Thirty Days Later: Steaming Forward: 30 Adventures in Time

by Harry Turtledove

  She and the man now stood on a vast plane of thick gray dust and rock, but she could see mountains in the distance, lit with bright sunlight. This seemed strange because it appeared to be night, and they now stood beneath a black sky full of stars. Looking all around, Vivian slowly came to realize that there wasn’t a single road, building, nor any sign of life anywhere around them, and that every inch of the ground and surrounding mountains was the same odd, dusty gray.

  “Where’s all the cheese?” the baboon asked, looking cross.

  “Yes, wasn’t there supposed to be cheese?” the man asked him curiously.

  “What’s happened?” Vivian asked them, realizing that her confusion and fright was beginning to make her body shake while the man continued to hold her steady.

  “Oh,” he replied, gently rubbing at her back. “You wished to visit the moon. And so,” he added, turning and gesturing behind himself, “here we are.”

  Still confused, Vivian glanced around behind him. A breathtakingly beautiful half-sphere of blue, green, and brown, swirled with feathered white streaks, hung in the stars above the horizon. She nearly spoke up to ask what he meant, when she suddenly recognized a shape on the edge of the sphere. It looked rather like the continent of South America, leaning on its side. She glanced up and winced to find a blindingly brilliant, large, single, point of light in the black sky and stars above their heads. All at once, her understanding fell into place.

  Vivian gripped the man’s arms and stared up at his face in astonished alarm. “We’re on the moon!”

  “Yes, as you wished,” he agreed with a nod and a smile.

  “But, we’re on the moon!” she protested. “I mean, the moon!”

  He chuckled lightly. The baboon smiled to her amiably. Vivian gaped at the both of them.

  “My name is Idris,” the man said pleasantly. “This is Jeffery Simian,” he added, gesturing to the baboon, who tipped his hat to Vivian again. “I’m a djinn,” Idris explained. “I’m always looking for people who know how to make interesting wishes, and I must say you’re off to a good start, my dear. Now, would you like to wish yourself back home,” he asked, hooking a thumb at the Earth, hanging over just the horizon, “or would you like take a stroll with Jeffery and me on the moon? I’ve already made it easy for us to walk in this gravity, and also for us to breathe. You would be perfectly safe in my company.”

  Vivian stared back at the man — rather, the magical, wish-granting, apparently-lamp-less genie — and began to wonder if she’d somehow either lost her mind completely or fallen asleep while on the job. Either way, she didn’t seem to be bound for sanity or the waking world any time soon. Wouldn’t the shock of finding herself no longer on the Earth have woken her up, at least? But then again, the djinn might just be telling her nothing but the truth. Surely she couldn’t be lucky enough to run into a real-life, magical djinn, who wanted to grant her wishes. Surely.

  “Idris,” Jeffery said, staring back at Vivian worriedly. “I’m afraid you might have rather frightened the young lady. Shall I wish her home?”

  “No,” Vivian answered, surprising herself. Idris looked back to her with a patient smile. Vivian returned it, taking the crook of his over-warm arm. “My name is Vivian Swift,” she said, mastering her decorum. “And I’d love to take a stroll with you on the moon.”

  “How delightful,” Idris replied, clearly pleased with her answer.

  As they set out, strolling slowly towards the Earth, Vivian found that it was indeed perfectly comfortable for her to step through the fine, soft, gray dust that covered the moon. Although the air felt chilly to her, it wasn’t unpleasantly so, and breathing was no trouble at all.

  “Perhaps after this,” Idris remarked, “we might visit some place with good cheese. I rather fancy some now that we find there is none here on the moon.”

  “But maybe there is,” Jeffery said with sudden inspiration. “Perhaps all this gray dust is just mold.”

  “Oh!” Idris gasped, disgusted. “I don’t want horrid old moldy moon cheese. I mean, rural France, or Switzerland — goodness, some stout Irish cheddar would be much better than moldy old moon cheese.”

  Vivian laughed, becoming somewhat giddy with all of the strangeness that had just crowded into her life. “I’ve always wanted to visit France,” she offered. “Have you been there?”

  “I haven’t,” Jeffery answered. “Have you, Idris?”

  “I’ve been everywhere down there,” Idris answered with a sigh, staring at the Earth on the horizon. Vivian noticed a note of melancholy in his voice. Seeming to notice her attention, Idris smiled to her and patted her hand, where she held his arm. “But seeing an old place with a new friend can make it seem brand new again. How long do you think you might like to travel with us, Vivian? Because I’m not afraid to tell you that I’d gladly show you the whole world, if you’d wish to see it.”

  Vivian smiled back to him, her heart beating quickly. Looking into the golden eyes of this djinn, strolling on the moon, she realized that she didn’t want to return to sanity, nor wake up again. And if, by some strange twist of fate, this was actually real, she also realized that no part of her wanted to go home. Trevor could marry someone else, she could send her parents postcards from all over the world so that they wouldn’t worry too much, and the Rooks could very well find another doorkeeper. Surely, only a true fool would pass up this gift. Surely.

  “I would be delighted to see the world with you, sir,” she said, surprised by the confidence and calm in her own voice. She smiled, looking off ahead of them at the Earth on the horizon, felt a deep and satisfying calm wash over her, and for once, her mind failed to wander at all.

  “Please,” he replied. “Call me Idris. You and I shall be great friends.”

  “Oh, I’m sure we will,” Vivian agreed. “Surely.”

  Two Days in June, Part II

  by Sharon E. Cathcart

  5 July 1832

  Has it really been only thirty days? Marianne asks herself. Thirty days since 300 Republicans, led by Enjolras, stopped Lamarque’s funeral in the Place de la Bastille? How well she remembers the day, and her lover’s rousing speeches to the gathered crowd. It seemed that the people of Paris would follow Jean-Claude Enjolras to the mouth of Hell itself. After all, they applauded every phrase that came from his mouth and the mouths of the others who spoke on Lamarque’s very catafalque.

  And yet, that is not what happened at all, is it?

  The people, at the end of the day, stayed home.

  The Friends of the Abaissé, along with their newfound comrades, barricaded the narrow streets around Place de la Bastille, and they waited for the people to come.

  And they waited.

  The only ones who came were the National Guard, twenty-thousand strong on the first day. Among them was one Robert Enjolras who, though sympathetic to his brother, was not sympathetic to the Republican cause. He was sorry he had ever told Jean-Claude the route that Lamarque’s funeral cortège would take.

  The first night, Marianne took a basket of food to Enjolras for him to share amongst his comrades behind the barricades. The meat, cheese, and wine disappeared so quickly! Hunger was a motivator for many behind the lines that evening. Once the food was shared around, Marianne begged Jean-Claude to come home with her, but he was steadfast.

  “The people will come, ma petite, I am sure of it.”

  He would not be moved, and so Marianne went back to her little room to keep vigil.

  Olympe reported a similar failure with Grantaire; she had brought him a bottle of cognac and the promise of a night of debauchery. None of that mattered to him … for once.

  And now, here they were, just a little more than a week before the Fête de la Fédération … alone.

  On that second day, the National Guard sent twenty-thousand more men than they had the day before. So, facing the Friends of the Abaissé and their few comrades were forty-thousand well-trained, well-fed soldiers.

  No one knows for certain whic
h side fired the first shot. Not even the very nice monsieur Hugo, whose wife was a client at the dressmaker; he had been caught behind one of the barricades and felt that his escape had been narrow indeed. He planned, he said, to write a book about the matter one day.

  But, Marianne thought, it does not matter who fired first. At the end of that second June day, ninety-three of the Republicans and thirty of the soldiers lay dead … among them both Enjolras sons and one Henri Grantaire. The bodies were laid out in long ranks, and both Marianne and Olympe had screamed at the sight of their lovers there. This was the one outcome that none of them had foreseen.

  Of the Friends of the Abaissé, only young Pontmercy survives in person. The others survive only in spirit. While this is not his tale, it is Pontmercy who tells Marianne and Olympe what became of their lovers. Of how Grantaire was collapsed, drunk, inside a tavern during the entire battle. Of how, when the soldiers pushed Enjolras into the tavern at bayonet-point, to execute him for being the ringleader of the Republicans, Grantaire awoke at last.

  Of how Grantaire arose with dignity, walked to the wall and stood next to his friend as the bullets flew.

  The two men who were closer than brothers during life have gone into the next world together. Somehow, young Pontmercy opines, it is fitting.

  The result of the whole thing is not what anyone would have predicted. Why? Because soon after those two days in June, the entire thing seems to have been forgotten. The people of Paris are still hungry, and the cruel king is still on the throne.

  It has only been a bit more than forty years since the first revolution, in 1789. Neither Marianne nor Olympe were yet born. Marianne remembers sitting by her grandmother’s side, learning to sew with tiny, perfect stitches and listening to stories about the Jacobins, the Girondins, the Cordilleras, and so many other clubs whose names she has forgotten. Of how Grand-mère learned to make those tiny, perfect stitches after being conscripted, in the levée en masse of 1793 with all of the other Parisian women, to make tents and clothes. Of how Robespierre led a terror-filled time, until his life was taken by the same guillotine that had made the streets run red at his direction.

  Somehow, she has never before connected that time to this. Never before has she considered that hunger and peoples’ rights were the driving causes for both the uprisings of 1789 and the one that took Jean-Claude’s life.

  Never before has she considered that her charismatic lover was a Robespierre to the Friends of the Abaissé. Nor has she contemplated the similarities between those long-ago clubs and the gathering of Sorbonne students in a dark tavern, dreaming of a better world for all citizens.

  And now she grows thoughtful. She wonders whether things will ever really get better for the people of her beloved city. And when the blood of those people will cease to stain the cat’s-head cobblestones of Parisian streets.

  The Friends of the Abaissé are, like the Girondins and the Jacobins, no more; it is as though they had never existed.

  Except for two things.

  In Marianne’s heart there is now a spirit of rebellion: a belief that better days could and would come if people worked together. The old slogan of liberté, egalité, fraternité holds a very different meaning for her now, just a few days before the anniversary of the first French revolution, than it did during those days when Enjolras was her lover. Now it is a burning need to fight for the freedom of all.

  And the other thing?

  Grantaire’s wish is coming true, if only he knew it. In Olympe’s belly is his child.

  From the Sky

  by Justin Andrew Hoke

  “We shall prove our worthiness to be more than God. To become His keeper ... and replacement.”

  —Harold Blythe, Architect/Mayor

  We have exchanged the bounty of our Mother Earth to placate the foolish dreams of a prophet. Our hands are dirtied by the efforts of vanity and our faces are smeared with the result of shame. The mutilation that fills our lungs carries a reminder in every cough, in every burn, in every spatter of blood we shake from our tongues.

  Our worthiness was never proven, for we were never prepared.

  No grace came from killing the ground as we cracked soil for its resources. No treasure was ever to be found in the destruction of our Eden. What did we think we were to gain by leaving the loving possession of the loamy land that we were planted in? We had a world at our fingers, yet we painted the sky in an effort to be sated by the covetous gains of enslaving ourselves to surpass heaven.

  The God we shook our fist at did not concede to our rightful claim.

  We have held on to reminders of our history, but we have cared not to recall the sins that bear the weight of our past. The earthly design of gravity kept us humble. It tethered us to each other and made us respect the atmosphere that contained us!

  A balance was broken when we forsake the invisible chains that made us one.

  We must now descend: to humble, to learn, to appease the upsetting of balance. Our entitlements only existed in exalting ourselves to the rank of deity. A command so undeserved of a race so uninspiring. Were we to think its upward reach amounted to the wealth of control?

  I can say with utmost certainty that we were never meant to rule in the sky.

  We are never meant to rule.

  Limits exist, yet we’ve cared not for their warning.

  Benefaction will result from our downward mission. It will harken to an era of humbleness toward genius via superiority. We must take our failures in stride and append the grave mistakes stemming from our unnatural greed. This is so we may once again grace ourselves with the humility of gravity.

  For when we respect the pull of a force unstoppable, we can recognize the force within.

  Blown Sky High

  by Lillian Csernica

  Constance Harrington took a deep breath. She reminded herself for the tenth time that day the women of Great Britain had followed their husbands to the four corners of the Empire and returned home triumphant. She had followed William to Kyoto, Japan. She, too, would return triumphant.

  “I realize beef and pork are not regular features of the Japanese diet,” she said to Mrs. Rogers, her housekeeper. “Surely you might at least have found some mutton?”

  “No, ma’am.” Mrs. Rogers clasped her hands before her. In severe black with her graying hair piled atop her head, she looked every inch the schoolteacher she once had been. “I had a chat with Mrs. Bailey, Lord Beaumont’s housekeeper. She tells me it’s good form to make sure you have a few Japanese dishes on the table as well.”

  “I will not serve my guests raw fish.”

  “No need, ma’am, no need. The cream pan and the honey sponge cake will do.”

  This was Constance’s first garden party in Japan. She’d already compromised on several of the traditional details. That left her anxious about the rest. She wore her dark hair swept up into a modest arrangement, adding a hair ornament decorated with tiny cascades of silk wisteria petals. The silk almost matched the pale blue border trim of her cream silk gown. She wore her aquamarine pendant and earrings. Driven by nerves, Constance bustled around, tidying the centerpieces of blue hydrangea, baby blue eyes and phlox and making sure each place setting was complete.

  “Now, Mama?”

  Madelaine stood in the shade of the flowering plum tree, holding a basket. She wore blue and gold plaid, with blue ribbons in her long dark hair.

  “Yes, darling.”

  Madelaine carried her basket among the tables. At each place setting, she added a blue origami dragon. Constance watched Madelaine’s precision with a combination of pride and relief. If Constance could turn Madelaine’s mechanical inclinations toward the complex arts of being a truly superior hostess, then perhaps Madelaine could be both accomplished and happy.

  A blue pavilion housed the refreshments. The two additional maids Mrs. Rogers hired had the tea and coffee arrangements well in hand, along with the claret-cup and lemonade. Constance looked along the buffet at the food, and her
heart sank. One simply could not get a decent loaf of bread in Japan. Rice flour, buckwheat flour, millet flour.... None of those created the texture of good English toasting bread. That and the lack of cold meats meant no proper sandwiches.

  A small hand slipped into hers.

  “It will be all right, Mama,” Madelaine said. “The Blue Dragon Festival is a party for Miss Kannon. Some of these treats must be her favorites.”

  The traditional Japanese sweets included sandwich cookies made from rice flour and red bean paste, little balls of fried, sweet dough on bamboo skewers, and floral-motif tea cakes. At least the tea cakes brought something of a traditional look to the buffet.

  “Madelaine, please,” Constance said. “Today could we talk about England? About Her Majesty Queen Victoria?”

  “Yes, Mama.” Madelaine looked thoughtful. “I wonder what would happen if Her Majesty invited the Goddess of Mercy to high tea?”

  Brief pain shot through Constance’s temples. Goddesses. Dragons. There had to be some way to cure Madelaine of this mad fixation on Japanese folklore.

  In one corner of the garden the string quartet tuned their instruments. Constance caught the eye of the lead violinist and gave him a firm nod to begin. The classical music of Mozart and Haydn soothed her nerves. The kitchen door slid open. Mrs. Rogers came hurrying across the grass.

  “Mrs. Harrington, your guests are arriving.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Rogers. Please have them shown to the garden. I’ll receive them here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Soon the garden was the delightful scene Constance had envisioned: the ladies, in their long gowns and bonnets, drinking tea and chatting with the gentlemen, drifting from one group to another, some taking seats where chairs were set up on carpets in the shade of the pine and plum trees.