Mrs. Standridge was quiet, almost melancholic, on the train back to New York, which gave Jesse ample time to contemplate the unanswered questions her story had raised. “You said you left New York with enough cash to buy clothes and transportation and to rent a room for a year?”
She nodded abstractedly. The Hudson River valley rolled past the window, dimming into sunset. The passenger car was foggy with cigar smoke. “It seemed like enough, at any rate.”
“Banknotes or specie?”
“Banknotes.”
“May I ask where you got them?”
“I told you, my family back home is more or less wealthy.”
“Yes, ma’am, I understand that. And I figured the money must be paper, because your husband would have noticed if you were carrying bags of coins through the Mirror.”
“Not just my husband. Going through the Mirror is like getting on a plane: You have to pass through security screening, including metal detectors. A bag of gold would have set off all the alarms, literally and figuratively.”
“Paper is more portable.”
“It would have been. But I didn’t carry paper, either.”
“Then where did your money come from?”
She hesitated. “I’d rather not say.”
“Then I apologize for asking. It’s just that I’m curious.”
“If it were up to me I’d tell you all about it. But I don’t want to get anyone else in trouble.” She hesitated. “I will say that a greenback isn’t hard to duplicate with twenty-first-century technology.”
“Your money was counterfeit?”
“My money was in every practical way indistinguishable from money issued by your banks, let’s put it that way.”
“You’re inflating the national currency.”
“The country’s in a recession, if you haven’t noticed. The goldbugs might disagree, but a little inflation isn’t a bad thing under the circumstances.”
Which left the question of who had slipped her the fake paper. But she refused to talk about that.
He watched from the window as the river came into sight: the Hudson, grown dark and turbulent as daylight drained from the sky. Not far to go now. “One other thing if you don’t mind. From when you first heard about August Kemp’s resort to when you crossed the Mirror, how much time passed?”
“Terrence barely paid attention when Kemp’s first resort opened. It took years for him to come around.”
“You said, Kemp’s first resort.”
“Ah.” She nodded. “They warned us not to talk about that with locals. But the rules are different between us, aren’t they?”
“I expect so,” Jesse said. “Really, it’s an open secret. Rumors get around.” Which was almost true. Back at the City, some claimed Kemp had opened other Mirrors into other times, other places. Those who knew the truth of the matter would neither confirm nor deny it.
“The problem is historical drift,” Mrs. Standridge said. “Kemp is selling tickets to history as we know it, but as soon as the City is constructed, that history begins to mutate. So he closes after five years, before the drift becomes too obvious. Then he opens the Mirror on a new 1872—or 1873, or 1874—all fresh and unsuspecting and completely virginal. The City in Illinois is the second one he’s built. Next year he’ll open a third.”
So—if this was true—there had already been another City, in one of those next-door worlds Kemp talked about … and had some other version of Jesse been hired to work at it? He guessed not; the Mirror was said to be imprecise; that other City might have arrived months after Jesse passed the spot, or might have been fully staffed months before he reached it. Still, it was an eerie thought. “I suppose he learns from experience.”
“I’m sure he does. And so do his enemies.”
“And who might they be?”
“I don’t really know a lot about it.” Ms. Standridge turned her head and closed her eyes as if she wanted to sleep, or wanted Jesse to think she wanted to sleep. “Will you be traveling with me all the way to the City?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Jesse said. “I go where they send me.”
* * *
Once they had passed through the bustle of the Grand Central Depot at 42nd Street and Vanderbilt, Jesse hired a coach to carry them to the Broadway Central Hotel.
The hotel had been considered one of the finest in the city when August Kemp’s men took it over and refurbished it. Kemp had reportedly offered the building’s owners a deal they could hardly refuse: He would install elaborate new amenities—electric lights powered by a dedicated generator, improved heating and fire protection, a twenty-first-century kitchen—in exchange for exclusive use of the facilities by City tourists for a four-year period. At the end of that time the hotel would revert to its owners, who would be supplied with enough spare parts and diesel gasoline to keep the amenities running for another decade. Newspapers had since taken to calling the hotel the “Electric Grand” for the way its electric lights shone through the many windows of the eight-story building; gawkers came from miles around to see it, and on pleasant summer evenings the crowds were thick enough to block traffic on Broadway.
Tonight the crowd seemed unusually dense despite the cool spring weather, and Jesse directed the coach driver to a gated side entrance to avoid the press of bodies. He showed his City identification to the gate guard, who examined it methodically before waving him through. In the lobby of the hotel Jesse handed off Mrs. Standridge to the night clerk, a man named Amos Creagh. Creagh was a local hire, a beefy veteran of the Army of the Potomac who owed his stiff right leg to an injury he’d suffered at Chancellorsville. Creagh had not yet forgiven General Lee for the insult. Jesse sometimes took meals with him. He stood by now as Creagh welcomed Mrs. Standridge—there was no mention of her being anything other than a valued guest arriving at an odd hour—and summoned a bellboy to escort her to the elevator.
“Strange night,” Jesse said once Mrs. Standridge had gone to her room. “Big crowd on Broadway.”
“That ain’t the half of it,” Creagh said.
“Why, what’s up?”
“I guess you haven’t seen the papers? Big trouble. Oh, and that City woman you’re always asking about? The big-shouldered gal?”
Elizabeth DePaul. “What about her?”
“Arrived by train this morning, along with a whole raft of City bosses, including August Kemp himself.”
9
ALARMING TRUTHS ABOUT “FUTURITY” EXPOSED
The advent of the City of Futurity on the Illinois plains southwest of the city of Chicago four years ago has inspired intense curiosity among all those who have heard of it. It is a curiosity about the years to come, a curiosity the operators of the City have exploited, but have been reluctant to entirely satisfy. The City’s spokesmen, including its founder Mr. August Kemp, eagerly boast of scientific and mechanical wonders, but they have reserved comment on political and social subjects until a comprehensive written account can be prepared and formally presented to the president of the United States. That document was handed to President Hayes last week, on the condition that its contents remain private until a general publication to take place at the end of 1877. Two other documents, said to contain useful advice for medical practitioners and mechanical engineers, are already being brought to press.
Absent these disclosures from Mr. Kemp, rumors have proliferated. Citizens of Manhattan have had ample opportunities to observe the behavior of individuals visiting from Mr. Kemp’s “future,” and many peculiarities have been noted. It is not a secret that Negroes, Orientals, and women in masculine dress mingle freely with white men in these crowds. Some have understood that observation as evidence that the world of the future is blind to distinctions of race or sex, as in a radical dream-vision of universal egalitarianism. Others take it as a token of the sort of haphazard morality too often associated with great wealth and aristocratic excess.