Last Year

  “All right, but will you show me how to do it?”

  She spent a few grudging minutes adjusting Talbot’s device until it needed only the touch of a finger to begin capturing images. Jesse thanked her. She said, “You’re bleeding again.”

  He was, but it wasn’t a problem he could address just now.

  “And you’re pale as a ghost.”

  “I can take care of myself from here on out. Thank you for your help. You’re a good girl at heart, Doris.”

  He thought the words would please her, but she frowned. “Do you mean that?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then say it like I was one of them.”

  “What?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Woman,” he corrected himself. “You’re a good woman.”

  She smiled. “And you’re a gentleman.”

  “I left you something,” he said, “back in your cubicle.”

  He used Dekker’s pass card to open the elevator for her. She stepped inside and gave him a longing look. Those big eyes of hers were what had drawn him to her in the first place, against his own better judgment. She said, “We were a good pair, weren’t we? While we lasted?”

  No, not especially. “Sure, we were.”

  She smiled and kissed his cheek. “Keep safe.”

  Keeping safe was not an option. But he nodded as the doors closed.

  * * *

  In truth, he would have liked to get off his feet. There was something lulling about this bright, vacant aerie. It provoked an urge to sleep, despite the thunder of guns. The tiled floor began to look like a bed to him. But he dared not give in to that temptation. It was the siren song of his faltering body. He pictured Phoebe in his mind’s eye. Phoebe and Elizabeth. He would sleep when they were safe.

  Now the federal cannons began to fire en masse, a concentrated volley that probably represented some frustrated commander’s failing patience, all focused on the main gate. Swaying at the edge of the observation deck, Jesse took off the Oakleys Doris had given him and dropped them at his feet. He raised the iPhone to eye level, peered at its screen and at the diminishing row of bars that predicted its useful life, touched the icon that caused it to record moving pictures. The device captured images of rising smoke and City soldiers firing fierce volleys, the steel gate trembling under the artillery barrage. At least two shells arced over the wall and struck Tower Two as the battle went on, impacts that shook the floor under Jesse’s feet.

  He was still recording all this when a vast shape hove up at the periphery of his vision, close enough to rattle the window. It was the City helicopter—the one that used to give rides to tourists—but there were no tourists in it now. As it canted toward the besieging army Jesse saw an open door and figures with rifles at the ready.

  It was as if a monstrous but formerly pacific creature had been provoked to deadly violence. The airship crossed the City’s boundary and bore down directly on the federal lines. What happened next seemed dreamlike, framed in the luminous display of the iPhone: federal marksmen firing futile volleys at the airship—the airship tilting to give its own gunners a field of fire—then rounds pouring down from above in a sudden, furious rain. Here was Thermopylae, Jesse thought madly. Here was Bull Run.

  Blue uniforms blossomed with blood.

  He went on recording until the phone’s screen dimmed to darkness. In a matter of minutes the besieging army was reduced from ordered ranks to terrified chaos, its flags trampled in a panicked retreat. And now the victorious City men began to abandon their positions atop the wall, hurrying down interior stairways and across the open courtyard toward Tower Two as the attacking airship circled back to its landing pad.

  Which could only mean that the evacuation was nearly complete.

  Which meant Jesse had to hurry.

  He used Dekker’s card to call an elevator, hoping the artillery impacts hadn’t damaged the machinery. Hours seemed to pass before the door slid open. He stumbled inside, leaving boot prints in the blood that had puddled at his feet.

  * * *

  Down in the sublevels, in the tunnel that connected the towers, he joined the crowd of men who had just left the wall. He recognized none of them, and none of them recognized him. They were all from the future, new arrivals recruited to act as a rear guard for the evacuation. A few of them saw the blood he was trying to conceal and urged him to hurry to the Mirror or to go to the clinic in Tower One while there were still medics available. It was this last advice he chose to accept. His body had grown mysteriously heavy, but he refused all offers of help. Better not to involve strangers. He found the designated elevator and used Dekker’s card to summon it.

  The door opened on a hectic crowd of men and women in white gowns, uniformed security men, distressed civilians. Jesse stepped out of the elevator and tried to orient himself. The Tower One medical clinic had originally been a small part of this arcade floor, but the broad central corridor was lined with cots and gurney beds now; shop stalls had been curtained off to create makeshift surgical rooms where physicians patched up security men who had been injured in skirmishes and civilians who had been hurt by stray artillery rounds. No sooner had Jesse stumbled out of the elevator than a medic pushed a loaded gurney past him: It looked as if casualties were being hurried to the Mirror as soon as they were stabilized.

  He caught the attention of a woman in a green surgical gown. “I need to find Dr. Talbot.”

  “Are you in from the wall?” She looked him over, and her eyes widened. “You need to be triaged.”

  “Talbot,” Jesse insisted.

  “I’m sorry, but you need attention right now.”

  “Not as much as I need to find Talbot.”

  “I don’t have time to argue. Triage is by the fountain. I think Dr. Talbot is working over there,”—she waved vaguely—“in what used to be the spa. Take your pick.”

  It was only a scant few yards to the sign that said MASSAGE/HYDROTHERAPY/FACIAL AND BODY SCRUBS, but the journey seemed immensely long. Jesse kept his eye out for Talbot, but in the end it was Elizabeth he found. She came barreling out of the crowd so eagerly that he had to turn away to protect his damaged arm. “Jesse!”

  He hugged her, or leaned on her, a little of both.

  “I wanted to kick Kemp’s ass when I realized he shut you out, but by then we were deep into Tower One and I figured I ought to stick with Phoebe. They handcuffed Theo and Mercy and took them to the Mirror, but—are you all right?”

  Not entirely. He ignored the question and asked where Phoebe was.

  “Talbot’s with her” was all Elizabeth would say.

  His thoughts had grown unreliable, but he remembered the iPhone. He took it from his pocket and presented it to her. “It’s the one Kemp’s people confiscated,” he said. “I took some extra pictures with it. The kind August Kemp doesn’t want anyone to see.”

  * * *

  Phoebe lay on a table in a back room of the former spa with bags of fluid attached to her body. Her face was alabaster-white, her eyes were closed. Dr. Talbot took Jesse by his good arm and steered him to a chair. “You need attention,” he said.

  I need to stay awake a little longer, Jesse thought. That’s what I need. “How is she?”

  Talbot took a vial of liquid from the heap of medical supplies on an adjacent table and drew some of the fluid into a syringe. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I can’t help her.”

  Jesse focused on the words until they made sense. Even then, he refused to believe it. He had come too far to be dismissed so cavalierly. “With all your futuristic medicine—”

  “Jesse, listen to me. I can’t help her here. We X-rayed her, and the internal damage is too extensive for a quick repair. There’s a good chance she’ll survive, but only if she gets careful surgery and post-surgical support. And I can’t give her that—here.”

  Five years, Jesse thought. For five years all he had done, from working at the City to killing Roscoe Candy, had been for
Phoebe’s sake. To protect her and to redeem her from the ugliness of the world she had been born into. And he had failed. He closed his eyes.

  Elizabeth came close to him. “Jesse,” she said. “There are dozens of injured people being taken back through the Mirror. No one’s checking their ID. Do you understand? Jesse? If Talbot puts a tag on Phoebe’s gurney, he can take her through the Mirror. No questions asked. Hell to pay when they find out, but by the time that happens she’ll be getting real treatment. It’ll save her life. But she can’t come back. Once the Mirror’s closed, there’s no opening it again. Do you understand? Jesse?”

  He struggled to find the meaning of her words in the increasingly cavernous space his thoughts now occupied. If he understood correctly, she was offering him a ghost of hope. It meant he would never see Phoebe again. But Phoebe might live.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes. All right. Take her.”

  “And you?”

  “What about me?”

  Talbot hovered into view, still holding a syringe. “She means you’re a plausible invalid. If I hook you up to a saline drip and give you something to make you sleep, odds are I can get you to the other side along with your sister. If that’s what you want.”

  The medication to make him sleep might not be needed. His vision narrowed until all it contained was Elizabeth. Her face, her eyes.

  The floor shuddered under him. The lights flickered, there were shouts of alarm. At least one of the federal artillery emplacements must have survived the helicopter assault, Jesse thought. Tower One was being shelled.

  A Klaxon sounded, everything was in motion now, an oceanic roar of voices, the smell of blood … “It’s up to you.” Elizabeth’s voice, taut as a piano wire. “It won’t be easy either way, but you have to choose.”

  He understood that he was being offered an invitation, but to what? To Futurity, he thought; to the diorama world, spaceships and luminous cities; but no, Futurity was a myth. That was a fact the City had taught him. Futurity was nothing but a place. A faraway place. Another country.

  Her voice again: “Help me get him on a gurney.”

  Hands lifting him.

  “Jesse, can you hear me? We don’t have much time. Last call. Where do you want to go?”

  The question required an answer. He summoned what remained of his strength. “With you,” he said, or meant to say, but darkness took him before he could be sure.

  EPILOGUE

  Magnificent Ruins

  —1889—

  Long ago, in his first letter from Illinois, Jesse had described the towers of the City as “an architecture fit for angels.” And in his last letter he had written, “They will make magnificent ruins.”

  And he was right, Abbie Hauser thought. The prophecy had been fulfilled with remarkable speed.

  Ten years and more had passed since Jesse’s final communication. During that time she had often resolved to make this visit, and for years she had put it off, distracted by her situation and the daily business of coping with it. And while she dithered, both she and the City had grown old. Her bones ached on winter mornings, her digestion was irregular, intimations of mortality intruded on her thoughts. And the City of Futurity had been given up to wind and rust and nesting birds.

  “Is that it?” Soo Yee asked. “There on the horizon?”

  Their carriage crested one of the rolling mounds that passed for hills in this part of Illinois, on a road that had once been smoothly paved but had been crazed and broken by seasons of sun and ice. There it was on the horizon, the City of Futurity, dark against the pale opacity of an October morning. Two man-made buttes, as if the Illinois bedrock had lifted its arms to the heavens. Abbie tugged her shawl and sighed. “Yes.”

  “Like gravestones,” Soo Yee said.

  “Memorials, perhaps. Not gravestones. Phoebe and Jesse aren’t dead, Soo Yee. At least, I don’t believe so. They’re just—not here.”

  They were not dead, but this was the place where they had left the sensible world, and that was why Abbie had wanted to come. She carried with her Jesse’s last letter, written under the letterhead of the City, on crisp white paper made soft as cloth by years of handling. She didn’t need to look at it. She had committed it to memory long ago.

  * * *

  Dear Aunt Abbie,

  Please forgive my brevity. I have not much time to write. If you receive this letter it will be by the graces of a woman named Doris Vanderkamp. I have also given her a large number of gold eagles in the hope that she will deliver at least some fraction of them to you. Doris is kindhearted but of questionable reliability, so I cannot depend on her to do more than put this letter in the mail, care of your family in Boston in case you have sold the house on California Street. I hope my words, if nothing else, reach you safely.

  * * *

  Several carriages and an omnibus arrived in the courtyard inside the pitted wall of the City.

  Abbie had arranged to join a guided group tour, organized by the Women’s Auxiliary of the Illinois Grange and consisting mainly of females. It was an end-of-autumn tour, at a discounted price. The weather was chilly, and low cloud obscured the heights of the two immense towers; but the summer crowds were absent, which Abbie considered a benefit. She left the carriage and joined the crowd of thirty or so women assembling around the hired guide, a young man who worked at the City on behalf of the Union Pacific Railroad, the nominal owner of the property.

  Doris Vanderkamp had arrived on the doorstep of Abbie’s Boston family late in the summer of 1877, bearing the letter and three gold coins. Doris had impressed Abbie as less virtuous than Jesse wanted to believe, and those coins had once, quite obviously, had many companions, now absent. But a certain Christian charity of spirit prevented Abbie from resenting the theft, if it could be called that. Doris, an unmarried woman in a perilous world, had surely needed the money more than Abbie ever would. And Doris had faithfully delivered the letter itself, which was more precious than any coin.

  “The towers are tall,” the guide said, “but you ladies needn’t worry that they might fall down. They are built around steel skeletons and are immensely sturdy. Buildings constructed in the same manner are rising in our big cities even now. Soon enough, structures tall as these may be commonplace in Chicago and New York! Join me as we enter the lobby of the nearest tower.”

  The tower’s doors and windows were dark in the long October light. The buildings had been damaged by artillery fire in the long-ago siege, and a wind like the breath of Boreas blew through their many gaps and hollows.

  * * *

  Phoebe’s wound is being treated as I write. I am at the City of Futurity now. Its two great towers are under siege, and will soon be abandoned—I think they will make magnificent ruins, with time. But I must speak bluntly. If this letter is all that reaches you—if months or years have passed and neither Phoebe nor I have contacted you—you should think of us as lost. Just what that means I cannot at present say.

  * * *

  Abbie and Soo Yee hung back from the crowd as the guide began his work in earnest. First they passed into the grand lobby of what had once been Tower Two, a room as big as a cathedral but cold as the autumn prairie. In its heyday these spaces would have been heated and illuminated by electricity and filled with astonishing displays. The original contract, which Mr. August Kemp had signed with the railroad, had provided for fuel and spare parts to be left behind after the Mirror was closed, to allow the City to operate as a tourist attraction for a few years more. But that genial agreement had come to grief in the City’s final confrontation with the forces sent to arrest Mr. Kemp. Whatever had not already been stripped from the buildings by Kemp’s men had been looted or vandalized by the victorious troops, or shipped off to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

  Of course, the building was an astonishment even in its present condition. Its current owners had attempted to replicate some of its former glory, with recreated models of airships, crude wood and plaster dioramas, and murals, l
ess than expertly painted, of the so-called world of futurity. “Not our futurity,” the guide was careful to point out, “as even our visitors were willing to admit.”

  “Where were they from,” Soo Yee asked in a whisper, “if not the future?”

  Supposedly, from another leaf in some great (perhaps infinite) Book of Worlds, a book in which each page was an instantiated moment. Which meant—Abbie had given the subject much thought—no moment every truly ceased to exist. Every “now” was inscribed in a vaster Now. “The mind of God?” Soo Yee asked.

  Soo Yee had lately joined a church, at Abbie’s urging, and her question was in earnest. “Perhaps so,” Abbie said.

  “And the people who built this City, all those adulterers and Sodomites, they knew how to travel through God’s mind?”

  “Some say they learned the trick from others, wiser than themselves.”

  * * *

  I apologize again for the events that injured Phoebe and defiled the house you so generously shared with us. It is a consolation to me and I hope to you that you will never again be troubled by Mr. R. Candy.

  I expect many hard things will be said about the people of the future and their presence among us. Much of this disapproval they have earned and richly deserve. But not all. Do not judge them by Mr. August Kemp’s behavior, no matter what the newspapers say. Remember that Elizabeth DePaul is one of them, and Elizabeth has adopted the cause of Phoebe’s welfare as her own, and has been invaluable in getting her the care she needs.

  * * *

  The tour did not include the high parts of the Towers. There had been attempts, the guide said, to restore or replace the original mechanical elevators, but not even Mr. Thomas Edison’s people (on loan from Menlo Park) had been able to find a safe way of doing so. The stairs were intact, and special tours were sometimes arranged for the physically fit, but such a climb would of course be too strenuous for the ladies. However, the guide said, photographs taken from the famous Observation Deck could be purchased at the conclusion of the tour.