Last Year

by Robert Charles Wilson

  An Asian woman with a duster in her hand, presumably not Mrs. Hauser, opened the door. She gave Jesse a wide-eyed look.

  “Hello, Soo Yee,” Jesse said.

  Soo Yee’s pleasure at recognizing him evolved into what appeared to be equal parts fear and awe. “Jesse, Jesse, come in,” she said, giving Elizabeth a sidelong glance: You too, whoever you are.

  The entrance hall was cool and quiet, rich with sunlight filtered through panes of opalescent glass. A crystal vase holding cut flowers stood on a side table. Soo Yee was a small woman, and the sound of her footsteps on the oaken floor made Elizabeth think of water dripping from a palm leaf. “I’ll tell Mrs. Hauser you’re here,” she said, disappearing down a shadowed hallway. Moments later Jesse’s aunt emerged from a deeper part of the house.

  “Aunt Abbie,” Jesse said. Some complicated mix of emotions put a burr in his voice, though he was trying not to let it show. “I apologize for not telling you I was coming. There wasn’t time to write.”

  Abigail Hauser was tall and lean. She wore a black bombazine dress and appeared to be in her forties, not young by the standards of 1877, but there was a liveliness and wariness in her eyes that Elizabeth immediately liked. “Jesse,” she said, embracing him. “It’s a surprise to see you, but a most welcome one. And you brought a friend!”

  “This is Elizabeth DePaul. Elizabeth, my aunt, Abigail Hauser.”

  “Right,” Elizabeth managed. “It’s, uh, nice to meet you.” No doubt failing some important test of etiquette, though Aunt Abbie gave her a genuine-seeming smile.

  “This is the woman you wrote about in your letters?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m very pleased indeed to meet you, Miss DePaul. A woman from the twenty-first century! I’m not sure I know what to say … I feel quite out of place.”

  “I’m the one who’s out of place. You can call me Elizabeth.”

  “Thank you, Elizabeth. I’m Abbie. Come into the parlor and sit down.”

  Abbie led them to a smaller room crowded with chairs and ornate sideboards. “Jesse, I know you’ll want to see Phoebe. She’s in her room, practicing her violin exercises. Soo Yee can fetch her.”

  “No,” Jesse said, “I’ll see Phoebe soon enough. I’m sorry if that sounds unsociable, but it can’t be helped. As for Soo Yee, I want you to send her down to the city.”

  “What for?”

  “To fetch Sonny Lau.”

  There was a silence. Abbie said, “Are things as bad as that?”

  “Well, I don’t know. They might be. You didn’t tell me in your letters that Roscoe Candy is alive.”

  “No,” Abbie said, “I didn’t. We knew, of course. But I was reluctant to trouble you about it.”

  “Has he been a problem?”

  “It was only last year that he emerged from the shadows. I have friends who watch the property market, and they noticed him making purchases in the less respectable parts of the city, just as he was accustomed to do before you shot him. Then Sonny Lau sent word that Candy was back in the Tenderloin, living in a low house with his band of thugs. He seldom appears in public, and no new murders have been attributed to him. If he knows anything about Phoebe, we’ve had no sign of it. Had there been even a hint of trouble, of course I would have contacted you at once.”

  “How did he survive, Aunt Abbie? He was gut-shot—pardon me for saying so.”

  “You needn’t apologize for speaking plainly, least of all on this subject. I don’t know how he survived. Lesser wounds have killed better men. A cruel joke on the part of nature, I suppose.” Abbie took a bell from a side table and rang it. Soo Yee appeared a moment later. “Soo Yee, will you ask Randal to drive you into town, please? We need to speak to your brother.”

  “You want me to find Sonny?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “And bring him back?”

  “Yes. And I gather it’s urgent. So go on now. Quickly, please.”

  Soo Yee hurried away. Jesse looked at his aunt and cleared his throat and said, “Perhaps I’ll see Phoebe now.”

  “Go on. You know how to find her room, I imagine, even after all these years. Jesse?”

  Jesse turned back.

  “Are we in danger?”

  “I wouldn’t bring danger down on you. You know that, Aunt Abbie. I’ve always kept this house apart from the other aspects of my life.”

  And from me, Elizabeth thought.

  Abbie said, “Are you in danger?”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  * * *

  Elizabeth listened to Jesse’s footsteps as he mounted the stairs. There was a briefly audible bar or two of violin music, which must have been Jesse opening the door to his sister’s room. Then silence.

  Which left Elizabeth and Abbie in the parlor trying not to stare at each other. Elizabeth thought she ought to say something polite, but the best she could come up with was, “Thank you for welcoming me into your home.”

  Abbie smiled. “I could hardly have left you on the doorstep. Jesse has written me a little about you, Elizabeth. And I’ve followed stories about the City of Futurity as long as Jesse has been associated with it. But I never dreamt I might meet a woman from the twenty-first century. Is it true you’re a soldier?”

  “I served in the army, yeah. I mean yes.”

  “And you saw combat?”

  “I was in signals intelligence. Not really front-line stuff. I was at a base in Iraq that took mortar fire a few times, but nothing serious. And that was a few years ago. I’m a civilian now.”

  “And you’ve voted in elections?”

  “Sure, yeah.”

  “And is it true that a black man was elected to the presidency?”

  “For two terms,” Elizabeth said cautiously.

  “Please don’t think I disapprove. Before I married Mr. Hauser, I advocated for abolition. I’ve read Mr. Douglass’s writings. And I pay attention to the controversy over women’s rights—I’m a great admirer of Mrs. Stanton, though I disapprove of her statements against the Fourteenth Amendment.” Abbie paused. “Do you understand me at all, Elizabeth?”

  “I think so.”

  “I don’t fear the future.”

  “Okay, good.”

  “Even if it includes something as alarming as marriage between persons of the same sex. Which Jesse has told me in his letters that it does. It’s strange, of course, and I would be helpless to defend it to a clergyman, but I think I understand the logic of it. In fact I have a cousin who—but that’s beside the point. What I mean to say, Elizabeth, is that I approve of you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m not sure you approve of me, however. No, let me speak frankly. I’m not sure you ought to approve of me, especially if Jesse has told you anything about me.”

  “He hasn’t said a whole lot, Mrs. Hauser—Abbie.”

  “My life illustrates the principle that it’s easier to care for strangers than for members of one’s own family. My brother Earl—Jesse’s father—fell out of favor with our parents when I was just three years old. Earl was fifteen years my senior, and the reasons for his disgrace were never discussed with me, but it became obvious that he had married a woman not respectable enough to bring home. That would have been Jesse’s mother. Earl sacrificed the prospect of a career in the family business for the sake of a woman he loved. Maybe that was foolish, maybe it was brave, but I was raised to see it as unacceptable, and I never questioned the verdict. If Earl ever tried to contact my parents, they didn’t speak of it to me.”

  “That’s harsh.”

  “It was harsh, but I didn’t see it in that light. For me it was as if Earl had died in some mysterious, unspeakable way. I didn’t hear from him—or, to be honest, think much about him—until I married Mr. Hauser. When our engagement was announced in the Boston Daily Advertiser I received a letter forwarded to me from the newspaper. The letter was from Earl. He offered his best wishes and he told me his wife had died. He said he was living in San Francisco,
and that I had a nephew and a niece, Jesse and Phoebe. He supplied an address at which I could write to him.”

  “Did you?”

  “I’m ashamed to say I did not. I was too vain—too naïve—and too much distracted by my new position as a wealthy man’s wife. A few years passed. Mr. Hauser kept a home in Boston, but his business took him west more often than I liked. It suited us both to move to California, though it was a terribly long trip. The next time I gave any serious thought to Earl was when we took up residence in this house. I was all too aware that the address he had given me was within riding distance, in a part of town where nothing good ever happens. The knowledge began to weigh on my conscience. Eventually I relented and wrote him a note. A brusque note, but it told him I was in the city and that I hoped my niece and nephew were well.”

  “And he wrote back?”

  “Almost at once, and he begged a favor from me. He said Jesse and Phoebe were healthy but in need of education and decent circumstances, neither of which he could provide. He wondered if they might be allowed to come live with me.”

  “That’s a big ask.”

  “I’ve never heard it put that way—but yes, it certainly seemed like a ‘big ask.’ I resented it, and Mr. Hauser wouldn’t hear of it. But Mr. Hauser passed away only a month later. We had no other family in the city. So, belatedly, I did what my conscience had been urging me to do. I couldn’t take the children and raise them as my own, but I offered to take them periodically, especially if Earl thought they were at risk. He brought them to me a few days later. Their first visit lasted for six weeks, over the hottest part of the summer.”

  “It must have been strange, seeing your brother again after so many years.”

  “It surpassed strange. It was daunting. Chastening. Earl had lived a hard life. His clothes were ragged and his breath smelled of liquor. We spoke very briefly, and although we corresponded sporadically after that, we never became close. But I tried to think of my brother as a good-natured man who was walking a difficult path. His love of his children could not have been more obvious. He nearly wept when he left them with me.”

  “You got along with them okay?”

  “They were wary at first, and so was I. Ultimately, yes, we got along. What they lacked in discipline they made up for in natural curiosity. But, Elizabeth—” Abbie bowed her head and clutched her hands in her lap. “I could have done so much more.”

  Women like Abbie had a vocabulary of hand and head gestures, explicitly feminine ways of expressing guilt or anger. Elizabeth couldn’t fake that stuff and found it difficult to read. But Abbie’s regret seemed authentic, as far as she could tell. “Phoebe lives here now, Jesse said.”

  “Phoebe has lived here since the day her father was murdered.”

  “When Jesse took her away from the burning, uh, house.”

  “Jesse and Sonny Lau brought her to me. I summoned the doctor who treated her.”

  “Sonny Lau is the Tong hatchetman?”

  “Jesse’s friend. And Soo Yee’s brother. Yes. That was a terrible day. Phoebe’s injuries were terrifying. The doctor is a war veteran, and he knows all the ways a human body can come to harm. But even he was shocked. He sewed her up as well as he could, but he couldn’t save her left eye. Jesse left town after that, because he knew Candy’s men might try to hunt him down and kill him, and he didn’t want to lead them here. It was sheer luck he was hired by the City. Luck for Phoebe and for me, I mean. Every investment I inherited from Mr. Hauser more or less vanished in the financial crisis, and we would be in a difficult position if not for the money Jesse sends every month.”

  “But you can afford to keep Soo Yee as a servant.”

  “It was an agreement Jesse made with Sonny Lau. A job and, in effect, a Western education for Soo Yee, in exchange for which Sonny uses his familiarity with the criminal element to keep watch for any threat that might arise. If Candy’s henchmen had started hunting for Phoebe or Jesse, Sonny would have warned us. And if we need to get in touch with Sonny, we can do so through Soo Yee.”

  “Like now,” Elizabeth said. “So why do think Jesse wants to talk to Sonny?”

  “I’m very much afraid to ask. Don’t you know?”

  The conversation was interrupted by the sound of footsteps: Jesse and Phoebe, coming downstairs.

  * * *

  Elizabeth had pictured Jesse’s younger sister as shy and damaged. But it was obvious as soon as she entered the room that Phoebe wasn’t shy. She went straight to Elizabeth and offered her hand, which Elizabeth shook. “You’re the woman from the future!”

  “Call me Elizabeth.”

  “Thank you! I’m Phoebe,” said Phoebe.

  Phoebe wore a blue silk scarf tied into a kind of skewed hijab that concealed the left side of her face. The only injury that showed was some scarring above her lip. But Phoebe’s good eye was lively and alert, and her smile was obviously genuine. “Pleased to meet you,” Elizabeth said.

  “You’re from the future.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ridden a flying machine?”

  “Phoebe,” Abbie said, “you mustn’t put our guest through an inquisition.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry—”

  “It’s okay,” Elizabeth said. “Yeah, I’ve ridden a few flying machines.”

  “How amazing!”

  “You get used to it. At least, most people do. Not everybody likes flying. For me, there’s almost always a moment when I look out the window and think, wow, I’m thirty thousand feet over Idaho or whatever.”

  “I’m sure I would feel the same way,” Phoebe said. “And is it true your people are shipping pistols to the Indians?”

  Abbie was visibly scandalized. But it didn’t seem like an unreasonable question, Elizabeth thought, given what had been in the newspapers. “Not ‘our people’ exactly. Those guns were smuggled through the City against regulations.”

  “Don’t you support the cause of the Nez Percé? From what Jesse wrote about you, I thought you might.”

  “I don’t know much about it. Where I come from, it’s more or less agreed that the Indians got a bad deal. Worse than a bad deal. But I don’t see how shipping them pistols is supposed to help.”

  “Apparently someone disagrees.”

  Apparently so, Elizabeth thought.

  “Perhaps,” Abbie said, “we can discuss something less contentious? Phoebe, why don’t you tell Elizabeth about your study of the violin.”

  Which Phoebe proceeded to do, at length. It became a monologue about the difficulty of arranging lessons and her problem learning to hold the instrument correctly, with tacit reference to her facial disfigurement. Despite the relentless talk, or maybe because of it, a less confident Phoebe began to show through. Her shoulders tensed and her voice took on an anxious edge. Finally Abbie said, “Thank you, Phoebe.”

  Phoebe fell silent, looking abashed.

  “I’d like to hear you play sometime,” Elizabeth said.

  Phoebe brightened. “Do you play an instrument?”

  “No. I enjoy music, but I’m just a listener.”

  “What is it like, the music of the future?”

  “Well, we have all kinds. Ask Jesse. He was listening to some of it today.”

  Phoebe turned her good eye on her brother. “How is that possible?”

  Elizabeth said, “I gave him a thing that plays recorded music. It’s in his pocket.”

  “May I see it?”

  Jesse looked alarmed. “I don’t think—I mean, the kind of songs it plays—”

  “We don’t have to play Hendrix for her,” Elizabeth said. “I loaded all kinds of stuff on that iPod. Here, give it to me.”

  Jesse passed her the device, frowning. Elizabeth scrolled through the playlist. She had put together the contents with Jesse’s taste in mind—or what she had imagined Jesse’s taste might be—but she had also tried to include representative music, not just personal favorites. Songs that were big even if she didn’t especially like them. So
what was suitable for a teenage girl circa 1877? The sound track to Elizabeth’s adolescence had included a lot of LL Cool J and Cypress Hill, maybe not the best choices. Pressed for time, she cued up Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.” It was a song Elizabeth remembered only dimly, but it was up-tempo and optimistic and she guessed Phoebe would find the lyrics too obscure to be truly shocking. “You’ll need to put these in your ears,” Elizabeth said, holding up the earbuds. “I can help you.”

  Silence ensued. No one moved. Elizabeth was briefly bewildered. Then she realized Phoebe couldn’t put the buds in her ears without taking off her scarf.

  Finally Jesse said, “It’s all right. Elizabeth knows what happened. Elizabeth was a soldier, Phoebe. She’s seen all kinds of things.”

  Phoebe said, “Is that true?”

  “Yes. But you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

  “No. Please! I want to hear the music.” Phoebe unwrapped her head in a single decisive motion, balling up the scarf in her lap. “There,” she said defiantly. “Well? Have you seen worse?”

  Elizabeth had once visited a friend at Landstuhl Regional, the big US military hospital in Germany. A guy named Felipe, a division MP. Shrapnel from a mortar had carved off his right arm and a chunk of his face. The surgeons had saved Felipe’s life, but he was looking at the prospect of multiple rounds of prosthetic and reconstructive surgery. “Yep,” Elizabeth said flatly. “I’ve seen worse. Okay, so these little plastic thingies? They go in your ears.”

  Phoebe’s disfigurement was evidence of a vicious attack. From the number and pattern of the scars, it looked as if she had nearly been scalped. Her vacant eye socket had healed badly, with knots of scar tissue filling the violated space. “How strange,” she said, taking the iPod in her hand. “How does it know when you touch it?”

  “Beats me. You’d have to ask a geek. I mean, an expert.”

  “You don’t know how it works?”

  “I know how to work it, and I have a vague idea how it works, but I’m not an electronics engineer. It’s like—you understand a steam engine, basically, right? But if I asked you what a particular piston or valve does…”