Terraplane

by Jack Womack

  "Some," I said; Spanish, Turkish, Russian, French. "I still think I'm too dark-"

  "Dark?" Wanda laughed, showing her old gold. "With those big green eyes? Look like there was more'n one ice-cream man hanging round your mama's woodpile."

  Feeling suitably placed, I decided a check necessaried, to distract if nothing more. "Jake," I said. "Movement seen or not seen?"

  Unpocketing the tracker, he looked. "None."

  "What's that thing?" Wanda asked.

  "Keeps us apprised of others' movements," I said. "Or lack thereof. We're eyeing one who holds our exit visa."

  "A friend?" she asked.

  We grimaced. "Another orphan of time," said Oktobriana. "Is terrible countryman of mine. Tried to take us prisoners. `Tried to kill Jake with bomb. On plane he attempted takeover once more so Jake threw him out into swamp below"

  "You sure you need to keep in touch?" Doc asked; we nodded. "He's still in Jersey, then?"

  "Close to descent point." A fly careened down, attacking; Jake, bored, caught it without seeable movement. Fisting tight, unclamping, he wiped it on his napkin and kept eating.

  "Big-game hunter," said Oktobriana, smirking as she cleaned her second plate.

  "I can run you over later, probably, once you get that passport," said Doc. "You seem to be making quite a recovery, miss."

  "Such exuberant feelings I have," she said. "So unexpected after fever's passing. Head sore but not painful. Expected stiffness fading.

  "May I?" I asked Doc, spotting a paper countertopped near.

  "Here," he said. "It's this mornings. I read it already. Toss it up on the icebox when you're through." The rag resembled nothing published in my New York, as had the Mirror; June 17, 1939's Herald-Tribune and Mail carried few photos, superabundant print, and semirational heads. Glancing across, I read: KING BIDS FAREWELL TO NEW YORK, MEETS PRESIDENT LATER TODAY; HEAT WAVE SEARS EUROPE; LA GUARDIA SWEARS TO FIGII'I' LEGISLATURE'S BUDGET CUTS-

  "So many flies," said Oktobriana, swatting.

  "No more'n any summer," Wanda said. "Beelzebub's hosts. Bringers of dark. You get used to 'em. Don't they have flies anymore?"

  "They've probably killed off all pests and such in the future, Wanda," said Doc. "No roaches. No rats. No spiders or mice."

  AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS REQUESTS LIFTING OF REFUGEE QUOTAS; LONG PLANS RUN ON THIRD-PAR'I'Y'I'ICKET IF DEMO NOMINATION DENIED; THREE DEAD IN BRONX FIRE; T'ESLA TO THROW SWITCH SUNDAY NIGHT, WORLD SCIENTISTS TO ATTEND CEREMONY--

  "Tesla?" Oktobriana said, espying the last name. "What is ceremony where?"

  "The World's Fair," said Doc. "Out in Flushing Meadows. In Queens. "

  "Let me see," she said, ripping the paper from my grasp. "He is to be honored in great festival at this fair. Will throw switch to begin operation of new device. Peacetime use, I would guess-"

  "What's Tesla?" Jake asked.

  "Tesla was inventor and scientist," she said. "True genius. Slavic, it goes without saying, though Yugoslavic. Alternating current system of electric power enabled with use of Tesla coil. Allows electricity to be used in all places safely. Many splendid ideas he had never employed. Brave notions and concepts ignored even in our day. Too visionary."

  "He's been working on death rays lately, I read," said Doc.

  "That would infer use of large coils with attached tower," she said, thoughtful. "Could perhaps prove useful. I have certain familiarity with his work. " A tiny bombardier closed in on her; had her glass of juice not been sent floorways by the movement it couldn't have evidenced that her arm ever left the table. One second her hand was open; the next, it had closed.

  "Damnation," said Wanda, pressing her cloth napkin linoleumways to suck the spillage before it merged with the floor. "Catching flies only thing you all are good at?"

  "Watch me do better than Jake," she laughed, standing to attain wider armroom. Her captive's fellows circled round as if in tribute to the fallen; their mistake. This time I caught the flash as her arm shot; drawing down her hand to eyelevel she unclasped. Four flies lay stunned upon her open palm, perhaps so surprised as we. She shook them awake, sending them skyways again.

  "How'd you do that?" Wanda asked.

  "I'm not sure-" she mumbled, reseating herself. "Lucky accident, maybe."

  Doc lay down his fork and knife, though food remained before him. "Listen," he said, "last night I was so busy taking care of the obvious complaints that I never got the chance to do a couple tests I wanted to do. Nothing to get all riled up about, just want to check a couple things. Would you and Jake come across to the office with me after we finish eating? Won't take ten minutes."

  Amateur's cloakings never concealed; no matter how still the face, the eyes of the nonprofessional never carry the lie. Whatever troubled him, troubled deep, no matter his feigned nonchalance. His gropes and plaints hung swordlike in the air.

  "All right," she said.

  "Luther, you too, once you get back."

  "Get back," said Wanda. "Haven't even gone yet. Let's get moving if we're going to. I got things to do besides babysitting and serving as a tour guide for this bunch. Come on." She stood, pushing herself away from the table. "I'll let you all do the dishes."

  "Jake," I said, distracting his roomwide search for the washer. "Tracker me while I'm out. I want to tab any stir that shows if he moves. "

  "If he moves," said Jake, "follow."

  "Don't let nobody see that thing while I'm with you," said Wanda.

  `Anybody asks, tell 'em it's a Hershey bar," laughed Doc, something-still eating him from within.

  "Those your only clothes?" Wanda asked me; my two-piece wool with faint pinstripe, medium lapel, no longer held even press's resemblance; most mud trousercuffed had returned to dust. I couldn't imagine it showing overstrange, still.

  "Sole and alone," I said.

  "Well, just don't get out of eyesight," she said to me. "Stick to me like glue. All right?"

  "A follow's essential," said Jake. "I'll prep."

  "Stay here, Jake," said Doc. "People they're seem', uh, don't cotton much to, uh-"

  "Ofays," said Wanda, shouldering her purse; its skin looked to be drawn from lizards, though I couldn't imagine that it truly was. "Let's get it done with."

  Following as specified, I trailed her steps, emerging behind her into clear light and streetrush as we left the house. Abyssinia's bill evidenced beneath the tunnel-like awning. I vizzed the attractions listed: Friday Lester Young and Charles Parker/Saturday Robert Johnson the Blues Man/Cover fifty cent.

  "They're just a few blocks up," she said. "What're you gawking at?"

  "All," I said. "These associates are fellow medicals?"

  "Fellow lowlifes," she said. "Lee the Blood's nothing but a pimp. Carries cards says he's an entertainment director. Keeps a three-girl stable working the street but they hold out half the money on him and he's always too drunk to know. He's nothing but a hog in shoes. Crashes rent parties, that's how low he is. Cedric's got the knowhow Runs numbers, keeps hooch pouring through the bars, fences anything a hophead'll drag in. Hooked in with the precinct house somehow Swear to this day he must be the one funding the man who buys the souls. And, he gets papers to those too sorry to have any of their own." Glancing me updown, she winked. "Queer as a three-dollar bill. He'll be glad to help you."

  "Does Doc have overmuch contact with underground trade?"

  "When necessary," she said. "I'd be glad of it if I was you, considering."

  Above us trains rattled, shaking along their run; sunlight leaked onto the street as through a jungle's canopy, its tones showing pure against constant shadow On streetlevel, traffic streamed: battered cars plain with years of unmuseumed use, looking less insectival as they familiared themselves onto my mind; streetcars, gray topped, red and yellow sided, their windows removed for summer comfort, buzzed down centerlane. We edged past a sidewalk-wide mass of stacked boxes and jumbled furniture, rolled rugs upon which children sans shoes perched.

  "Somebody e
lse evicted," Wanda muttered. "Damn landlords never give nobody a chance to make good."

  As in our day, a radioed teen added sound onto noise; here his implement was lasereo size, held but two buttons, plugged into a lampbase with a long cord and broadcast a pregame baseball show from the Polo Grounds, wherever those were, to an attentive crowd. All along the sidewalks locals hung, chattering in groups, arguing between pairs, wandering along. Men kneeled above subway grates, dropping down lures of string as if to fish.

  "Built the grates," she said. "Never built the subway. Ran out of money. Still going to tear the el down next year, they say. Tore down the one on Sixth Avenue last year."

  At one shaded streetcorner an elderly woman sold big pretzels, her cart two wooden crates, her display case a worn wicker basket. "Pretzels," she mouthed, toothless. "Pretzels a penny. Please buy a nice pretzel." Plaid-skirted little girls hopped across chalked pavement; shirtless boys flung pocketknives into a patch of dirt where once a tree had stood. Dozens waved and smiled at Wanda as we passed; she acknowledged all with word or nod. We passed two men in ragged wear curled atop themselves, bunched behind trashcans, dead to all worlds save their own.

  "Bet you don't see that in your day," she said. "Damn Depression's never going to end, I don't think."

  She was right; in our day, in similar terrain, there'd be twenty piled deep, sleeping as they might until they were awakened by assault or siren or the smell of their own flesh burning away.

  "Least it finally caught up with the ones that had all the money," she went on. "They're still better off than us but they're hurting bad. Serves 'em damn right."

  We walked before a newer building, a three-story stone with curved chrome trim and silver letters. UNITED STATES BANK, it was; FOUNDED 1933. Wanda spat on its steps.

  "Your bank?" I asked.

  "Only bank there is," she said, "if you use banks." At the next corner we pushed through an audience; they surrounded a man standing atop a rickety stepladder, flapping his arms as if to attempt ascension, his voice echoing like summer thunder.

  "Negro man wants a fair deal!" he shouted. I eyed two black policemen standing near. "Wants the same pay as a white man if he does the same work. Wants to go where he wants when he wants like a white man do. Wants respect for being a man!" His crowd assented. Having passed, Wanda paused, turned to listen. "Not a half man, a whole man. With whole rights. Have schools worth sending your kids to. Have subways you can sit on and not stand!" An enormous yes rose from the crowd. "Have police working for you and not against you!" His small mob's roar tripled twiceover. The two policemen quickly moved.

  "All right, break it up-"

  "Move along," said the other, pushing aside two white-haired elderlies. "Break it up."

  "Look at 'em," said the speaker, descending from his ladder. "We want free speech in this country like the white man has-"

  "Get back to Russia," cried the larger of the two guardians, rushing up, clubbing the man pavementways; before he kissed the street his crowd was gone. Wanda lowered her head; turned and moved on.

  "What's ongoing?" I asked, following.

  "One of those speechifyers," she said. "Most of 'em hang out over on Lenox. They don't like 'em comin' over here too much and they never like 'em when they start talking about cops. But ever' word he said's true."

  "He bore no Russian look," I said. Wanda laughed.

  "Babes in the woods, all of you."

  A few hundred meters more and we reached our evident destination, a small candy store with dirt-blackened windows. Eyeing upand then downstreet, she entered; a bell attached to the door tinkled as we crossed over. The windows were dew clean in comparison to the shop's inside. Beneath a long smudged glass counter lay Kerr's butterscotch and Oh Henry! bars, their gray paper crinkling around their grisly cores. Several yellowed papers stacked near bore previous month's dates. Countered behind was a sullen young boy, an oversize cloth cap shading most of his head, a toothpick wiggling at mouthcorner.

  "They're in?" she asked. The brat nodded without looking, thumbing rearward towards an all-concealing drape. "Better be." Slipping behind the curtain, we faced a smooth wall broken by a single metal door. She knocked three separate knocks. Someone sized us through the door's spyhole before unlocking; the watchman showed, a slender man of cafe-au-lait tint, wearing a dress vest and trousers cut for look rather than ease. Lowering his pistol, he smiled, gleaming incisored diamond's glint.

  "Hi-de-ho, big woman." He sounded theatrically trained. "Come right in. "

  "Put away that cannon," she said, entering. Within showed an unwindowed office holding no furniture save for filing cabinets, a massive wooden desk and a tall coatrack. 'Iwo of those antique phones were desktopped. Hanging above the desk was a framed photo of Teddy Roosevelt; Cedric, I noted, wore similar nosepinching glasses. Cornered was what, in these days as since discovered, was called a Victrola; on its spinner black wax played Verdi's screams, and I wondered at my musicinate's taste. Atop Cedric's silk shirt lay a broad green-and-purple tic, noosed tight round his slender neck. Hanging on the coatrack was a dark pearl-buttoned jacket and a sky gray derby; dried vomit speckled both.

  "Miss Wanda," he said, "I'm just a wreck this morning. Up all night taking care of Rockefeller back there-" Downhall, rearward, I heard stumbling'' sound, as occurs after a long bout.

  "Dump him in a bag and drop him in the river. Cedric, I didn't come here to get an earful-"

  "He and one of his floozies got into a row last night, don't want to know what happened but his knuckles were all skinned upanyway, they must have been drunk. I know he was. Came home, ripped all his clothes off like he was Josephine Baker and went to the bathroom. I hear this thud like a horse keeled over in the heat and I go in and he's passed out between the john and the wall. I greased him all over with Dixie Peach and then took hold and pulled-"

  "I don't want to hear about your love life," she said. "Where's this passport Norman was talking about? I got things to do, Cedric-"

  "Oh. We'll just gossip when Miss Wanda wants to, I suppose. All right," he said, trotting deskways like a new-groomed pony. "This is our man in need?" He measured me plain; I felt X-rayed. "A military man, I hear. He's staying with you?"

  "Quit flittin', Cedric, and get with it."

  "Put curdled milk in the coffee this morning?" he asked, arming me with quick hand. "When she gets too big for her britches"-he winked-"shouldn't be long, you just come up here and stay with us as long as you like."

  "You've what's wanted?" I asked, preferring not to commit.

  "Never heard any complaints." Unlocking his desk drawer, he took out a thin green booklet. "Here you go, you Venezuelan firecracker. Brought a snapshot? Won't work otherwise." Passport handed over, he toreaway my photo without looking it over; swabbed its rear with mucilage brush and thumbed it pageways into the booklet. After flapping it a few times, he decided it had dried. "Sign as I've got you listed. Gave you a new monicker, you'll see."

  My readjusted natality was August 7, 1892; my alias was-

  "Anselmo Peron y Caracas Valentino?"

  "Sounds so south-of-the-border, doesn't it?" he said. "I can almost see the cactus. Sign there, muchacho. A high yellow like you won't have no trouble passing."

  A shambler emerged from hall's dark; his form, once muscular, raced towards fat. Lee the Blood showed in less than magnificence, wearing knee-length undershorts dabbed with red hearts; a sleeveless under was tucked under shortsband.

  "Wanda," he said, rubbing his face as if to transform its shape. "What're you doing here?"

  "Collecting on tramp's debts," said Cedric. "Miss Wanda, you just tell Doc that if he ever wants a big favor all he has to do is get Lee to bring in all his girls for an exam"-he paused, eyeing Lee with blood-"and then plug the bitches up."

  "Easy, Cedric," she said. Lee leaned nearer, reached around her waist as if looking for a handle with which to hold himself upright, patted one casabalike buttock.

  "My fine dinner's not go
nna ride with the master?" he asked, sounding yet drunk. `Ain't comin' in on that tab?"

  "Keep your hand offa my ass," she said, pushing free. "Jiveass pimp. Think I want to look at your ugly face first thing when you haul yourself outta bed?"

  "You have," he said, grinning. "Got killer fizz out back. Come send me."

  "Shit. Send your dead ass to the pen. Go feel up somebody wants feelin' up. Come on, Luther, let's go." Lee shrugged, grinned again, bumped back into the hall. Cedric clasped my shoulder as I trailed, his frustration all but smoking.

  "Drop in anytime," he said, unsmiling. "Soldier boy."

  Once we'd restreeted I looked at Wanda, her face bright with anger; this time, at least, I knew we hadn't been the cause.

  "You're connected as well?" I asked.

  "Did some work for him, long time ago," she said, disposing of the subject as she would a used tissue. "Anyhow, that passport ought to keep you out of most trouble."

  "The name's senseless," I said. "My residence is typed in as Bogota. That's Colombia-"

  "Who']] know?" she asked. "Colombians?"

  Jacketing the pass, I bumped hand into the tracker; decided to recheck Skuratov's lack of movement. Covering it with jacket and hand, I flicked it open as Wanda stopped to buy a paper from a newsstand fitted below an el stair; the ascent's three-flight rise was roofed with metal shingling, upheld by delicate iron posts showing rust, needing paint. The moving light showed plain on trackerscreen.

  "How's to downtown fastest?" She pointed upward, seemingly unsurprised by my outburst. "He's moving. On rubber, must be-"

  "Just hold on a minute," she said, grabbing my arm, whispering earways. "Don't let people see that damn thing. What're you talking about?"

  "He's enrouted," I said. "We've got to see where he settles." Judging the tracker, he'd entered lower Manhattan; no chance he was ambulatory alone.

  "That thing shows where he's going, right?"

  "Someone's taking him. What if he's being airported or inac- cessibled? He's got our only ticket and I've got to trail-"

  "Mean you want to go downtown?" she sighed, knowing my answer.