by Ian Whates
She should have known better.
“‘All day’ is what we owe the past,” Hsia said in a prim little voice.
Kimber hadn’t thought there could be someone on the planet more annoying than Ambra, but Hsia had proven that theory wrong in less than two hours.
And that alone made Kimber want to finish this meeting. She turned to Hsia.
“I think you’re right,” Kimber said to her. “We owe the past a great deal. Perhaps you can set up this international committee? It will take a grant or two to establish, and someone – perhaps Dr. McKinty here – will need to set up the research guidelines, but I think it’s necessary.”
“What about you?” Hsia asked, her eyes bright. She probably saw the forward momentum of her entire career in this one assignment. “This is your idea, after all.”
Kimber nodded. “It is, and I’d be happy to sit on the committee if you need me. Otherwise, I’d prefer to let someone else take point on this. I’m almost six months behind on my research, and I’d like to finish before the year’s out.”
Everyone else chimed in about the state of their own research, and Kimber tuned out.
She had done what she could, hadn’t she? After all, did she owe history a debt? Was history an entity that actually could be owed a debt? Or was it simply a construct that many people refused to believe in?
Like ghosts.
5.
“I THINK THIS is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
John F. Kennedy
Remarks at a dinner honoring
Nobel Prize winners of the Western Hemisphere
April 29, 1962
KIMBER NEVER SPOKE the word “séance” again, but she did think it, and in the most unlikely place. Or perhaps it was too likely.
For she was in the White House dining room designed by Thomas Jefferson, with its circular shelves that turned with the touch of a spring. The shelves really worked the way the history books said they would: covered dishes, filled with the finest food, prepared under the supervision of steward Etienne Lemaire, hid in each cabinet, so that the notoriously private Jefferson could dine alone.
In his own time, Jefferson’s public meals had been famous, written up in every single journal, and by many guests – particularly female guests, who had no idea that the Third President of the United States had a live-in lover who was also his slave. The entire country thought him an eligible bachelor.
Time travel, Living History, whatever anyone wanted to call it, had proven that Jefferson and Sally Hemings had indeed been intimate, and that Hemings did indeed look like her white half-sister, Jefferson’s late wife, Martha.
But those things hadn’t interested Kimber, at least not when she had made her grant proposal. She wanted to recreate the meals, the recipes, write about the grand conversations, once thought lost to time.
And she also wanted to know if Jefferson truly did dine alone, like John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, used to imagine.
Kimber had planned this trip for a long, long time. She’d researched the schedule, looked at guest diaries, researched the weather, and figured if Jefferson would ever dine alone it would be on this night. So she went back, to see not just the dining room, but the meal itself, and what he read while eating – if he read anything.
Instead, she found herself beside his chair, looking at one of the handsomest men to ever sit in the White House – red-headed, freckled, with a friendly face and lively blue eyes, more than six feet tall, and without an ounce of fat on a frame that was “straight as a gun barrel” (as Edmund Bacon once described him).
The table, like the shelves, was circular and, at this moment, littered with almonds and cut apples, an empty claret glass to one side, and some warm tea steaming near an open book.
The candles in the chandelier burned low, so another candle sat near the book itself, illuminating the text.
But Jefferson wasn’t looking at the book. He was staring at the other side of the table as if he saw people. His face had paled and his lips were parted. He said nothing.
Kimber followed his gaze, and saw half a dozen Jeffersonian scholars, her colleagues and rivals, all staring at Jefferson as if expecting him to say something profound.
She could see them, but they didn’t seem to notice her. Could she see them because she had expected them? Or had she conjured them herself like a medium at a séance?
She bowed her head, then cursed softly.
It was all gone for her now, the feeling of discovery, of aloneness, of scholarship. Now she truly felt like she was invading someone’s privacy.
All Thomas Jefferson wanted to do on this evening – on that evening, now hundreds of years in the past – was dine alone.
He had failed at that. And he had an inkling that he had failed.
He smiled a little sardonically, picked up his claret glass and peered at it in the manner of a man who thought he had had too much.
Then he shook his head and returned to his book.
Kimber let out a small breath. She wanted to ask his forgiveness, but she didn’t dare speak to him. What if her voice remained in the room, like poor Mr. Burns’ voice had?
She didn’t need this part of the White House to be haunted by a perpetual sorry attitude. Not that it probably would have, considering. After all, the British would burn this section of the building to the ground in less than a decade.
Still, she couldn’t resist. She looked at Jefferson’s bowed head, and mouthed her apology, realizing the apology wasn’t just to him, but to all residents of this magnificent house.
Because it would become – it already was – the most haunted place in America.
And she now knew she had contributed to its growing collection of ghosts.
BONDS
ROBERT REED
Robert Reed is the author of eleven novels and a big quivering mass of shorter works. His novella, “A Billion Eves”, won the Hugo in 2007. Reed is now at work on a trilogy of narrow novels set in his Marrow/Great Ship universe. The first book, now titled The Slayer’s Son, should be published in mid-2013 from Prime Books. The author lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with his wife and daughter.
The Article
AN INTESTINAL AILMENT led to post-surgical complications, and the young man had to spend three or four months in a long-term care facility. Or it was a sick gall bladder and half a year of recovery. Or the patient began with a sexual correction or enhancement and perhaps has never fully recovered. There must be a true story, and maybe it is illuminating. But Desmond Allegato seems to prefer opacity and rumor. The only detail common to every account is Havenwood – a small private institution where the twenty-five-year-old language arts student could heal in peace, contemplating life and his place in a universe awash with profound forces and tiny people.
Havenwood is famous for its professional, trustworthy staff. Desmond Allegato’s case has never been discussed by any employee, present or past. But that seamless secrecy allows pretenders to step forward, each claiming to have been a patient during the right months, and to have met the genius long before he defined our century.
As a rule, you can spot liars and charlatans; they are ones full of self-affirming details.
The casual, inadequate witness rarely gets much of an audience. But they are the most reliable voices to us. Those people describe a handsome but dangerously skinny, very pale young man. Most never knew his name. Desmond took his meals in a room that he shared with an old laptop. His days and long evenings were spent playing first-person shooter games and FreeCell. Nobody remembers visiting family or friends, though it was understood that he was riding his parents’ health insurance. On those rare occasions when he emerged from his quarters, the gaunt youngster spent his breath complaining about the awful food and his cheap computer and how poor he was, and bored, and if only there was some way to
make fat money fast.
These are the stories that appeal to a cynical, scientifically schooled audience. Allegato is our shared obsession, and we have a favorite story – an anecdote that broke while The Bonds That Free became a runaway bestseller. An elderly gentleman was living in a nursing home. His family was visiting when a stock photo of Allegato appeared on Fox News, and he announced that he knew that face. Then after pulling together his thoughts, he explained how he met “the kid” at Havenwood. They were neighbors and shared a nurse, some middle-aged black gal, and thinking about the nurse brought a wide, appreciative smile.
It seems their nurse had quite a few things to say on the subject of Allegato. “Mr. Locked Away,” as she called him. She never offered medical details, but she insisted that he was an odd broken child, and broken in ways no doctor could fix. Mr. Locked Away didn’t want people. He preferred to sit alone, which was unnatural. The boy didn’t have one friend in the world, and that’s what he deserved. And while every patient had his sickness and his special burdens, that idiot white boy was in such a miserable place, and he didn’t even know it.
Then came a morning when some unspecified incident put her over the brink. Entering the old man’s room, she announced that she’d had enough of Mr. Locked Away. Several years later, sitting with his daughters and grandchildren, the witness described how the nurse railed against the waste of being alone so much, never being touched in good ways. Then she stopped talking. Which was an unusual event, he mentioned. Silence was peculiar. The nurse worked quickly with him, and then, glancing at the time, she broke into a dreamy smile, and he asked what she was thinking, and that’s when she winked in a conspiratorial fashion.
“I’ve got a fix,” she said. “I know just how.” And with that, she returned to Allegato’s room.
The old man made a few assumptions. He didn’t confess his state of mind, not with the little grandkids sitting close, but he had made no secret of liking his nurse, particularly her “well-built” qualities. It was easy to imagine his mind – a frank firm woman in her forties would seem like a wish answered, and there sat that eighty year-old fellow with his new knee and happy visions about what was happening down the hall. His hearing wasn’t the best, but he listened. He thought he heard voices and then he definitely heard something fall, and that was followed by larger crunching sounds. An attendant jogged past the room. Another door opened. Then the Allegato kid was shouting about the unfairness and why did she do that, and the nurse said she was sorry but accidents happen. Except Allegato would have none of that. “Then why did you pick it up and throw it down a second time, if it was a damned accident?”
More attendants arrived. The nurse was standing in the hallway, telling her supervisor how sorry she was and she would replace the machine.
From his room, Allegato cried out, “When?”
“When you listen to what I’ve been telling you,” she said. And with that she walked away, not smiling but definitely proud, her posture full of certainty, her fine full chest carried up high where it belonged.
TWO DAYS LATER, the kid had a new laptop and the hallway had a new nurse, and the incident was officially closed. And two days after that, our favorite witness happened to shuffle past his neighbor’s room and found the door opened. The kid was working with his new computer. He usually played idiot games, but not today. He was writing, displaying the swift competent typing of a professional student.
“What’s the project?” the old man asked.
Allegato had fine features and black hair, and whatever his ailment, he was beginning to regain weight and strength. “I’m writing an article,” he said. “It’s going to make me money.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I’m a very good writer,” the kid said, eyes focused on the screen.
“That’s great,” the old man said, not caring one way or another. Then after a long silence, he asked, “So what’s your article about?”
“Something occurred to me the other day.” No mention was made of altercations or reassigned nurses. “You just think we’re living in different rooms. But then I realized that we aren’t.”
“Aren’t what?”
A mysterious smile broke out. “Apart,” Allegato said.
“We’re not?”
“Not ever.”
“So we’re joined somehow? Is that it?”
“Yeah, there this bond between us,” the kid said.
It seemed like a singularly silly notion, and the old man giggled, which didn’t offend anyone because nobody else seemed to be listening. And then he asked, “Do you really believe that?”
“Hell no. But that’s what I’m claiming.” And then Allegato finally glanced at his neighbor, and their last conversation ended with a simple request.
“Shut the door on your way out.”
The Bonds that Free
THE ARTICLE WAS published but only barely—a short-lived web magazine offered Desmond a hundred dollars for the honor and then paid him nothing. But among its few readers was a jobless editor/minor author/amateur psychologist named Clarence Parcy. Where most people found nut-cake baked from obscure reasoning, Parcy saw one grand idea begging to be domesticated. An exaggerated resumé and promises of a book deal helped him meet the young author. Allegato proved to be a self-serious, aloof lad with no charm but an inflated and very useful ambition. Promises were made. A partnership was forged, and the next five years were spent building the future bestseller. Because the public wanted an expert, the author had to acquire an advanced degree. Desmond earned two quick literary doctorates from online universities. Because a serious professional needed a serious job, the young doctor formed the Chicago Institute of Interpersonal Bonding and Love – an incorporated endeavor that filled one corner of his bedroom. Because science lives on research, he and his mentor devised dozens of web surveys, dangling the possibility of cash in exchange for a moment of the world’s time. Mountains of data were given away for free. A small portion of those files were massaged to create charts and graphs, while the comments sections were dredged for tales of personal woe and adoration. And because the first goal of any genuine professional is to practice his craft, Dr. Allegato gave a series of lectures and little workshops, teaching select audiences about his extremely new theory about the nature of human beings and how vivid, living connections tie all of us together.
Those were the venues where Allegato mentioned his undefined surgery and the long, illuminating recovery. He brought notes but never referred to them, speaking from memory as the PowerPoint show churned past. Every participant signed an agreement not to record the important, confidential material. Only one authenticated video log survived until today. In it, the speaker looks older than his years, the wardrobe and gray dye in the black hair creating the portrait of the wise professor who had been through much and who might know what he was talking about. Despite a relentless smile, Allegato seemed remote, even chilly. Presumably that was why Parcy sat in the audience. A heavy-set man in his sixties, Parcy had a winner’s grin and an infectious manner that couldn’t be taught. No one ever remembers Allegato mentioning his associate. The two men in the video act as if they don’t know each other. Parcy is a nameless character sitting near the front of the rented hall, intrigued by every word and every chart, lifting his hand high whenever the group energy diminishes.
“Yes, sir,” Allegato says in the recording. Pointing off screen, he asks, “Do you have a question, sir?”
“No, just a comment.” The shaky phone-camera pans right. Parcy takes a moment to look back at the audience, making sure everyone feels involved. “I did some checking, sir,” he begins. “I can tell you’re smarter than me, and goodness knows, I don’t have half your education. And I’m sure this is all very obvious to you, this business of bonds forming around distinct personality types. But what do these bonds mean? And how can I use them in my life?”
“That’s more than a comment,” Allegato points out. “Those sound suspiciously like questions to me.”
Parcy breaks into a delightful laugh, dragging the audience into his pleasure. “I guess you’re right, sir.”
A smattering of laughter has to die away. Then with a tone both caring and a little wary, Allegato asks, “Do you have children, sir?”
“One son, yes.”
That happened to be true.
Allegato nods. “And are you close to him?”
“Very close, yes.”
“So that’s your son sitting beside you?”
His ‘son’ is a sleepy fellow in his seventies who looks up in surprise.
The lecture hall fills with hard laughter. Parcy is still giggling when he says, “No, no. Brad lives in Arizona, with his wife and twins.”
“But you said you were close to him,” Allegato says.
“Yes.” Parcy frowns and looks at his hands. “Oh, wait. I understand. I’m not talking about Brad. I’m talking about the bond between us.”
“Because that’s what is real to you.”
The audience shifts in the chairs, whispering.
“That’s not to say your boy is inconsequential.” Allegato needs a pointed finger to underscore the implications. “The human species acts like a very complicated molecule. And what is a molecule? It is a mixture of elements, some similar and some very different, all linked together by powerful, powerful bonds. For instance, hydrogen is an elemental gas that burns. Oxygen is an element that supports burning. Yet the molecule born from that fire is water. Hydrogen and oxygen are still present, but what we see is a delicious essential liquid composed of the bonds between these most common ingredients.”
The audience probably doesn’t understand the concept, such as it is. But the air fills with interested noises and whispered questions.
Parcy nods, seemingly ready to surrender the stage.
