#
I'm not a stupid little kid. I didn't spend much time pewling. Instead, I went
to the phone and dialed the police. The screen stayed blank. Feeling like I was
in a dream, I went to the teleporter and dialed for my old school and stepped
in. I failed to teleport.
Reality sank in.
All outside services to the apartment had been shut off when we moved out. The
only things that still worked were the ones that ran off our reactor, a squat
armoured 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 to
approve any passage.
I thought about sitting tight and waiting. Mama would be sick with worry, and
would check the barn eventually and see the shot bolts. She'd speak to Mr
Johnstone, who would send a telegram to Paris, and they would relay the message
to 1975, and _voila_, I'd be rescued. I'd get the whipping of my life, and do
extra chores until I was seventy, but it was better than starving to death after
the 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 was
spoked into had a supply of escape-jumpers, single-use jet-packs with a simple
transponder that screamed for help on all the emergency channels. I could ride
one of these down into Greater Salt Lake, wait for the police. The more I
thought about this plan, the better it sounded. Better, anyway, than sitting
around like a fairytale princess, waiting for rescue. In my mind, I was the
rescuing 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 jumpsuit
that looked like it would fit me, and suited up. The packed whined as it powered
up and ran through its diagnostics. I checked the idiot-lights to make sure they
were all green, feeling like a real man of action, then I stepped into the
exterior lock and jumped, arms and legs streamlined, toes pointed.
The jet-pack coughed to life and kicked me gently, then started lowering me to
the ground. The emergency beacon's idiot-light came on, and I heaved a sigh of
relief and got comfortable.
The flight was peaceful and dreamlike, a slow descent over the gleaming metal
city. I was so engrossed with the view that I didn't see the packjackers until
they were already on me. They hit me high and low, two kids about my age with
tricked-out custom jet-packs with their traffic beacons broken off. One snagged
my knees and hugged them to his chest, while the other took me at the armpits. A
voice shouted in my ear: "I'm cutting your pack loose. This is a very, very
sharp knife, and when I'm done, I'll be the only thing holding you up. _Don't
squirm_."
I didn't even have the chance to squirm. By the time the speech was finished, I
was separated from my pack, and I spun over upside-down, and watched it continue
its descent, straps dangling in the wind. My hair hung down, and blood filled my
head, reawakening my headache. Reflexively, I twisted to get a look at my
kidnappers, but stopped immediately as I felt their grips loosen. I squeezed my
eyes shut and prayed.
The three of us dove fast and hard, and I tasted that second helping of
breakfast again before we leveled off. I risked a peek, then squeezed my eyes
shut again. We were speeding through the lower levels of Greater Salt Lake, the
unmanned freight corridors, impossibly claustrophobic, and at our speed,
dangerous.
We cornered tightly so many times that I lost count, and then we slowed to a
stop. They dumped me to the ground, steel traction-plate. The wind was knocked
out 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 one
who'd warned me about squirming. Hearing his voice a second time, I realised
that he was younger than I was, maybe ten or eleven. Even then, it didn't occur
to me to fight back -- he had a knife sharp enough to cut through the safety
strapping on my pack.
"Clothes. I'm from 1898 -- my Pa's an ambassador. I don't have any money." I
struggled 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 enough
that I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. Small hands pressed into my
eyes. "No peeking, now."
Another set of hands systematically rifled my coat and pants, then cut them
loose and gave the same treatment to my underpants and shirt. I blushed as they
were 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 back
home, and then the hands were gone. I looked up just in time to see two small
figures jetting away upwards.
I was naked, sitting on a catwalk above a freight corridor, three-quarters of a
century and God-knew-how-many miles from home. I didn't cry. I was too worried
to cry. I kicked my ruined clothes down into the freight corridor and pulled on
the 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 with
sweat and my headache had returned.
Foot traffic was light, but what there was pretty frightening. I'd gone walking
in 75 before of course, but Greater Salt Lake was a big place, and there were
parts 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 been
painted around to look like surprised mouths, or eyes, or, in one fascinating
case, a woman's private parts. Mostly, they were betting shops, or bars, or
low-rent bounceaterias. Even in 1975, the Saints had some influence in Salt
Lake, and the bars and brothels were pretty shameful places, where no
respectable person would be caught.
The other pedestrians on the street were mostly off-worlders, either spacers in
uniform 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 my
eyes down, except when I was looking around for a public phone. After several
blocks, I realised that no one was paying any attention to me, and I took my
hands out of my pockets. The sun filtered down over me, warm through the big
dome, 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 on
my feet. The thought made me smile. Another kid, say Oly, wouldn't have coped
nearly as well.
I still hadn't spied a public phone. I figured that the taprooms would have a
phone, otherwise, how could a drunk call his wife and tell her he was going to
be late coming home? I picked a bar, whose airlock was painted to look like a
brick tunnel, and walked in.
The airlock irised shut behind me and I blinked in the gloom. My nose was
assaulted with sickly sweet incense, and stale liquor, and cigar smoke.
The place was tiny, and crowded with dented metal tables and chairs that were
bolted to the floorplates. A woman stood behind the bar, looking hard and brassy
and cheap, watching a soap opera on her vid. A spacer sat in one corner, staring
at his bulb of beer.