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Pope Emeritus? A black pope?

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Strange times at the Vatican.  I was at the gym this morning; on the TVs, all three morning news shows were reporting live from Saint Peter’s Square.  I listened to Arcade Fire instead, because it was highly unlikely any of them would have anything interesting to say.  You need to go elsewhere for that.

One of the top candidates to replace Benedict is a black cardinal from Ghana, Peter Turkson.  I find this particularly fascinating, since my novel Pontiff features a black pope.  So it was my idea first!  My guy is not this guy, though.  He strikes me as the Church’s equivalent of Marco Rubio (not Obama) — he may have appeal to people the Church wants to appeal to, but any changes he brings will be in style, not in substance.  This is from the New Yorker:

He will not lessen opposition to gay marriage or undo the directive stating that men with “deeply rooted homosexual tendencies” should not be ordained as priests. On the contrary, Turkson has defended anti-gay legislation in Africa and argued that “alternative lifestyles” should not be considered human rights…. Similarly, there is no reason to expect shifts on abortion, birth control, or the ordination of women should Turkson become Pope. He does not deviate from the party line even on topics where a variety of positions are theologically permissible, such as the end of clerical celibacy.

A good place to go for some perspective on the current goings-on at the Vatican is Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish.  An odd bundle of contradictions, Sullivan is a gay conservative Irish-Catholic Obama-lover, and no admirer of the Catholic hierarchy. Here he vents about Cardinal O’Brien of Scotland’s resignation on the eve of the conclave after accusations of sexual impropriety, while the abominable child-abuse-enabling Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles will attend:

Britain will have no representative at the Conclave because the Cardinals are either too old or too sexually compromised. But Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles, found unequivocally guilty of hiding and enabling the rape of children, will show up in his red robes. Why exactly is he allowed to go while O’Brien has resigned? Will he grab a sherry with Cardinal Law, another enabler of child-rape actually rewarded by the Vatican with a sinecure in Rome?

And here’s a question: if every Cardinal who had a cover-up of child-rape and abuse under his authority or had had sex with another man were barred from the Conclave, how many would be left?

And then there’s the ex-pope’s living arrangement — he’ll be right there in the Vatican, with his handsome secretary doing double duty as the head of the new pope’s household. Sullivan says:

So Benedict’s handsome male companion will continue to live with him, while working for the other Pope during the day. Are we supposed to think that’s, well, a normal arrangement? . . . This man – clearly in some kind of love with Ratzinger (and vice-versa) will now be working for the new Pope as secretary in the day and spending the nights with the Pope Emeritus. This is not the Vatican. It’s Melrose Place.

Ya can’t make this stuff up.  I know; I tried.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 21

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Larry tries to visit Kevin in the hospital, but the hospital has burned down, and Kevin is nowhere to be found.  He brings food to his family in the refugee camp, but afterwards his mother insists that he return “home”.  The camp, meanwhile, is descending into chaos.  Larry makes it out, but is then accosted in Cheapside.

Can things get any worse?

************************

Chapter 21

I turned.  There were three of them–short, scrawny kids, about my age probably, dressed in ragged shirts and pants.  They quickly  surrounded me.

“Where you headed, mate?”

“We’ve seen you before passin’ through Cheapside, haven’t we?”

“Comin’ from the camp?  How’d you get out?”

I tried to push past them, but they closed in on me.  The thing I remember most about them were their eyes.  They were wild and fearless.  They didn’t have anything to lose.  I put my fists up, ready to defend myself.  Not much point in that, it turned out, because the kid behind me cut my legs out from under me and I fell to the ground.  Then the three of them were on top of me, pulling my coat off while I tried to push them away.  They were small, but they were strong.  One of them held my legs while the other two wrestled with the coat.  I didn’t have a chance.  They had it off me inside a minute, and then they glared down at me.

“Got a little spunk in you, don’t you, mate?”

“This is our turf, and you don’t pass through without payin’ the toll.”

“Reckon you’ll have to be punished for breaking the rules.”

One of them picked up a rock and grinned.  I squirmed, but there was no way I could break free.

“Hey!” I heard someone shout, and a rock went whizzing past.  “Let ‘im go.”

The kids looked back.  “None of your concern, mate!” one of them called out.  “Now shove.”

“Shove yourself.  He’s a friend of mine.”  Another rock went by.

The kids looked at each other.  “You can have your friend,” the one holding the rock said.  “He’s not worth dross.  But we keep the coat.  We’re off, mates.”

They let go of me and disappeared down an alley.  I sat up and looked at the person who had saved me.  He was walking towards me with a rock in each hand.

It was Stinky Glover.

“Hey, mate, I think I actually do know you,” he said as he came up to me.

“There were some kids chasing you in the camp yesterday,” I said.  I was gasping a little, trying to catch my breath.

“That’s right, I remember.  You did a good deed for me.  I made up that ‘friend’ bit, but looks like I was right.”

“Thanks for getting those kids off me,” I said.

He helped me up.  I felt a little bruised, but otherwise okay.  “Dangerous place to be by yourself,” he replied.  “Name’s Julian Glover.  What’s yours?”

“Palmer.  Larry Palmer.  So, what are you doing outside the camp, Julian?” I asked.  It was going to be really hard not to call him “Stinky.”

“I could ask you the same thing, Lawrence,” he said.  “I make myself useful to the soldiers.  They want something from the city, they can send me, ’cause they know I’ll come back.  Beats sitting around all day in the camp doing nothing, and they’ll give me a hunk of meat or a hardtack biscuit for my troubles.  I’ve got no family, so I have to fend for myself.”

“No family?” I asked.  “You’re here alone?”

“Well, I’m ‘prenticed to a blacksmith, but I’ve pretty much run off from him since we got to the camp.  With no smithing to be done, I’m not earning my keep, so he doesn’t care.  What about you?  How’d you end up here?”

I told Stinky the story I had made up.  I figured it would get him interested, and it did.

“The Barnes family?” he said.  “From Glanbury?  I’m from Glanbury.  I know the Barneses.  Nice people.  Well, Cassie can be a trial.”

“I know what you mean.”

“But still–maybe we’ll run into each other after all this.”

“That would be great.  Anyway, thanks again.  I don’t know what they would have done to me if–”

Stinky waved me silent.  “We’re even.  So, you headed home?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You guess so?  Where else’d you be going?  Anyway, mind if I tag along?  It’s dangerous out here by yourself.”

The last thing I wanted right now was for Stinky Glover to be tagging along with me.  “No, that’s all right, uh, Julian.  Curfew’s coming pretty soon.  You better get back to the camp.”

Stinky looked sort of disappointed.  “You sure?  It’s no bother.  I can sleep in an alleyway as well as in that camp.”

“No, really.  Thanks for the help, but I’ll be fine.”

He stared at me, and then shrugged.  “Suit yourself, Lawrence.  And good luck.”

“Thanks, Julian.”

He turned away and headed back towards the camp.

I shivered–from the cold, and from fear.  I was alone again in Cheapside.  I started walking quickly towards the center of the city.

It was odd about Stinky, I thought.  He didn’t look all that fat in this world–but then, it was hard to be fat after a couple of months in that camp.  He probably stank, but it was hard to tell, because everyone sort of stank in this world, and I’d gotten used to it.  But the main thing was, he could’ve just left me to get beaten up–what did it matter to him?  But he didn’t.  Maybe he wasn’t so bad; maybe this world brought out some different qualities in him.

I saw a policeman, who stopped and stared at me suspiciously.  It wasn’t quite sundown, but it was close.  Did the curfew really matter, with the battle about to begin, with hospitals on fire and the camps ready to explode?  I remembered that my pass was in my coat.  Not that it had helped with that cop last night.  But losing it made me feel a little more lonely, a little more abandoned.  I was just another homeless kid wandering through the city.

I was downtown now, near where Kevin and I had been that first night when we’d asked that cop for help.  There were people still out on the streets, but they all look tired and worried.  A lot of the stores were boarded up.  I passed by a small park.  In it, a man was standing on a platform, talking to a small crowd.

Not talking, I realized after a moment–preaching.

Somehow I knew who it was, even standing outside the park, without being able to hear or see him clearly.  I went into the park and stood at the edge of the crowd.

It was him.  The guy from the Burger Queen world, with the black beard and fierce, dark eyes.  The guy who had talked about the beauty in each speck of dirt.  And in the home you left behind.

He wasn’t wearing a robe this time, just a rumpled jacket and pair of pants.  As before, he spoke softly, but you could understand every word he said.  He was talking about suffering.

“Yes, you have suffered, you continue to suffer, but you must not let your suffering define or diminish you.  You are so much more than that.  The suffering diminishes you only if you let it diminish you.  Even in suffering there is beauty, there is hope, there is love.  More than that.  In suffering lies the chance for redemption, and even the chance for greatness.  How can you know what is in you unless you have struggled, unless you have been asked to do more than you thought you were capable of doing?  Little consolation, perhaps, when there is not enough to eat and the enemy knocks upon our gates.  But it is true nonetheless.”

Someone shouted at him from the crowd, “We need food, not words!”

“What a fool!” an old man called out.

“Listen to the man!” a woman scolded him. “Let him speak.”

“There’s been too much talk!”

And then it seemed like he was staring straight at me as he went on, ignoring the crowd’s taunts.  “Our journey through life is harsh, and dangerous, and filled with sorrow and disappointment,” he said.  “We say to ourselves, I just can’t take anymore.  And yet there is more to be borne.  And it is only by enduring the pain that we can see the beauty.”

“I’ll show you pain!” someone shouted.

“It is only by living in doubt that we can find certainty.”

“See the beauty in this!” the heckler said, and flung a rock at him.  It hit him in the shoulder, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“It is only by setting out that we can finally return home,” the preacher concluded.

Then there were more rocks thrown, and fistfights broke out, and everyone was shouting.  I made my way through the crowd to the preacher, who was sitting on the ground rubbing his temple.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

He looked up at me.  “I’m okay,” he said.  “But you look cold.”

Okay.  He had said ‘okay.’  “Who are you?” I demanded.

“Just a stranger passing through,” he said.  “Maybe I should have passed through a little faster,” he added, wiping some blood onto his pants.

“No, I saw you–in that other world.  What’s going on?  Do you know me or something?  How come you know the word ‘okay’?”

He shrugged.  “Excellent questions.  But weren’t you listening?  It’s only by living in doubt–”

“Tell me!” I screamed at him.

His dark, glittering eyes looked a little doubtful then.  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.  “This whole thing has been entirely my fault.  I wish I could–”

“Hey you!” a voice behind me said.  I turned.  It was the cop I had run into the night before.  He didn’t look happy to see me.  “What are you doing here?”

“Listen,” I said, “could you just wait a sec–”

“Why are you causing trouble here?  Now get home before I tag you.”

I didn’t know what tagging was, but I supposed I didn’t want it to happen to me.  I turned back to the preacher–but he was gone.  Vanished.

Except for his jacket, which lay on the ground at my feet.  A parting gift?  I picked it up.

“Did you hear me?” the cop demanded.

“Fine,” I said, without looking at him.  “I’m leaving.”

I put the jacket on and ran out of the park, hoping to find the preacher.  But there was no trace of him.  I stopped to catch my breath finally in the middle of a street.  I checked the pockets of his jacket; they were empty.

So who was he?  Was he from another universe?  My universe?  Had he come here in the portal?  Why?  What did he mean when he said that the whole thing had been entirely his fault?  What whole thing?

He hadn’t answered any of my questions, and I had a whole lot more to ask him if I ever saw him again.  But what were the odds of that?

I started walking.  Suddenly I was so tired I could barely stand up.  I knew what I was going to have to do: go back to headquarters.  The lieutenant or the professor might yell at me, but they weren’t going to throw me out, they weren’t going to let me starve.  Besides, they had more important things to worry about right now than me.  And they might know what happened to Kevin.

So that’s where I headed, my mind filled with the preacher and my family and Kevin and Stinky Glover and the corpse of the old woman.  I felt overwhelmed; and the battle hadn’t even started yet.

The streets got more and more deserted as I walked, except for soldiers galloping by on horseback.  I saw a few policemen, but they ignored me.  I got the feeling that everyone was starting to hunker down to wait for the battle.

Headquarters, when I finally reached it, was anything but deserted.  Soldiers rushed in and out of the courtyard; wagons were being packed; officers were conferring with each other.  No one took any special notice of me.

I was surprised to see Corporal Hennessy there; the last time I had seen him, he had brought Kevin and me over to haul bags of grain in the food warehouse.  It seemed so long ago.  He nodded to me.  “Almost time, eh, mate?” he said.

“That’s what I’ve heard,” I replied.  “What’s going to happen to the camp?”

“Don’t know.  They’ve already pulled a lot of us out.  Not much point in guarding it now, is there?”

I thought about the old woman.  How many others were being killed as they tried to escape?  “Why don’t they tell the people in the camp?  Why don’t they just open the gates and let them go?”

The corporal shrugged.  “Because war’s a bloody mess.  If you spend your time trying to find sense in it you’ll go mad.”

That sounded about right.  “Well, good luck,” I said.

He nodded.  “Good luck to you, mate.  And to all of us, because we’ll surely need it.”

I went inside to the mess.  It was almost empty, but a grouchy cook got me the usual salt pork and stale bread, which I wolfed down like it was Harvest dinner.  Then I went upstairs to my room.

I could hear muffled sobs while I was still on the stairs.  I have never been so happy to hear someone crying.

I rushed into the room.  Kevin was lying on his cot, his face buried in a pillow.

“Hey, Kev,” I said, and I put my hand on his shoulder.

He turned over, and his face lit up.  “Larry!” he said.  “Am I glad to see you.”  He sat up, and we hugged for a long time.

“I went to the hospital this afternoon,” I said.  “I thought maybe you were–”

“I know, I know.  A cannonball hit the main building and set the place on fire.  Everyone was screaming to get out.  It would’ve been easy for me if they didn’t have those bars on my windows.  So instead I had to go out into the corridor, and there was smoke everywhere, so I could barely see.  But then a nurse grabbed me, and we found a door and got out just before the whole place collapsed.  They could really use some of those red Exit signs, you know?”

“Sure.  What happened then?”

“Well, I tried to help out for a while, but there really wasn’t much I could do.  There wasn’t much anyone could do.  It was awful, Larry.  All these people were injured and dying–and the doctors were basically helpless.”

“Yeah, I saw some of that.”

“So finally I just headed back here,” Kevin went on.  “I’d been in that hospital long enough anyway.  I feel fine.  There wasn’t much of anyone around, but then I ran into Peter, and he told me you’d disappeared and Lieutenant Carmody was really angry.  So then I started to get worried.  You hadn’t been to the hospital for a couple of days, and I thought: what if you’re dead?  What am I gonna do here by myself?  When it got dark and you still weren’t back, I guess I got pretty upset.”

“Sorry I haven’t been around, Kevin,” I said.  “But see, I found my family.  In the camp, just like you said.  Plus Stinky Glover, and Nora Lally, except her name’s Sarah here.”

“Hey, that’s great, Larry,” Kevin said.  Then he paused.  “What about–you know–my family?”

I shook my head.  “I didn’t find them.  I don’t think they live in Glanbury.  But they could be somewhere else–who knows?”

He sighed.  “Well, maybe it doesn’t matter so much.  At least there’s someone here from our world.”  He didn’t sound convinced that it didn’t matter.  “Tell me what happened,” he said.

So I told him everything.  About finding my family, about how I was dead in this world, about how my father was in the army and Cassie was pretty nuts, about the meeting with the president, and Stinky helping me fight those kids in Cheapside.  And about the strange preacher in the park.

“I guess you’ve been busy.” Kevin said when I finished.  “What do you think that meant–the preacher apologizing to you?”

“No clue.  No clue how he recognized me, either.  But I think–I think he’s like us.  From our world, or maybe from another world.”

Kevin was silent for a while.  Then he said, “So, what do we do?”

“I don’t know.  Go to sleep, I guess.  I’m wasted.”

“But tomorrow.  After we wake up.”

“I want–I want to help my family,” I said.

“Everyone says the battle is going to start tomorrow,” Kevin pointed out.

“I know.  But you can’t believe how awful it is in that camp now.  People are dying all over the place.”

“So how are you going to help your family?”

“I don’t know–bring them more food, maybe.  Help them get back to Glanbury, if that’s possible.”

“If we get to Glanbury, we can find the portal,” Kevin pointed out.

I hadn’t thought about the portal in days.  “Yeah,” I said.  “If we can get there.”

“Talking to Peter today got me worried,” he went on.  “It sounds to me like Lieutenant Carmody doesn’t want to let us go home.  We’ve been too valuable.”

“But we’ve told them everything we know.”

“Not really.  I mean–they’ve focused on this short-term stuff, just trying to win the war, right?  But if they do win, maybe they’ll start paying attention to other stuff.  Like medicine.  That Doctor Dreier who runs the hospital–I guess Professor Palmer talked to him, because he was in to see me a couple of times, and he was really interested in germs and viruses and smallpox and so on.  I bet we could help them a lot with that.”

I thought of the way Professor Palmer and then that doctor had wanted to bleed Kevin.  “It’s not right,” I said.  “We helped them.  They should let us go home.”

“I know.  But that’s not the way the lieutenant thinks.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying we should get out of here.  First thing tomorrow morning.  See if we can make it to Glanbury.”

The idea was scary, but it was what I wanted to do.  “We have to go to the camp first and find my family,” I said.

“Okay.  We’re going to have to wait till after the battle anyway to head south.”

So we had a plan, sort of.  And we had each other again–which was more than I’d expected an hour ago.  I blew the candle out, and we lay down on our cots to go to sleep.  I was really tired, but my mind kept on racing.  “Kevin,” I said, “if we find the portal, do you think it’ll bring us home?”

“Sure,” he replied.  “It has to.”

I thought about what the preacher had said: It is only by setting out that you can finally return home.  Had he been talking to me?  Well, it looked like I was going to try to follow his advice.

“You want to know something funny, Larry?” Kevin asked after a while.

“What’s that?”

“Today’s my birthday.  I’m a teenager.”

“Happy birthday,” I said.

“I almost didn’t make it,” he murmured.  “Hard to believe, but I almost didn’t make it.”

Then he was quiet.  The artillery had stopped, I noticed.  I could hear someone shout an order, the creaking of wagon wheels in the courtyard.  Not much of a birthday, I thought.  But it could have been worse.  I closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew it was dawn.

 

I get a two-star customer review on Amazon, and I brood about the nature of fiction

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Here I described a review of Senator that started badly but it ended up full of praise.  I love trick endings like that!

But now I’ve got a review of Dover Beach that goes in the opposite direction.  Look:

Great plot…..excellent writing……FINALLY a believable private eye……interesting, unforgettable characters…..surprising twists……All this to say that I believe here is an author we will hear more from in the future.

So why did I give it only 2 stars? Because of his world-view. His main character is living in a destroyed world as a result of nuclear war — yet Bowker thinks humanism is going to rebuild it all????

Have long though[t] that good Science Fiction asks the right questions, but am afraid Bowker comes up with wrong answers. I don’t buy the humanist philosophy and if his next book has “Humanistic Science Fiction” on the cover I for one won’t be spend[ing] a dime on it.

I guess we shouldn’t have put that quote from Locus (“Humanist science fiction of a high order”) on the cover!  But anyway, I was brooding about that four-question-mark question in the review’s second paragraph.  Do I believe what the reviewer says I believe?  I do not.  But further, I have never even considered the question.  Even further, if the novel suggests that I have an opinion about the matter–or about anything, in fact–I’d consider that a flaw.  The purpose of fiction is to give pleasure, not to give answers–to strive for beauty, not for truth.  For me, the pleasure of Dover Beach was in plopping down a conventional literary genre in an unconventional setting, and exploring the tensions that resulted.  This may cause notions of humanism to creep in, because private eyes deal with human-scale issues.  But the private eye in Dover Beach isn’t going to save the world he inhabits–he is lucky if he’ll be able to save himself.

This gives me a chance to copy John Keats’s definition of negative capability, which we should all read every year or so:

At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously- I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties. Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason — Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

Words for a writer to live by.

Here’s a five-star review to make me feel better:

What a treasure. Amazing how smoothly this author leads the reader into his jagged, apocalyptic world to reveal what evil lurks in the hearts of men, and leaves you to decide if such a world is worth saving or even living in. I was particularly impressed with his skill at giving you his characters bit by bit throughout to let them become gems of many facets, like a skilled diamond cutter. This is one P.I. whom you will never forget.

 

 

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 20

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President Gardner has decided to fight rather than surrender to the Canadian and New Portuguese soldiers besieging Boston.  And Larry has decided to return to help his “family” trapped in the refugee camp.

Can New England win the battle?  Will Larry be able to get back to the camp?  And what about Kevin, still trapped in the hospital recovering from drikana?

Read on . . .

*************************************

Chapter 20

I awoke the next morning in the cold attic room.  I could hear the artillery still booming away in the distance.

I went downstairs and out into the washyard to splash some water on myself, then over to the mess for another meager meal.  Word of President Gardner’s decision had gotten around.  A few officers were excited about the upcoming battle; most of them just seemed resigned.

Lieutenant Carmody wasn’t in the mess, but Professor Palmer was.  He started in on me right away.  “I’m most concerned about what you did yesterday afternoon, Larry–going off like that against my wishes.  Really, there is too much at stake here for such behavior to be tolerated.”

I felt guilty, but I didn’t want to lie to him.  Anyway, I couldn’t hold it in.  “I found my family,” I said.

He stared at me.  “Your family?”

“In the Fens camp,” I said.  “Not the people from my world, but the same people from this world–you know what I mean.  My mother and my sister and brother are in the camp.  My father’s in the army.”

“You went to the Fens camp by yourself?”

“I had to.  Kevin and I talked about it and–I had to find out if they were here.”  I could feel my eyes start to tear up.  “I know it was dangerous, but this was maybe my only chance.”

The professor shook his head.  “I understand.  It must be very emotional for you, Larry.  But you can’t risk this sort of thing–not now.  There’ll be time after the battle.”

“After the battle we may all be dead,” I pointed out.

He put his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes.  Suddenly I noticed how tired he looked.  He had been working awfully hard–and it hadn’t been that long since the night when he’d been shot as we rowed across the Charles.  “We may all be dead very soon,” he agreed.  “But we must proceed under the assumption that we will survive.  There is really nothing else we can do.  Come with me to Coolidge Palace, Larry.  It’s the best–and safest–place for you.”

I didn’t want to hurt him.  I didn’t want to be a burden.  So I just said, “Okay.”

“Thank you, Larry,” he said.  He asked a few questions about my family, but I could tell he had too many other things on his mind.  We finished our breakfast in silence.

Pretty soon after that Peter drove us over to the palace.  Everyone was busy packing up the remaining equipment, and I did what I could to help.  Lieutenant Carmody was there for a while; I saw him stare at me once or twice, but he didn’t say anything.  Professor Foster left in a wagon with some of the electrical equipment soon after we arrived; he looked really nervous.

The artillery hadn’t let up, and there was a haze of smoke over the city.  It’s really going to happen, I thought.  The president wasn’t going to surrender.  The battle was coming.

I couldn’t stop thinking about my family.  What was going on in the camp?  Were they safe?  Were they hungry?  What would happen when the battle started?

Professor Palmer wanted me to stay at the palace.  But how could I?  It was okay while I had something to do, but now I was just hanging around.  Was I going to stay here straight through the battle?  Then what?  I went looking for Professor Palmer, but he wasn’t around.  “Heard he went off to some big strategy meeting,” a soldier told me.

I wandered over to the kitchen.  One benefit of working on the palace grounds was that there was still lots of food to eat.  Not as good as the roast beef we’d had the first time we were here, back when I’d saved the president’s life, but way better than what you’d get anywhere else in the city.  Everyone else seemed to have already eaten, and the kitchen was pretty deserted.  There was leftover chicken and roast potatoes, though, and they tasted unbelievable.

And that’s when I made my decision.  It wasn’t really conscious.  I just found myself walking over to the chef, pointing to the leftovers, and saying, “Could you put some of that food in a sack for me?  I’m supposed to bring it back to the soldiers–a few of them are too busy to come over here, and they’re getting hungry.”

The chef wasn’t pleased about having all those soldiers dirtying up her kitchen and eating her food.  She was a fussy lady with gray hair and a French accent.  She just shook her head at my request.  “I’m glad this nonsense is finally ending,” she muttered.  “I cook for aristocrats, not common soldiers.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.  “Not much longer, I’ve heard.  But your food has certainly been wonderful.”

She brightened at the compliment.  “You’ve not had the chance to sample my cuisine when we haven’t had these annoying shortages,” she pointed out.

Lots of people were dying because of those annoying shortages, of course, but I wasn’t going to mention that.  “I’m sure the food would be even more wonderful then,” I said.

She nodded in full agreement and pulled a sack out of a drawer.  “Will this be enough?” she asked, shoveling in the rest of the pan.

“Yes, ma’am,  That’ll do.  And thank you very much.”

“Come back when this wretched war is over,” she said.  “My stuffed pheasant is beyond compare.”

“I’ll certainly do that,” I replied as I hurried out of the kitchen.

I stuffed the sack down the front of my coat and headed for the palace gate.  Would the guards let me out?  Maybe Lieutenant Carmody had left orders not to.  Maybe I was a prisoner here.  Well, then, I’d have to figure out how to escape.  I was feeling really guilty–about lying to get the food, about letting Professor Palmer down.  But I just couldn’t help it.  I had to get to my family.

The guards at the gate still wore those weird-looking tall hats with the plumes on them and stood at attention, hardly even blinking.  There were more of them than usual, maybe because there were more people than usual outside.  Begging to get in to see the president.  Begging for food.

Would they be able to smell what was in the sack?  I could get torn limb from limb if people realized what I was carrying.

“Good morning,” I said to one of the guards.  “Can you let me out?  I have to get back to headquarters.”

He stared down at me.  “Why don’t you wait for a wagon?” he asked.  “They’re arriving and departing all the time.”

“I’m supposed to go now.”  More lying.

He shrugged and opened the gate for me.  The people outside surged forward, and I pushed through them, just like yesterday at the camp.  They ignored me.  If they smelled the chicken, maybe they thought they were hallucinating.

I headed off for the camp.

I felt weird.  I had really done it.  Just like that, I had left.  And I wasn’t going back.  Lieutenant Carmody, Professor Palmer, General Aldridge–they’d all be mad at me.  I probably couldn’t make them understand.  They’d done a lot for me, but I was alone.  I had lost my family and my world.  I wasn’t sure I’d ever get my world back, but I knew where Mom and Cassie and Matthew were.  And I had to be there too.

Then I stopped.  I had forgotten about Kevin.  He must have been going nuts, all alone in the hospital.  I needed to bring him along with me, I decided.  Of course, maybe he wouldn’t want to go; it wasn’t his family, after all.  But I was pretty sure he would–anything was better than staying in that room by himself.  So I veered off and headed towards Mass General.

The haze of smoke got thicker as I approached the hospital.  It was close to the Charles–but not that close, I thought, suddenly worried.  The Canadian artillery couldn’t reach it–right?  I hurried down the long empty street leading to the hospital.  More smoke.  The artillery kept getting louder.  I was really scared now.

I got as close as I could.  The hospital was on fire.  Horse-drawn fire trucks surrounded the building, and men were shooting streams of water into it.  Didn’t look like they were doing much good.  I heard people screaming and weeping.  Some were lying on the ground, others just wandering around in a daze.  “What happened?” I asked a doctor who was treating a little girl with a long gash on her face.

He glared at me.  “What d’you think happened?” he demanded.

“The survivors–where will they go?”

He waved vaguely around him.  He looked exhausted.  “Everywhere.  Nowhere,” he said.  “What does it matter?”  He went back to bandaging the girl.

I walked around and around the building, looking for Kevin.  I saw lots of stuff that I’ll never forget–people bleeding, people dying–but I didn’t see him.  Finally I sat down on the cobblestones and put my head in my hands.  My throat was raw from the smoke.  My stomach still hurt from where I’d been punched yesterday.  But I didn’t really notice.  People were dying all around me, and Kevin was gone.

I needed my mother.

I got up after a while and trudged away from the burning building.  It took me a long time to get to the camp.  I was kind of in a daze.  Poor Kevin.  First drikana, and now . . .  He could still be alive, of course, but what if he was burned, or hurt–what if he was dying all by himself in this alien world?  I saw a couple of balloons floating above the city, and they reminded me of Kevin getting the idea for them as we sat by the professor’s fireplace.  He deserved better.

Cheapside was quiet.  Some people were sitting on their steps, smoking long pipes, and children were running around in the lanes.  It seemed strange that kids would actually be playing on a day like today, but what did I know?  I wasn’t a kid anymore.  No one bothered me, and the sack of food stayed safe inside my coat.

Outside the camp, things were grim.  Chester and his friends were digging another big hole next to the one I’d seen yesterday.  By the barracks, soldiers were silently cleaning their weapons.  Sergeant Hornbeam spotted me, and he seemed angry.  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“I’m–I’m visiting someone.”

“Don’t you know there’s a war on?” he said, sounding like Colonel Clarett.

Usually Sergeant Hornbeam scared me, but right now I didn’t feel like being a nice little boy.  “Look,” I said, “all I want is to go into the camp.  Can I do that or not?”

He raised an eyebrow, and then muttered, “I can’t stop you,” and he turned away.

I walked up to the main gate.  There were several empty wagons lined up there, and lots of soldiers, rifles at the ready.  Inside the gate was an even bigger crowd of people than I’d seen yesterday.  “What’s the bloody point of aiming those guns at us?” one old man shouted at the soldiers.  “Why don’t you go and fight the real enemy!”

Caleb was one of the soldiers being shouted at.  He shook his head when he saw me.  “Not a good day to be visitin’, mate,” he said.  “Lots of angry people inside.  Must not have got a good night’s sleep.”

“I know,” I said.  “I’ll be careful.”

“Come on, then.”  We headed over to the side gate.  “What’s the news from headquarters?” he asked.

“We’re going to fight,” I said.  “Tomorrow, probably, or the next day.”

He nodded.  “That’s what we heard.  Won’t be soon enough, for my taste.  Now be careful in there, lad.  People aren’t just angry, some of ’em are a bit crazy.”

Once again the guards opened the gate with bayonets fixed and I pushed my way through the crowd, making sure the sack didn’t fall out from inside my coat.

Caleb was right.  Things were falling apart in the camp.  I passed by several fistfights; no one seemed interested in stopping them.  Some old guy who was either drunk or crazy just stood in the middle of a path, howling at the top of his lungs.  And here and there a corpse lay on the ground, its face covered with a sheet or a scrap of clothing.

It took me a while to find my family in the chaos, but finally I spotted their wagon.  As I approached it, I saw a red-coated soldier standing next to my mother.  My first thought was: Is she in trouble?  Then I recognized the soldier.  It was my father.

Mom’s face lit up when she saw me, and she pointed me out to Dad.

“Larry,” she said.  “It’s so wonderful you came back.”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Barnes.”  I was so relieved to be here I wanted to hug her.  And Dad.

“This is Mr. Barnes,” she said, pointing to Dad.  “He’s just–just here for a short while.  On leave, before the battle.”  She looked like she’d been crying, I noticed.  “Henry, this is the boy I was telling you about.”

My father extended a hand.  “A pleasure, lad.”

I shook his hand.  Like Mom, he looked different in this world.  He was wearing a bushy mustache.  He was thin, and his hair was streaked with gray.  And the uniform looked so strange on him; he had never been a soldier, and he hated guns.  But it was Dad all right.

He gave me a long look.  “Mrs. Barnes was talking about you,” he said. “She mentioned what a strange coincidence it was, your age and first name and all,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”  He seemed almost suspicious of me, like he thought I was up to something.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t return,” Mom said, “with the bombardment starting.  It’s so dangerous now.”

“I promised to come back,” I pointed out.  I motioned to the makeshift tent that was attached to the wagon.  “Let’s go in there,” I said.  “I’ve got something to show you.”

We crawled inside.  Matthew and Cassie were already in there.  “Hi, Larry!”  Matthew called out.  He was spinning a little wooden top.  “Did you see the airships in the sky?”

“I sure did,” I replied.  “They call them ‘balloons.'”

“That’s a funny name.  Pa says we’re doing some other things to beat the enemy, right, Pa?”

“That’s right, Matthew.”

Cassie was just sitting in a corner with her shawl wrapped around her, shivering, and rocking back and forth a little.  Her eyes were dead; she didn’t even seem irritated when she saw me.  She looked awful–not sick, just awful.

I pulled out the sack of food.  “It’s not much,” I said, “but it’s more than you’ve been getting here.”

Everyone’s eyes widened.  “Oh, you dear boy,” Mom murmured.

“This is extremely good of you, Larry,” my father said.

“I promised I’d do it,” I said.

“Where in the world did you get chicken and potatoes?” he asked as Mom passed out the food.

“My father–he got some extra rations at headquarters.”

“Really?  That’s hard to believe.”  He raised an eyebrow and smiled, and it was just like we were back at home, and I had said something he thought was kind of funny, although I didn’t know why.  He didn’t laugh much, but he was always acting amused, like the rest of us were putting on a play just for him.  It drove Cassie nuts.

Matthew was excited.  “This is the best food I’ve had in months!” he said.  “Thanks, Larry!”  Cassie took her share and started gobbling it down, but she didn’t say anything.

Dad refused to take any.  “We still get our rations,” he said.

“You need to keep your strength up,” Mom pointed out.

“I’m fine, Emma,” he replied.  “Larry, why don’t you and I go outside and give them a little more space to eat.”

We scrambled out of the tent and stood by the wagon.  “Mrs. Barnes has told me a lot about you, Larry,” he said.  “You’ve made a deep impression on her.”

“She’s a very nice woman,” I replied.

“You believe you’re related to her?”

“Possibly, sir.”

“How is that, exactly?  Emma wasn’t very clear about it.”

“I’m not really sure,” I replied.  I tried to remember exactly what I’d said to her yesterday, so I could repeat the story.  I did my best.  He pressed me on the details, and I don’t think I did a very good job of answering him.  He still seemed a little suspicious of me, even though I’d brought them the food–or maybe it was because I brought the food, without a good explanation.  Or maybe he was just curious.  He liked things to be logical, to make sense.  And my story didn’t quite make sense.

But he let it go finally.  Logically, what reason did I have to be lying?  “I am very grateful to you for the food, Larry,” he said, changing the subject.  “It grieves me that I can eat so well and sleep in a cot while my family has to live like this.”  He gestured at the tent and the wagon.  “It grieves me to be away from them.”

“Yes, sir.  But you’ve got to do it.”

He nodded.  “Yes, of course.  I fear, though–”  He looked away and didn’t finish the sentence.

“I think we’ve got a good shot at winning,” I said.  “These balloons–”

“Ah, the airships,” he replied.  “Matthew is so excited by them.  But they’re nowhere near as useful as people hope.  I’ve heard they’ll be used for surveillance of the enemy, nothing more.”

“But that’s something,” I pointed out.  He could be a drag sometimes, telling us not to get our hopes up when we entered a contest or whatever.  Just giving you kids a reality check, he’d say.  But lots of times we didn’t want a reality check.

“It is something, of course,” he admitted.  “We’ll find out soon enough what difference they’ll make.”

“Where are you stationed?” I asked.

“On the Charles,” he said.  “Preparing to fight the Canadians.  My captain gave some of us with families in the camps a few hours’ leave to go and see them.  Very decent of him.”

“The battle is coming,” I said.

He nodded.  “Yes,” he replied quietly.  “It is coming.”

And some of you will never see your families again, I thought.

Matthew came bounding out of the tent then, and Dad turned his attention away from me.  Mom came out a couple of minutes later; Cassie stayed inside.

Mom looked worried, of course–she had plenty of reason to be worried, with her husband going off to battle.  But what worried her most now was Cassie.  She made Dad go back into the tent to talk to her.  “The strain is too much for the poor girl,” she said to no one in particular.  “It’s such a difficult time.”

“She’ll be fine,” I said, knowing she wouldn’t be.  Cassie would always find a way to feel bad.  And Dad wouldn’t be able to talk her out of it.  He always tried to be logical with her, and he could never get it through his head that Cassie didn’t have any use for his logic.  It just made her angrier, because she thought he was talking down to her.  Sure enough, I could hear her squawking after a minute:  “You don’t know what I’ve been through.  You don’t understand, you’ve never understood . . . ”  The same old stuff, only she said it with the almost-British accent people had in this world.

I heard Dad’s voice, too low for us to make out the words, and then Cassie again, this time in a tone I’d never heard before–beyond anger, beyond despair: “Please, Papa, please take me with you.  Please get me out of here, I have to get out of here.  Papa, please  . . . ”

And then she was sobbing, and I knew Dad had his arms around her, trying to calm her down.  And I knew he wasn’t going to succeed.

“Why is Cassie the only one complaining?” Matthew wanted to know.

Mom just shook her head.

Eventually Dad came out, looking as worried as Mom.  “Emma–” he said, and sort of shrugged.  “It’s hard on all of us.”

“I know, Henry.  I know.”

“Private Barnes!” someone shouted from the path.  It was a sergeant, with a couple of soldiers alongside him.  “It’s time!”

“One moment,” Dad replied.  He turned back to us.

“So soon, Henry?” Mom said.

“I’m sorry.”

Matthew hugged him and started to cry.  “Please, Papa, stay!” he sobbed.  Mom touched Dad’s arm, in that way she had.  I stayed back by the wagon; I wasn’t part of this.

When Dad had finished saying goodbye to Matthew and Mom, he ducked into the tent and said something to Cassie.  I don’t think he got any response.  Then he came over and shook my hand.  “Thank you again, Larry,” he said.

“Please be careful, sir,” I replied.

“I will.”

Then I blurted out, “I’ll take care of your family.”

He looked puzzled.  “That’s very kind of you,” he said, “but you’ve got your own family.”

I couldn’t think of anything I could say to that.  Dad kissed Mom and Matthew one last time, and then left us.

The day suddenly seemed a lot colder.

“It’ll be all right,” Mom murmured.  “Everything will be all right.”

Matthew cried for a while.  Mom put her arm around him, and he leaned close to her, but eventually he got over it and moved away.  That was how Matthew was.  Cassie stayed inside the tent.  Mom looked really upset.  The distant artillery never stopped.  We talked for a while about the war and conditions in the city.  I told her about the fire at the hospital, and she was horrified.  “Those poor people.  Is nowhere safe?”  And then she started in: “You should go home, Larry.  It was wonderful of you to come and bring that food, but it’s late already.”

How could I tell her that I didn’t have a home anymore?  I hadn’t thought this part through.  “Well,” I said, “I was thinking of staying here and helping you out.”

She gave me a long, puzzled stare.  “You can’t do that, Larry,” she said.  “You have to go home.  You have to be safe.  How can you think about leaving your father?”

“No, it’s all right,” I insisted.  “He’s really busy helping out with the war.  He doesn’t pay much attention to me.”

“I’d like Larry to stay,” Matthew piped up.

Mom shook her head, almost violently.  She wasn’t buying it.  “Larry, you must go,” she said, in that tone she gets when she’s really serious and we’ve gone too far.  “Now.”

I thought about telling her the truth.  But that was stupid–she wouldn’t believe me.  I could just stay somewhere else in the camp–she couldn’t make me leave–but that wasn’t the point.  The point was to be with my family.  I felt an awful emptiness come over me.  Kevin was gone.  Professor Palmer would probably be so angry that he wouldn’t want me anymore.  And now Mom didn’t want me either.  I thought: She’s not my real mom.  This isn’t the real Matthew.  But I didn’t believe that anymore.

I was all alone in this stupid world.  “Please let me stay,” I whispered.

Tears came into her eyes then.  She reached for Matthew and pulled him close to her.  “You have to go home, Larry,” she whispered back.  “You have to go home.  After the war, come visit us.  You’ll always be welcome.”

I didn’t move for a while, and then I slowly got up from the ground.  Matthew was crying again.  I gave him a long hug.  I hesitated, then looked into the tent.  Cassie was huddled in a corner, staring at me.  “Take me with you,” she begged in a hollow voice.

She looked scary.  She looked insane.  I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.  But there was nothing I could do.  “I’m sorry, Cassie,” I said.  “I can’t.”

Her eyes turned away from me then, and she started silently rocking once more.

Outside the tent, Mom was waiting for me, her face wet with tears.  “I’ll visit you,” I said.  “I promise.”  She hugged me then, and I didn’t want to leave her embrace.  I remember once when I was little getting separated from her at the mall, and I felt so scared and lost, and suddenly I saw her, frantically looking for me by the escalator.  I raced to her and jumped up into her arms, and I felt so safe there, I never wanted to be anyplace else.  That was kind of how I felt there in the camp.

But Mom pushed me away finally.  “Please go, Larry,” she said, “before it’s too late.”

And so I walked away.

I don’t know what I was thinking.  Maybe I was beyond thinking.  I made my way through the crowded, stinking camp to the main gate.  It was worse there than the day before.  I had to fight my way through the crowd, but when I got to the front I didn’t recognize any of the guards, and none of them looked like they wanted to hear my story or look at my pass.  Off to my right people were throwing things at the guards, who just stood motionless at the fence, their rifles at the ready.  Everyone was shouting.

“Let’s go!” someone yelled.  “They can’t stop us all!”

There was more shouting, and people started pushing against me.  I could see the guards just a few feet away, and their eyes were half-scared, half-angry.  Even if one of them recognized me, he couldn’t have done anything to help me at this point.  I felt like I was going to get trampled to death, like at one of those soccer games in South America.

And then I heard gunshots, and the shouting turned to screaming, and people were running every which way.  I fell to the ground, and someone kicked me, but I didn’t get trampled.  I could smell gunpowder in the air, and someone near me was groaning, and a woman was calling out, “Help me!  Help me!”

I was scared I’d be shot if I got up, so I stayed where I was.  I heard someone shouting out orders, and the gates opened.  A bunch of soldiers rushed in, and one of them hoisted me to my feet.

“I think you’ve outworn your welcome here, lad,” he said, shaking his head.

It was Sergeant Hornbeam.

“Yes, sir,” I said.  “I’m just leaving.”

“See that you don’t come back.  This won’t be the last of it.  The night is going to be long and deadly.”

“Yes, sir.”

The crowd had mostly moved back.  Some of the soldiers aimed their rifles at them while others collected the wounded and the dead.  Sergeant Hornbeam gestured at the gate; I walked out.

It was only after I was outside the camp that I could think about what had happened.  I had been in a battle–soldiers fighting their own people.  I was lucky to be alive.

I was trembling and out of breath.  My ribs were sore where I’d been kicked.  Two soldiers hurried past me, carrying the corpse of an old woman on a stretcher.  Five minutes ago she had been alive, probably screaming at the soldiers along with everyone else.  Or maybe she had just been trapped in the crowd.  And now she’d be dumped in one of those graves that Chester was digging.  No one would ever know what happened to her.

And what was I supposed to do?

I headed off, trudging slowly through the deepening darkness.  Past the barracks and the other army buildings and on into Cheapside.  Going where?  To do what?

I don’t think I even noticed the footsteps behind me.  What did I care?  Then I heard the voice, loud and mocking, almost at my shoulder.

“Nice coat, mate!”

The newly re-covered Summit is free on iTunes!

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I don’t know why we keep giving stuff away, but we do.  Here you go.

Here’s that new cover everyone’s been talking about, with the Kremlin clock tower that no one recognizes:

summit

As with other free offers, the idea is to bludgeon Amazon into also making the book free by having thousands of rabid fans click on the “tell us about a lower price” link on the Summit page. Please help — it only takes a few seconds.

My wily publisher’s idea, by the way, is to tie Summit to Marlborough Street as part of a “psychic thriller” series.  Works for me if it will sell copies!

By the way, Dover Beach continues to be free on Amazon.  It’s piling up some really nice reviews, along with a couple that make me scratch my head.  One of them is probably worth a separate post.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 19

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In the refugee camp, Larry has finally met his family.  They are much the same as in his own world, but their circumstances in this world are utterly different.

In particular, in this world Larry died as an infant.  And his mother senses something about him . . . he seems to fill a gap in her heart.

Larry returns to Coolidge Palace with some decisions to make, as artillery booms in the distance and the final battle for Boston is about to begin.

*********************

Chapter 19

The carriage raced through the deserted streets towards Coolidge Palace.  “What do you mean?” I asked Peter.  “Chat about what?”

“Wouldn’t know,” Peter replied.  “The president doesn’t tell me what’s on his mind.”

“Are people mad at me?”

Peter chuckled.  “I imagine they’ve more important things to be worrying about, lad.”

We reached the palace in no time.  The guards let our carriage through the gates, and we raced up the long drive to the front steps.  There was still a lot of activity on the palace grounds, I noticed.

“Hurry, lad,” Peter said when the carriage stopped.  I got down from the bench and ran up the steps.  A green-coated butler wearing a wig opened the door for me.

Lieutenant Carmody was standing in the entrance hall, looking seriously annoyed.  “Where did you get to?” he demanded.

“Well, uh, I–”

“Never mind.  Let’s go.”  He headed off down a long hallway to the president’s office.  Another butler bowed and let us in.

President Gardner was seated by the fire, along with General Aldridge, Professor Palmer, Vice President Boatner, and the foreign minister, Lord Percival.  The president wasn’t wearing his wig; he looked tired.  “Ah, you’ve brought Master Barnes,” he said when we entered.  “Excellent.  Have a seat.  General Aldridge was just finishing one of his gloomy reports.”

We bowed and sat down.  The warmth of the fire felt great after being outside all day.

“The Canadian artillery pieces on the Cambridge side of the Charles are firing almost continuously,” General Aldridge said.  “Damage is light so far except in the refugee camp by the river.  The goal, presumably, is to create confusion and panic prior to the main assault.”

“And the Portuguese?”

“A similar strategy south of the city, except the firing is more intermittent.  They may be conserving their ammunition.”

“And the balloons?” the president asked.  “The electricity?  All this work taking place on my back lawn–where are we with it?”

General Aldridge turned to Professor Palmer.  “Professor?”

“Four balloons are in use at strategic points around the city, Your Excellency,” he said.  “Two more are being completed tonight.  The balloons are tethered, with ropes sufficiently long that soldiers in the balloons will be able to easily view the enemy’s troop dispositions by telescope.  We have developed a semaphore signaling system that allows them to send the information back to the soldiers on the ground, so that they can adjust our own deployments of artillery and troops.”

“Can’t the enemy just train their fire on the balloons and shoot them down?” Vice President Boatner asked.  He looked as glum as he had the first time I saw him.

“The balloons are out of range of enemy artillery.  They’ll be safe.”

“What about wind, snow, ice?” the president asked.

Professor Palmer nodded.  “Weather is a concern, Excellency, particularly wind.  But on calm days, the balloons will be effective.”

“One might say that the balloons have already served their purpose,” Lord Percival pointed out.  “The enemy negotiators have seen the balloons floating over the palace.  And that has provoked a change in their attitude.”

The president raised a hand.  “We will get to that,” he said.  “First I want to hear about the electrified fences.”

Professor Palmer spoke up again.  “We have had some difficulty getting the batteries to hold sufficient charge,” he said.  “We’ve tried generating the electricity directly, but–”

“Yes, yes,” the president interrupted.  “These details are fascinating, I’m sure, but we need to know the consequences.  What can we do now?”

“We have fences that can be deployed across a limited area,” the professor replied.  “The shorter the fence, the more significant the shock it will impart.”

“The plan is to expose gaps in the fortifications that will be filled by the fences,” General Aldridge explained.  “We hope the enemy will choose to attack in these gaps and be thrown into confusion by the shocks they receive.  We may also be able to inflict some injuries.”

“That’s all very well,” the vice president responded, “but neither these fences nor the balloons give us a decisive military advantage.  We are still besieged by enemy forces that far outnumber our own.  Our citizens are dying of disease and starvation, and looting and riots are widespread.  The refugee camps are about to explode.  The chaos and suffering will only increase if the siege continues.

“Lord Percival is correct, however: our bargaining position has improved somewhat.  At our negotiating session today, the enemy made what they termed their final offer: to let us maintain a civilian administration in New England as long as we disband our army and acknowledge the co-sovereignty of Canada and New Portugal.  This seems to me to be a far better outcome than we could have hoped for a month ago.  We would be foolish not to take it, and instead risk the future of our nation on a battle we have no hope of winning.”

“Solomon, when do you expect the battle?” the president asked.

“Not likely to be tomorrow,” General Aldridge replied.  “But no more than a day or two after that.  We assume the attacks will be coordinated.  The Portuguese are still moving troops up towards the fortifications.  Once they’re in place, they won’t delay further.”

That shut everyone up for a minute.  Then President Gardner looked at me.  “Master Barnes, what do you hear?” he asked.  “Do the people in the city want us to surrender, or fight?”

I thought.  How could I summarize what I had heard in the camp?  Sarah Lally was all for surrender.  Matthew was all for fighting.  Mom longed to go back to the farm and have Dad be safe.  “I think people just want it to be over, Your Excellency,” I said.  “Whatever you do, do it soon.”

That brought nods from everyone.

“Might I add one more thing?” Professor Palmer said.  “Obviously we have not achieved everything we would have liked with electricity.  But we have a new understanding of its power.  If we can continue to work on it, I believe its potential is limitless.”

President Gardner’s eyes rested on me for a moment before he replied.  “We would need our independence in order to reap the rewards of such work,” he remarked.

“That is correct.”

Vice President Boatner looked like he was going to say something, but instead he folded his arms and stared into the fire.  A clock in the corner of the room struck the hour.  We waited.

The president turned to the vice president and Lord Percival.  “Reject the enemy’s final offer,” he instructed them.  “Break off negotiations, and escort the diplomats back to the front lines.  We have nothing left to say to those who would destroy us.  Solomon,” he said, turning to General Aldridge, “do what you have to do, and quickly.  We will show them what New Englanders are made of.”

General Aldridge stood up and bowed.  “Thank you, Excellency.”

I expected the vice president to say something, but he simply shrugged.  He seemed to know there was no point in arguing.  We all got up, bowed, and left the room.  The meeting was over; the decision had been made.

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Professor Palmer said as we walked down the corridor away from the office.  “His Excellency showing some gumption.”

The Vice President stopped us at the front door of the palace.  “If we can help in any way,” he said to General Aldridge, “let us know.  All our lives are in your hands.”  He didn’t seem happy about it.

The general nodded.  “Thank you, Randolph.  The first thing you can do is pray for us.”

We hurried out into the night and heard the sounds of the artillery once again.  “William, Alexander, come with me,” General Aldridge said to the lieutenant and the professor.  “There is much to be done.  Larry, you can return to headquarters.”

“And stay there,” Lieutenant Carmody ordered.  “I don’t know what you’ve been up to, but you’re too important to be wandering around the city.”  He signaled to Peter to take me.

Instead of getting into the carriage, I climbed up next to Peter once again.  “Any news?” he asked as we headed out of the palace grounds.

“We’re going to fight,” I replied.

He didn’t seem surprised.  “There’ll be many of us dead before the week is out, then,” he said.  He didn’t look awfully upset about it.  It was just a statement of fact.

“Aren’t you scared?” I asked.

He shrugged.  “I try not to think about it,” he said.  “This battle’s been coming for such a long time.  So we’ll all just do our duty when it finally arrives.”

We weren’t stopped on the way to headquarters.  “Thanks, Peter,” I said when he dropped me off in the courtyard.

“Don’t be wandering around the city, lad,” he advised me.  “The lieutenant’s right.  The situation is dangerous enough–don’t go looking for trouble.”

I went directly to the mess–I was starving.  All they could give me was the usual: salt pork, stale bread, and tea.  It would have to do.  Then I went up to my room, too tired to think, but knowing I had a huge decision to make.  Was I going to disobey Lieutenant Carmody and return to the camp?

I put out the lamp and dropped down onto my lumpy mattress,

When I closed my eyes, I saw my mother–tired and worried, just trying keep her family alive in that awful camp.  Dad wasn’t around, Cassie was about to go off the deep end.  It was so familiar, but so much worse than anything in our safe world.

I had to go back, I decided.  No matter what.  I had to help her.

But how?

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 18

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We’re about halfway through this story of Kevin and Larry’s adventures in an alternate universe, where Boston is under siege from the forces of Canada and New Portugal.  Kevin is still in the hospital, recovering from his bout with a dread disease unique to this world.  Larry has made his way back to the refugee camp on the outskirts of Boston, hoping to find this world’s version of his family.  He thinks he has spotted a girl from his English class in the water line at the camp.  But has he really?

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Chapter 18

I tried one last time.  “You’re not Nora Lally?”

She looked puzzled.  “I’m Sarah Lally,” she said, “Not Nora.”

“From Glanbury?” I asked.

“Yes.”  She put her buckets down.  “Your accent–are you from these parts?  Do I know you?”

Same person, different first name.  I felt a tremendous sense of relief.  It made sense, right?  They had old-fashioned names here.  They wouldn’t necessarily be called the same thing as in our world.

I didn’t know how to answer her question.  It’s me, Larry, I wanted to say.  From English class?  I gave that oral report on Mark Twain last year, and you laughed a couple of times–remember?  “No, I guess you don’t know me,” I managed to say.

“But how do you know my surname?”

For all the time I’d spent thinking about meeting someone in the camp, I hadn’t really come up with the right answer for that sort of question.  Should I tell her the truth?  If not, what story could I possibly come up with?  I decided to do what Kevin and I had done with the Harpers–just ignore the hard questions.  So instead I just asked my own.  “I wonder, Sarah–do you know the Barnes family?”

A wagon came lumbering down the path, and we had to get out of the way.  My heart was pounding as I waited for her response.  “Of course I know the Barnes family,” she said.  “They have the farm over next to the Johnson’s.  Do you know them, too?”

“Yeah, I–I’m related.  Are they here by any chance, in the camp?  I’ve been looking for them.”

Sarah nodded.  “Mostly all of us are here, sad to say.”

Finally.  I thought I was going to explode from excitement.  “Do you know where they are?  Could you–would you take me to them?  I’d be really grateful.”

“Surely.”  She stared at me.  “You do look like a Barnes, I believe.  What’s your name?”

“Larry.  Larry, uh, Palmer.”

“Larry.”  She smiled.  “Pleased to meet you, Larry.”  She held out her hand, and I shook it.  It was the first time I’d ever touched Nora–I mean, Sarah.  Her hands were rough and chafed.  This was way different from going to school at The Gross.

“Can I help you with those buckets?” I asked

She looked down at them and sighed.  “That would be very kind of you,” she said.  “I tire so much more easily nowadays.  We can drop them off with my family, and then I’ll take you to the Barneses.”

I picked up one of the buckets, and we started walking.  “What part of the camp does your family live in?” Sarah asked.

“I’m not staying in the camp.  We live in the city.”

She looked at me.  “I don’t understand,” she said.  “Then why are you here?”

“I wanted to find them–the Barneses.  We’ve never met.”

“But I thought you were related.”

This was already getting complicated.  “It’s a long story,” I said, hoping that Sarah didn’t ask to hear it.

Luckily she didn’t.  Instead she started asking me about how things were going in the city.  Did we have enough to eat?  Was there a lot of robbery and looting?  What news had I heard about the war?  The distant booming seemed louder now.  Were we fighting the enemy at last?

I told her what I knew, which was a lot more than she did.  But I couldn’t exactly make her feel optimistic about the war.

“I know we’re not supposed to say this, but I think it would be better if we surrendered, don’t you?” she said.  “My father has joined the army–all the men have gone.  It would be wonderful if he didn’t have to fight.  At least we’d be safe, and we could leave this wretched camp and go back home.”

“Sure, if the Portuguese let you go home,” I said.

“You think they’d take our farm?”

“I don’t know.  If we surrender, what’s to stop them from taking everything?”

“Oh my,” she murmured.  “That’s very true.”

It certainly was easy to talk to Sarah.  Why had I been so frightened of Nora back at school?  Not that it mattered anymore.

“Well, here’s our little home of the moment,” Sarah said.  It was the usual–a wagon, a sickly-looking horse, a makeshift tent.  A couple of kids were playing next to the wagon.  One of them had a cricket bat and was trying to whack the other one.  We set the buckets down.  “Jared, Thomas, stop that,” she ordered them.  “Where’s Mother?”

“In the food line,” one of them replied.  The other one stuck his tongue out at her.

“Charming,” she said.  “Larry, let’s go find your relatives.  You two, mind you don’t upset the buckets.  And don’t kill each other.”

My relatives.  Sarah said it so casually, like visiting them was something we did every day.  “Are they near here?” I asked.

“Not far.  We Glanbury folks tried to stay close together.  It’s all so different and frightening in the camp–it’s good to have familiar faces.”

That reminded me.  “Is there an Albright family here?”

“I don’t know anyone of that name.  Are they from Glanbury?”

“I think so,” I said.  “Is it possible they live in Glanbury and you haven’t heard of them?”

Sarah shook her head.  “It’s such a small town.  Everyone knows everyone else.”

Poor Kevin.  He wasn’t going to want to hear that.  We started walking.  “Do you see the Barnes family much?”

“Jared and Thomas play with their boy.  But there’s no one my age in the family.”

“How many children do they have?”

Sarah gave me another look.  She was probably thinking: If they’re my relatives, how come I didn’t know how many children they had?  But she answered my question.  “They have the boy–Matthew–and Cassandra.  She’s a couple of years older than me.”

Cassandra?  What kind of name was that?  Cassie’s real name in our world was Catherine.  Was she called Cassie here?

But that didn’t matter.  The big news was: no Larry.  That made things less complicated–the universe wasn’t going to explode–but I guess I was sort of disappointed.  “And Mr. Barnes–is he in the army, like your father?” I asked.

“Oh, yes.  Look, there they are.”

I looked.  Another wagon, another tent made out of ragged sheets and blankets, another horse who looked ready to keel over at any second.  There was also a small, smoky fire, over which a girl sat hunched, looking tired and gloomy.  A boy was climbing up the side of the wagon, chattering to no one in particular.  And there was a woman telling him to get down this instant, he was going to hurt himself.

I was home.

Sarah and I walked over to them.  The girl–my sister–looked up.  “Hello, Cassie,” Sarah said.

So she was called Cassie, just like in my world.  She just stared at Sarah and said nothing.

Sarah kept talking.  “This is Larry Palmer,” she said.  “He is, um, a relative of yours?”

Cassie turned her gaze to me without much interest and shrugged.  “I don’t know him.”

Then my mother turned around.  She looked older.  Her hair had streaks of gray, and her eyes had little wrinkles around them.  But she was my mom, no doubt about it, and my heart leaped when I saw her face.  She, too, stared at me–a very different stare from Cassie’s.

I wanted to run into her arms, but I held back.  “Your name is Larry–Lawrence?” she whispered.

Her voice sent chills down my spine.

“Yes,” I managed to say.  “Larry Palmer.”

“Who’s that?” Matthew called out from the top of the wagon.  “Hello, I’m Matthew Barnes.  Are you from Glanbury?  That’s where we’re from.  My pa’s in the army, and he’s going to fight the Portuguese.  I wish I could fight them.  Are you old enough to be a soldier?”

“Be silent, Matthew,” my mother said, without taking her eyes off me.  Her gaze felt awfully strange.  Almost unbearably strange.  It was as if, somehow, she recognized me.

“Palmer,” she said finally.  “I don’t recognize the name.  You say you’re related to us, Larry?”

“I think so.”  I’d been trying to come up with a story.  “My mother–she died of smallpox when I was little–but she said once that she was related to the Clement family.”  That was my Mom’s maiden name.  “And a girl from the Clement family had married a man named Barnes from Glanbury.”

“What was your mother’s name?” Mom asked.  “How was she related to the Clements?”

“Her name was Annie,” I said.  I was making this up as I went along.  “I really don’t remember how she was related.  The story just kind of stuck in my mind for some reason.  So I thought–I thought I’d see if I could find you here in the camp.”

“He lives in the city,” Sarah said.  “He came here specially to look for you.”

That got Cassie’s attention.  “You came here, and you didn’t actually have to?” she asked.  “That’s the foolishest thing I ever heard of.”

“Mind your manners, Cassandra,” Mom said.

“Can you get us out of here?” Cassie asked me.  “Can we stay with you?”

I’d have liked to, but there was no way I was going to be able to pull that off.  “No, I’m sorry,” I replied.  “No one’s allowed out now.”

Cassie turned away, no longer interested in me.  But Mom–that was how I thought of her already–still was.  I was afraid she was going to keep on quizzing me about my story, but she didn’t.  “I don’t recall any relative of mine named Annie,” she said. “Probably a second cousin or some such.  But no matter.  You’re very welcome, of course.  I wish we had something to offer you, but you see how things are here.”

“Why not offer him tea in the parlor?” Cassie muttered.

“That’s okay–I mean, that’s fine,” I said, ignoring Cassie.  “Maybe we can just talk.”

“Well, I have to go back,” Sarah said, “before Jared and Thomas maim each other.  It was a pleasure to meet you, Larry.  Perhaps we’ll meet again.”

She really seemed to mean it.  “Thanks for everything,” I said.

Sarah smiled and gave a little curtsy.

“It’s getting dark,” Mom said to me.  “Won’t you be out after curfew?  And the artillery–”

“I’ll be all right,” I assured her.  “The police just make sure you’re on your way home.”

Mom looked doubtful, but clearly she wanted me to stay.  I sat down by the fire with her.  Cassie looked at me the way she always did–like she couldn’t believe she had to put up with my existence.  Matthew climbed down from the wagon and started peppering me with questions.  Mom mostly just gazed at me with that kind of puzzled look she’d had when she first heard my name.

I pretended I was Professor Palmer’s son, but I tried not to say too much, afraid I’d start getting confused with the stuff I had to make up.  I was pretty sure Cassie didn’t believe me, although I had no idea why she thought I’d be lying.  Probably she couldn’t believe she was related to someone who was a professor at Harvard.  Eventually I got the conversation off of me and onto their lives.

“We’re just farmfolk, as they call us in the city,” Mom said.  “Nothing special.  Though I wonder if we’ll ever see our farm again.”

Cassie looked disgusted.  “Fine with me if we don’t,” she replied.  She hated farm work, I was sure.  I figured she wanted to move to the city, wear a wig and a fancy dress, and go to dinner parties at Coolidge Palace.

“Please don’t say that, Cassandra,” Mom said softly.  “The farm is all we have in this world.”

Cassie looked glumly into the fire and pulled her shawl more tightly around her.  “Then we don’t have anything,” she said.  “You think we’re actually going to win this war?  You think we’ll actually be able to go back to our farm, as if nothing happened?”

“Pa is going to whip those Portuguese!” Matthew said.  “You wait and see!  We’ll be back home by New Year’s.”

“Do you go to school, Matthew?” I asked.

Matthew looked delighted.  “Not any more!”

Mom shook her head.  “We keep talking about setting up some kind of schooling in the camp.  We shouldn’t just let the children run wild, day after day.”

“You should let me join the army, like Pa,” Matthew said.  “I can help.  Can’t help anyone if all I’m doing is learning how to read and cipher.”

“The army doesn’t need little boys,” Mom said.

“It needs something,” Cassie muttered.

“I think the army will have some surprises for the Portuguese and the Canadians,” I said.

“Oh, I do hope you’re right,” Mom said.

“What about the airships?” Matthew said.  “Lots of people have seen them in the city.  Above the palace, they say.  Have you seen them, Larry?”

“Yes,” I said.  “I have.”

“Are they big?”

“They’re pretty big.”

“I’ll bet we can shoot cannonballs right down on the enemy from the air.  The Portuguese won’t have a chance!”

Mom was clutching a handkerchief and twisting it tightly.  To keep from crying, I realized.  She was worrying about Dad, but she didn’t like to cry in front of her children.  Just like Mom in my world.  Everything about their lives had been different, I thought.  But at bottom, they were entirely the same.  “Is Mr. Barnes able to visit you here?” I asked.

“Just a couple of times,” she said.  “They’re very busy with their training and building the fortifications and such.  He’s not really a soldier, you know.  It’s just that they need every man they can get.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“If something happens,” she said, twisting the handkerchief, “we may never find out.  Things are so upside-down.”

Matthew reached over and patted her hand.  Even Cassie looked sympathetic.  “Pa’s a dead shot,” she said.  “And he knows how to take care of himself.”

“Yes, yes he does.”

We were silent for a while, and then I asked more questions, learned a little more about them.  Matthew helped a lot on the farm.  He knew how to ride and shoot and fish.  Mom sewed the family’s clothes and cooked and worked in the fields during planting and harvest seasons.  Cassie said everything was boring and she was going to get a job in the city just as soon as she could, if by some miracle we won the war.  On Sundays they all went to church in their wagon; their horse’s name was Gretel.  Occasionally there was a dance in the church hall on Saturday night.  There were lots of parties around Harvest Day.  Their life had been quiet and happy, until the war.

I didn’t notice how dark it was getting until Matthew spoke up.  “If we don’t get in the food line soon, we’ll not have supper,” he pointed out.

“I did it this morning,” Cassie was quick to say.

“Of course,” Mom said.  “It’s my turn.  Larry, you really should be going.”

“I know.”  The sun had set, and the curfew would be starting soon.  But I didn’t want to leave.  It had been so long since I’d heard Matthew babble or seen Cassie sulk . . .

“Come with me, Larry,” Mom said.  “Just for a minute.  Cassie, watch your brother.”

We got up and headed for the food line.  “They say it can’t last,” Mom said to me.  “A few days more at most.  Too many people, too little food, and the soldiers are needed for fighting, not for guarding us.”

“I’m sure you’ll be all right.”

“Some people are going mad from the wait and the hardship,” she went on.  “Cassie is very unhappy.”

Cassie is always unhappy, I wanted to tell her.  “I think we’ve got a good shot at winning,” I said, desperate to make her feel better.

We reached the food distribution area.  There were several long lines heading towards a big wooden building much like the one where I’d helped to load the sacks of grain so long ago; soldiers were everywhere, carrying rifles.  They looked like they were more than willing to use them.  We got into one of the lines.

“Larry, how old are you?” Mom asked.

She was staring at me the way she had when I first showed up.  “Almost thirteen,” I said.

“Almost thirteen,” she repeated, and she nodded, as if this was the answer she had expected.  “Larry, Lawrence.  This is very strange.  You see, we had–we had a little baby.  We named him Lawrence, too.  He died of a fever when he was two months old.  He would have been exactly your age, if he had lived.”

I shivered, and not from the cold.

A tear leaked out of her eye.  “He was so brave, but he just couldn’t hold on.  This world was too harsh for him.  And to think: he could be just like you today.”

So, that’s what had happened to me in this universe: dead when I was just a baby.  My family had never gotten to know me.  “I’m very sorry,” I managed to say.  “It’s . . . it’s a big coincidence.”

Mom touched my arm, which was something she did when she got really emotional.  “I know it will be hard, Larry, but if you can  . . . come back and visit us again.  It’s like you . . . you fill up an empty space in my heart.”

“I’ll be back,” I said.  “Tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”  She squeezed my arm.  “Thank you, Larry.  Of course, if you can’t make it, I understand.  You should really stay at home, of course.  The city is so dangerous.  But maybe later, if things work out, you could come visit us in Glanbury.”

“Sure.  I’ll do that too.”

She smiled at me.  “Now you should go.”

She looked so frail, yet so brave, standing in that long line, with her shawl wrapped around her.  I couldn’t stand the idea that she had to face this camp without Dad, when I could be here to help her.  But she was right; it was time to go.

She leaned over and kissed my forehead, and then I left her there in the line.

I made my way back to the side gate where they’d let me in.  The old man was gone, but a few people were still there, begging to be let out.  The guards were different from the ones who’d been there earlier.  I showed my pass to one of them.  “Sergeant Hornbeam said you’d let me out if I showed you this,” I said.

The guard took the pass and studied it, the way the sergeant had.  “You can leave,” he said, “but I don’t know where you can go.  It’s after curfew.”

“I know,” I replied.  “I just need to get back to army headquarters.”

He just shook his head.  “Well, good luck to you.”

Once again the guards fixed bayonets to keep the other people from charging the gate, and they let me out.

It was dark and cold, and I had a long way to go.  The artillery hadn’t let up.  But I didn’t really care.  I felt so different.  I felt as if everything had changed.

My family was here.  I had found them.  Even if they were farmfolk, they weren’t really that different from the family I had left behind.

I had gotten used to not thinking about my family–it was too painful.  But now I couldn’t help but think about them–at least, this world’s version of them.  I would steal some food from the mess for them, I thought.  Maybe I could find them some warm clothes, too.  If Lieutenant Carmody tried to stop me from coming back, I’d just run away.

I passed by the barracks; there were a few soldiers outside it; they glanced at me as I passed by, but no one spoke to me, no one mentioned the curfew.  The hole Chester had been digging was filled up now.  It looked sinister in the darkness.

I hurried through Cheapside.  The streets were deserted.

Kevin was probably worried about me, but I couldn’t get to the hospital tonight.  Maybe tomorrow.  He’d be disappointed that there weren’t any Albrights, but that couldn’t be helped.

What if the battle had started?  Could I get back to the camp?  What would happen to Kevin?

My mind just kept racing.  I didn’t even notice how hungry and tired I was.  I didn’t notice that my stomach still hurt from where that kid had punched me.  And I wasn’t even particularly scared–I was just too excited.

I noticed a few people, hurrying like me along the streets, staying in the shadows.  There weren’t any carriages or wagons.  And I didn’t see any policemen.  I recalled the first night Kevin and I had spent in this world.  We were so scared, but the streets had been busy and full of life.  Would they ever be like that again?

I almost made it back to headquarters before I ran into the cop.  He saw me from across the street and yelled at me to stop.  I thought about running, but he took out his pistol and aimed it at me, and I figured I shouldn’t take the risk.  He came over and grabbed me by the collar.  He was big and stupid-looking, and he sure was angry.  “What are you doin’, sneakin’ around after curfew?” he demanded.  “Shoot on sight, those are the orders.  Want me to shoot you, you little sneak?”

“Officer,” I said, “I have a pass and–”

“I don’t care about your pass.  There’s no passes for curfew, those are the orders.”  He started shaking me.  What was he so angry about?

Just then a carriage came around the corner at top speed.  The policeman started yelling at the driver, who came to a stop next to us.

It was Peter.

“It’s curfew,” the policeman screamed at him, waving his pistol.  “Get down from there.”

“This is official army business, mate,” Peter said.  “Let the boy go and everyone’ll be happy.”

“Those aren’t the orders,” the policeman replied.  “No exceptions to curfew–those are the orders!”

Peter calmly picked up a rifle and aimed it at him.  “I’d hate to have to blow a hole in your stomach, mate,” he said, “but I need that boy.”

The policeman looked outraged, and for a second I thought he was actually going to try to shoot Peter with his pistol.  But he thought better of it and let me go.  I scrambled up onto the bench next to Peter.  “This isn’t right,” the policeman pointed out.  “You have a curfew, you got to–”

But I didn’t hear the rest as the horses clattered off down the street.  “Thanks, Peter,” I said.

“Been looking all over for you, mate,” he said.  “Thought you might be at the hospital, but you weren’t.”

“Sorry,” I said.  I noticed we were heading away from headquarters.  “What’s going on?”

“Oh, nothing much,” Peter replied.  “Just that the President of New England wants to have a chat with you.”

Amazon Author Central: Tracking your ignominy in real time

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Want an easy way to feel like a failure?  Become an author and check out Amazon Author Central, which provides a wealth of statistics about how badly your books are doing.  The depressing news is updated hourly, so you can check back multiple times during the day to increase your feelings of worthlessness.  Here, for example, is a snapshot of how I stack up against other fiction writers over the past month.  The trend slopes upward a bit, but in a fairly narrow range of mediocrity.

ScreenHunter_05 Feb. 02 10.30

Amazon also offers graphs by category (I’m close to breaking into the top thousand in science fiction!) and by individual book. In the old days, authors would get their bad news via semiannual unintelligible statements from publishers.  Are we better off today?  I suppose. Theoretically, you could use all this information to plot your marketing strategies or judge their effectiveness, if you’re the sort of author who has marketing strategies.  But mostly it’s just another way of wasting your time when you should be working on your next book.  After all, that’s the one that’s going to make you famous!

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 17

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Lying in his dismal hospital bed, Kevin has convinced Larry to return to the refugee camp and look for their families.  Do they even exist in this world?  Can Larry help them?  He decides that he has to find out.  So he sneaks off from Coolidge Palace, makes his way through Cheapside, and talks his way into the desperately crowded camp.  And now he has to search it . . .

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Chapter 17

“Help me, help me, I’m dying!”

An old man was kneeling on the ground by the gate.  He grabbed my leg and wouldn’t let go.

The other people ignored him.  His eyes were watery; he didn’t have any teeth.  His whole body was shaking.

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “There’s nothing–”

“I have no one,” he said.  “I can’t make it to the food line.  Please help, else I’ll die.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated.  “I don’t . . . I can’t . . . ”  I pulled away from him; he wasn’t strong enough to stop me.

Maybe this was a big mistake, I thought.

My next thought was: It really stinks in here.

I moved away from the gate and looked around.  I thought the place had been crowded before, but now there were people everywhere, jammed together for as far as I could see alongside the narrow dirt paths.  All the animals were gone, too, except for some sad-looking horses and donkeys.  I remembered the cows and goats and oxen tied to the wagons that people were driving into the city the day Kevin and I arrived.  Eaten by now, I figured, or dead of starvation.

I started walking.  That first night, things had been kind of mellow in the camp: people singing, kids playing, old men smoking pipes in front of fires . . .  Now all the mellowness was gone.  People were mostly just sitting down, on the ground or in their wagons, wrapped in blankets, staring back at me with dead eyes.  A lot of the men were holding rifles in their laps.  With soldiers afraid to enter the camp, I guess I understood why.  There were lots of people walking along the paths, too; some of them looked pretty scary, like they’d kill you if they thought you had a loaf of bread on you. I really didn’t feel like asking anyone if they knew a Barnes family from Glanbury.  Just looking at people made me nervous.

So I walked.  And I thought: How am I going to find anyone in this huge, crowded place?  What if I don’t recognize my family?  What if my father has a beard, or Cassie has a different hairstyle, or they’re all so bundled up that I walk right past them?

I wandered around for a long time until I started to get tired.  I stopped at an intersection of two paths and tried to decide what to do.  Should I just give up?  I couldn’t stay here forever.  I still had a long walk back through Cheapside to headquarters.

I realized that I had a lump in my throat.  Now that I was here, now that I’d taken the risk and gotten myself in trouble with Professor Palmer and Lieutenant Carmody, I really didn’t want this to be a waste of time.  I really wanted to find my family, or Kevin’s family, or someone.  Mostly I wanted my original idea to come true–I wanted to help my mother.

Then I saw a fight break out.  “You filthy picker!” someone shouted.  And two kids my age were dragging another kid down to the ground, where they started punching and kicking him.

I started to turn away.  Not my problem, like the old man by the gate.  But no one else was breaking up the fight, and it looked like the kid on the ground was going to get killed.

Something made me go over there.  “Hey!” I shouted, and I dragged one of the kids away from the fight.  He was short but tough-looking.  He glared at me.  “What’s your problem, mate?” he demanded.

Meanwhile the kid they were beating up managed to scramble away.  He got to his feet and looked at me for a second, then started to run away.  The other kid took off after him.  The tough-looking kid broke away from my grasp and punched me in the stomach.  I gasped for breath and my legs buckled; he really knew how to punch.  But he didn’t stay to punch me again; instead, he turned and ran after the other kids.

When I managed to catch my breath I started running after all of them.  Because the kid they had been beating up was Stinky Glover.  Not as fat as in our world, but I’d recognize that face anywhere.

I couldn’t find them, though.  They were lost in the maze of paths.  I kept going until I was sure it was useless, and then I stopped to catch my breath again.

A picker.  That was slang in this world for a thief.  It figured that Stinky would be a picker.

I had lost him, and that was bad.  But still, I was excited.  If Stinky was here, then Kevin was right.  Why couldn’t my family or his family be here too?  I just had to keep looking.

But where?  Just wandering around wasn’t working.  There had to be a better way.

In the distance I saw people lined up.  For food?  The privies?  I went over to the line.  Everyone had a bucket.  They were waiting for water, I realized.

The line moved fairly quickly.  I walked alongside, trying to glance at the people in it.  As usual, they looked back at me suspiciously.  Who was I?  Was I going to cut in front of them?  I didn’t recognize anyone.  At the front of the line was a little stream that went through a corner of the camp.  People were filling their buckets from the stream.  There were plenty of soldiers there to keep the line orderly.  I recognized one of them–he had been loading the sacks of grain that wicked hot first day.  He nodded to me.  “What’re you doing here, mate?” he asked.

“Just looking for someone.”

“Most everyone passes by here sooner or later.  No lack of water at least.  And it’s not giving everyone the flux the way it did back in September.  Still not the cleanest stream in the world, y’understand.”

Mr. Harper had mentioned the flux.  I figured it was something like diarrhea.  “What happens when the stream freezes?” I asked.

“Ah.  None of us’ll be here by that time, I trust.  If we are, there’ll be worse things to worry about than the flux.”

He fell silent, and I studied the people in line.  Even though it only took a few seconds to fill your buckets, the line stretched out a long ways.  If it was this bad getting water, I wondered what it was like getting food–if there still was any food.  People probably spent a lot of their day just standing in line.

I stuck my hands stuck in my armpits to keep them warm.  Sometimes I’d walk up and down the line.  Sometimes I sat on a tree stump nearby.  Occasionally there was a fight when someone tried to cut into the line, and the soldiers would move quickly to break it up.  But for the most part people just shuffled along in silence waiting their turn.  A lot of them looked too tired to fight, or to care about anything.

At some point I noticed a distant booming.  Artillery, I decided.  Had the final battle started?  The booming quickly became constant.  An old woman standing in line started to weep.

It was getting late.  I wasn’t going to make it back to headquarters before curfew.  I had my pass, but that wasn’t going to do much good if some policeman decided to shoot me.  And how much trouble was I was going to be in if I did make it back?  I was afraid to leave, though.  If I left, would I ever be able to return?

I was getting hungry.  And thirsty, watching all that water go by.  I must’ve stopped paying attention for a while.  I know I was feeling sorry for myself, even with these people all around me who were a lot worse off than I was, even with Kevin lying bored to death in the hospital.  So I didn’t see her until she had already gone to the river and filled her buckets.

Long black hair, shining blue eyes–I knew it was her, even wearing a long skirt and a shapeless jacket.  Even looking exhausted and worried.

My first response was the same one I felt in English class, in the cafeteria, in the world neither of us inhabited now.  I couldn’t say anything to her.  I was just too shy.  She had already gone past me when I got over it.  Things had changed.  This was important.

“Nora!” I called out.

She just kept walking.

I went after her.  “Nora?” I repeated when I had caught up to her.

There was no recognition, just puzzlement and suspicion, in those blue eyes.  “My name’s not Nora,” she said, and my heart sank.