Last Year

by Robert Charles Wilson

  “Yes, I see. But how marvelous it is!”

  “I’m going to keep the volume, the loudness, pretty low. You can adjust it if you want.”

  “What will I hear?”

  “Just a song. Nothing fancy. A song that was popular once, back where I come from.”

  Elizabeth hit play.

  What seemed to strike Phoebe first was the simple novelty of reproduced sound. She sat upright, openmouthed, unmoving. Then, a minute or so into the song, her fingers started to move—counting beats, Elizabeth guessed—and her O-mouth compressed into a fascinated smile. No one spoke as the song ran out its four minutes and change. By the time it finished, Phoebe was grinning. “It’s wonderful! But it stopped.”

  “You can play it again if you like.”

  “May I?”

  Elizabeth showed her how. The second time through, Phoebe closed her eyes and tapped her buttonhook shoe against the floor. Abbie leaned toward Elizabeth and said, “She seems to enjoy it very much. Is it possible I could—?” She mimed putting earbuds into her ears.

  “Of course,” Elizabeth said. Assuming the iPod’s battery was up for it.

  She turned to Jesse then, thinking about the other tech devices in his bag—in particular, the radio that was their only real connection to Kemp’s base at the Long Wharf in Oakland. Because another hour had passed, and they were no closer to finding Mercy Kemp. She would have to check in soon—what was she supposed to say? But the expression on Jesse’s face stopped her.

  Not that he was showing much obvious emotion. His stoneface emoji was fully engaged. But Elizabeth knew him well enough to read the clenched jaw, the rapid blinks. There was a lot going on inside him. Happiness at seeing his sister, she guessed. Pleasure at the way Phoebe responded to the music. But darker things, too. Echoes of his own trauma. Maybe guilt. Phoebe would spend a lifetime learning to deal with what had happened to her at the hands of Roscoe Candy, but Jesse would spend a lifetime dealing with the knowledge that he had failed to protect her from it.

  So no need to mention August Kemp or the fucking radio. At least not right now.

  Not until Sonny Lau showed up, which happened a couple of hours later.

  14

  Phoebe had changed in ways Jesse found both pleasing and dismaying.

  Her disfigurement was no surprise. Her missing eye was a tragedy, and her other wounds had healed badly, but those marks and scars weren’t what troubled him. Something nervous and wary had taken up residence inside her. She talked too eagerly, or not at all. She laughed as if laughter hurt her throat. Jesse supposed it was a symptom of the disease Elizabeth called PTSD. Jesse himself had caught it from his last encounter with Roscoe Candy, and it was natural that Phoebe, who was more sensitive, had come down with a more serious case. There was no easy cure, according to Elizabeth.

  Jesse felt his own old rage churning inside him, faded memories suddenly burnished to a high shine. He nearly jumped out of his chair when Soo Yee came through the front door with Sonny Lau behind her. It was as if his years at City had never happened, as if he was still the whorehouse boy who ran with the boo how doy. Aunt Abbie stood up and said, “Come with me, Phoebe, we’ll make ourselves useful in the kitchen. Elizabeth, would you like to join us?”

  “No,” Jesse said before Elizabeth could answer. “She stays.”

  His aunt and sister left the parlor by one door as Sonny entered by another. Jesse gave his old friend an evaluating look and got one in return. Sonny had become a man, thicker and more muscular than Jesse would have anticipated. And while he had always been a careful dresser, Sonny’s taste in clothes appeared to have sharpened: He wore a knee-length frock coat, a poppy-red vest, and a silk four-in-hand tie. His braided queue dangled as far as his waist. If he was carrying knives or pistols, they were well concealed. Sonny put out his hand, and Jesse shook it.

  Sonny spared a glance for Elizabeth. “Who’s the woman?”

  “She works for the City of Futurity,” Jesse said, “just like me.”

  “I heard as much.” Sonny’s English was deliberately, almost aggressively formal. “Is she from the future?”

  “She is.”

  “I would have thought she’d be wearing trousers or smoking a cigar.”

  “Pass on the cigar,” Elizabeth said. “But yeah, I wish I’d packed a pair of jeans.”

  “Can we speak in her presence?”

  “Yes.”

  “Freely?”

  “Yes.”

  “Without being interrupted?”

  “Well, I hope so,” Jesse said.

  “Good. I expect you called me here to talk about Roscoe Candy?”

  “That,” Jesse said. “But not just that.”

  “What else?”

  By way of an answer Jesse reached into his calico travel bag and took out a Glock 19 and set it down on one of Aunt Abbie’s gleaming sideboards. “Have you ever seen a pistol like this one?”

  Sonny Lau stared at it. “What an interesting question.”

  * * *

  Sonny didn’t know how Roscoe Candy had survived his gunshot wound. It must have been a near thing, he said, because after the burning of Madame Chao’s whorehouse Candy had disappeared for almost three years. And when he did eventually turn up, consolidating his old San Francisco properties and occasionally strutting down Market Street with a cohort of Sacramento thugs in striped jerseys, he was gaunter and grayer than he had been before. Tong men who had dealt with him said Candy still suffered chronic pain from his wound and was obliged to wear a truss he had ordered all the way from Chicago. None of this had improved his temperament, though it had changed him subtly. Candy had once seemed to delight in his own wickedness, but the new Roscoe Candy was differently vicious: He hurt people more methodically and with less emotion. He still cut his victims, Sonny said, but now he cut them as professionally and as indifferently as a butcher cuts a beeve.

  None of which meant Candy had forgotten about Jesse Cullum. As soon as Candy was back in San Francisco he had offered a generous reward to anyone who spotted Jesse or could provide news of his whereabouts. “He expected you to come back sooner or later,” Sonny said, “as a dog returns to its vomit. Have you been seen?”

  “I only just arrived.”

  “Candy has eyes all over town. That’s something you’ll have to reckon with, if you stay. Especially if you stay here.”

  “I won’t be staying here.”

  Sonny cocked his head. “You didn’t come back just because of Roscoe Candy, did you?”

  “No.”

  “He’s only a complication.”

  “I hope that’s all he is.”

  “Soo Yee could have told you most of what I just told you. I thought you called me here because you wanted help going up against Candy. But that’s not it. So what do you want from me?”

  Jesse didn’t answer, only glanced at the pistol on the sideboard as if it were an explanation. Sonny said, “Ah, that. May I hold it?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Sonny picked up the Glock, keeping his fingers away from the trigger guard. He weighed it in his hands, puzzled over the clip, admired the metalwork. “It’s a well-made thing. As pretty as it is dangerous. A City thing.”

  “Seen one before?”

  “Not with my own eyes.”

  “Heard of one?”

  Sonny nodded slowly. “I’m not supposed to say. But yes. Little Tom has one. The heads of the other Six Companies also claim to have one.”

  Jesse exchanged a look with Elizabeth, whose expression was a gratifying combination of genuine surprise and oh-I-get-it-now. “They acquired these pistols recently?”

  “I don’t know, but I first heard of them a month ago.”

  “How did they come to possess them?”

  “About that, no one speaks. Why? Do you want me to find out?”

  “I’m looking for the man who brought these guns into the city.”

  “Again, why? What’s your business with him?”

&nb
sp; “He doesn’t belong here, Sonny. He needs to go back where he came from.”

  “Are you a bounty hunter now?”

  “Bounty hunter for the City, you could say.”

  “The City of Futurity is drying up faster than spit in a desert. You must be in a hurry to find this man.”

  “We are. And I don’t like to impose on our friendship by asking for more than you’re willing to give, but—”

  Sonny Lau said, “You’re not my friend.”

  Jesse was startled. “Say that again?”

  “Honestly, what’s Jesse Cullum to me? I have lots of friends. Most of them know better than to ask difficult favors of me. But you’re not my friend. You may be older now, but you’re still just a shirttail whorehouse bouncer with shoulders like a buffalo’s and cast-iron balls. A worthless piece of Tenderloin shit with more pride than sense. You want me to risk my reputation and my career by poking my nose into the business of people who could have me killed just for looking at them the wrong way? I wouldn’t do that for a friend. No true friend would ask. Only an impertinent bastard like Jesse Cullum would ask.” He grinned. “And Jesse Cullum’s one of the few people I would do it for.”

  * * *

  Now that the conversation had passed on to mutually congratulatory masculine bullshit and reminiscences, Elizabeth gave herself permission to leave the room. She took the bag of tech gear with her, after putting the Glock back inside.

  Abbie Hauser’s mansion was big but Elizabeth got the feeling that a lot of the rooms had been closed off and abandoned. There were, as far as she could tell, two live-in servants, Soo Yee and a middle-aged black man, Randal, who had put in a brief appearance after driving Soo Yee to town and back. A staff of two was probably picayune stuff by Nob Hill standards. Abbie and Phoebe were in the kitchen helping Soo Yee fix the evening meal, something that probably didn’t happen in the tonier households.

  Elizabeth retreated to the entrance hall, where she took the clunky two-way radio from the bag and pushed the button to connect her to August Kemp. He must have been waiting for the call, because there was no hesitation, just a flat electronic beep followed almost instantly by his voice: “Elizabeth? Where are you?”

  “Somewhere up Nob Hill, actually.”

  “You have something to tell me?”

  “Just that we’re making progress.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “We have a lead.”

  “You found Mercy?”

  “Not yet, but we have a line on somebody who’s been distributing Glocks, presumably Theo Stromberg.”

  “Do you know whether Mercy’s with him?”

  “We’re working on that assumption, but we don’t know for sure.”

  “How soon can you find out?”

  “It depends on our informant. I doubt we’ll find out much more until tomorrow.” Which might be absurdly optimistic, but she wasn’t sure Kemp could bear the weight of the truth right now.

  What followed was a pause so lengthy she began to suspect the radio was defective. “The thing is,” Kemp finally said, “there have been some developments. Major upheaval. Rail strikes everywhere, malcontents greasing the tracks and fucking with signal lights. The Chicago yard workers are coming out in sympathy. Worse, Hayes has mobilized federal troops to arrest me and occupy the City.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “Not before we evacuate. We can hold them off. But it’s making everything a lot more difficult. Pretty much every editorial writer in the Union blames us for instigating a labor revolt and a race war, thanks in large part to Theo fucking Stromberg. I had to send the last City train back to Chicago this afternoon.”

  “You—what?”

  “Don’t worry. I have other means of extracting us when the time comes.”

  Suddenly all Elizabeth could think about was Gabriella. A thousand miles of physical distance and a century and a half of Hilbert space stood between Elizabeth and her daughter, a divide deeper than any of those misty Sierra Nevada canyons they had crossed on the way here. Now Kemp was telling her he had torched the only bridge. “Other means?”

  “Look, obviously I have no intention of being stranded. I’ll get you home, Elizabeth. You and Mercy both. I promise. But first, you have to find Mercy.”

  * * *

  Elizabeth mulled over the news while Jesse said good-bye to Sonny Lau. The tong man left with barely a glance at her, probably confused about the role a badly dressed white woman might have to play in this game of guns and threats. She was a little confused about it herself.

  She wanted to tell Jesse what Kemp had said, but they were called to dinner before she could speak to him privately. It was a lengthy meal—Soo Yee served each course with great ceremony, and Jesse made a point of praising everything—but to Elizabeth it just seemed like Something Soup followed by rounds of Boiled Something. Other means, she kept thinking. Soo Yee turned up the gaslights as daylight faded (here was something else that made Elizabeth feel uneasy, all these little fires burning in their sconces like promissory notes of disaster), and Abbie began to talk about the future. Or, as she pronounced it, The Future, the words spoken reverently, as if she were talking about a sacred grotto in some Greek myth. “I think some people resent the City of Futurity because they feel chastised by it, especially since those rogue letters have been published. But I wonder if that’s fair. If there is such a thing as moral progress, the future will inevitably seem to admonish us for our sins.”

  The remark was meant to be flattering, or at least to communicate Abbie’s open-mindedness, but it sounded too much like the kind of high-minded bullshit August Kemp’s copywriters produced for the press back home. “I’m not admonishing anybody,” Elizabeth said.

  “No, Elizabeth, of course not. All I mean to say is that, for instance, concerning the rights of women—”

  “Okay, stop. I mean, there’s some truth in what you’re saying. I can vote, which is great, and we don’t get yellow fever and we don’t hang people for stealing horses, but the idea that what I have waiting for me back home is some kind of Utopia? No. Sorry.” This wasn’t how polite conversation was supposed to go, but Elizabeth felt as if she had lost the ability to steer the words, much less stop them. She flashed on all the times when her friend Chanelle had come over to the house, Friday nights when Gabriella was still in her crib, how they would share a couple of glasses of wine or even a joint (furtively, in the bathroom, with the ventilator fan turned up to carry away the smoke) and complain about Elizabeth’s jailed husband or Chanelle’s troubles as a Walmart sub-manager, letting the indignation boil over until it turned into laughter or tears. “It’s true I was a soldier, but you have no idea what it means being a woman in the armed forces, the kind of crap you put up with on a daily basis, and sometimes worse than crap, sometimes very much worse, and good fucking luck if you try to complain about it. I’m a veteran and a single mom, and the reason I’m here isn’t because I enjoy outdoor plumbing and coal smoke. It’s because this is the only job that’ll pay the rent on my falling-apart house and buy groceries for me and Gabriella and maybe leave enough after taxes that I can think about moving as far as possible from my crazy ex before he gets out of prison. Which is something else we have a lot of—prisons—though you won’t hear Kemp boasting about it. We also have wars, not big scary wars but little wars that go on for years and years and never seem to accomplish anything. Wars without victory, whatever victory would amount to. And good luck if you come home needing help, because the VA hospitals—they, uh—”

  Jesse and his aunt Abbie were staring. So was Phoebe. Even Soo Yee had gone stock-still in the servants’ doorway. Elizabeth’s urge to talk evaporated as suddenly as it had come.

  “I’m sorry,” she finished. “I mean, if I used offensive language.”

  Silence followed, one of those weighty silences that accompany a weapons-grade breach of etiquette, until Phoebe spoke up: “Jesse said in his letters that even the best people of the future are freer with
their language than we’re accustomed to. He made it sound quite comical, the way he described it.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe not so comical at the dinner table. I apologize. It’s been a long day.”

  “He often wrote about the unusual words he heard at the City of Futurity. Didn’t you, Jesse?”

  “The printable ones,” Jesse said stiffly.

  “And I committed them to memory,” Phoebe said. Elizabeth was chastened by how hard the girl was working to make her feel better. “Smartphone. Video game. Cool and uncool. Elizabeth?”

  “Yes?”

  Phoebe’s smile curved under her scarf, up into the papery white scar tissue there. “I think you’re cool,” she said. “I think you’re awesome.”

  15

  In the morning Jesse prepared to venture into the lower part of the city. He left the buggy he had arrived in with the servant Randal and arranged to borrow Aunt Abbie’s more spacious carriage and two horses from the stables.

  He had slept apart from Elizabeth even though it might have been their last night together. It couldn’t be helped—Aunt Abbie’s views on courtship were modern but not infinitely elastic—and he wasn’t sure Elizabeth would have wanted his company in any case. The news that Kemp had sent the last train east had unnerved her. She was worried about getting caught on the wrong side of the Mirror. It was a reasonable fear, but it had made her sullen and temperamental. When he asked whether she had slept well, she said, “Not really. Nice bed and all, but this mansion? The wallpaper, those creepy little bronze statues everywhere? It looks like every haunted house in every horror movie that ever came out of Hollywood.”

  Jesse couldn’t imagine a home as spacious and well-appointed as Aunt Abbie’s ever seeming haunted, a word he associated with séances and European castles, though Elizabeth might have a point about the statuary—he remembered his own uneasy fascination with the miniature bronze of the Capitoline Wolf on the table at the top of the stairs.

  He hoped Elizabeth’s judgment hadn’t been affected by recent events. In truth, he wasn’t sure how helpful her presence would be. She was a deft hand with a pistol, he had learned that from experience, but they might need to go places where a woman would be unwelcome or outrageously conspicuous. But nor could he proceed without her. Kemp had sent her on this mission for many reasons, not the least of which was to make sure Jesse persisted in it.