Last Year

by Robert Charles Wilson

  At the southern reach of Lookout was the Stadium of Tomorrow, a high wall of pineboard that blocked any view of the prairie. Here the gimcrack vendors gave way to restaurants and saloons. Where there were saloons there would of course be whorehouses, and some of the crude shacks on the side streets, sleepy in the sunlight, looked as if they might conduct that business after dark.

  Onslow’s Unusual Items was a small storefront situated between a tavern and a magic-lantern theater. Jesse and Elizabeth slowed as they passed it, but they needed to agree on a strategy before they went in. “Let’s take in the show,” Elizabeth suggested.

  “The magic lanterns?”

  “The Stadium of Tomorrow. It seems to be where everybody’s headed.”

  “It’s a cheat,” Jesse said. “I’ve heard all about it. It’s just stacked bleachers facing south. All you get for your nickel is some patter and a look at the airship when it flies over.”

  “A place to sit and talk,” she said.

  He shrugged. It was the City’s dime, not his.

  * * *

  “Money back if the flying machine don’t show,” the ticket seller told them. An easy promise to make: It was a rare day the City helicopter didn’t fly, weather permitting, and the weather today was fine. “Entertainment starts in a few minutes.”

  They headed for the less desirable seats, where the crowd was thinner and they could speak without fear of being overheard. A peanut vendor wandered past, and Jesse bought a bag for himself and one for Elizabeth. If she didn’t want her portion he would eat it himself. But she accepted the bag with only a brief dubious look. He guessed roasted peanuts were unlikely to be dusted with poison or infected with deadly diseases, even in 1876. She ate from her portion unselfconsciously—like a man, Jesse thought—brushing shell fragments from her billowing dress with the back of her hand.

  “So here’s what we know,” she said. “The would-be assassin bought a Glock here in town. He was working solo, without partners or connections, so the weapon probably came from a novelty vendor like Onslow. The question is, how does the vendor lay his hands on an automatic pistol?”

  Jesse thought about it. “Most of the goods in these shops are lost items or copies of lost items, like that Shining book. Supposedly, the merchandise comes from tour groups. You put a hundred or two hundred City people on a train to New York or San Francisco, lodge them for a week, carry them back—they’re bound to leave a few things in the Pullman car or the hotel room. At least that’s the story I’ve heard.” City management was aware of the trade and for the most part had ignored it.

  “So someone like Onslow,” Elizabeth said, “must get his goods from a City employee, or someone with access to a City employee.”

  “That’s a whole lot of people, though, and lots of them are local hires. Railroad porters, hotel staff, coachmen—”

  “What if Onslow decides he’s tired of fencing two-bit castoffs? He knows he can sell anything that’s authentically City, way more than he can get his hands on. He might figure he’d be better off with a steady supply—someone on the inside feeding him a little of this and a little of that, in quantity and on a predictable schedule.”

  Horses and riders marched out onto the parade grounds of the Stadium of Tomorrow for the warm-up show. The riders wore spangly red-white-and-blue uniforms and put their mounts through some synchronized rearing and prancing. A brass band played “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” and the audience gave back a tepid round of applause.

  “It would affect the nature of his stock,” Jesse said. “It wouldn’t be random, and it wouldn’t necessarily be the kind of thing that people tend to leave behind.”

  “So we need to see his stock.”

  “Onslow might be reluctant to show us. If he has a source inside the City, he’ll know all about the attempt on Grant. If we’re too obvious, he’ll play dumb. But he’s a businessman,” Jesse said, “and if he scents cash, he’s bound to show us something.”

  It was almost noon. The horse show came to a desultory conclusion. The parade grounds cleared. There was a wooden tower to the left of the bleachers, and a man in nautical garb climbed to its highest point, a sort of crow’s nest, where he trained a theatrically huge brass telescope on the southern horizon. Down on the ground, in what would have been the center ring if this had been an actual circus, a master of ceremonies in a claw-hammer coat addressed the crowd through a megaphone. Something about how the people in the bleachers were about to witness an “indisputable miracle of the future,” meanwhile consulting a pocket watch on a chain and glancing at the tower, where the man with the telescope eventually rang a bell and shouted, “Airship ho!”

  The crowd grew hushed with anticipation. Elizabeth leaned toward Jesse’s ear and said, “That was pretty fucked up last night. The way you were yelling. Maybe we should talk about it.”

  “No,” Jesse said, horrified.

  The helicopter appeared first as a mote on the southern horizon, small as a blown leaf but remarkable for the precision of the curve it etched against the blue September sky. It seemed to increase in size as it approached, and the noise of it increased in step until it rattled the bleachers, thunder with a clockwork rhythm in it. At its closest approach the airship hovered in midair for all to admire. Then it darted at the audience, deft as a steel dragonfly.

  “That’s Vijay,” Elizabeth said. “The pilot. Showing off. He can’t resist a crowd.”

  Jesse guessed the people in the bleachers believed they had got their money’s worth. Some of the women covered their eyes or clutched their husbands’ arms, pleased and terrified in equal parts; some of the men cringed into their seats. For an interminable moment, tons of screaming steel hung suspended above their heads. Then the airship veered away.

  Elizabeth was still talking into Jesse’s ear, shouting to make herself heard: “We call it PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I mean, I’m not diagnosing you, and you can tell me it’s none of my business. But it’s nothing I haven’t seen before, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “You think I have some kind of disease?”

  “I’m a veteran—I know lots of people who are dealing with PTSD.”

  “Is your husband one of them?”

  It was an ugly remark and he regretted it immediately. But she only blinked and said, “Actually, yeah.”

  The helicopter flew to the south. Before a minute had passed it was almost invisible, a dark comet carving the blue meridian.

  “I’m sorry,” Jesse said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “Let’s go see Onslow,” Elizabeth said.

  * * *

  He had almost let himself forget that Elizabeth was a married woman—whatever that meant to women of her time.

  It wasn’t that Jesse cherished any illusions about the sanctity of marriage. He had learned about the hypocrisy of married men at an early age. And it wasn’t that he was attracted to Elizabeth, in the romantic sense. Of course he’d noticed that she was attractive, for a woman of her unusual height and strength. But she was out of bounds. She was Tower One. Her marriage was none of his business … any more than his night terrors were any business of hers.

  Still, now that she had reminded him of it, he couldn’t help wondering about her life in the twenty-first century. As hard as it was to picture her as a soldier, it was harder still to picture her as a soldier’s wife, the wife of a soldier who woke at dawn with the echo of a scream in his ears. The way she had clasped Jesse’s hands, he realized, had been a sort of medical intervention, kindly but impersonal, like a nurse binding a wound.

  There was much he didn’t know about her.

  They walked into Onslow’s Unusual Items like a pair of tourists, giddy from the helicopter show. Jesse looked around as the shopkeeper—presumably Onslow—waited on another customer. The large front room of the shop was walled with shelves and stocked with the same kind of merchandise every other such store in Futurity Station sold. If Onslow had something better to offer, he didn’
t keep it in plain view. All that distinguished Onslow from any other vendor on Lookout Street was his girth (generous) and the plain straw boater he tipped to his female customers. His chin was clean shaven, but his sideburns were making a determined march on it. His eyes were narrow and calculating.

  The bell over the door tinkled as Onslow’s previous customer left. Onslow turned to Jesse and said, “How can I help you?”

  Elizabeth, as they had arranged, remained at the far end of the store so Jesse could speak freely. He mentioned the name of the store they had visited on Depot.

  “I know the place,” Onslow said. “Did you buy the book in the window?”

  “A copy of it,” Jesse said. “But don’t tell my wife.”

  Onslow grinned and touched a finger to the side of his nose. “If that’s the sort of thing you want, you’ve come to the right place. Genuine editions or copies as you prefer and can afford. Harry Potter. Fifty Shades of Grey. The works of Lee Child—”

  “Thank you, but I already have a book. I’m interested in something more substantial.”

  “A display piece? A watch, say? Something electrical? Such things don’t come cheap, as I’m sure you know.”

  “Well, I haven’t thought it through. What can you offer me?”

  “Do you have a price in mind?”

  Jesse gave a number that seemed excessive even for the successful businessman he was pretending to be. He hoped it wouldn’t make Onslow suspicious. In fact it had the opposite effect. Onslow said, “That rules out the more spectacular items.”

  “I might be convinced to go slightly higher—what do you call spectacular?”

  Onslow unlocked a drawer, took out a rectangular object of glass and plastic and placed it on the counter. Jesse recognized it as what Elizabeth would call a smartphone. Tower One guests carried them. He feigned ignorance. “It’s not very large. What does it do?”

  “It does more than you can imagine.” Onslow touched a button. Instantly, images welled up on the screen of the device. “It makes pictures that move and speak. It plays music. It can even add and subtract.”

  Elizabeth stopped pretending not to overhear and joined them. Onslow repeated his description of the device. She turned to Jesse and said, “Why, that’s marvelous! Can it possibly do what the man says?”

  Here was another interesting fact about Elizabeth, her ability to lie without blushing. “I don’t know. I suppose it can.”

  “It almost seems alive. Is it alive? I mean to say, will it work this way forever? Or does it need some kind of fuel?”

  “That’s a fine question, Mrs.—”

  “Cullum,” Elizabeth said promptly.

  “A fine question, Mrs. Cullum. On its own, no, it would not work indefinitely. But its functions can be restored with this.” He took another device from a different drawer, a glassy wafer with a wire dangling from it. “You attach the wire like so, and put this under sunlight for an hour or two.”

  “Sunlight?”

  “Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “It fuels itself with sunlight? How is that possible?”

  “I don’t pretend to understand it, Mrs. Cullum. I can tell you what it does, and I can tell you how to make it do what it does, but I’m as ignorant as an infant regarding its works.”

  “Have you sold many of these?”

  “Just a few. They’re scarce, as you can imagine.”

  Jesse said, “It’s a costly item.”

  “I’m sure it must be! Has Mr. Onslow mentioned a price?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “In that case, Mr. Onslow, would you excuse us while I talk this over with my husband?”

  “Of course.”

  Out of earshot, Elizabeth said, “This pretty much nails him.”

  “Does it? How so? The device is something a tourist might have lost, isn’t it? There’s nothing to say he got it directly from the City.”

  “The device, sure, but not the charger. The City makes sure its guests have access to electrical power everywhere they go. The City hotels in New York and San Francisco run generators around the clock—even the City’s Pullman cars are electrified. Nobody needs to bring a solar charger through the Mirror, and nobody does.”

  “So we shouldn’t buy it?”

  “Waste of money.”

  “We ought to buy something,” Jesse said, “if only to keep up the charade.”

  He went back to the counter and looked wistfully at the phone. Onslow said, “Have you come to a decision?”

  “Is the price negotiable?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  “In that case, can we see something a little less costly?”

  Onslow was visibly disappointed. “There’s an assortment of simple goods in the drawers at the side. All individually priced. You’re welcome to look.”

  It was a chilly invitation, but Jesse dutifully open one of the drawers Onslow had pointed out.

  His eyes widened.

  The drawer was full of Oakley sunglasses in plastic wrappers.

  “I’ll take one of these,” he said.

  * * *

  They went back to the dining room of the Excelsior for their evening meal. The room was crowded tonight. A dozen or more press men, in town for Grant’s visit, filled the air with cigar smoke and forced levity, but Jesse managed to secure a reasonably private table in a darkened corner. He ordered mutton stew with a side of boiled onions; Elizabeth ordered roast beef. A waiter drew the curtains and lit lamps as sunset colored the sky.

  “We don’t know for sure if it was Onslow who supplied the pistol,” Elizabeth said, “but we can be fairly sure he has connections inside the City. So we need to look at the supply side, any City employees Onslow might have had contact with. I’ll call Barton tonight and let him know what we found out.”

  “It’s a different town after dark,” Jesse said, “when the shops close and the saloons open up. It would be easy enough to follow Onslow, see who crosses his path.”

  “I guess we could do that.”

  “Not we,” Jesse corrected her. “A respectable woman would be out of place in the kind of establishment Onslow is likely to frequent.”

  “I’m respectable now?”

  He smiled and said, “In a dim light you’d pass.”

  “So what are you suggesting?”

  “I can scout the south end of town while you talk to the City.”

  “Uh-huh. Or you could just go out and get drunk.”

  “I could get drunk and hire a loose woman and come back with my pants on sideways, but is that really what you imagine I mean to do?”

  She laughed. “I guess not.”

  At least she gives me the benefit of the doubt, Jesse thought. “I’m sorry I raised the subject of your husband, back at the helicopter show. It’s none of my business and I shouldn’t have presumed.”

  “Are you curious about my husband?”

  He didn’t know how to answer that.

  She said, “His name’s Javiar. I met him in high school. He dreamed about doing something big, like becoming a doctor, but he was a west Charlotte kid with all the baggage. We enlisted about the same time. Nineteen years old, both of us, we got married at city hall and signed up a month later, how crazy is that? I ended up in signals intelligence, but Javiar was infantry. Multiple tours. After we mustered out it seemed like we had a chance. I got a job with Riptide, that’s a security company that hires a lot of vets. Javiar hired on, too, and that was okay for a while, but he didn’t last. They eventually fired him for not showing up, or for showing up drunk, some combination of the two. So I was the breadwinner, and we had Gabby by then.”

  “Gabby?”

  “Our daughter. Gabriella. When Javiar got bored with looking for work he took up with some of his old friends. Who were mostly petty criminals. Breaking and entering, low-end drug dealing. He was happy to spend my paychecks but he resented having to ask me for them. He got angry. Often. He finally saw somebody at the VA hospital, got diagnosed
with PTSD. Okay, you don’t know what that means—it’s something that happens to people who’ve had some kind of shocking or terrifying experience. Humiliating for these guys who come back from the front and suddenly they can’t sleep through the night, can’t think straight, get in fights, drink, do drugs, maybe end up on the street or in jail. So I tried to nurse Javiar through it. Talk him down when he woke up screaming. Tolerate his fits of anger. I drove him to the hospital and I made sure he kept his appointments. All that. But.”

  Jesse waited as she took a sip of water.

  “But he was out of control. It wasn’t just the PTSD. I think PTSD just opened the door to something that was inside him long before he enlisted. It got to where he was obviously dangerous, not just to me but to Gabby. He fired a gun in the house.”

  “Is that why he went to prison?”

  “They took him on multiple charges, including a botched drug deal where he pushed a guy into a wall and broke his hip. But I testified against him in court. Because by then it was clear to me that Javiar wanted to hurt us, and that he would hurt us, or try to, sooner or later. I wanted him behind bars long enough to get Gabby and me to a safe place. Which is why I’m at the City, actually. The City’s security service offered me a pretty generous contract. It means I’m away from Gabby for months at a time, which is bad, and it means my mother is caring for Gabby while I’m in 1876, which I’m not real happy about. But at the end of my tour I get a paycheck big enough to take us out of North Carolina altogether. Divorce, name change, new job. That’s my plan.”

  Jesse was too startled to say more than, “I see.”