Tag Archives: fiction

Should authors feel bad when they kill off a character?

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Here I talk about the problem that pops up when you kill off a character in a series, only to realize later you’d like to have him around.  A more interesting issue is your emotional relationship with characters you create.  Should it bother you when you kill them off?  I was talking to a reader about Pontiff, where (not much of a spoiler alert) a sympathetic character dies at the climax.  She wasn’t especially bothered by this, because it was a bit of a twist on what she was expecting, but it made perfect sense in the context of the plot.  Which was the effect I had hoped to achieve.

But I had grown to like that character.  I wished her nothing but the best!  I was sorry she had to die!  This didn’t stop me from killing her, all the same.  It wasn’t a question of morality; it was a question of aesthetics.  Your readers aren’t going to care about your characters if you don’t care about them yourself.  But you’re the boss — not the characters.

This brings me to the case of the angelic character Little Nell in Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop  The novel was serialized, as all of his novels were, so readers could follow the decline of the little girl’s health week by week. Wikipedia says:

The hype surrounding the conclusion of the series was unprecedented; Dickens fans were reported to storm the piers of New York City, shouting to arriving sailors (who might have already read the last installment in the United Kingdom), “Is Little Nell alive?” In 2007, many newspapers claimed the excitement at the release of the last volume of The Old Curiosity Shop was the only historical comparison that could be made to the excitement at the release of the last Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Dickens lived life and wrote fiction in a higher key than anyone else. so it’s not surprising that he was as upset by her death as his readers were.

Dickens was traumatized by the death of Little Nell.  As he was writing it he felt as though he were experiencing the death of one of his children.  It also brought back painful memories of the death of his sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth.

But a novelist has gotta do what a novelist has gottta do.

Here, if you can bear to read it, is Dickens’ description of Little Nell in death:

She was dead. No sleep so beautiful and calm, so free from trace of pain, so fair to look upon. She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God, and waiting for the breath of life; not one who had lived and suffered death. Her couch was dressed with here and there some winter berries and green leaves, gathered in a spot she had been used to favor. “When I die, put near me something that has loved the light, and had the sky above it always.” Those were her words.

She was dead. Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead. Her little bird, a poor, slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed, was stirring nimbly in its cage, and the strong heart of its child-mistress was mute and motionless forever! Where were the traces of her early cares, her sufferings, and fatigues? All gone. Sorrow was dead, indeed, in her; but peace and perfect happiness were born, imaged in her tranquil beauty and profound repose.

This is great stuff, although you may be inclined to agree with Oscar Wilde: “One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears…of laughter.”

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 16

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Kevin appears to have survived drikana.  Once the quarantine was over, he and Larry, along with Professor Palmer, escaped the invading Canadians in Cambridge and rowed back across the river to Boston, nearly getting killed in the process.  Now more adventures await them . . .

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Chapter 16

That nighttime journey from Cambridge back to Boston was the second time we had been shot at in this world.  It wouldn’t be the last.

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Except for blue-uniformed policemen carrying nightsticks, the streets of Boston were deserted as we headed for the hospital.  The policemen eyed our wagon as we raced past them, but no one tried to stop us.  I think the sergeant would’ve shot anyone who tried.

Within a few minutes he pulled up in front of a large brick building with a sign in front that said Massachusetts General Hospital.  “Wait here,” the sergeant ordered us.  He got down from the wagon and went inside.  A few minutes later he returned with a couple of people carrying a stretcher.  They lifted Kevin out of the wagon and onto the stretcher.  The professor and I followed along as they brought him inside.  We never saw the sergeant again.

The building didn’t smell like hospitals in our world.  It stank, really.  And it was dark, with just an occasional oil lamp lighting the corridors, and not all that clean.  Somewhere a woman was screaming in pain.  As we walked, a bearded guy who was apparently a doctor started questioning us about Kevin’s drikana.  When had the symptoms appeared?  Who had been present at the onset?  How had we treated the illness?  He wasn’t happy to learn that we hadn’t bled Kevin.  “The height of folly,” he said.

“Except that the patient still lives,” Professor Palmer growled.

We passed through a door with a red “C” on it, and then into a small room with no furniture except for a bed, a chair, a little table with a candle on it, and a chamber pot.  There was one small, barred window.  Kevin was put into the bed, and the doctor examined the three of us.  It turned out that the professor had been nicked in the shoulder by a bullet back on the river and hadn’t said anything about it.  The doctor bandaged him up, but other than the bullet wound he couldn’t find anything wrong with us.

“You will be examined further in the morning,” he said.  “In the meantime, none of you is to leave this room.”

“In the meantime,” the professor said, “we demand that you send a message to Lieutenant William Carmody, chief of staff to General Solomon Aldridge, informing him of our presence here.  Also, send word immediately to my old friend Doctor George Dreier, who is the president of this august institution.  Tell him that Professor Alexander Palmer has taken up residence in his hospital and would like to chat about the accommodations.  And bring us some food; we’ve had a taxing night.”

The doctor didn’t look too happy about getting those orders.  He simply nodded and left without a word.  We were by ourselves finally.  And safe.  The professor sat back in his chair and closed his eyes.  “A little too much excitement for someone my age, lads,” he said.

“Are we going to be stuck here?” I asked.

“I’m afraid Kevin may be in hospital for a while,” he replied.  “Even though the claustration is officially over, they’ll want to be especially careful that he doesn’t suffer a relapse.  A drikana outbreak in the city would be just too devastating to contemplate.  As for us–I expect we’ll be able to leave once they’ve poked at us enough to be assured we don’t have the disease.”

I noticed that Kevin had already fallen asleep.  “Will we be able to visit him?” I asked.  “He’s going to get awfully lonely in here.  This place is creepy.”

“That should be possible, Larry.  I’ll talk to Doctor Dreier.”

I decided I was getting pretty tired, too.  I closed my eyes.  “You were really brave on the river, Professor,” I said.

“One becomes brave when one has no other choice,” he replied.  “Now we can all relax a little.”  And that’s the last thing I remembered until I opened my eyes and saw Lieutenant Carmody standing in the room.

“Very glad to find you have all survived,” he said.  “I’m informed you’re all in reasonably good health as well, thank God.”  Gray light shone through the small window.  I figured it was about dawn.  As usual, the lieutenant was freshly shaved, and his uniform was gleaming.

“You might have asked your sentries on the shore to refrain from shooting at us,” the professor replied.  “I received a welcoming present in the shoulder from one of them.”

“We did send out an order, actually, but unfortunately orders from headquarters do not always reach the men in the field.  And if they do, all too often they’re ignored or forgotten.”

“No wonder we’re losing this war,” the professor muttered.  “Anyway, what have we been missing in the past week?”

“We are established on the grounds of the palace, and progress continues, although Professor Foster’s behavior has left something to be desired.  He has not taken your absence well.”

“I’ll take care of Benjamin.  How are negotiations with the enemy progressing?”

“Vice President Boatner and Lord Percival ably represent our interests,” the lieutenant replied.  “Unfortunately, the enemy seems to think there is little to negotiate.  ‘Unconditional surrender or death’ would be a reasonable summary of their position.”

“Not especially conducive to a diplomatic solution.  And the situation in the city?”

“Not pleasant, I’m afraid,” the lieutenant replied.  “There is a strict curfew in force, dusk to dawn, and we’ve had to divert soldiers to help the police maintain order.  So far things are relatively calm, but I wouldn’t want to guess how much longer they will remain so.  People are cold and hungry and frightened, and there is little hope that their situation will improve.”

The curfew helped explain why the streets had been so deserted last night, I figured.

“At any rate,” the lieutenant went on, “I’m delighted you made it to Boston safely, and we’d like to get you back to work as soon as possible.”

“Yes,” the professor said.  “We may need a dispensation from Doctor Dreier to get Larry and me out of here, however.”

“I’m sure he’ll listen to reason.”

They went off to find the doctor, and I stayed behind with Kevin.  There was a loaf of bread and a pot of tea on a table next to Kevin’s bed.  The bread was stale, though, and the tea was cold.  Kevin woke up while I was trying to swallow a few bites.  I gave him some bread and explained what was going on.

“You mean I’m gonna be stuck in this place by myself?” he asked.

“Looks like it.  But I’ll come and visit you as often as they’ll let me.”

“Thanks,” Kevin said.  “They really don’t mess around with this disease, do they?”

I shook my head.  “Look at the bars on that window over there.  I bet they’re to keep drikana patients from escaping.”

“I can see why they’re scared,” Kevin said.  “I wouldn’t wish this disease on my worst enemy.  Still, it’s gonna be really boring in here.”

“Yeah, but it’s better than most of the alternatives.”

“No kidding.”

Lieutenant Carmody and Professor Palmer returned then with sort of good news.  The doctor had no objection to the professor and me leaving, but Kevin had to stay in the hospital for at least a couple more weeks.  “He is also very interested in some of the medical theories I have picked up from you boys,” the professor said.  “An extraordinarily open-minded man, for a doctor.  Larry, let’s go.  Kevin, we’ll be back to visit.  I’ll see if I can find a chess set and some books to keep you entertained.”

It felt awful leaving Kevin behind, but there was nothing we could do about it.  We went outside, and Peter was waiting there with the lieutenant’s carriage.  It was good to see him again.  He brought us straight to Coolidge Palace, and we got out to inspect the work going on.  I just kind of tagged along, actually; there wasn’t a lot I could help with at this point.

The balloons looked pretty much ready to use, now that they had figured out how to stop the leaks.  They were still experimenting with the best way of heating the air, but that seemed like a detail.  People had seen the balloons flying over the palace grounds and had gotten very excited.  “Airships,” they called them.

Professor Foster was very proud of his electric fence, but there was concern about how much power his batteries could generate, and what distance the fence would be able to cover.  Professor Palmer questioned him sharply, and as usual he got confused and defensive.  “It will work,” he insisted.  “You can count on me.  You can count on electricity.”

No one looked convinced.

Lieutenant Carmody left Professor Palmer in charge after a while and returned to headquarters.  I hung around all day, doing whatever people asked me to, and in the evening the professor and I went to headquarters too.  He was pretty tired.  I figured his shoulder was bothering him, but he wouldn’t admit it.  “There is much still to be done, and precious little time,” he said.  “I fear I won’t be able to visit Kevin as often as I’d like.”

“I can go by myself,” I pointed out.

“Traveling through the city alone will be quite dangerous,” he responded.

“I survived drikana and the Canadians,” I said.  “Not much is going to scare me anymore.”

That brought a smile to his face.  “Good point,” he admitted.  “But courage doesn’t keep you safe.  We should talk to Lieutenant Carmody.  Perhaps Peter can drive you.”

We found the lieutenant in his room.  He was okay with having Peter drive me once in a while, but not every day.  “I’m sorry that Kevin is in hospital,” he said, “but winning the war must take precedence.”

“I worry about Larry on the city streets by himself,” the professor said.

The lieutenant considered.  “We could give him a military pass,” he said.  “That might keep him out of trouble if the police pick him up after curfew.”

“That’s better than nothing, I suppose.”

So I got a pass, and they found me a beat-up winter coat that looked like it would be even more useful.  It was definitely getting colder now.  I couldn’t imagine how people in the camps would survive, once winter really set in.  On the other hand, everyone expected the war to be over before that happened.

The next morning Peter drove me to the hospital.  It turned out to be near the river, down the hill from Coolidge Palace.  I brought along a couple of books, a deck of cards, and a chess set that the professor had borrowed from a colonel who was too busy to use it.  The streets were still crowded during the day, but it was hard to go a block without people running up to the carriage begging for food.  The restaurants were all closed, I noticed, and there were armed guards outside the few grocery stores that were still open.

Kevin was overjoyed to see me.  “This place is horrible,” he said.  “There’s nothing to do, no one to talk to.  They just bring you a lousy meal every once in a while and empty your chamber pot and then disappear.  And that doctor with the beard is still mad that you guys didn’t bleed me.”

“And no TV,” I pointed out.

Kevin sighed.  “No TV.  No nothing.”

So we played chess (I lost every game), and we played cards, and we talked–about this world and our world, sort of all mixed in together.  I had to go after a couple of hours, but I came back the next day, and the next, and every day after that.

A couple of times I had to walk, but that was okay.  I was familiar with the route, and I always got back to headquarters well before the dusk curfew.  Nobody bothered me, although I saw a fight or two and some people trying to break into a store.  Professor Palmer started to worry less about me–not that he had much time to worry, with all the stuff he was supervising at Coolidge Palace.  At the officer’s mess, the food got skimpier and skimpier.  Standing in line to wash up in the morning, I overheard the officers worrying that the situation couldn’t last much longer.  Even Bessy, the huge woman who brought out the hot water, was starting to look thin.

As for Kevin–physically he kept getting better, although he too looked thin.  His mental state was another story.  He had too much time to think, and the more he thought, the unhappier he got.  It was the same old stuff: we wouldn’t find the portal, we’d never get home, we’d be stuck here forever.  But now it all seemed more real to him.  “We’re going to die here,” he said one day.  “Next week or in, like, sixty years, it’s gonna happen.”

“If we can just get back to Glanbury–”

“But we might not even be able to do that,” he pointed out, “if New England loses the war.”

“We won’t lose.”

But Kevin was too depressed to be convinced.  “Larry,” he said, “remember that first day, sitting in the brig?  Remember how we wondered if our families were in the camp?”

“Yeah, I guess so.  You were the one who was wondering.”

“Well, I still am.  I was thinking: If we can’t get back home, maybe at least we can find another version of our families here.”

“That’d be creepy,” I said.  “What if you met yourself?”

“That wouldn’t be creepy.  It’d be cool.”

I thought about it.  Hadn’t I wondered if I existed in the Burger Queen world?  But still . . .  “I know Stinky Glover was in the Burger Queen world, and Nora Lally,” I said.  “But this world split off from ours hundreds of years ago.  What are the odds they’d be here?”

“Beethoven lived in this world,” Kevin pointed out.  “And look at Calvin Coolidge, for crying out loud.  If there was a Calvin Coolidge here, why can’t there be an Albright family and a Barnes family?”

“Well, Glanbury’s just a small farming town.  There can’t be anywhere near as many people living there in this world as in ours.  I mean, think about it.  The right people have to fall in love and get married, generation after generation, every since the two universes split off.  Even if it’s possible that our families are here, what are the odds?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin said.  “But I think you should go look for them.”

“You want me to go to the Fens camp?  That’s nuts!”

“Why?”

“Things are getting scary out there, Kevin.  Professor Palmer is worried about me even coming to the hospital.  And the camps are a whole lot worse.  They won’t let anyone out anymore, and people inside are getting desperate.  I was talking to a couple of soldiers at headquarters, and they said they wouldn’t go into the camp with anything less than a platoon.”

Kevin considered.  “I can’t make you go,” he said.  “But what if they’re in the camp?  What if Cassie and Matthew and your Mom and Dad are just a couple of miles away from here?”

“Come on, Kevin, they’re not the same people.  Even if they have the same DNA or whatever, all their experiences are different.  So they’d be different.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t be that different–how do you know?”

“What do we have in common?  Farming?  Smallpox?  Drikana?”

Kevin seemed to lose his energy all of a sudden.  Maybe it was my mentioning his disease.  “Suit yourself,” he said, lying back on his pillow.  “I’ll go myself when I get sprung from here.”

“Look, I’ll think about it, okay?”

“Okay,” he replied.  “Thanks, Larry.”  He didn’t sound like he meant it.

But I did think about it.  I had to admit I was curious, but was I curious enough to walk through Cheapside and talk my way into the camp?  If I got in, could I get back out?  I had my pass, but how much good was that going to do?  I guess I was braver than I used to be, but going to the camp really seemed stupid.

When I visited Kevin the next day, he didn’t bring it up, but I could tell he was still thinking about it too.  And he was still depressed about being in the hospital, and in this world.

Walking back to headquarters afterwards, I saw a woman begging outside a tavern, with a child Matthew’s age by her side.  They were both wearing rags, basically.  The mother looked desperate, and the child looked like he was too tired and hungry to care what happened to him.  There were lots of beggars now, and most people just walked past them.

I didn’t have anything to give her, but she started me thinking about my own mother.  If she was in the camp, how could she stand it?  At home she was worried about perverts from Rhode Island getting hold of us.  What would she do if there was real danger all around her?

And then I thought: What if I could help her?  Bring her food, maybe even get her out of the camp.

I got excited thinking about this, and it took me a while to realize that something weird was happening.  I had slipped from imagining my real mother being in the camp to thinking about my “other” mother–the one from this world.

And it didn’t seem to make any difference.  I had been arguing with Kevin that the Emma Barnes in this world would be a different person from my Emma Barnes.  Now I had fallen into thinking the opposite: She was my mom, no matter where she was.

Did I believe that?

I guess I sort of did.  And if so, why didn’t I agree with Kevin?  Why wasn’t I itching to go find my family?

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do just that.

I imagine this was the process Kevin had gone through, lying there in his hospital bed with nothing to do but think.  Practically everything about this world was different and strange.  But if we could find our families . . . well, they might be different, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be strange.  There would be some way in which my mom was still my mom, my dad was still my dad.

If they were here.

I lay awake that night in my cold attic room thinking about it some more.  In the morning I was still thinking about it as I washed up outside, then ate a hard biscuit and some thin porridge in the mess.  I went over to Coolidge Palace with Professor Palmer, but I didn’t say anything about going to the Fens camp; he would’ve gone nuts.  It turned out he didn’t even want me to visit Kevin anymore.

“But I haven’t had any problems at all going to the hospital,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but it keeps getting worse in the city,” he responded.  “I hear there was a riot at Dock Square yesterday.”

“I don’t go anywhere near Dock Square.  And Kevin is expecting me.”

He just shook his head.  “I can’t allow it, Larry,” he said.  “Things are just too dangerous, and you are too valuable to us.  If Peter could take you, then wait and bring you back, that would be acceptable.  But Lieutenant Carmody can’t spare him any longer.”

This wasn’t good.  Especially since I didn’t feel very valuable.  On the palace grounds, mostly I just hung around and got in the way.  Professor Palmer was usually in meetings or supervising something.  Once I saw President Gardner, along with Vice President Boatner and Lord Percival, but he barely nodded to me.  The three of them looked pretty tired.  I heard that the Portuguese and Canadian diplomats were meeting with them off and on inside the palace, but no one had any idea how the negotiations were coming.  For all any of us knew, the war could be over at any minute, with New England surrendering and all our efforts wasted.

After lunch I decided that I couldn’t stand it, so I just wandered away.  The soldiers with the big plumed hats at the gate knew me, and they let me out without a problem.

I was fine as I walked through the heart of the city, but I began to get nervous as I came to Cheapside.  When Kevin and I had walked through it before, it had been nighttime, and we hadn’t really seen just how run-down the place was, with its narrow dirt lanes and wretched shacks.  No more hogs snuffling around in the alleys, though–they’d all been eaten long ago, I supposed.  And no more music and laughter from inside the saloons.  The only people I saw were hunched in doorways, and they stared at me suspiciously.  I began to be conscious of my warm coat, which had looked pretty shabby when the lieutenant had first handed it to me.  But I thought: these people don’t have enough energy to attack me.

At last I made it through Cheapside and reached the military buildings outside the camp.  It felt strange to see them again, after so much had happened.

Near the barracks I spotted Chester, the guy who was in the brig with us.  He was digging a big hole in the ground with some other soldiers.  “Graves,” he said when he saw me.  “Need lots of graves.”

I shuddered and hurried on.

There seemed to be a lot more soldiers guarding the camp, and the fence looked higher and sturdier.  I searched for a familiar face, and finally spotted one.  “Caleb!” I called out.

He was standing in front of the barracks, talking to some other soldiers.  His beard was scruffier than I remember and, like everyone, he looked thinner.  He glanced over when I called his name and smiled.  “Hello, mate!” he said.  “What brings you back here?  I hear you was involved in that secret business back at the Palace.”

“I got the day off.  I was wondering–can I get into the camp?”

“Now why would you want to do that, mate?” he asked.  “It’s nasty in there.  Everyone who’s inside just wants to get out.”

“I’m looking for a friend.”

He shook his head.  “Know where he’s camped?”

“Not really.”

“Then you’ll not have much luck, I fear.”

“But I need to try,” I said, starting to feel desperate.

Caleb shrugged.  “Suit yourself.  Let’s go find Sergeant Hornbeam.  Easy enough to get in, I suppose.  The trick is getting back out.  Used to be folks could wander outside, as long as they came back before curfew.  Those days are gone now.  Too many people, not enough of anything else.”

He brought me inside the barracks to a little office next to Colonel Clarett’s–the one where I had first met Lieutenant Carmody.  Sergeant Hornbeam was sitting there writing on a sheet of paper.

“Sergeant, look who’s come back to visit!” Caleb said.

The sergeant looked up at me.  If I was expected him to be happy to see me, I was mistaken.  He just seemed puzzled and maybe a little annoyed.  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“He wants to go visiting in the camp,” Caleb said.

“By yourself?  Is Lieutenant Carmody with you?”

“No, uh, just me.  But I’ve got a pass from him.”

I dug it out and gave it to him.  He studied it.  “Odd,” he muttered, then handed the pass back to me.  “Hold onto it,” he said.  “But take my advice and don’t go into the camp.”

“I’ll be careful,” I promised.

He shook his head.  “We only go in there to cart out the dead now.  But suit yourself.  Show the pass to get back out.  If there’s a problem, tell the guards to find me.”

“Yes, sir.  Thank you, sir.”

He waved me away, and Caleb escorted me out of the barracks.

“So,” Caleb said as we walked over to the camp gates, “what does headquarters have up its sleeve?  Flying airships, that’s what Fred heard.  Hundreds of feet above Coolidge Palace.”

“I can’t really talk about it, Caleb.”

“Could you just tell me if there’s something, mate?  Folks is getting mighty nervous, I don’t mind telling you.  There’s also rumors that the president’s going to surrender by week’s end.  So are we fighting, or are we giving up?  It’d be good to know what’s what.”

“I don’t know about surrendering,” I said.  “But I know they’re working on some things at Coolidge Palace, and I’m pretty sure they’re going to help.”

“As long as they’re still trying, that’s a good sign.  Here you go, mate.”

We had reached the main gates.  There were several soldiers standing guard.  A crowd of people on the other side of the fence was yelling at one of them, demanding to be let out.  The guards just ignored them.

“This here is Larry from headquarters, Sergeant,” Caleb said to the soldier in charge.  “He’s to be let in and out of the camp, though why he wants to go in there is beyond me.”

“He’ll learn soon enough,” the sergeant replied with a shrug.  “Take a couple of men and go to the side gate.  Fix bayonets, in case you have to clear a path.”

“Right.”  Caleb found a couple of his friends, and we went along the fence till we reached another gate, also heavily guarded, but with only a few people on the other side. Caleb and the guards put their bayonets on, then unlocked the gate and pretty much shoved me inside, while pushing back the people who lunged forward, trying to get out.

“Thanks, Caleb!” I shouted as I made my way through the people.

“Fare you well, mate!” he said.  “And be careful!”

And there I was, back inside the camp.

The paranormal and Marlborough Street

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When I was writing Marlborough Street (ebook now available!) I did a good bit of reading about the paranormal, especially “psychic detectives,” since my hero, Alan Simpson, was such a beast, the reluctant owner of a gift that allowed him to find missing persons, living and dead.

I decided that there wasn’t much there.  The scientific study of the paranormal didn’t reveal anything, and the anecdotes weren’t much better. I recall reading the autobiography of one self-proclaimed psychic detective, and by the end I realized that she hadn’t really solved a single crime or directly found a single missing person.  As evidence of her prowess she would point to vague hints she had provided the police that later proved to be generally accurate.  But that’s the stuff of newspaper horoscopes — if you say “I see a dark forest near a lake,” occasionally you will end up being sort of right.  But which forest?  Which lake?  How near the lake?  Where’s the body?

But I went ahead and wrote the novel, because, you know, reality is not a novelist’s problem.  I liked the idea of a protagonist whose gift was more a curse than a blessing (and I used the same general concept in Summit for a character with a very different kind of psychic ability).  Anyway, Alan spends a good bit of time pondering the fickle nature of his “gift,” as in this passage, in which it has once again let him down:

He had long ago come to the conclusion that his gift had a consciousness of its own and was determined to be perverse. The worst possible frame of mind was to care about what it gave him.

He recalled the time he had volunteered for a psi experiment at Harvard. He was a freshman, and temporarily in love with rationality. Surely ESP was the next great frontier of science, and surely he could help to conquer it. And if it helped him to understand himself, so much the better.

The researcher was a middle-aged psychology professor who, secure in his tenure, had evidently tired of running rats and wanted to dabble in the occult. In this experiment, a computer randomly generated simple drawings. The subject sat in a booth and tried to reproduce the drawings.

Nothing could be easier. Alan sat down and drew better than he had ever drawn before. The images flowed easily and vividly: a cow crossing railroad tracks, two black boys listening to the radio, a vase of roses lying on its side… When he handed in his booklet he was grinning with delight. You’re onto something now, Professor, he wanted to say.

Then he waited. If the professor was onto something, he wasn’t letting Alan know about it. Finally Alan camped outside his door during office hours and managed to get a few minutes of his time.

“Simpson, Simpson…” The fellow poked around his desk, littered with blue books and overflowing ashtrays, until he found Alan’s folder. “Ah, yes. A. Simpson. Chance level. Some interesting drawings, though.”

It took a moment to sink in. And as it did he was inside the professor’s mind for an instant of utter clarity: God, I’m tired. Maybe that sweet little thing with the black tights will show up. Dental bills. A Cognitive-Affective Theory of… Perhaps you’d like to discuss your paper over a…

Chance level. I should mention the black tights, Alan thought. What were the odds on that?

But then he realized what his gift was up to. If I mention the black tights, they’ll probably be wrong too. And Alan started to laugh. “Sorry to bother you,” he said. “Just curious.”

He didn’t feel like laughing now. No VW, no Julia, no cat—but he knew the gift remained, lurking in the shadows of his psyche, waiting to play its next trick. Alan kicked an empty motor-oil can and headed for the exit.

I like the idea of the paranormal lurking mischievously in the background, determined not to be caught by science and rationality.  Do I believe it?  Well, no.  But it makes for a good story.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 15

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The Canadian soldiers are approaching Cambridge.  It’s time for Professor Palmer and the boys to retreat to Boston with the New England soldiers.  They decide to spend one last night at home — to celebrate Harvest Day.

And then Kevin comes down with the dread disease drikana.  Now they all have to be quarantined for seven days, with the enemy invading their city.  Will Kevin survive?  Even if he does, will the Canadians discover them and burn down the house with the three of them inside?

Kevin and Larry are a long way their old lives, where all they had to worry about was getting wet willies from Stinky Glover . . .

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

Chapter 15

We went back inside to take care of Kevin.  He was sitting on the edge of the bed, pale and shivering, trying to throw up.  “Am I dying?” he managed to whisper.

“You are very ill, Kevin,” the professor replied, “but we will take care of you.”

I wrapped a blanket around him.

Was he better?  Worse?  I changed my mind every few minutes, and finally decided he was about the same.  Which meant he still had a chance.  “Larry, what did I do to deserve this?” he whispered as he lay back, gasping, after one long stretch over the chamber pot.

“Hang in there, Kev,” I told him.

“I just want to go to school.  I just want to be with my family.”

“It’ll be all right.”

“This is awful.  They’ll never know what happened to me.  I’ll die, and–”  He started to cough, and then he began retching again.  He was right.  It was awful.

In the middle of the afternoon he drifted off to sleep again.  I was exhausted.  Just sitting was a strain.

“Go to my room and rest,” the professor urged me.  “I’ll take care of Kevin.”

I didn’t want to leave him, but I wasn’t doing much good sitting there, so I went across the hall and lay down on the professor’s bed.  I probably fell asleep right away.  This time I didn’t dream of balloon rides.  I dreamed of stepping into the portal and, instead of finding a new world, this one started spinning around me.  I got dizzier and dizzier, and I realized: the germs have got me.  Drikana.  I’m going to die.  And I thought: I hate this world, I hate this world . . .

I opened my eyes.  The room was dark.  I blinked and shook my head.  Was I dizzy?  Was I dying?

No, it was just a dream.  I was hungry.  I had to pee.  But I felt okay.  I got up and went back across the hall.  Kevin was still asleep.  The professor was reading a book by candlelight.

“This is good, right?”  I asked him.  “I mean, that he can sleep?”

“It is good.”

“And if he makes it through the night . . . ?”

“That will be a very good sign.  But there’s nothing certain about the course of the disease, Larry.  Even if Kevin survives the first two days, he will still be very weak.  Often victims succumb to another disease that overtakes them in their weakened state.  In rare cases, the drikana returns, and that is certain death.”

“I just want to be able to hope,” I said.

“So do I, Larry.  So do I.”

We heard the sound of gunfire in the distance.  I noticed that the curtain was drawn.  “We’ll have to be careful about candles and lamps at night,” I remarked.

The professor nodded.  “It’s lucky we’re not on a main thoroughfare,” he said.  “But our situation is still perilous.”

“How are we going to get to Boston after the claustration is over?”

The professor put down the book and rubbed his eyes.  “Let us first survive these first few days,” he said.  “There’ll be time to decide what we do after that.”

So we took turns watching Kevin through the night.  He woke up after a while, and the professor tried feeding him a little broth, but he couldn’t keep it down.  I read to him, and he seemed to like that, but he was too weak to pay much attention.  I wasn’t very sleepy, so I just kept on reading, even after Kevin had closed his eyes and fallen back asleep.  I was too worried to just sit there and think.  Was I dizzy yet?  What would I do if Kevin died?  What would happen if the Canadians showed up?  It was probably better not to think about those things.  But it was hard to avoid, sitting in the dark bedroom in the middle of the night with your friend maybe dying next to you.

Finally I nodded off again.  When I woke up, it was light out.  The professor was sitting in his chair, asleep.  I looked over at Kevin.  He was awake.  “This sucks, you know that, Larry?” he said.

I could have kissed him.

“Am I gonna be all right?” he asked.

“Of course you are.”

His voice was weak, he was too exhausted to move very much, and he had no appetite, but he was definitely better.  “You are a strong young man,” the professor pronounced after he had examined Kevin.  In private, he told me that Kevin still wasn’t out of danger, but I don’t think I really believed him.  Kevin was okay, and the professor and I were still okay, and drikana wasn’t going to defeat us.

By the end of the day we could feed Kevin some broth.  By the next morning he wanted to know what was going on–weren’t we supposed to leave Cambridge?  Where were the Canadians?  Professor Palmer explained to him about claustration, and how we’d had to stay behind.

“You mean this is, like, enemy territory now?  And we’re stuck here?”

“We haven’t seen any Canadians yet, but yes, I expect they have taken over Cambridge at this point.”

Kevin thought this over.  “And you stayed behind to save me,” he said.

The professor put on his gruff voice.  “We really had no choice, you see.  The entire household must be claustrated when any inhabitant falls ill with the disease.  It’s the law.”

“All right,” Kevin replied.  “But, thanks just the same.  I’d be dead without you.”

The professor nodded.  “Of course, of course.”  Then he turned away, and I think maybe his eyes were moist.

So then it was a question of getting Kevin stronger and hoping the Canadians didn’t notice us until the seven days were up.  No fire during the day, no matter how cold it got; candlelight only behind thick curtains at night.  We went outside as little as possible–to visit the privy, to take care of the animals.  Once I was out in the barn, and I heard the sound of wagon wheels and soldiers’ voices, not that far away, and I prayed the animals would keep quiet until they passed.  Lieutenant Carmody’s warning kept buzzing around in my brain–when they saw the claustration sign they wouldn’t take us prisoner, they’d simply burn us up.  Could there be a worse death?  The sounds faded eventually, and we were still safe.

Eventually we began talking about our escape.  “Anything we attempt will be dangerous,” the professor explained, “but it should not be impossible to get to Boston.  I have lived here much of my life, and I know the backroads well.  On a clear night we should be able to reach the river without going near the Massachusetts Road–I have sketched out a route already.  The Canadians won’t be patrolling these roads, I think–their enemy is ahead of them, not behind them.”

“But what happens when we reach the river?” I asked.  “How do we get across?”

“The Canadians won’t have had time to build up positions along the entire length of the Charles, even if that is their strategy,” the professor replied.  “They’re probably massed on either side of the road.  We’ll need to work our way upriver.  I know an inlet where Harvard keeps a small boathouse for its students.  If we’re lucky, it will have escaped the enemy’s notice, and we can get a boat there and row across to the Boston side.”

“Will Kevin be strong enough to travel like this?”

“We don’t leave until Kevin is ready.  He can ride in the back of the carriage, but it will surely be a bumpy trip.”

“I can make it,” Kevin said.

The professor shook his head.  “Not until the seven days are up, at the earliest.”

I thought of the lieutenant’s final warning: We’d be shot if we showed up in Boston before those seven days.  People didn’t fool around here when it came to drikana.

Kevin had a question, too.  “What happens to Susie?”

“We’ll have to leave Susie at the boathouse,” the professor replied.  “It can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

That was just awful.  The professor’s horse was like part of the family.  But there was nothing we could say.  It was clear we couldn’t get her across the river.

So we took care of Kevin, and we waited.

The seventh night was clear and cold.  Kevin was still very weak, but eager to leave.  “I’m ready,” he insisted.  “Let’s get out of here.”

Professor Palmer was hesitant.  “A day or two more would do you a world of good,” he said.

“Every day we’re here makes it more dangerous for all of us,” Kevin replied.  Couldn’t argue with that.  So the professor agreed: it was time to go.

There were things to be done first.  We burned all Kevin’s bedclothes–a requirement at the end of claustration.  Professor Palmer took down the sign; that was a big relief.  We unloaded the books and papers we had so carefully put into the professor’s carriage a week ago; we weren’t going to row them across the river.  It seemed like way more than a week had gone by since we had packed the carriage, since that happy Harvest Day.  If the professor was sad that we had to leave all his stuff behind, he didn’t let on.  Then we hitched up Susie, who seemed plenty surprised to have to go to work at this time of night.  Last of all, we brought Kevin out and made him as comfortable as we could in the back of the carriage.

“Ready?” Professor Palmer asked.

“Ready.”

We headed off.  I took one look back at the house, wondering if I’d ever see it again.  Then we turned a corner, and it disappeared.

The night was quiet, and we seemed to make a huge amount of noise as we clopped along in the moonlight.  Leaves floated down from the trees like small dark ghosts.  I thought of the pretend scariness of Halloween, and how different this was.  The enemy was out there somewhere, ready to kill us.

Susie seemed confused about where we were heading; this certainly wasn’t one of her regular routes.  The professor led us through little lanes and narrow paths, staying away from the main roads.  Sometimes it looked like there wasn’t a path at all, and we were cutting across a meadow or through someone’s backyard.  We didn’t see or hear anyone else; the town seemed entirely deserted.

“You okay, Kev?” I whispered to him after we went over a big bump.

“Hangin’ in there,” he replied, but he didn’t sound all that great.  “You know what I miss this time of year?”

“What’s that?”

“The World Series.  I wonder if the Red Sox–”

“Save the baseball talk for General Aldridge, Kevin.”

“Not much farther to go,” the professor said.

We made one final turn, and then I could see the rippling of water in the distance and the outline of a long, dark structure.  “The boathouse,” he whispered.  We had made it!

We pulled up in front of the building.  “Quickly,” the professor said, getting down from the carriage.  “Larry, bring the lantern.  We may have to risk a light inside.”

I turned to get the lantern.  And that’s when I heard the voice.

“Stop right there!  Turn around and get down!  Both of you, raise your hands where I can see ’em.”

I turned, my heart pounding, and saw the shape of a man aiming a rifle at me.  I did as I was told.

“Laurent,” he called out.  “Wake up and give us some light if you please.”

He had one of those French-Canadian accents.  In a few seconds a second soldier appeared out of the boathouse; he lit a lantern and held it up.

Both of the men had long hair and beards.  The one with the rifle was big and burly; Laurent was smaller, and looked nervous.  They were wearing dirty gray uniforms with the jackets unbuttoned.

“Put the lantern down and search them for weapons,” the burly soldier ordered Laurent.  He seemed to be the boss.

Laurent came over and patted us down.  “Trying to get to Boston, eh?” the other soldier asked meanwhile.

We didn’t reply.

“They don’t look like spies, Robert,” Laurent said when he was done.  He pronounced it “Row-bare.”

“And what exactly do spies look like?” Robert snapped.  “Do they wear red uniforms with ‘New England’ written on the sleeves?”

“We’re not spies,” the professor said.  “We’re merely residents of Cambridge who delayed in evacuating.”

“Well, you delayed too long,” Robert said.  “This is Canadian territory now.  D’ye think we’re too stupid to guard this boathouse?”

“Shall we shoot them, Robert?” Laurent asked.

Robert looked annoyed.  “No, fool, we bring them to headquarters and have them interrogated.  Even if they’re not spies, they may have valuable information.  Get some rope and tie them up.”

“Where’s the rope?”

Robert muttered what sounded like a French swear under his breath.  “Hold the rifle and give me the lantern,” he said.  “If either of them moves, shoot them both.”

“But I thought you said–”

Robert said the French word louder, then grabbed the lantern from Laurent and went back into the boat house.  The professor and I stayed where we were.  Laurent aimed the rifle at us in the moonlight.

And that’s when Kevin moved in the back of the carriage.

“What’s that?” Laurent demanded.

“That,” said the professor, “is our drikana patient.”

“Mon Dieu!” Laurent whispered, and he shifted the rifle and blessed himself.  “Robert!” he called out.  “Robert!”

Robert came back out of the boathouse a moment later, carrying another rifle along with the lantern.  “What the devil is it?” he demanded, when he saw that neither of us had moved.

“D-drikana,” Laurent said, pointing to the carriage.  “In the back.”

Robert went over to the carriage, shined the lantern inside, and saw Kevin lying down amid pillows and blankets.

“We were under claustration,” the professor said.  “That’s why we were delayed in leaving.”

Why is he telling them about that? I wondered.  They’ll want nothing to do with drikana, Lieutenant Carmody had said.  They’d just burn us alive.

“Now let’s shoot them,” Laurent begged, proving my point.

“If you shoot us,” the professor pointed out, “you’ll have to bury us.”

Robert backed away from the carriage.  “How do we know it’s drikana?” he said.

“Why else would we stay behind enemy lines instead of leaving with everyone else?” the professor replied.

“Please let’s shoot them,” Laurent said.

“Shut up!” Robert ordered him.  “The claustration, it is over?” he asked the professor.

“It ended tonight.  And now you can kill us and deal with our bodies, or you can let us row our patient over to the city.”

So then I understood what the professor was up to.  The best solution for the Canadians was to let us go and bring the disease across the river into Boston.  Let New England deal with us.

Robert got the point.  “The boy is definitely ill,” he said.  “Could be consumption, I suppose.”

“Could be,” the professor agreed.  “But it’s drikana.”

Laurent looked very unhappy.  “My sister died of it,” he said.

“It is not a pleasant disease.”

“Laurent, get a boat out for ’em,” Robert ordered.  “They’re going to Boston.”

Laurent didn’t have to be told twice.  He ran back into the boathouse, and soon after that we could hear him dragging a boat out into the water.

“This gun will be trained on you as you cross,” Robert said to us.  “If I see you turning back, you’ll all be dead before you reach the shore.”

“We understand,” the professor replied.  “Believe me, we have no desire to return to Cambridge.”

Robert motioned with the rifle.  “Get the boy,” he ordered.

We put our hands down–my arms were really tired–and went to get Kevin.  “Sorry,” he said.

“Sorry for what?” I replied.  “Come on, Kev.  Let’s get into the boat.”

The professor and I half-carried Kevin along a narrow path to the dock, where the boat was waiting.  Laurent was standing as far away from us as he could on the dock.  We arranged Kevin in the boat as well as possible, but he looked pretty uncomfortable.  “We need the blankets,” Professor Palmer said to Laurent, and he motioned with the rifle to go back and get them.  “Larry, you stay with Kevin,” the professor said.

“Say goodbye to Susie for us,” I said.

He patted me on the head and then returned to the carriage.  “That was a smart move by the professor,” Kevin said while we waited.

“I bet he planned it all along, and just didn’t want to tell us.”

He returned in a minute with the blankets and pillows.  “Can you row?” he asked me.

“A little.”  Thank goodness I had taken lessons at camp last summer.

“We’ll take turns.  You begin.”

Robert was on the dock now, too.  “To Boston,” he reminded us.  “Return, and you die.”

I picked up the oars, fit them into the oarlocks, and moved us away from the dock.  “So far so good,” I said.

“Indeed,” the professor replied.  “Unfortunately, now it begins to be really dangerous.”

Why?  I didn’t want to ask.  I focused on getting us out of the inlet and onto the river.  I was pretty rusty at rowing, but I got back the hang of it quickly.  The dock was out of sight once we were on the river, and I wondered how the Canadian soldiers were going to track us.  Had Robert just been bluffing?  The river was calm; its surface was like glass in the moonlight.  There were just a few dim lights on either shore.  And there wasn’t a sound except for the swooshing of the oars.  It felt incredibly peaceful.

When we were about in the middle of the river, the professor said, “I’ll take over now.”

“I’m not tired,” I said.  “I can make it the whole way.”

“Larry, let me take over,” he repeated.  “I want you to get down in the bottom of the boat with Kevin.”

“Why?”

“Because I expect the New England soldiers will start shooting at us any moment now.”

“Huh?  But the claustration is over!  We’re okay.”

After a few weeks with us, the professor didn’t need a translation of “okay”.  “They don’t know who we are,” he said.  “They just see a boat heading toward them from enemy territory.  They’re first instinct will be to shoot at it.  Now do as I say and get down with Kevin.”

I didn’t really have a choice.  I awkwardly switched positions with the professor, then scrunched down next to Kevin.  “Scary, huh?” I said.

“Wouldn’t it be great just to feel safe again?” he replied.

“Not gonna happen anytime soon.”

We approached the Boston shore.  The professor was a pretty good rower, for someone his age.  “Won’t be long now,” he muttered.  And then he shouted, “This is Alexander Palmer!  Let us come ashore!”

He barely got the second sentence out when the guns started firing.  The sound was like a punch in the stomach.  The bullets sprayed the water around us.  One of them nicked an oarlock.  Kevin and I huddled together.

“Alexander Palmer!” the professor repeated at the top of his lungs.  “I’m Professor Alexander Palmer!  Don’t shoot!  Let us come ashore!”

There was a pause.  “You all right?” I asked the professor.

“Yes, yes.  But their aim will get better as we get closer.”  He shouted out his name again, and then added: “We are friends of Lieutenant William Carmody.  We have no weapons.”

They fired a couple more shots at us, then I heard a shout from the shore that I couldn’t understand.  But the shooting stopped after that, and we continued to make our way toward Boston.  I sat up a little, and I saw a lantern ahead of us.  “Over here,” a voice called out.  “Stay in the boat.”

We eased up to the bank.  A squad of soldiers approached, with rifles aimed at us.  “You have the drikana patient with you?” one of them demanded.

“We do,” Professor Palmer replied.

The soldier came up to the boat.  He was a short, plump lieutenant, and he carried a pistol instead of a rifle.

“He is much improved,” the professor said.  “And the claustration is complete.”

The lieutenant peered in at Kevin.  “Hi,” Kevin said.

“Sergeant,” the lieutenant called out.  “Have you found the order from headquarters?”

“Yes, sir,” one of the other soldiers replied.

“What time does it expire?”

“Midnight, sir.”

The lieutenant took out his watch and made a big deal of checking it.  What a jerk, I thought.  We hadn’t left Cambridge till after midnight.  Obviously the time was up.  “Very well,” he said.  “I don’t approve, but the order is clear.  Sergeant, find a wagon and get these people to hospital without delay.  And keep everyone away from them.”

“Yes, sir.”  The sergeant headed off away from the bank.

The lieutenant turned back to us.  “Can he walk?”

“We can help him,” Professor Palmer replied.

“Follow the sergeant up the path.  Don’t touch anyone.  Don’t talk to anyone.”

“Let’s go, lads,” the professor said without replying to the lieutenant.

The lieutenant stepped back away from us as we got out of the boat.  “Corporal,” he said to another soldier, “burn the boat and everything in it.”

“Welcome back to Boston, eh?” the professor said to us as we headed towards the path leading away from the river, and all the soldiers shrank back.

“Could have been worse,” I said.

“Indeed it could,” the professor replied.  “Indeed it could.”

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 14

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Larry and Kevin went to Coolidge Palace to meet President Gardner, and Larry uses the Heimlich maneuver to save the president’s life.  Now the kids are returning to Cambridge, where things are about to get really serious . . .

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

Chapter 14

We returned to Cambridge the next day, and work started up again.  Everyone had rumors to spread: that the president was making plans to surrender, that General Aldridge was going to seize power from the president, that the people in the camps were going to riot, break out, and try to take over the government, that the Canadians were about to attack Cambridge . . .

It was hard to concentrate, but Lieutenant Carmody kept the pressure on.  “Work as if your lives depend on it,” he told people.  “Because they do.”

Professor Foster was scared to death of the lieutenant.  He was happy to talk about electricity and give little demonstrations for people, but he got very nervous when he actually had to accomplish anything.  I got the impression he was drinking heavily.  So Professor Palmer spent a lot of time working with him, making sure that he stayed focused on getting things done.

The balloons worked pretty well, except for one thing: they didn’t stay up long.  It turned out the hot air leaked out of the silk too quickly.  Kevin and I didn’t know anything about that.  Finally someone figured out that they should sort of coat the silk with linseed oil, and that did a good job of stopping up the leaks.  People started going up in them, and they were really excited when they came back down.  “The grandeur of God’s creation is laid out before you,” one of them said.

Lieutenant Carmody just wanted to know if they could see the Canadians with their spyglasses.

Kevin and I got to go up, and he had a lot more fun than I did.  “This is so cool!” he shouted, as we looked out over the farms and the church steeples and the houses and the distant river.  I decided maybe I was afraid of heights.

And then we got the word: the New England troops were retreating from Cambridge.  We were going to have to leave too.  “Where will we have the space to do our work in Boston?” Professor Palmer wanted to know.

“Only one place with enough room right now,” Lieutenant Carmody replied.  “The grounds of Coolidge Palace.”

“His Excellency doesn’t object?”

“He does not.  Which isn’t to say we won’t be capitulating to the enemy tomorrow.  Let’s get everything packed up.  We don’t have much time.”

“William, Harvest Day is in two days,” the professor pointed out.  “It would be–well, I would like to celebrate it at home.”

“A bit of a risk, Professor.”

“I know.  But it’s important to me.”

The lieutenant considered.  “Very well,” he said, “the troops are scheduled to leave the morning after Harvest Day, unless the Canadians attack first.  Be prepared to go with them; otherwise, we’ll be unable to guarantee your safety on this side of the river.”

Harvest Day.  One more thing different about this world: the holidays.  No trick-or-treating on Halloween.  No Thanksgiving at all.  They didn’t have anything like the customs we had on Christmas, and most people didn’t even celebrate it.  Harvest Day took place in late October, and it was kind of like Thanksgiving; you ate food you had grown on your farm and celebrated your good fortune in making it through another year.

Needless to say, people weren’t feeling very fortunate on this particular Harvest Day.  The guys we worked with were mostly soldiers, and they still had enough to eat, but civilians were starting to go hungry in the city, and the food situation was only going to get worse while the siege lasted.  People had started to sneak over into Cambridge and break into houses looking for anything they could eat or sell, and the military had had to seal off the bridges trying to keep everyone out.  It was getting nasty.

So Professor Palmer wanted to celebrate one last Harvest Day at his home, knowing that it might be a long time, if ever, before he got back there again.  And it was really nice that he wanted us to share the holiday with him.  Kevin and I spent the day before helping him pack up his important books and papers and loading them into the carriage.  We didn’t want any part of slaughtering one of the pigs, but he insisted.  “If you want to eat the meal, lads, you have to help prepare it.”  He pointed out that we would have to leave the pigs behind, and either Canadians or wolves would kill them eventually.  That didn’t make murdering the poor thing any less gross, though.  It was a lot more fun churning the butter and baking the apple pie and the bread.

On Harvest Day itself we could hear artillery fire in the distance, and that didn’t help the celebration.  The reality of having to leave this place had set in, and it wasn’t making any of us happy.

The professor began the big meal with a prayer of thanks, but as we ate he got off onto a topic that didn’t make us any happier.  “It occurs to me,” he said, “that if the theory you boys propose is correct, and there are an infinite number of universes, that means there are some in which war doesn’t exist, in which people have managed to find a way to live in peace and harmony with one another.”

“That’s not our universe for sure,” Kevin said.  “But I guess you’re right.”

“It’s hard to imagine, is it not?” the professor went on.  “Once I got used to the idea of a world like yours, I had only a little difficulty in imagining the wonders it might contain–airplanes and automobiles and computers and so on.  But imagining a world without war, without hatred, without these endless disputes over who owns each little plot of land . . .  My mind cannot comprehend such a place.”

“At least you can’t blow the whole planet up, like we can,” I pointed out.

“I suppose one should be grateful for that.  But I’m sure that someday even we will be able to unlock the secrets behind such weapons.  And then . . . ” the professor shrugged.  “Perhaps we will find the wisdom to refrain from using them.”

But he didn’t sound hopeful.

We ate till we were more than full, and then we sat on the professor’s front porch and watched the sun set, glowing purple and gold over the horizon.  The artillery fire had stopped, and we put aside all depressing thoughts.  I still missed my own family and my own world, of course, but I remember wishing that I could hold onto that moment forever, feeling peaceful and well-fed and at least moderately safe in the middle of the war and the hunger and the uncertainty.

But the moment didn’t last.  That was the night that Kevin got sick.

#

At first I thought it was part of a nightmare.  We went to bed early, knowing we had to leave by dawn.  I dreamt I was up in a balloon and the tether had broken.  I had no idea how to steer or how to land.  Below me, people were calling out instructions, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.  I was floating higher and higher into the clouds, more scared than I’d ever been in my life, when finally I managed to make out Kevin’s voice, calling faintly to me from far below.  “Larry, Larry . . . ”

“Kevin!” I called back, and I fought my way through the clouds until I opened my eyes.

. . . and realized I was lying on my bed.  I sighed with relief, until I heard Kevin call my name again in a faint voice.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“Larry, I don’t feel so good,” he said weakly.  “Could you get the professor?”

I got up and looked at Kevin in the moonlight.  He was sweating, even though it was cold in the room, and his eyes glittered.  He looked frightened.  I felt his forehead; it was burning hot.  “Be right back,” I said.  I went and roused Professor Palmer.  When we got back to the room, Kevin was on his knees, throwing up into the chamberpot.

“Get a bucket of water and a cloth, Larry,” the professor ordered.  “Quickly.”

I rushed downstairs to the kitchen, and all I could think was drikana.

No cure.  You feel like you’re vomiting your entire insides out.  You die within a couple of days.

No cure.

If there was any immunity to drikana–or any other diseases in this world–Kevin and I didn’t have it.

When I got back to the room with the cloth, Kevin was in bed again, shivering.  The professor was leaning over him.  He took the cloth from me and put it over Kevin’s forehead.

“Is he going to be all right?” I asked.

The professor looked up at me.  “I don’t know, Larry,” he said softly.  “I don’t know if any of us is going to be all right.”

“Is it–is it–?”  I couldn’t bring myself to say its name.

The professor nodded.  “I think so, yes.”

“I want to go home,” Kevin moaned.  “I want my mom.”

“It’s all right, Kevin,” I said.  “It’s all right.”

“Please let me go home.  Please.”

I was scared out of my mind.  “What do we do, Professor?” I asked.  “Can we help him?”

He handed me the cloth.  “Keep him cool, Larry,” he said.  “I’ll be right back.”

Aspirin, I thought.  Tylenol.  Motrin.  There was none of that stuff in this world.  Just a wet cloth on the forehead for someone who was burning up with fever.  Kevin threw up some more, and the stench was bad, but I couldn’t leave him.  After a couple of minutes the professor returned, and he was carrying a basin and a scalpel.  “What are you going to do?” I demanded.

“I have to bleed him, Larry.  It is the only way to evacuate the noxious humors.”

“No!” I screamed.  “That’s nuts!”

He hesitated.  “It’s the standard treatment,” he said.

“I don’t care.  In my world they stopped bleeding people, like, hundreds of years ago.  It doesn’t work.  It’s just a superstition.”

“Larry,” he said, “you have to trust me.  You don’t have this disease in your world.  We’ve lived with it for five hundred years.”

“And you haven’t cured it.  You don’t know a thing about it.  You don’t know a thing about medicine.  You’re not bleeding Kevin.”

I don’t know how I got the nerve to stand up to him–the famous Harvard professor–but I did.  He wasn’t going to touch my friend with that scalpel.

We stared at each other for a minute, and then Professor Palmer put the scalpel and basin down.  And somehow I knew what he was thinking: smallpox.  Vaccinations.  Our world could have saved his wife and son.  We knew more than he did.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“Let us pray that you are right, Larry,” he replied.  “In any event, we must keep him clean and cool.  If he can sleep, that would be best.  The crisis will be over, one way or the other, within forty-eight hours.”

“There’s no other medicine we can give him?”

The professor shook his head.  “None that have any efficacy.  In any case, his stomach cannot tolerate anything.  He may be able to sip water, that’s all.”

In our world, Kevin would have been in an ambulance by now, heading for a hospital.  Here, even if there were a hospital around somewhere, the trip in the professor’s carriage over the bumpy roads would have killed him.  I was going to have to take care of him, along with the professor.  I was going to have to help him live.

I guess that was the worst night of my life–worse, even, than that first night in this world, back in the brig with Chester.  To see Kevin suffer, and not be able to do anything about it . . .  The vomiting continued, and then the diarrhea started, and a little while later convulsions . . .  Before long Kevin wasn’t begging to go home, he was begging to die.  “Please, Larry, please!  Stop the pain!  Stop the pain!”

I held his hand.  “You’re going to make it, Kevin!  You will!”  And I was thinking: Don’t leave me alone here, Kevin.  I need you!

After that he must have been delirious, because what he was saying didn’t make any sense at all.  And then he was to weak to say anything.

I must have fallen asleep eventually, because when I opened my eyes it was gray outside.  I was kneeling next to Kevin, and his hand was lying on my arm.  His eyes were closed.  At first I thought he might be dead, but then I could see his chest go up and down, just a little bit, and I relaxed.  He was sleeping, and that was good.

I heard a banging sound coming from outside, so I went downstairs to investigate.

The professor was on the front porch, nailing something onto one of the white columns.  “Is Kevin still asleep?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.  What are you doing?” I asked.

He motioned to me to take a look.  It was a big red “C” painted on a board.  “A notice of claustration,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“It tells the world there is a drikana patient inside.  By law and custom, no one can leave this place for seven days.”

So, claustration was their word for “quarantine.”  Seven days, I thought.  “But the Canadians are coming!” I said.  “We were supposed to leave this morning.”

“We can’t go anywhere now, I’m afraid.”

“We’ll be trapped,” I said.  “They’ll take us prisoner.”

“Larry, we can only hope that is the worst that happens to us.”

I shuddered.  The professor finished putting up the sign, and we went inside.  He had already made some tea, so we had a cup by the fireplace.  “So what happens next?” I asked him.

“When Kevin awakens, the vomiting will likely start all over again,” he replied.  “If it’s worse, it’ll continue to get worse, and he will probably die by nightfall.  If it’s better, not so intense, that’s a good sign, and he may survive.  If he’s still alive tomorrow, that’s a very good sign.”

“What are his odds?”

“Half the people who come down with the disease die of it.  The odds are a little better if you are young and healthy.”

So, fifty-fifty.  Some hope for Kevin.  But then there was the question that had been lurking in my mind, too scary to ask.  Now it was time to ask it.  “What about–what about us?  Are we going to come down with the disease?”

“I don’t know, Larry.  I’ve been around the disease many times but never contracted it.  Perhaps for some reason I have that immunity you talk about.  As for you–who knows?  I wish I could give you a better answer, but I can’t.”

“But we’ve already been exposed, right?  If we’re going to get it, we’re going to get it.”

“That’s right.  There’s nothing we can do about it at this point.”

“What does it feel like, when it starts?”

“They say it starts with dizziness, like the world won’t stop spinning around you.  And then you become nauseated and feverish.  And finally the vomiting begins.”

I closed my eyes.  Did I feel dizzy?  I didn’t think so.  Were there germs already inside me, getting ready to kill me?  There was no way of telling.  I opened my eyes.  The professor was looking at me.  He reached over and put a hand on my shoulder.  “I’m sorry, Larry,” he said.  And then I buried my face in his chest and started to cry.

#

Later in the morning Lieutenant Carmody showed up.  He called to us from the path leading up to the house.  When the professor and I went out on the porch, he said, “It’s Kevin, then?”  He stayed on his horse and didn’t come any closer.  He had seen the sign.

“It is Kevin,” the professor replied.  “Last night.”

“Does he still live?”

“Yes, thank God.”

“I am sorry indeed to hear of this, Professor,” the lieutenant said.  “We can’t protect you, you understand.  The last troops retreat over the bridge by noon.  We were getting worried when you didn’t come.  But we can’t delay.  The Canadians are no more than a mile away.”

“I understand the situation,” Professor Palmer replied.

“If you can, use your fireplace only at night,” the lieutenant advised.  “They’ll see the smoke during the day.”

“Yes, I hadn’t thought of that.”

“If you hear the enemy approach, get out as quickly as you can, before they see you.  They’ll probably fire the house when they notice the sign, and not bother looking inside.  They’ll want nothing to do with drikana.”

“Of course,” the professor said.  “That makes sense.”

“Why don’t we just take down the sign?” I asked the professor.

He shook his head.  “It’s not done, lad.  It’s just not done.”

“One more thing,” Lieutenant Carmody said.  “Perhaps I needn’t say this, but I fear it’s my duty.  Do not try to reach Boston before the end of the claustration.  Important as you are, and as much as I respect and admire you, the law cannot be broken, especially not now.  Orders will be issued to shoot you on sight until the week has passed.”

“I would do the same myself, William,” the professor replied.

The lieutenant nodded.  “It’s an ill time for us all.  Fare you well, then.  And may God have mercy on the three of you.”

Then he rode off, leaving us utterly alone.

Upstairs, Kevin started to moan.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 13

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In the alternate universe Kevin and Larry find themselves stuck in, they are helping the United States of New England in its war against New Portugal and Canada.  The boys are working with the military on hot air balloons and electricity when they get a summons from President Gardner.  Their guardian, Professor Palmer, is not happy about it.

Previous chapters are up there on the menu.  They’re all pretty good!

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Chapter 13

“The man’s an idiot,” Professor Palmer said.  “We won’t go.”

General Aldridge scratched his chin.  “I may have my disagreements with the president, but I fear he’s no idiot.  In any case, you don’t have any choice.  This wasn’t an invitation, Alexander; it was a summons.”

“Why can’t we just bring him out here and show him what we’ve accomplished?” Kevin asked.

“One must first persuade him that it’s worth the trip,” the general replied.  “Lieutenant, see that they get to the palace.  If Professor Palmer gives you any trouble, arrest him or something.  I’ll follow along presently.”

“Yes, sir.”  Lieutenant Carmody turned to us.  “Let’s go, then, shall we?”

The lieutenant didn’t have his carriage, so we all piled into Professor Palmer’s.  He decided we needed to improve our appearance, so we stopped back at the house, cleaned up, and borrowed a couple of the professor’s dressy white shirts.  They were about the right size for me, but way too big for Kevin.  Lieutenant Carmody thought it was an improvement, though.

The professor, meanwhile, was still in a snit.  “Everything is wasted–science, planning, courage–without political wisdom,” he said.

“We elected the president,” Lieutenant Carmody pointed out.

“Not with my vote.  He promised us a stronger New England.  And now with his reckless adventurism he has all but destroyed it.”

The lieutenant wasn’t very interested in what the professor had to say about President Gardner.  He just wanted to get us to Coolidge Palace.  Once we had changed, we got back in the carriage and hurried off to Boston.

It was twilight by the time we crossed the bridge into the city.  Things were looking worse.  Many of the trees I had seen there on the trip to Cambridge had been chopped down–for firewood, I guess; the smoke from the fires in the refugee camp stung my eyes.  The smell of sewage was almost unbearable.  There were fewer people on the streets, but those who were out looked tired and hungry.  More than one of them rushed up to the carriage with his hands outstretched, begging for food.  We didn’t stop.

In our world, I’d gone into Boston a couple of times to visit the Massachusetts State House, a big brick building with a gold dome at the top of Beacon Hill.  Here, there was more than one hill in the center of the city, and the president lived in a mansion at the top of the middle hill.  This was Coolidge Palace–named, I found out, after the first president of New England, Sir Calvin Coolidge.  I remembered him as a not-so-important president in our world, so that struck me as really strange.  But I didn’t say anything about it.

We drove up to the front gate, which was guarded by stern-looking soldiers with those silly plumes in their hats.  Lieutenant Carmody got out of the carriage and talked to one of them, who came up and looked at us suspiciously.  He wrote down our names, then opened the gates and let us through.

It was like going through the portal again–this time entering a serene, lovely world where nothing was out of place.  As we drove up the gravel drive to the large granite building we saw one groundskeeper sweeping leaves off the immaculate lawn, another trimming a bush that was so perfectly shaped it looked artificial.

“No refugees allowed near Coolidge Palace,” Professor Palmer muttered.  “Wouldn’t do.”

At the front steps a groom took Professor Palmer’s carriage, and then a tall man in a bright green suit wearing a long white wig escorted us up the steps and opened the door for us.  I thought I caught him sneering at Kevin and me, in our crufty pants and shoes, but I couldn’t be sure.  This was the first time I’d ever seen anyone in a wig for real, and I almost burst out laughing.  He led us along a couple of corridors lined with portraits of people I didn’t recognize, and finally deposited us in a small room whose walls were painted with scenes of pretty shepherdesses tending flocks of sheep.  He instructed us to wait there until summoned, and then he left.

“Waste of time,” the professor said.

Lieutenant Carmody gave us instructions about how to act in front of the president.  Give a small bow when you’re introduced, speak only when spoken to, throw in lots of “Your Excellency”‘s.  He looked like he was right at home in the palace.

Eventually the guy in the green suit led in General Aldridge.  He had shaved and put on a clean uniform, although the way he wore it, it still managed to look rumpled.  At least he wasn’t chewing on a cigar.  He sat in one of the overstuffed armchairs and folded his arms.  “His Excellency is dining this evening with the British ambassador and friends,” he said.  “I expect that we are the entertainment.”

“What’s the game?” Lieutenant Carmody asked.  “Is he trying to embarrass you?”

“Perhaps.  Show that he’s still in charge.”

“He could simply discharge you.”

“At the risk of having half his cabinet resign,” General Aldridge pointed out.  “Lord Percival would certainly object, as would some of the others.  At any rate, the president can’t afford a political crisis now.  And he can’t afford to make me too angry.”

Professor Palmer seemed to pick up on this.  “Your soldiers respect you, Solomon,” he said, “and they don’t respect Gardner.  They’ll follow you, if you decide to–”

The general raised a hand.  “Rebellion is not an option,” he replied in a stern voice.

“But surrender is?”

“None of us can guarantee victory,” the general replied.  “Even with electricity on our side.”

“How do you think the president found out about us?” Kevin asked.

“The president has spies everywhere, and there are many people working on our projects.  Apparently Cambridge wasn’t far enough away to keep them secret from him.  I didn’t really think it would be.  As for you boys–it isn’t clear what he knows about you, other than your existence.  So I think we should just find out.”

So we fell silent and waited some more.  Night fell, and I got hungry.  I started to wonder if this was some kind of punishment, and we weren’t really going to see anybody after all.  Then at last the guy in the green suit returned, and we walked down another fancy corridor.  He opened a set of big double doors, and we were ushered into the presence of the president of New England.

General Aldridge went in first, and the rest of us followed.  We were in a large dining room with high ceilings and walls covered with more portraits of men wearing wigs.  A bunch of people were seated at a long table, eating dinner.  My stomach growled as I caught the aroma of roast beef.  A fat, red-faced man sat at the head of the table, digging into his food like he was afraid any minute the Portuguese would swoop down and grab it away from him.  He was wearing a black coat, a white ruffled shirt, and a short wig.  Sweat poured down his face.  When he noticed us he waved a fork at General Aldridge.  “Solomon,” he said, “I hear these boys are your new military advisers.”  He had a strange, high-pitched voice.

The remark didn’t seem very funny to me, but the men and women at the table gave it a big laugh.  Most of the men wore black suits, like the president.  The women wore fancy gowns and lots of jewelry; their hair was piled up so high on top of their heads I thought they might lose their balance.

General Aldridge smiled and bowed.  “Your Excellency,” he said, “nowadays I take advice wherever I can get it.”

“Odd you can’t get good advice from your highly trained staff.  You’ve met the Earl of Chatham, Solomon?”

The general bowed to the guy on the president’s right, a short man with huge ears that stuck out from his wig.  “Mr. Ambassador, good to see you again.”

The earl nodded back with a little smile.  He didn’t seem to be enjoying himself.

“You,” the president said, pointing his fork at Kevin, “where are you from, boy?”

Kevin remembered to bow; I’m not sure I would have.  “From Glanbury, Your Excellency,” he said.

The president chuckled.  “Glanbury?  When has anything useful come out of that godforsaken village?”  More laughter from the table.  The president speared a hunk of roast beef and stuck it into his mouth, looking satisfied with himself.  “And you are full of advice for General Aldridge?”

“Not really, Your Excellency.  We’re just staying with Professor Palmer.”

“I hear differently,” the president replied.  “I am told there are very strange doings over in Cambridge.”

“We are attempting to develop–” General Aldridge began.

“I know exactly what you’re attempting to do,” the president interrupted.  “We’re besieged by our enemies, winter is setting in, and you’re devoting precious time and manpower to projects suggested to you by ten-year-olds?”

I wanted to yell at him that Kevin and I were both teenagers, practically, but I managed to restrain myself.

“Come and see for yourself, Your Excellency,” the general offered calmly.

President Gardner waved away the suggestion and speared another hunk of roast beef with his knife.  “Mr. Ambassador,” he said, turning to the earl next to him.  “What is the message you delivered to me today, smuggled in from your superiors in London at great risk?”

The earl shifted in his seat and looked uncomfortable.  “Excellency,” he said, “I think it more suitable for–”

“Come, Cecil, we are all friends here,” the president insisted.

People around the table grew quiet.

“Sir,” the earl began, “His Majesty’s government regret that they will be unable to provide assistance to your nation in its current difficulty.  Unfortunately, the demands of the war in Europe preclude–”

“Thank you, Cecil, we all understand about the demands of war,” the president said.  He motioned to a servant to refill his glass with wine.  The earl looked down at his plate.

“Sir,” General Aldridge said to the president, “this is unhappy news.  But it simply means that we have all the more reason to press ahead with our efforts.”

“It means what I say it means,” the president retorted.  And he stuffed a large chunk of beef into his mouth.  I looked at General Aldridge.  He had turned red.  I imagined it was all he could do to keep his temper.  I had no idea how Professor Palmer was keeping his.

I looked back at the president, and his face was red, too.  Then he stood up.  One hand reached for his throat, the other reached for his wine, but knocked it over.  He tried to say something, but nothing came out.

He was choking on his meat.

The people at the table started shouting out instructions.  One of the servants came over and pounded the president on the back.  Didn’t help.  His eyes were bulging now, and his face was the color of a rotten tomato.  He gestured wildly, hitting one of the servants who was trying to loosen his collar.

That’s when I figured I should do something.

Mom made me take a first aid course in fifth grade.  It had never come in handy till that instant.

I went up behind the president–no one seemed to notice me.  He was doubled over now, still clutching at his throat.  I shoved a lady out of the way, then wrapped my arms around him, put my hands together, and pushed up on his chest.

The first push didn’t work.  I could feel people grabbing at me now, trying to pull me away, but I managed to try again.  And this time the piece of meat popped out of the president’s mouth.

People dragged me away from him then, and I didn’t see what happened next.  I was afraid some security guy was going to shoot me, but eventually they let me go and got out of the way, and President Gardner stood facing me.  His face was still red and splotchy, but at least he didn’t look like he was going to keel over.  At least he was breathing.

“You were the one?” he demanded.  “You saved me?”

I nodded.

“How did you learn how that–that thing you just did?”

“We know how to do a few things in Glanbury,” I said.  “Your Excellency.”

Kind of a wisecrack, I know, but he had made a wisecrack about my home town.  He stared at me, and I wondered if he was going to have me beheaded or something.  And then he threw his head back and laughed.  “Very well, then,” he said.  “Your village is apparently not as benighted as I had imagined.”  He picked up a glass of wine.  “A toast–to Glanbury!”

That kind of broke the tension.  The president ordered places to be set for all of us, so we got to eat some of that roast beef.  Which was good, because I was just about starving at that point.  The servants offered to pour us wine, but Kevin and I asked for milk instead.  General Aldridge ate, but he still didn’t look happy.  Professor Palmer asked me about what I’d done.  “Is that something from your world?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.  “It’s called the Heimlich maneuver.  I guess you haven’t figured it out here.”

“Indeed.  I wonder if it will change his attitude towards us.”

“Can’t hurt,” Lieutenant Carmody replied.  “You know, General Aldridge is right: he’s not as incompetent as you think, Professor.  He took some gambles during his presidency and lost.  But some would say the gambles had to be made, if New England were to survive.”

This was more of an opinion than we usually heard the lieutenant offer.  But Professor Palmer wasn’t buying it.  “A real leader would not be locked up behind palace gates,” he said, “swilling wine while his countrymen starve.”

The lieutenant shrugged.  “He has just seen his last gamble fail–reason enough to seek solace.  And in any case, little would change if the wine were not drunk.”

After the meal was over we got another summons from the green-suited butler.  The president wanted to see us all privately.  The butler brought us to a big office with lots of bookcases and a fire blazing in a marble fireplace.  “Now we’ll get down to business,” General Aldridge murmured.  Lieutenant Carmody, Kevin, and I stayed in the back of the room, while the general and the professor sat in a couple of chairs next to the fire.  Eventually the president showed up, followed by a couple of the guys who had been at the dinner.  One was tall, dark-haired, and a little stoop-shouldered, as if he had gone through too many doorways that were too small for him.  The other one was shorter, with a narrow face and bright eyes; he had taken his wig off, so you could see there were just a few wisps of gray hair on the top of his head.  “Vice President Boatner and the Foreign Minister, Lord Percival,” Lieutenant Carmody whispered to us.

General Aldridge and Professor Palmer stood as the others entered.  “Oh, sit down, sit down,” the president said, and he himself sank into one of the chairs by the fire.  He looked really tired.  The vice president and the foreign minister sat on either side of him.  “Anyone care for a brandy?” he asked.

No one did.  He sighed and waved the butler out of the room.

“So, would you care to explain about these boys, General?” the president said.  “I have heard that they are the spawn of Satan.  Seems rather unlikely, from the look of ’em, but what do I know?”

“Nothing as interesting as that, I fear,” General Aldridge replied.  “They were impressed onto a pirate ship a couple of years ago and spent a good deal of time in China.  On the return voyage they escaped and made their way back home to Glanbury, but the Portuguese had overrun the place, so they had to flee to Boston.  They are bright lads and picked up a good deal of useful knowledge in the Orient.  We are merely trying to take advantage of it amid our current difficulties.”

I was impressed by how smoothly the general could lie; he was very convincing.  The president shifted in his chair and stared at Kevin and me.  “They look no more like pirates than they do the spawn of Satan,” he remarked.  “But your story is somewhat more plausible, I suppose.  Now please tell us what is going on over there in Cambridge.”

So General Aldridge went through it all, with some help from Professor Palmer.  The president folded his hands over his big belly and closed his eyes.  I thought he might be falling asleep, but he opened his eyes every once in a while to ask a good question.  The foreign minister asked questions, too, but the vice president stayed silent.  The president especially liked the idea of balloons.  “Imagine being able to simply float away from this siege,” he murmured.  “How delightful.”

“Nevertheless,” the vice president said suddenly, “you should end all this nonsense immediately.”

“May I ask why, Randolph?” the general said.

“Because our only hope is in negotiating with the enemy, and if they find out what you are doing, it will simply make the negotiations more difficult.”

“Why so?  If they find out, I suggest it will incline them to negotiate more seriously, realizing how difficult we are going to make it for them to defeat us.”

“It will more likely incline them to end negotiations altogether and attack immediately, before you have a chance to complete your little science experiments.”

“They are far more than science experiments,” Professor Palmer replied hotly.  “They have the capacity to revolutionize the way we conduct warfare.”

“We have neither the men nor the munitions to defeat this enemy, now that the British have abandoned us,” the vice president insisted.  “To believe anything else is arrant nonsense.”

The president looked over at the foreign minister.  “Benjamin, what say you?  Might as well get everyone into the fray.”

“Well of course you know I disagree with Randolph,” Lord Percival began.  He had the most British accent of anyone I’d met so far, except the Earl of Chatham.  “We’re in a dire situation, I won’t deny it.  But if the Canadians and Portuguese believe they have such a decisive advantage as Randolph describes, why haven’t they attacked already, instead of sitting outside our gates and waiting for us to crumble?  They have as much to fear from a long siege as we do.  Their supply lines are hopelessly extended, so they have to live off the land–but what supplies will be left for them, by January?  And of course the Portuguese soldiers aren’t used to the cold, and neither Portuguese nor Canadians are eager to be here in the first place.  Their armies may simply melt away if they don’t make a decisive move soon.

“Now we have these new developments from Solomon.  I say, let them continue.  They may be enough to alter the balance.  I don’t know.  If the enemy do find out about them, that’s all to the good, in my judgment.  Let the enemy worry that they’ve got in deeper than they’d prepared for.  Let them realize that the price for this adventure may be far greater than they are willing to pay.”

“Bosh,” the vice president retorted.  “We all know this will be finished well before January.  They are waiting for the moment of maximum preparedness on their side, maximum vulnerability on ours.  Then they will strike.  And nothing that General Aldridge is doing or can do will change the outcome.  We need to negotiate now, and hope we escape with our lives.”

President Gardner raised a hand, and everyone fell silent.  “You see how clear my advisers make things for me,” he said.  “Ah, well.”  He turned to the vice president.  “Randolph, make contact with the enemy tomorrow.  We begin negotiations for surrender.”

The vice president bowed, looking satisfied.  “Very well, Your Excellency.”

“But Your Excellency–” Professor Palmer began.

The president glared at him, and he fell silent.  “Solomon,” he said to General Aldridge, “in the meantime, please continue your ‘science experiments,’ as Randolph calls them.  I see no good reason not to continue preparing for the final battle, even if it may not occur.”

The general bowed slightly in turn.  “Thank you, sir.”

The president waved his hand at us.  “All right then, you may all go.”  Everyone got up to leave.  As I was headed for the door the president pointed at me.  “You, stay a moment, if you please.”

I looked at Lieutenant Carmody, who grinned and gave me a little shove back towards the president.

“Sit,” the president ordered when everyone was gone.

I sat down next to him.

“Your name?”

“Larry Barnes, Your Excellency.”

“Master Barnes, would you like a cigar or a glass of brandy?”

“Uh, no thank you, Your Excellency.”

“Odd.  I’d think a pirate boy would have developed a taste for tobacco and spirits.”

“I’m still a little young, Your Excellency.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”  He leaned back in his chair.  “Tell me about China, Master Barnes.  I’ve always had an interest in the place, but I’ve met so few who have actually travelled there.”

Great, I thought.  I’m supposed to lie to the president.  “Well, it’s really . . . different.  Lots of people.  In some ways they’re, uh, pretty advanced.”

“Yes, the electricity, and the–what was it?–the balloons.  What else?”

What else?  I tried to think what else.  “Like, toilets,” I said.  I explained about flush toilets.  That was pretty good.  Then I brought up bicycles, because I’d seen a TV show about how everyone in China rides a bicycle.  I’d seen a few here, but they were really primitive-looking.  Then the president asked me what they ate in China, and I had a good answer for that, too, because we ate Chinese food at home a lot.

President Gardner looked kind of puzzled after a while.  “Well, you do seem to know something about China,” he said.  “It must feel strange to be back here in New England.”

“Pretty strange,” I agreed.  “But I’m getting used to it.”

“Yes.  Good.  Well, I want to thank you for saving my life, Master Barnes.  Very fortuitous that you were here tonight.”

“My pleasure, Your Excellency.”

The president stood, and we shook hands.  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a cigar?” he asked.

I was sure.

Outside, General Aldridge had already left, but Lieutenant Carmody, Professor Palmer, and Kevin were waiting for me, eager to know what happened.  “We talked about China,” I said.

“He doesn’t believe our story,” the lieutenant remarked.

“Maybe he’s not so sure now.  I was pretty convincing.”

“Good lad,” the professor said.

“Too late to return to Cambridge, I’m afraid,” the lieutenant said.  “Let’s go to the barracks.  Then back to work in the morning.  The stakes are only getting higher.”

Kevin and I returned to our old room in the attic.  “More interesting than The Gross, huh?” I said, feeling pretty good about my meeting with the president.

“Yeah, but I’d still rather be home.”

I lay down on the thin mattress.  Kevin was right, of course.  But still . . . it wasn’t everyday you save the president’s life, and he offers you brandy and a cigar.  And that sure beat having to deal with Stinky Glover and my stupid sister.

Marlborough Street is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble!

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Kindly purchase it for the Kindle or the Nook.  Presumably it’ll show up in other places before long.  It’s only $2.99, and Christmas was expensive this year.

Marlborough Street’s summary and first chapter are here.  And here’s the cover, which maybe is OK:

Marlborough Street cover

I have to tell you that Marlborough Street is a pretty strange novel.  It’s partially about the meaning of life (which, incidentally, I explain on the last page), but it’s also about the difference between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, and what it means to be a psychic.  It’s a suspense/thriller/horror type of thing, but I also tried to make it funny.  It all makes sense to me, but your mileage may vary.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 12

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Kevin and Larry have come up with a couple of ideas — hot-air balloons and electric fences — that may help the war effort against New Portugal and Canada.  And now things start to change even further for them . . .

Earlier chapters are up there on the menu under “Portal.”

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Chapter 12

Things changed once the meeting with General Aldridge was over.  We all went back to army headquarters, and Lieutenant Carmody and Professor Palmer had a long meeting to figure out what they needed to do.  Kevin and I just hung around in the courtyard, wondering what was going to happen next.

“They wouldn’t just get rid of us now, would they?” Kevin asked.

“No way.  We’re too valuable.”

“Why?  They’ve got what they need from us.”

“But they’ll want more, won’t they?” I pointed out.  “I think we’ll be okay.”

Kevin didn’t look reassured.  Luckily, Peter came along and made us forget about our problems for a while.  “How are your zippers, mates?” he asked us, grinning.

“Don’t have ’em anymore,” I replied.  “It’s hard getting used to these buttons.”

“I bet it is.  The lieutenant is very interested in you lads, you know.”

Peter pronounced the word “loo-tenant.”

“What do you think of Lieutenant Carmody?” Kevin asked.

“Oh, he’s a good enough sort,” Peter replied.  “Plenty ambitious.  I expect he’ll be president one of these days, assuming we still have a president, so you want to stay downwind of him.”

I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I think I got the idea.  The lieutenant and Professor Palmer came out a little while later, looking serious.  “Lots to be done, lads,” Lieutenant Carmody said.  “You’ll stay the night here and return to Cambridge in the morning.  Be sure to remain quiet about where you come from.  No tales of portals and alternate universes and such.  If it comes up, say you were cabin boys on a pirate ship that visited China.  People will believe anything about China.  Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Will we be doing anything to help?” Kevin asked.

“Of course you will,” Professor Palmer replied.  “We just have to get organized first.”  He seemed to understand that we were worried.  “If we actually manage to win this dreadful war, lads,” he pointed out, “you’ll be heroes.”

That was a good thought, although it wasn’t clear how we’d be heroes if we were supposed to keep everything secret.  Anyway, we went back to the hot attic room where we had spent the night before meeting Professor Palmer for the first time, and we waited for the professor and the lieutenant to do their business in the city.  Early the next morning we returned to Cambridge with the professor.  In the barn, the chickens and the pigs were hungry and the cow needed milking, and it almost (but not really) felt like we were coming home.

We took over the cricket fields at Harvard for our work.  Lieutenant Carmody was worried about the Canadians pushing into Cambridge unexpectedly, but here we had the space and the privacy we needed, so he decided to take the risk.  Equipment and people started arriving almost immediately, and the professor spent a lot of time talking with the experts he’d brought in to help.  Most of them started out pretty dubious about the whole thing, but his reputation kept them at it.

The balloons turned out to be the most straightforward thing we attempted.  It was easy enough to start with toy models and then get bigger as people started to understand the idea.  One tricky part was figuring out the right way to control heating the air to make the balloons rise.  That was pretty much a matter of trial and error.  Another problem was creating the big wicker baskets, which involved finding willow trees and reeds in the city.  To obtain the silk for the full-size balloons they held a drive to get all the upper-class ladies in the city to hand over their old dresses, telling them they were for bandages.  The results looked kind of strange, but they worked.

The electricity business was harder.  It was a good thing Kevin had been paying attention when Mrs. DiGenova did the electricity unit in the fifth grade–of course, that was the sort of thing Kevin liked.  I remembered about copper being a good conductor, but I had sure forgotten about zinc in batteries, and I had also forgotten how you could transform the energy in, like, waterfalls or even pedaling bikes into electricity.

Luckily, they found Professor Foster–the guy Professor Palmer thought would be drunk in a ditch somewhere.  I don’t know if he was an alcoholic, but he was really strange.  He was very tall, with frizzy brown hair and the palest skin I’d ever seen.  Someone called him a walking mushroom, and that seemed like a pretty good description.  But the big thing was, he loved electricity.  It seemed to him to be the most wonderful, mysterious thing in creation.  Lieutenant Carmody didn’t want us talking to most of the people who were involved in the projects, but he agreed to let Professor Foster meet with us.

We described batteries to him and he seemed to catch on immediately.  “Yes, yes, an array of capacitors!” he shouted.  “Leyden jars connected in parallel!”

I had no idea what he was talking about.  He brought Professor Palmer, Lieutenant Carmody, Kevin, and me to his laboratory, which was located in a shed behind his house in Cambridge.  It was a dusty place filled with pieces of metal, wires, and bottles of chemicals.  He showed us a jar lined with foil.  At the top of the jar was a ball connected to a shaft.  “Do you see?” he said.  “You use the ball of sulphur to rotate the shaft like so–”

“–and the electrical charge builds up in the foil,” Kevin said.

“Exactly!” Professor Foster exclaimed.  “What a brilliant boy!”  He turned to the lieutenant.  “Would you like to touch the foil?”

Lieutenant Carmody didn’t appear eager to do it, but he reached his hand into the jar and, sure enough, got a shock.

“You see, the current moved from the foil to your hand,” the professor explained.

“I built one of these in my basement,” Kevin said while the lieutenant rubbed his hand.

“Remarkable!  Stupendous!”

“Can we kill people with this?” the lieutenant asked.

That shut everyone up for a minute.

“Lightning kills,” Professor Foster said finally, in a much lower tone.  “We cannot capture the power of lightning.”

“But these boys–”

“All I know about is the electric fence,” I said.  “The electricity runs along the wires and just gives you a shock if you touch it.”  But I really wasn’t so sure about that.  I thought about the electric fence in Jurassic Park and how powerful it was.  Could they do something like that here?

“An electric fence would be a sight better than Aldridge’s foolish mounds of earth and pointed sticks,” Professor Palmer pointed out to the lieutenant.

“It all depends on the charge we can build up, store in the battery–what an evocative name!–then transmit along the wire,” Professor Foster said.  He absently turned the shaft in the jar.  “Copper and zinc,” he muttered, “copper and zinc . . . There are practical difficulties, I suppose.”

“We have six weeks,” the lieutenant said.  “Eight at the outside.  Any longer than that, and your work will be useless.”

This seemed to fluster him completely.  “Oh, my.  I don’t see how . . . well, perhaps . . . ”

The lieutenant looked at Professor Palmer.

“I will work with Bartholomew,” the professor said.  “If it can be done, we will do it.”

Lieutenant Carmody nodded, satisfied.  “Let’s get started, then.”

Professor Palmer explained to us about his friend later, when we were back home for the night.  “Electricity has never been taken seriously, I fear.  I have seen those jars used as an entertainment at parties–young ladies think it quite daring to put their hands inside and receive a shock.  So Bartholomew’s interest in electricity has always seemed bizarre, almost amusing, to most people.  To have it become part of the effort to win the war–well, it’s a bit much for him to take in.”

He set up the chess board to play Kevin.  I sat down at the piano and started playing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”.

“Do you think we we’ll be able to win the war?” Kevin asked.

“I’m not a soldier, thank God,” the professor replied.  “I have no idea what it will take to win militarily.  But I do know that we cannot win if we lack the will–if we believe the cause is hopeless and victory impossible.  That is the current situation, thanks to our president’s ineptitude.  Right now it is just a matter of counting out the days to our defeat and hoping it will be as painless as possible.  But defeat is never entirely painless.  Speaking of defeat, I would be paying particular attention to your rook, if I were you.”

“But that could be changing, right?” Kevin asked.  “I mean, the attitude.”

“Let us hope so.  Let us hope.”

#

“Larry, do you notice how we’re saying ‘we’ now?” Kevin asked me that night in our room.

“Huh?”

“When we talk about this place–about New England.  Used to be we’d say, ‘Are you going to win?’  Now it’s, ‘Are we going to win?'”

I thought about that.  “You’re right,” I said.  “We’re part of it now.”

“Not that I’m not thinking about home, you know?” he went on.  “It’s just–we’re here.  This is it.”

“When the war is over,” I said, “all we have to do is go back to Glanbury and find the portal.”

“Yeah.  If we survive.  If we’re not, like, sold into slavery or something.”

“We’ll survive.  We’ll win.  We’ll get back there.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Home.  I realized I hadn’t been thinking about it as much lately.  My fights with Cassie, my annoyance with Matthew and Mom and Stinky Glover . . . all that stuff was starting to seem kind of far away now.  We had a war to win.  And in the meantime, I was getting used to going to the privy, to lighting candles and oil lamps, to living without TV, even to eating watery porridge and salt pork.

Home.

I fell asleep on my lumpy mattress, and my dreams were strange and confused.

#

After a few weeks General Aldridge came to Cambridge to check on our progress.  The hot-air balloons were going well.  We had a small prototype that was tethered to the cricket field by a fifty-foot rope.  It looked kind of goofy, stitched together out of all those different-colored dresses, but it worked.  The general peered up at it as it floated above him.  “People can fly in that contraption?” he asked.

“After a fashion,” Lieutenant Carmody replied.

The general laughed.  “If that doesn’t scare the Portuguese, nothing will.”

As Lieutenant Carmody had expected, we had been less successful with the stuff we were trying to do with gunpowder.  Nobody had a solution for the moisture problem, least of all Kevin and me.  General Aldridge talked with the munitions guys, and then said, “No sense wasting time.  Pack up and return to your units.”

Then there was electricity.  Professor Foster had moved his equipment from his shed to a larger building near the cricket fields.  He was so excited to be explaining his work that he was practically bouncing off the walls.  “The electrical fluid moves along the wire,” he said, showing the apparatus he had set up.  “The side that gains fluid acquires a vitreous charge.  The side that loses fluid acquires a resinous charge.  According to my calculations, the force between the charge varies inversely as the square of the distance.  So it follows that–”

“Touch the wire,” Lieutenant Carmody said.

General Aldridge looked at him.  “What?”

“Touch the wire, sir,” the lieutenant repeated.

The general hesitated, then reached out and grabbed the wire.  “Drat, that smarts!” he shouted, jumping back and glaring at the lieutenant.

Professor Foster clapped his hands in glee.  “You see?” he said.  “You see?  A fundamental force of the universe, under our control.  Isn’t it marvelous?”

That started a barrage of questions from the general.  How much electricity could you store?  How far would it travel along the wire?  What happened if the wire broke?  Professor Foster answered as well as he could.

“That’s good,” General Aldridge said finally.  “That’s very good.  Lieutenant, we need to talk about deployment.”

“Yes, sir.”

We all walked out of the building.  I was pretty happy.  Professor Foster looked like he was about to levitate with joy.

Outside, a soldier in a fancy red-and-gold uniform was waiting on a large black horse.  He was wearing a big hat with an even bigger white plume on top.  When he saw us he dismounted, stuck the hat under his left arm, and saluted the general.  “Message, sir,” he said.  “The honor of a reply is requested.”

General Aldridge didn’t look happy.  Neither did the lieutenant.  The soldier took a letter out of his pocket and handed it to the general.  He broke the seal, opened it, and studied it for a moment before handing it back.  “All right,” he muttered.

The soldier hesitated.  “Is that your answer, sir?”

“Of course it is, you dimwit,” the general exploded.  “Now begone!”

The soldier hastily got back onto his horse and rode off.

“Er, bad news?” Professor Foster asked.

General Aldridge glared at him for a moment, and then shrugged.  “Depends on one’s point of view, I suppose,” he said.  “My presence is required at Coolidge Palace.”

“Well, uh, that doesn’t sound–”

“Gardner knows,” Professor Palmer said.

General Aldridge nodded.  “Yes, apparently he knows.”

“But surely he can’t complain about–”

“You’re invited as well,” the general said.  “And the boys.  He knows about the boys.  He wants all work stopped until he’s met them.”  He looked at us.  “You’re in luck, lads,” he said.  “You’re about to meet His Excellency, the President of the United States of New England.”

Dover Beach is free on iTunes (let’s make it free on Amazon)!

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In celebration of the failure of the world to end or something, Dover Beach is now free on iTunes.  (The idea is that, if you like Dover Beach, you’ll spend real money on its thrilling sequel, The Distance Beacons.)

You can help make Dover Beach free on Amazon, which will match Apple’s price if we nag it often enough.  The idea is to go down to the place on the Amazon page for Dover Beach where it says “tell us about a lower price” and enter the iTunes URL:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/dover-beach/id584966623?mt=11

. . . and report that it’s selling there for $0.00.  You can keep doing this if you’re so inclined, and eventually through the miracle of our collective action Amazon will capitulate.  Thanks!

 

Forbidden Sanctuary now available on Amazon!

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Other stores to follow.  Here’s the link. Here’s the summary.  And here’s the cover:

Forbidden Sanctuary ebook

I’m not crazy about it, but it’s better than the original paperback cover, which makes it looks like the novel takes place in ancient Egypt rather than a parking lot in western Massachusetts:

forbidden sanctuary from amazon

This was my first novel, and there’s nothing like selling your first novel.  I think it stands the test of time pretty well, although there are the usual issues with science fiction of a certain age: nobody has cell phones, there’s no Internet, etc.  As in Pontiff, the pope is a prominent character, and he is a good guy, struggling to do the right thing in a complex and difficult situation

For a mere $2.99, you can form your own opinion.