A Place so Foreign
Page 9
then, but it would be 75 in my mind forever. Under the dome, GreaterSalt Lake was warm and tranquil. I saw boys my age scooting around in jet-packs,dodging hover-traffic.
Pa liked to open a big, square window when he came home, and sit in his easychair and smoke a stinky cigar and read the paper and cluck over it -- "Well,well, well," he'd say, and "How _about_ that?" Sometimes, he'd have a tumbler ofwhiskey. He'd given me some, once, and the stuff had burned like turpentine andI swore I wouldn't try it again for a long, long time.
I sat in Pa's easy chair and snapped up the newspaper, the way he used to."Panorama," I said, and Pa's square window opened before me. "Whiskey," I said,and "Cigar," because I was never one for half-measures. The robutler trundledover to me with a tumbler and a White Owl in its hover-field. I plucked themout. Cautiously, I put the cigar between my lips. The robutler extruded a long,snaky arm with a flame, and lit it. I took a deep puff, and coughedconvulsively. Unthinking, I took a gulp of whiskey. I felt like my lungs hadturned inside-out.
I finished both the whiskey and the cigar before I got up, taking cautious puffsand tiny sips, forcing myself.
My head swam, and nausea nearly drowned me. I staggered into the WC, and hung myhead in the oubliette for an eternity, but nothing was coming up. I moved intomy old bedroom and splayed out on my bed, watching the ceiling spin. "Lights," Imanaged to croak, and the room went dark.
#
When I woke in the morning, the walls were at half-opacity, the normal 0700schedule, and I dragged myself out of bed.
The robutler had extruded the table and set out my breakfast, ham and eggs and abig bulb of milk. One look at it sent me over the edge, and I left a trail ofsick all the way to the WC.
When I was done, I was as wrung-out as a washcloth. My head pounded. Therobutler was quietly cleaning up my mess. I started to order it to clear awaybreakfast, but discovered that I was miraculously hungry. I ate everything onthe table and seconds, besides, and had the robutler juice my temples and clearaway my headache. I dialed the walls to full transparency, and watched thetraffic go by.
The robutler maneuvered itself into my field of vision and flashed a clock onits chest-plate: 0800 0800 0800. It was my old school-alarm. It snapped me backto reality. My Mama was going to whip me raw! She must've been worried sick.
I stood up and ran for the door. It was closed. I punched my code into itspanel, and waited. Nothing happened. I calmed myself and punched it again. Stillnothing. After trying it a hundred times, I convinced myself that it had beenchanged.
I summoned the robutler and asked it for the code. Its chest-panel lit up: BADPROGRAM.
That's when I started to really worry. I was near to tears when I remembered theemergency override. I punched it in.
Nothing happened.
I think I started crying around then. I was stuck in 1975!
#
I'm not a stupid little kid. I didn't spend much time pewling. Instead, I wentto the phone and dialed the police. The screen stayed blank. Feeling like I wasin a dream, I went to the teleporter and dialed for my old school and steppedin. I failed to teleport.
Reality sank in.
All outside services to the apartment had been shut off when we moved out. Theonly things that still worked were the ones that ran off our reactor, a squatarmoured 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 toapprove any passage.
I thought about sitting tight and waiting. Mama would be sick with worry, andwould check the barn eventually and see the shot bolts. She'd speak to MrJohnstone, who would send a telegram to Paris, and they would relay the messageto 1975, and _voila_, I'd be rescued. I'd get the whipping of my life, and doextra chores until I was seventy, but it was better than starving to death afterthe 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 wasspoked into had a supply of escape-jumpers, single-use jet-packs with a simpletransponder that screamed for help on all the emergency channels. I could rideone of these down into Greater Salt Lake, wait for the police. The more Ithought about this plan, the better it sounded. Better, anyway, than sittingaround like a fairytale princess, waiting for rescue. In my mind, I was therescuing 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 jumpsuitthat looked like it would fit me, and suited up. The packed whined as it poweredup and ran through its diagnostics. I checked the idiot-lights to make sure theywere all green, feeling like a real man of action, then I stepped into theexterior lock and jumped, arms and legs streamlined, toes pointed.
The jet-pack coughed to life and kicked me gently, then started lowering me tothe ground. The emergency beacon's idiot-light came on, and I heaved a sigh ofrelief and got comfortable.
The flight was peaceful and dreamlike, a slow descent over the gleaming metalcity. I was so engrossed with the view that I didn't see the packjackers untilthey were already on me. They hit me high and low, two kids about my age withtricked-out custom jet-packs with their traffic beacons broken off. One snaggedmy knees and hugged them to his chest, while the other took me at the armpits. Avoice shouted in my ear: "I'm cutting your pack loose. This is a very, verysharp knife, and when I'm done, I'll be the only thing holding you up. _Don'tsquirm_."
I didn't even have the chance to squirm. By the time the speech was finished, Iwas separated from my pack, and I spun over upside-down, and watched it continueits descent, straps dangling in the wind. My hair hung down, and blood filled myhead, reawakening my headache. Reflexively, I twisted to get a look at mykidnappers, but stopped immediately as I felt their grips loosen. I squeezed myeyes shut and prayed.
The three of us dove fast and hard, and I tasted that second helping ofbreakfast again before we leveled off. I risked a peek, then squeezed my eyesshut again. We were speeding through the lower levels of Greater Salt Lake, theunmanned freight corridors, impossibly claustrophobic, and at our speed,dangerous.
We cornered tightly so many times that I lost count, and then we slowed to astop. They dumped me to the ground, steel traction-plate. The wind was knockedout 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 onewho'd warned me about squirming. Hearing his voice a second time, I realisedthat he was younger than I was, maybe ten or eleven. Even then, it didn't occurto me to fight back -- he had a knife sharp enough to cut through the safetystrapping on my pack.
"Clothes. I'm from 1898 -- my Pa's an ambassador. I don't have any money." Istruggled 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 enoughthat I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. Small hands pressed into myeyes. "No peeking, now."
Another set of hands systematically rifled my coat and pants, then cut themloose and gave the same treatment to my underpants and shirt. I blushed as theywere 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 backhome, and then the hands were gone. I looked up just in time to see two smallfigures jetting away upwards.
I was naked, sitting on a catwalk above a freight corridor, three-quarters of acentury and God-knew-how-many miles from home. I didn't cry. I was too worriedto cry. I kicked my ruined clothes down into the freight corridor and pulled onthe 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 withsweat and my headache had returned.
Foot
traffic was light, but what there was pretty frightening. I'd gone walkingin 75 before of course, but Greater Salt Lake was a big place, and there wereparts 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 beenpainted around to look like surprised mouths, or eyes, or, in one fascinatingcase, a woman's private parts. Mostly, they were betting shops, or bars, orlow-rent bounceaterias. Even in 1975, the Saints had some influence in SaltLake, and the bars and brothels were pretty shameful places, where norespectable person would be caught.
The other pedestrians on the street were mostly off-worlders, either spacers inuniform 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 myeyes down, except when I was