lived with your mother’s people as you were growing up?’
Rene’s face closed down, and he dropped her hand gently. Without replying, he stood up, and collected the plates and utensils. He carried them into the kitchen. All the while, Liv sat quietly waiting for what was to come. She didn’t know why, but she sensed that what he would tell her next would make the news she had travelled five hundred years into the future seem like child’s play.
He busied himself in the kitchen, and when he came back to the table, it was with two cups of milky tea. She took hers with soft thanks, and continued to wait. Finally, after clearing his throat a few times, Rene started to speak again.
‘When I said I spent many years with the Obejwe, I meant many years – whole lifetimes – with different tribes, across vastly different terrain. I gathered information on nature, and how the First People interacted with nature – worked in partnership with it. You see, my mother’s people did not own the land, as white men would see it. They were own by the land, or by the Great Spirit that made all things. They protected the land, and in turn, were provided for by that land.’
‘That is a truly profound. It is as it was in the Garden of Eden. God made Adam to husband his creation.’
‘Yes, and when Adam started to see himself above the other creations, he was cast down, and the land he ‘owned’ became dry and desolate.’
‘Hmmm. I am not sure about that. We husband our land well, and it provides well for my family and our tenants.’
‘For the short term. In the long term, your farming methods will destroy the land. Not in your lifetime, or the lifetime of your great grandchildren, but one day…’
‘That makes me very sad. But the future now seems wondrous.’
‘We have struggled to sustain the small population left on this planet for hundreds of years. So much has gone. But we are now regenerating the natural world with extinct creatures, like your giant earthworm, and with work, we may well be able to save ourselves and the planet.’
‘I do not know this word “planet”.’
‘The world.’
‘Oh. It is that calamitous?’
‘Yes. But we are fighting back, and we take our role of husbandman very seriously now.’
For a moment, Liv sat quietly sipping her tea, considering everything she had heard. It seemed impossible that the world could have come to such dire straits that it required men such as Rene to heal it from species of the past. That he spent years as a native … lifetimes… Suddenly that statement caught her attention. How could he have spent lifetimes as a Red Indian? Surely he would age, if he had done so.
‘You have drunk from the Fountain of Youth then?’ she asked slowly, as she put down her cup.
‘Not in the way you mean it. But, in our own way, thanks to modern science… er natural philosophers, we have discovered something close. We age, and when our bodies are too old, we take on new ones, young ones – like this,’ he said, indicating his own body. ‘A year ago, I was an ancient, wizened man, half blind and almost deaf. That is the man Jane befriended. Otherwise her Julio would never have felt comfortable with our friendship.’ He laughed with a certain arrogant amusement, as if revelling in a memory concerning Jane and Julio.
Liv’s head was spinning again. She consciously dismissed the information he had given her, and focused on her environment. She studied the sea as the storm quickly approached. She studied the enormous glass windows that seemed too thin to withstand the coming storm. She studied the strange napkin that still lay across her lap – anything that would keep her from tipping over into hysteria or unconsciousness.
‘Too much?’ Rene asked, cautiously.
‘I am afraid so. I think it better that I focus on the here and now for the moment. It has all been too much to take in.’
‘I understand. For you, it is like when the First People came in contact with white man. Can you imagine what those stone-age men, with their bows and arrows, thought of guns and metal swords?’
‘Guns?’
‘Muskets.’
‘Oh. Yes, I think I can well imagine. Would you mind very much if I lay down for a little. The meal was delicious, but I… I am exhausted by the events of the day.’
‘And for you it is late evening. Your body has