Last Year

by Robert Charles Wilson

  Not that it had saved him, in the end.

  “Do you think less of him for that?”

  Jesse was puzzled by the question. “Think less of him for what?”

  “Dodging the war. Not doing his bit for the Union. Or the Confederacy or whatever.”

  “His sentiments were Union, but he lived in New Orleans. He was smart to get away.”

  “As opposed to cowardly.”

  “What would you have had him do, Elizabeth? Abandon me and Phoebe in a New Orleans parlor house and head north to enlist?”

  “Who’s Phoebe?”

  He had spoken without thinking. “My sister,” he admitted.

  “Younger, older?”

  “Younger.”

  Phoebe had been just two years old when they began the journey to California. She had slept through the storms as blissfully as if the swells were God’s way of rocking her cradle. Briefly, Jesse had hated her for it.

  “What about your mother?”

  “She died delivering me, just as Phoebe’s mother died delivering Phoebe.”

  Elizabeth blanched.

  Jesse said, “I suppose women never die in childbirth, where you come from.”

  “Not the way yours do.”

  “And you’ll hand it over to us next year, I suppose, the medical knowledge that protects your mothers and infants.”

  “I guess so.”

  “And I guess we thank you. Though I can’t help wondering how many women and children must have died while you waited.”

  That sounded harsher than he meant it to. Jesse regretted the words, but Elizabeth didn’t answer, and he saw by the tilt of her head that she was listening to the sounds coming through the open window: passing carriages, the chiming of the railway station’s big clock. Top of the hour. A stilling of voices. High noon. Right about now, down at the bottom of Lookout Street in the Stadium of Tomorrow, the barker would be finishing his spiel about the wonders of the future, the sailor in the lookout tower would be aiming his theatrical telescope at the southern horizon.

  Elizabeth caught Jesse’s eye, acknowledging a shared secret. She had talked to Vijay, the helicopter pilot. Vijay had agreed to fly a different route today, west and south of Futurity Station. The customers on Marcus Frane’s sun-beaten bleachers might catch a glimpse of a dark speck moving against the horizon, but that was all they would see.

  “Now we wait,” Jesse said.

  * * *

  Frane’s response came in the form of an anonymous note delivered after sunset to the front desk of the Excelsior:

  The man you want is Isaac Connaught he drives a coach from the city he is Onslows man.

  “Awesome,” Elizabeth said. “Nice work. With any luck we can head back to the City tomorrow. I’ll call Barton and let him know.”

  “Do that,” Jesse said. “I’m going out.”

  “Going out for what?”

  “Some business of my own.”

  “What business?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I don’t know. Should I?”

  “I’ll be back by midnight,” Jesse said.

  * * *

  He made his way to the brothel where he had met Heddie Finch the night before, dodging the drunks who loitered outside the saloons. He knocked at the door and made it a point to smile when the doorman opened up.

  My old job, Jesse thought. He knew it was important to state his business as succinctly as possible. “I’m not a customer,” he said. “I’ve come to see Heddie Finch.”

  The doorman was untypically short for his calling, but he made up for it with his enormous width. He looked like a boulder balanced on a pair of bowling pins. “She ain’t here.”

  “That’s all right. I just want to talk, but I’ll pay the going rate if I have to. I’m an old acquaintance of hers.”

  “Good for you. But she still ain’t here. Plenty of other girls, though. Come in and take your pick, or move along—one or the other.”

  Jesse was inclined to believe the man. “Will she be back tomorrow night?”

  “She won’t be back at all. She left town. What’s one buggy old whore to you, anyway?”

  “Left town?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “For where?”

  “I ain’t her keeper. She took what little she owns and headed for the train station in a hurry. It ain’t unusual for these gals to pick up and leave, if they think they can get away with it.”

  Heddie had always been flighty and easily scared. But never without good reason.

  Jesse thought: Am I the reason?

  “Now move along, lummox, you’re blocking the door.”

  Jesse moved along. He needed to think about Heddie’s hasty departure, but he didn’t want to let the question distract him. He had another task to attend to.

  He found the alley that ran parallel to Lookout on the west side. The alley was unlit and fouled with trash and the occasional dead animal, but there was moonlight enough for Jesse to pick his way north, counting buildings, until he reached the back door of Onslow’s shop. No light came from inside. The door itself was heavy and was secured with a rusty padlock. Jesse had no key, but he had the boot at the end of his left leg. It took three vigorous kicks to lift the hasp from the doorframe.

  He waited to see whether anyone would respond to the noise, but no one did. The building was dark and seemed to be empty. He took two steps inside and counted to ten, waiting for his eyes to adjust, and even then he could see little more than a few ghostly outlines. He was in a room walled with shelves. A bulky presence in front of him was probably a table. He put his hands out before him and took another step. The shape of the table became more distinct. Cautiously, he swept his arm across the surface of it and found what he hoped had been left there: a finger-loop oil lamp. He pulled off the shade and took a book of City matches from his pocket, little paper lucifers attached to a sandpaper striking board. The lamp was nearly empty of oil, but there was enough in the font to support a small flame.

  In the fresh light Jesse scanned the room, which seemed to be where Onslow kept his stock. The shelves were bounteously full. Jesse admired the novelty and variety of what he saw. Then he found a burlap bag abandoned in a corner, and began methodically to fill it.

  * * *

  Coming through the lobby of the Excelsior with the bag draped over his shoulder made him feel like some kind of criminal St. Nicholas. The night clerk gave him a hard stare but said nothing. Upstairs, Elizabeth was waiting for him. “Where’d you go?”

  He came inside and closed the door. “Onslow’s back room.”

  “You broke in?”

  He nodded.

  “Uh-huh,” Elizabeth said. She stared at the bag. “So what’s that? I hope to hell it’s not full of Oakleys.”

  “I wish it was. It wouldn’t be so cursed heavy.” He emptied the bag on the bed. He didn’t know what a Glock automatic pistol weighed, but he guessed about two pounds. And here were twenty of them.

  6

  The woman’s name was Zaina Baumgartner, her title was “events manager,” and her job was to arrange stage and screen presentations in both towers of the City—show business, in other words.

  Jesse had not known many show people, certainly none from the twenty-first century. He wondered if Baumgartner was a representative example. She was tall and almost unnaturally thin, her gestures were nervous, and she seemed to regard Elizabeth and Jesse as lesser creatures bent on distracting her from the more important things in life. Elizabeth’s first words on stepping into Baumgartner’s Tower One office were, “We need to ask you a few questions.” Baumgartner said, “But I have a screening.”

  Four days had passed since Jesse and Elizabeth had arrived back at the City. They had delivered their bag of automatic pistols to the security chief, Barton, whose reaction was a wide-eyed “Holy shit!” Since then Barton had been holding daily conferences with Elizabeth in his office. Jesse had not been invited to these sessions, but Elizabeth h
ad apparently agreed to retain him as her partner: She had called him to accompany her to this meeting with Baumgartner, the purpose of which she declined to explain.

  “This is urgent,” Elizabeth said.

  Which didn’t stop Baumgartner from walking out of her own office. “The screening is scheduled for five minutes ago. It’s the new version of Manned Flight. All the department heads are waiting! Follow me.”

  So they hustled to keep up with Ms. Baumgartner as she made for the elevators. “Gearing up for the final year,” she said. “It’s going to be just ridiculously busy. The film we’re screening now is an improved version of the one we’ve been showing to local guests since the City opened for business. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Starting in January we’re booking major talent, local and home. Mr. Kemp wants a Cirque du Soleil show that will perform for both towers. You cannot imagine the complexity! And we’re trying to book local celebrities as well. Maybe a lecture by Mark Twain—”

  Jesse said, “Twain? The ‘Jumping Frog’ writer?”

  Baumgartner seemed to notice him for the first time. “You’re local yourself, are you not?” She asked Elizabeth, “Should I be discussing this with him?”

  “He’s been vetted.”

  “Well, then, yes, Twain. Why, do you know him?”

  “Not personally.” Twain, aka Sam Clemens, had acquired a certain reputation in Virginia City and San Francisco, not exclusively literary. Clemens had vanished from San Francisco for a few months after a friend of his killed a bartender by breaking a bottle over his head. Nor had Jesse been much impressed by the frog piece when it appeared in The Californian. It was just another mining-camp story, as far as he could tell. But it had been well received, and if City people wanted to see him, then Twain must be destined for a sterling literary career. Unless the City destroyed that career by the very act of announcing it.

  “Well, it’s difficult,” Baumgartner declared, bounding off the elevator as the doors opened on the theatrical level. “I’m sure you can imagine!”

  Elizabeth said without much real hope in her voice, “We have just a few questions—”

  “They’ll wait, won’t they? You can sit at the back of the theater and we’ll talk after the presentation, how about that? Then you’ll have all my attention—I promise.”

  Elizabeth shrugged. They filed into the cinema behind Baumgartner, who abandoned them in the back row and headed for the stage. There were only a few people in the seats down front, some of whom Jesse recognized as bosses from the City’s entertainment division. Baumgartner took up a handheld microphone and addressed them from in front of the enormous screen. She told them how difficult it had been to design an introduction to cinema for audiences of the 1870s: “Motion pictures were first shown to the public in the 1890s, and when those people saw a moving train on the screen some of them actually ran away from it. So it’s always been a question of introducing locals to movies in a way they can easily assimilate. That’s why we have a five-night sequence, where the first night is a lecture and some brief examples—it conditions them, so what comes after isn’t so alarming. And that’s only the first hurdle! Think of all the cinematic conventions these people have never absorbed, things like continuity, cross-cutting, close-ups. The version of Manned Flight you’re about to see builds on everything we’ve learned about presenting movies to an unsophisticated audience. It’s simple, it’s relatively short, and by modern standards it’s fairly static. But it’s also viewer-friendly and gauged to impress naïve viewers without frightening them.”

  Jesse could only guess what all this meant. Not long after he was hired by the City, he and the other local employees had been given a special screening of the various films offered to paying guests. The shows had impressed him mightily, but she was right about how difficult they had been to understand.

  “And Manned Flight is only the first of our enhancements to the film program. Next month we’ll be introducing revised versions of Cities of Tomorrow and Wonders of Science.”

  All guaranteed not to provoke undue terror in their audiences. Baumgartner stopped talking and took a seat; the lights dimmed; the movie began. Jesse watched with interest. The scenes of gleaming airships darting among the clouds were as astonishing as they were unsettling, but he liked the animated sequences best: cartoon illustrations of the early years of aviation, featuring mustachioed men of the relatively near future and their comical adventures with flying machines. The sons of our generation, he thought. Sons and daughters: apparently there would be women among the pioneers of aviation.

  Elizabeth sat close to him in the darkness, the blue cotton cloth of her City trousers pressed against his thigh. It was a pleasant feeling, which he tried to ignore. City women had a free-and-easy demeanor that did not mean they were either free or easy. That was one of the mistakes local men too often made when they were hired for City work, and it was a fatal one: A single unwelcome advance could put you out the door. Likewise uttering racial or national insults, even if you didn’t recognize them as such. Jesse was fortunate in that regard: His time at Madame Chao’s had taught him how to speak placatingly to people of all extractions, from Samoan sailors to Dupont Gai hatchetmen. Watch your mouth and keep your hands to yourself was the first and firmest rule. And the last thing he wanted to do was insult Elizabeth DePaul, who was, after all, a married woman, even if her husband was currently in prison. But still, sitting thigh-to-thigh with her in the flickering shadows of Manned Flight, he couldn’t avoid the truth that he liked her. He liked her very much, in complicated ways.

  Jesse had slept well for five consecutive nights since his return from Futurity Station. He felt freer and less worried, which might be a danger in itself: He couldn’t afford to let down his guard, especially in light of what Heddie Finch had said about the monster Roscoe Candy. Impossible as it seemed, Candy still lived. That was very bad news. Worse, Heddie knew where Jesse could be found, and Heddie had left town the day after she spotted him. Was it possible the news of Jesse’s whereabouts might reach the ears of Roscoe Candy? If so, might Candy come looking for him—or worse, for Jesse’s sister, Phoebe?

  The movie ended with a last giddy aerial view of a flying machine dipping its wings toward some vast, impossible city. Then the theater lights came up and Baumgartner spent a maddening quarter-hour glad-handing the assembled managers before she made her way up the aisle to where Jesse and Elizabeth sat. “We can talk in the green room,” she said cheerily. “Thanks for your patience!”

  * * *

  The room to which Baumgartner led them was furnished with a conference table and some folding chairs, a coffee urn, and the clutter of used paper cups. Baumgartner settled into one of the chairs and said, “Well, I think that was successful!”

  “No doubt,” Elizabeth said. Elizabeth had asked Jesse to keep quiet during the interview, for the same reason he had taken the lead in Futurity Station. This was her investigation now, on her turf. “It’s amazing how much thought has gone into the film program,” she said.

  Baumgartner beamed. “Isn’t it? August Kemp has been personally involved, so we’ve all been doing our very best to get it right. He has a way of motivating people—his enthusiasm is contagious!”

  Everyone professed to love Kemp. And most of that love seemed reasonably genuine. August Kemp was apparently one of those wealthy men who inspire devotion in their employees. Most of them. “What about you, Ms. Baumgartner? Are you a hands-off manager, or do you like to get up close and dirty?”

  Something in Elizabeth’s voice made Baumgartner frown. “Before we go on, can I ask what this is all about? Mr. Barton arranged the interview, but he wasn’t clear about its purpose.”

  “We’re looking at how supplies get distributed once they come through the Mirror. There have been problems with bottlenecks—shipments of nonessential goods clogging up inventory while more important items wait to get tagged.”

  “I see. Well, I’m deeply involved in the work, but not so much th
at end of it. I haven’t noticed any problems if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Specifically, in August your department received new digital projectors?”

  “We upgraded all five cinemas. Four-K two-D Barcos. New switchers, new interfaces, everything running off Android tablets—plus more lamps and lenses than we’re ever likely to need.”

  “All arrived in a timely fashion, undamaged?”

  “Yes! No problem at all.”

  “Anything included that wasn’t on the bill of lading?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Like what?”

  “You unpacked these items yourself?”

  Baumgartner hesitated and stroked her nose with the thumb of her right hand—it seemed to be a nervous habit. “Well, some of them. Mostly I leave that to the technicians.”

  “Any technician in particular?”

  “We have a team.”

  “Do unauthorized personnel have access to your storeroom?”

  “If so, I’m not aware of it. You’d need the right card to get in. Security, isn’t that your department?”

  “And are you on friendly terms with any Tower Two employees outside of the entertainment division?”

  “Because of the work I do, I have informal contacts with a lot of people in both towers.”

  “Do you have contacts with any local people in Tower Two?”

  “Like this one?” She waved her hand at Jesse, as if Elizabeth had brought him in on a leash. “As a rule, no.”

  “All right. Let me read you a list of five names, and you tell me if you recognize any of them.” Elizabeth took a notepad from her hip pocket and flipped through pages while Baumgartner fidgeted. Elizabeth read the names slowly, and Jesse watched Baumgartner for any visible reaction.

  There was none he could detect, but he was distracted by the last name Elizabeth read: Mick Finagle. Finagle was a Tower Two security guard, the one toward whom Jesse’s old girlfriend Doris Vanderkamp was currently directing her affections.