She woke in the small hours, as she so often did these days…

Her lover was still sleeping soundly; he slept the sleep of the just, or the dead (she hadn’t quite decided), but she knew this situation could not continue. Not wanting to wake him she slid carefully out from under the duvet and rolled off the large hessian cushion; now for the difficult part…

The architects of these treehouses, either by accident or design (she hadn’t worked out which) had made it almost impossible to move within them without making enough noise to rouse a sleeping partner. But Tata had learned (through experience) where to place her feet and reached the open doorway without any appreciable disturbance.

The night was still and humid, well above twenty five degrees even at four in the morning. She could hear the buzz of the crickets and the calls of tree frogs down by the creek, and now felt a welcome breeze rustling through the canopy. They were too high up for most mosquitoes, and in any case they were both immune to anything the pesky insects might be carrying. Being careful to make as little noise as possible she hung her backside over the edge of the wooden walkway, and a stream of urine dropped into the blackness below. Most Arcadians used clay chamber pots or held it ’til morning, but she’d established this as an almost daily ritual; she kept on meaning to check the patch of ground directly below, curious to see if her ablutions helped or hindered plant growth down there at the base of the trunk. She was sure that it would be starting to smell by now, and was convinced that one of these days an unlucky Arcadian taking a midnight stroll would be getting an unwelcome shower.

Back in the hut she gazed at her bedmate of the last three months…

At first it had been exciting and helped her deal with the grief of her recent loss; she’d meant to tell him about the death of his namesake, but kept on putting this off, and the longer she did so the harder it became. She was helped in this by his almost pathological indifference to the fate of the other David. As far as her current lover was concerned the two men had fallen out years ago, lived completely separate lives, spoke different languages and disagreed philosophically on a profound level; he showed no interest in his current whereabouts.

Tata found this irritating in the extreme, and reflected that she was finding more and more things about David Rodrigues to annoy her. She was aware that he’d been a substitute, and at first it was the similarities between the two men that struck her most forcefully. Physically they were almost identical, David Rodrigues was younger of course, the same age as her, and he seemed to be holding onto his hair. Whenever he smiled in that oh-so familiar sardonic way her heart threatened to stop.

But they were not the same, and the longer she lived with him the more apparent this became. Rodrigues manifested very little intellectual curiosity about the outside world, he lacked the restlessness which had characterised his sibling. He was almost excessively easy-going; at first this had relaxed her, but increasingly she found him complacent, and (the kiss of death in any relationship), he’d started to bore her…

She knew she needed to do something different, that she was finding life in this most idyllic of utopian communities increasingly restrictive and claustrophobic, but had no clear idea of what to do about this. Ordinarily she would have left and gone somewhere else, but this was no longer an option. O governo provisório do Novo Brasil now knew who she was and crucially where she was, and any attempt to leave the sanctuary of the free communities would be foolish in the extreme. All in all she felt like one of those old-time hobos who had drifted around the former United States, she’d read about them in a book once. Starting on the East Coast she’d headed steadily west until she fetched up against her own metaphorical Pacific ocean, and now she could go no further.

Tata considered her options; she could move to one of the other communities, but had spent long enough in all of them to realise they all had the same limitations; she could contact one of the indigenous tribes and see if they would accept her, after all she spoke their language and was fairly familiar with their customs; or maybe she could live alone for a while, as a number of people did. This sounded superficially attractive and would probably do for now; she looked sidelong at the man under the quilt, the difficult thing would be telling him.

She slipped back under the covers, felt the warmth of his body, smelt his familiar odour and her resolve began to weaken. Maybe she’d put it off for a bit longer; with that thought in mind she allowed sleep to take her once more…

1.

The following day she went off to do one of her regular shifts in the fields. She’d been quiet at breakfast, but with communal meals it was always possible to hide and plenty of people had been talking, so he hadn’t really noticed. David was a technician and spent most of his work duties servicing and repairing their technology. Today he would be doing routine maintenance on some of their solar panels, located in a hidden clearing further out in the Rainforest, so she wouldn’t see him until dinner…

Tata reflected that there was now no real need to conceal these things, secure as they were behind the Barrier. She also noted that there had been new faces at breakfast, people who’d made the long trek to safety and had reached their own Promised Land.

Her work partner for the day was now waving enthusiastically from between the rows of yellow capsicums and Tata went to meet her,

“Hi Sally…”

They fell into step and walked over to the small hut where all the tools were kept…

Like her, Sally Chen was a ‘spare’; her prototype had been murdered in the disorder that followed the Collapse. Sally had hold told her about this once,

“…my sister never really stood a chance, she was well enough known in China to be a target for those who wished the Mission harm, but not considered sufficiently important to be protected,”

“…why was that?”

“…our sister on Alpha never developed properly, “ said the other woman, “…they kept her alive, according to the telemetry, but she was essentially a cretin and had no need for an Earthsister…so my sisters were not valued you see,”

“…how did you survive?”

“…I was just an obscure Chinese girl in the suburbs of Sampa…nobody noticed me…”

---

The physical labour felt good in the hot morning sun, and they were able to chat while they weeded,

“…did you get a chance to talk to any of the new people?”

“…I spoke to someone called Beatriz…”

Tata remembered that she’d briefly gone under that name,

“…she said that there are a lot more patrols in Amazonas these days,” continued Sally, “…even beyond Marapata; she told me they’d taken a canoe up the Juruá and pretended to be indigenous, after that they walked…”

As ever Tata felt humbled by the lengths people were prepared to go in pursuit of an ideal, and wondered about the fate of those that didn’t make it…

---

They’d bought their own lunch, made for them in the communal kitchens,

“…it’s a bit worrying, all those patrols,” said Tata to fill a gap in conversation,

“…I think Gaia will protect us,” replied her friend,

Tata reflected that this was the first time that Sally had put it exactly in those terms,

“…we don’t really know enough about the Discontinuity to be that confident, surely…”

She could tell by the look on the other woman’s face that this was not what she wanted to hear,

“…I mean…what if they dropped a nuclear bomb…or if they tried tunneling under the Barrier…”

Tata knew she was being alarmist, but the complacency of her fellow Arcadians was beginning to get on her nerves,

“…Han told me that the Barrier is a displacement in time and nothing can get through unless the Discontinuity wants it to get through,” said Sally, after an embarrassed silence…

Tata knew she was dealing with Faith here and decided to change the subject before they fell out,

“…when I was with the Tupi…after I left the Fitzcarraldo, I felt I was no longer in the Portuguese world, I felt I was outside of time, somehow; I feel like that here…”

Sally, who had been frowning, was now watching her with renewed interest so she carried on,

“…I had the strangest feeling when I finally got back to ‘civilization’, I felt that the world of the Forest, where the Tupi live, was the real world, and that the Portuguese world was somehow an illusion…what was that word you used?”

“…Maya,” said her friend, “…it’s really an Indian concept, it occurs in Hinduism, and also in Buddhism, which is where I came across it. It doesn’t mean that the world is ‘unreal’, in the sense of not being there, merely that it is not what we think it is, that it hides its true nature…”

Tata felt that they’d strayed from the notion she’d been trying to put across, into theoretical abstractions, and decided a response was called for,

“…still, if the Barrier continues to expand then surely the World as we see it is eventually going to swallow up the outside world…”

Sally was getting to her feet,

“…I think that’s enough philosophy for today, these weeds aren’t going to pull themselves out of the ground…”

So they returned to their labours; but it occurred to Tata later that afternoon that if the people on the Outside knew that the Discontinuity was expanding then they would regard that as a real threat, one which would eventually push them and their kind out of Brazil altogether,

‘…and if I were them, I’d want to do something about it…’

2.

On their walk back to the settlement they came across a rare and slightly disconcerting sight,

“…what’s that? Over there on that bush,” called out Tata who was in the lead…

They approached warily; the thing presented itself as a bee, and was investigating the blooms on the shrub on which it had alighted. It had the colouration of a bee, but there was something unnatural about its movement as it flitted from flower to flower, and the buzzing it made had a strident slightly-artificial quality,

“…I think I’ve seen one of these things,” said Sally, “…I didn’t know there were any still left,”

“…what on Earth is it?” asked Tata, “…it looks like an insect, but somehow it isn’t,”

“…it’s a drone bee,”

“…you mean like a male bee?” said Tata, recalling half-forgotten biology lessons…

“…no, it’s actually artificial…like a robot. See? When it moves, the light catches the miniature solar cell on the top of its ‘abdomen’. That’s its power source, and presumably why it’s still working,”

“…I’d no idea that there were such things,” said Tata, in her slightly formal English, “…what were they for?”

“…back in the 2030’s, when the population of honey bees crashed, there was a real crisis as crops couldn’t pollinate and started failing…”

They were now quite close to the thing, which had stopped going from flower to flower and settled on a leaf; it appeared to be studying them. Tata could now clearly see that it wasn’t a real insect, the eyes were wrong for a start,

“…so they made these things to take over from the bees and butterflies that they’d wiped out…”

Sally snorted,

“…typical of the sort of lunatic thinking of the time…I mean, why not just prevent the natural pollinators from going extinct, rather than wasting time inventing artificial replacements,”

“…did they work?” interrupted Tata,

“…after a fashion…but there were never enough of them,”

“…so why didn’t we all starve?”

“…agronomists managed to engineer new crop strains that didn’t need pollination, and our destructive culture managed to stagger on for a few more years,”

“…I think it’s cute,” said Tata,

“…well it’s not doing any harm, I suppose…”

And they moved on, leaving this curious survival of Anthropocene tech-culture to return to its duties…

Later on Tata felt disconcerted, it was as if a piece of the Portuguese world had made its way through the Barrier, and this did not portend well…

---

When they got back to the village, Sally went off to join her husband (an ex-Mission agronomist, coincidentally), leaving Tata to wait for David. But he was late, so she decided to go to dinner without him. She got her food from the kitchen and went to sit opposite Ilse and her daughter at the trestle tables,

“…do you mind if I join you?”

Ilse smiled and indicated that she should sit; Tata reflected that David Martinez was still very much alive, within her. That she’d unconsciously adopted his speech patterns and idioms when speaking English; she wondered if anyone else had noticed,

“…how’s school?” she asked Emelia, who was sitting opposite her…

The ten year old took a mouthful of salad and paused to consider the question, chewing while she ruminated,

“…it’s alright, I suppose,”

“…what are you learning about?”

“…Han’s teaching us about the Barrier…in Science,”

“…that sounds very interesting, what did he tell you?”

Tata was intrigued, she wanted to hear what Arcadians were telling their children about the phenomenon that kept them safe, and was interested to know how much of their teaching would be actual science, and how much would be ideology,

“…well…Han says that the barrier is like a… a wall, made out of time…and that the Outside is bit behind us,” the child looked thoughtful for a second, “…or maybe it’s in front of us, I don’t remember…anyway, stuff from Outside can’t get in…especially if it wants to hurt us,”

“…did he say why he thinks that some stuff, and some people can get in…and other stuff, and bad people, can’t?” asked Tata…

The child looked at a loss,

“…he didn’t really talk about that…he just talked about the experiments they were going to do to find out how it works,” the child brightened,

“…but he did say that the…the… What’s that word he says, mummy?”

“…Discontinuity, darling,” said Ilse, who’d been listening in,”

“…the Dis-con-tin-uity,” Emilia pronounced the unfamiliar word carefully, “…that it’s getting bigger and so pretty soon we won’t have to worry about bad people on the Outside because they’ll be too far away,”

“…well done, darling,” said her mother, “…you explained that very well…”

They talked about other things after that, but Tata reflected that Emelia’s account of her lesson really summed up the full extent of their knowledge about the Barrier; as well as highlighting their lack of knowledge about how it worked, and more importantly, who put it there…

She also didn’t share Han’s optimism about the future, figuring that it would be some time before the forces of Novo Brasil would be far enough away not to pose a threat, and she was sure they would make renewed attempts to penetrate the Barrier well before that happened.

After dinner they sat around and talked; the people of the free communities had adopted the alcoholic beverage of the Tupi, and the fermented chica began to loosen tongues. Tata found herself sitting next to one of the newcomers, the one whose name was Beatriz,

“…Hi, I’m Tata…I haven’t been here long myself…but I gather you just got here…”

The woman looked cautiously at her, as if not sure how much to reveal,

“…yes, we got here last night,” she looked up at Tata who was considerably taller, “…how long have you been here?”

“…about six months…I came here from Manaus, with my partner, but we ran into some of those Novo Brasil goons, and he was killed…but I got away…”

She trailed off, not sure why she’d revealed so much; she’d been much cagier with the Arcadians,

“…is yours that white 4×4 parked in the clearing?”

“…that was his truck…but I sort of inherited it…I did have a truck of my own once, but I had to leave it in a town back on the River…”

She had to stop then, because the emotion was threatening to overwhelm her. The other woman seemed to understand and they sat in silence for a few minutes,

“…I gather that you came up the Juruá,” said Tata, to break the ice that had formed,

“…yes, we all disguised ourselves as indigenes, we’d managed to buy a canoe with an outboard, and enough fuel to get us up the river…”

The woman frowned as she remembered, and Tata noted that she was younger than she’d first thought, no more than twenty five; she was sitting next to a young man of similar age, they both spoke English fluently, but with an accent she couldn’t place,

“…the fuel we had got us as far as Juburi; we tried paddling but it was too hard, the current was just too strong, so we traded in the canoe and the outboard for more supplies and after that we walked…”

She smiled while she remembered,

“…the people we traded with…they sort of guessed where we were going, although they didn’t say its name, and they told us to head due west, to Jutai, but to avoid the town which is full of Federales, to skirt round it and head west again. If we’d carried on up the Juruá we’d have been getting further away,”

“…but still, that’s a very long march,”

“…yes, we could have done with that truck,” said Beatriz with a smile,

“…did you see any…Federales?”

“…yes, we spotted a long column…they looked like troops and they had armoured vehicles, but we hid and they were heading away from us anyway,”

“…I called myself Beatriz for a while,” said Tata, “…when I was hiding from the Federales…”

She smiled,

“…where are you from, originally? You don’t sound Brazilian,”

“…is it that obvious?” said the other woman with mock alarm, “…in answer to your question, we’re all Uruguayan…from near Montevideo, we all worked at the same University. We heard about As Comunidades Livres, and decided that was the place for us, so we all upped sticks and left. We managed to get a ship, a freighter, all the way to Manaus…there’s six of us, three couples, we decided we wanted a better life for the children we intend to have…and this place offers hope to Mankind…”

Beatriz’ face had assumed a sort of beatific expression as she said this, and Tata concluded that they were indeed in the right place; they had the same kind of almost religious belief in this place as the other Arcadians. Tata prayed that their Faith would not be misplaced, and she was alarmed by the story Beatriz had told her of the column of soldiers in the Rainforest. To her mind this was evidence of a build-up of Novo Brasil forces, and that could only mean one thing; that they intended to launch an assault on the free communities…

She noticed that David had just arrived, and that he was waving to her,

“…that’s my partner, so I better go and join him…nice to meet you, Beatriz, and welcome to the free communities…”

They embraced, and Tata felt better about her life…

3.

“…I thought you were going to wait for me,”

“…I did…I waited in the square,” she replied, referring to a grassy area between two of the largest trees that served as a meeting place, “…but you didn’t show so I went to get my dinner thinking you’d join me there…”

She could tell that he was seriously unhappily,

“…I got held up…I went to the hut, I thought you’d be there,”

“…why didn’t you ’face me?”

As Mission children both had the implanted comm tech,

“…nobody uses that here,” he interrupted, “…I’ve been to the kitchen and they’ve no more food,”

“…look, I’m sorry…we’ll pick some fruit for you to eat, in the meantime come and have a drink…”

But David had turned and was walking back to their tree, leaving her little option but to follow…

---

As she trailed after him Tata reflected that his refusal to even consider using his interface to communicate with her summed up everything about him that was now getting on her nerves. His insularity, his inflexibility, his parochial views, his innate selfishness, his ‘my way or the highway’ attitude to use an expression David Martinez had used, all combined to infuriate her. She’d been foolish and sentimental to suppose that he could be a substitute for her lost love.

They now reached their hut,

“…I’m going to bed,”

“…I thought we were going to talk…about our day,”

“…I don’t feel like talking,”

“…well, you might have told me that before I climbed up all this way,”

“…why don’t you go back to your friends…you seemed to be having a good time without me,”

“…thank you, I will,” she retorted, turning on her heel…

---

When she got back down, the informal Friday night party was in full swing, she spotted Ilse through the crowd,

“…where’s David?”

“…we had a fight and he’s not coming down,”

“…you two not getting on?”

“…is it that obvious?”

“…we had sort of noticed that things weren’t that good between the two of you over the past couple of weeks…”

Isle smiled maternally at her friend,

“…do you want to talk?”

“…yes, and then I want to get really drunk…”

They got more chica and found a quiet spot away from the crowd,

“…so what’s the problem…you seemed really happy when you first got together?”

“….I need to tell you something, Ilse…something I haven’t told anyone else…that I’ve kept a secret, and I don’t want you to be angry with me,”

“…OK, I promise. What is it?”

“…I haven’t been entirely honest with you up to now…about how I got here, and what happened to me after I lost the Tupi in the Rainforest…”

She’d given Ilse an edited version of her wanderings after she escaped from the Portuguese hunters,

“…when I lost track of my people I wandered alone in the Forest until I reached a logging settlement called the acampamento,”

“…yes, I’ve heard of that place…a sort of modern day Babylon,”

“…you don’t know the half of it,” Tata shuddered as she remembered,

“…I haven’t always been a saint, Ilse. On board the Fitzcarraldo I was a hostess, which is a polite term for prostitute…but I had no choice, I was nearly caught by what I now know were agents of the provisional government, in a fleaspeck town called Vertedouro, I signed on with the riverboat to get away from them…”

Ilse was listening silently,

“…I met a man on board, a client, but he was different from the usual roughnecks…I met him again in the acampamento, and he helped me get away from there, too….from a really bad situation.

She started to cry and Ilse took her in her arms,

“…we’ve all had to do things we’re not proud of,” said her friend, “…just to survive in this terrible world,”

“…I think the things I’ve done are worse,”

She made an effort to pull herself together,

“…I killed a man, Ilse…I stabbed him in the neck with a steak knife…OK, he was sexually assaulting me at the time…but I still murdered him…”

She could tell the other woman was shocked,

“…the man who I’d met on the Fitzcarraldo, he helped me get away the following day, before the body was discovered…it was his 4×4 I arrived in and you know that man, Ilse, his name was David Martinez,”

“…my God! What happened? What happened to him?”

“…you know I said I had to dodge some paramilitaries,”

“…yes, I remember you telling me,”

“…well, I lied…we didn’t avoid them, they surrounded us in the night and they captured us,”

“…they were going to take us back to their base…but David created a diversion…he was able to grab a gun and he killed three of them before they shot him! He sacrificed himself, so that I could get away,”

“…I had no idea, “ her friend looked completely stunned by the news, “…so when you met David Rodrigues,”

“…it was like my lover had come back from the dead,” finished Tata,

“…Christ, does he know?”

“…no…I haven’t told him,”

“…Tata…seriously, you’ve got to tell him, it’s his brother we’re talking about here,”

“…a brother he doesn’t care about,”

“…but still his brother! Tata, you’ve got to come clean…it’s obviously affecting your relationship…he must have realised by now that there’s something you’re not telling him, something really important,”

“…I know, but it just keeps getting harder,”

“…the longer you leave it…you’ve got to tell him…tomorrow, or I will…”

Tata had been intending to swear Ilse to secrecy, but when she looked at the implacable expression on the other woman’s face she realised that would not be possible…

---

They went back and joined the others after that, and true to her word, Tata got horribly drunk and flirted shamelessly with one of the other Arcadians, an inoffensive plant biologist who seemed rather disconcerted by her interest. Eventually she staggered back to her tree, pausing only to throw up in the bushes. She sat down with her back to the trunk until her head stopped spinning. Eventually she remembered she still had her canteen from earlier and was able to quench her raging thirst, before making the long climb up to the treehouse she shared with the other David.

She should really have stayed on the ground and was lucky she didn’t fall off the walkway, so drunk was she. Unsurprisingly, he was awake when she reached the hut; Tata could see his dark eyes reflecting the moonlight coming in through the open doorway,

“… teve um bom tempo, não é?”

“… sim, precisamos conversar,”

“… Eu não!” he retorted, turning his face to the wall…

After that there was nothing she could do but squeeze under the duvet next to him, taking care not to touch him. Despite her intoxication, it was a long time before she eventually fell asleep…

Coda

Another morning after the night before…

She stayed in bed after he got up, drinking the last of the water in her canteen and enduring her raging hangover. He went to breakfast without her,

‘…I guess I deserved that,’ she told herself…

Eventually she managed to sleep; when she woke her hangover was down to manageable proportions, but she was really thirsty again and now needed to go to the loo as well. This forced her out from under the covers and she made her way to the communal bathroom that served their particular tree. Fortunately it was down all the way as their hut was the topmost, she was grateful because she lacked the energy to climb. There was no-one else around as it was now mid-morning and Arcadians didn’t as a rule sleep in, even on a Saturday, which was set aside for personal interests and activities rather than communal work. She had to pump fresh water up from the rainwater still to slake her thirst, and the exercise seemed to help, and she started to register the surrounding world for the first time. She could hear the excited cries of children playing down below and catch occasional snatches of conversation from adults in nearby huts,

‘…this is a lovely place,’ she thought, ‘…in many ways it’s Eden…but the apple of temptation and the Serpent are always lying in wait, especially for you…’

The water for her shower had already been pumped and warmed by the morning sun, and she emerged refreshed and ready to face the world. The communal wardrobe was next to the washroom and she ditched her dirty clothes from yesterday and, dressed in the standard Arcadian uniform of knee-length ecru linen shorts and matching baggy top, headed down to join her fellow villagers.

Tata didn’t really have any interests as such, and generally found Saturdays boring; she’d learnt to weave when she first got here but now did that as one of her work duties so it didn’t really count as an interest. So instead she decided to check on her 4×4.

The vehicle was a bit dusty and someone (presumably kids) had amused themselves by drawing faces in the grime on the side windows. She triggered the door locks using her interface and climbed in. All her stuff (and most of David’s) was stored here and nobody had attempted to tamper with it. In fairness, this would have been difficult as only she could open the vehicle, which was armoured in any case and would have been virtually impossible to break into. But messing with someone else’s stuff wouldn’t have even occurred to an Arcadian. She had however been coming under subtle pressure to turn the vehicle over to communal use, pressure which she had thus far resisted.

The door locks had opened with a certain amount of reluctance leading her to believe that the batteries were run down. So an excuse to drive it then, which suited her as she needed to get out of Arcadia for a while. The thing was a hybrid and the methanol-fueled engine fired (just), but she’d need to drive it around for a while to charge the batteries and leave it parked somewhere where the solar panels could keep it charged. There was no-one about (for which she was glad), David did his landscape painting on Saturdays which meant she had nearly six hours before she would have to face him. Rather than drive back through the village (and incur the disapproving looks of the villagers), Tata headed out on the road to Twin Oaks, knowing that there was a little-used back road which she could use to swing back around the settlement, and head back on the road she taken to get here six months ago.

This was a good plan, given that she wanted to be alone, as the road took her through fields and market gardens, currently deserted as the Arcadians took their ease.

Soon she was clear of the village and its slightly-suffocating air of niceness, and she could almost imagine she was back on the road again. Just driving made her feel more alive. She put on some music; in Arcadia recorded music was frowned upon, the villagers made their own music, this fact alone made her seriously consider moving to Twin Oaks, where such attitudes were considered to be quaint and Luddite.

She was coming up to the deserted village where she’d encountered the Tupi, and decided to take a look. Literally nothing had changed, apart from a few more saplings forcing their way up through the crumbling concrete. The church door was still partially-open, as she had left it, and the water tower was in danger of disappearing completely in the tree canopy.

Satisfied that all was well she backed carefully out the way she’d arrived and resumed her journey east.

She eventually came to the point where she’d originally crossed over into the free communities. She knew this because she found the crash site of the helicopter which had attempted to pursue her. The patch of scorched earth had already been colonised by Rainforest vegetation, and the outlines of the wrecked aircraft were already being softened by invasive plants, feathery lianas hung from what was left of the rotor blades. She stopped and got out, noting that the Discontinuity could be made out as a slight ripple distorting the trees that lay beyond it. The Barrier was now at least three klicks further east.

It didn’t take her long to find human remains; the bones had been scattered by scavenging animals and the charred remains of a uniform could only just be made out amongst the new grass, but she found a skull, almost picked clean by the crows, still contained in a flying helmet with the mic positioned in front of a mouth that would never speak again. She assumed this was the pilot, whose decision to listen to his commanding officer and attempt to fly through the Barrier had doomed them all.

She was distracted from her reminiscences by a movement over by the tree-line. She went back to her truck and got her field glasses, and quickly picked out a man in what she assumed was the uniform of the Novo Brasil security forces watching her as she watched him. They kept up this odd charade for several minutes before he slipped back into the trees.

Slightly shaken by what she’d seen, she had no interest in further exploration and climbed back into her truck and drove back to town…

---

Her trip had taken her longer than expected, and by the time she’d parked her vehicle dinner was nearly over…

She was able to get a meal, though, and ate it hurriedly by herself at one of the trestle tables. Everyone else was in the square, and the night’s festivities had begun. When she got there herself David already appeared to be drunk, she went up to him,

“…look, I’m sorry about yesterday, but we need to talk, and I’d prefer if we did that somewhere private,”

“…actually, I’d prefer if we did that here,”

He looked ’round at the other revellers,

“…I mean, I’ve no secrets from my neighbours…have you?”

“…please,” she said quietly, as people started to look their way,

“…you know I’ve been wondering about the way you speak English…that formal way of speaking that you affect…”

He was clearly more drunk than she’d thought and he was swaying slightly. She suddenly felt cold,

“…and you know who it reminds me of…”

All other conversation had now stopped,

“…well, I’m going to tell you, fuckin’ Martinez! You don’t happen to know him, do you?”

She sneaked a glance at Ilse who was on the fringes of the crowd that had gathered; the other woman shook her head,

“…don’t do this,”

“…aha, a hit!”

He looked around at his audience like a cheap stand-up, but nobody was laughing,

“…was he your lover, by any chance? The smooth son of a bitch always did have an eye for the ladies! So where is he now? Couldn’t make the trip, huh? So you settled for a replacement,”

“…he’s dead, you bastard!”

She had the satisfaction of seeing the mocking smile wiped off his face,

“…God, I’m sorry…I had no idea,”

“…but you’re right about one thing, you were just a substitute and an entirely inadequate one at that…”

---

After that there was no going back, and she moved out of their hut and into her car,

‘…one good thing about living in a utopian community,’ she told herself bitterly, ‘…without all those awkward personal possessions to carry, moving out of your ex-lover’s place is a breeze…’

The next day she decided she had to leave Arcadia, anywhere within the Discontinuity would do, providing it wasn’t here…

She now thanked God she had her own vehicle, even if it was causing resentment in a society where everything was held in common. But basically she didn’t care; her truck (OK, it had been David’s, but he’d bequeathed it when he sacrificed his life for her) was everything to Tata; it was her sanctuary, her home, her refuge, the thing that made life as a lone woman possible in this dangerous century, and she wasn’t about to give it up for anyone…

She passed Ilse as she drove out of the settlement the following morning. She slowed down and wound down her window,

“…so I told him, like you said…didn’t go well, so I’m making myself scarce… Ciao!”

Tata could see the other woman’s open-mouthed expression in her rear view mirror as she hit the trail…

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Chapter 2. Not Available Yet >>