World Enough (And Time)

by Edmund Jorgensen

  When it became clear that Bradley was not going to stop until Jeremiah had surrendered his upright position, Jeremiah heaved a sigh and then heaved himself over, doing his best not to hurt Bradley in the process, but to make him feel important and responsible, as if Jeremiah could not possibly have fallen over without the benefit of Bradley’s recent exertions. But, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished—a maxim upon which Jeremiah had occasion to reflect, as Bradley parlayed Jeremiah’s encouraging tumble into a headlock. The struggle became real.

  They had not been tangled up on the floor, red-faced and grunting, longer than a few seconds before Grubel came into the office without knocking.

  “What in the name of all that is holy is going on here?” he bellowed.

  Bradley broke off his assault instantly and pulled himself to his feet. Jeremiah joined him, and the two of them stood with their hands behind their backs, swaying slightly, like two schoolboys surprised red-handed by the headmaster.

  But before Jeremiah could offer any explanation, Bradley reached for the hoariest brush with which surprised schoolboys throughout history have attempted to scrub some of the red from their own hands.

  “Jeremiah started it, sir.”

  “You’re saying he initiated this encounter?” Grubel asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Jeremiah, “this is exactly what it looks like—we were fighting.”

  “Are you saying, Dr. Bonaventure, that Jeremiah propositioned you?”

  “I—that is—well—”

  “I am not passing judgment, Dr. Bonaventure—not on you. But you, Jeremiah? I come by to see if you need anything to assist with that special passenger, only to find you in flagrante delicto—and in the office, where a guest could walk in at any moment! Dr. Bonaventure, for what it’s worth, I firmly believe you could do better, even with the handicap of your heritage. As for you, Jeremiah: get back to work on the needs of our special passenger immediately. And if I ever find you abusing Golden Worldlines property in this way again, special passenger or no special passenger, I will have your head on a platter.”

  Grubel stormed from the room, leaving Bradley and Jeremiah still frozen in their boarding school poses.

  “Bradley,” said Jeremiah finally, “look, Kimberly and I—”

  “Lush sans velour,” the other said, or French words to that effect. He spat on the floor and left, arching his back and pressing the small of it with both hands.

  * * *

  A few minutes before closing, Jeremiah was deep in the playbook when a voice summoned him from the mysteries of requesting custom water hardness for a guest’s bathroom.

  “Bradley didn’t believe it.”

  Kimberly stood just inside the doorway, still dressed in her scrubs and coat. She had been crying.

  “Yes, he came by and said as much,” said Jeremiah.

  “And he accused me of playing games with him—me playing games with him. Can you believe that?”

  “Well,” said Jeremiah.

  “Oh, Jeremiah, I’ve made such a mess of things. I’m always so suspicious of my heart, but it’s my head that gets me into trouble. What should I do?”

  She sat down in the chair across from Jeremiah, holding the troublesome head in her hands.

  “You’re overthinking this,” Jeremiah said. “You love him, he loves you. Tell him the truth. He’ll understand.”

  “Are you sure I shouldn’t try to convince him we’re engaged just one more time?” Kimberly asked.

  “Kimberly, he’s never going to believe you—why should he? You don’t have a ring. He’s never even seen us together. Just come clean.”

  “You’re right,” Kimberly said. “I don’t want to come clean, but I should, so I will. That’s the Categorical Imperative. Jeremiah, you’re a genius of moral philosophy as well as experimental method. I’ll go do it now.”

  She stood up, determined, but before she could leave, Mrs. Abdurov arrived.

  “Is 4:59,” Mrs. Abdurov yelled as she entered the office, preventing any appeals to working hours. “Ah, the lady doctor is here too. You stay a minute, and when I finish with this one, you tell me why my hip hurts.” She sat down in the recently vacant seat. “Where are my photos, Jeremiah? I told you get them by today.”

  “Mrs. Abdurov, maybe we should talk about this when we’re alone?”

  Mrs. Abdurov pursed her lips and shook her finger.

  “No, no, Jeremiah,” she said. “You will not hang noodles on my ears any longer. You are help, she is help. She will say nothing. Either you show me pictures right now, or right now I will go to Financial Office and report my satisfaction as nothing.”

  “But Mrs. Abdurov, I just haven’t had—”

  “Enough,” she said, standing up. “I go now.”

  “Which hip did you say was hurting you, Mrs. Abdurov?” said Kimberly.

  Mrs. Abdurov turned and faced her—it seemed she had forgotten the doctor was there.

  “The left,” she said. “It clicks when I am walking.”

  “Is it worse in the mornings?” Kimberly asked.

  Mrs. Abdurov had to think for a moment.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Which side do you sleep on?”

  “The left,” said Mrs. Abdurov, in a tone that any uncle rediscovering a coin behind a niece’s ear would have found extremely gratifying.

  “I thought so. I have an ointment that will help—you put it on before you sleep.”

  “It is the same stuff you give Mr. Moakley and Mrs. Idlewhile?” Mrs. Abdurov asked suspiciously.

  “No, this is much more powerful—you have to wash your hands after you use it. I only have one tube left. Come with me, we can stop by the infirmary and pick it up.”

  “Good,” said Mrs. Abdurov, “we go now.” She started through the door without waiting for Kimberly.

  “That was amazing,” said Jeremiah.

  “They all want what the others don’t get,” said Kimberly. “Status is the strongest placebo.”

  “Seriously, thank you: I owe you one,” said Jeremiah. “I’m grateful enough to thank a Canadian.”

  Which he meant not just in the idiomatic sense—of his being grateful enough to thank someone who, like a Canadian, did not usually deserve thanks—but in the literal sense of being grateful enough to thank Kimberly, who was an actual Canadian—and who, it must be added, had not particularly been a locus of deserved gratitude in Jeremiah’s life to date.

  Mrs. Abdurov poked her head back into the office.

  “Lady Doctor, we are going or what?” she yelled.

  “Coming, Mrs. Abdurov! You know,” Kimberly shouted conspiratorially into Mrs. Abdurov’s ear when she had reached her, “when you arrived, Jeremiah was just telling me about his plan to get you some photos or something.”

  21

  The Conservation of Ghosts

  Friday (2 days until arrival)

  Katherine emerged from her room the next morning to find Jeremiah once again holding two pieces of one bandora.

  “This is getting to be a tradition,” she said. “Both glues didn’t work?”

  “I think it worked worse. I’m not sure I even managed to touch the strings this time before it fell apart, and that was giving it a full day and a half to dry.”

  “Well,” said Katherine.

  “Yes?”

  “I was trying to think of something encouraging to say, but I couldn’t. Not about the bandora, at least.”

  Jeremiah’s ears perked up.

  “But you might have something encouraging to say about something else?”

  “I’m sorry about giving you the silent treatment after that guy came and accused you of being engaged. It wasn’t your fault, after all. Or at least—”

  “Not totally my fault,” said Jeremiah.

  “It’s Friday, so I’m on breakfast duty, but I thought maybe we could chat over lunch?”

  “That sounds great,” said Jeremiah, trying to k
eep his voice casual. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to run. I had a brainstorm last night, and I have to see a Mexican about a homebrew surveillance system.”

  Katherine’s left eyebrow lifted.

  “Another idiom I’m not familiar with,” she said. “But I hope it’s larky.”

  * * *

  The Mexican table was already well into breakfast by the time Jeremiah arrived.

  “Luis,” Jeremiah said after the rituals of seat shuffling and back slapping had been observed, “can you ask Heriberto how he got that wave of Mrs. Mayflower? Did he just happen to have the camera running?”

  “No,” Luis reported after a bit of back and forth with Heriberto. “Second Carlos tells Heriberto he sees something in that hallway that looks like a ghost. So Heriberto hooks up his camera to a—how do you call it? Motion scissor?”

  “Sensor.”

  “That’s it, motion sensor. Heriberto is very good with all things like that.”

  “Luis,” said Jeremiah, “do you think you could help me ask Heriberto to do me a huge favor in the Guest Services office?”

  * * *

  “And then he says when the motion scissor detects something out in the hallway,” said Luis, “this thing here buzz like—”

  The small square of plastic, which looked like it had been adapted from a restaurant pager, suddenly came to life, blinking and buzzing with such vigor that it cost Luis some effort to keep his grip on it.

  “—just like that,” said Luis. He sounded surprised.

  “Is he testing?” Jeremiah asked, pointing at Heriberto.

  “Heriberto, estás probando o que?”

  Heriberto shook his head.

  “Is not testing,” Luis said. “Is real. Look at the PED!”

  Jeremiah did as instructed and saw, on the grainy video feed that Heriberto had set up there, that the motion sensors had done their job well. Someone was walking down the hallway to the Guest Services office.

  “Jeremiah,” said Kimberly, exiting the frame of the wave and stepping through the office door. “Oh, hello. Hello.” These last two hellos were directed at Luis—who grinned in response—and Heriberto, who bowed low with a flourish of his arm.

  “Jeremiah,” Kimberly said again, “I figured out what to do—or really, you did, you’re a genius.”

  While this was very pleasant to hear, Jeremiah did have a question or two.

  “I tried to come clean to Bradley,” Kimberly said, “but it didn’t work. He says now that he knows the games I’ve played to make sure he loves me, he can’t be sure if I love him. But I know how to convince him! If he believes that you and I are engaged, then I can break off the engagement because I’m still in love with him, and then he’ll know that it must be true!”

  “Um, Kimberly,” said Jeremiah. “I’m sorry you’ve found yourself in such a difficult situation, but by this point haven’t we established pretty firmly that Bradley doesn’t believe that we’re engaged?”

  “Of course, because we’ve just told him we’re engaged! You said it yourself, Jeremiah—he believes what he sees. So if he sees us get engaged, then he’ll believe it!”

  “To be clear, you’re asking me—”

  “She want you to propose to her!” said Luis. He translated for Heriberto, who nodded in agreement that this was, yes, just a fantastic idea.

  “Yes!” said Kimberly, feeding off their excitement. “In front of Bradley! I’ll explain to him that we fell in love during our fake engagement, and now we’re really engaged. Then the next day, I break it off, he believes that I really love him, and we live happily ever after. Will you do it?”

  To say that Jeremiah’s Better Judgment had some misgivings about this course of action would be to give short shrift to his Mediocre, Questionable, and Downright Terrible Judgments—which, in a rare show of solidarity, had lined up to hold signs and march in the picket organized by their Better counterpart. Only Jeremiah’s Suicidal Judgment stood apart, holding up an opposing sign on which the slogan “It might be fine!” had been smeared in letters of fresh blood.

  “Please?” said Kimberly. “You did say you owed me one.” She began to rub her left hip subtly, as if to soothe the deep ache of a favor still unpaid.

  Jeremiah was about to rub his entire body to remind Kimberly of the pains he had already suffered on her behalf, but in the new climate of quid pro quo, his Suicidal Judgment found a sudden bit of inspiration.

  “What if I did this for you, and you got me some information about a passenger?” said Jeremiah.

  “What information?”

  “I need to know what medications he’s taking.”

  “That’s a violation of medical ethics,” said Kimberly. “It flies directly in the face of the Categorical Imperative—and you know how important the Categorical Imperative is to me, Jeremiah.”

  “I do,” said Jeremiah. “It’s one of your favorite imperatives.” He reached into the small bag of philosophy that he had acquired in his academic career, most of it from the men’s room stalls in the classroom building. “But you would be doing this for love, and doesn’t Nietzsche say somewhere that what is done for love takes place beyond good and evil?”

  “You want me to set my moral compass according to a relativist’s aphorism?” said Kimberly, and shook her head. But she was wavering. “I shouldn’t,” she said, “I know I shouldn’t—but—for Bradley—I will. Which passenger? Tell me quick, Jeremiah, before I change my mind.”

  “Alastair Roof. He takes a blue one, two red ones, a white one, and a pink one. Oh, and a little yellow one at night.”

  “I’m not his doctor, so I don’t know offhand—I’ll have to pull the records.”

  “All right,” said Jeremiah. “As for the fake proposal, it needs to be controlled—discreet. We need to plan when and where.”

  “You let me handle that—I’ll figure everything out and let you know.”

  “And what about a ring? It’s not going to look very convincing if we get engaged without a ring.”

  “Don’t worry about anything. All you have to do is show up. Now I have to get going, I have clinic duty.” She seemed to realize something, and her face, which had been troubled since Nietzsche had emerged victorious over the Categorical Imperative in the cage match of her soul, brightened. “I’ll see you soon, fiancé.”

  At that word Jeremiah’s Suicidal Judgment—which since its brainstorm had been looking rather smug as it strutted and crowed insults at its betters—sighed and crossed over to join the picket line.

  Seeing that the young lady was preparing to go, Heriberto offered his arm.

  “Oh,” she said, “a gentleman! You may escort me out—as long as it’s all right with my fiancé.”

  Jeremiah’s Suicidal Judgment fell to the pavement and soiled its pants.

  “Jeremiah,” Luis said when Kimberly and Heriberto had gone, “you are bendito among the women. You live with the pretty fresa and now the lady doctor is proposing you marriage! You are tremendo, my friend.”

  “It’s not like that, Luis.”

  “That remind me,” Luis said, “we need liquor.”

  “All right,” said Jeremiah. It was early, but in the circumstances Jeremiah certainly wouldn’t turn down a snort himself. “There’s a little vodka left back in my room.”

  “No, for the stage. To make it shine nice.”

  “Oh,” said Jeremiah, “you need lacquer.”

  “That’s it. Lacquer, from the big storeroom. We run out in the shop, and I don’t want to ask my boss nothing about this. The wood I find easy, and the stuff for thermite.”

  “Thermite? Luis, are you making an exploding stage?”

  “You know, thermites, the little bichos who eat the wood. I kill them with insecticide.”

  “Ah, termites.”

  “That’s it, termites. But I don’t have access to the big storeroom to get no liquor. You get some for me?”

  “Sure,” Jeremiah said. “I’ll take care of it.”

&nbs
p; “Good. I earn my credit,” said Luis. “I gonna liquor the hell out of that son a bitch.”

  * * *

  Shortly after Luis left, as Jeremiah sat picking idly through the playbook, Heriberto’s ad-hoc alarm system buzzed again. There on the grainy screen of the PED, Mrs. Mayflower was picking her way down the hall towards the door of his office.

  “I can take care of that for you right away, Mr. Smith,” said Jeremiah loudly—louder than he would have if Mr. Smith had actually been sitting in the Guest Services office at the moment. “I’ll just need to examine it to check the model of the PED—there are subtle differences, you know, and if you don’t respect those differences—”

  As he spoke, Jeremiah watched the surveillance wave anxiously. Mrs. Mayflower had stopped in the hallway outside and was now listening, her ear to the door. He could not see her face—only the top of her broad hat—but if it was possible for the top of a hat to look deeply suspicious, then hers did. Jeremiah raised his voice even louder.

  “—for example, if you tried that little maneuver on a Mistutashi X200, you’d be left with a very expensive brick. But on this model—”

  A noise somewhere further down the hall made Mrs. Mayflower jump. For a few tense seconds Jeremiah was afraid that she would seek cover in the office, fake Mr. Smith or no, but she turned and fled back down the hallway. In ten seconds she was out of the camera’s range.

  Jeremiah smiled with great satisfaction at the image of the empty hallway. With the talent show only a day away, and their arrival to Earth only one day after that, he knew that he had merely delayed his execution—but when it came to executions, any delay was infinitely preferable to proceeding right on schedule.

  * * *

  When the plastic pager buzzed a quarter of an hour later, it was announcing the arrival of Mr. Porter, who sprinted through the surveillance frame before he stumbled into the office and collapsed into the guest chair with a finality that would have made Pheidippides proud.