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The Project Gutenberg eBook ofA Place so Foreign
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*** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook. Details Below. ***
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Title: A Place so Foreign
Author: Cory Doctorow
Release date: September 19, 2005 [eBook #16721] Most recently updated: December 12, 2020
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PLACE SO FOREIGN ***
Copyright (C) 2000 by Corey Doctorow
A Place So Foreign
Cory Doctorow
From "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," a short story collection published inSeptember, 2003 by Four Walls Eight Windows Press (ISBN 1568582862). Seehttp://craphound.com/place for more.
Originally Published in Science Fiction Age, January 2000
—
Blurbs and quotes:
* Cory Doctorow straps on his miner's helmet and takes you deep into the caverns and underground rivers of Pop Culture, here filtered through SF-coloured glasses. Enjoy.
- Neil Gaiman Author of American Gods and Sandman
* Few writers boggle my sense of reality as much as Cory Doctorow. His vision is so far out there, you'll need your GPS to find your way back.
- David Marusek Winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Award, Nebula Award nominee
* Cory Doctorow is one of our best new writers: smart, daring, savvy, entertaining, ambitious, plugged-in, and as good a guide to the wired world of the twenty-first century that stretches out before us as you're going to find.
- Gardner Dozois Editor, Asimov's SF
* He sparkles! He fizzes! He does backflips and breaks the furniture! Science fiction needs Cory Doctorow!
- Bruce Sterling Author of The Hacker Crackdown and Distraction
* Cory Doctorow strafes the senses with a geekspeedfreak explosion of gomi kings with heart, weirdass shapeshifters from Pleasure Island and jumping automotive jazz joints. If this is Canadian science fiction, give me more.
- Nalo Hopkinson Author of Midnight Robber and Brown Girl in the Ring
* Cory Doctorow is the future of science fiction. An nth-generation hybrid of the best of Greg Bear, Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling and Groucho Marx, Doctorow composes stories that are as BPM-stuffed as techno music, as idea-rich as the latest issue of NEW SCIENTIST, and as funny as humanity's efforts to improve itself. Utopian, insightful, somehow simultaneously ironic and heartfelt, these nine tales will upgrade your basal metabolism, overwrite your cortex with new and efficient subroutines and generally improve your life to the point where you'll wonder how you ever got along with them. Really, you should need a prescription to ingest this book. Out of all the glittering crap life and our society hands us, craphound supreme Doctorow has managed to fashion some industrial-grade art."
- Paul Di Filippo Author of The Steampunk Trilogy
* As scary as the future, and twice as funny. In this eclectic and electric collection Doctorow strikes sparks off today to illuminate tomorrow, which is what SF is supposed to do. And nobody does it better.
- Terry Bisson Author of Bears Discover Fire
—
A note about this story
This story is from my collection, "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," publishedby Four Walls Eight Windows Press in September, 2003, ISBN 1568582862. I'vereleased this story, along with five others, under the terms of a CreativeCommons license that gives you, the reader, a bunch of rights that copyrightnormally reserves for me, the creator.
I recently did the same thing with the entire text of my novel, "Down and Out inthe Magic Kingdom" (http://craphound.com/down), and it was an unmitigatedsuccess. Hundreds of thousands of people downloaded the book — good news — andthousands of people bought the book — also good news. It turns out that, asnear as anyone can tell, distributing free electronic versions of books is agreat way to sell more of the paper editions, while simultaneously getting thebook into the hands of readers who would otherwise not be exposed to my work.
I still don't know how it is artists will earn a living in the age of theInternet, but I remain convinced that the way to find out is to do basicscience: that is, to do stuff and observe the outcome. That's what I'm doinghere. The thing to remember is that the very *worst* thing you can do to me asan artist is to not read my work — to let it languish in obscurity anddisappear from posterity. Most of the fiction I grew up on is out-of-print, andthis is doubly true for the short stories. Losing a couple bucks to people whowould have bought the book save for the availability of the free electronic textis no big deal, at least when compared to the horror that is being irrelevantand unread. And luckily for me, it appears that giving away the text for freegets me more paying customers than it loses me.
You can find the canonical version of this file athttp://craphound.com/place/download.php
If you'd like to convert this file to some other format and distribute it, youhave my permission, provided that:
* You don't charge money for the distribution
* You keep the entire text intact, including this notice, the license below, andthe metadata at the end of the file
* You don't use a file-format that has "DRM" or "copy-protection" or any otherform of use-restriction turned on
If you'd like, you can advertise the existence of your edition by posting a linkto it at http://craphound.com/place/000013.php
—
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###
A Place So Foreign==================
My Pa disappeared somewhere in the wilds of 1975, when I was just fourteen yearsold. He was the Ambassador to 1975, but back home in 1898, in New Jerusalem,Utah, they all thought he was Ambassador to France. When he disappeared, Mamaand I came back through the triple-bolted door that led from our apt in 1975 toour horsebarn in 1898. We returned to the dusty streets of New Jerusalem, and Ihad to keep on reminding myself that I was supposed to have been in France, and"polly-voo" for my chums, and tell whoppers about the Eiffel Tower and the fancybread and the snails and frogs we'd eaten.
I was born in New Jerusalem, and raised there till I was ten. Then, one summer'sday, my Pa sat me on his knee and told me we'd be going away for a while, thathe had a new job.
"But what about the store?" I said, scandalised. My Pa's wonderful store, theonly General Store in town not run by the Saints, was my second home. I'd spentmy whole life crawling and then walking on the dusty wooden floors, checkingstock and unpacking crates with waybills from exotic places like Salt Lake Cityand even San Francisco.
Pa looked uncomfortable. "Mr Johnstone is buying it."
My mouth dropped. James H Johnstone was as dandified a city-slicker as you'dever hope to meet. He'd blown into town on the weekly Zephyr Speedball, and skinnyTommy Benson had hauled his three huge steamer trunks to the cowboy hotel. He'dtipped Tommy two dollars, in Wells-Fargo notes, and later, in the empty lotbehind the smithy, all the kids in New Jerusalem had gathered 'round Tommy togoggle at the small fortune in queer, never-seen bills.
"Pa, no!" I said, without thinking. I knew that if my chums ordered theirfathers around like that, they'd get a whipping, but my Pa almost never whippedme.
He smiled, and stretched his thick moustache across his face. "James, I know youlove the store, but it's already been decided. Once you've been to France,you'll see that it has wonders that beat anything that store can deliver."
"Nothing's better than the store," I said.
He laughed and rumpled my hair. "Don't be so sure, son. There are more things inheaven and earth then are dreamed of in your philosophy." It was one of hissayings, from Shakespeare, who he'd studied back east, before I was born. Itmeant that the discussion was closed.
I decided to withhold judgement until I saw France, but still couldn't shake thefeeling that my Pa was going soft in the head. Mr Johnstone wasn't fit to run anapple-cart. He was short and skinny and soft, not like my Pa, who, as far as Iwas concerned, was the biggest, strongest man in the whole world. I loved my Pa.
#
Well, when we packed our bags and Pa went into the horsebarn to hitch up ourteam, I figured we'd be taking a short trip out to the train station. All mychums were waiting there to see us off, and I'd promised my best pal OlySweynsdatter that I'd give him my coonskin cap to wear until we came back. Butinstead, Pa rode us to the edge of town, where the road went to rutted trail andsalt flats, and there was Mr James H Johnstone, in his own fancy-pants trap. Paand me moved our luggage into Johnstone's trap and got inside with Mama andhunkered down so, you couldn't see us from outside. Mama said, "You just hush upnow, James. There's parts of this trip that we couldn't tell you about before weleft, but you're going to have to stay quiet and hold onto your questions untilwe get to where we're going."
I nearly said, "To where we're going?" but I didn't, because Mama had neverlooked so serious in all my born days. So I spent an hour hunkered down inthere, listening to the clatter of the wheels and trying to guess where we weregoing. When I heard the trap stop and a set of wooden doors close, all myguesses dried up and blew away, because I couldn't think of anywhere we would'veheard those sounds out in the desert.
So imagine my surprise when I stood up and found us right in our very ownhorsebarn, having made a circle around town and back to where we'd started from!Mama held a finger up to her lips and then took Mr Johnstone's soft, girlishhand as he helped her down from the trap.
My Pa and Mr Johnstone started shifting one of the piles of hay-bales thatstacked to the rafters, until they had revealed a triple-bolted door that lookednew and sturdy, fresh-sawn edges still bright and yellow, and not the weatheredbrown of the rest of the barn.
Pa took a key ring out of his vest pocket and unlocked the door, then swung itopen. Each of us shouldered our bags and walked through, in eerie silence, intoa pitch black room.
Pa reached out and pulled the door shut, then there was a sharp click and wewere in 1975.
#
1975 was a queer sight. Our apartment was a lozenge of silver, spoked into thehub of a floating null-gee doughnut. Pa did something fancy with his hands andthe walls went transparent, and I swear, I dropped to the floor and hugged thenubby rubber tiles for all I was worth. My eyes were telling me that we werehundreds of yards off the ground, and while I'd jumped from the rafters of thehorsebarn into the hay countless times, I suddenly discovered that I was afraidof heights.
After that first dizzying glimpse of 1975, I kept my eyes squeezed shut and heldon for all I was worth. After a minute or two of this, my stomach told me that Iwasn't falling, and I couldn't hear any rushing wind, any birdcalls, anythingexcept Mama and Pa laughing, fit to bust. I opened one eye and snuck a peek. Myfolks were laughing so hard they had to hold onto each other to stay up, andthey were leaning against thin air, Pa's back pressed up against nothing at all.
Cautiously, I got to my feet and walked over to the edge. I extended one fingerand it bumped up against an invisible wall, cool and smooth as glass in winter.
"James," said my Pa, smiling so wide that his thick moustache stretched all theway across his face, "welcome to 1975."
#
Pa's ambassadorial mission meant that he often spent long weeks away from home,teleporting in only for Sunday dinner, the stink of aliens and distant worldsclinging to him even after he washed up. The last Sunday dinner I had with him,Mama had made mashed potatoes and corn bread and sausage gravy and turkey,spending the whole day with the wood-fired cooker back in 1898 (actually, it was1901 by then, but I always thought of it as 1898). She'd moved the cooker intothe horsebarn after a week of wrestling with the gadgets we had in our 1975kitchen, and when Pa had warned her that the smoke was going to raise questionsin New Jerusalem, she explained that she was going to run some flexible exhausthose through the door into 75 and into our apt's air-scrubber. Pa had shook hishead and smiled at her, and every Sunday, she dragged the exhaust pipe throughthe door.
That night, Pa sat down and said grace, and he was in his shirtsleeves with hissuspenders down, and it almost felt like home — almost felt like a millionSunday dinners eaten by gaslight, with a sweaty pitcher of lemonade in themiddle of the table, and seasonal wildflowers, and a stinky cheroot for Paafterwards as he tipped his chair back and rested one hand on his belly, as ifhe couldn't believe how much Mama had managed to stuff him this time.
"How are your studies coming, James?" he asked me, when the robutler hadfinished clearing the plates and clattered away into its nook.
"Very well, sir. We're starting calculus now." Truth be told, I hated calculus,hated Isaac Newton and asymptotes and the whole smelly business. Even with theviral learning shots, it was like swimming in molasses for me.
"Calculus! Well, well, well —" this was one of Pa's catch-all phrases, like"Howabout that?" or "What do you know?" "Well, well, well. I can't believehow much they stuff into kids' heads here."
"Yes, sir. There's an awful lot left to learn, yet." We did a subject every twoweeks. So far, I'd done French, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Physics andAstrophysics, Esperanto, Cantonese and Mandarin, and an alien language whosename translated as "Standard." I'd been exempted from History, of course, alongwith the other kids there from the past — the Chinese girl from the MingDynasty, the Roman boy, and the Injun kid from South America.
Pa laughed around his cigar and crossed his legs. His shoes were so big, theylooked like canoes. "There surely is, son. There surely is. And how are youdoing with your classmates? Any tussles your teacher will want to talk to meabout?"
"No, sir! We're friendly as all get-out, even the girls." The kids in 75 didn'teven notice what they were doing in school. They just sat down at theirworkstations and waited to have their brains filled with whatever was going on,and left at three, and never complained about something being too hard or toodull.
"That's good to hear, son. You've always been a good boy. Tell you what: youbring home a good report this Christmas, and I'll take you to see Saturn's ringson vacation."
Mama shot him a look then, but he pretended he didn't see it. He stubbed out hiscigar, hitched up his suspenders, and put on his tailcoat and tophat andambassadorial sash and picked up his leather case.
"Good night, son. Good night, Ulla. I'll see you on Wednesday," he said, andstepped into the teleporter.
That was the last time I ever saw him.
#
"He died from bad snails?" Oly Sweynsdatter said to me, yet again.
I balled up a fist and stuck it under his nose. "For the last time, yes. Ask meagain, and I'll feed you this."
I'd been back for a month, and in all that time, Oly had skittered around melike a shy pony, always nearby but afraid to talk to me. Finally, I'd grabbedhim and shook him and told him not to be such a ninny, tell me what was on hismind. He wanted to know how my Pa had died, over in France. I told him thereason that Mama and Mr Johnstone and the man from the embassy had worked outtogether. Now, I regretted it. I couldn't get him to shut up.
"Sorry, all right, sorry!" he said, taking a step backwards. We were in theorchard behind the schoolyard, chucking rotten apples at the tree-trunks towatch them splatter. "Want to hear something?"
"Sure," I said.
"Tommy Benson's sweet on Marta Helprin. It's disgusting. They hold hands —inchurch! None of the fellows will talk to him."
I didn't see what the big deal was. Back in 75, we had had a two-week session onsexual reproduction, like all the other subjects. Most of the kids there werealready in couples, sneaking off to low-gee bounceataria and renting privatecubes with untraceable cash-tokens. I'd even tussled with one girl, KatebeM'Buto, another exchange student, from United Africa Trading Sphere. I'd pickedher up at her apt, and her father had even shaken my hand — they grow up fastin UATS. Of course, I'd never let on to my folks. Pa would've broken an axle."That's pretty disgusting, all right," I said, unconvincingly.
"You want to go down to the river? I told Amos and Luke that I'd meet them afterlunch."
I didn't much feel like it, but I didn't know what else to do. We walked down tothe swimming hole, where some boys were already naked, swimming and horsingaround. I found myself looking away, conscious of their nudity in a way that I'dnever been before — all the boys in town swam there, all summer long.
I turned my back to the group and stripped down, then ran into the water asquick as I could.
I paddled around a little, half-heartedly, and then I found myself being pulledunder! My sinuses filled with water and I yelled a stream of bubbles, and closedmy mouth on a swallow of water. Strong hands pulled at my ankles. I kicked outas hard as I could, and connected with someone's head. The hands loosened and Ishot up like a cork, sputtering and coughing. I ran for the shore, and saw oneof the Allen brothers surfacing, rubbing at his head and laughing. The fourAllen boys lived on a ranch with their parents out by the salt flats, and weonly saw them when they came into town with their folks for supplies. I'd neverliked them, but now, I saw red.
"You pig!" I shouted at him. "You stupid, rotten, pig! What the heck do youthink you were doing?"
The Allens kept on laughing — I used to know some of their names, but in thetime I'd been in 75, they'd grown as indistinguishable as twins: big, hard boyswith their heads shaved for lice. They pointed at me and laughed. I scooped up aflat stone from the shore and threw it at the head of the one who'd pulled meunder, as hard as I could.
Lucky for him — and me! — I was too angry to aim properly, and the stone hithim in the shoulder, knocking him backwards. He shouted at me — it was like aroar of a wild animal — and the four brothers charged.
Oly appeared at my side. "Run!" he shouted.
I was too angry. I balled my fists and stood my ground. The first one shot outof the water towards me, and punched me so hard in the guts, I saw stars. I fellto the ground, gasping. I looked up at a forest of strong, bare legs, and knewthey'd surrounded me.
"It's the Sheriff!" Oly shouted. The legs disappeared. I struggled to my knees.
Oly collapsed to the ground beside me, laughing. "Did you see the way they ran? The Sheriff never comes down to the river!"
"Thanks," I said, around gasps, and started to get dressed.
"Any time," he said. "Now, let's do some swimming."
"No, I gotta go home and help Mama," I lied. I didn't feel like going skinnydipping anymore — maybe never again.
Oly gave me a queer look. "OK. See you."
#
I went straight home, pelting down the road as fast as I could, not even lookingwhere I was going. I let the door slam behind me and took the stairs two at atime up to the attic ladder, then bolted the trap-door shut behind me and sat inthe dark, with my knees in my chest.
Down below, Mama let out a half-hearted, "James? Is that you?" like she alwaysdid since I came back home. I ignored her, like always, and she stopped worryingabout it, like always.
Pa's last trip had been to the Dalai Lama's court in 1975. The man from theembassy said that he was going to talk with the monks about a "white-paper thatthe two embassies were jointly presenting on the effect of mimeticambassadorships on the reincarnated soul." It was all nonsense to me. He'd neverarrived. The teleporter said that it had put him down gentle as you like on thefloor of the Lama's floating castle over the Caspian Sea, but the monks neversaw him.
And that was that.
It had been a month since our return. I'd ventured out into town and looked upmy chums, and found them so full of gossip that didn't mean anything to me; soabsorbed with games that seemed childish to me; so strange, that I'd retreatedhome. I'd prowled around our house like a burglar at first, and when I came backto the attic, all the numbness that had enveloped me since the man from theState Department had teleported into our apt melted away and I started bawling.
The attic had always been Pa's domain. He'd come up here with whatever crackpotinvention he'd ordered this month out of a catalog or one of the expensive,foreign journals he subscribed to, and tinker and swear and hit his thumbnailand tear his pants on a stray dingus and smoke his cheroots and have a heck of atime.
The muffled tread of his feet and the distant cursing while I sat in the parlourdownstairs had been the homiest sound I knew. Mama and I would lock eyes everytime a particularly forceful round of hollers shook down, and Mama would get alittle smile and her eyes would crinkle, and I felt like we were sharing asecret.
Now, the attic was my private domain: there was the elixir shelf, full of patentmedicines, hair-tonics, and soothing syrups. There was the bookcase full of wildtheories and fantastic adventure stories. There were the crates full ofdangerous, coal-fired machines — an automatic clothes-washing-machine, acherry-pitter, and other devices whose nature I couldn't even guess at. None ofthem had ever worked, but I liked to run my hands over them, feel the smoothsteel of their parts, disassemble and reassemble them. Back in 75, I'd oncetried to take the robutler apart, just to get a look at how it was all puttogether, but it was a lost cause — I couldn't even figure out how to get thecover off.
I walked through the cool dark, the only light coming from the grimy atticwindow, and fondled each piece. I picked up an oilcan and started oiling thejoints and bearings and axles of each machine in turn. Pa would have wanted toknow that everything was in good working order.
#
"I think you should be going to school, James," Mama said, at breakfast. I'dalready done my morning chores, bringing in the coal, chopping kindling, takingcare of the milch-cows and making my bed.
I took another forkful of sausage, and a spoonful of mush, chewed, and looked atmy plate.
"It's time, it's time. You can't spend the rest of your life sulking aroundhere. Your father would have wanted us to get on with our lives."
Even though I wasn't looking at her when she said this, I knew that her eyeswere bright with tears, the way they always got when she mentioned Pa. His chairsat, empty, at the head of the table. I had another bite of sausage.
"James Arthur Nicholson! Look at me when I speak to you!"
I looked up, reflexively, as I always did when she used my full name. My eyesslid over her face, then focused on a point over her left shoulder.
"Yes'm."
"You're going to school. Today. And I expect to get a good report from Mr Adelson."
"Yes'm."
#
We have two schools in New Jerusalem: the elementary school that was builttwenty years before, when they put in the wooden sidewalks and the town hall;and the non-denominational Academy that was built just before I left for 1975.
Miss Tannenbaum, a spinster lady with a moustache and a bristling German accentterrorised the little kids in the elementary school — I'd been stuck in herclass for five long years. Mr Adelson, who was raised in San Francisco and whohad worked as a roustabout, a telegraph operator and a merchant seaman taughtthe Academy, and his wild stories were all Oly could talk about.
He raised one eyebrow quizzically when I came through the door at 8:00 thatmorning. He was tall, like my Pa, but Pa had been as big as an ox, and MrAdelson was thin and wiry. He wore rumpled pants and a shirt with a wiltedcelluloid collar. He had a skinny little beard that made him look like agentleman pirate, and used some shiny pomade to grease his hair straight backfrom his high forehead. I caught him reading, thumbing the hand-written pages ofa leatherbound volume.
"Mr Adelson?"
"Why, James Nicholson! What can I do for you, sonny?" New Jerusalem only had but2,000 citizens, and only a hundred or so in town proper, so of course he knewwho I was, but it surprised me to hear him pronounce my name in his creaky,weatherbeaten voice.
"My mother says I have to go to the Academy."
"She does, hey? How do you feel about that?"
I snuck a look at his face to see if he was putting me on, but I couldn't tell— he'd raised up his other eyebrow now, and was looking hard at me. There mighthave been the beginning of a smile on his face, but it was hard to tell with thebeard. "I guess it don't matter how I feel."
"Oh, I don't know about that. This is a school, not a prison, after all. How oldare you?"
"Fourteen. Sir."
"That would put you in with the seniors. Do you think you can handle theircourse of study? It's half-way through the semester now, and I don't know howmuch they taught you when you were over in," he swallowed, "France."
I didn't know what to say to that, so I just stared at my hard, uncomfortableshoes.
"How are your maths? Have you studied geometry? Basic algebra?"
"Yes, sir. They taught us all that." And lots more besides. I had the feeling oficebergs of knowledge floating in my brain, ready to crest the waves and crashagainst the walls of my skull.
"Very good. We will be studying maths today in the seniors' class. We'll see howyou do. Is that all right?"
Again, I didn't know if he was really asking, so I just said, "Yes, sir."
"Marvelous. We'll see you at the 8:30 bell, then. And James —" he paused,waited until I met his gaze. His eyebrows were at rest. "I'm sorry about yourfather. I'd met him several times. He was a good man."
"Thank you, sir," I said, unable to look away from his stare.
#
The first half of the day passed with incredible sloth, as I copied downproblems to my slate and pretended to puzzle over them before writing down theanswer I'd known the minute I saw the question.
At lunch I found a seat at the base of the big willow out front of the schooland unwrapped the waxed paper from the thick ham sandwich Mama had fixed me. Imunched it and conjugated Latin verbs in my head, trying to make the day pass.Oly and the fellows were roughhousing in the yard, playing follow-the-leaderwith Amos Gundersen out front, showing off by walking on his hands and thenspringing upright. Amos' mother came from circus people in Russia, and all thekids in his family wanted to be acrobats when they grew up.
I tried not to watch them.
I was engrossed in a caterpillar that was crawling up my pants-leg when MrAdelson cleared his throat behind me. I started, and the caterpillar tumbled tothe ground, and then Mr Adelson was squatting on his long haunches at my side.
"How are you liking your first day, James?" he asked, in his raspy voice.
"It's fine, sir."
"And the work? You're able to keep up with the class?"
"It's not a problem for me. We studied this when I was away."
"Are you bored? Do you need more of a challenge?"
"It's fine, sir."Unless you want to assign me some large-prime factoringproblems.
"Right, then. Don't hesitate to call on me if things are moving too slowly ortoo quickly. I mean that."
I snuck another look at him. He seemed sincere.
"Why aren't you playing with your chums?"
"I don't feel like it."
"You just wanted to think?"
"I guess so." Why wouldn't he just leave me alone?
"It's hard to come home, isn't it?"
I stared at my shoes. What did he know about it?
"I've been around the world, you know that? I sailed with a tramp steamer, theSlippery Trick. I saw the naked savages of Polynesia, and the voodoo witchesthat the freed slaves of the Caribbean worship, and the coolies pullingrickshaws in Peking. It was sohard to come home to Frisco, after five yearsat sea."
To my surprise, he sat down next to me, in the dirt and roots at the base of thetree. "You know, aboard theTrick, they called me Runnyguts — I threw upevery hour for my first month. I was more reliable than the Watch! But theydidn't mean anything by it. When you live with a crew for years, you become adifferent person. We'd be out at sea, nothing but water as far as the eye couldsee, and we'd be playing cards on-deck. We'd told each other every joke we knewalready, and every story about home, and we knew that deck of cards so well,which one had salt-water stains on the back and which one turned up at cornerand which one had been torn, and we'd just scream at the sun, so bored! But thenwe'd put in to port at some foreign city, and we'd come down the plank in ourbest clothes, twenty men who knew each other better than brothers, hard andbrown from months at sea, and it felt like whatever happened in that strangeport-of-call, we'd come out on top."
"And then I came back to the Frisco, and the Captain shook my hand and gave me asack of gold and saw me off, and I'd never felt so alone, and I'd never seen aplace so foreign.
"I went back to my old haunts, the saloons where I'd gone for a beer after aday's work at the docks, and the dance-halls, and the theatres, and I saw my oldchums. That was hard, James."
He stopped then. I found myself saying, "How was it hard, Mr Adelson?"
He looked surprised, like he'd forgotten that he was talking to me. "Well,James, it's like this: when you're away that long, you get to invent yourselfall over again. Of course, everyone invents themselves as they grow up. Yourchums there —" he gestured at the boys, who were now trying, with varyingsuccess, to turn somersaults, dirtying their school clothes "— they'reinventing themselves right now, whether they know it or not. The smart one, thestrong one, the brave one, the sad one. It's going on while we watch!
"But when you go away, nobody knows you, and you can be whoever you want. Youcan shed your old skin and grow a new one. When we put out to sea, I was just ayoungster, eighteen years old and fresh from my Pa's house. He was a cablecarengineer, and wanted me to follow in his shoes, get an apprenticeship and joinhim there under the hills, oiling the giant pulleys. But no, not me! I wanted toput out to sea and see the world. I'd never been out of the city, can youbelieve that? The first port where I took shore leave was in Haiti, and when Istepped onto the dock, it was like my life was starting all over again. I got atattoo, and I drank hard liquor, and gambled in the saloons, and did all thethings that a man did, as far as I was concerned." He had a faraway look now,staring at the boys' game without seeing it. "And when I got back on-board, sickand tired and broke, there was a new kid there, a negro from Port-Au-Princewho'd signed on to be a cabin boy. His name was Jean-Paul, and he didn't speak aword of English and I didn't speak a word of French. But I took him under mywing, James, and acted like I'd been at sea all my life, and showed him theropes, and taught him to play cards, and bossed him around, and taught himEnglish, one word at a time.
"And that became the new me. Every time a new hand signed on, I would be histeacher, his mentor, his guide.
"And then I came home.
"As far as the folks back home were concerned, I was the kid they'd saidgood-bye to five years before. My father thought I was still a kid, even thoughI'd fought pirates and weathered storms. My chums wanted me to be the kid I'dbeen, and do all the boring, kid things we'd done before I left — riding thetrolleys, watching the vaudeville shows, fishing off the docks.
"Even though that stuff was still fun, it wasn'tme, not anymore. I missed theold me, and felt him slipping away. So, you know what I did?"
"You moved to New Jerusalem?"
"I moved to New Jerusalem. Well, to Salt Lake City, first. I studied with theJesuits, to be a teacher, then I saw an ad for a teacher in the paper, and Ipacked my bag and caught the next train. And here I am, not the me that camehome from sea, and not the me who I was before I went to sea, but someone inbetween, a new me — teaching, but on dry land, and not chasing dangerousadventures, but still reading my old log-book and smiling."
We sat for a moment, in companionable silence. Then, abruptly, he checked hispocket watch and yelped. "Damn! Lunch was over twenty minutes ago!" He leapt tohis feet, as smoothly as a boy, and ran into the schoolhouse to ring the bell.
I folded up the waxed-paper, and thought about this adult who talked to me likean adult, who didn't worry about swearing, or telling me about his adventures,and I made my way back to class.
It went better, the rest of that day.
#
In 75, Pa had almost never been home, but his presence was always around us.
I'd call the robutler out of its closet and have it affix its electrodefingertips to my temples and juice my endorphins after a hard day at school, andwhen I was done, the faint smell of Pa's hair-oil, picked up from the 'trodesand impossible to be rid of, would cling to me. Or I'd sit down on the oublietteand find one of Pa's journals from back home, well-thumbed and open to anarticle on mental telepathy. We did ESP in school, and it was all about a raceof alien traders who communicated in geometric thought pictures that tookforever to translate. We'd never learned about Magnetism and Astral Projectionand all the other things Pa's journals were full of.
And while I never doubted the things in Pa's journals, I never brought them upin class, neither. There were lots of different kinds of truth.
"James?"
"Yes, Mama?" I said, on my way out to chop kindling.
"Did you finish your homework?"
"Yes, Mama."
"Good boy."
Homework had been some math, and some biology, and some geology. I'd done itbefore I left school.
#
The report cards came out in the middle of December. Mr Adelson sealed them withwax in thick brown envelopes and handed them out at the end of the day. Sealingthem was a dirty trick — it mean a boy would have to go home not knowingwhether to expect a whipping or an extra slice of pie, and the fellows were asnervous as long-tailed cats in a rocking-chair factory when class let out. Foronce, there was no horseplay afterwards.
I came home and tossed the envelope on the kitchen table without a moment'sworry. I'd aced every test, I'd done every take-home assignment, I'd led theclass, in a bored, sleepy way, regurgitating the things they'd stuck in my brainin 1975.
I went up to the attic and started reading one of Pa's adventure stories,Tarzan of the Apes, by the Frenchman, Jules Verne. Pa had all of Verne'sbooks, each of them crisply autographed on the inside cover. He'd met Verne onone of his diplomatic missions, and the two had been like two peas in a pod, tohear him tell of it — they both subscribed to all the same crazy journals.
I was reading my favorite part, where Tarzan meets the man in the balloon, whenMama's voice called from downstairs. "James Arthur Nicholson! Get your behinddown herenow!"
I jumped like I was stung and rattled down the attic stairs so fast I nearlybroke my neck and then down into the parlour, where Mama was holding my reportcard and looking fit to bust.
"Yes, Mama?" I said. "What is it?"
She handed me the report card and folded her arms over her chest. "Explain that,mister. Make it good."
I read the card and my eyes nearly jumped out of my head. The rotten so-and-sohad given me F's all the way down, in every subject. Below, in his seaman'shand, he'd written, "James' performance this semester has disappointed megravely. I would like it very much if I could meet with you and he, MrsNicholson, at your earliest convenience, to discuss his future at the Academy.Signed, Rbt. Adelson."
Mama grabbed my ear and twisted. I howled and dropped the card. Before I knewwhat was happening, she had me over her knee and was paddling my bottom with heropen hand, hard.
"I don't" — whack — "knowwhat" — whack — "you think" — whack — "you'redoing, James." — whack — "If yourfather" — whack,whack — "were here,"— whack — "he'd switch you" — whack — "within an inch of your life." And shegave me a load more whacks.
I was too stunned even to cry or howl. Pa had only beat me twice in all the timeI'd known him. Mama hadnever beat me. My bottom ached distantly, and I felttears come to my eyes.
"Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"
"Mama, it's a mistake —" I began.
"You're durn right!" she said.
"No, really! I did all my homework! I passed all the exams! I showed 'em to you!You saw 'em!" The unfairness of it made my heart hammer in time to the throbbingof my backside.
Mama's breath fumed angrily out of her nose. "You go straight to your room andstay there. We're going to see Mr Adelson first thing tomorrow morning."
"What about my chores?" I said.
"Oh, don't worry about that. You'll haveplenty of chores to do when I let youout."
I went to my room and stripped down, and lay on my tummy and cracked my windowso the icy winter air blew over my backside. I cried a vale of tears, and raineddown miserable, mean curses on everyone: Mama, Pa, and especially the lying,snaky, backstabbing Runnyguts Adelson.
#
Mama didn't get any less mad through the night, but when she came to my door atcock-crow, she seemed to be holding it in better. My throat and eyes were soreas sandpaper from crying, and Mama gave me exactly five minutes to wash up anddress before dragging me out to the horsebarn. She'd already hitched up our teamand refused my hand when I tried to help her up.
I'd been angry and righteous when I woke, but seeing Mama's towering, barelycontrolled fury changed my mood to dire terror. I stared out at the trees andfarms as we rode into town, feeling like a condemned man being taken to thegallows.
Mama pulled up out front of the Academy and marched me around back to theteacher's cottage. She rapped on the door and waited, blowing clouds of steamout of her nose into the frosty morning air.
Mr Adelson answered the door in shirtsleeves and suspenders, unshaved andbleary. His hair, normally neatly oiled and slicked, stuck out like frayedbroom-straw. The muscles on his thin arms stood out like snakes. He blinked atus, standing on his doorstep. "Mrs Nicholson!" he said.
"Mr Adelson," my mother said. "We've come to discuss James' report card."
Mr Adelson smoothed his hair back and stepped aside. "Please, come in. Can Ioffer you some coffee?"
"No, thank you," Mama said, primly, standing in his foyer. He held out his handfor her coat and kerchief and she handed them to him. I took off my coat andstruggled out of my boots. He took them both and put them away in a closet.
"I'm going to have some coffee. Are you sure I can't offer you a cup?"
"No. Thank you, all the same."
"As you wish." He disappeared down the dark hallway, and Mama and I found ourway into his tiny parlour. Books were stacked every which where, dusty andprecarious. Mama and I sat down in a pair of cushioned chairs, and Mr Adelsoncame in, holding two mugs of coffee. He set one down next to Mama on the floor,then smacked himself in the forehead. "You said no, didn't you? Sorry, I'm notquite awake yet. Well, leave it there — there's cream in it, maybe the cat willhave some."
He settled himself onto another chair and sipped at his coffee. "Let's startover, shall we? Hello, Mrs Nicholson. Hello, James. I understand you're here todiscuss James' report card."
Mama sat back a little in her chair and let hint of a sardonic smile show on herface. "Yes, we are. Forgive my coming by unannounced."
"Oh, it's nothing."
Mr Adelson drank more coffee. Mama smoothed her skirts. I kicked my feet againstthe rungs of my chair. Finally, it was too much for me. "What's the big idea,anyway?" I said, glaring daggers at him. "I don't deserve no F!"
"Any F," Mr Adelson corrected. "Why don't you think so?"
"Well, because I did all my homework. I gave the right answers in class. Ipassed all the tests. It ain't fair!"
"Not fair," my Mama corrected, gently. She was staring distractedly at Mr Adelson.
"What you say is true enough, James. What grade do you suppose you should'vegotten?"
"Why, an A! An A-plus! Perfect!" I said, glaring again at him, daring him to sayotherwise.
"Is that what an A-plus is for, James? Perfection?"
"Sure," I said, opening my mouth without thinking.
Mama shifted her stare to me. She was looking even more thoughtful.
"Why do you suppose you go to school?"
"'Cause Mama says I have to," I said, sullenly.
"James!" Mama said.
"Oh, I suppose it's to learn things," I said.
Mr Adelson smiled and nodded, the way he did when one of the students got theright answer in class. "Well?"
"I see," he said. "James, what's the formula for determining the constant in thesecond derivative of an equation?"
I knew that one: it was one of Newton's dirty calculus proofs. "It's a trickquestion. There's no way to get the constant of second derivative."
"Exactly right," he said.
"Yes," I said, and folded my arms across my chest.
"Where did you learn that?"
"In —" I started to say 1975, but caught myself. "In France."
"Yes."
"Yes," I said. The fingers of dawn crept across my comprehension. "Oh."
Mama smiled at me.
"But it's not fair! So what if I already knew everything before I started? Istill did all the work."
"Why are you in school, James?" Mr Nicholson asked me again.
"To learn."
"Well, then I think you'd better start learning something, don't you? You're thebrightest student in the class. You're certainly smarter than I am — I'm justan old sailor struggling along with the rest of the class. But you, you'vegotit. You've been marking time in class all semester, and I daresay you haven'tlearned a single thing since you started. That's why you got F's."
"Mr Adelson," Mama said. "Am I to understand that James performed all hisassignments satisfactorily?"
It was Mr Adelson's turn to squirm. "Yes, but madam, you have to understand —"
Mama waved aside his objections. "If James satisfactorily completed all the workassigned to him, then I think he should have a grade that reflects that, don'tyou?" She took a sip of her coffee.
"Yes, well —"
"However, you do have a point. I didn't send my son to your school so that hecould mark time, as you put it. I sent him there to learn. To betaught. Haveyou taught him anything, Mr Adelson?"
Mr Adelson looked so all-fired sad, I forgave him the report card and spoke up. "Yes, Mama."
Mama swiveled her head to me. "Really?"
"Yes. He taught me what I was at school for. Just now."
"I see," Mama said. "This is very good coffee, Mr Adelson."
"Thank you," he said, and sipped at his.
"James," Mr Adelson said. "You've learned your first lesson. What do you proposeyour second should be?"
"I dunno," I said, and went back to kicking the rungs of the chair.
"What is it that you have been doing since you came back to town, son?" heasked.
"Hanging around in the attic, mostly. Reading. Tinkering. Like my Pa."
"My husband's machines and journals are up there," Mama explained.
"And his books," I said.
"Books?" Mr Adelson looked suddenly interested. "What kind of books?"
"Adventure stories. Stevenson. Wells. Some of it's in French. We have all of Verne."
"Well, perhaps that can be your next assignment. I would like to see an originalcomposition of no less than twenty pages, discussing each work of Verne's,charting his literary progress. Due January fifth, please."
"Twenty pages!" I said. "But it's the holidays!"
"Very well. Whatever length the piece turns out is fine. But be sure you dojustice to each work."
#
By the time I got through with the assignment, it was thirty-eight pages long. Inever thought I could write that much but it kept on coming, new thoughts abouteach book, each scene, the different worlds Verne had built: the fantasticslopes of Barsoom, the sinister Island of Dr Moreau. . . Each one spawned a newinsight. I felt like the Verne's detective, Sherlock Holmes, assembling all ofthe seemingly insignificant details into some kind of coherent picture, findingthe improbable links between the wildly different stories the Frenchman told.
Mama was thrilled to see me working, papers spread out all around me on thekitchen table — I could've used Pa's study, but it felt like an invasion,somehow — writing until my wrists cramped. She let me get away without doing mychores, rising early to milk the cow, bringing in the eggs from the henhouse,even chopping the kindling. Just so long as I was writing, she was happy to letme go on shirking my responsibilities.
Even on Christmas Eve, I was too distracted to really enjoy the smells of gooseand ham and the stuffing Mama spent days preparing. I was still writing when shetold me to go change and set the table for three.
"We're having Mr Johnston to dinner," she said.
I made a face. Mr Johnston was the only one in town that I could have talked toabout my time in 1975, but I never did. He had a way of bossing a fellow aroundwhile seeming to be nice to him. He still ran Pa's store, using ladders to reachthe high shelves that Pa had just plucked things off of. I had to see him whenMama sent me on errands there, but I made sure that I left as quickly as Icould. Mama kept saying that I should ask him for a job, but I was pretty goodat changing the subject whenever it came up.
I put away my papers and changed into my Sunday clothes. I'd been hinting toMama lately that a boy just wasn't complete without a puppy, so I put an extrashine on my shoes and said a quick prayer that I wouldn't find socks andpicture-books under the tree.
Mr Johnstone arrived with a double-armload of gifts. Well, hedid run my Pa'sstore, after all, so he could get things wholesale. I took his parcels from himand set them under the tree. Then that dandified sissy actuallykissed my Mamaon the cheek, lifting a sprig of mistletoe up with one hand. When Pa and Mamastood together, she'd barely come up to his shoulder, while Mr Johnstone had tostand on tiptoe to get the mistletoe over their heads. "Merry Christmas, Ulla,"he said.
She took his hands and said, "Merry Christmas, James."
I wanted to be sick.
#
Mr Johnstone had a whiskey in our parlour before we ate, sitting in my Pa'schair, smoking a cigar from my Pa's humidor. Mama ordered me to keep him companywhile she set out the meal.
"Do they call you Jimmy?" he asked me, staring down his long, pointy nose.
"No, sir. James."
"It's a fine name, isn't it? Served me well, man and boy." He made a face thatwas supposed to be funny, like he'd bit into a lemon.
"I like it fine, sir."
"Are you having any problems adjusting, now that you're home? Finding it hard torelate to the other fellows?"
"No, sir."
"You don't find it strange, after seeing 1975?"
"No, sir. It's home."
"Ha!" he said, as though I'd said something profound. "I guess it is, at that.Say, why don't you come by the store some time? I just got some samples from anew candy company in Oregon, and I need to get an unbiased opinion before Iorder." He gave me a pinched smile, like he thought he was Santa Claus.
"Mama doesn't like me eating sweets," I said, and stared at my reflection in myshoes.
Mama rescued me by coming into the parlour then, looking young and pretty in herbest dress. "Dinner is served, gentlemen."
We followed her into the dining room, and Mr Johnstone took my Pa's seat at thehead of the table and carved the goose. Even though the bird was brown andjuicy, I found I didn't have any appetite.
"I have word from Pondicherry," Mr Johnstone said, as he poured gravy over hissecond helping of mashed potatoes.
"Yes?" Mama said.
"Who's he?" I asked.
"Your father's successor," Mr Johnstone said. "A British officer from New Delhi. A fat little man, and awfully full of himself."
I repressed a snort. For my money Mr Johnstone was as full of himself as one mancould be. I couldn't imagine a blacker kettle.
"He says that Nussbaum, from 1952 New York, has rolled back relations withextraterrestrials by fifty years. He sold a Centurian half a million defectiveumbrellas from his brother-in-law's factory. The New Yorkers are all defendinghim.Caveat emptor."
"I never could keep track of who was friendly and who wasn't," Mama said. "Itwas all Greek to me. Politics."
Mr Johnstone opened his mouth to explain, but Mama held up one hand. "No, no, Idon'twant to understand. Les used to lecture me about this from dawn todusk." She smiled a little sad smile and stared off at the cabbage-roses on ourdining-room walls. Mr Johnstone put one hand over hers.
"He was a good man, Ulla."
Mama stood and smoothed her skirts. "I'll get dessert."
#
I didn't get a puppy. Mr Johnstone gave me an air-rifle that I was sure Mamawould have fits over, but she just smiled. She gave me a beautiful fountain-penand a green blotter and a ream of creamy, thick paper.
The pen made the most beautiful, jet-black marks, and the paper drank it up likea thirsty man in the desert. I recopied my essay the next day, sitting with Mamain the parlour while she darned socks. Mr Johnstone had given her a tin ofcosmetics from Paris, that he'd ordered in special. I'd heard Mama say that onlydancehall girls wore makeup, but she blushed when he gave it to her. I gave hera carving I'd done, of the robutler we'd had in 75. I'd whittled it out of ablock of pine, and sanded it and oiled it until it was as smooth as silk.
Oly Sweynsdatter came by after supper and asked if I wanted to go out and playwith the fellows. To my surprise, I found I did. We had a grand afternoonpelting each other with snow-balls, a game that turned into a full-scale war, asall the older boys back from high-school came out and joined in, and then,later, all the men, even the Sheriff and Mr Adelson. I never laughed so much inall my life, even when I got one right in the ear.
Mr Adelson led a charge of adults against the fort that most of the Academy boyswere hiding behind, but I saw him planning it and started laying in ammunitionlong before they made their go, and we sent them back with their tails betweentheir legs. I hit him smack in the behind with one ball as he dove for cover.
Oly's mother gave us both good, Svenska hot cocoa afterwards, with fresh whippedcream, and Oly and I exchanged gifts. He gave me a tin soldier, a Confederatewho was caught in the act of falling over backwards, clutching his chest. I gavehim my best marble. We followed his mother around their house, recounting theadventures in the snow until she told me it was time for me to go home.
#
School started again, and I went in early the first day to turn in my paper. MrAdelson took it without comment and scanned the first few paragraphs. "Thankyou, James, I think this will do nicely. I'll have it graded for you in theafternoon."
I met Oly out in the orchard, where he was chopping kindling for the school'sstove, a job we all took turns at. "I hear you might be getting a new Pa forChristmas," he said. He gave me a smile that meant something, but I couldn'tguess what.
"What is that supposed to mean?" I asked.
"My Mama says your Mama had old man Johnstone over for Christmas dinner. And thewidow Ott told my Mama that she'd connected one or two calls between your houseand the store every day in the last month. My Mama says that Johnstone iscourting your Mama."
"Mrs Ott isn't supposed to talk about the calls she connects," I said, as mymind reeled. "It's like a telegraph operator: it's a confidential trust." MrAdelson had told me that, once when he was telling me stories about his lifebefore he went to sea.
"So, is it true?"
"No!" I said, surprising myself with my vehemence. "My Mama just didn't want himto be alone at Christmas."
Oly swung the axe a few more times. "Well, sure. But what about all thetelephone calls?"
"That's business. The store is still partly ours. Mama's just looking after ourinterests."
"If you say so," he said.
I shoved him hard. I drew a line in the snow with my toe. "Ido say so. Stepacross the line if you say otherwise!"
Oly got to his feet and looked at me. "I don't want to fight with you, James. Iwas just tellin' you what my Mama said."
"Well, your Mama ought to mind her own business," I said, baiting him.
That did it. He stepped over and popped me one, right in the nose. Oly and I hadbeen chums since we could walk, and we'd had a few fights in our days but thistime it was different. I was soangry at him, at my Mama, at my Pa, at NewJerusalem, and we just kept on swinging at each other until Mr Adelson came outto ring the bell and separated us. My nose was sore and I was limping, and I'dtorn Oly's jacket and bent his fingers back, so he cradled his hand in the crookof his arm.
"Boys!" Mr Adelson said. "What the hell do you think you're doing? You'resupposed to be friends."
His language shocked me, but I was still plenty angry. "He's no friend of mine!" I said.
"That's fine with me," Oly said and glared at me.
The other kids were milling around, and Mr Adelson gave us both a look thatcould melt steel, then rang the bell.
#
I could hardly concentrate in class that day. My Mama getting married? A new Pa?It couldn't be true. But in my mind, I kept seeing my Mama and that Johnstonekissing under the mistletoe, and him sitting in my Pa's chair, drinking hiswhiskey.
Oly's desk was next to mine, and he kept shooting me dirty looks. Finally, Ileaned over and whispered, "Cut it out, you idiot."
Oly said, "You're the idiot. I think you got your brains scrambled in France, James."
"I'll scramble your brains!"
"Gentlemen," said Mr Adelson. "Do you have something you'd like to share withthe class?"
"No sir," we said together, and exchanged glares.
"James, perhaps you'd like to come up to the front and finish the lesson?"
"Sir?" I said, looking at the blackboard. He'd been going through quadratics, anelaborate first-principles proof.
"I believe you know this already, don't you? Come up to the front and finish thelesson."
Slowly, I got up from my desk, leaving my slate on my desk, and made my way upto the front. Some of the kids giggled. I picked up a piece of chalk from thechalk-well, and started to write on the board.
Mr Adelson walked back to my seat and sat down. I stopped and looked over myshoulder, and he gave me a little scooting gesture that meant go on. I did, andby the end of the hour, I found that I was enjoying myself. I stopped frequentlyfor questions, and erased the board over and over again, filling it with steadycolumns of numbers and equations. I stopped noticing Mr Adelson in my seat, andwhen he stood and thanked me and told us we could eat our lunches, it seemedlike no time at all had passed.
Mr Adelson looked up from my essay. "James, I'd like to have a chat with you. Stay behind, please."
"Sit," he said, offering me the chair at his desk. He sat on one of thefront-row desks, and stared at me for a long moment.
"What was that mess this morning all about, James?" he asked.
"Oly and I had an argument," I said, sullenly.
"I could see that. What was it about, if you don't mind my asking?"
"He said something about my Mama," I said.
"I see," he said. "Well, having met your mother, I feel confident in saying thatshe's more than capable of defending herself. Am I right?"
"Yes, sir," I said.
"Then we won't see a repeat?"
"No, sir," I said. I didn't plan on talking to Oly ever again.
"Then we'll say no more about it. Now, about this morning's lesson: you did verywell."
"It was a dirty trick," I said.
He grinned like a pirate. "I suppose it was. I wouldn't have played it on you ifI didn't have every confidence in your abilities, though." He leaned across andpicked up my essay from his desk. "It was this that convinced me, really. Thisis as good as anything I've seen in scholarly journals. I've half a mind to sendit to theIdler."
"I'm just a kid!"
"You're an extraordinary boy. I'm tempted to let you teach all the classes, andtake up whittling."
He said it so deadpan, I couldn't tell if he was kidding me. "Oh, you can't dothat! I'm not nearly ready to take over."
He laughed. "You're readier than you think, but I expect the town council wouldstop my salary unless I didsome of the work around here. Still, I thinkthat's the most active I've seen you since you came to my class, and I'm runningout of ideas to keep you busy. Maybe I'll keep you teaching maths. I'll give youmy lesson plan to take home before school's out."
"Yes, sir."
#
Mr Adelson gave me a stack of papers tied up with twine after he dismissed theclass for the day. I went home and did my chores, then unwrapped the parcel inthe parlour. The lesson plans were there, laid out, day by day, and in thecentre of them was a smaller parcel, wrapped in coloured paper. "MerryChristmas," was written across it, in his hand.
I opened it, and found a slim book. "War of the Worlds," by Verne. For somereason, it rang a bell. I thought that maybe it had been on our bookcase in 75,but somehow, it hadn't made it back home with us. I opened it, and read theinscription he'd written: "From one traveller to another, Merry Christmas."
I forced myself to read the lesson plans for the next month before I allowedmyself to start the Verne, and once I started, I found I couldn't stop. Mama hadto drag me away for dinner.
#
My trip back to 1975 wasn't planned, but it wasn't an accident, either. We'dgotten a new load of hay in for our team, and Mama added stacking it in thehorsebarn to my chores. I'd been consciously avoiding the horsebarn since Pa haddisappeared. Every time I looked at it, I felt a little hexed, a littlefrightened.
But Mama had a philosophy: a boy should face up to his fears. She'd beenterrified of spiders when she was a girl, and she told me that she had made apoint of picking up every spider she saw and letting it crawl around on herface. After a year of that, she said, she never met a spider that frightenedher.
Mama had been sending me to the store more and more, too, and having MrJohnstone over for dinner every Friday night. She knew I didn't like him onelittle bit, and she said that I would just have to learn to live with what Ididn't like, and if that was the only thing I learned from her, it would beenough.
I preferred the horsebarn.
I worked close to the door the first day, which is no way to do it, of course:if you blocked the door, it just made it harder to get at the back when the timecame. The way to do it is to first clear out whatever hay is left over, move itout to the pasture, and then fill in from the back forward.
Mama told me so, that first night, when she came out to inspect my work. "Yousure must love working out here," she said. "If you do it that way, you'll beout here stacking for twice as long. Well, you have your fun, but I still expectyou to be getting your homework and regular chores done. Come in and clean upfor supper now."
I jammed the pitchfork into a bale, and washed for supper.
The next afternoon, I resolved to do it right. I moved the bales I'd stacked up by the door to a corner, and then started cleaning out the back. Before long, I'd uncovered the door into 1975. "James," Mama called, from the house. "Dinner!"
I took a long look at the door. The wood on the edges had aged to thesilvery-brown of the rest of the barn-boards, and it looked like it had beenthere forever. I could hardly remember a time when it wasn't there.
I went in for supper.
The next morning, I picked up my lunch and my schoolbooks, kissed Mama good-bye,and walked out. I stood on our porch for a long time, staring at the horsebarn.I remembered the brave explorers in Verne's books. I looked over my shoulder, atthe closed door of our house, then walked slowly to the horsebarn. I swung thedoor open, then walked to the back. The triple-bolts had rusted somewhat andtook real shoving to slide back. One of them was stubborn, so I picked up therake and pried it back with the handle, thinking of how ingenious that was.
I gave the door my shoulder and shoved, and it swung back, complaining on itshinges. On the other side was the still-familiar dark of our 1975 apartment. Istepped into it, and closed the door behind me.
"Lights," I said, and they came on.
The old place was just like the day we left it. It wasn't even dusty, and as Iheard the familiar trundle of the robutler, I knew why. My Pa's easy chair satin the parlour, with a print-out of the day'sSalt Lake City Bugler folded onthe side-table. I walked to one wall and laid my palm against it, the familiarcool glassy stuff it was made of. "Window," I said, and wiped a line across thewall. Wherever my hand wiped went transparent. It was a sunny day in 1975 —1980, by then, but it would be 75 in my mind forever. Under the dome, GreaterSalt Lake was warm and tranquil. I saw boys my age scooting around in jet-packs,dodging hover-traffic.
Pa liked to open a big, square window when he came home, and sit in his easychair and smoke a stinky cigar and read the paper and cluck over it — "Well,well, well," he'd say, and "Howabout that?" Sometimes, he'd have a tumbler ofwhiskey. He'd given me some, once, and the stuff had burned like turpentine andI swore I wouldn't try it again for a long, long time.
I sat in Pa's easy chair and snapped up the newspaper, the way he used to."Panorama," I said, and Pa's square window opened before me. "Whiskey," I said,and "Cigar," because I was never one for half-measures. The robutler trundledover to me with a tumbler and a White Owl in its hover-field. I plucked themout. Cautiously, I put the cigar between my lips. The robutler extruded a long,snaky arm with a flame, and lit it. I took a deep puff, and coughedconvulsively. Unthinking, I took a gulp of whiskey. I felt like my lungs hadturned inside-out.
I finished both the whiskey and the cigar before I got up, taking cautious puffsand tiny sips, forcing myself.
My head swam, and nausea nearly drowned me. I staggered into the WC, and hung myhead in the oubliette for an eternity, but nothing was coming up. I moved intomy old bedroom and splayed out on my bed, watching the ceiling spin. "Lights," Imanaged to croak, and the room went dark.
#
When I woke in the morning, the walls were at half-opacity, the normal 0700schedule, and I dragged myself out of bed.
The robutler had extruded the table and set out my breakfast, ham and eggs and abig bulb of milk. One look at it sent me over the edge, and I left a trail ofsick all the way to the WC.
When I was done, I was as wrung-out as a washcloth. My head pounded. Therobutler was quietly cleaning up my mess. I started to order it to clear awaybreakfast, but discovered that I was miraculously hungry. I ate everything onthe table and seconds, besides, and had the robutler juice my temples and clearaway my headache. I dialed the walls to full transparency, and watched thetraffic go by.
The robutler maneuvered itself into my field of vision and flashed a clock onits chest-plate: 0800 0800 0800. It was my old school-alarm. It snapped me backto reality. My Mama was going to whip me raw! She must've been worried sick.
I stood up and ran for the door. It was closed. I punched my code into itspanel, and waited. Nothing happened. I calmed myself and punched it again. Stillnothing. After trying it a hundred times, I convinced myself that it had beenchanged.
I summoned the robutler and asked it for the code. Its chest-panel lit up: BAD PROGRAM.
That's when I started to really worry. I was near to tears when I remembered theemergency override. I punched it in.
Nothing happened.
I think I started crying around then. I was stuck in 1975!
#
I'm not a stupid little kid. I didn't spend much time pewling. Instead, I wentto the phone and dialed the police. The screen stayed blank. Feeling like I wasin a dream, I went to the teleporter and dialed for my old school and steppedin. I failed to teleport.
Reality sank in.
All outside services to the apartment had been shut off when we moved out. Theonly things that still worked were the ones that ran off our reactor, a squatarmoured box on the apartment's underbelly. The door in New Jerusalem worked,but on the 1975 side, it needed to communicate with the central office toapprove any passage.
I thought about sitting tight and waiting. Mama would be sick with worry, andwould check the barn eventually and see the shot bolts. She'd speak to MrJohnstone, who would send a telegram to Paris, and they would relay the messageto 1975, andvoila, I'd be rescued. I'd get the whipping of my life, and doextra chores until I was seventy, but it was better than starving to death afterthe apartment's pantry ran out. I felt hungry just thinking about it.
Still, there was a better way. The null-gee doughnut that our apartment wasspoked into had a supply of escape-jumpers, single-use jet-packs with a simpletransponder that screamed for help on all the emergency channels. I could rideone of these down into Greater Salt Lake, wait for the police. The more Ithought about this plan, the better it sounded. Better, anyway, than sittingaround like a fairytale princess, waiting for rescue. In my mind, I was therescuing type, not the kind that needed rescuing.
Besides, there wasn't much better than riding around in one of those jet-packs.
I cycled the emergency lock into the doughnut, unracked a pack and a jumpsuitthat looked like it would fit me, and suited up. The packed whined as it poweredup and ran through its diagnostics. I checked the idiot-lights to make sure theywere all green, feeling like a real man of action, then I stepped into theexterior lock and jumped, arms and legs streamlined, toes pointed.
The jet-pack coughed to life and kicked me gently, then started lowering me tothe ground. The emergency beacon's idiot-light came on, and I heaved a sigh ofrelief and got comfortable.
The flight was peaceful and dreamlike, a slow descent over the gleaming metalcity. I was so engrossed with the view that I didn't see the packjackers untilthey were already on me. They hit me high and low, two kids about my age withtricked-out custom jet-packs with their traffic beacons broken off. One snaggedmy knees and hugged them to his chest, while the other took me at the armpits. Avoice shouted in my ear: "I'm cutting your pack loose. This is a very, verysharp knife, and when I'm done, I'll be the only thing holding you up.Don'tsquirm."
I didn't even have the chance to squirm. By the time the speech was finished, Iwas separated from my pack, and I spun over upside-down, and watched it continueits descent, straps dangling in the wind. My hair hung down, and blood filled myhead, reawakening my headache. Reflexively, I twisted to get a look at mykidnappers, but stopped immediately as I felt their grips loosen. I squeezed myeyes shut and prayed.
The three of us dove fast and hard, and I tasted that second helping ofbreakfast again before we leveled off. I risked a peek, then squeezed my eyesshut again. We were speeding through the lower levels of Greater Salt Lake, theunmanned freight corridors, impossibly claustrophobic, and at our speed,dangerous.
We cornered tightly so many times that I lost count, and then we slowed to astop. They dumped me to the ground, steel traction-plate. The wind was knockedout of me, and I was barely conscious of the hands that untabbed my jumpsuit,then began methodically turning out the pockets of my clothes.
"What the hell are you wearing, kid?" one of them asked. It was the same onewho'd warned me about squirming. Hearing his voice a second time, I realisedthat he was younger than I was, maybe ten or eleven. Even then, it didn't occurto me to fight back — he had a knife sharp enough to cut through the safetystrapping on my pack.
"Clothes. I'm from 1898 — my Pa's an ambassador. I don't have any money." Istruggled into a sitting position, and was knocked onto my back again.
"Stay down and you won't get hurt," the same voice said. It was young enoughthat I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. Small hands pressed into myeyes. "No peeking, now."
Another set of hands systematically rifled my coat and pants, then cut themloose and gave the same treatment to my underpants and shirt. I blushed as theywere cut loose, too.
"You really don't have any money!" the voice said.
"I said so, didn't I?"
The voice said a dirty word that would've gotten it beaten black-and-blue backhome, and then the hands were gone. I looked up just in time to see two smallfigures jetting away upwards.
I was naked, sitting on a catwalk above a freight corridor, three-quarters of acentury and God-knew-how-many miles from home. I didn't cry. I was too worriedto cry. I kicked my ruined clothes down into the freight corridor and pulled onthe jumpsuit.
Some hero I was!
#
It was hard work, climbing staircase after staircase, up to the shopping levels.By the time I reached a level where I could see the sky, I was dripping withsweat and my headache had returned.
Foot traffic was light, but what there was pretty frightening. I'd gone walkingin 75 before of course, but Greater Salt Lake was a big place, and there wereparts of it that an Ambassador's son would never get to see.
This was one of them. The shopfronts were all iris-open airlocks, and had beenpainted around to look like surprised mouths, or eyes, or, in one fascinatingcase, a woman's private parts. Mostly, they were betting shops, or bars, orlow-rent bounceaterias. Even in 1975, the Saints had some influence in SaltLake, and the bars and brothels were pretty shameful places, where norespectable person would be caught.
The other pedestrians on the street were mostly off-worlders, either spacers inuniform or extees. In some cases, it was hard to tell which was which.
I kind of slunk along, sticking to the walls, hands in my pockets. I kept myeyes down, except when I was looking around for a public phone. After severalblocks, I realised that no one was paying any attention to me, and I took myhands out of my pockets. The sun filtered down over me, warm through the bigdome, and I realised that even though I'd gotten myself stuck in 75, been'jacked, and left in the worst neighbourhood in the whole State, I'd landed onmy feet. The thought made me smile. Another kid, say Oly, wouldn't have copednearly as well.
I still hadn't spied a public phone. I figured that the taprooms would have aphone, otherwise, how could a drunk call his wife and tell her he was going tobe late coming home? I picked a bar, whose airlock was painted to look like abrick tunnel, and walked in.
The airlock irised shut behind me and I blinked in the gloom. My nose wasassaulted with sickly sweet incense, and stale liquor, and cigar smoke.
The place was tiny, and crowded with dented metal tables and chairs that werebolted to the floorplates. A woman stood behind the bar, looking hard and brassyand cheap, watching a soap opera on her vid. A spacer sat in one corner, staringat his bulb of beer.
The bartender looked up. "Get lost, kid," she said. "No minors allowed."
"Sorry, ma'am," I said. "I just wanted to use your telephone. I was packjacked,and I need to call the police."
The bartender turned back to her soap opera. "Go peddle it somewhere else,sonny. The phone's for customers only."
"Please," I said. "My father's an ambassador, from 1898? I don't have any money,and I'm stuck here. I won't be a minute."
The spacer looked up from his drink. "Get lost, the lady said," he slurred atme.
"I'll buy something," I said.
"You just said you don't have any money," the bartender said.
"I'll pay for it when the police get here. The Embassy will cover it."
"No credit," she said.
"You're not going to let me use your phone?" I said.
"That's right," she said, still staring at her vid.
"I'm a stranger, an ambassador's son, who's been robbed. A kid. Stuck here,broke and alone, and you won't let me use your phone to call the police?"
"That's about the size of things," she said.
"Well, I guess my Pa was right. The whole world went to hell after 1914. Nomanners, no human decency."
"You're breaking my heart," she said.
"Fine. Be that way. Send me back out on the street, deny me a favour that won'tcost you one red cent, just because I'm a stranger."
"Shutup, kid, for chrissakes," the spacer said. "I'll stand him to a Coke, ifthat's what it takes. Just let him use the phone and get out of here. He'sgiving me a headache."
"Thank you, sir," I said, politely.
The bartender switched her vid over to phone mode, poured me a Coke, and handedme the vid.
#
The policeman who showed up a few minutes later stuck me in the back of hiscruiser, listened to my story, scanned my retinas, confirmed my identity, andretracted the armour between the back and front seats.
"I'll take you to the station house," he said. "We'll contact your Embassy, letthem handle it from there."
"What about the kids who 'jacked me?" I asked.
The cop turned the jetcar's conn over to wire-fly mode and turned around. "Yougot any description?"
"Well, they had really nice packs on, with the traffic beacons snapped off. Onewas red, and I think the other was green. And they were young. Ten or eleven."
The cop punched at his screen. "Kid," he said, "I got over three million minorseight to eleven, flying packs less than a year old. The most popular colour isred. Second choice, green. Where would you like me to start? Alphabetically?"
"Sorry, sir, I didn't realise."
"Sure," he said. "Whatever."
"I guess I'm not thinking very clearly. It's been a long day."
The cop looked over to me and smiled. "I guess it has, at that. Don't worry,kid, we'll get you home all right."
#
They gave me a fresh jumpsuit, sat me on a bench, called the embassy, and forgotabout me. A long, boring time later, a fat man with walrus moustaches and ruddyskin showed up.
"On your feet, lad," he said. "I'm Pondicherry, your father's successor. You'vemade quite a mess of things, haven't you?" He had a clipped, British accent,with a hint of something else. I remembered Mr Johnstone saying he'd been inIndia. He wore a standard unisex jumpsuit, with his ambassadorial sash overtopof it. He looked ridiculous.
"Sorry to have disturbed you, sir," I said.
"I'm sure you are," he said. "Come along, we'll see about fixing this mess."
He used the station's teleporter to bring me to his apartment. It was asridiculous as his uniform, and in the same way. He'd taken the basic elegantsimplicity of a standard 1975 unit and draped all kinds of silly trophies andmodels overtop of it: lions' heads and sabers and model ships and framed medalsand savage masks and dolls.
"You may look, but not touch, do you understand me?" he said, as we stepped outof the teleporter.
"Yes, sir," I said. If anyone else had said it, I would have been offended, butcoming from this puffed-up pigeon, it didn't sting much.
He went to a vid and punched impatiently at the screen while I prowled theapartment. The bookcase was full of old friends, books by the Frenchman, ofcourse, and more, with strange names like Wells and Burroughs and Shelley. Ilooked over a long, stone-headed spear, and the curve of an elephant's tusk, anda collection of campaign ribbons and medals under glass. I returned to thebookcase: something had been bothering me. There, there it was: "War of theWorlds," the book that Mr Adelson had given me for Christmas. But there wassomething wrong with the spine of this one: instead ofJules Verne, the authorname wasH.G. Wells. I snuck a look over my shoulder; Pondicherry was stillstabbing at the screen. I snuck the book off the shelf and turned to the titlepage: "War of the Worlds, by Herbert George Wells." I turned to the firstchapter:
The Eve of the War
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that thisworld was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man'sand yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their variousconcerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a manwith a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm andmultiply in a drop of water.
It was just as I remembered it, every word, just as it was in the Verne. Icouldn't begin to explain it.
A robutler swung out of its niche with a sheaf of papers. I startled at thenoise, then reflexively stuck the book in my jumpsuit. The roboutler deliveredthem to Pondicherry, who stuffed them in a briefcase.
"The embassy will be able to return you home by courier route in three hours.Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of waiting around here until then. I havean important meeting to attend — you'll have to come along."
"Yes, sir," I said, trying to sound eager and helpful.
"Don't say anything, don't touch anything. This is very sensitive."
"No, sir, I won't. Thank you, sir."
#
The meeting was in a private room in a fancy restaurant, one that I'd been tobefore for an embassy Christmas party. Mama had drunk two glasses of sherry, andhad flushed right to the neck of her dress. We'd had roast beef, and a goosewrapped inside a huge squash, the size of a barrel, like they grew on the Moon.
Pondicherry whisked through the lobby, and the main dining room, and then up anarrow set of stairs, without checking to see if I was following. I dawdled alittle, remembering Pa laughing and raising his glass in toast after toast.
I caught up with Pondicherry just as he was ordering, speaking brusquely intothe table. Another man sat opposite him. Pondicherry looked up at me and said,"Have you dined, boy?"
"No, sir."
He ordered me a plate of calf livers in cream sauce, which is about the worstthing you can feed a boy, if you ask me, which he didn't. "Sit down," he said."Mr Nussbaum, Master James Nicholson. I am temporarily inloco parentis, untilhe can be sent home."
Nussbaum smiled and extended his hand. He was wearing a grey suit, with astrange cut, and a black tie. His fingers dripped with heavy gold rings, and hishair, while short, still managed to look fancy and a little sissy-fied. "Good tomeetcha, son. You Lester's boy?"
"Yes, sir, he was my Pa."
"Good man. A damned shame. What are you doing here? Playing hooky?"
"I guess I just got lost. I'm going home, soon as they can get me there."
"Is that so? Well, I'll be sad to see you go. You look like a smart kid. Youlike chocolate cake, I bet."
"Sometimes," I said.
"Like when?"
"When my mama makes it, with a glass of milk, after school," I said.
He laughed, a strangled har-har-har. "You guys kill me. Your mama, huh? Well,they make some fine chocolate cake here, though it may not be as good as thestuff from home." He thumbed the table. "Sweetie, send up the biggest piece ofchocolate cake you got down there, and a glass a milk, willya?"
The table acknowledged his request with a soft green light.
"Thank you, sir," I said.
"That's quite enough, I think," Pondicherry said. "I didn't come here to watchyou rot young James's teeth. Can we get to business?"
Pondicherry started talking, in rapid, clipped sentences, punctuated by viciousbites of his food. I tried to follow what it was about — trading buffalo steaksfor rare metals, I got that much, but not much more. The calves' livers wereworse than I imagined, and I hid as much of them as I could under the potatoes,then pushed the plate away and dug into the cake.
I sneaked a look up and saw that Nussbaum was grinning slyly at me. He hadn'tsaid much, just ate calmly and waited for Pondicherry to run out of steam. Hecaught my eye and slipped a wink at me. I looked over at Pondicherry, who wasnoisily cudding a piece of steak, oblivious, and winked back at Nussbaum.
Pondicherry daubbed at his mouth with his napkin. "Excuse me," he said, "I'll beright back." He stood and walked towards the WC.
Nussbaum suddenly jingled. Distractledly, he patted his pockets until he locateda tiny phone. He flipped it open and grunted "Nussbaum," into it.
"Jules!" he said a moment later. "How're things?"
He scowled as he listened to the answer. "Now, you and I know that there's adifference betweensmart andgreedy. I think it's a bad idea."
He listened some more and drummed his fingers on the table.
"Because it's notcredible, dammit! Even the title is anachronistic: no one in1902 is going to understand whatNeuromancer means. Think about it, wouldya?Why don't you do some of Twain's stuff? Those books've gotlegs."
My jaw dropped. Nussbaum was talking to the Frenchman — and he was helping himtocheat! To steal from Mark Twain! I was suddenly conscious of "War of theWorlds," down the front of my jumpsuit. I thought back to Mr Adelson'sassignment, and it all made sudden sense. Verne was aplagiarist.
Nussbaum hung up just as Pondicherry re-seated himself. He took a sip of hisdrink, then held up a hand. Pondicherry eyed him coldly.
"Look," Nussbaum said. "We've gone over this a few times, OK? I know where youstand. You know where I stand. We're not standing in the same place. Much as Ienjoy your company, I don't really wanna spend the whole day listening to yourepeating yourself. All right?"
"Really, I don't think —" Pondicherry started, but Nussbaum held up his handagain.
"That's all right, I'm a rude son-of-a-bitch, and I know it. Let's just take itas read that you and me spent the whole afternoon letting the other fella knowhow sincere our positions are. Then we can move onto cocktails, and compromise,and maybe have some of the day left over." Pondicherry started to talk again,but Nussbaum plowed over him. "I'll go to six troy ounces per steer. You won'tget a better offer. 98% pure ores. Better than anything you'd ever refine backhome. It's as far as I go."
"Sir, is that an ultimatum?" Pondicherry asked, his eyes narrowing.
"Call it whatever you please, buster. It's my final, iron-clad offer. You don'tlike it, I can talk to the Chinaman. He seemed pretty eager to get some goodmetal home to the Emperor."
"You wouldn't — he's too far back, it would violate the protocols."
"That's what you say. It may be what the trade court decides. I'll take mychances."
"Six and a half ounces," Pondicherry said, in a spoiled-brat voice.
"You don't hear so good, do you? Six ounces is the offer on the table; take itor leave it." Nussbaum pushed some papers across the table.
Pondicherry stared at them for a long moment. "I will sign them, sir, but it iswith the expectation of continued trade opportunities. This is a good-willgesture, do you understand?"
Nussbaum snorted and reached for his papers. "This is about steaks and metals. This isn't about the future, it's about today, now. That's what's on the table. You can sign it, or you can walk away."
Pondicherry blew air out his nose like a crazy horse, and signed. "If you'llexcuse me, I need to use the WC again." He rose and left the room, purple fromthe collar up.
"What a maroon," Nussbaum said to the closed door. "This's gotta be a real blastfor you, huh?" he said.
I grinned. "It's not so bad. I liked watchin' you hogtie him."
He laughed. "I never would've tried that on your father, kid. He was too sharp.But fatso there, he's terrified the Chinaman will give the Middle Kingdom anedge when it faces down his Royal Navy. All it takes is the slightest hint, andhe folds like a cheap suit."
That made me chuckle — a cheap suit!
I gave him my best innocent look. "Who else knows about the Frenchman?" I askedhim.
Nussbaum grinned like he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Irealised about halfway through that conversation that being Lester's boy, you'veprobably read just about every word old Jules 'wrote.'"
"I have," I said. I took out "War of the Worlds." "How does Mr Wells feel aboutthis?" I asked.
"I imagine he's pretty mystified," Nussbaum said. "Would you believe, you're thefirst one who's caught on?"
I believed it. I knew enough to know that the agencies that policed theprotocols had their hands full keeping track of art and gold smugglers. I'dnever even thought of smugglingwords. If the trade courts found out. . .Well, hardly a week went by that someone didn't propose shutting down theambassadorships; they'd talk about how the future kept on leaking pastwards, andif we thought 1975 looked bad, imagine life in 1492 once the future reached it!The ambassadors had made a lot of friends in high places, though: they usedtheir influence to keep things on an even keel.
Nussbaum raised an eyebrow and studied me. "I think your father may've figuredit out, but he kept it to himself. He and Jules got along like a house on fire."
I kept the innocent look on my face. "Well, then," I said. "If Pa didn't sayanything, you'd think that I wouldn't either, right?"
Nussbaum sighed and gave me a sheepish look. "I'dlike to think so," he said.
I turned the book over in my hands, keeping my gaze locked with his. I was aboutto tell him that I'd keep it to myself, but at the last minute, some instincttold me to keep my mouth shut.
Nussbaum shrugged as though to say,I give up. "Hey, you're headed home today,right?" he said, carefully.
"Yes, sir."
"I've got a message that you could maybe relay for me, you think?"
"I guess so. . ." I said, doubtfully.
"I'll make it worth your while. It's got to go to a friend of mine in Frisco.There's no hurry — just make sure he gets it in the next ten years or so. Onceyou deliver it, he'll take care of you — you'll be set for life."
"Gosh," I said, deadpan.
"Are you game?"
"I guess so. Sure." My heart skipped. Set for life!
"The man you want to speak to is Reddekop, he's the organist at the Castrotheatre. Tell him: 'Nussbaum says get out by October 29th, 1929.' He'll knowwhat it means. You got that?"
"Reddekop, Castro Theatre. October 29th, 1929."
"Exac-atac-ally." He slid "War of the Worlds" into his briefcase. "You're doin'me a hell of a favour, son."
He shook my hand. Pondicherry came back in then, and glared at me. "The embassycontacted me. They can set you at home six months after you left — there's acourier gateway this afternoon."
"Six months!" I said. "My Mama will go crazy! Can't you get me home any sooner?"
Pondicherry smirked. "Don't complain to me, boy. You dug this hole yourself. Thenext scheduled courier going anywhere near your departure-point is in fiveyears. We'll send notice to your mother then, to expect you home mid-July."
"Tough break, kiddo," Nussbaum said, and he shook my hand and slipped me anotherwink.
#
The courier gateway let me out in an alleyway in Salt Lake City. The embassy hadgiven me ten Wells Fargo dollars, and fitted me out with a pair of jeans and aworkshirt that were both far too big for me, so that they slopped around me as Imade my way to the train station and bought my ticket to New Jerusalem.
It was Wednesday, the normal schedule for the Zephyr Speedball, so I didn't havetoo long to wait at the station. I bought copies of the Salt Lake CityShout,and the San FranciscoChronicle from a passing newsie. TheChronicle was aweek old, but it was filled with all sorts of fascinating big-city gossip. Iread it cover-to-cover on the long ride to New Jerusalem.
Mama met me at the train station. I'd been expecting a switching, right then andthere, but instead she hugged me fiercely with tears in her eyes. I rememberedthat it had been over six months for her since I'd gone.
"James, you will be the death of me, I swear," she said, after she'd squeezedevery last bit of stuffing out of me.
"I'm sorry, Mama," I said.
"We had to tell everyone you'd gone away to school in France," a familiar malevoice said. I looked up and saw Mr Johnstone standing a few yards away, with ourteam and trap. He was glaring at me. "I've had the barn gateway sealedpermanently on both sides."
"I'm sorry, sir," I said. But inside, I wasn't. Even though I'd only been awayfor a few days, I'd had the adventure of a lifetime: smoked and drank and been'jacked and escaped and received a secret message. My Mama seemed shorter to me,and frailer, and James H Johnstone was a puffed-up nothing of a poltroon.
"We'll put it behind us, son," he said. "But from now on, there will be order inour household, do we understand each-other?"
Our house? I looked up sharply at my Mama. She smiled at me, nervously. "Wemarried, James. A month ago. Congratulate me!"
I thought about it. My Mama needed someone around to take care of her, andvice-versa. After all, it wasn't right for her to be all alone. With a start, Irealised that in my mind, I'd left my Mama's house. I felt the Wells-Fargo notesin my pocket.
Mama hugged me again and the Mr Johnstone drove us home in the trap.
#
All through the rest of the day, Mama kept looking worriedly at me, whenever shethought I wasn't watching. I pretended not to notice, and did my chores, thentook myChronicle out to the apple orchard behind the Academy. I sat beneath abig, shady tree and re-read the paper, all the curious bits and pieces of a cityfrozen in time.
I was hardly surprised to see Mr Adelson, nor did he seem surprised to see me.
"Back from France, James?"
"Yes, sir."
"Looks like it did you some good, though I must say, we missed you around the Academy. It just wasn't the same. Have you been keeping up your writing?"
"Sorry, sir, I haven't. There hasn't been time. I'm thinking about writing anadventure story, though — about pirates and space-travellers and airships," Isaid.
"That sound exciting." He sat down beside me, and we sat there in silence for atime, watching the flies buzz around. The air was sweet with apple blossoms, andthe only sound was the wind in the trees.
"I'm going to miss this place," I said, unthinking.
"Me, too," Mr Adelson said.
Our eyes locked, and a slow smile spread over his face. "Well, I know whereI'm going, but where are you off to, son?"
"You're going away?" I said.
"Yes, sir. Is that a copy of theChronicle? Give it here, I'll show yousomething."
He flipped through the pages, and pointed to an advertisement. "TheSlipperyTrick is in port, and they're signing on crew for a run through the south seas,in September. I intend to go as Quartermaster."
"You're leaving?" I said, shocked to my boots.
To my surprise, he pulled out a pouch of tobacco and some rolling papers androlled himself a cigarette. I'd never seen a schoolteacher smoking before. Hetook a thoughtful puff and blew the smoke out into the sky. "To tell you thetruth, James, I just don't think I'm cut out for this line of work. Not enoughexcitement in a town like this. I've never been happier than I was when I was atsea, and that's as good a reason to go back as any. I'll miss you, though, son.You were a delight to teach."
"But what will I do?" I said.
"Why, I expect your mother will send you back East to go to school. I graduatedyou from the Academyin absentia during the last week of classes. Your reportcard and diploma are waiting on my desk."
"Graduated?" I said, shocked. I had another year to go at the Academy.
"Don't look so surprised! There was no earthly reason for you to stay at theAcademy. I'd say you were ready for college, myself. Maybe Harvard!" He tousledmy hair.
I allowed myself a smile — I didn't think I was any smarter than the otherkids, but I sure knew a whole lot more about the world — the worlds! And maybe,in my heart of hearts, I knew that I was alittle smarter. "I'll miss you,sir," I said.
"Call me Robert. School's out. Where are you off to, James?"
I gestured with my copy of theChronicle.
"My home town! Whatever for?"
I looked at my shoes.
"Oh, a secret. I see. Well, I won't pry. Does your mother know about this?"
I felt like kicking myself. If I said no, he'd have to tell her. If I said yes,I'd only have myself to blame if he spilled the news to her. I looked at him,and he blew a streamer of smoke into the sky. "No, sir," I said. "No, Robert."
He looked at me. He winked. "Better keep it to ourselves, then," he said.
#
The ticket-girl at the Castro Theatre wasn't any older than I was, but she woreher hair shorter than some of the boys I'd known back home, and more makeup thaneven the painted ladies at the saloon. She looked at me like I was some kind ofsmall-town fool. It was a look I was getting used to seeing.
"Reddekop only plays for theevening shows, kid. No organ for thematinee."
"Who you calling a kid?" I said. I'd kept a civil tongue ever since debarkingthe train, treating adult and kid with equal respect, but I was getting sick ofbeing treated like a yokel. I'd been farther than any of these dusty slickerswould ever go, and I was grown enough that I'd told my Mama and Mr Johnstonethat I was going off on my own, instead of just leaving a note like I'doriginally planned.
"You. Kid. You want to talk to Reddekop, you come back after six. In themeantime, you can either buy a ticket to the matinee or get lost."
On reflection, telling my Mama was probably a mistake. It meant that I waslocked in my room for two consecutive Wednesdays so that I couldn't catch thetrain. On the third Wednesday, I climbed out onto the roof and then went downthe rope-ladder I'd hidden behind a chimney. The Wells Fargo notes I'd startedwith were almost gone, mostly spent on the expensive food on the train — Ihadn't dared try to sneak any food away from home, my Mama was no fool.
I thought about buying a ticket to the matinee. I still had almost five dollars,but a quick look at the menus in the restaurants had taught me that if I thoughtthe food on the train was expensive, I had another think coming. I shouldered myrucksack and wandered away, taking care to avoid the filth from dogs and peoplethat littered the sidewalks. I told myself that I wasn't homesick — just tired.
#
"October 29, 1929, huh?" Reddekop was a small German with a greying spade beardand a heavily oiled part in his long hair. His fingers were long and nimble, butnearly everything else about him was short and crude. He made me nervous.
"Yes, sir. Mr Nussbaum thought you'd know what it meant."
Reddekop struck a match off the side of the organist's pit, lighted a pipe, thentossed the match carelessly into the theatre seats. I winced and he chuckled."Not to worry, kid. The place won't burn down for a few years yet. I have it onthe very best authority.
"Now, Nussbaum says October 29, 1929. What else does he say?"
"He said that you'd take care of me."
He gripped the pipe in his yellow teeth and hissed a laugh around the stem. "Hedid, did he? Well, I suppose I should. Of course, I won't know for sure for morethan 25 years — I don't suppose you want to wait that long?"
"No, sir!" I said. I didn't like this little man — he reminded me of some kindof musical rat.
"I thought not. Do you know what a trust is, James?"
We'd covered that in common law — I could rattle off about thirty differentkinds without blinking. "I have a general idea," I said.
"Good, good. What I'm thinking is, the best thing is for me to set up a trustthrough a lawyer I know on Market Street. He'll make sure that you're alwaysflush, but never so filthy that someone will take a notice in you. How does thatstrike you?"
I thought it over. "How do I know that the trust fund won't disappear in a fewyears?"
"You're nobody's fool, huh? Well, how about this — you find your own advocate:a lawyer, a bondsman, someone you trust, and he can look over all the books andpapers, make sure it's all square-john. How does that strike you?"
Reddekop knew I was a stranger in town, and maybe he was counting on my notbeing able to find anyone qualified to audit the trust, but I had an ace up mysleeve. I wasn't anybody's fool.
"That sounds fair," I said.
#
Back at my Mama's I'd had long hard days, doing chores: chopping wood, stackinghay, weeding the garden, carrying water. I'd go to bed bone-tired, limp as a ragand as exhausted as I thought I could be.
Boy, was I wrong! By the time I found Mr Adelson's rooming house, I could barelystand, my mouth was dry as a salt-flat, and it was hard to keep my eyes open.They've got hills in San Francisco that must've been some kind of joke Godplayed. His landlady, a worn-out grey woman whose sour expression seemeddirected at everything and anything, let me in and pointed me up three ricketyflights of stairs to Mr Adelson's room.
I dragged my luggage up with me, bumping it on the stairs, and rapped on thedoor. Mr Adelson answered in the same shirtsleeves and suspenders I'd seen himin that Christmas, an age ago, when my Mama dragged me to his cottage. "James!"he said.
"Mr Adelson," I said. "Sorry to drop in like this."
He took my bag from me and ushered me into his room, pulling up a chair. "Whaton earth are you doing here?" he said. "Do your parents know where you are? Areyou all right? Have you eaten? Are you hungry?"
"I'm pretty hungry — I haven't eaten since supper last night on the train," Itried to make it sound jaunty, but I'm afraid it came out prettytired-sounding."
"I'll fix us sandwiches," he said, and started fishing around his sea-chest. Iwatched his shoulders move for a moment, and then my eyes closed.
#
"Well, good morning," Mr Adelson said, as I sat bolt upright, disoriented in astrange bed with a strange blanket. "Coffee?"
He was leaning over a little Sterno stove, heating up a small tin pot. Morningsun streamed in through the grimy window.
"I wrapped your sandwich up from last night. It's there, on the dresser."
I stood up and saw that except for my shoes, I was still dressed. The sandwich was salt beef and cheese, and the sourdough was stale, and it was the best thing I'd ever eaten. Mr Adelson handed me a tin cup full of strong coffee, and though I don't much like coffee, I found myself drinking it as fast as I could.
"Thank you, Mr Adelson," I said.
"Robert," he said, and sat down on the room's only chair. I perched on the bed'send. "Well, you seem to have had quite a day! Let's hear about it."
I told him as much as I could, fudging around some of the details — my Mamasurely did know where I was, even if she wasn't very happy about it; and ofcourse, I couldn't tell him that I'd met Nussbaum in 1975, so I just moved thelocale to France, and caged around what message he'd asked me to deliver toReddekop. It still made for a pretty exciting telling.
"So you want me to go to this lawyer's office with you? To look over the papers? James, I'm just a sailor, I'm not qualified."
I'd prepared for this argument, on the long slog to the rooming house. "ButIknow something about this; they won't believe it, though, and will slip allkinds of dirty tricks in if they think that the only fellow who'll be looking atit is just a kid."
"Explain to me again why you don't want to wire Mr Johnstone to come and look itover? It sounds like an awful lot of money for him not to be involved."
"He's not my Pa, Robert. I don't evenlike him, and chances are, he'll hideaway all that money until I'm eighteen ortwenty-one, and try to send me offto school."
"And what's wrong with that? You have other plans?"
"Sure," I said, too loudly — I hadn't really worked that part out. I just knewthat the next time I set foot in New Jerusalem, I'd be my own man, a man of theworld, and not dependent on anyone. I'd take Mama and Mr Johnstone out for a bigsupper, and stay in the fanciest room at the Stableman's hotel, and hire TommyBenson to carry my bags to my room. "Besides, I'm not asking you to do this forfree. I'll pay you a — an administrative fee. Five percent,for life!"
He looked serious. "James, if I do this — mind I saidif — I won't take ared cent. There are things here that you're not telling me. Now, that's yourbusiness, but I want to make sure that if anyone ever scrutinises the affair,that it's clear that I didn't receive any benefit from it."
I smiled. I knew I had him — if he'd thought it that far through, he wasn'tgoing to say no. Besides, I hadn't even played my trump card yet: that if hedidn't help me, I'd be out on the streets on my own, and I could tell that hedidn't like that idea.
#
Mr Adelson wore his teacher clothes for the affair and I wore the good breechesand shirt I'd packed. We stopped at a barber's before, Mr Adelson treated me toa haircut from the number-two man while he took a shave and a trim. We boardedthe cablecar to Market like a couple of proper gentlemen, and if I thoughtflying in a jetpack was exciting, it was nothing compared to the terror ofhanging on the running-board of a cablecar as it laboured up and then —quickly! — down a monster hill.
The lawyer was a foreigner, a Frenchie or a Belgian, and his offices were grubbyand filled with stinking cigar smoke and the din of the trolleys. He asked noembarrassing questions of me. He just sized up Mr Adelson, then put away thepapers on his desk and presented a set from his briefcase, laying out the termsof the trust, and retreated from the office. I read over Mr Adelson's shoulder,the terms scribbled in a hasty hand, but every word of it legal and binding,near as I could tell.
The amounts in question were staggering. Two hundred dollars, every month!Indexed for inflation, for seventy years or the duration of my natural life,whichever was lesser. The records of the trust to be deposited with the WellsFargo, subject to scrutiny on demand. Mr Adelson looked long and hard at me."James, I can't begin to imagine what sort of information you've traded forthis, but son, you're rich as Croesus!"
"Yes, sir," I said.
"Do these papers look legal to you?"
"Yes, sir."
"They seem legal to me, too."
A bubble of excitement filled my chest and I had to restrain myself frombouncing on my heels. "I'm going to sign it," I said. "Will you witness it?"
"I've got a better idea. Let's get that lawyer and take this down to the Wells Fargo and have the President of the Bank witness it himself."
And that's just what we did.
#
Mr Adelson had spent the previous night on the floor, while I slept in his bed.My first month's payment was tucked carefully in my pocket, and over hisprotests, I pried loose a few bills and took my own room in the rooming house,and then the two of us ate out at a restaurant whose prices had seemedimpossibly out-of-reach the day before. We had oysters and steaks and I had aslab of apple pie for desert with fresh ice cream and peach syrup, and when Iwas done, I felt like new man. Mr Adelson had a bottle of beer with dinner, anda whiskey afterwards, and I insisted on paying.
"Well, then," he said, sipping his whiskey. "You're a very well-set-up youngman. What will you do now?"
All throughout my scheming since my second return from 75, the prospect of whatto do with all the money had niggled away at the back of my mind. All I knew forsure was that I didn't want to grow up in New Jerusalem. I wanted adventure,exotic places and people, danger and excitement. Over dinner, though, a plan hadbeen forming in my head.
"Does theSlippery Trick need a cabin-boy?"
He shook his head and smiled at me. "I was afraid it was something like that.Son, you could pay for a stateroom on a proper liner with all the money youhave. Why would you want to be in charge of chamber-pots on a leaky old tub?"
"Why do you want to sail off on a leaky old tub instead of teaching in Utah, orworking on the trolleys here?"
It took me most of the night to convince him, but there was no doubt in my mindthat I would, and when the ship sailed, that I'd be on it, with a big,leather-bound log, writing stories.
—
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