All the Colors of Time

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  Heads turned the moment she took off her jacket and stuffed it into her locker. They kept turning as she paraded the halls on her way to class. She smiled at Miss Tindall’s stare and ignored the whispered wise-cracks of her classmates. When, during a morning study break, Miss Tindall called her into the hall again, she was calm, smiling, amiable.

  “Yes, Miss Tindall?” she said sweetly.

  “I thought your mother bought some new clothes for you.”

  “She did.”

  The teacher made an uncertain gesture. “Well, then—”

  “I like these clothes, Miss Tindall. They . . . suit me.” Her smile widened. “Don’t you think?”

  “I’m not sure they’re suitable for school.” Miss Tindall was making a gallant attempt to sound kind and wise.

  Stasi feigned bemusement. “Why not? Is there a rule against them?”

  “Well . . . no, but they are distracting to the other students.”

  “That’s not my fault, is it? Besides, I think they’ll get used to it.”

  Miss Tindall frowned. “That’s a poor attitude, young lady.”

  “Why? I’m not breaking any rules and I’m not hurting anybody. I’m just being myself. What’s wrong with that?”

  Miss Tindall sucked in her lips and fixed Stasi with a look that might have frozen a lesser fifteen-year-old on the spot. Stasi smiled.

  Miss Tindall tried another tack. “Stasi, dear, can’t you hear them laughing at you? Don’t you care if you become a laughing stock?”

  Stasi thought about that. “No,” she said.

  “No,” repeated Miss Tindall.

  Stasi shook her head. “I’d rather be a laughing stock and be different than look just like everyone else.”

  “I see.”

  “May I go study now, please?”

  Speechless, Miss Tindall opened the door and ushered her in.

  oOo

  Tahireh stood before her class with total aplomb, dressed in an azure linen sari that, with the lime green shirt she’d elected to wear under it, made her look like an elongated peacock. Her blonde hair cascaded in a fountain from a tiny topless blue fez.

  “When I Grow Up—an essay by Tahireh Jones. Ahem. When I grow up I plan to be a scientist like my mother. And, like my mother, I would like to have my first Master’s degree by the time I’m fifteen and my first Ph.D. at twenty—in Physics, I think, Quantum Physics . . . or maybe Particle Physics. I think I’d like to get my degree at Stanford—that’s in California. Then, I would like to go to Julliard and study drama and voice. It is my dream to someday portray the fearless saint, Tahireh, for whom I am named, in the play about her commissioned by the immortal Sarah Bernhardt. I also plan to write several novels, books of inspirational poetry and academic volumes on travel in space and time.”

  She paused and thought for a moment, ignoring the titters of her classmates, then added, “I would also like to be one of the first full-time field scientists on Mars.”

  Now the class cackled in unabashed glee. Mr. Matthews stood and clapped his hands.

  “Class! Class! Please! I think we should applaud Tahireh for a very interesting and imaginative presentation. Now, seriously, young lady, tell us what you really want to do when you grown up.”

  “Everything I just said, although, I might like to study acting first.”

  Mr. Matthews smiled tolerantly. “But, Miss Jones, half those things are . . . just make-believe—going to Mars, time travel. And the other are not very realistic goals for a young lady. Don’t you want a family? Children?”

  “Oh, sure. If I meet the appropriate soul mate, then I’ll have that too.”

  The indulgent smile deepened. “Young lady, you can’t do both.”

  “Why not? My Mom did. She says you can be whatever you want. She’s got three Ph.D.s and her teaching credential. She’s written three books, too. One of them won the Nobel Peace Prize. I think I’d like to be the first author to win a Nobel prize for a science fiction novel.”

  “Science fiction,” Mr. Matthews repeated. “I see.” He looked around the room. “Who would like to go next?”

  Pamela Harris wanted to go next. Pamela had been going to talk about being a beautician like her big sister, she said, and marrying someone who looked like Clarke Gable and moving to Omaha, but she was having second thoughts. She decided she really wanted to be a cruise ship captain like her Uncle Jerry, or maybe even an Air Force pilot like her father. She wasn’t really sure she wanted a family at all. At least, not until she was very old. She thought she’d rather travel all over the world and decide about a family later.

  Out of Mr. Matthew’s eleven female students, seven suddenly opted to grow up differently than they’d previously planned. The word “homemaker” came up only twice as a lifetime goal. Tahireh Jones suddenly had the young ladies in Mr. Matthew’s third grade class talking about careers, degrees and the equality of the sexes.

  oOo

  “About this paper, Mr. Jones.” Mr. Schiflin pushed the three-page essay across his desk.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I didn’t grade it, because I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I asked for an essay on the future of relations between the U.S. and Europe and you gave me science fiction.”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “You can’t honestly believe what you wrote here. Why did you write it?”

  “Of course I believe it, sir.”

  Mr. Schiflin rustled the top page. “A unified Germany? The U.S. and the Soviet Union the closest of allies? A world government? English as a universal language?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What makes you think the U.S. will lose its superpower status?”

  Tam shrugged. “It’s inevitable, isn’t it? If we’re to achieve world unity, there really can’t be any so-called superpowers—at least, not the way we’re used to thinking of them. We have to give up some sense of sovereignty to become a working member of a community made up of equal nations.”

  “There are those who would find that view unpatriotic or unAmerican. I just find it absurd. I’d like you to rewrite this essay, Mr. Jones, from a more realistic point of view.”

  “I can’t, sir.”

  Mr. Schiflin fixed him with a positively deadly over-the-bifocals stare.

  “This is the way it’s going to be . . . I believe. If I wrote something else, I’d be lying. You don’t want me to lie, do you, sir?”

  The stare waxed more deadly. “Perhaps I need to have a word with your parents about this, young man.”

  “Perhaps you do, sir,” returned Tam agreeably.

  oOo

  Tuesday, Constantine forgot his pencil bag. He stared at the empty paper before him on the desk, arms folded, stoic.

  He could ask the teacher for a pencil, but that would lay him open to ridicule and perhaps even discipline. He could signal Tahireh to toss him one of hers, but she’d probably get caught doing it and be made to stand against the wall for throwing things in class. He could ask Bobby Truman to lend him one, but then he’d get caught whispering. That drew a stiff oral presentation on a randomly selected subject.

  Then, again, he could always manifest a pencil—they were easy and nondescript—but he’d promised Mom and Dad he wouldn’t. When he and Tam had told their parents about the blank book incident, a definite rule was established: no manifesting of books, pencils, paper, or other items. Period.

  Constantine had mumbled something about stifling the development of his God-given talents, but the rule stood—Constantine was not to manifest so much as a paper clip.

  But I don’t need a paper clip, he thought, I need—

  “Constantine, begin working on the problems, please.”

  He glanced up toward the front of the class. Mr. Matthews gazed back, pointedly tapping his wristwatch. Constantine dropped his eyes and glanced quickly around the room, taking in the hunched figures of the other children—scribbling madly, eraser chewing, pencil tapping.

  A slow smile tugged
at the corners of his mouth. He glanced at his open math book, then set his gaze purposefully on the empty paper beside it, the first set of figures indelibly impressed on his mind.

  Mr. Matthews started wandering several minutes later, weaving his way along and through the rows of struggling students, checking their progress or lack thereof. One of them sat unnaturally straight, eyes on his paper, smiling, hands folded inactively in his lap.

  Matthews worked his way quietly toward the immobile child, snuck up behind him and peered expectantly over his shoulder, mouth open to utter a terrifying, “And what are we doing, Mr. Jones?” But the words did not form. Mr. Matthews stared in silent disbelief as a series of mathematical problems scrawled themselves across the sheet of paper as if by an invisible pencil.

  He gasped.

  Constantine felt a chill of mixed terror and elation as he heard Mr. Matthews breath catch in his throat, sensed his blood cool suddenly in his veins.

  The child-smile deepened.

  oOo

  “He hasn’t told anybody,” said Constantine. “I know he hasn’t. And it’s been three days.”

  Tam wrinkled his forehead. “Well, Mr. Schiflin talked to Dad about my essay. Dad said I should be less direct in my revelation of future events. He assured Mr. Schiflin that I wasn’t un-American, just unusually perceptive and cosmopolitan. I’m not sure Schiflin even knows what cosmopolitan means. How’re you girls doing?”

  Tahireh drew herself up and smiled, tossing a thick blonde braid over her shoulder.

  “I’ve got almost every girl in our class thinking about what college they want to go to and what degrees they want to get.” She exchanged the smile for a puzzled frown. “But I don’t really understand how that’s supposed to upset anybody.”

  “Oh, it will, Tar,” Tam told her. “You’ll see.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Stasi dourly. “I think maybe Mom and Dad awed the administration so much, they’re just gonna grin and bear it. Miss Tindall hasn’t batted more than an eyelash since our last talk. Elaine and a couple of the other girls have even started to dress like me, and Beth Silverberg did something weird to her hair and Tindall just said, ‘My, that’s unique.’”

  “Yeah, but Schiflin—”

  “You handed in an essay that offended the man’s sensitivities. That’s not enough to get you in trouble.”

  “Then we need to bolster our offense.”

  Stasi shook her head. “We can’t do anything really bad, Tam. At least, I won’t.”

  “Me neither,” vowed Tahireh.

  “I wasn’t even going to suggest it. I just think we need to give them something they can’t ignore.”

  oOo

  Tamujin Jones handled his fluorescent orange and blue gravipack with cheerful confidence, showing everyone who cocked an eye at the bright satchel that it was light as a feather, despite the fact that it obviously contained every textbook he owned. He stopped to let one student touch the sleek, shiny material; grinned as another hefted it, finding it to be much lighter than it appeared to be; laughed outright when one especially curious young citizen removed a book to find that the single volume weighed more than the entire pack full he had just taken it from.

  “It’s what they make parachutes out of,” Tam told anyone who asked. “And astronaut’s uniforms.”

  “Astro-what?” asked one freckled peer.

  “Space suits,” Tam said, and grinned.

  “So what else do you carry around in that ‘space bag’ besides books?” asked the boy who sat behind him in class.

  He tried to look coy, secretive. Stasi was better at that than he was. “Oh, not much,” he said, and floated the pack into his lap.

  His classmates’ curiosity was suitably whetted. They watched the pack as if it might hold a football autographed by the Cornhusker’s starting quarterback. They were forced to take their eyes from it as class progressed, but Tam brought their attention back from time to time by rummaging in it, extracting a pencil, a notebook, his English text.

  When Mr. Schiflin began to lecture on their English assignment, Tam set his pencil down in the midst of note-taking and glanced furtively around. Then he opened the pack and extracted, with the air of a veteran safe-cracker, something small and black and mechanical; something that drew the eyes of his circle of watchers like a magnet.

  He played it like a tiny piano—one handed—then scribbled, then listened, then played, then scribbled again. A whisper of curiosity rippled out from Tam’s cast pebble, cresting within earshot of the lecturer. Schiflin, interest engaged, took his show on the road, wandering the depth and breadth of the classroom.

  Tam let him come within two rows before he slipped the enticing object back into his pack. The teacher covered the distance between them in two strides, every eye in the class following him.

  “What was that, Mr. Jones?”

  Tam looked up, wide-eyed, and smiled affably. “What was what, sir?”

  Schiflin pointed. “You just hid something in that bag.”

  “I didn’t hide anything.”

  “I saw him, Mr. Schiflin,” volunteered Greg Rollins from across the aisle. “He was playing with something. A puzzle, I think.”

  “What was it, Mr. Jones?”

  Tam shook his head. “The only thing I put away just now was my pocket dictionary.”

  Mr. Schiflin’s pointing hand turned palm up. “Give it to me, please.”

  “I was just taking notes and needed to look up a word—”

  “Hand it over. Now.”

  Tam hesitated just long enough to make Schiflin’s face turn red, then he withdrew the curiosity from the satchel and laid it across the teacher’s outstretched palm.

  Schiflin turned the thing over, frowning at it. “What is this, Mr. Jones?”

  “I told you, sir. It’s a dictionary. I was looking up words from your lecture.”

  Schiflin stared at him. “A dictionary . . . . If you don’t mind, Mr. Jones, I think I’ll just hold onto this ‘dictionary.’ And I’ll expect you to deliver a note from me to your parents.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Schiflin started to turn away, then glanced back. “How does this work?”

  “You just turn it on—the little red switch at the top. Press it; it turns green to show the unit is on. You press it again to turn it off. To look up a word, you can either enter it from the keypad or just tell it.”

  “Tell it?”

  Tam nodded, enjoying himself much more than he knew he should. He’d always wondered what it would be like to take Jules Verne for a ride in a hover-lite or show Edgar Alan Poe a computer. This had to be almost as good.

  “Just say the word,” he said.

  Schiflin frowned, then reddened. He glanced around the room as if he’d only just realized how big an audience they had.

  “C’mon, Mr. Schiflin!” urged Greg. “Try it. I’ll bet he’s full of it!”

  Schiflin didn’t even censure the outburst. “It would serve you right, young man, to be caught with your pants down.”

  “I’m not lying, sir. I promise. Give it a word.”

  Scowling, Schiflin pressed the red button. It turned green and the flat, black screen not much bigger than a business card displayed the words: “Dictionary.” Below that was: “Input Word?”

  He held the thing close to his mouth and said, “Outrageous.”

  The screen filled with text. “Outrageous,” echoed his own voice. “Grossly offensive, disgraceful, shameful, extravagant, immoderate. Shall I spell it?”

  Face white with small patches of intense red at the cheeks, Schiflin stared at the tiny machine. “Shall I spell it?” it repeated.

  “No, thank you,” he answered, and flushed more deeply. Tam sensed his anger warring with wonder, with curiosity . . . with fear.

  The bell rang, jolting everyone out of the shared stupor.

  Still, no one moved. Mr. Schiflin cleared his throat. “Class dismissed for lunch. Mr. Jones, you may go home.”
<
br />   “Why, sir? I haven’t done anything wrong. It’s all right to look up words—you said so.”

  “In a book not—”

  “It’s just a dictionary, sir.”

  “It’s more than a dictionary, Mr. Jones. Even I can see that. What you’ve done is lied boldly and outrageously. You have disrupted my classroom. I can only assume, you’ve stolen this obviously valuable piece of equipment. Now, go home. I’ll speak to your parents at their earliest convenience.”

  “I didn’t steal it.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Tam nodded. “Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.” He gathered his books into the mysterious pack and left the campus.

  He managed to get into the house without being seen by either parent. That wasn’t difficult. Troy Jones was at the Air Base posing as a scientist of some sort and his wife was cheerfully working on their joint research somewhere in the Lab/Office.

  When the others came in at 1630 hours, Stasi had her friend Elaine and two other giggling girls in tow. Tam came out to the landing, giving his sister the thumbs up sign as she entered the front hall. She returned it, looking purposefully intense and sporting a twisted, half-manic grin.

  “Hi, Mom! I’m home!” she called through the front parlor. “I’ve got some friends with me. We’re going up to my room to do some homework, okay?”

  There was a moment of silence, then Helen Jones’s voice came back to them from the “restricted area.” “Is your room clean?”

  Stasi’s grin widened. “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Well . . . okay, then, I guess.”

  “Thanks, Mom!”

  The girls loped up the stairs, school books in arms, looking, Tam realized, like Anastasia Jones Clones. Their hair was tugged off to one side in fans or sprays; their Mary Jane shoes mimicked her nearly weightless astrolon flats. They wore what looked like their big sister’s hand-me-down skirts and from every earlobe dangled earrings made of gaudy goo-gaws home-mounted on scavenged clips and wires.