6. Good-Bye to Everything
“You know this is not a good time to sell,” their housing agent, Karin Joost, said as she looked out the window of their flat in Österholm. “Ah! You can see the water from here. That’s a plus.”
Rolf remembered the narrow view across the Strandvägen. He didn’t have to strain his neck to see it again. In many ways, he would not be sorry to leave this cramped space in a city crowded onto tiny islands. England in the fifteenth century sounded so much … roomier.
“It’s a shame you have to give it up,” the woman said.
“I know,” he replied, “but with a five-year-old running around, we’re going to need a bigger place.”
“Oh, you have a little boy?” And when Rolf hesitated. “A little girl then?”
“Actually, we don’t know yet. We just found out that Anja’s pregnant.”
“So the baby is some months off, and a toddler is years in the future.”
“Yes, that’s the situation,” he said.
“So why do you want to sell now?”
“We’ll be going away for a while.”
“Have you thought about leasing out the property?”
“Not really,” he said, meaning not at all. “Where we’re going, we won’t be able to interview tenants, sign contracts, or manage their relations with the Housing Board.”
“Oh, I can handle all that for you,” Joost said. “I could send you a remittance for the rental every month—minus, of course, your land taxes, social obligations, and my agency’s small transaction fee.”
“I’m afraid we wouldn’t be able to cash it,” he said.
Rolf’s eyes followed Anja as she moved around the room, touching things: their neatly made bed, the loveseat, the table made of real teak with two mismatched chairs, the wall screen that currently displayed a sunset view of the harbor. She lingered in the kitchen alcove. He saw her quietly open a drawer, pull something out, and slip it into her pocket.
“They won’t let you take that,” he called across the room.
Anja paused with the hand still firmly in her pocket.
“It’s all right,” Karin Joost said. “ ‘Furnished’ doesn’t mean you have to sell everything. She can take along a souvenir.”
“It’s not that—” Rolf started to say.
“It’s just a knife,” Anja said. “Master Lee said I’m supposed to carry one. And I’ll need a really sharp knife where we’re going.”
Now he knew what she was holding: a twenty-centimeter blade of hardened white ceramic that was virtually unbreakable and would never need sharpening. It folded neatly with a spring-loaded catch into a handle of red polycarbonate, sculpted with deep finger grooves. It would never chip or become dull from use. But if such an object were discovered in the fifteenth century, it would be impossible to explain. And the staff at InterTime Systems would never let it pass through the portal.
“But, sötnos, it’s the wrong kind,” he said, to be reasonable.
“Don’t ‘sweetheart’ me, Rolf. I want it. It’s for my protection.”
“Oh, go ahead. Let her have it,” Joost urged. “I didn’t see a thing.”
Rolf relented without a word. He couldn’t argue with two women at once. Let the proctors at the ITS Centre manage this. He wondered if things would really be that much different in the fifteenth century.
——
Anja Varden reached her right hand slowly up to the back of her head and straightened the circle of flowers, which had slipped to one side as she and Rolf walked down the aisle. The blooms were mostly small, white buds spacing out larger flowers with yellow centers and long, white petals that she thought might have been daisies. Well, actually, they were all plastic, fitted into a headband with an adjustable tab. She supposed it was more hygienic that way.
In her left hand, Anja carried a bouquet with more white flowers, roses and something that looked like tiny bits of lace. Dame Agnes would know the species immediately, as well as its medicinal uses. But again, these were plastic replicas rather than once-living plants. The stems were fused into a handle with a strap that made them easier to hold and carry.
Complying with notes the church office had given her the day before this ceremony, Anja was wearing a chemise of stiff, white fabric. Real satin, the store clerk had assured her. It was drawn tight across her shoulders and chest but loose and open—like a tent—from her hips to her knees. The billowing cloth created strange drafts around her legs as she moved. It reminded her of the skirts Dame Agnes made her wear. This form of dress and the flowers, the church’s notes insisted, would mark her pure condition as a virtuous woman—a different kind of virtue from a man’s—in the sight of the deity and of the assembled wedding party. However, the church at this noon hour was empty except for her and Rolf. And Pastor Jacobson, of course. The two men were lucky, because they only had to wear plain, black jumpsuits. Rolf’s was buttoned at the throat, and the pastor’s had a white neckerchief.
They were supposed to have been married in the Catolic rite. That was the instruction from the ITS Centre, so that they could “own the experience” and be able to “make truthful answers” when questioned—but to whose questions, and what kind? Evidently, where they were going in the fifteenth century, there was only one religion, one doctrine, one true faith—and people cared about it. If you weren’t faithful and observant, if you didn’t believe, then the people around you would know it and they would shun you. “Excommunicate” was the word. And in primitive times that was equal to banishment from the county or a sentence of slow death by starvation and neglect.
Well, even in the eighth millennium, the Catolic Church was still strict about these things. When she and Rolf applied for a marriage certificate, complete with the ceremony, as instructed, the priest at the Cathedral of Österholm, Father Benedict, declined on religious grounds. He could not marry them—he actually called them “heretics”—even in the civil form, he said. To have the ceremony, they would be required to become practicing Catolics themselves, which would take weeks of instruction, examination, and the administration of other, introductory “sacraments.” And that was time—not to mention a tolerance for bother—that she and Rolf just did not have.
So, instead, they applied at the Luterite church. This building was much more modern and less … gaudy inside. The walls were white plaster instead of ancient stone. The windows were clear glass instead of all those colored bits in fantastic, storybook arrangements. Here she saw no alcoves with life-sized statues of holy people. Even the mystical device above the altar table was a simple cross of plain, brown wood without the writhing man nailed to it.
Now Pastor Jacobson smiled down as they stood at the front of the empty church. He seemed glad to have them with him under any condition.
“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” he said solemnly, and Anja could hear the emphasis he placed on the names of these fictitious people. Then he looked at her and Rolf meaningfully and cleared his throat.
“Uh … ah-men,” Rolf said belatedly.
Anja just murmured the word.
Then the Luterite priest went on at length: “We are gathered here in the sight of God and of his Church to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in holy marriage. This is an honorable estate, which God himself has instituted and blessed …”
As he spoke the formula in panEuropan, Anja silently translated random words into the Middle English she had been taught at the Centre in Genevra. “Sighth of Got und his Chirche … witnessen und blessen … theos mon und theos wifmon …” Or maybe they would use Latin in the fifteenth century?
Anja settled her mind and let the words roll over her. After all, they were just words and didn’t mean any more now than they did back then.
——
“But I don’t understand,” Rolf’s mother said. “Even if you’re going far away, we can still interface. You’ll have your tablet. We’ll schedule a time to connect—”
“It’s not like that,” he said. “We won’t be in the same time frame.”
“Another time zone won’t make a difference. Call me any hour.”
“It’s like another planet, Mother Pohl,” Anja said. “Not here.”
“Oh,” the older woman said. “Well, you can come to visit.”
“That will be difficult,” he said. “They don’t expect us—”
Anja squeezed his hand. “We’ll try to come back often.”
“But you’ll both be older then,” his mother said. “Years older—years that I will miss. And the birth of my first grandchild!” By now, Anja’s pregnancy had been confirmed and announced to their families. “I’m going to miss that, too.”
“We will be back before you know it,” Rolf promised.
But his father was harder to convince about their job choice.
“Did she put you up to this?” the man said. “It’s her kind of stunt.”
“Anja and I agreed to do this together,” Rolf replied. “It will be the experience of a lifetime, with lots of opportunities to follow when we get back.”
“But we have good jobs right here—plenty of jobs. You’re a couple of bright kids—highest marks. You could do anything you wanted, if only you continued your education.” This was the old argument, Rolf knew, inevitably leading him to a respectable, extended-lifetime career in the medical or legal services.
“We wanted to get out in the world. Do something useful.”
“The government should provide you with better jobs than this.”
“It’s not a government program, Father,” Rolf explained. “InterTime Systems is a private outfit. They don’t even take panEuropan financing.”
“That’s because the Riksdag only supports necessary, socially responsible products and services. Not these fantastic research projects that just lead to more know-it-all professors writing fancy papers to settle obscure questions and that will only—”
“We’ve made our decision, sir,” Rolf said with emphasis.
“—get you two killed in the bargain,” his father finished.
“This is a unique opportunity,” Anja told her father-in-law. “A chance to study living history. You approve of history, don’t you?”
“Yes,” the older man said with a frown. “When it stays in the past and doesn’t endanger my son’s life.”
——
“This is an unusual request,” the clerk at the Regeringen office told Anja. The name on his badge was Pavel Anders. In the scheme of things, he held the power of life and death over a child’s future. She wanted to make sure her unborn child would be recognized and supported when they returned to the eighth millennium.
“I can pre-register a birth, of course,” Anders said, “We then put the child in line for natal care and testing, stipend, and a base track of public education.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I want,” Anja said. “A good start.”
“But you aren’t seeking medical services for this child’s birth.”
“No, all that will be finished by the time we return to Sweden.”
“And you want me to pre-enroll a five-year-old for the fall semester—this fall, starting in sixty days—but without any tests or certificates.”
“He’ll be five years old then,” Anja said. “Or she—we don’t know which just yet. And it may be only three years, because the timing of our travel is not exact. Oh, can’t we do the necessary testing when we bring him—or her—back?”
“Back from where?” Anders asked.
“My husband and I are moving to England.”
“Oh, well! We can arrange for a transfer back from Angleterre priority to Sveriges priority when the time come. This happens frequently, as people keep moving around.”
“Not that kind of England,” she said. “We’ll actually be in another time frame.”
“Somewhere outside of panEuropa?”
“Somewhere in the fifteenth century.”
“I … see. I think. You’re going with InterTime Systems, are you?”
“Yes, we’ve signed their employment contract as station keepers.”
“Well … then. I’ll have to suspend your public stipend and your Health Service account for the interim. You will still owe payroll taxes at the nearest local office. That would be in the Schweizisk Republic. They collect for us.”
“We won’t actually be getting paid,” she said. “Not in this time frame.”
“They must be offering you some form of compensation. That’s taxable.”
“We’ll be taking gold sovereigns and silver groats, all struck in the name of Henricus Rex, the sixth one of that line, or so I’m told. But the ITS people have assured us they’re not taxable because they won’t exist—and we won’t be spending them—in this economy.”
Anders sighed. “That’s a gray area under the panEuropan Convention of seventy-eight twelve—one of many with these time-travel people.” He sighed again, and perhaps it was a sign that Anja would finally get her way. “I suppose you’ll be coming right back, too? Same day return?”
“Practically,” she said. “Arrive the day after we leave.”
“All right. I can hold your registrations open, and make provision for an unborn five-year-old, under special circumstances. But understand, if your assignment gets extended, you will owe a ton of back taxes—and perhaps even forfeit your future stipends.”
“InterTime Systems doesn’t seem to be worried about that.”
“I would think not,” he agreed. “Out of sight, out of mind.”