“Well, I’ve been Charley longer!”
“Cut it out,” I said. They ignored me, resorting to battering each other with childish epithets. “Belay that!” I shrieked finally.
They stopped yammering and stared at me.
I felt like the mouse that roared. “All right, fine. Nobody has to be Percival. You’re Charley and you’re . . . Farley. Parents might do that to twin boys.”
Charley-Is was livid. “But I should be Charley! Why should he be Charley? After all I’ve been through—”
I gritted my teeth. “You want the girl? Let him be Charley.” His mouth popped open to protest. “End of discussion,” I said, quoting my mother.
Farley glared at me and went off to sulk while Charley and I registered with the faded concierge.
oOo
Bright and early the morning of the eleventh we were at the fated park. Dew sparkled in grass that was just awakening from winter. The breeze was crisp and chill—vigorous, I guess you’d say—and Charleys were frisky.
So, as it turned out, was Miss Llewellyn’s mount. It was, appropriately, a red, red roan. A Strawberry, indeed, on which she in her vivid green habit, was the stem. They came toward us along the bridle trail, Mary nodding to passing acquaintances, Strawberry doing the same. When they were about one hundred yards off, the horse, just as Mary had said, took violent exception to another lady’s plumed hat and exploded into a wild gallop.
I glanced around quickly and saw, behind us, the ill-omened gaggle of white geese and, coming down a garden path to our left, Dr. Ian MacCormac. His eyes were glued to a thick leather-bound volume he carried in both hands, while an umbrella dangled from one arm, his medical bag from the other. He reminded me, oddly, of my father—the books were different, but the posture was the same.
How archetypal of him, I thought and nudged Charley-Was. “Get after her, Charley, or you’ll lose her to the doctor all over again.”
Both Charleys glanced around and spotted their rival, both made sneering faces, both lunged toward the oncoming runaway.
I snagged Charley-Farley by the coat tails. “Wait your turn, fella.”
We watched as Charley-Was raced to the bridle trail, stepped manfully into the path of the on-rushing Strawberry and masterfully manhandled the poor beast into speedy submission. He literally dragged it to a stop—one thick hand on its nose, cutting off its air, the other bracing the rosy-cheeked young lady in her side-saddle. That done, he had only to help her dismount and stand by to receive her commendations.
“I cannot thank you enough, sir,” she said breathlessly, gazing up into his dark, bearded face. “This silly creature has an untoward manner of expressing fashion sense.” She indicated the bobbing crests of the now distant hat.
Charley-Was looked after it, then threw back his shaggy head and laughed. “But sense, it has, miss, for all it near got you killed. That hat is atrocious! Are you all right or shall I call a doctor to see you?”
“Doctor? Good God, sir! Do you take me for a China doll? What I need is a harness-maker to sew me up a set of blinkers for this beast.” She rattled the horse’s bit and gave it an affectionate pat on the neck.
Charley-Was stood mutely, the most besotted smile I have ever seen creeping from beneath his mustache. Even from here I could tell he was hooked; my future was assured and Ian MacCormac would live. Charley-Is, however, did not look happy. In fact, he looked like a man about to fly into a white-faced rage.
“That mutton-headed scum! How dare he ogle her that way?”
“Don’t you mean, how dare you ogle her that way?”
He spluttered futilely for a moment about hand-kissers and randy old sea-dogs, then subsided as the young lady favored his former self with a brilliant smile.
“Such gallantry shouldn’t go unrewarded,” she told him. “My father will most certainly wish to meet you and hear how you saved his daughter’s silly neck. Won’t you please come to tea?”
“No reward is necessary, dear girl, but your assurance that you are as fit as you look.”
“I am quite fit,” she assured him, promenading in a small circle. “But I should like some help getting this over-excited animal home. By then, it should be just about tea-time.”
The over-excited animal in question yawned exaggeratedly but was soundly ignored. Mary-Maureen Llewellyn and Charles Percival Dunbar, smitten beyond hope, walked off arm in arm, trailing the docile Strawberry.
Charley-Is gazed after them, his black heart in his eyes. “Will I remember?” he asked me. “When we get back to the Essex will I remember the months I’ll have had with her?”
“Eventually,” I said. “But you’ve been out of your time stream. Everything has to . . . settle into a new pattern.”
He gave me a blank stare, then looked after the retreating lovers.
“Come on,” I said. “We’re finished here. Besides, the faster we get back—”
That got his attention. He grinned at me, then took off in the direction of our distant alley. I followed with a last glance around the park. Early morning London wasn’t too bad, really. In the dewy freshness before stoked coal fires filled the air with smaze, it was really quite pretty.
As I turned to go I saw Ian again. He was sitting on a low wall, umbrella at his feet, medical bag in his lap, book flopped open across its handles, the pages rippling, unread, in the breeze. He was a forlorn figure—not at all the good-spirited man I remembered from the Essex. As I watched, he sighed so deeply, I could see his shoulders heave. The breeze gusted black, ill-mannered curls into eyes that were fixed on a distant point—the point where Charley and his Lady had disappeared.
I had a sudden conviction, as Ian MacCormac rose and slunk away, that this was not the first time he had taken an early morning stroll across this particular bridle path.
oOo
By the time we’d Shifted back to the forward hold of the Essex, Charley Dunbar was nearly beside himself (no pun intended). But somehow, the close, cold, creosote-soaked atmosphere of the Essex’s belly had a sobering effect on him. He took the steps topside with measured stride, only the clenching and unclenching of his fists betraying any nervousness.
We found Mary-Maureen on the poop deck, gazing out over the stern. The same brisk wind that snapped the sails and plucked the shrouds, whipped bright streamers of hair about her face and fanned her cheeks to rose flame. She was beautifully animated, in the throes of lively conversation with her companion.
I felt as if my feet had frozen to the deck. The man she sparkled so for was Ian MacCormac.
Beside me, Charley uttered a low growl that turned my blood to ice. “Damn you, Arthur Dunbar. You promised me. You promised me. And here she is with her doctor husband. I shall kill you, Arthur, and feed you to the fishes.”
Mary turned just then and saw us: Charley, beet red; me, shade pale. Her eyes fastened on Charley and across her face spread the most radiant dawn of a smile I have ever seen.
“Darling!” she exclaimed and I knew profound relief that Charley would not have to kill me after all. She crossed the deck in quick, graceful steps and threw herself into the Captain’s outstretched arms. “You disappeared for so long, I thought you must have fallen overboard. If dear Dr. Mac hadn’t been so gallantly occupying my time, I’d have worried myself sick about you, what with this past week’s goings on.”
She pulled away a little and gazed up at him, framing his face with her hands. “Dear man, I think that between Arthur and me, we shall have to watch over you day and night until we reach Bombay. We won’t let anything happen to him, will we, Arthur?”
I nodded absently. It was obvious that Charley hadn’t heard a word she said. He was too busy worshipping her with that ludicrously beatific grin that just seemed to wriggle onto a man’s lips when Mary Llewellyn turned her green eyes on him. And for that reason, he also failed to notice the look on Ian MacCormac’s face. It was also an expression I had learned to associate with the young lady. It said there was rat poison in the Capt
ain’s brandy, sand on the hold steps, and at least one loose cannon aboard the Essex.
oOo
That was two days ago. Since then, Mary and Charley have watched each other, Ian MacCormac has watched Mary and Charley, I have watched Ian MacCormac and, so I don’t feel at all neglected, Mr. Reardon has watched me. I check the historical lines daily by computer; every day they tell me the same thing: that something important will happen in Bombay and that my ancestry is even more dubious than I previously suspected.
As I see it now, I have several options. I can stick around and keep Black Charley Dunbar under close observation for the next several years or so . . . at least until he produces a male heir and names him Arthur. Or I can make him return to the Park, put things back the way they were, and let Fate take its course—which probably means that Ian will die and Charley will have his Maureen and she will give birth (suspiciously soon) to a son that is probably not Charley’s after all. In which case, she will name him Arthur because it’s what Ian would have wanted and . . .
Then again, I could just wash my hands of the whole affair, hightail it back to 2115 in my ersatz shipping crate and pray that someone will produce a son named Arthur, who may or may not be a Dunbar.
I am confused.
And I’m in trouble. There is the matter of that unauthorized Shift back to April and I seriously doubt my “emergency” would hold up to any serious scrutiny. After all, I was supposed to be observing history, not creating it.
Still, looking on the bright side, I’m also in a unique situation: I am probably the only person in history given the opportunity to choose his ancestors.
As I said, the best laid plans of Arthur Dunbar gang ne’er a’gley—or at least they so rarely do that it doesn’t count.
Not really.
Return to Table of Contents
Home Is Where . . .
“Home Is Where…” was published in Analog in 1991, but is further along the Questlabs timeline than the previous stories. Am I, you may wonder, writing time travel stories traveling backward in time? Quite possibly. “Home” is a story about the impact on the family of parents’ career choices, about the wiliness of highly motivated children, and the sort of compromise in which everyone really does win. Its key elements arrived in the form of a vivid dream in which a small boy in a familiar Nebraska classroom held a butterfly clip out on the palm of his hand and said, “Well, yes, but I meant to make a banana clip.”
The Jones family in the story is based on a real Jones family of my acquaintance who have been world-travelers and whose two oldest children suffered greatly from culture shock when they returned to America after many years in Africa.
I should also note that some of the technologies I mention in the story have already been surpassed by real tech, but this was back in the days before iPads, when even Jerry Pournelle wasn’t carrying an eReader everywhere.
oOo
Anastasia Jones viewed her new town with little interest from the crest of a maple-shaded hill. It was a fresh-washed picture postcard of a town; all green and white and brick red under a rain-dark sky. An equally fresh-washed breeze rolled up the hill, carrying with it the smell of . . . popcorn.
Anastasia smiled. Now that was interesting. She scanned the buildings along the cobbled main street. Ah, yes, there it was—a theater. She could see the ornate marquee peeking up at her between elm sentinels.
“Looks like they’ve picked another homespun backwater,” said a voice over her shoulder.
She turned, noting that her brother Tamujin’s face looked just as dour as it had the last time she’d seen it. “What’d you expect?” she asked. “They do this every time we start whining.”
“I don’t whine, Stasi.”
“No, you pout. The twins whine. I sulk.”
She swept moist strands of deep burgundy hair from her forehead with one hand and brushed her wind-climbing skirts down with the other. Her eyes searched the trees.
“There’s the school,” she said finally and pointed.
“Oh, royal. Another one-roomer?”
“No . . . It looks kind of nice. All brick and white-washed and a green roof.”
“Don’t get too attached to that green roof, sis. We won’t be here that long.”
“I wish—”
“If wishes were wheels, gramma would’ve been a trolley car,” Tamujin muttered.
Stasi giggled. “Where’d you dig that up?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. Somewhere about three stops ago.”
“What does it mean?”
“Who knows. Does it matter?”
“Anastasia! Tamujin! Dinner!”
Tamujin Jones made a goofy face. “Sounds real down home, don’t she?”
Stasi giggled again. “Well, at least she didn’t ring that stupid triangle she got in Armadillo or wherever that was.”
“Amarillo.” Tamujin snorted. “Armadillo! Geezumminy, Stasi, no wonder you’re having so much trouble with geography. You’ve gotten it mixed up with zoology!”
oOo
The new school was okay, Anastasia decided. It was old and neat and smelled of ancient wood varnish, fresh wood oil and cedar. Their parents had done the obligatory first-day-in-a-new school thing and delivered them to the Admin office all smiles and pride. They’d filled out the paperwork, kissed their children and gone off for a day of getting-to-know-Papillion.
“Have fun,” they’d said, but their parting message, as ever was, “Do try to fit in.” So much for fun.
Now they sat in a neat row on a wooden bench in the Admin office waiting for the vice-principal, Mrs. Thorpe, to escort them to their classes. She arrived in due course, wreathed in smiles, flourishing four fresh, new, file folders. A pair of spectacles dangled from a cord around her neck.
The twins stared at her, making Anastasia wish she could reach across Tam’s lap and pinch them.
“Well!” The apple-cheeked face beamed its freshness at them. She even smelled like apples. “What a lovely family! Your parents are such lucky people. So . . .” She set the spectacles on her nose and flipped open the top file folder. “Your names are . . . very unusual. Anastasia?” Her eyes bounced kinetically back and forth between Stasi and her little sister.
“That’s me,” said Stasi. “Please, call me Stasi.”
“Oh.” She pulled a pencil from behind one ear (the twins fairly ogled) and made a note, then went on to the next folder. “Tamu—?”
“Tamujin,” he said. “I go by Tam.”
“That is unusual. What nationality is that?”
“Mongolian.”
“It’s Genghis Kahn’s first name,” offered the staring, blonde gamine next to him.
“Oh, my! How did they ever settle on that?”
Tam turned beet red and threw his little sister a get-even glance. “Dad’s a . . . a historian. He’s fascinated with that period.”
“I see . . . well . . .” She made a note, then glanced at the twins. “Now, you’d be Constantine, I’ll bet.”
“Connie,” said Tam.
“Con,” said Constantine. “Connie is a girl’s name, here.”
“And Tahireh . . . my, that’s pretty.”
“It’s Persian,” explained Tahireh proudly, then announced, “Tahireh was a martyr in the cause of women’s suffrage.”
Mrs. Thorpe’s face froze, whether because the vocabulary was bit precocious for an eight year old, or because either martyrdom or suffrage was an unusual topic of conversation for a child that age, Stasi couldn’t guess. Mrs. Thorpe wriggled her lips back into a smile.
“Really? How interesting.”
“They strangled her with her own scarf and threw her body down a well. Just before she died she said, ‘You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women.’”
Mrs. Thorpe let out a nervous giggle. “How precocious!” she burbled, then whisked them away to their classes.
Stasi thought she’d like her teacher. Her name was Mildred Tinda
ll and she was young, pretty, and quick to praise. She exclaimed over what a pretty name Anastasia was and said she thought Stasi’s dress was strikingly beautiful and that she liked the unusual color of her hair.
Stasi was not so sure she was going to like her classmates. She overheard one of them say her dress was “antique” and her hair was “weird” and her name was “foreign.”
This is a learning experience, she told herself and ignored the whispers and the fact that she really did look dreadfully out of place among these wearers of plaid and poodle skirts, saddle shoes, and natural-colored pony tails.
By lunch time she had acquired a reputation as a Brain and heard the words “teacher’s pet” whiffle softly through the air over her head. She thought briefly about playing dumb, but Dad said never to stifle your natural abilities to suit anyone else’s expectations and besides, it rubbed her the wrong way.
She was on her way to the cafeteria when she felt someone lift her ankle-length skirt from behind. She skittered sideways, nearly colliding with a group of loitering boys and turned to find herself confronting three of her female classmates. They peered at her archly, their notebooks clasped to their chests like battle shields.
“Why do you wear such weird clothes?” asked one of them. “Beth says it’s because you’re a Quaker or something. Are you a Qu-a-a-a-ker?”
Her voice wavered and cracked on the last word and the two girls flanking her giggled.
“No. I’m a Bahá’í,” Stasi told them.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a religion. Excuse me. I’m going to be late for lunch.”
She started to turn away, but the tallest of the three moved to cut off her path of retreat.
“So why do you wear such weird clothes?”
Stasi muzzled her considerable temper and said, “I just haven’t had a chance to get any new clothes since we got here. This was the height of fashion the last place we lived.”
“Oh, yeah? And where was that, Mars?”
Stasi drew herself to her full height. “Paris, actually. France.”
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