Some Other Time
by Ray Vukcevich

Donald looked out over the marshy ground surrounding the fort. It was easy to imagine things moving in the fog that always rolled along the ground and around the trees and giant ferns. Bog pools like cloudy mirrors threw back reflections that could be mistaken for things moving up on the wall. A cleared perimeter around the fort was lighted by big spots at night. There were never any stars. The cloud cover never lifted. Not even a little, not even once. A sun smear lighted the gray days, and sometimes at night the unending darkness of the sky was broken by a moon smudge. Sentry duty, day or night, mostly involved screaming for help when the big bog rats were actually climbing the walls. 
Everything looks like something. If there were a thing that was so new, so different that it didn't look like anything, could you even see it? You could say these creatures looked like giant hairless rats, rats with too many limbs, rats that moved like spiders. Or beavers, maybe. You could say they looked like spiders, really big spiders, beaver spiders the size of buffalos, spiders with delicate manipulative limbs like the arms and hands of monkeys; watching one pick a fruit and eat it was like watching a monkey eat a banana. You could say they looked like monkeys, except for the rat snout and terrible teeth and all those limbs and slashing claws. They moved along the marshy landscape like water bugs, quick and gray and usually silent. 
Donald, Eleanor, everyone these days was always either going up on or coming down from the effects of eating starfish. They liked to think of the starfish as a "byproduct" of the bog rats. The thought of how long it had been since he'd eaten a starfish made Donald break into a cold sweat, and he spent several minutes trembling badly. 
While he had the jitters, he wasn't watching the wall, which meant he was falling down on the job. Maybe that was why no one would look him in the eye. Everyone looked at his back and whispered together. In fact, if he turned now and looked back down into the courtyard he'd see dozens of people look away quickly. 
"Daddy!" 
He looked back down into the fort and saw his daughter Zoey waving at him. First born on a new planet! How proud he and Eleanor had been. A rush of warmth turned up his smile and made him feel suddenly so much better. What a blessing was this little version of Eleanor with her big bright smile and blond pigtails. 
"What is it?" he asked. "Are you calling me to lunch?" 
"No, Daddy, I'm dead." 
"You're not dead!" he yelled. How he wished she'd stop saying that. 
"As a door nail, Daddy. Pushing up daisies. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.…" 
2
There weren't many people left now. The fort looked like the inside of an abandoned house. Something tips over, it stays tipped over. Nobody sweeps up. Shutters banging in the wind. A ragged man hanging onto the post that holds up the porch of the meeting hall like a drunk. Couple of other people slumped on benches on the same porch. By the time anyone came back to the planet to check on them, there wouldn't be anyone left. 
His turn to watch, but who really cared anyway? 
Donald decided he didn't care and came down off the wall. No one said he shouldn't; no one took his place. He needed to go chew some starfish. He knew there weren't any left. He would have to go outside and find some. Probably get himself killed. He wondered if Eleanor would want to go with him. 
3
They hid in the giant ferns and waited in the milky afternoon sunlight, watching the big rat move like a grayer patch of fog over the march as she searched for her birthing pool, and after she'd found it, they waited until she was deep into her pain, before they ran quietly from their hiding places, Donald first, and then Eleanor with the sack. Donald got down into the bog pool behind the rat. She lifted her gray head from the mud and twisted around to scream what he knew must be words, could only be words, meanings, language of some kind—malice, then despair, entreaties, and finally hopelessness. He knew he would care in the morning; just then he didn't care, couldn't care. They'd be long gone before she could walk. They'd be home or they'd be hidden, melting into the fog, blending in like the ghostly rats themselves. She'd never catch them. 
"Don't listen to her," Eleanor said. Donald had told her his theory about how the big rats were actually intelligent. She wouldn't want him thinking about that at a time like this. 
The water smelled like dead animals, dead fish, dead plants, and suddenly the rat's blood. Donald dropped to his knees and plunged his arms into the water. 
"Have you got one yet, Donald?" Eleanor stood opening and closing the top of the sack, stepping from foot to foot. "Just shut up, you stupid cow!" she screamed at the rat. "Have you got one, Donald?" 
The infant rat dropped into Donald's hands. He closed his fingers around it and snatched it out of the water before it could squirm away. The creature felt like a slick sack of smooth pebbles. The newborn might almost have been a different species. Its skin was dead white and its eyes were glassy black. Had Donald not caught it, it would have used its twelve weak legs to scuttle around the bog pools fleeing the six-legged eels that were always around any rat birth. When it wasn't running and hiding it would be searching for little things to eat. 
Eleanor stood with her mouth a little open, staring at the wriggling creature in his hand. 
"So, hold out the sack," he said. 
She jerked up her head and then dropped to her knees at the edge of the pool and held out the open sack. Donald dropped the creature in, and Eleanor closed the sack quickly and hugged it to her chest. 
"We need more," she said. 
Donald turned too quickly and slipped and caught himself with both hands flat on the gray smooth flanks of the rat. He felt her quiver at his touch, but she had no strength to lift her head and plead or threaten now. He imagined touching a rhinoceros would be like this. He ran his hands back down her body and into the water. 
Another starfish dropped into his hands, but before he could catch it, two more came quickly one after the other, distracting him, and he lost all three in a bloody cloud washing around the back of the rat. 
"Damn." 
"What happened, Donald? What is it?" 
"Nothing. Nothing. Just get the sack ready." 
When the next ones came, he was ready, and he caught two. Eleanor held open the sack, and he dropped them in and then went back for more. 
A time of decision was fast approaching. How many would they take? How long could they stay so exposed like this? There was always the chance that a rat not weakened by birth might come by, maybe the father, if there were father rats. They didn't know much about the breeding habits of the rats. Eleanor had been working on that problem, but then eating the newborn rats had become more important to her than studying how they came to be. 
Donald did know they had to hurry. If they were taken by surprise out in the open, they wouldn't have a chance. 
"We need more," Eleanor said. 
She was right. They might be greedy, it might be dangerous, but they really did need more. Donald could feel the need, had felt it for hours, it was like shaking inside, like he would rattle apart and fall to pieces from the inside out. 
There was a sudden burst of births, and the water came alive with blood and swimming starfish, their twelve legs moving them gracefully and quickly around the legs of their mother. Donald snatched at them but didn't expect to catch the free-swimming ones. He got back into position for the next birth, and when it came, he made an easy catch, bagged it and got back into position again. 
Four more and Donald decided they had enough. He crawled out of the pool and pulled Eleanor to her feet. 
"Let me see them," he said. 
Eleanor held the sack tight to her chest, and for a moment he thought she might just run away. 
"There's enough for both of us, Eleanor." He put his hand on the sack. 
"Yes, enough," she said. She opened the sack, and he looked down at the squirming white mass, legs clawing at the air, black eyes wild with fear. He licked his lips and reached down for one. Eleanor gave a little cry, but she didn't jerk the sack away. Donald wanted one now; his little voice said why not just one, Donald, just one wouldn't hurt, it would take the edge off, but, while he might be almost that desperate, he wasn't that stupid. He put his hands on Eleanor's hands and closed the sack. 
"Let's get out of here," he said. 
They moved quickly into the ferns, and Donald looked back once as they moved out of sight and saw the eels each as long as his leg move in on the big rat, covering her completely for a moment on their way deeper into the pool after the starfish. 
4
Later that same day, or maybe it was some time far into the future, or even weeks before, Eleanor pushed in ahead of Donald as soon as the gate opened and ran for the quarters she shared with no one since she'd kicked him out. Jeffers, who had opened the gate for them, eyed Eleanor's sack, and Donald could see they weren't fooling him. Donald gave him a glare meant to peel the face from his skull, and the look must have been at least partly effective because Jeffers didn't make an issue of it, stepped back instead and licked his lips and closed the gate. 
Donald hurried to catch up with Eleanor. He didn't doubt that she would forget him altogether now and lock herself inside with the starfish. He caught up with her just as she reached her door. 
Inside she went quickly to a big glass bowl on a low table. The bowl was always there, always ready. The young starfish could survive a long time in the air, but they were more lively, and everyone agreed better, when submerged for a few minutes. Eleanor emptied the sack into the bowl, and Donald drew a pitcher of water and poured it over them. They moved sluggishly at first, but by the time he had added two more pitchers of water, the starfish swam briskly and stared out of the glass bowl with bright eyes. When they spread their twelve legs against the glass, they looked like strange white hands pressed against a window. 
"We didn't lose even one!" Eleanor said. 
"Lucky us," Donald said. 
Eleanor put a wooden bowl on the table. It was almost as big as the glass bowl holding the starfish. She sat down. Once she would have gotten him a wooden bowl, too, or at least would have told him to help himself. He could see she didn't care at all that he was here. He should leave. He wished he could leave. He took down another wooden bowl for himself and put it on the table. He wished he could go home, read, think, work, maybe figure out a way to save them all, be the hero, make Zoey proud. He sat down across from Eleanor—the big glass bowl between them. He could see her fun house face twisted and bloated through the water. 
Eleanor plunged her hand into the glass bowl and stirred around until she caught a starfish. With no hesitation, she opened her mouth as wide as she could and put the creature inside. Her cheeks bulged as she chewed. Sweat beaded her forehead, and she rolled her eyes back in her head. Donald would wait until she swallowed. It was a kind of challenge, putting off satisfying his own need for just a moment longer, just a little longer, each moment of resistance a little victory. At one time he thought that he could give up the starfish altogether by spacing out his eatings and making the spaces longer and longer until they were forever. Now he played little games with little victories and little losses. 
Eleanor swallowed—once, twice. Her shoulders heaved as she sucked in deep breaths, then her face went red and she leaned over her wooden bowl and vomited. 
Donald might have looked away. He might have made things easier for himself, but he wouldn't allow himself that—if he was going to eat them, he would face the ugliness of the addiction, and there was no doubt that eating the starfish was an addiction. It had been a seductive thing. At first the high was so incredible. Donald was convinced that he had seen the face of god in those early days, was convinced that he had touched the deity, had been shown the pattern of the universe, had been shown his special place in the universe, had felt the love, had felt the rightness—he remembered how everything had gotten better; the world was brighter; sex was better; Eleanor was kinder. Being a parent was easier, clearer. Nothing could have hurt him in those days. These days he needed a few starfish just to stop the cold sweats and shakes, just to work his way up to feeling lousy. 
Donald fished a starfish out of the bowl and put it in his mouth. It struggled as he crushed it with his teeth. His mouth felt numb and sweet relief tingled up the sides of his face. He swallowed and felt a familiar fierce sense of rightness flow down his throat. When the starfish hit his stomach, his body rebelled, and Donald leaned over his bowl to vomit. He thought it was the pebbles he felt when he caught the starfish that were so hard on his system. They lay now like black stones in the chewed remains of the starfish in his wooden bowl. He was aware that Eleanor was vomiting again, but he didn't pay any attention to her. He reached into the bowl for another starfish. One more and he'd feel normal, but even as he ate it, he knew he wouldn't stop with one more. 
5
Donald wasn't in his body at all. He could see his body at the table slumped to one side of his wooden bowl, head on folded arms, dreaming the starfish dream. Eleanor still fished around in the big glass bowl for another one. From his vantage point near the ceiling, he could see there weren't any more. Eleanor could probably see that from where she was, too, but she didn't want to believe it. It took more, so many more, these days to reach the jumping off point, and sometimes you didn't reach it at all, sometimes, you ate one, you ate two, you ate half a dozen or more, and all that happened was that you stopped feeling so bad, not good, but not so bad, and sometimes that was enough. 
It wasn't enough for Eleanor tonight. He saw her look at his slumped body and he saw the look of envy and even hate cross her face. Why should he be zooming around in space buzzing the face of god like a celestial fly while she was stuck here with all the ugliness? 
At least the baby wasn't crying. 
The baby wasn't crying. 
The baby. 
Donald expanded like a balloon, filled the room, felt the walls constrict him, pushed harder, burst through the walls and exploded, looking in every direction at once for Zoey—hey, kiddo, no fooling around! Come on, now it's dangerous out here. 
He ran through the fog and leaped over the wall of the fort in a single bound. He spotted her ducking under a giant fern and he shouted again, but she didn't stop or even look back. Zigzagging around the trees, jumping over the bog pools, he ran after her. 
He heard her hide-and-seek giggle just ahead, and when he came around the tree he found her body deeply slashed and drained as it had been the day she died. At least she was all in one piece now. 
"Look at me, Daddy," she said without opening her eyes, "I'm a bag of rats!" 
Her body split and dozens of smaller versions of the big bog rats scattered in all directions. Zoey dissolved into the marshy ground. A tree grew quickly from where she had been. 
"Very symbolic," Donald said. He sat down on the ground. 
As he sat his head passed through layers of time and when he was low enough Zoey stepped out from behind the new tree and sat down beside him. 
"I guess it's fair in way," Donald said. "We're the bad guys. We eat their young, and so they kill us, you for example, whenever they can." 
"You haven't got it right, Daddy," Zoey said. "Keep trying." 
"Do they know how hard it is for us to resist?" Donald asked. "Do they have any idea what this is like for us?" 
"They don't kill us because you eat the starfish, Daddy," Zoey said. "The eels eat their young, too." 
"Then what?" 
She patted his knee and the grown up gesture and her small hand melted him; he wanted to grab her and hug her close but he could see parts of the forest through her, and he knew if he grabbed her it might be like grabbing smoke so he held back afraid to do anything that would ruin this contact. 
"Daddy, they don't kill you because you eat their newborn," Zoey said. "They kill you because you spit out the seeds." 
The seeds. 
The black pebbles in the wooden bowls. 
"What would happen if we didn't spit out the seeds, Zoey?" 
"Bag of rats, Daddy," she said, "but I'm still here. You keep the seeds and you get a moment that lasts forever." 
The system itself now made sense to the biologist he had once been. 
It all worked together. The rats lured the eels into eating the starfish and the starfish grew into new rats and killed the eels when they were ready to emerge. There were many many eels. Not so many rats. The mechanism that lured the eels to the birthing pools might be an irresistible scent or sound. He doubted the eels had the cognitive machinery to benefit from a final moment that lasted forever. That part didn't make so much sense, but people were something from outside the natural system. Who could have predicted their reactions? 
"Is it a shared final moment, Zoey?" 
No answer. 
Donald jerked his head up from the table and looked across the glass bowl at Eleanor. She seemed surprised to see him. He was surprised to be seeing her. He had never pulled out of the deep starfish state like that. The urgency to check on Zoey had kicked him out of it. That was it. 
That wasn't it. 
Zoey was still dead, and he had been balancing on the line between Eleanor's current state of not enough starfish to take off and that don't-expect-to-see-me-until-you-see-me blast off point, that point of no return, that big jump into the void, and thinking about Zoey had knocked him over to this side, and he would need a couple more starfish to get back, and the bowl was empty. Or not exactly empty, but empty in the sense that mattered. It still had water, and it looked like a big aquarium after all the fish have died and you've fished (ha) them out and flushed them and now all you've got is water with a few twigs floating and some leaves, a little sand on the bottom, a barely discernible rainbow slick along the top. But when did they ever have an aquarium? 
6
Waking was always such a disappointment—nothingness to pain, and the realization that he was still marooned, Zoey was still dead, and the colony was next to dead. The first task of the day was just finding the strength to sit up in bed. Inhale the heavy air, exhale something that tasted and smelled like sulfur gas. Dying of thirst and too weak to crawl to water. Insane conga drummers in his head. 
Eleanor was an untidy pile beside him. Her neck was twisted at an angle that looked uncomfortable. He imagined her head had hit the pillow with a plop when she passed out and hadn't budged all night while her body thrashed around like a hooked fish. Her cheek was still stained with the aftermath of their eating. She sucked air in through her mouth. If it had not been for that sad whistle, he might have thought her dead. 
He managed to sit up and then spent a few minutes belching and waving away the smell it produced. Then he let his head loll to the side and watched Eleanor for a moment more. 
He poked her in the side with his finger. "Hey, Sunshine, rise and shine." 
She groaned and pulled herself up to lean back against the headboard beside him. He didn't think her eyes were focused and talking to her might be like talking to himself, but since he had things to say, he took her hand and said, "Eleanor, we can't go on like this." 
"What?" 
"I feel so bad," he said. 
"You think you're alone? What's the point?" 
"I don't want to live like this." 
"So kill yourself." 
"You don't mean that, Eleanor." 
"Leave me alone, Donald." She scrunched down in the covers and turned away from him. "Just leave me alone." 
"I had a vision," he said. 
"How nice." 
"I mean it," he said. "I saw Zoey." 
"Don't Donald." She got up, dragging the top sheet off with her, and wandered over to the table and the glass bowl. The wooden bowls were as they'd left them the night before, and she looked down at hers and went white and turned her head away quickly. 
"She told me the problem is we spit out the seeds," he said. 
"This is another one of your goofy theories, isn't it?" She came over and sat down on the bed beside him. 
"Maybe," he said. "Maybe she told me and maybe I just figured it out." He put his arm around her shoulders. She resisted for a moment, but then she sighed and relaxed against him. "I think the reason the rats don't kill the eels is that they want the eels to eat the starfish. They want us to eat the starfish, too." 
"Oh, sure." 
"They don't kill the eels because the eels don't spit out the seeds and the seeds grow inside them into new rats." 
She twisted around to look up at him and he wrinkled his nose at her breath before he could stop himself. "You're saying we should keep those black stones down somehow and let them hatch and eat their way out of us?" 
"Yes," he said. "Do you think we could use a tranquilizer to stop the stomach spasms?" 
"I'm sure we could," she said. "But why should we? What's in it for us?" 
"Time," he said. "When I sat down beside Zoey I got a little taste of it. It's all the time you need. In those last moments of this body you have an eternity of time to do what you want." 
"How can you know that?" 
"You know the starfish state," he said. "I think it's certainly possible. And in any case, we wouldn't be here." 
"Would we be alone?" 
"I don't know," he said. "Probably no more alone than everyone is all the time anyway. We already make up most of the stuff we call our lives." 
She didn't say anything more. They sat together listening to the protests of their bodies, lost in their own thoughts. 
Finally he shook his head and pulled away from her. "Or like you say it could just be another one of my goofy theories. Keeping the seeds down might just be suicide." 
"Well," she said, "since you put it that way, let's do it." 
Today or tomorrow or the day after that. 
"Daddy?" 
Zoey at the door in her long nightdress. Tangled blond hair. Dirty bare feet. Rubbing her eyes with a fist. 
"Hey, sleepyhead, crawl in with Mommy and me." 
The End