the shipwreck

The timeship comes down in a forest, deep in the hilly land away from the capital city. It’s a humid summer morning just before light. Dewdrops quiver but don’t fall from their leaves when the ship crackles into view, aligns with realtime, and settles low, hovering above a deep furrow in the dirt created by its spacetime flux.

It’s first investigated by a squirrel, not used to humans and human machinery, unafraid of the acrid steaming metal. It approaches the ship and sniffs for a seam. When the door hisses open and Anca comes out, it scampers away into the brush.

Anca—tall, freckled, dignified, dark-eyed—has looked over the map while still inside the ship, but wants to see firsthand where she’s landed. The ship is a hundred or so meters from a dirt road, invisible in the overgrowth save for flashing reflections from its bright hull. There’s nothing edible or useful in the tangle of vines and young lightstarved pine trees oozing sun-orange sap.

Anca looks up at the lightening grey sky, sighs, and activates the ship’s beacon. It begins to pulse slowly with psychic energy, sending out a burst every few minutes. She settles down on the ramp and waits, lidded eyes scanning for motion between the trees.

~

Well into the morning a middle-aged man leaves his tractor on the main road and follows the pulses into the woods. 

Almost without seeing her at all, he stands and gazes up at Anca’s ship, approaching it slowly and without fear.

Hail and well met Anca says. 

What’s this. 

It’s my ship, I am a traveler. 

What is it. From where did it come.

Stop there. Don’t come closer. 

The man stops, finally looking at Anca. His voice is flat, patternless, not like she’s used to, though they speak the same language.

What is it.

It’s my ship. I came here from the future.

From where. What’s future.

Yours. From time still to come. Do you understand?

The man reaches out a cracked, dirty hand to touch the silvery curved side of the ship and Anca snaps, no, holding some control out of view, and electricity crackles on the hull. He pulls his hand back.

Do you have food? Anca asks.

Why did you come here.

I’m hungry. My food’s run out.

The man eyes her shrewdly.

What have you brought from time still to come.

Go get me something to eat. Don’t tell anyone about this ship. Do you understand?

The man looks the ship up and down. His eyes are bright blue. He pulls his fingers through his beard.

What do I get then. 

Anca scowls.

I’ll tell you about the future.

What do I care about this. You’ve got boul in that vehicle. From time still to come.

Anca looks up boul on her flickering handheld. It’s like “stuff.”

Yes I’ll give you something. Some boul. Now go get me food.

The man holds his hand up with three extended fingers, indicating agreement or the time of his return, maybe, Anca can’t tell, and then he turns and walks away into the trees.

It’s a long while before the rumble of the tractor returns. Anca is sitting bent in the ship’s doorway clutching her stomach when the man ambles back into the small clearing and rolls three potatoes across the ground to her.

She picks them up.

Not cooked? 

The man's eyes smile.

You don’t have a stove in there.

No.

You have to eat them raw.

She brushes one off with her sleeve and hesitatingly bites into it. It’s old, a little soft, with small white sprouts she scrapes off with a fingernail. In two minutes she’s finished it and begun on the second. The man squats down, takes off his hat, and wipes his forehead. 

I will need more food, Anca says finally, stripping buds off the third potato. And materials to make a fire, and a pot with water to cook them in. The man begins to say something and Anca cuts him off. Yes, I know. Boul.

She goes into the ship and rummages around, returning with a smooth, oblong piece of aluminum. One end is dented in. She tosses it to the man, who catches it deftly. 

Is it broken. 

You don’t even know what it is.

Looks broken. What is its use.

It’s made of very expensive metal. You can sell it.

Sell it to whom.

Anca stands.

For Christ's sake you dumb fool. It’s more valuable than you, your vehicle, no doubt this whole filthy settlement. Sell it and buy whatever you want. 

The man shrugs. I cannot use this. He drops it in the dirt and turns to walk away.

Don't leave me here. Stop!

The man keeps walking.

Anca expands the ship’s electrical defense field and watches as the man collapses, twitching. She looks to and fro into the trees and then ventures out from her ship, picks up a large rock and, straining, drops it on the man’s head. She does this once more and then drags his body back into the divot below the levitating ship, checking his pockets before pushing him into the dark indentation.

Like an animal, she mutters. She breathes deep and settles back down in the doorway of the ship, flips the psychic beacon back on, and stares deep into the forest, over the small dark puddle already disappearing into the soft ground. She begins to eat the last potato.

~

Later, using the last dying light coming in through the doorway, Anca tries to fix the ship’s communication system, taking strings of copper wire from other essential systems and splicing them into the broken radio. Nothing works.

She walks to the doorway and looks out at the purple trees, blueblack evening sky. Counting in her head, she takes fourteen measured steps away from the ship and stops. 

Scanning the bushes inside that radius for food, she finds a few berries, and sniffs them, crushing one between her fingers. The red juice leaves a dark fingerprint, barely visible in the ambient light. She eats one, considers, then the rest. 

~

A day or so later a man and woman come in off the road and stop before the pulsing ship. Anca’s on her back, shirtsleeve and chest stained with vomited red goo, split-flecked lips working.

Food, please.

The two stand still, gazing. 

What is this thing that you’re inside of.

I need food. I’m dying.

They stand a moment longer, speaking softly to one another, and then they both leave in the direction of the road. 

They’re back in a few minutes. The man carries a basket with a patterned cloth lain over it. Some bread and potatoes, he says. There’s no butter. I’m sorry. He tries to bring the basket to Anca and she barks hoarsely, no, leave it there, and he does. She stumbles over and drags it back into the ship’s doorway and throws the cloth back to the bewildered couple, greedily attacking one of the round loaves.

After a few minutes Anca slows and lies back, pained and nauseous but full. The man and woman watch her.

You can come to our home and rest, the man says. Anca shakes her head.

I’m bound to the ship. Responsible for it. If I leave it, I die and the important parts of it break so no one else can use it. It’s the logic of the place I come from. Beyond your ability to understand.

From where did you arrive the woman says.

From far away. Anca rolls over and vomits again.

You shouldn’t have eaten so quickly. The man looks concerned. Can’t you come home with us.

Anca spits. 

The woman rubs her chin, brow furrowed in the bright light. Where was this ship created.

Anca looks balefully up at the empty noiseless sky. 

Far away, she sighs. Where is this? Where have I landed? How far is Orik? 

The woman shrugs. We have never been to Orik. There’s nothing they want of us and nothing there we can afford.

What is this village called then? Anca asks.

It is no village. It has no name. The woman slaps a bug. It lies between Orik and another distant place, called Demathenes. Travelers used to stop in the midst but do no longer, and most living here have moved away.

At this Anca laughs contemptuously. Or self-pityingly. The woman’s expression does not change.

There is a tractor on the road the man says.

Oh Anca says. I cannot see the road.

Do you know whose tractor.

No. 

The woman looks into the undergrowth. The man twists his hat in his hands.

May we have our basket back.

Anca rolls it away into the grass and he hunches and picks it up. She goes feebly into the ship and comes back with a metallic cup filled with water, and she sits and sips.

I need help she says. You must bring me more food and then you must to go into Orik and speak with the head of the science council, any astrophysicist, that means scientist who studies space, or any professor of science that will speak to you, and tell them that a traveler has landed and wrecked their ship under their jurisdiction and they are required to give aid.

The man looks down, embarrassed. The woman speaks, loud and straightforward: they won’t see us. They keep the field dwellers far away. In any case we have only our tractor, getting there would take two weeks.

Who in this village has a car? Anca says, slowly and deliberately like she’s talking to a child. Does anyone have the money for a railway ticket?

There’s no village. There’s no rail from here to Orik. Why would anyone go from here to Orik or Orik to here. The woman scuffs the ground. It’s darker beneath, flecked with rust-brown crust.

Call then, or send mail. Or a messenger. Don’t you have messengers?

There’s no mail here. The woman’s eyes have narrowed. When did the old man come here.

Fucking stupid, Anca snaps. You’re all so fucking stupid.

Where have you put him. 

The woman begins to back away and the man follows. Anca leaps upright and flicks the electricity field. The two fall, stricken. 

This time, too weak to heave such a large rock, Anca goes into the ship and comes out moments later with a smooth metal rod.

~

A thin branch stuck into the seam between pieces of the ship’s hull stand barkless, gleaming, licked clean after being used to roast potatoes. The electric field had been useful for that too. 

It’s been two or three weeks. A boy finds the gleaming, lightly hovering ship and spends the afternoon throwing rocks at it. Each time one sparks off the forcefield he looks hesitantly back toward the road, as if expecting to be scolded. 

In the early evening preparing to go home he sees motion in the doorway. A withered red hand gestures. He moves closer and sees the sunken eyed, immobile figure laying inside.

Go to Orik, it croaks. Tell them my ship has died. Tell them I need help. I’ll give you money. Give you boul.

Tell who says the boy. What’s Orik.

Like a fucking animal, it mouthes, and flips the switch.

~

It’s a few more days before the boy’s path is traced. His body is found facedown before the ship, pebbles scattered from his left hand. His parents take him back to be buried.

The search party encircles the strange metal thing. Approached with an outstretched stick, the ship’s metal hull still crackles with energy. No one tries to go inside. Nothing is visible through the hooded doorway.

When, with a wooden fulcrum and lever, they push the ship over onto its side, in the indentation below it the villagers find the three half-devoured corpses, a wedded couple and an old man, coarse white beard stained grey with clotted blood.

These, too, they take to be buried. The ship and its contents they leave, too frightened and disinterested to touch, to vanish behind the vines.