My mouth dropped. James H Johnstone was as dandified a city-slicker as you'd
ever hope to meet. He'd blown into town on the weekly Zephyr Speedball, and skinny
Tommy Benson had hauled his three huge steamer trunks to the cowboy hotel. He'd
tipped Tommy two dollars, in Wells-Fargo notes, and later, in the empty lot
behind the smithy, all the kids in New Jerusalem had gathered 'round Tommy to
goggle at the small fortune in queer, never-seen bills.
"Pa, no!" I said, without thinking. I knew that if my chums ordered their
fathers around like that, they'd get a whipping, but my Pa almost never whipped
me.
He smiled, and stretched his thick moustache across his face. "James, I know you
love 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 in
heaven and earth then are dreamed of in your philosophy." It was one of his
sayings, from Shakespeare, who he'd studied back east, before I was born. It
meant that the discussion was closed.
I decided to withhold judgement until I saw France, but still couldn't shake the
feeling that my Pa was going soft in the head. Mr Johnstone wasn't fit to run an
apple-cart. He was short and skinny and soft, not like my Pa, who, as far as I
was 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 our
team, I figured we'd be taking a short trip out to the train station. All my
chums were waiting there to see us off, and I'd promised my best pal Oly
Sweynsdatter that I'd give him my coonskin cap to wear until we came back. But
instead, Pa rode us to the edge of town, where the road went to rutted trail and
salt flats, and there was Mr James H Johnstone, in his own fancy-pants trap. Pa
and me moved our luggage into Johnstone's trap and got inside with Mama and
hunkered down so, you couldn't see us from outside. Mama said, "You just hush up
now, James. There's parts of this trip that we couldn't tell you about before we
left, but you're going to have to stay quiet and hold onto your questions until
we get to where we're going."
I nearly said, "To where we're going?" but I didn't, because Mama had never
looked so serious in all my born days. So I spent an hour hunkered down in
there, listening to the clatter of the wheels and trying to guess where we were
going. When I heard the trap stop and a set of wooden doors close, all my
guesses dried up and blew away, because I couldn't think of anywhere we would've
heard those sounds out in the desert.
So imagine my surprise when I stood up and found us right in our very own
horsebarn, 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, girlish
hand as he helped her down from the trap.
My Pa and Mr Johnstone started shifting one of the piles of hay-bales that
stacked to the rafters, until they had revealed a triple-bolted door that looked
new and sturdy, fresh-sawn edges still bright and yellow, and not the weathered
brown of the rest of the barn.
Pa took a key ring out of his vest pocket and unlocked the door, then swung it
open. Each of us shouldered our bags and walked through, in eerie silence, into
a pitch black room.
Pa reached out and pulled the door shut, then there was a sharp click and we
were in 1975.
#
1975 was a queer sight. Our apartment was a lozenge of silver, spoked into the
hub of a floating null-gee doughnut. Pa did something fancy with his hands and
the walls went transparent, and I swear, I dropped to the floor and hugged the
nubby rubber tiles for all I was worth. My eyes were telling me that we were
hundreds of yards off the ground, and while I'd jumped from the rafters of the
horsebarn into the hay countless times, I suddenly discovered that I was afraid
of heights.
After that first dizzying glimpse of 1975, I kept my eyes squeezed shut and held
on for all I was worth. After a minute or two of this, my stomach told me that I
wasn't falling, and I couldn't hear any rushing wind, any birdcalls, anything
except Mama and Pa laughing, fit to bust. I opened one eye and snuck a peek. My
folks were laughing so hard they had to hold onto each other to stay up, and
they 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 finger
and 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 the
way 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 worlds
clinging 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 was
1901 by then, but I always thought of it as 1898). She'd moved the cooker into
the horsebarn after a week of wrestling with the gadgets we had in our 1975
kitchen, and when Pa had warned her that the smoke was going to raise questions
in New Jerusalem, she explained that she was going to run some flexible exhaust
hose through the door into 75 and into our apt's air-scrubber. Pa had shook his
head and smiled at her, and every Sunday, she dragged the exhaust pipe through
the door.
That night, Pa sat down and said grace, and he was in his shirtsleeves with his
suspenders down, and it almost felt like home -- almost felt like a million
Sunday dinners eaten by gaslight, with a sweaty pitcher of lemonade in the
middle of the table, and seasonal wildflowers, and a stinky cheroot for Pa
afterwards as he tipped his chair back and rested one hand on his belly, as if
he 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 had
finished 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 the
viral learning shots, it was like swimming in molasses for me.
"Calculus! Well, well, well --" this was one of Pa's catch-all phrases, like
"How _about_ that?" or "What do you know?" "Well, well, well. I can't believe
how much they stuff into kids' heads here."
"Yes, sir. There's an awful lot left to learn, yet." We did a subject every two
weeks. So far, I'd done French, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Physics and
Astrophysics, Esperanto, Cantonese and Mandarin, and an alien language whose
name translated as "Standard." I'd been exempted from History, of course, along
with the other kids there from the past -- the Chinese girl from the Ming
Dynasty, the Roman boy, and the Injun kid from South America.
Pa laughed around his cigar and crossed his legs. His shoes were so big, they
looked like canoes. "There surely is, son. There surely is. And how are you
doing with your classmates? Any tussles your teacher will want to talk to me
about?"
"No, sir! We're friendly as all get-out, even the girls." The kids in 75 didn't
even notice what they were doing in school. They just sat down at their
workstations 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 too
dull.
"That's good to hear, son. You've always been a good boy. Tell you what: you
bring home a good report this Christmas, and I'll take you to see Saturn's rings
on vacation."
Mama shot him a look then, but he pretended he didn't see it. He stubbed out his
cigar, hitched up his suspenders, and put on his tailcoat and tophat and
ambassadorial sash and picked up his leather case.
"Good night, son. Good night, Ulla. I'll see you on Wednesday," he said, and
stepped 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 me
again, and I'll feed you this."
I'd been back for a month, and in all that time, Oly had skittered around me
like a shy pony, always nearby but afraid to talk to me. Finally, I'd grabbed
him and shook him and told him not to be such a ninny, tell me what was on his
mind. He wanted to know how my Pa had died, over in France. I told him the
reason that Mama and Mr Johnstone and the man from the embassy had worked out
together. 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 the
orchard behind the schoolyard, chucking rotten apples at the tree-trunks to
watch them splatter. "Want to hear something?"
"Sure," I said.
"Tommy Benson's sweet on Marta Helprin. It's disgusting. They hold hands -- _in
church_! 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 on
sexual reproduction, like all the other subjects. Most of the kids there were
already in couples, sneaking off to low-gee bounceataria and renting private
cubes with untraceable cash-tokens. I'd even tussled with one girl, Katebe
M'Buto, another exchange student, from United Africa Trading Sphere. I'd picked
her up at her apt, and her father had even shaken my hand -- they grow up fast
in 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 after
lunch."
I didn't much feel like it, but I didn't know what else to do. We walked down to
the swimming hole, where some boys were already naked, swimming and horsing
around. I found myself looking away, conscious of their nudity in a way that I'd
never 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 as
quick as I could.
I paddled around a little, half-heartedly, and then I found myself being pulled
under! My sinuses filled with water and I yelled a stream of bubbles, and closed
my mouth on a swallow of water. Strong hands pulled at my ankles. I kicked out
as hard as I could, and connected with someone's head. The hands loosened and I
shot up like a cork, sputtering and coughing. I ran for the shore, and saw one
of the Allen brothers surfacing, rubbing at his head and laughing. The four
Allen boys lived on a ranch with their parents out by the salt flats, and we
only saw them when they came into town with their folks for supplies. I'd never
liked them, but now, I saw red.
"You pig!" I shouted at him. "You stupid, rotten, pig! What the heck do you
think you were doing?"
The Allens kept on laughing -- I used to know some of their names, but in the
time I'd been in 75, they'd grown as indistinguishable as twins: big, hard boys
with their heads shaved for lice. They pointed at me and laughed. I scooped up a
flat stone from the shore and threw it at the head of the one who'd pulled me
under, as hard as I could.
Lucky for him -- and me! -- I was too angry to aim properly, and the stone hit
him in the shoulder, knocking him backwards. He shouted at me -- it was like a
roar 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 out
of the water towards me, and punched me so hard in the guts, I saw stars. I fell
to the ground, gasping. I looked up at a forest of strong, bare legs, and knew
they'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 skinny
dipping anymore -- maybe never again.