What should he leave behind? She probably had another key. It would be inconvenient if she started snooping around and sent the machine into the future. He wiggled at the plastic dome over the RESET button, and it was secure enough that removing it would be an act of deliberate vandalism. The pistol and ammunition were a problem, but maybe it would be wise not to carry them into MIT.
He wound up leaving it all, except his wallet and the taxi driver’s money. The two rare documents could wait until after he’d learned more.
He’d have to learn a lot more before he decided what to do with the porn notebook. Its technology might make it extremely valuable. Its contents might put him away for the rest of his life, which could be short.
Mass Ave was sunny and pleasant, the clop and creak of horse and mule traffic, a slight barnyard smell overlaid with sea breeze from the harbor. He took a hundred-dollar bill into a bank and got a response similar to yesterday’s— are there more where this came from?—but the clerk initially offered him $100 and wound up paying $125. It would be smart to shop around.
He walked slowly down to Building One, getting his story together. His various possible stories, depending on what he could uncover. It wouldn’t do to just walk into the dean’s office and say, “Hey, I’m Matthew Fuller, the time traveler you’ve been waiting for.” That nobody had been waiting evidenced a profound discontinuity with the past. The time and place of his projected arrival must have been widely known.
Or would they have been? Professor Marsh hadn’t been all that generous with the information Matt had given him about the time machine, back in 2058. Had Matt ever seen the actual time and place published? He couldn’t recall.
He went into Building One and walked past the administration offices, on down the Infinite Corridor toward the library, or at least the building that had once housed the science and humanities library.
The walls of the corridor were disturbingly bare. They used to be covered in a riot of posters and announcements, MIT-approved or not. Of course, it would have been bustling with students, too, Monday morning. There were only eight other people in the whole quarter-kilometer of hall.
He didn’t want to be the only person in the whole library. Kill an hour doing something else.
Halfway down the corridor, at the rotunda with the stained-glass Stations of the Cross, double doors led to the outside, what used to be the quad.
It was still a large quadrangle, not as well kept, the grass brown or bare dirt in places. A woman in head-to-ankles black was taking advantage of the morning cool to push a mechanical mowing machine. Matt had seen pictures of them. He wanted to go investigate, see whether this one was a museum piece or newly constructed, but it might not be smart to approach a single young woman that way. Or even look at her too hard. He averted his gaze and walked on toward the river.
That was different. Both banks of the Charles were solidly packed with ramshackle houseboats, most of them just moored rafts that obviously weren’t going anywhere except, eventually, straight down. Student housing in the twenty-third century, apparently; most of the people in evidence were young men, and a few women, all dressed in black. The men and women were separated.
The places weren’t drab; it was a riot of disorganized color. Walls of bright green next to orange and red, with cartoon figures stenciled or spray painted on. No obscenities, unsurprisingly; paragraphs of scripture in neat block printing. In some places, collages of scrap metal and glass clattered and tinkled in the breeze. Someone was quietly practicing intervals on a violin. That would’ve been grounds for murder, or at least musical defenestration, in the MIT dorms of Matt’s youth.
There was a faint aroma of fish frying, and people were fishing from some of the houseboats, idly watching lines or, in one case, throwing out a circular net. Matt wondered how often they caught the bioengineered Christ fishes, or whether those even swam in this river, open to the sea.
Well, he could wonder till the cows came home, though if they were bioengineered, they probably just stayed at home. He had to nail down some data. He angled across the frost-heave ruin of Memorial Drive toward the library.
The glass wall that faced Mem Drive was broken in several places, but those sections had been carefully repaired with glued stacks of clear glass bottles. The automated security system had been replaced by a guard with a wooden staff. He was sitting outside the door and looked amiable.
Matt didn’t lie. “I don’t have a card.”
“Are you carrying any books?”
“No.”
“Don’t bring any out, then.” Matt went on inside.
There were low stacks of books all around, and trays of books spine up in rows between irregular arrangements of tables and chairs. The books on shelves were behind glass, locked away, and the glass was frosted so that the titles were illegible. The trays held well-thumbed paperbacks that didn’t seem to be in any order.
There was no console for finding books. What did libraries do before there were computers? There must be a list somewhere. Look up a book and ask someone to get it for you.
Maybe he could figure it out. Meanwhile, be inconspicuous. He started sorting through the paperbacks, which seemed as limited in range and sophistication as the assortment he’d seen in the bookstore.
Then he found a slender volume simply titled American History. He sank into a soft chair by the window and opened it to the first page.
“On the first day of the first year, Jesus Christ appeared in the Oval Office of the president of the United States.”
On the facing page there was a photograph identical to the one in the Bible on Magazine Street.
The text dismissed all previous history with “Men and women had lived in the United States for centuries in a condition of sin, forgivable because of ignorance.”
Some few had refused to accept the reality of their senses and what their hearts told them about the Second Coming and so there was the One Year War, followed by the Adjustment. It didn’t say how long the Adjustment had been, or whether it was over.
It seems that President Billy Cabot, the one in the picture, had already been touched by God, which is why Jesus chose his office for His appearance. Cabot became First Bishop, and proceeded to simplify the government in ways that were part divine inspiration and part the stewardship of Jesus.
Looking at a map, it was easy to read between the lines. The One Year War had produced an entity that still called itself the United States of America, but it comprised only the Eastern Seaboard states south of Maine and Vermont, with obvious lacunae. The eastern third of New York was blacked out, as was a large part of Maryland and Virginia, bordering Washington. Metropolitan Atlanta and Miami. What had happened to them? The book had no index and little organization; it rambled along like a disjointed conversation. Well, the author was Bishop Billy Cabot, as told to Halleluja Cabot, presumably his daughter.
As a military history, the book was of questionable value. The Army of the Lord chose its battles well, evidently, and never lost. It apparently didn’t bother to fight for 80 percent of the fifty-one states, though.
What kind of battles were they? He couldn’t imagine tanks rumbling down Broadway, but New York City was in the blacked-out portion. Was it destroyed?
Maybe it was all metaphor. The “war” was not military at all, but some kind of propaganda war for this new version of Christianity. Which could be almost as scary as a fighting war.
He could walk up to Maine, which would only take a few days, a week, and ask his questions there. If he was allowed to cross the border into that heathen state. If there was anyone left there to talk to. What if Christ had nukes?