Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors

a fold. It was obvious
now. It was hard to understand how he could have missed it.
Inside was a large area, larger than the outside dimensions
seemed to allow. Closed stalls ran around the square with canvas
awnings reaching in. It was silent. There was no wind.
The surface had been cleared of stones. It was raked into tiny
parallel furrows that reached from the entrance to the far wall of
tents. The lights cast an illumination that admitted of no high
spots, an eerie but pleasant effect giving everything the same
intensity.
He imagined his footprints crossing this area, perfect in the virgin sand. He watched his feet crush the perfect furrows. The sound was loud in the silent square. It stopped when he reached the far
side and stepped onto the canvas floor of a shooting gallery.
The light made the footprints appear drawn, not impressed. In
the desert they were always deep with shadow. In the rocks nonexistent. For the first time he saw how he moved in the desert.
These prints were alike and yet different. They were clean. Even,
he thought, beautiful.
There was no way to return without destroying what he had
made. The tents made a wall he could not pass. He wanted the line
of steps to be an enigma to the first arrival of the morning. He
grinned as he considered the reaction of that person, whoever it
might be.
The square was now a story to be told. How the person arrived
and told friends about the footprints. Inexplicable. Hargreaves
crossed to the edge of the stall. A few feet away was another canvas
floor. The sand in between was also raked. Perfect furrows, not to
be harmed.
The line stretched out. He closed his eyes to capture it, finally.
Childlike, he urged his body to cross the distance, pushing from
within. He felt childhood dreams blend with this new memory. His
hair shifted in a gentle wind.
At the exit he turned and looked at what he had made. He saw
himself as the first arrival. One set of footprints reaching out. An
enigma. One that would make a good story.
Hargreaves turned to leave. A voice laughed from the shadows.
48
Tim othy Dell
An old man came out. A grin had pushed his features to the top of
his face, the lines of age exaggerated grotesquely. The old man
stood and laughed at John Hargreaves. He let his eyes travel along
the one-way line of footprints and he laughed harder. His eyes saw
John Hargreaves jum ping from stall to stall, around the edge of the
square, and tears ran down the lines in his face.
John Hargreaves felt he could explain. The old man, however,
seemed content to laugh. To say anything now would make it
worse. He concentrated on the story of the footprints. The old
man, in response, took a rake from the shadows. Hargreaves hurried from the tents, abashed. In his mind he saw the old man remove the prints from the sand.
At the hotel men drank. Later they carried him to his room.
His body sweated into already dark-stained sheets. The sun
showed the ceiling cracked like the dried lake beds in the desert. He
tried to tell the ceiling about the desert. All that came was the
memory of the old man. The lake beds of his memory all had the
imprint of an aged, laughing face.
He hated the old man. Hargreaves’ small memories were fragile;
the mockery of others could destroy them.
He preferred the small memories. He liked the circles in the sand
because that was a thing only he could have seen. A thing that his
mind had collected; had thought worth collecting. Others would
accept the arrival into town, but not the detail of a grain of sand
falling when he placed his foot down in the desert. He had tried to
tell them, wanted them to share his memories. Always, though,
they would rather talk of the harder images from the city. O r the
circus. Familiarity breeds reality, he