The River of No Return

Melitta’s. In 1000 B.C .”
    Julia’s ears and eyes felt like they were on stalks, she was straining so hard to see and hear everything. But surely she hadn’t heard correctly; it seemed that Peter had just said she had a friend in 1000 B.C .
    Alva was shocked, too. “You were able to go to 1000 B.C .? How?”
    “I can’t. But that’s just the point: Why can’t we, Alva? I mean, the Pale is in the future, but we all have a sort of a Pale in the past, too. We can’t jump back more than a thousand years, right?”
    Julia couldn’t help it. She twitched her head to look more directly at them. She saw that Miss Blomgren was unfazed by the suggestion that it was possible to go back a thousand years into the past.
    “I thought we could learn about the Pale if we learn about that other barrier in the past,” Peter was saying when Julia found it possible to comprehend human speech again. “But what I figured out doesn’t have to do with the Pale. It has to do with the Talisman.”
    “Yes, so you’ve said.”
    “So I’ve been making friends back upriver to see how far back we go. That’s what these symbolon . . . well, it’s what they symbolize. Friendship. They’re from ancient Greece. I’m friends with this guy named Kaveh from the year 28. He can go back to like 1000 B.C . Back there he’s friends with Melitta, and she sends messages to me through him. She’s the one who came up with the idea of all of us wearing the symbolon. . . .”
    “That’s cute,” Miss Blomgren said. “Like pen pals.”
    “It’s more than cute. Melitta’s made friends even further upriver, and I have their symbolon, too. I have friends going back to 3000 B.C. and you act like it’s the Baby-sitters Club.” Peter scowled. “Pen pals. You can be such a jerk, Alva.”
    Miss Blomgren leaned into Peter’s face and spoke severely. “I have told you that I want you to make this short.”
    “Fine.” Peter started talking very quickly. “Symbolon. It’s one of the ways money developed. You move from these symbols of friendship, where you break these discs in half to show that you are two parts of this emotional whole, to breaking them in half to symbolize debt! Like you owe the person something. You see? Friendship is totally, like, perverted into debt.” Peter was waving her hands now, her words coming out faster and faster. “Feelings and money are totally connected. We use feelings to travel, but we can only travel to places where there’s certain kinds of economies, right? Where there’s colonial conquest and debt and that kind of crap. All those other people living in other kinds of cultures are just hanging out in their time without jumping. Which is so weird! Why is that? I mean, the Guild thrives where there’s money, and the Ofan always exist in the neighborhood of the Guild, like suckerfish on a whale. Why, why, why?”
    “War,” Miss Blomgren said. “I’ve explained it to you many times.”
    “That’s your argument, Alva, and it’s totally right, but there’s more. You’re always like, the river is made out of money and blood. And the Guild is all about how money and war are normal human things and the river is just made out of feelings and we don’t travel to certain kinds of cultures because we simply don’t have the same feelings. Well, I think you’re both right. The river connects different cultures throughout history where feelings have been translated into debt and then into money! Some places in human history haven’t sutured their feelings to money—that’s why we can’t get to them or them to us. Wars of conquest are a big way that that transformation happens because you have to have an economy to feed an army on the march, but even war is a symptom, Alva, not the disease itself!”
    Peter paused as if this was a revelation, but Miss Blomgren said nothing—only stared at the girl.
    Peter sighed when it was clear that Miss Blomgren was not going to respond, and carried on. “Don’t you see? This means that the Ofan are totally in this with the Guild. There’s no structural reason why we’re the good guys and they’re the bad guys. We both travel the river for the same reason.” Peter rubbed her hands together, almost as if she were cold. “I know you were all hopped up on the Guild being warmongers who are single-handedly destroying humanity and the Ofan being all rainbows and unicorns and peace symbols. But instead we’re both just totally complicit in this