Terraplane Read online

  "I'll give 'em back when you leave," Doc said. "Don't feel too comfortable so close to an armory. Meantime they can just stay right there. "

  "Are you all right, Jake?" Oktobriana asked, her voice soft and unexpected; though openeyed I thought her under, so deathlike she lay.

  "I think he'll be just fine," said Doc. "Seems a pretty tough bird. How're you feelin', miss?"

  "Sick," she said. She looked at Jake as one starving.

  "Think you just picked up a bug, that's all. Considering what you been through you're coming out ahead. Jake, you say this shoulder was dislocated-"

  "Was," said Jake, looking over his blue-black joint, the lasting swell.

  "I don't know," said Doc, running hands along Jake's ridges and holes and bumps. "Nothing displaced. No ribs broke. You still oughta be pretty racked up-"

  "Diodin lasts twelve hours," Jake said. "By then it'll have settled. "

  "What is that? I don't know it. "

  "A painsucker," said Jake. "I'm no pusher, I can't describe. It was in the plane's kit."

  "And she told me she had Extamyl. That's the same sort of thing?"

  "I told you," she said. "Synthetic morphia derivative restructured to remove addictive potential."

  Doc stared on as if he'd OD'ed on the stuff she described. "Let's just bandage you up then," he said. "Wanda, give me an Ace-"

  "Sitting there in front of you," she said. He applied it, wrapping Jake's shoulder tight. Oktobriana's look fixed Jake without letup; her gaze held fear, fear that if her eyes shut again but once, upon reopening she would look upon nothing but an absence, a loved one gone, nevermore seen, stealing away all in the flight. Windowways came a sudden shout. "Doc!"

  "Yeah," Doc yelled back. "Who's that? Bill?"

  "Up awful late, aren't you?"

  "Yeah, I'm burning the midnight oil. How you doing, Bill?"

  "Sent but not spent," the unseen spoke. "Really hot downstairs."

  "I hear 'em."

  "Catch you on the fly." Then, again, silence. Doe finished wrapping Jake.

  "That'll be all right. Looks like ever' one of you got bit raw by those skeets. I got some medicated lotion, you can rub it on. All right, Luther, let's check you out. "

  Bearing no body trauma, I kept clothed. Doc alcoholed a cot- tonball and painted my headwounds with pain. "Turn this way," he said. "Hell, inch or two deeper, you wouldn't have much ear left. Somebody try to bite it off?"

  "I was cuffslung," I said. "Bashed and doublebashed. Jake preserved."

  "Cuffslung," Wanda repeated. "You mean with handcuffs?"

  "Exact. "

  "What the hell are you all? Convicts or what?" Her voice rose, foreboding more than it had. "Norman, you bringing in gangsters now? '16 our home?"

  "Be quiet, Wanda," Doc said, matching her pitch, swiping one of my cuts so viciously I thought his aim might be to deepen, not cleanse. "They're not gangsters. I thought that at first, but on the one hand they seem too smart to be crooks-"

  "We've no criminal orientation," I said, keen to assure.

  "-on the other hand they're too damn dumb," he concluded. "Nothing but babes in the woods. Telling me they're Americans-"

  "We are," I said.

  "Not me," Oktobriana noted.

  "Luther never seen a flyer, he says." With a bandagelength he affixed gauze to my head. "Didn't even know what one was."

  "Get out of here," said Wanda. "You shittin' me?"

  "I'll tell the world," said Doe. "I'm wondering if they might not be spies. What do you think?"

  "Spies?"

  "Hell, yes, spies. Piss-poor spies at that. Crashing in some kinda plane, hear you tell it. Act like you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground to the point I don't think you do. Don't speak English worth a damn-"

  "We word perfect," said Jake. "Your dialect hinders."

  "Listen to him. Look, there's been a lot of talk lately about spies. Nazi subs coming up off Long Island ever' night. Hanging out down by the waterfront. Yorkville's full of Germans and probably half of 'em are into something. If you all were krauts it wouldn't surprise me-

  "Krauts," I said. "What's meant?"

  His face beamed with exasperation. "Germans."

  e?

  "Whitest nigger I ever saw," murmured Wanda, lighting a cigarette with a scratch match pulled from a small paper box; these people smoked like Russians, keen for dragonsbreath.

  "But I don't think that holds up either," said Doc. "Too damn crazy to be spies, too. What the hell are you, man? Where're you from? You going to spill the beans or am I just gonna have to boot your asses out on the street?"

  Still, we'd snared his interest; but how to explain such a thing, where to begin? "What if I tell and receive no belief?"

  "Bound to be a hell of a story."

  I could do no other but earplay, testing one approach and then another. Obvious examples seemed safest to employ. "All right," I said. "Jake's guns. His whole works. Their look unfamiliared, true?"

  "They was talking about secret weapons on the March of Time last week at the picture show," said Wanda. "Don't mean nothing."

  "Clothing of such styles as we wear?"

  With probing hand he fingered my jacket, collar and tie. "So you don't use dry cleaners. Got something instead of buttons on your shirt. So what?"

  Unpocketing my wallet, flipping it over, I demanded: "Examine."

  Doc caressed the cover as if stroking his wife, with wonder and fright, and ill-hid tension. "Your billfold's some kind of soft shit." Spreading it, hearing Velcro's snap, he examined its strips, closing and reclosing several times, listening to the pop. He gleaned my personals within.

  "This some kind of-" He didn't finish.

  "What is it, Norman?" Wanda asked, stepping over. He pulled and showed my Drydencard, my Citicard, my Amex and Nynex; the national number; my driver and army IDs with holographic safeties ashimmer. They studied my snaps: my sergeants and myself, Johnson foregrounded, in Long Island, all gone now but me, taken just before the Children's Hour; a self-portrait as I stood in Istanbul, Saint Sophia backdropped; the VP and myself before the White House's Berlin-like wall; Katherine, my ex-wife, perched hoodways on the uniform blue Castrolite Dryco provided me with upon my joining the firm, her smile lying that she knew no happier life than with me. From its clasp Doc shook ruble notes, dollar bills and a clang of coins from my wallet. They gazed silently upon them, as if watching sunrise at sea. He flicked a quarter airward; landing, it thumped.

  "This shit's not silver."

  "Cuprolite zinc alloy," I explained. Doc rubbed it on his pants as if to strike sparks, scratched it with his nails.

  "'T'hese dates right?" Wanda asked; I nodded, but she didn't see.

  "Still old George on 'em, though," he said. "Just like ours. Look here." Unpocketing his own coins, he palmed them into mine: a quarter, a dime, a heavy half, two pennies. The silver sang like hells, hitting tabletop. The dime's symboled head wore a winged cap; a negligeed woman strode the half's obverse. Washington, true, was quartered. Each penny bore an Indian's head and a nineteenth-century date.

  "Lincoln?" Doc queried, seeing my hills, as if ignorant of his being. Awaiting further comment, I heard none. They looked at each other, then at me as they returned my holdings.

  "You were an officer, your army card says?"

  "I was."

  "Told me you were in over twenty years. What was your rank when you left?"

  Of course; the hologram meant nothing to him. I returned my army ID to their hands. "Slant it lightways," I said. "Viz the doublestar? That demonstrates major general's rank. As of retirement, certainly."

  Ile shook his head as Wanda stared calmly on. "How'd you get to be a general?"

  "Promotions," I said. "One automatic upon retirement. Earlier, a lack of applicables-"

  "You can't rise above master sergeant in the army," said Doc.

  "I enlisted as a second lieutenant."

  Again, he vizzed my ID. "What is this thing,
anyway?"

  "A hologram," I said. "Sort of a photograph."

  "You're full of this Buck Rogers shit," he said. "How'd you get here?"

  "We flew Oktobriana understands the principles. I don't know how we got here, otherwise. I warned that belief may come hard."

  "Damn hard," said Wanda.

  "How can you fly into the past?" Doc asked. "That is, seeing how you're from the future you must do this all the time." I wondered if he was serious.

  "Certainly not," I said. "I've no idea what proof testifies-"

  "You all do seem kind of confused about pretty simple things."

  "So's Herman Brown down the street," said Wanda. "He don't tell people he's from the future."

  "She knows how to get you back?" Doc asked, ignoring his wife, his vast back turned towards her. "You are going back, aren't you?"

  "Back to Germany," said Wanda.

  "Hush!" he shouted. "Let the man speak."

  "Variables interfere," I said. "If a fellow of ours isn't uncovered we may be limboed here till-" Till when? Till we were born again? I wished not to wonder just then. "Whenever."

  "Say we give you a hand, wherever you're from," Doc said. "We get anything out of it?"

  I shook my head. "We've nothing offerable."

  "The future, huh?" said Doc. "What kinda help you figure on needing?"

  "We need to bed it first," I said. "We need guidance here. We wish to leave before you wish us gone, undoubted-"

  "Don't bet on it," said Wanda.

  "We don't need none of your lip," said Doc, his forehead's central vein rising as if tourniqueted. "All right. One step out of line and you get the boot. You can stay with us awhile-"

  "Oh, Norman-" He lifted his hand as if to slap; didn't.

  "Stay awhile and if you need a little help gettin' on your feet, I'll do something."

  "Appreciated. "

  "Main thing you're going to need if you're going to be sticking around, though, is papers. First thing in the morning I'll call a friend of mine, he's good with that sort of hooey. He owes me a favor anyway."

  "Should Jake and Oktobriana be papered as well?"

  He seemed surprised. "That's not necessary."

  "This ain't no mission house," said Wanda. `Anybody wants to eat they going to give me a hand, no matter how bad you're feeling when you wake up in the morning. You're going to help me keep the joint picked up and you're not moving in permanent."

  "Don't be so hard-nosed this time of night, Wanda," he said. "I'm beat to the bricks." The rhythm below began again, shook the room's floor. The horns sprayed uncountable notes through the muffling underfoot. The sound attracted; it was so human. "There many Negro generals in your army?" he asked, laughing.

  "Sixteen, at present," I said. "Natural selection. Nothing other."

  "Maybe where you're from," he said, that head vein of his close to explosion. "Probably even have a Negro President-"

  "For two years," I said. "He was shot in Kansas City-"

  "Like they're always saying, Wanda," Doc said softly; happiness of unknown origin nearly aureolaed his face. "Better times ahead. See?"

  "Shit," she said. "We'll never see 'em. I'm going back to bed." She turned, left the room. Perhaps only my perception of their conversations made so much seem as riddle.

  "You just got to laugh it off," Doc said. "She's moody, this late. And she wasn't expecting company. Come on. I'll spread out some sheets on the front room floor so you two can make up pallets. Peewee can sleep on the davenport. I'm guessing you all know each other fairly well." I shrugged. "Good thing tomorrow's Saturday," he continued, replacing his medical tools within a worn leather bag. "Let's cross the hall. Good music playing to go to sleep by, ain't it? The Prez-"

  So, perhaps we could trust; perhaps not. Choice wasn't inher ent. Onearmed, Jake cradled Oktobriana during transit, his face free of either pain or concern. Into his glassed eyes she directed her glance. Even at my distance her fire flamed full, her unfathomable devotion keen to burn, if not both, then one; if not one, then the other. I lugged the bags, doubtful now as to the essentiality of all that we'd brought.

  "You got nightclothes in your bags?" Doc asked.

  "Her bags," I said. "We weren't expecting an overnight."

  "Some spies. Don't even bring pajamas-"

  "I have no frivolous sleepwear," Oktobriana muttered.

  "Just keep bundled up good, then," he said. Their apartment resembled old ones I'd seen, though theirs was of purer form: woodwork's edges weren't rounded by the usual palimpsest of pain layer; all original fixtures were properly placed; the walls ran smooth beneath mauve-flowered paper. A large front room, kitchen and hall evidenced; downhall, I estimated, was the bath, their bedroom and possibly more. The three-meter ceiling enlarged the roomspace by inference and impression, lessened the massive furniture's bulk. All windows along Eighth Avenue's wall were open; this room's ceiling fan almost succeeded in cooling air.

  "I'll get what you need. Make yourself at home," said Doc. For a moment we stood in crystal stillness; a grinding shatter from without tore away all calm. The elevated ran along Eighth, I recalled, just outside, five floors above.

  "We'll adapt," I said, fingering loose optimism's crumbs.

  "If need be," said Jake, settling slow into an overstuffed chair, favoring his injured arm, resting his head upon an embroidery draped across chairtop. Oktobriana unbundled, sitting upon the rowboat-sized couch; in silence stripped her shirt and trousers, stretched and yawned, showed underarm puffs, pink nubs of nipple, stomach's flat board, an untrimmed tuft of dark at belly's base. I shifted my look away; saw, looking again, then she looked at none but Jake. Jake tried not to see her; did, did again, and eyeshot, as if to gaze overlong would make him as stone, or worse. Rewrapping within the sheet tucked round her earlier, she lay down, coughing as if she smoked; she didn't.

  "How're you feeling?" I asked again, my voice cracking as if with rebirthed glands.

  "Tired," she said. "New York is always so hot?"

  "Usually," I said, realized that I referred to a different climate. "Often." Finding another chair, one with arms so wide that it could have seated four, I sat alone.

  "What's behinding?" Jake asked. "A mainframe?" Turning, I saw only a wooden box, its leering face made of two knobbed eyes, a clear yellow dial of a nose, a broad fabric smirk.

  "A radio," I said, studying the dial. "Stromberg-Carlson."

  "So oversize?" he said. "Why?"

  "Vacuum tubes," said Oktobriana, her eyes closed as she lay down. "Communication media here operates only with use of many vacuum tubes wasting much valuable space in inefficient manner. Is most unavoidable hindrance if need to employ progressive technology is seen."

  I thought of our own tech; how to recover it. "Where's the tracker show him, Jake?"

  "It's set still to Moscow grid," he said, looking. "The light flickers, the green shows. He's viabled, wherever he is."

  Doc returned, bearing a load of bedware; threw sheets upon the carpet, placed covers and pillows on an empty chair.

  "I'll let you all do the setting up," he said. "I got to get some shuteye, myself. Get you some towels in the morning." He spotted the tracker. "What's that?"

  "We're following our friend with it," I said.

  "I've never seen anything like that," he said.

  "Of course. Jake, we'll reset it in the morning. At this hour I'm barely thinking, much less thinking straight."

  "Maybe in the morning," Doc said, "you can tell me what the future's going to be like." Morning, yes; it wasn't something you wanted to hear before sleep. "Good night," he said, leaving the room for hall's darkness. In several minutes we'd made our beds. Oktobriana sneezed, groaned and stirred again.

  "Is extra pillow there?" she asked. "Such hard springs in these cushions. "

  We'd no extras. "I'll try to snare one," I said, rising and moving downhall to where light showed underdoor; the sound of waterrush within comforted me that it was bath and not bed.r />
  "Doc?" I asked, tapping the wood. There came the sound of closure's click, and of medicine chest's slain.

  "What, Luther?" he asked, whispering as he opened the door; a pinprick at elbow joint yet bled, a round dark dot rising from his skin. "Need something else?"

  "Oktobriana needs another pillow if you're spared."

  "Right in the closet here. I'll get it." When he tugged a long chain, switching on hall light, I saw he retained his sleeveless under, though his shirt was long removed. When he grasped a pillow topshelved I saw something right-shoulder centered, half hidden by shirt strap.

  "You get that under fire, Doc?" I asked. `A warscar?"

  "What?"

  "On your back."

  "Never saw one of these?" he asked, so quietly I barely heard; he turned to show. Upon facing me again, he switched off the light before I might see his eyes, passed me the pillow. "See you in the morning. "

  "Good night," I said. "Thank you." He slipped behind the bedroom door, shutting it close, leaving me feeling as if accidentally I'd cut into his soul. Returning to the front I saw Jake's suit piled next to where he lay between his covers. Oktobriana, already asleep, had pulled her thin white sheet tight round her; she sweated so that she seemed even more nude then than when she had been. Shy in strange women's presence, anxious to conceal inadvertent reaction, I retained my pants as I turned off the room's lamps and lay down. The floor felt almost soft.

  "What's to be done, Luther?" Jake asked.

  "Sleep," I said. "We'll earplay. I don't gather all that's up."

  "I gather none," he said; fell silent after. The elevated's grumble seemed barely heard after the first two hours, and came almost to comfort. Towards dawn I awoke, finding the room lit with sun's amber glow, summerlight full of haze and wet, banded by the elevated as if by an arbor's ribs. Flies tickled my skin as they reconnoitered.

  "Jake-" I heard; gave no sign of my listening. Earlier-how much earlier, I couldn't say-she'd awakened and crept floorways, sliding next to Jake, between his sheets. From across the room I watched, giving ear to inaudible murmurs. When she pressed close, he pulled away; when she wrapped round, he unbound. She slipped and rolled, dove undersheet, rubbed and nuzzled; clung to his shoulders as if her hold on him were all that kept her from sinking. Her energy astonished; still, she drew no reaction. Throughout all Jake remained still, as if to move would be his end. She must have felt to be loving the dead.