from all over the world.

A buzz rose among the islanders.  The knowledge that the pakeha would treat Pitcairn with respect made the leaving of it easier.

Foley watched the schoolteacher rise. Her name was Christian, Jane Christian, a lineal descendent of Fletcher.  At least he thought she was.  There was some mystery about her birth.  A dumpy spectacled woman, her hair tied back in a bun, she stood second in influence to Thursday.  She seemed older then her thirty-seven years, her looks fading into the heaviness of middle age.  She spoke, not in Pitcairnese, that curious melange of Tahitian and eighteenth century English, but in perfect schoolbook English. 

“My name is Jane Christian.  You have come saying how much you will help us.  You say it is a good thing to leave our island.  Many have agreed.”

A nervous coughing rippled through the congregation.  Foley could tell from the expression on their faces that they had heard this argument before.

Jane glanced down at her uncle and aunt.  “My aunt and uncle have decided to stay.  All the old people have.  Their lives are here.  So is mine.  We are Pitcairners.  That is enough for us.  We have no more to say.”

Mary and William rose.  Followed by Jane and by the five other old people who were staying they left the church.

“At least we don’t have to put on the other copters” Delisle whispered to Foley. The eight remaining would not pose a problem for the agency Delisle told Foley later. Nothing to worry about. The only problem, the director explained as they walked back to the copter, was a legal one of ownership.  In leaving the island the islanders were abandoning any legal claim they had to the island.   The seven old people remaining were heads of the families, McCoys, Boggs, Browns and Christians.  Those seven people owned half the island.  That would restrict the agency’s ability to establish its extraterritorial claims free of governmental interference.  Still, not a major problem he assured the scientist. Time would see to that.

Jane and the other remaining Pitcairners did not try to resist the encroachment of the agency on their land.  They were quite willing to rent, for a nominal sum, whatever land was needed by the agency.

As the agency introduced paved roads and high rise buildings the elders collected their rent deposited for them in the Standard Chartered Bank in Wellington. They withdrew more and more into their homes to avoid seeing the transformation of Pitcairn.  Most of her time, Jane spent in the Flatlands on the hundred acres of her Uncle William’s farm.  Here she lived in the same sprawling one story wooden frame house that had been her home since her childhood.  Surrounded by banyan vines, banana groves, vineyards and Norfolk Pine she spent her days reading, caring for her uncle and aunt, gardening, feeding her chickens, baking and cooking.  Every night before sleeping she would sit in front of her computer and chat for a few minutes with Pitcairners scattered across the Pacific. To them she became the last voice of the island.

She had reached her forty-seventh year when the agency approached her concerning the Dzingira baby.  Jane had brushed back her greying hair and stared myopically at the female agent, Astrid Van Den Brugge, who had the temerity to interrupt the feeding of her “chooks”.  As she cast another handful of seed at her chickens, Jane grumbled.   "Why does the agency want a stupid Island girl?  Don't they have their own nurses?”

“That” Astrid admitted, “could be awkward.  An agency nurse being employed in this case would be tantamount to the agency’s publicly accepting responsibility for the anomaly.”

“Anomaly?”

“A strange unexpected . . . “

“I know what an anomaly is but why me?”

“In this case Director Delisle thinks it best to employ someone else outside the agency. You’ve had experience and to be honest, there really is no one else.”

*** 

Jane watched the nurse give the anomaly her bottle. As she looked on Astrid told her where the baby had come from.  Jane knew. On Pitcairn there were few secrets.  The island had always been too small The child in the nurse’s arms was seven hundred years old.  The age however meant little to Jane.  Not having been trained in the proper agency perspective she could not appreciate that she was looking upon a time-spatial anomaly.  She could see only an infant.

“What’s her name?”

“It doesn’t have one.”  A name would have meant acknowledgement.  Astrid hesitated.  “Agent Dzingira named it Joanna.”

“Joanna?”

“After his mother. He found it in England, in a hamlet outside Bristol. Everyone was dead from the Black Death, the bubonic plague except . . . her.”

“Why her?”

“Natural immunity.  It happens.”

Joanna knew of Dzingira, a tall Zimbabwean.  He seemed a decent enough sort, polite but then all agents were.  His colour made him stand out.  Not many Africans worked in the agency.

“So.  You will take the child,” Astrid asked.

“Why not leave her here?”

“As I explained, the agency will not accept responsibility for it.  Agent Dzingira’s act was unwarranted.”

Astrid could say little more.  The agency had already decided to return the child.  Its value as evidence to prove the guilt of Dzingira would end once the trial concluded.  “We will arrange payment,” she added. “Unofficially of course.”

Jane shook her head.  She was a Pitcairner.  In two centuries Pitcairn had never turned away anyone cast up upon its shores.  “That won’t be necessary.”

For the next two weeks she tended the child taking it with her on a sling in front of her back when she walked or pedalled her bicycle about the island.  Joanna and she would visit the shops in Adamstown, now a crowded town gleaming with glass and steel.  Once a day, a nurse from the agency would stop by to take the baby’s measurements. Both Jane and Joanna accepted the nurse’s presence with stoic silence.  As Jane read her books, fed her chooks and conversed with exiled Pitcairners Joanna would remain next to her. Uncle William and Aunt Mary doted on the baby, something that Jane rather regretted.  What the agency gave the agency could take back.

Her spectacles perched on top of her short nose Jane examined the box of powdered baby’s milk.  She decided that while it might suit mainland children, goat’s milk was best for an island baby.

At the end of the aisle, carrying a shopping basket, was Astrid. She looked at Jane,  nodded and returned to considering a box of Ritz crackers.  As Jane passed her Astrid, without turning to her, whispered, “they’re bringing in the Dzingira verdict tomorrow.”  Before Joanna could speak Astrid hurried to the cashier, paid for her groceries and left.

Fifteen days after turning the anomaly over to Jane the agency concluded its case against agent Dzingira.  He was found guilty of breaking the prime directive, interference with the time line.  He was stripped of his rank and sentenced to ten years in prison. Only one thing remained to be done. The historical anomaly had to be corrected.  The baby was to be returned to where it had been found.  Delisle ordered two agents to collect the baby.

Someone in the director’s office made an unauthorised call to William Christian. The speed of the agents sent to fetch the infant seemed slower than usual. When they arrived at the Christian house they found six old people and Jane sitting in chairs in front of William Christian’s house.  Two of the men carried ancient shotguns.  A worn piece of cloth had been hung from the window, the old flag of the Pitcairn colony.  Mary Christian was inside the house with Joanna at Jane’s computer.

The agents looked at the seven people.  They looked at the guns and at the flag and phoned for instructions.  As they phoned, an eight-year-old boy in Wellington picked up a message on the computer for his mother, Edna Brown.  The next morning all one hundred and sixty-seven Pitcairn descendants living in the city converged on Parliament.  Within a day New Zealanders ten times their number had joined them.   There were similar demonstrations in Canberra, on Norfolk Island and Sydney.  Jane kept her baby.

The demonstrations were overshadowed in agency history by the Adamstown agreement but to the Pitcairners and to the agents Jane Christian became a legend.  To the children of Pitcairn she became Aunt Jane.  To Joanna she was simply mother.

***

As Joanna straightened her back from hoeing the sweet potatoes she looked over at her mother sweeping the red dust from off the porch step.  Jane was eighty now. In all those years not once had she ever driven a car, seen a cow or a horse.  Apart from an occasional expedition in her youth to Henderson and Oeno Islands she had never been off the two square miles of Pitcairn.  She had never even, as far as Joanna knew, made love. She had cared for her uncle and aunt until they had passed away.  All of the elders were gone.  Jane was the last Pictairner on Pitcairn. Her once plump form had shrunk.  Yet this old woman, the last of her race, was now mistress of half of Pitcairn Island.  The old people had left the land to her.  If the Pitcairners could not win, she told Joanna, they could delay the agency’s victory.

Joanna had not visited the past since returning from Kish.   The agency had decided that Joanna lacked the temperament suitable to a field agent.  They had assigned her a maintenance job flying and keeping in the air the copters that flew between the island and the ships.                  Sean, who had remained in the field, lived with them in the old Christian house. The agency had offered them a modern condominium but Joanna would not leave Jane. Sean’s days were spent travelling the ages but he was always home in time for dinner.  In some ways it was just like any other nine to five job.  The married couple would leave in the morning for their respective jobs and meet over the dinner table.  There the resemblance ended.   Sean had aged more quickly than Jane had.

The natural time in the field could run for weeks or even months. On Pitcairn the time between departure and return would last for only a few minutes.  The rest of the day Sean would spend filing reports and discussing his observations with Sam and the other field agents.  You could fool the time line.  You could not fool your own body.  The body continued to age during the time in the field.  A good agent could have ten to fifteen years Pitcairn time in the field before being retired .If a mainlander, he or she could chose to return to their country of origin.  If an islander, the former agent would be rewarded with a comfortable life in an agency condominium on Pitcairn.

The service took its toll in another way.  Sam would not speak of what he saw in the past but at night Joanna would hear him muttering in different languages.  Often he would thrash about. Once his weeping roused her. Sometimes she would awaken to find him gone.  This night she found him standing outside, naked in the cool air, staring up at the sky. Afraid that he would catch cold she pulled on her dressing down and brought him his robe.  She draped it around his shoulders as he continued to look up at the Southern Cross.

“Do you remember that child killed by the lions all those years ago,” he asked her. “Just as well.  He would never have liked it here.” He made no move to tie his robe.  Joanna leaned against him, placing her arms around him, warming him. “They try to make you forget.  It doesn’t work.”

“About what you saw?”

“No.  About what you are, where you came from.  It doesn’t work.” He held her arms. “You were too young to remember what it was like before they took you.  I was five. Much too old to forget.”

“Sean, you’ve never told me.”

“I never thought about it much.  It was all too long ago.  I never wanted to think about it.  An Irish-American senator from Boston, a very powerful man, a possible presidential candidate wanted to trace his ancestors. He approached the agency. Guess who they chose as researcher.”

“The agency isn’t supposed to be political.”

“Everything is political.  To please the American government Sean Mulcahy, dressed as a fine, well-fed gentleman, went riding on a wet autumn day through County Mayo.  I was at a little place called Westport, the senator’s fabled ancestral home, and mine." 

"I saw people working on the road, women hauling stone in straw baskets, men with pick and shovels and bare hands.  Famine work.  It was raining.  Most wore only rags. Some were shaking from the cold but the work meant food.  They didn’t even look up as I rode past. The work was everything.”

“My da was there breaking the rocks.  My ma and my sister, Eileen, with her ulcerated leg were carrying baskets.  I had stayed in the hut with my grandma that day.  The work would stop later in the fall.  When the work ended, so did the food.  I rode by them knowing who they were; knowing what would happen.  I could not even toss them a copper.  That would have interfered with what was to come. I just . . . kept riding.  I ignored them all in the best agency manner.   Delisle would have been proud.”

“Sean.”

“Why did Foley ever invent the damn thing?  Do you know what I can’t forgive myself for? As I rode on,  I didn’t want to know those dirty, ragged, starving people as my own.”

They remained there for a moment holding one another.  Sean murmured that he was cold. They went back into the house. Once in bed they made love.  Joanna straddled him trying to drive away the memories within him.  She almost succeeded feeling him bucking and gasping beneath her. But as she listened to his moaning and felt his hands clutching her she knew even as he came inside her that his mind remained elsewhere.  When they were spent and lying beside one another, Sean ran the palm of his hand down her back.

“You’ve never forgiven them for taking you out of the field, have you. love?”

Joanna closed her eyes. She did not want to think about what could not be.  He stroked her hair.  “You’ll never know how lucky you are.” Sean sank his head into the pillow and slept.

***        

When Sean failed to come home for supper Joanna called Sam.  His secretary put her on hold.  As James Galway piped Mendleson’s Midsummer’s Night Dream, Joanna fumed.  After five minutes Sam’s deep voice sounded over the phone.

“Something wrong, Joanna?”

“Damn right there’s something wrong. Sean’s not home yet.  What’s going on, Sam?”

Joanna could pick up whispered murmuring.  Sam came on again.  “I’m coming over.”

She heard a click and then the soft buzzing of the line.

***

Sam had put on weight.

“Too many official dinners” he complained as he climbed the steps of Jane’s porch.

“No one’s forcing you to eat the food,” said Jane. “Would you like some lemonade?”

Jane might have little liking for the agency but a guest was a guest.  Besides she had always liked Sam.

                Sam, settling into a wicker chair, accepted the offer with grateful relief.  As he drank he chatted with Jane discussing their health, Susan, Jane’s crops and the prospect for rain.  Finished he handed the glass back to Jane and smiled at Joanna. “Let’s take a walk.”

His large hands clasped behind his back, Sam strolled down the narrow lane leading away from Jane’s house.  He breathed in the heavy scent of the hibiscus.  He would miss Pitcairn.  It’s hilly surface, vegetation and climate reminded him of Beirut. He thought of Susan remaining behind living out her life here.  An islander leaving Pitcairn would pose too great a threat to the stability of the time line.

“Something’s wrong with Sean?” Joanna asked.

“Yes.”

“He didn’t come back.”

“No.”

“Did you send him back to Ireland?”

“How did you . . .?"

“He told me.”

Sam sighed.  “That was a mistake, Ireland. We should never have sent him.”

“Why did you?”

Sam shrugged.  “Ever read about the early history of flight.  One mistake after another.”

“Sam.”

“The Americans have never liked the agency’s control of the portal. Delisle thought we could win a few points with them by satisfying Senator Mulcahy.  Sean has the same name.  He is one of our best agents.  The senator wanted him.”

“Did you know that Sean met his parents?”

Sam turned.  “No. I didn’t.”

“They were working on the roads.  Famine relief.  He rode on past them.  Never said a word.  Did you send him back there?”

“No. I sent him on a holiday. I knew Ireland had been hard on him so I gave him an easy assignment.”

“What?”

“Canada, 1995.  A small city called Kingston.  Pretty place.  I thought he would enjoy it”

“Why there?”

“You should know your agency history, Joanna.”

Joanna thought for a moment.  “Doctor Foley.”

“Very good.  We’re coming up to the centennial of his birth. 1989. Kingston Ontario.  The agency wants to honour him.  We’re going to run a series of holographic videos about his life and work.  All Sean had to do was to get some footage of his family.  Simple.”

“What went wrong?”

“We don’t know.  We’ve traced his movements up to three days time-line after he arrived.  After that nothing.”

Joanna shivered.  “So what now?”

“We keep looking. People just didn’t disappear in Canada in 1989.  There has to be a sign of him somewhere.”

Joanna remembered him standing in the dark looking up at the stars. “Maybe he just doesn’t want to be found.”

“That has occurred to me.  That’s why I want you to go look for him.”

“Me?”

“The trouble with being beginners is that we make too many mistakes.”  He smiled. “Do you know what I call myself? The man with the red flag.”

“Waving a warning?”

“Oh, he did more than that.  In England he had to walk in front of any self-propelled vehicle which meant that the vehicle could never move faster than he could walk.  The truth is, the agency hates the entire concept of time travel. For all the speechifying, it terrifies them. Do you want to know the unofficial attitude of the agency towards the great genius Foley.  They see him as a blundering fool who should have left well enough alone.  Now we’re stuck cleaning up the consequences.”

“Am I one of those consequences, Sam? Is that why they took me out of the field?”

“The agency felt that you were not reliable.  You did hate it there.”  He could have mentioned the drinking but did not.  There seemed no need. Joanna had never taken another drink since returning to Pitcairn.

“Yes, some of it,” she admitted.  “But that wasn’t the reason.  I am Benjamin Dzingira’s daughter. They have never forgiven him or me. Have they?”

“That’s between you and them, Joanna.  Look. I came here because I need you.  The advantage of being chief of operations is that every so often I get to do what I want.  I’ve had to cash in accumulated favours of sixteen years but I’ve been able to secure two agreements, one conditional on the first.”’

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever tried to play chess with someone who knows every move before you make it?  The agency had suspected since the Sargon incident that someone, probably from the future has been attempting to interfere with the time line.  We have lost three agents over the past two years including Sean.. Vanished completely.”

“Murdered?”

“Worse. Defected.”

“De . . but to what?”

Sam plucked a hibiscus and placed it in a buttonhole.  “I want you to find him Joanna, for his sake.”

“I don’t have the experience.”

“You know him.  You know how he thinks.  That’s what we need.”

“There’s so much of him I don’t know at all.  Anyway, what’s to stop me from joining him?”

“That’s where the second agreement comes in.”

“Second?”

“Another mistake we made. I’ve finally persuaded the agency that it should be corrected for the greater good.  Sean is their priority.  To get to him I’ve persuaded them that they need you.  However, as you pointed out, they can’t trust you to return. So we need a damn good reason to make you want to come back.  A wonderful group we work for, isn’t it?”

“What is this reason?”

He placed a thick finger on her left shoulder.   “You’re going to become a mother, Joanna.”

“What?”

“The agency has approved your request.”

“What request?”

“The one you made sixteen years ago.  You asked if we could save a child.  They’ve granted that request, if you help find Sean.”

Joanna’s mind raced back through the years.  “The boy killed by the lions?”

“Yes.”

“But . . . we can’t. It’s too late. It would change our own past.”

Sam nodded. “Quite right but in politics logic doesn’t always apply, does it?  Delisle has decided that considering the circumstances, an exception can be made.”

“Is that what you believe, Sam?”

Sam shrugged. “They don’t pay me to believe, just to run the damn thing.  The agency believes that finding Sean is worth the risk.  When the Allied high Command planned the D-Day assault during World War  two, they created a fake army to convince the Germans that the assault was coming at the Pas de Calais,  That is what we’re going to do.  We are going to convince the future that we have employed you as a mechanic, pilot and surrogate mother. There will be no record of your trip to Canada. The only communications you make will be oral to myself and to one agent on site. No one else.”

Joanna thought of Sean lying beneath her looking into scenes she could never know.  She remembered a child being ripped apart by lions.  She had risked her career appealing for his rescue.  Now she found herself echoing the reasons once given against saving him. Was she getting old?

“It won’t work Sam, at least as far as the boy goes.  Sean couldn’t forget where he came from. That boy is even older than Sean was.  Would we be helping him in bringing him here?  Why couldn’t we just drop him off somewhere close to a settlement?”

“The agency won’t approve that; too disruptive to that time.  Bring him here or leave him to the lions.  That’s your choice, Joanna.”

“If I find Sean and he doesn’t want to come back?”

“At least we’ll know why.  Would you like someone else, some of our security people to find him?”

“No.”  Joanna shook her head.

Sam continued, his voice becoming more urgent.  “I want to see him, to talk to him.  Old time’s sake.  No one will punish him not while I‘m in charge.”

“When would you want me to go?”

"Tomorrow.”

Joanna protested.  An operation usually required months of training. “But surely you have to give me some time to prepare.”

Sam shook his head.  “The agency has decided not to extend my contract.  I’ll be leaving Pitcairn in two months time. Once I'm gone this will be out of my hands.”

“But you’ve been here since the beginning.”

“Had to end sometime. If I were American or British but Lebanese? I asked if I could settle here, buy a small house.  I know it's against agency policy. Never any chance of them accepting it of course.”

She placed a hand on his right shoulder. “Sam I’m so sorry.  What about Susan?”

“She always knew this would have to happen. Anyway that has nothing to do with this.  I’ll see you at the office at nine o’clock. Good night.”

She watched Sam stroll away back up towards Adamstown, his hands clasped behind his back. She called out to him.

“What will I say to the child?  I don’t know his name, his language.”

Sam looked back.  “Who does?  You’ll think of something.”  He waved and resumed walking back to Adamstown.

***

Tezah opened his eyes.  He had dreamed of his sister Napthali and mother Marna. Again he had seen them fleeing naked and screaming out of the burning longhouse.  He could still feel the warmth of the flames.  He blinked. What he had thought were flames were rays of the late morning sun shining upon him burning his face.  He staggered to his feet. His legs and back were stiff and sore.  He would drink first and then begin his run toward the mountains. As he squatted beside the brown water he noticed the goddess.

On the opposite side of the pool the air shimmered.  There she stood, Shahat the beautiful, the goddess of life.  His father had seen her once.  Before he had become a man Uruk had gone off into the hills.  For three days he had fasted praying to the gods for the vision that would give him a man’s name. Shahat had come to him calling him Uruk, great heart.  Had Shahat come to give him a name? No. Tezah knew he was too young.  Why would the goddess want him?  She held something out to him.  A cloth finer than the finest wool covered it.

If you see a god or goddess Uruk had told him, do not run. Do not show fear.  The immortals despise cowards.  Do not grovel.  The gods wish people to be people, not animals or slaves. We are not like the southerners that scrape before their false gods.  We are men. Speak to the immortals with the respect the young should give to the elders. Tezah touched the firestone dangling from his neck. But even with the firestone of Shahat he remained a frightened, lost, hungry child. His belly, upset by the unripe dates and dirty water, rumbled.    Flatulence added shame to his fear. His legs began to shake.  The goddess, angry at such disrespect, would punish him.  

Before going to bed Joanna had discussed her assignment with Jane. Words, Jane had told her, did not matter.  What mattered was the tone. If the child could understand that she intended no harm it would not run.  The child would be frightened. It would also be hungry. If you cannot appeal to the mind appeal to the stomach.

Joanna pulled the cloth away from the plate.  On it were fresh biscuits baked by Jane.  She prayed that the aroma and sight of the food would offset any panic he would feel at her sudden appearance. Holding the plate in front of her she adjusted the plastic tiara on her head, smiled and stepped towards him. The tiara with its paste diamonds was a prop from the agency theatre.  Even so to the boy it would glitter like stars. A goddess must look like a goddess. So Joanna had donned fake jewels a robe and a white wedding dress.  The props however did not solve another problem. A goddess should know his language.  She did not.  Therefore she had to remain mute. Look lofty and mysterious Sam had suggested. Wondering how one looks lofty, Joanna stepped forward.

Tezah stepped forward relieved that Shahat did not seem angry.  Her beckoning and the smell of the food drew him on.  He began to wade through the water.

The heat of the morning sun caused perspiration to trickle down Joanna’s forehead.  Goddesses she told herself were not supposed to perspire. If he should suspect that she was a fraud and run she would lose him. The lions lay waiting in the grass. Apart from the amulet the child was naked.  There was nothing to protect him. She carried no weapon, only the biscuits and these silly props. She recalled the last time she had seen the amulet.  They had buried it with the child. Please God, let there not be a second burial. She had to hurry. Within a minute or two the copter she and Sean were flying in would pass over.  Sean would be looking into his viewer.  She could not stay beyond that moment.  Yet she could not allow herself to appear anxious.  A goddess must appear serene.

Tezah stood still in the middle of the pool the water now past his knees.  Could he approach any further? His father told him that the goddess in his vision had been tall with raven black hair.  This one had red hair but gods and goddesses could change their appearance.  Shahat continued to hold the food out to him. Uruk had told him how Shahat had offered to Tiamat the food of the gods.  In eating it he had become as one with the gods.  Would that happen to him?  He longed for the goddess to speak, to tell him what he should do but she did not. Neither could he dare ask. He hesitated.

Joanna stepped forward into the pool wondering what bacteria dwelt in those brown waters. The boy might have a natural immunity. She did not.

He struggled to remember the story of Tiamat,.  Generations before invaders from the north had destroyed the village.  Tiamat had called unto the gods for help.  Shahat had come unto him and had taken him up into the mountains. There he had dwelt with the gods learning from them the wisdom he needed to defeat their enemies.  Unworthy as he was, Tezah, the black-faced one had been chosen to be another Tiamat.  When they thought him ready the gods would return him to the earth.  There he would defeat the southerners and free his people.  How he would do that he did not know but if such was his fate he could only obey.

When he was very small the other children had mocked him because of the mark on his face and because of his left-handed clumsiness.  His father had silenced them by telling them that Enku had placed his hand on Tezah’s face to tell all the gods that he intended him for great things. He placed around his neck the amulet that Uruk had received from his father, who in turn had received it from his father. It had fallen burning out of the sky. Since Shahat ruled the sky and all things in it, they had taken it as a gift from her. The wearer of the stone was under her protection.  No one made fun of Tezah after that.

The goddess now stood an arm’s length from him.  He looked at the strange bread. He had never seen such fine bread before.  His stomach ached. Tezah yearned to take it but did not.  This was a test.  He should not appear greedy.  He waited for the goddess to speak. Perhaps she would take him up to the sky as she had taken Tiamet.

Joanna broke off an end of the biscuit and held it out to the boy.  She prayed he would not detect the nervousness behind the smile. Goddesses were not supposed to be nervous.  Sam should have given her time to study the village’s language and customs.   He had been in such a damn hurry. It could ruin everything.

                Tezah nibbled at Shahat’s bread.   He chewed it slowly, savouring it. The goddess stepped back beckoning him to follow. He followed stopping to take another piece of the marvellous bread. Joanna led him back out of the pool, placing it between themselves and the lions.  When she reached the water’s edge she stopped to offer him her hand. Tezah hesitated.  Humans could shrivel at the touch of an angry god. Yet the immortals also fathered humans.  Shahat did not seem angry. Why would she wish to trap him?  That was not Shahat’s way.

Behind the goddess the air began to shimmer.  The gods must be calling her.  He stood there chewing and watching Shahat looking back at the gods.  Shahat then turned and again offered him her hand.  She also spoke.  “Come.”

The boy frowned.  He did not know that word.  It sounded like the word for bread.  Sometimes what the gods said was not clear.  They had a different way of speaking as did people from other villages. He sensed that she meant no harm.   He placed his hand in hers.

She led him out of the pool towards the spirits of the air.  Tezah and Shahat stood beside the pool allowing the shimmering air to surround them. Despite himself Tezah began to tremble.  The goddess knelt and pressed him close to her. He smiled to show that he was not afraid. He heard soft crackling and saw a bright light.  For the second time his world ended.

Islands in Time  Amazon

Author's Note

Written in Canadian English