“So someone like Onslow,” Elizabeth said, “must get his goods from a City employee, or someone with access to a City employee.”
“That’s a whole lot of people, though, and lots of them are local hires. Railroad porters, hotel staff, coachmen—”
“What if Onslow decides he’s tired of fencing two-bit castoffs? He knows he can sell anything that’s authentically City, way more than he can get his hands on. He might figure he’d be better off with a steady supply—someone on the inside feeding him a little of this and a little of that, in quantity and on a predictable schedule.”
Horses and riders marched out onto the parade grounds of the Stadium of Tomorrow for the warm-up show. The riders wore spangly red-white-and-blue uniforms and put their mounts through some synchronized rearing and prancing. A brass band played “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” and the audience gave back a tepid round of applause.
“It would affect the nature of his stock,” Jesse said. “It wouldn’t be random, and it wouldn’t necessarily be the kind of thing that people tend to leave behind.”
“So we need to see his stock.”
“Onslow might be reluctant to show us. If he has a source inside the City, he’ll know all about the attempt on Grant. If we’re too obvious, he’ll play dumb. But he’s a businessman,” Jesse said, “and if he scents cash, he’s bound to show us something.”
It was almost noon. The horse show came to a desultory conclusion. The parade grounds cleared. There was a wooden tower to the left of the bleachers, and a man in nautical garb climbed to its highest point, a sort of crow’s nest, where he trained a theatrically huge brass telescope on the southern horizon. Down on the ground, in what would have been the center ring if this had been an actual circus, a master of ceremonies in a claw-hammer coat addressed the crowd through a megaphone. Something about how the people in the bleachers were about to witness an “indisputable miracle of the future,” meanwhile consulting a pocket watch on a chain and glancing at the tower, where the man with the telescope eventually rang a bell and shouted, “Airship ho!”
The crowd grew hushed with anticipation. Elizabeth leaned toward Jesse’s ear and said, “That was pretty fucked up last night. The way you were yelling. Maybe we should talk about it.”
“No,” Jesse said, horrified.
The helicopter appeared first as a mote on the southern horizon, small as a blown leaf but remarkable for the precision of the curve it etched against the blue September sky. It seemed to increase in size as it approached, and the noise of it increased in step until it rattled the bleachers, thunder with a clockwork rhythm in it. At its closest approach the airship hovered in midair for all to admire. Then it darted at the audience, deft as a steel dragonfly.
“That’s Vijay,” Elizabeth said. “The pilot. Showing off. He can’t resist a crowd.”
Jesse guessed the people in the bleachers believed they had got their money’s worth. Some of the women covered their eyes or clutched their husbands’ arms, pleased and terrified in equal parts; some of the men cringed into their seats. For an interminable moment, tons of screaming steel hung suspended above their heads. Then the airship veered away.
Elizabeth was still talking into Jesse’s ear, shouting to make herself heard: “We call it PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I mean, I’m not diagnosing you, and you can tell me it’s none of my business. But it’s nothing I haven’t seen before, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“You think I have some kind of disease?”
“I’m a veteran—I know lots of people who are dealing with PTSD.”
“Is your husband one of them?”
It was an ugly remark and he regretted it immediately. But she only blinked and said, “Actually, yeah.”
The helicopter flew to the south. Before a minute had passed it was almost invisible, a dark comet carving the blue meridian.
“I’m sorry,” Jesse said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Let’s go see Onslow,” Elizabeth said.
* * *
He had almost let himself forget that Elizabeth was a married woman—whatever that meant to women of her time.
It wasn’t that Jesse cherished any illusions about the sanctity of marriage. He had learned about the hypocrisy of married men at an early age. And it wasn’t that he was attracted to Elizabeth, in the romantic sense. Of course he’d noticed that she was attractive, for a woman of her unusual height and strength. But she was out of bounds. She was Tower One. Her marriage was none of his business … any more than his night terrors were any business of hers.
Still, now that she had reminded him of it, he couldn’t help wondering about her life in the twenty-first century. As hard as it was to picture her as a soldier, it was harder still to picture her as a soldier’s wife, the wife of a soldier who woke at dawn with the echo of a scream in his ears. The way she had clasped Jesse’s hands, he realized, had been a sort of medical intervention, kindly but impersonal, like a nurse binding a wound.
There was much he didn’t know about her.
They walked into Onslow’s Unusual Items like a pair of tourists, giddy from the helicopter show. Jesse looked around as the shopkeeper—presumably Onslow—waited on another customer. The large front room of the shop was walled with shelves and stocked with the same kind of merchandise every other such store in Futurity Station sold. If Onslow had something better to offer, he didn’t keep it in plain view. All that distinguished Onslow from any other vendor on Lookout Street was his girth (generous) and the plain straw boater he tipped to his female customers. His chin was clean shaven, but his sideburns were making a determined march on it. His eyes were narrow and calculating.
The bell over the door tinkled as Onslow’s previous customer left. Onslow turned to Jesse and said, “How can I help you?”
Elizabeth, as they had arranged, remained at the far end of the store so Jesse could speak freely. He mentioned the name of the store they had visited on Depot.
“I know the place,” Onslow said. “Did you buy the book in the window?”
“A copy of it,” Jesse said. “But don’t tell my wife.”
Onslow grinned and touched a finger to the side of his nose. “If that’s the sort of thing you want, you’ve come to the right place. Genuine editions or copies as you prefer and can afford. Harry Potter. Fifty Shades of Grey. The works of Lee Child—”
“Thank you, but I already have a book. I’m interested in something more substantial.”
“A display piece? A watch, say? Something electrical? Such things don’t come cheap, as I’m sure you know.”
“Well, I haven’t thought it through. What can you offer me?”
“Do you have a price in mind?”
Jesse gave a number that seemed excessive even for the successful businessman he was pretending to be. He hoped it wouldn’t make Onslow suspicious. In fact it had the opposite effect. Onslow said, “That rules out the more spectacular items.”
“I might be convinced to go slightly higher—what do you call spectacular?”
Onslow unlocked a drawer, took out a rectangular object of glass and plastic and placed it on the counter. Jesse recognized it as what Elizabeth would call a smartphone. Tower One guests carried them. He feigned ignorance. “It’s not very large. What does it do?”
“It does more than you can imagine.” Onslow touched a button. Instantly, images welled up on the screen of the device. “It makes pictures that move and speak. It plays music. It can even add and subtract.”
Elizabeth stopped pretending not to overhear and joined them. Onslow repeated his description of the device. She turned to Jesse and said, “Why, that’s marvelous! Can it possibly do what the man says?”