Dunno why we went through that phase of selling it for $0.99. But anyway, Dover Beach is now free on Amazon. As well as iTunes. But presumably not forever. So download it while you can. And if it makes you happy, write a nice review. Please?
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 . . .
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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.
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.
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.”
***********************
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.”
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!
Kevin and Larry have moved into Professor Palmer’s house in Cambridge. And now they are part of the war effort against the Canadians and the New Portuguese — if only they can come up with a way to help…
*******************
Chapter 11
Professor Palmer was pretty gruff, and he got angry with us a lot, especially in the first couple of days. He expected us to do our share of chores, and we weren’t very good at them. At home I’d have to clean my room and wash the car and stuff like that, but I sure didn’t have to sweep up horse poop or empty chamber pots or feed garbage to pigs. I mowed lawns at home, but with a power mower, not a scythe–I didn’t even know what a scythe was; Mom would have had a stroke if she’d seen me with one of them in my hands.
“Your utter incompetence is proof of something,” the professor said, shaking his head at us as Kevin and I tried to put a saddle onto Susie, his friendly old horse.
But we kind of got used to his style after a while. He was never mean to us; he just hadn’t dealt much with kids, especially incompetent kids. And we got better at our chores, at least some of them.
Life at the professor’s house was actually pretty pleasant, except for our homesickness, and the occasional distant sound of gunfire, which reminded us that before very long this was going to end and we’d have to move back into the crowded city for the final siege. Some things took getting used to, though.
The smells, for one. Not just the barnyard smells–the chickens and the pigs and Susie–and the smell of the privy behind the house. But the people smells. Taking a bath was a big deal in this world. Washing clothes was also a big deal–and Kevin and I only had one set of clothes to wash. So we all kind of stank, at least until I got used to it.
The isolation was another big difference. We didn’t have a clue what was going on with the war, and there really wasn’t any way to find out, unless we rode into Boston. Were the Canadians heading into Cambridge? Was England going to save us? Professor Palmer didn’t seem too bothered about the lack of news, but it really bugged Kevin and me.
Part of the isolation was the silence. When the gunfire stopped, there wasn’t much sound at all–just birds twittering, the wind rustling leaves, hens clucking in the barnyard. No traffic noise, no airplanes, not even the hum of a refrigerator. It was kind of spooky.
And of course there wasn’t much to do. We couldn’t talk to the professor or do chores all the time, so we had to entertain ourselves. The professor had plenty of books, and we tried reading them. We skipped the philosophy stuff, but some of the novels were okay, although they always had lots of words we didn’t understand and scenes that didn’t make any sense because we didn’t know enough about this world’s history or geography or whatever. Kevin liked to play chess with the professor, who was delighted to have an opponent.
I actually ended up spending a lot of time playing the piano, which Professor Palmer also enjoyed. His piano had a tinnier sound than I was used to, and not as many keys, but the basic instrument was the same. The professor didn’t know any of the songs I knew, so it was cool when I came up with something that he liked. One of his favorites was “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
He had some sheet music, and I managed to learn a few of the songs from his world, too. There was one we all liked with a sad melody and strange words:
Wanly I wandered
Through the world far and wide
Seeking some solace
For dreams that had died
Long did I linger
In an alien land
Till tears finally left me
As I stood on the strand . . .
I played that song so often that it felt like it was part of my fingers.
Anyway, our job was to try to figure out how we could help New England win the war. So we talked a lot about weapons. They knew about rifles and gunpowder in this world, obviously, and they used cannons. But they didn’t have anything more sophisticated than that. We tried to think of stuff from our world they might be able to use–something short of nuclear bombs and that sort of thing. I came up with hand grenades, and the professor made some notes as I described them. Kevin remembered about landmines, although neither of us was exactly sure how they worked. The professor winced and made a lot more notes. It was obvious that he wasn’t enjoying this. “Demanding that young boys think about such things,” he sighed. “It is deeply depressing.”
Kevin and I didn’t really mind. We didn’t want to make the professor feel bad, but this was kind of interesting. “It’s all about winning the war,” Kevin pointed out. “Like the lieutenant said.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” the professor said, shaking his head. “At such a cost, though.”
Lieutenant Carmody showed up after a few days, on horseback instead of being driven by Peter. “You boys are looking well,” he said when he saw us. “And professor, how are you getting along with these lads?”
“They’re excellent company,” the professor replied. “Our task, however, is not a pleasant one.”
“I’m not aware of anyone who thinks that war is pleasant,” the lieutenant said. “But tell me what you’ve come up with.”
We sat by the barn as we had before, and Professor Palmer talked about landmines and such. Lieutenant Carmody didn’t look especially impressed. “These devices have been tried already,” he said. “The French in particular have worked on them: fougasses, they’re called. They’ve never been effective. The problem is keeping the gunpowder dry–once it gets moist, the fougasse won’t explode. How does your world deal with that problem?” he asked us.
We didn’t have a clue. “I don’t think they’re even made from gunpowder anymore,” Kevin said. “They probably have dynamite in them or something.”
“And what is ‘dynamite’?”
There was that question again. Yet another word that was so familiar to us and totally strange to them. But, as usual, the concept behind the word wasn’t quite familiar enough. Neither of us could tell the lieutenant what exactly dynamite was.
“All right,” he said after we’d talked about weapons for a while longer. “I need more, I’m afraid. Professor, perhaps you’ve been focusing too much on the obvious. Let’s try again. But time runs short. The Portuguese have reached the fortifications south of the city, and for all intents and purposes the siege has begun.”
“How much longer do we have, William?” the professor asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll return in a few days, and we’ll discuss the situation then. Keep working.”
Professor Palmer didn’t look happy after the lieutenant had left. “William’s right, of course,” he muttered. “Perhaps we must simplify. Get back to first principles.”
“You mean like gravity?” Kevin asked.
I half-expected the professor to say, And what is gravity? But it turned out Sir Isaac Newton had lived in this world, and they knew about gravity and the laws of motion and all that stuff. “Perhaps gravity,” he replied. “Or something equally basic. I don’t know. Perhaps we should just talk.”
He seemed kind of discouraged. I think his heart really wasn’t in it. But then that night Kevin came up with something, just
sitting in front of the big kitchen fireplace and watching the smoke go up the chimney.
“Hot-air balloons!” he exclaimed.
Professor Palmer looked at him, and then asked the usual question. “And what is a hot-air balloon?”
“My parents gave me a ride in one once as a birthday present,” Kevin said. Not the kind of present my mother would ever have given me. “Hot air rises–you know that, right? Because heating the air makes it expand and become lighter. As it expands, it can push things up.” He crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it onto the fire. A few of the ashes rose up the chimney along with the smoke. “So with hot-air balloons,” he went on, “you have this huge, like, spherical cloth, and there’s a flame underneath it so you can heat the air inside the sphere. And there’s this big wicker basket attached where people can stand, and it rises with the balloon. If you want the make the balloon go higher or lower, you adjust the flame. It’s really cool.”
The professor looked puzzled. “Cool? How can the flame be cool?”
Kevin shook his head and explained what cool meant.
“Well then, yes,” the professor said, “I agree that it is really ‘cool.'” He stroked his beard, then started peppering Kevin with questions. “Can you steer a balloon?”
“A little bit. You have to catch air currents going one way or another. Someone went around the world in a balloon, I think.”
“What is the balloon made out of?”
“I’m not sure. Nylon or something–you probably don’t have any of that.”
“Silk!” I put in, happy to be able to contribute. “In the old days they used silk. I remember seeing a show about balloons on the History Channel. The North used them in the Civil War to check out enemy positions. They were attached to the ground with a long rope so they wouldn’t float away.”
Professor Palmer took a pencil and started sketching what a balloon looked like. “There are clearly some practical issues here,” he said, “but yes, this is interesting. We’ll see what William has to say.”
So that was pretty good. And another idea came the next afternoon, as we sat on the front porch during a thunderstorm. We started talking about electricity. There hadn’t been a Benjamin Franklin in this world, but they did understand lightning; they just hadn’t made much use of what they knew about electricity. We had already talked about electrical power and electric lights, but we hadn’t talked about the basics. Now we started describing some of the experiments we did in science class, and that got Professor Palmer scribbling furiously. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Storing and controlling it. What were the words again?”
“Batteries?” Kevin said. “Generators?”
“Yes, yes. And the electricity runs along wires . . . ”
“I don’t know how they work,” I said, “but I think there are electric fences–to keep animals in. The cow or whatever touches the fence and gets a shock, and that teaches him to stay away from the fence.”
“Electric fences,” the professor said. “Remarkable. If they keep animals in, would they keep soldiers out?”
“I don’t see why not. But you need to generate the power.”
“Yes, of course.”
More writing, as the rain came pouring down. I thought of the people in the camp, with only the shelter of their wagons. We’ve been very lucky, I thought. I wondered if our luck would hold. Maybe Lieutenant Carmody would send us back to the camp when he’d gotten whatever he could out of us. Or maybe the Portuguese and Canadians would attack tomorrow, and then what? Even if New England somehow won the war, what would happen to us next month, next year, if we couldn’t find the portal, and we ended up stuck here forever?
A couple of days later Lieutenant Carmody returned, looking preoccupied and worried. This time we sat around the dining room table, and Professor Palmer brought out his notes and drawings. As usual, the lieutenant listened carefully, then asked a lot of tough questions. I couldn’t tell if he was happy with what we had come up with or disgusted with the time he had wasted on us. After a while he simply nodded and said, “Right. Let’s go back to Boston.”
“Why the devil do we have to go to Boston?” the professor asked.
“To talk to General Aldridge. He’s at the fortifications in Brighton. Along the River Road past the new refugee camp.”
“Does that mean you like our ideas?” I asked.
“That means General Aldridge won’t chew my head off for wasting his time on them. Now let’s go, if you please. There’s a war on, as one of our more discerning senior officers likes to point out.”
Professor Palmer didn’t act pleased, though. “I don’t see why Aldridge can’t come here,” he grumbled. Secretly, though, I think he was kind of relieved. He went and changed into a white shirt and a long gray coat, and then we went outside, hitched up Susie to his carriage, and headed off to Boston, with Lieutenant Carmody leading the way on his horse. The professor’s carriage wasn’t as fancy as the one Peter drove; it was open and smaller, and a whole lot bouncier as we went over the bumps and ruts of the Massachusetts Road. But it was kind of fun to be going somewhere for a change.
Like the lieutenant said, there was another camp now along the Charles, just past the bridge. We saw hundreds of people there as we passed by. “Poor wretches,” the professor muttered. “Things get worse by the day.”
Eventually the river bent away from us to the right, and that’s where the fortifications started. Looking at them got the professor muttering some more. “How do they expect to keep the enemy out with earthworks and palisades?”
They really didn’t appear all that impressive. Maybe I’d seen too many movies, but it seemed like any good-sized army should have been able to overrun those pointed stakes and piles of dirt. After a while we reached an area where the fortifications were still being constructed, and I spotted General Aldridge talking to a bunch of other officers. He looked even sloppier than he had the other time I’d seen him. He hadn’t shaved in a while, and a small unlit cigar was clenched between his teeth, just like it had been the first time we met him.
We pulled up next to him and got out of the carriage. “What a colossal waste of time, Solomon,” Professor Palmer said to him. “Why don’t we invite the Canadians over, hand them the keys to the city, and be done with it?”
“Good afternoon to you too, Alexander,” General Aldridge replied. He looked at us. “Runs, er, struck in,” he said to Kevin.
“Runs batted in,” Kevin corrected him.
The general nodded. “Of course. Certainly. How could I forget?” Then he turned to Lieutenant Carmody. “Well, Lieutenant, I suppose you have your reasons for subjecting me to this paragon of courtesy?” he asked, gesturing at the professor.
“Sir, can you spare a few moments?” the lieutenant replied.
The general waved the other officers away and had an orderly produce a few chairs for us. When we had sat down, the lieutenant continued. “They have a couple of ideas, sir, that it would be well for us to consider.” And he started talking about some of the things we had come up with–mostly the balloons and the electric fences. Professor Palmer and Kevin and I jumped in with comments and corrections while the general listened in silence.
“Balloons,” he murmured when we were done. He made it sound like a word in a foreign language–which, I guess, it sort of was. “Electricity. And we have no idea if any of this will work?”
“The ideas have a sound theoretical basis,” the professor replied. “As for their practical application, that is a question of time and resources.”
“We have precious little of either,” the general pointed out.
“Then we should start preparing for the surrender ceremony instead,” Professor Palmer said. “President Gardner is very good at ceremonies. I’m sure it will be memorable.”
That got a laugh out of General Aldridge. “What is it that you need?” he asked.
“Silk, and lots of it,” the professor replied. “Copper wire–even more of that. Experienced carpenters, machinists, seamstresses, and blacksmiths. Munitions experts. Sir Henry Bolles. James Carlton–I believe he’s staying at the Somerset Club. Professor Harold Foster–he’s probably drunk in a ditch somewhere, but no one knows more about electricity. We will need open land. And we will need to be left alone.”
The general lifted an eyebrow. “Are you sure that’s all?” he asked. “How about some gold ingots? Perhaps a shipload of molasses? A deserted island in the West Indies?”
“Most amusing,” the professor replied. “It may in fact not be all. But it is a start.”
The general took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at Lieutenant Carmody. “Well?”
“The landmines and grenades and the like–I’m dubious that we can accomplish much with them,” he replied. “I’m intrigued by the reconnaissance potential of these balloons. As for the electric fences, they would of course have some tactical value, depending on how powerful they can be made. But there’s more, sir.”
“What’s that?”
“Surprise. Terror. Dismay. Some of the soldiers who saw that lad’s watch thought it was the work of the devil. What will our enemies think if they see flying devices used against them? They may think: If we can do these things, what other wonders do we have in store? What will that do to their morale, their will to defeat us?”
The general nodded slowly. “Yes, it’s always good to have the devil on your side,” he said. “It will be difficult to keep this secret from the president, I fear.”
“Undoubtedly. He need not make the connection with the boys, though, if that’s your concern.”
“I suppose.” General Aldridge sat there for a moment, staring into space. Then suddenly he flung his cigar onto the ground and stood up. “Lieutenant, get them what they need,” he ordered. “Let’s make this happen, and the president be damned.”
Lieutenant Carmody leaped to his feet. “Yes, sir.”
The general looked at the professor and the two of us and shook his head. “An odd crew to entrust with the future of our nation. But beggars can’t be choosers. Fare you well.”
He turned and walked back to the fortifications.
“Well, then,” the lieutenant said to us. “I believe we have some work to do.”
There’s apparently an author meme infecting the Internet wherein you’re supposed to talk about what you’re currently working on, and link to others doing the same. I hate this meme. I hate talking about what I’m working on. Actually, I also hate talking about stuff I’ve already worked on. But if I didn’t do that, this blog would be empty except for posts about Mitt Romney. So here goes. For a much better example of how to do this, check out Jeff Carver’s site. If you’re participating in the meme, feel free to leave a link in comments.
1) What is the title of your next book?
I dunno. And if I told you, I would probably be wrong.
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
I had an image. I’ve written a few pages of notes about the novel, and that image is the first sentence in the notes. That first sentence is now crossed out. So I wonder if this tells us something.
3) What genre does your book fall under?
It is your standard post-apocalypse private eye novel, with a main character who is deeply interested in nineteenth-century British poetry.
4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
The idea that there would be a movie rendition of this book is so ridiculous that I won’t even contemplate it. Could you please come up with better questions?
5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Walter Sands investigates the disappearance of the charismatic leader of a local church; as usual, he fails, and he succeeds, and he wonders what life is all about. (This is the third in a series.)
6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Self-published.
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
I’m about fifteen percent into the first draft. Early days.
8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
See the response to question 3. If there are other books in this “genre,” I’m not aware of them.
9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I have been thinking a lot about religion. So I started to wonder about religious beliefs in the world I had created for Dover Beach. I said a little about this in its sequel, The Distance Beacons. I decided I had something more to say.
10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
I think there will be a boat ride! And maybe, if you’re good, a visit to New York City! Unfortunately, Manhattan will have a rat problem. Also, there will be some references to nineteenth-century British poetry. If that doesn’t pique your interest, I don’t know what will.
The print edition of today’s Boston Globe tells me something I hadn’t known: Tolkien had to retroactively change The Hobbit to make it fit with the plot he subsequently created for The Lord of the Rings:
When Tolkien first wrote “The Hobbit,” he didn’t know Gollum’s “birthday present” would take on such significance in his sequel. He had to fix future editions of “The Hobbit” to better match the story arc.
So, I’m currently at work at a novel set in the world of Dover Beach and The Distance Beacons. Writing about a world you’ve already invented, with some of the same characters you’ve already invented, certainly makes things easier for an author in many ways: you’re earning a return on your creative investment. On the other hand, you do occasionally find yourself hemmed in by the choices you’ve already made.
In particular, I find myself missing a character I killed off in Dover Beach. I realize now that this was a somewhat gratuitous act of violence; the novel would not have been harmed if I had let the poor guy live. But I was younger then and thought I knew what I was doing. And now . . . now I can’t imagine the novel without him dead at the end of it. So there will be no Tolkienesque retroactive fiddling. What’s done is done. Life, and art, will have to go on without him.
Well, we’re about a quarter of the way through. The story so far: Larry and his friend Kevin, who live in a suburb south of Boston, have stumbled through some kind of portal into a parallel universe. Here, there is no “America”; instead they have landed in a “United States of New England” that’s fighting a war with Canada and New Portugal. They make their way to Boston, which is preparing for a siege, and no one is optimistic about winning the war. Kevin shows his multi-function watch to some soldiers, and this eventually brings the boys to the attention of New England’s military commander, General Gardner and his aide, Lieutenant Carmody. They are (somewhat) convinced that the Kevin and Larry are from another world, but they can’t figure out how the boys can help the war effort. So they send the boys off to live with Professor Palmer in Cambridge, hoping that he can come up with some ideas. And that brings us to . . .
Chapter 10
“My housekeeper left to join her daughter’s family in Boston,” Professor Palmer explained, “but I’m used to fending for myself. Kindly have a seat.”
The kitchen was large and sunny, with a big open fireplace along the inside wall. We sat in a couple of straight-backed wooden chairs in a corner and watched him putter for a while in silence. When he was done, we helped him bring the food into the dining room, which was small and dark and kind of stuffy. We ate cold roast chicken, and it was just about the best chicken I’d ever tasted. I was beginning to get the idea that food here was either terrible or delicious. Like the soldiers in the mess hall, he ate with his knife. His fork only had two prongs, and he used it just to hold down the meat while he cut it. Weird.
“Before long, meals like this will be but a memory,” the professor said. “We must enjoy them while we can.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “It’s very good.”
“Yes. Well.” He paused, then fell silent and looked down at his plate. He seemed to be having difficulty starting up a conversation with us.
“Do you believe us?” Kevin asked.
He looked up and blinked rapidly. “You know, I want very much to believe you,” he replied. “Knowledge is so hard to come by. In many ways we have learned little–and forgotten much–since the ancient Greeks. The idea that somewhere, somehow, another turn was taken, and so much more has been discovered and accomplished–it is deeply exciting. But then, there is still Occam’s razor.”
“We’re telling the truth,” I said. “We’re not smart enough to make up all this stuff.”
The professor nodded. “That is actually the most powerful argument in your favor. Your theory, though–that we live our lives countless times, in countless different worlds–simply doesn’t feel real. It is the stuff of fantastical late-night conversations in college common rooms, after too many glasses of port. Lieutenant Carmody wants weapons. I want to understand what is real.”
“We don’t drink port,” I pointed out. I had no idea what port was.
That got him to laugh. “Let us begin, then,” he said. “Remove these plates, and I’ll find some paper.”
We cleared the table while the professor got some of that odd-looking yellowish paper that the lieutenant had used, and one of those strange, long pencils. And we started telling our story once again.
It didn’t go all that well. Professor Palmer took a lot of notes and asked a lot of questions, but we had the same problem we had before. Like the lieutenant said, we knew things, but we didn’t understand them. And the professor was mostly interested in the portal and how that worked and what it meant to philosophy and religion and stuff, and there we couldn’t help him at all. After a while he began to look unhappy and distracted, like he was getting tired of listening to us.
Finally we took a break, and he showed us his house and where we’d be sleeping. For a famous professor, his house wasn’t all that big–I think people in this world were used to a lot less space than in ours. Across from the dining room was a small room he called the “parlor,” which was mostly filled up with a piano. That reminded me again of the piano lesson I had missed, which wasn’t good. Next to the parlor was a tiny study crammed with books. There was a narrow staircase leading to the second floor, which had one good-sized bedroom and one small one. We were bringing up sheets and blankets to the small bedroom when we noticed a couple of paintings in the hall–one was of a little boy in short pants, the other of a black-haired woman with a sad smile sitting in a chair and holding a fan. Kevin asked the professor who they were. He looked like he didn’t want to answer, and then he said softly, “My wife and son.”
“Where are they?” Kevin asked. “Are they–?”
He shrugged. “They died many years ago.”
“How did they die?”
I thought that was kind of a pushy question. The professor again didn’t seem to want to talk about it, but he said, “In an outbreak of the smallpox.” He gazed at the painting of the child. “It occurred shortly after Seth’s portrait was completed.”
“Smallpox?” Kevin said. “I’m pretty sure that’s totally cured in our world.”
The professor turned and glared at Kevin. “Do not trifle with me, boy!” he shot back angrily.
Kevin retreated a step. I think he was afraid the professor was going to hit him. “I didn’t mean to–” he said. “I mean, I’m sorry, if you don’t want to talk about it . . . ”
“How was it cured?” he demanded. “Or is that something else you don’t understand?”
“I’m pretty sure they came up with, you know, a vaccine.”
“No, I don’t know. What is a ‘vaccine’?” he demanded.
This time Kevin had an explanation. “It’s like when you give someone a tiny bit of a disease, with a shot or something. Not enough to make them sick, but it gives them immunity when they come in contact with the disease for real.”
“What do you mean, ‘immunity’?”
“You know, when you don’t get a disease, because your body has built up a resistance to the germs.”
The professor shook his head, still not getting it. “And what are ‘germs’?” he asked.
Kevin looked at me like, Can you believe this? “They’re tiny, um, organisms that can make you sick,” he said. “Different kinds of germs give you different illnesses. They’re really small–you can only see them with a powerful microscope. Do you have microscopes in this world?”
Professor Palmer continued to stare at Kevin. Then I noticed that his dark eyes were filled with tears. “So many people have died of smallpox,” he said. “And you tell me they could have been saved?”
“We’ve cured a lot of diseases,” Kevin said.
“What about . . . drikana?”
Kevin looked at me. I shook my head. The name was kind of familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “Never heard of it,” I said.
“Me neither.”
“No matter, I suppose,” the professor said softly. “No matter.”
But that conversation did matter. It seemed to change the way Professor Palmer acted toward us. He never really said that he believed us instead of Occam’s razor or whatever, but it was just more or less assumed. It was more than that, though–before, it had been like what we were telling him was just a puzzle he was trying to figure out. Now, it was different. Now, it was sort of personal. We weren’t going to bring his wife and son back, but maybe we really could help.
#
After supper we all sat in the parlor and talked more about his world. Professor Palmer was eager to give us his opinions about it. He seemed a little lonely, with the college closed and the town deserted and nobody to lecture to, and we were the best audience he was going to get.
“This war need never have happened,” he said, “except that those purblind fools in Boston were certain it wouldn’t happen. They assumed the Canadians and Portuguese hated each other more than they hated us, and would never be able to unite against us no matter how much we provoked them. Perhaps fifty years ago that was true. But times have changed. They realized that they needn’t be friends to be allies, and we were in no position to defend ourselves on two fronts. So they attacked, and we have been fighting for our lives ever since.”
I remembered the newspaper we’d read and the soldiers’ talk. “Why hasn’t England helped?” I asked.
“Because we asked too late. And because England has more than enough problems of its own fighting the Franco-Prussian alliance. And there continue to be those who never wanted us to become independent of England, and would be happy to see us fail.”
“Sir,” Kevin said, “would you mind–we still don’t understand what’s going on here. We know about Canada, but what happened to America–you know, what we call this place? And in our world, the Spanish came here first from Europe. Portugal didn’t have a whole lot to do with the New World, that I remember. We think something must have changed way back in your history, to make things end up so different.”
The professor nodded. “All right. The theory makes sense. Let’s see if we can find out.”
It didn’t take that long. You wouldn’t have to have paid much attention in history class to figure out what the difference was, once you started looking for it.
In this world, Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America. Professor Palmer had never heard of the guy.
What we learned in school was that the Portuguese, under Prince Henry the Navigator, wanted to find a trade route to India, so they explored south along the coast of Africa, until they rounded the Cape of Good Hope and sailed north through the Indian Ocean. They weren’t interested in sailing west across the Atlantic, maybe because they knew more about geography than Columbus and realized they’d have to travel a whole lot further than he thought to reach India.
So in our world Columbus went off and sold Spain on his idea, and that’s why Spain reached the New World first, why it became a huge empire, at least for a while, why Balboa discovered the Pacific and Cortez conquered Mexico and all that stuff. And America got named almost by accident when a mapmaker decided a guy named Amerigo Vespucci deserved some credit for his explorations.
That was us.
In Professor Palmer’s world, the Portuguese did sail west and discover the New World. It wasn’t even Columbus’s idea; he never entered the picture. It was Portugal, not Spain, that got all the silver and gold. It was Portugal that became the big empire, with Spain just another loser country in Europe.
France still explored and settled what would become Canada, and England colonized the eastern part of “America.” But the British colonies never expanded the way they did in our world. They stayed along the Atlantic coast, hemmed in by the Portuguese, the Canadians, and the Indians. And that’s the way it stayed.
Professor Palmer showed us a map that night. New England was a lot bigger than it was in our world–it looked like it included New York and Pennsylvania–but New Portugal was huge; it extended all the way from, like, Virginia, west to what’s Texas in our world, then south through Mexico and into South America. Canada was big, too, stretching down into the Midwest. On the map New England looked like this little stone stuck between two huge boulders.
How could it avoid getting crushed?
Well, things weren’t always quite as bad as they looked on the map. New Portugal was too big, too spread out to be much of a nation. It was more like a bunch of half-independent states, usually at war with each other. And Canada had mostly been friendly with New England and an enemy of New Portugal.
But right now England was busy fighting a war against France and Prussia (which was sort of like our Germany), so it couldn’t do much to help with the defense of its former colony. Canada and New Portugal saw this as an opportunity to carve up the little nation between them. New England had been trying to extend its borders by skirmishing with both countries, and that gave them the reason they needed to invade.
It all seemed so strange, so different, as we talked about it. There had been no American Revolution, no Civil War. New England had stayed part of the British Empire until 1925. Slavery ended there when it ended in the rest of the Empire, in the 1830’s, although it still existed on a small scale in some areas of New Portugal. The whole western part of the continent remained largely unexplored and was inhabited mostly by Indians (who were called by their tribal names, because no one ever thought they came from India).
Some people were just as famous in this world as they were in ours–Beethoven, for example. But many either hadn’t existed or, if they did, never became well-known. Shakespeare had died young and was remembered for just a couple of poems. Mozart, Van Gogh, Mark Twain–who were they? Professor Palmer had never heard of them, and lots of others we mentioned.
And where were all the inventions, the medicines, the discoveries? Why was this world, like, two hundred years behind ours?
The answer became obvious to Professor Palmer as we talked. “You told me this afternoon that you had never heard of drikana,” he said. “That may explain a great deal.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“A horrible disease–worse even than smallpox or consumption. A person afflicted with drikana has uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea. It is as if everything in his body is trying to escape as quickly as possible. Most people die within two days of the disease’s onset. It is also highly contagious. If it shows up in a city, it will kill a third of the inhabitants in a month.”
Kevin and I looked at each other. I remembered where I’d heard the word before. “A soldier asked us about drikana when we were coming into Boston,” I recalled.
Professor Palmer nodded. “They need to be vigilant to keep the disease from entering. An outbreak would be devastating, with the city so crowded with refugees.”
“Drikana sounds kind of like Ebola,” Kevin said. “That’s a deadly virus from Africa.”
“And what is a ‘virus’?” the professor asked.
Kevin tried his best to explain. “Kind of like germs, I think, only it’s harder to come up with medicines for a virus. I think.”
“There is no cure for drikana,” the professor noted. “Early settlers in the New World were the first to come down with it. ‘Drikana’ was the name of a native tribe near the site of the first outbreak. Unfortunately the survivors returned to Portugal and brought the disease with them. It devastated Europe, and five hundred years later it still devastates us. For a few years it seems to lie dormant, until people begin to hope that it is finally gone–but always there is a new outbreak, just as devastating as the last.
“Surely that accounts for the difference between our worlds,” he went on. “How many geniuses has the disease claimed before they could make their discoveries? How much time and effort have we spent in dealing with it that we could have spent in the search for knowledge?” He looked pained again, as he had when talking about the death of his wife and son. “And how many lives have we wasted fighting useless wars like this one?” he murmured.
“Well, it’s not like there are no wars in our world,” Kevin pointed out. And we talked about the Civil War and the World Wars and Iraq, the concentration camps and the A-bomb and chemical weapons. I don’t think it made the professor feel much better.
“Knowledge doesn’t bring wisdom, certainly,” he said. “No reason to assume otherwise. More advanced weapons just allow you to kill each other more efficiently. Still, a world without drikana, with smallpox cured . . . I daresay most people would make the exchange.”
I know I would have.
“Well,” he said, “this is the world we have, and we must make the best of it. Time for bed. Tomorrow we will set to work again.”
We went up to our room, and for the first time in this world we had clean sheets and soft pillows. The mattresses were lumpy and, of course, we still had to pee in a pot or go outside to what the professor called the “privy.” But we weren’t complaining.
“Drikana,” Kevin whispered in the darkness, as if trying out the disease’s name.
“Drikana,” I repeated, lying on my bed and staring up at the ceiling.
“Some little germ somewhere, can’t even see it, and it wipes out half the world, sets progress back centuries.”
“Do you think we’ll get it?” I asked.
“Maybe the worst danger in this world isn’t the Portuguese or the Canadians,” he replied, not quite answering my question.
“Have you ever been in the hospital?”
“Just to the emergency room once,” he said, “when I broke my thumb.”
“I don’t even know if they have hospitals here.”
“If they do, doesn’t sound like they’d be much use.”
I fell silent, thinking about how safe I’d always felt at home. My mom was crazy about safety, but even if she weren’t, there were doctors and ambulances and firemen and policemen around . . . Bad things happened, sure, but they had never happened to me. And it had never really occurred to me that they could happen to me, maybe just because Mom was always so worried. With her protecting me, what could go wrong?
Drikana.
Kevin was silent. I listened to my heart beating in the quiet room. I have to rely on myself now, I thought. I had to grow up. There just wasn’t any choice. No use feeling sorry for myself; no use thinking about the past and my home and family and what I could have done to not get into this mess. No use hoping they’d find the portal and find this world and magically save me. A germ or a virus or whatever could kill me tomorrow, but I couldn’t worry about that. I could only do my best, and try to stay alive.
Richard Bowker 