“Don’t be modest, Jesse. I’ve seen the video.”
Like his secretary, Booking kept an illuminated display on his desk. He swiveled it to show Jesse the screen. The pictures it displayed had been captured by a wall-mounted camera, so the view was distant and a little indistinct, but Jesse recognized himself in his uniform and his Oakleys, lumbering along the rope line. What followed was pretty much as he remembered it. He shrugged.
“President Grant is grateful to you,” Booking said.
“He saw what happened?”
“You were quick and careful, but the president has a keen eye.”
Jesse supposed Grant had seen enough gunplay in the war that he was still alert to it. “His gratitude isn’t necessary.”
“And we’ve got the bad guy in custody, which is what matters. Nevertheless, Jesse, the president wants to thank you, and he wants to do it in person.”
“Sir?”
“And because President Grant is a special guest, we want to make that happen for him. So you’ll be escorted to his quarters tonight at seven sharp. Which gives you time for a shower and a fresh set of clothes.”
Jesse glanced back at the screen. The images were repeating in a thirty-second roundelay. He saw himself wrestling with the assailant. At that point, his Oakleys had already come off. “Is it absolutely necessary for me to meet him? Can’t you just tell him I appreciate the thought?”
“It is necessary, and you can tell him yourself. But I want you to keep a couple of things in mind. First, Grant hasn’t had the orientation yet. So he’s going to be full of questions, and he might pose some of them to you. So you need to remember the rule. You know the rule I’m talking about?”
“If a guest questions me about anything I learned in my employment at the City, I should refer him or her to a designated host or hostess.” Almost verbatim, from the handbook every local employee was required to read.
“Good. But in this case you’ll need to find a diplomatic way to do it. We think it would be best if you present yourself to President Grant as a hard-working employee whose duties keep him in Tower Two and who doesn’t know anything substantial about the future. Which is pretty much the truth—am I right?”
The question—Am I right?—was one of Booking’s verbal habits. Jesse found it irritating, in part because it wasn’t rhetorical. It required actual assent. “Yes, sir.”
“In any case, I doubt Grant wants a lengthy conversation. They say he’s a pretty tight-lipped kind of guy.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Don’t offend him, don’t volunteer information, and if he asks questions let him know his assigned host or hostess can answer them better than you can.”
“Sir,” Jesse said.
“And if he asks about the assailant, tell him our people are handling all that.”
“All right.”
“Okay, good,” Booking said. “One more thing, Jesse. If you carry this off the way we hope you will, the City will find a way to show its appreciation.”
Jesse sensed an opening. “I broke my Oakleys,” he said, “in that scuffle.”
“Oh? I’m sorry to hear that. Do this right, and we’ll get you a whole crate of Oakleys.”
* * *
Jesse showered and changed into his reserve uniform and took himself to the commissary for a meal. There was a line-up at every booth, but Jesse was patient. He spent his chits on fried chicken and French-fried potatoes and a cup of coffee.
He sat at a table by himself. He could have joined friends, but he had been told not to say anything about his scheduled meeting with Grant, and under the circumstances it would have been hard to make small talk. In any case, the table where the security and housekeeping folks had gathered wasn’t as attractive a destination as it might have been. Doris Vanderkamp was there, paying obvious attention to a lanky, freckled security man named Mick Finagle. Jesse had lately extracted himself from a romantic entanglement with Doris, and he thought she might be trying to make him jealous by fawning over Mick. Jesse had a low opinion of Mick Finagle. And Doris, for all her posturing and covert glances in Jesse’s direction, clearly wasn’t at her best. She was sniffling as if her perennial head cold had come back, and her forehead was beaded with perspiration despite the machine-cooled air. He felt a little sorry for her, a sentiment that would have enraged her had he dared to express it.
He made quick work of the fried chicken. The commissary’s portions were lamentably small, and he often went back for seconds, but it was getting near the end of the month, and if he spent all his food chits he would have to resort to cash, which he didn’t want to do. What he could afford was a second cup of coffee. He bought one and sipped it slowly, watching the clock above the elevator bank, until a City woman in trousers showed up to escort him to President Grant’s quarters.
It was a well-known fact that women from the future often wore trousers. It had been remarked on in all the papers, especially since tour groups had begun visiting Manhattan and San Francisco. Visitors didn’t mingle with locals even there, but they were visible as they moved through the streets, and the presence of women in trousers was impossible to ignore. A few unctuous churchmen had condemned the practice. Victoria Woodhull, the notorious female-rights campaigner, had expressed her approval. Most commentators took the generous view that customs vary not just from place to place but from age to age, and that these novel forms of dress said more about changing customs than they did about morality or propriety. Jesse agreed, he supposed, though he had met enough City people to convince him that their morals might be almost as fluid as their fashion.
What surprised him about this woman was not her trousers as such but the fact that she was wearing them in Tower Two. Tower Two employees were issued uniforms designed not to shock sensitive guests, including skirts for females. So this was someone from the other tower, dressed according to its rules. The woman’s name, her badge said, was Elizabeth DePaul.
Whatever her assignment—and Jesse guessed it was more than just escorting him to Grant’s quarters—she seemed slightly bored by it. Her face was well formed but plain. Her dark hair was cut to a masculine length. She was nearly as tall as Jesse, thickset but not in any way ungainly. Nor was she demure. Her gaze was frank and unflinching. Her badge said CITY SECURITY.
“Good work on the rope line this afternoon,” she said.
Her accent was flat as well water and Jesse couldn’t gauge her sincerity. “Thank you,” he said.
“Seriously. I saw the video. You had the weapon out of the bad guy’s hand before anyone noticed.”
“Well, not quite. President Grant noticed.”
“There’s that. Are you looking forward to meeting him?”
“I expect we’ll exchange a few words, that’s all.” And then I can go back downstairs, Jesse thought, and have a beer. The commissary allowed the sale of beer to employees between the hours of six and ten. He wasn’t ordinarily a drinker, and the price of City beer had almost made a temperance man of him, but the occasion seemed to justify the expense. He asked Elizabeth DePaul whether she would be joining him for his conversation with Grant.
“Me? No. Though I wouldn’t mind getting a look at him. See what he’s like when he’s not decorating a fifty-dollar bill.”
Jesse failed to understand the reference but let it pass. “Have you talked to the gunman?”
“Not my department.”
“He’s just a lunatic with a grievance,” Jesse said, “I imagine.”
“I wouldn’t care to speculate.”
The elevator opened on the highest of the guest floors, where Grant had been assigned the biggest suite with the grandest view. Four City people waited in the corridor. Jesse recognized his boss, Mr. Booking. The others were unfamiliar to him. Prominent among them was a gray-haired man of maybe fifty years, wearing civilian clothes rather than a City uniform. The others seemed to defer to him. But no one bothered to make introductions. Elizabeth DePaul pointed in the opposite direction: “That way,” she said. There was only one door at the end of the corridor. “Go ahead and knock. He’s expecting you. We’ll be here when you come out.”