AFTER THE FACT

by Fred Saberhagen

  Jerry groaned. With eyes still shut, he extended a leg to find the edge of the bed. He needed a bathroom, and the need was going to become urgent very soon.

  His exploring foot could locate no edge, and in another moment or two Jerry had realized that this was because there was no bed. By now one of his eyelids had come unglued and opened, and with this advantage he could see that he was indeed lying on the floor. An unfamiliar floor. Between him and its rough-hewn, unfinished planks there was only the thickness—the thinness, rather—of a stained mattress that really did crackle with his every movement, as if it contained cornhusks.

  It seemed that the folk of the Pilgrim Foundation were blessed with an exquisite sense of humor, as well as pots of money. Not only a cornhusk mattress, but they had also changed Jerry's clothes for him. He was now wearing some kind of handmade gray shirt—it felt like good linen—and shapeless trousers that looked somewhat the worse for having been rolled in dust and leaves. Over his shirt he had on an embroidered vest, that came down past his waist. There were stockings—unfamiliar ones—on his feet, and a kind of enlarged bow tie loosely looped around his collar.

  In a far corner of the room, which was barren of all furniture except the mattress, stood a pair of leather boots. The heels were too low for cowboy boots, but they were high-topped and laceless. Beside them, resting on some kind of brownish folded garment, was a high stovepipe hat of approximately the same color. A shapeless bag the size of a small suitcase, made of cloth fabric except for its two cord carrying handles, rested beside the clothing.

  This was the same size and shape as the room in which Jerry had fallen asleep—but no, it wasn't the same. It might have been the same room once. Last night's room had had two doors, and two windows, and here were two doors and two windows in the same locations. But these windows lacked screens or shades, as well as nearly all their glass. Green leaves, as of dense bushes, were crowding in from outside; he must be on the ground floor. Through the broken windows came in the smell of lilacs and the song of robins.

  For a minute or so he stood unsteadily in the middle of the room, turning round and round in a kind of hopeless stupidity. He stared at the faded and weathered wallpaper—last night the walls had been painted—and at the white-painted woodwork. Yes, as far as the general architecture went, this looked like the same room in which he had fallen asleep last night. But last night's house had been decorated and comfortably furnished, and this one was long abandoned.

  When Jerry stumbled over to the door to the room adjoining and pushed it open, there was no one in there either. This chamber was as barren as the one in which he had awakened, and its windows were broken too. Outside the broken windows, birds were singing cheerfully. No doubt they had a good idea of where they were.

  The need to find plumbing, or some emergency substitute, was fast becoming an imperative. Jerry, wary of the splintery floor, got his feet into the boots. They fit him perfectly, and felt as if they had been already broken in. Then he went down the hallway looking for a bathroom.

  He needed only a few moments to decide that he was wasting his time. There wasn't a bathroom in this house, not on the ground floor anyway, and if there was one upstairs it couldn't be functional. So he would just have to go outside. Somewhere…

  He reached a back doorway, from which the door was missing. Untended fields surrounded the house for as far as he could see. In a back yard overgrown with weeds were a couple of ramshackle outbuildings, including a privy partially screened from the house by tall hollyhocks—barren of flowers this early in the year—and more spring-blooming lilac bushes. The door of the privy squeaked open on what looked like homemade hinges when Jerry pushed it in, and a field mouse scurried out of his way. The smell inside was very old, but still pungent enough to be the final trigger for his nausea.

  Emerging some time later from the wooden sentry-box of the abandoned latrine, Jerry felt considerably better, though his head still ached and his hands trembled. At least he was back in the world again, and prepared to deal with it.

  In a great silence he walked completely around the deserted house, confirming that he had the place entirely to himself. Then he stood for what felt like a long time in the back yard, looking things over. He shaded his eyes with a hand when he looked east against the morning sun. There were no other houses nearby in any direction; there was what looked like another farmhouse, about a mile to the south, but that was too far away for him to be able to make out any details.

  Whoever had concocted this joke had known what they were doing, and had spared no effort or expense.

  From where Jerry stood he was able to see a part of an unpaved road that passed close in front of the house. There were no phone lines along that road, no utility poles of any kind. He could see part of a split-rail fence, much like the ones at New Salem. There was no traffic passing. He watched for what felt like a considerable time—his wristwatch was missing—and not a single vehicle came by.

  When he gave up at last and re-entered the house, his first sickness and confusion had passed, and he could look at things more thoughtfully. Now Jerry noted the complete absence of light switches. Not surprising when there were no incoming wires visible. Nor were there any electric outlets in the barren walls, any more than there was running water in the kitchen. He'd passed a hand-levered pump in the back yard.

  Next he toured the house, upstairs and down; everything he saw confirmed that the place had been abandoned for years. Almost all the windows were gone, all the rooms suffering from exposure to the weather.

  Returning at last to the room in which he'd awakened, he looked again at the tall hat waiting for him on the floor. This time he tried it on. It fit him nicely. The folded garment turned out to be a coat. He was afraid that it would fit him too, and threw it down on the mattress without making the experiment.

  Then Jerry went down on his knees beside the carpetbag and started taking out the contents. Most of it was clothing. There was a spare vest and trousers, along with several sets of odd-looking underwear, of the same general style he'd already found himself to be wearing, and socks and handkerchiefs. There were two clean shirts, much like the one he had on, with detached collars packed in a separate interior pocket of the bag.

  Another small pocket in the bag held a straight razor, folded shut, and a small pouch made of a material that felt something like plastic but wasn't. In the pouch Jerry discovered a bar of soap, and a small brush he could dimly recognize as a shaving aid, probably because it had been packed in proximity to the razor.

  Yet another small interior pocket held a small blue-steel revolver. Jerry, who was no firearms expert, fumbled around gingerly with the thing, turning the cylinder and gently thumbing back the hammer and slowly letting it down again. Peering at the cylinder he could see cartridges occupying five of the six chambers. Something about them looked peculiar even to his eye, amateurish with regard to firearms.

  In the same pocket of the bag there was a folded letter, still in its envelope; envelope and letter were creased and worn. In faded, water-spotted blue ink the letter was addressed to one James Lockwood, at some illegible location in Missouri. The handwriting, Jerry thought, was probably feminine. And it looked, he thought, oddly like Jan Chen's.

  He opened the letter and started to read. There was no date or any other heading.

  My Dearest Jim—

  That was about all he could make out; the body of the letter had been soaked worse than the address. He would try to decipher the rest later, when he had time. Or he would mind his own business. These things weren't his.

  Working quickly, he repacked the bag with all the items he had taken out of it. Then at last he grabbed up the coat from where he had thrown it down, and tried it on. The coat proved to fit him as well as did the garments he was already wearing, but the cut of it was very strange, different from that of any suit coat Jerry had ever worn. It came down halfway to his knees, and hung on him as unpressed and shapeless as the trousers.

&nbs
p; Now Jerry started on the coat's pockets, with which it was well supplied. They contained a handkerchief, basically clean, and a small folding pocket knife. There was also a great deal of paper money, in several colors and varieties, with every variety claiming to be dollars. Most of the notes bore the name of one bank or another, in different states. And then there were gold and silver coins. Counting it all up as best he could, Jerry figured that he was in possession of something close to a thousand dollars altogether, if this money was real.

  But of course it couldn't be, not really. The money, like the clothing and the gun, had to be part of the big joke that was being played on him. Yes, of course it did.

  His fingers were shaking more and more as he stuffed the cash away awkwardly into the unfamiliar pockets of the coat.

  There was a key—a single key—resting by itself in one of the inner pockets of his coat. An old-fashioned large key, with a comparatively simple bit. From the moment he saw it, Jerry had the feeling that it was important.

  And there was a locket in one of his coat pockets, with a painted miniature likeness inside. The likeness of a comely young woman with brown hair, wearing a high nineteenth-century collar; he didn't know her. She was certainly not Jan Chen, or the one-name Olivia either. Was she perhaps the woman who had written the indecipherable letter to Jim Lockwood?

  Jerry's head ached, and so did his throat. Remembering the pump in the back yard, he went back to it, and with much squealing and clanking of metal made it work. For what felt like a long time there was no result. Then water, rusty at first, gushed from the spout, and Jerry soaked his head in the yellowish irregular stream, and swallowed a much-needed drink.

  All right. Joke or whatever, he was here, and he would deal with the world as it came to him.

  If this was a joke he could go along with it. He put on his coat and hat—the first people who saw him dressed like this were going to laugh at him, but so what—and went out of the front door of the house to stand on the edge of the road. Between the ruts there were some horse-droppings that didn't look all that old. The road itself was not modern gravel, but what looked like clay, in places no more than mud. Here and there puddles still lingered from the last rain. Split-rail fences of the type Jerry had seen at New Salem marked off fallow fields on either side.

  In one direction, toward Jerry's left, there were some buildings in sight, a mile or two away. In the other directions, nothing that looked like a habitation. Carrying his carpetbag, he started walking to his left, which he decided had to be north, assuming that the rising sun still marked the east.

  These untended fields were deriving no benefit from their fences, but the wooden rails provided perches for a profusion of songbirds. The day was warm and clear, but not yet hot. All Jerry could think of was that if he kept walking long enough on a road, someone would come out of a house, drive up in a car, or descend in a helicopter, and start to explain the joke.

  The more he thought about this tremendous joke, the more explaining he could see that it was going to take. But on the other hand if he once admitted that this might not be a joke—

  His mind had reached a place where logical thought seemed to be of little benefit. Therefore he rested his mind as best he could, and kept on walking.

  Another human being came in sight at last, a man, way off across the fields, driving horses as he walked beside them—no, the animals that he drove were mules. They were hitched up to something, pulling it.

  Jerry had been walking for about a mile when he became aware of another engineless vehicle, this one overtaking him from behind. He heard the thunk of hard wheels on uneven ruts, the quick hooves of a horse, the jingle of harness.

  Jerry stepped off the road. He turned and made himself smile as the driver of the wagon pulled to a stop beside him. The driver, a man of about forty, was dressed in a costume very similar to Jerry's, with minor variations. "Headed for Springfield?" he called down cheerfully.

  "Yes. I certainly am." Jerry took the question as an invitation, tossed his carpetbag into the small cargo compartment at the rear of the buggy—or whatever this four-wheeled two-passenger vehicle ought to be called—and climbed up awkwardly onto the single high seat beside the driver. In a moment they were under way again, in a hard-jolting but still remarkably quiet ride.

  Holding the reins in his left hand, the driver extended his right to shake. "Winthrop Johnson. M'friends call me Win."

  "Jer—Jim Lockwood." He had a letter in his pocket, didn't he, to prove his identity? If it should ever come to that. Whatever the game, he had to play the cards he had been dealt. "Thanks for the ride."

  "Don't think a thing about it. Suppose you haven't been walking far?"

  "No, no. Not far." Jerry took off his hat, scratched his head, and rubbed his eyes. Already the buggy's motion was beginning to revive his queasiness; but he had no wish to go back to walking. "Truth is, last night some friends and I got into a bottle. Went a little deeper than I planned."

  "Hahaa." It wasn't really a laugh, more a drawn-out sound of sympathy. Win Johnson shook his head; he was obviously a man of worldly understanding. "I've been down that road myself more than once. There've been mornings when I didn't rightly know where I was when I woke up."

  "I appreciate your sympathy." Jerry allowed his eyes to close again. "How far is Springfield?"

  Johnson squinted up toward the sun; there were certainly no road signs to consult. "Should be there by dinner time, or so they told me. This road's a new one to me—maybe you've been over it before?"

  Jerry shook his head.

  "Well then, we'll just be explorin' together. I'm a land agent for the railroad, and have been talking to some surveyors. Don't believe I caught what your line is?"

  Jerry considered. "I travel," he said after a moment.

  "Hahaa. Between jobs right now. Wal, m'friend, I don't know if Springfield is a-going to be the best place to find a new one. Chicago, now, I'd say your chances are bound to be better there. Things will be a little slow all over, I'm afraid, now that the war is winding to an end."

  "An end," Jerry repeated. He was barely able to keep himself from asking: What war?

  The other nodded. "Grant's troops entered Richmond on the third. Can't be long now before Lee surrenders. That should just about finish her off."

  "On the third." Jerry thought he was going numb all over. "What's today?"

  "Well, the fifth. Wednesday."

  Jerry was riding with his eyes closed again. He told himself that when he opened them, he would be riding in an automobile. But he couldn't convince himself of that, not while the damned buggy kept bouncing so. Not while he could smell the horse, and hear the beat of hooves. Grant and Lee. Richmond. Sure.

  "Hate to see a man suffer so," said the voice of Winthrop Johnson. "Here, have a hair of the dog?"

  Jerry opened his eyes to see, almost under his nose, the jouncing right hand of his companion extending a small metal flask in his direction. With a kind of desperation he accepted the flask and put it to his lips. The taste of the stuff inside was fiery, but still surprisingly good, and the net result of a couple of small swallows actually beneficial.

  "What is that?" he asked, gasping lightly as he handed the flask back.

  "Peach brandy." His benefactor seemed somewhat surprised by the question.

  "It's very good—no, no more, thanks. One hair of the dog is plenty."

  "Not from around these parts of Illinois, are you, Jim?"

  "No, no. Back east."

  "Thought so, listenin' to the way you talk. I'm from Indiana, myself. You from New York, maybe?"

  "That's right."

  "Thought so. I can usually pin a man down by the way he talks."

  The countryside flowed past the buggy at a slow pace, but still faster than his feet had been able to make it move, and with infinitely less effort on his part. His brief stint of walking had been enough to convince him that this mode of transportation was in every way an improvement.

  At i
ntervals Win Johnson's rig passed a couple of heavy wagons, laden with farm produce and laboring in the same direction. Two young women costumed in ankle-length dresses and pinned-on hats went by going the other way, in a light two-seater carriage pulled by a graceful gray horse. Jerry, numb with wonders, observed them in their Scarlett O'Hara costumes almost without surprise. Johnson tipped his hat lightly to the ladies, and Jerry caught on just in time to tip his own hat just before the other carriage passed.

  Why was he going to Springfield? Chiefly, he decided, because he had to go somewhere. He couldn't have simply waited in an abandoned farmhouse for something to happen. But God knew what was going to happen to him next.

  With half his mind Jerry continued to make wary conversation with Win Johnson, while with the other half he got busy trying to reconstruct the exact circumstances of his departure from what he considered the normal world—the late twentieth century, in which era he had spent his life up until now. This just didn't feel at all the same as his childhood escape from the burning house. No, this experience was vastly different. Apart from the subjective difference, this time he had been outfitted.

  But how had it happened? Everything had seemed perfectly normal when he'd arrived in Springfield. He'd registered in a real, modern hotel, one with plumbing and electric lights and elevators. Then he'd driven out to New Salem, where there were split-rail fences just like these, and at about that point things had started to go subtly wrong. After he'd met Dr. Pilgrim and Jan Chen the deterioration had speeded up.

  After visiting New Salem, and the Foundation office, he'd gone out to dinner with Jan. He could still sense pizza and wine in aftertaste. But damn it, there had to be something besides wine to explain why he'd passed out. He hadn't consumed that much. He just didn't, ever, drink enough to knock himself out. He never had. Certainly he wouldn't have done so in the course of an extended job interview.