to call it.” She laughed, a dull noise, still staring at the floor.
I stared at her. All I could see for a second was that Time magazine cover, her beloved face under the crisp, familiar typeface. Person of the Year. When she was nine. And now she was saying that that thing, that groping tentacle-tip of a clamouring pack of monsters, had... had caused that to happen? “I... how?”
“It came to me when I was very young. Before you and I met.”
“But—”
“I was about three. It made the offer, I accepted; it gave me what it wanted to give: the memory, the processing ability, the speed, a few other things. Then it came back a few months later, when I was working on my wormhole book proposal, and said: Do you want to keep it?”
“So you...”
She nodded, the barest movement of her chin. “I asked it what it wanted in exchange, and it said time. We hammered out the details of the covenant. It took days.”
“...Time.”
“Can’t get something for nothing. But I didn’t have anything to pay with. So I buy my empire in time. One to one exchange rate. Every minute I allow myself in prodigy mode, in the grip of Their gift, is a minute off the end of my life.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed. I thought I might faint. “Jesus Christ.”
There it was.
More even than the covenant, that was the secret: her payments. She could have told me the first part and left out the second, I thought. Could have spared me that. We had known each other long enough. And hearing that it was magic would have been no barrier, after today. I wondered if she knew exactly how long she would have had, and could pace herself accordingly. Or if they had just... just made the agreement, left it at that. Not saying that she would be killed by a bus at thirty. Die of cancer at sixty. Something like that. Something you’d never know, and one day she’d simply run out of time. What then? Vanish, on live TV? Collapse to the ground and die like anyone else?
I realized I was shaking. “Can... you go back on it? Be normal now? Would that get rid of—”
“A covenant is unbreakable. Just hope you never get offered one.”
“I...”
“You think you can say no. And then it comes and you... can’t.”
I nodded, head moving as if on autopilot. I just couldn’t stop picturing it, how horrible it would have been. All those years. Clicking it on and off like a light, trying to do as much as she could on her own, surely, to save that time, but as a child, with the mind and stamina of a child. Exhaustively researching articles and books and then going into prodigy mode for an hour or two, eyeing the clock obsessively, worrying. All those years not knowing which would be her last.
“John...”
“I’m sorry. It changes everything.”
Of course it did. I held down a wave of revulsion and said, “It doesn’t change anything.”
She looked up at me uncertainly, tears bright in her green eyes, more blue than green down here, in the flickering lights.
I thought: I was wrong. If anything has formed between us, it isn’t love. And it isn’t that... vast, empty chasm I thought it was, with no bottom, and us looking at each other across cliffs of impossible heights. It’s an ocean, huge and deep and polluted with monsters. Yet it could be crossed. Either of us could build a boat and cross it. Neither of us will, since it’s easier not to cross than to cross, and what do we have to spare, in terms of time, wood, canvas? We have nothing, not one thing. We will never sail to meet each other.
But both of us wept into this ocean. That’s our salt in there. There is a duty that remains, if not love.
“You didn’t know what you were doing,” I said.
“Please, no platitudes,” she said. “I knew precisely what I was doing. That was what the deal meant: that I had full knowledge of what saying yes would mean. Of what saying no would mean. I accepted knowing that the lives I would save outweighed mine... qualitatively, quantitatively. That more people would live better. That even if I said no, I would still be... still have a good life... like...”
“A little blonde princess,” I said. “A Disney princess, with everything you ever wanted, and no one ever saying no to you. The money, the jewelry, the