by Pete Hautman
“Boggsians? I suppose those are some sort of bug-eyed monsters from Saturn?”
“No, I think they might be Amish. Or maybe Jewish.”
The doctor rolled his eyes. “You’re losing me, son. Why don’t you just tell me how you got here.”
“A maggot ate me,” Tucker said. He couldn’t resist.
“Right.” Arnay reached beneath his mask with his forefinger and scratched his nose. “A maggot.”
“A maggot is a sort of portable disko — a machine that makes its own time-travel portal. They’re called maggots because they look like giant grubs.” He decided not to tell the doctor that the maggots were bright pink — that might be too much for him. “‘Maggot’ is like a nickname. They’re also called Timesweeps. Actually, I’ve gone into three of them now. The first time, I was going after Lahlia. The second time, I got thrown in by a Boggsian. The third time, a maggot caught me and sent me here.”
“You are trying to make me not believe a thing you say, son.”
Tucker shrugged. “I said you wouldn’t believe me.” He held out his hands. They were white and powdery looking. The little bumps were still there, but they weren’t moving anymore. He brushed the back of his left hand. Some of the powdery substance came off, revealing a layer of skin, pink and new like a baby’s.
The doctor glanced down, then looked closer. He put on a pair of latex gloves, took one of Tucker’s hands, and felt the soft new skin.
“This is impossible,” he said flatly.
“Impossible like the diskos?” Tucker said.
The doctor didn’t say anything for several seconds. Finally he sat back and crossed his arms. “Okay, I’m listening.”
Tucker had noticed that when somebody crosses their arms, it’s almost impossible to convince them of anything, but he could try.
“The diskos are like time portals. If you go into one, it takes you someplace, or sometime, else. Except you never know where. I sure never expected to end up on the North Pole.”
The doctor still had his arms crossed.
Tucker said, “Anyway, I ended up going through a bunch of the diskos, and it turns out a lot of them go to historical events. Like this one. It’s kind of a big deal, right — you coming here to the North Pole in a submarine?”
“It’s never been done before.”
“Except for the Nautilus.”
“You know about the Nautilus?”
“I used to have a book about submarines.”
“Yeah, well, the Nautilus didn’t surface like we did. They stayed under the ice.”
“The point is, most of the places the diskos go are places where something important is happening. Like the World Trade Center.”
“The what?”
“The . . .” Tucker hesitated. Had the Twin Towers been built before or after 1959? He imagined trying to tell the doctor how buildings that hadn’t been built yet were destroyed by two passenger jets. Did they even have jets in 1959?
“Never mind,” he said.
“Who will win the next World Series?” the doctor asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not much of a baseball fan. Besides, I won’t be born for another forty years.”
“Who’s going to win the presidential election?”
Tucker said, “Okay. Um . . . who’s running?”
“Don’t know yet, but probably Richard Nixon, the vice president. And there’s a young senator named Kennedy folks are talking about.”
“I think they both won,” Tucker said.
The doctor laughed, puffing out his mask. “Now, wouldn’t that be something.”
“But I think Kennedy was first, until he —” He almost said, until he was assassinated, but caught himself. They might interpret that as a threat: Russian spy kid threatens to assassinate future president.
The doctor said, “Never mind. You were telling me your father showed up one day with this girl?”
“Yeah. They came through a disko.”
“Of course they did.”
“But I don’t know exactly how she got to Hopewell. She seemed pretty messed up, like she’d been through a lot. She couldn’t even talk.”
“You don’t know what happened to her?”
“No. But I’m pretty sure it had to do with the diskos.”
Dr. Arnay shook his head. “You just walk through these things, like going through a door?”
“More like being squeezed through a straw. Only it doesn’t hurt. At first. The problem is, most of the diskos are up in the air, and when you pop out of one, you have to brace yourself for a fall. . . .”
LIA HAD TIME TO THINK, I’M FALLING. STILL FALLING. It’s going to hurt. I —
She hit. Something inside her broke. She hit again — treetops, sun, and bright-blue sky spinning crazily, and then oblivion.
The smell of rotting leaves. Time had passed. Lia opened her eyes. A pair of yellow orbs stared back at her from inches away.
“Merp?”
Lia tried to move, to touch the cat.
Pain.
She slipped away.
A voice. A woman’s voice. Muttering in some strange language. Lia was afraid to move, afraid to open her eyes. She knew it would be bad. The pain was there, waiting, a monster in ambush.
She felt hands. Cold metal touched her spine, and suddenly her body went completely numb from the neck down.
She opened her eyes. She was looking up a steep, flat hillside. High above the top of the hill, she saw the outline of a Gate. Had she fallen so far?
A face blocked her view. A woman. Ash-gray hair, black eyes, freckled skin. The woman muttered to herself as she examined Lia.
Lia heard herself say, “Where am I?”
The woman smiled. Her teeth were small, even, and very white. “You fell. You are damaged. Do you wish to live?”
“Yes.”
Lia felt herself being lifted and carried like a baby. As the woman started to walk, Lia was better able to see the hill she had tumbled down. The flat side of the hill was green with grasses and stunted shrubs and horizontally striped with crumbling blocks of stone. It looked like an ancient, rotting staircase. Recognition hit her. This was no hill, but the ruins of the top of a pyramid. The Cydonian Pyramid? If so, she had been flung into the distant future. Somewhere beneath her were buried the paving stones of the zocalo.
They were moving through a forest along a narrow path. If this was the future, everyone she had ever known was dead and gone. . . . She remembered the cat and gasped. The woman stopped.
“Are you in pain?
“Kitten . . .” Lia said.
The woman turned so that Lia could see behind them. The little gray cat was sitting on the path, cleaning its paw.
“Your cat is with us still. I will keep him safe for you, until he is needed.” The woman did something to the thing attached to Lia’s back; a wave of comfort radiated through her body. “We do not have far to go.”
Lia felt herself slipping into a soft, timeless place.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice muddled.
“My name is Awn.”
The next time she opened her eyes, Lia saw a pair of blue feet. Blue feet? She wriggled her toes. The blue toes moved. They were her feet, encased in flexible blue sheathes.
Was she back home? No, this room, with its smooth beige walls, was like nothing in Romelas. She sat up. A bed. More of a cushioned platform, really. An open doorway looked out into a hallway. Lia took a quick inventory of her body. No obvious missing parts, no pain, no sign of injury. She was wearing the same silvery shift she had worn on the frustum.
A man entered the room. At least she thought it was a man. He appeared to be more machine than human. His chest area was taken up by a panel studded with red, blue, and green buttons. Variously shaped and colored items of plastic and metal ringed his waist, wrists, and gloved fingers. A small metal stud was affixed to his chin, and his eyes were hidden behind a pair of bulbous shields.
The man spoke, a rapid and inc
omprehensible burst of sound. As his mouth moved, the colored buttons on his chest flickered.
Lia shook her head. “I can’t understand you.”
The man tried again, speaking more slowly in what Lia recognized as an ancient dialect of inglés. “I am Dr. Three-Three-Four. Tell me your level of pain on a scale of one to ten.”
Lia was shocked by hearing numbers spoken out loud.
“I am not in pain,” she said.
The doctor put a finger to the stud on his chin and made a sound like a chittering wren. Lia had the impression that he was rattling off a series of digits.
She was in the age of the Medicants. The Digital Age. The Plague years. She had been in the future; now she had been thrown into the distant past.
“You are a patient at Mayo One,” the doctor said, returning to inglés. “Two-three-seven-nine Gregorian. You have received twenty-eight treatments, including six vertebrae replacements, restoration of severed spinal cord, skull repair, regression of four incipient tumors, partial ulna replacement, selective regeneration of muscular and peripheral nervous system, removal and replacement of ruptured spleen, seven cardiac reboots, and complimentary sterilization of sebaceous follicles to enhance skin texture and appearance. How do you wish to pay?”
Lia, more disturbed by his use of numbers than by the catalog of damages her body had sustained, said, “I have no means to pay you.”
“We have need for kidneys.”
Lia thought of the Yars who had returned to Romelas with missing body parts, and recalled what Yar Song had told her.
“I did not ask to be treated,” she said. “I will not pay.”
The doctor touched his chin stud. “Protocol two-nine-seven. Subject nineteen-four-seven-seven point three-nine declines to pay for treatment.” He tipped his head as if listening, then walked out through the open doorway. “Come with me,” he said over his shoulder.
Lia hesitated but could think of no reason to stay in this sterile, uncomfortable room. She followed the Medicant out into the hallway.
“Where are we going?” she asked. The doctor did not reply. Lia stopped. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where you are taking me.”
The doctor turned to face her. “You have been sold.”
“Sold?”
“You must discharge your debt.”
“I refuse.”
“You cannot refuse.” He pressed a button on his chest. A moment later, a pair of men emerged from a nearby doorway and came toward her. Lia turned to run, but too late — the men were upon her in an instant. They grabbed her by the arms and held her. The doctor rattled off a set of incomprehensible instructions, then walked off. The men dragged her roughly and rapidly down the hallway, her blue feet skittering on the smooth floor.
Yar Song had warned Lia that she might be enslaved. She tried to imagine herself working in “a house of abased women” as Yar Song had. She didn’t know exactly what that was, but she was certain she would not like it.
They took her into an elevator car, then down. The doors slid open, and they stepped out into a brightly lit underground space filled with row upon row of wheeled metal boxes. Autos. Her table had shown her images of such things.
None of the autos were moving. They seemed to be resting. The tangy odor of ozone and heated metal hung in the air.
“That doctor said I was sold. Sold to whom?” Lia asked.
Neither of her guards replied. They simply stood with her outside the elevator, waiting.
“Do you talk?” Lia said.
“No,” said the guard on her left.
“You just talked,” Lia pointed out.
The guard’s mouth shortened.
“What are we waiting for?” Lia asked.
The guard who had spoken gave his head a slight shake. Lia became aware of a rhythmic sound — clop, clop, clop — growing slowly louder. A dark shape became visible at the far end of the row.
A horse! A big black draft horse pulling a cart balanced on a pair of wheels. The man driving the cart was wearing a black hat and a black coat.
Lia turned to the guard on her left. “Is that a Boggsian?”
The guard’s nod was barely perceptible, but definite.
WITH MOUNTING FEAR, LIA WATCHED THE HORSE AND the man draw closer. A Boggsian! It was the Boggsians who built and maintained the few machines still used by the Lah Sept — machines like her entertainment table and the priests’ shock batons. Some said that Boggsians were immune to the Plague. Others maintained that they were themselves victims and carriers. The priests denounced them for their digital ways and their peculiar religious practices, even as they purchased their digital technologies.
We know little of what the Boggsians do in their domains, the Lait Pike had once told her. Their ways are hidden. It is said by some that they never change their clothes, that their prayers are woven of numbers and dark thoughts, that they eat the eggs of crows. Still, they are a necessary evil, like white lies and black knives.
As the Boggsian and his horse clopped toward her, Lia noticed a curious thing. The clop-clop-clop sound did not match the fall of the horse’s hooves, as if the horse was walking silently while a recording of an entirely different horse played. The driver pulled back on the reins. The horse stopped, but the sound of its hooves continued for a moment.
The Boggsian was dark haired, olive skinned, and nearly as big around the middle as his horse. He touched the brim of his black hat with a thick-fingered hand and spoke in a voice that made her think of tumbling stones.
“Be this the shayner maidel?”
Shayner maidel? Lia had been taught several languages, but these words were unfamiliar.
The man on the cart saw her incomprehension. He leaned toward her and spoke carefully. “My name is Artur Zelig-Boggs, child. You must call me Artur.” She could not see much of his mouth because of the beard, but the corners of his eyes crinkled in a kindly fashion.
“Your horse is not a horse,” she said.
He raised his heavy black eyebrows in surprise. “Ach, but he is! Gort is a very goot horse!”
Lia reached out to touch the horse. Her fingers disappeared into its flank. She jerked her hand back.
“I’ve never seen a horse like that before!”
Artur chuckled. “You see his image. You will come with me and see him fleshwise, nu?” Artur patted the seat beside him.
Lia looked from Artur to the guards.
“Go,” said the guard on her left.
“What if I don’t want to?”
The guards did not reply, but she feared she knew the answer. If she refused to go with the Boggsian, the Medicants would take their payment in body parts. She took a step closer to the cart and touched the wheel. It felt real — a steel hoop shod in hard black rubber. The solidity of the wheel reassured her. Perhaps the Boggsian meant her no harm. He reached down. Lia grasped his thick hand and let him help her up onto the padded bench seat. He was, she thought, the largest man she had ever met.
Artur gave the reins a twitch. The cart moved forward. The wheels turned smoothly. A faint vibration rose up through the wooden seat. The not-horse moved its legs.
Artur guided the cart around a row of autos, then directed it back toward the exit. The guards stayed where they were, watching until the cart left the garage and rolled out of the building and onto the street.
Lia had given no thought to what might lie outside the Medicant hospital, so her reaction to the surrounding city was utter and complete amazement. The street they turned onto ran straight as an arrow through a walled canyon of nearly identical blocky buildings, hands of stories tall, all faced with a stonelike substance in gray, beige, and tan, all with windows of uniform size and shape. Each building had symbols affixed to its front. Lia suspected that the symbols represented numbers; she tried not to look at them. The street itself was several lanes of smooth gray concrete filled with humming, moving vehicles — mostly the same sort of autos she had seen parked inside the hospital build
ing, though some were larger. Artur calmly guided the horse and cart into the traffic stream. The autos shifted and slowed to make room for them. They settled into the right lane. Autos passed to the left, their occupants staring at them with open curiosity.
“Where are they all going?” Lia asked.
“They are shpatzirs,” said Artur. “They do not know where they go. That is why they hurry. To find out where they wish to be.”
“Where are we going?”
“We go to Harmony.” Artur gave the reins a shake. The horse abruptly accelerated its gait from a walk to a trot; after a heartbeat’s delay, the cart sped up as well.
“What makes us move?” Lia asked.
“The wind, child.”
Lia could feel no wind.
“Why did you buy me?” she asked.
“I did not buy you.”
“They said I was sold.”
“I give them bupkis; they give me you.”
“What is bupkis?”
“Nothing of value. A trinket. I make an even trade.” He winked at her.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“I am going to introduce you to Gort, who does not yet know he has already met you.”
“Gort is a real horse?”
“Indeed.” He gave her a sideways look. “You came here through a disko, nu?”
“A Gate.”
“Gate, disko, it is all the same. You are from a time yet to come.”
“I am a Pure Girl.”
“I thought as much.”
“You know other Pure Girls?”
“Some.”
“Are there Pure Girls where we are going?”
“Did you think you were the first?”
Lia felt her eyes heat up. She blinked, and a tear spilled down her cheek. Other Pure Girls lived here! She would not be alone.
They continued along the same street. The buildings became less uniform and their design more varied. Off to their left, Lia saw a large, pyramid-shaped structure. Several men were dragging a large block of stone up the steep sides on wooden rollers. A tingle of recognition shivered her spine.
“You see it, nu?” Artur twitched the reins; the cart moved to the side of the street and stopped.
