“Plus all the ethical considerations. The whole question of treating you guys as a tourist destination. And thereby fucking with your history, which might be morally objectionable. Or not fucking with it, which also raises moral questions. So yeah, Kemp ran into lots of opposition, including an entire political movement aimed at stopping him. Which he crushed, or marginalized, or simply ignored.”
“The man we took into custody,” Jesse said. “The smuggler. Do you suppose he’s one of Kemp’s enemies?”
Elizabeth hesitated. “Why do you ask?”
“He came for Kemp as if he bore a grudge against him.”
The hotel’s dining room was nearly empty now. A waiter trod softly between the tables, floorboards creaking under his feet. Beyond the window, a carriage passed in a gentle music of hoofbeats and harness reins. “Probably just some slacker,” Elizabeth said, “looking to make a little easy money.”
But that wasn’t the whole story, Jesse thought. She knew more than she was saying.
* * *
Autumn was beginning to show its muscle. Jesse’s room in the Excelsior was chilly even with the windows shut and the curtains drawn, and he had piled the bed with blankets. Elizabeth, in the adjoining room, had left the connecting door ajar—in case of trouble, Jesse thought with some embarrassment: in case his demons visited during the night.
He fell asleep quickly and woke an uncertain time later. He hadn’t been dreaming, or at least he didn’t think so. But here was Elizabeth, standing at his bedside. She had lit a lamp in her room, and its soft and uncertain light came through the open door, just enough to see that she was hardly dressed and that the expression on her face was solemn. He summoned his wits and said, “Did I wake you?”
“No. Couldn’t sleep. Can I sit?”
On the bed, she meant. He nodded and shifted his legs to make room for her. The bed frame creaked as she settled onto the mattress. He waited for her to speak. After a long moment she said, “Tell me what you think of me.”
“I’m sorry—I don’t know what you mean.”
“What do you think of me? Simple question.”
No, it was not. It was far from a simple question. He said, “I think you’re a brave and competent woman. Why do you ask?”
“You said City women reminded you of prostitutes.”
“Only in their frankness.”
“Only that?”
She must consider the question important or she wouldn’t have come to him in this state of undress. He tried to answer honestly. “There was a time when I thought your men had no conception of honor and your women had no conception of decency. But that’s not true. It’s that you hold these ideas differently. You’re not afraid to say what you think. And you don’t hold out chastity as a virtue.” He hesitated, feeling foolish. “Is that correct?”
“As far as it goes.”
She shivered and drew up her shoulders until the tremor passed. “You’re cold,” he said.
“Uh-huh. Can I come in?”
He opened the blanket for her. She couldn’t have missed seeing the aroused state of his masculinity, even in this subtle light. But the sight seemed not to shock or offend her. She pulled the blanket over herself and pressed herself against him.
After a few silent moments she said, “Do you have a condom?”
One of those French letters they sold by the box at the City pharmacy. “No.”
“Then it’s a good thing I brought one.”
Once again she astonished him. And she went on to astonish him some more.
* * *
By the long light of morning the town seemed transformed. Or maybe I’m the one transformed, Jesse thought. The season’s last tourists moved through the streets in chattering clusters, men in straw hats and women in bustles with sun umbrellas (“Like an impressionist painting,” Elizabeth said, whatever that meant), the summer making its last faint show, a fragile warmth fretted with wood smoke. He could have walked all day with Elizabeth on his arm. But they had work to do, even though the events of last night, of which they were careful not to speak, made the duty seem trivial by comparison.
Futurity Station’s pharmacist was a small, round man, easily cowed: The merest hint that they represented the City’s interests was enough to reduce him to fawning cooperation. Yes, he had sold coca powder in significant quantities to Mr. Isaac Connaught, but only because Connaught had told him the City dentists were suffering a shortage. Yes, he had found the claim plausible. Yes, he had taken a profit on these exchanges; why would he not? Yes, he would report any such future transactions to an agent of the City. And no, he was not aware of any arrangement Connaught may have made with Onslow. The pharmacist’s obvious nervousness tended to belie the last statement. But the rest was all more or less in accord with what City security had deduced, so Jesse simply shook the breathless man’s moist hand and left.
They walked toward Onslow’s, making no particular haste. “I know so little about where you come from,” Jesse said.
“You’ve seen the movies.”
“I wonder if the movies don’t hide more than they reveal. Before the City ever came, some people thought the future might be a place where everyone was wealthy and happy. And when I first came to the City, I thought that might be true. The nations at peace, the poorest men richer than our own captains of industry.”
“Kind of true,” Elizabeth said. “Kind of not. Mostly not.”
“What about you? Are you wealthy, where you come from?”
“I wish I could say yes.”
“Are you poor, then?”
“I wouldn’t say so. But a lot of my neighbors are what’s called working poor. Single moms holding down two McJobs and maxing out their credit to pay for day care. My neck of the woods, a lot of us are one paycheck away from the trailer park. I’m a little better off than that—I get paid pretty well for the time I spend on this side of the Mirror, which helps. Why do you ask?”
“So many things I don’t know about you.”
“I’m pretty average.” She glanced at him from under her sun bonnet, which she had neglected to tie: the strings dangled fetchingly over her shoulders. “There’s a lot I don’t know about you, either.”
“Such as?”
“Like what you do with your money. City wages are pretty good by contemporary standards, right? But you don’t seem to spend much.”
“Most of it goes to support my sister.”
“You mentioned her before. Phoebe, right?”
“Yes.”
“You support her?”
He hesitated. He said, “It’s a long story. Maybe best not told by daylight—not on a pleasant day like this.”
Lookout Street had the aspect of a midway at the end of the season, underpopulated and sad despite its declarations of gaiety. A board had been nailed across the door to Onslow’s shop. The words OUT OF BUSINESS were chalked on it. Onslow himself had probably left town. He’d been tight with the local business leaders, but attracting the wrath of the City would have made him persona non grata. “Keep walking,” Jesse said. They could get into the building more easily from the rear.
It was his second time in the alley behind Lookout: It was uglier but less threatening by daylight. Elizabeth muttered a few curses as they stepped past trash barrels overflowing with encyclopedic examples of everything that met the definition of “waste.” Most noxious was the carcass of a horse, picked to bone and sinew by dogs, from which a thrumming cloud of flies arose when Jesse kicked a stone at it. “Oh, God,” Elizabeth said, covering her mouth.
“Do animals never die where you come from?”
“Of course they do. We try not to let them decay in public places.”
“That must make city life more pleasant,” Jesse said.
The back door of Onslow’s had also been boarded over, but it wasn’t much work to pry off the barrier. The broken hasp still dangled free. Jesse pulled the door open and propped it with a loose plank. He stood on the threshold a moment, listening for any sound that might indicate that the building was occupied. There was only silence.