A Century of Progress (5 page)

Norlund looked at the doctor. “Are you the one who’s treating Sandy?”

The man’s expression did not change, nor did he answer, but went on chewing methodically. Ginny said quickly: “That’s not an answerable question right now. Do you want to call the hospital, Alan? You may, of course.”

“And then call again in the morning?”

“Yes, certainly. Use the phone in the next room there. Or the one in your room, if you prefer.” As Norlund started to rise, her eyes held his. “Alan? Don’t give any hints. About this. It’s getting more important hour by hour. It could wreck everything right now.”

“I won’t.”

He used the phone near the dining room, punching out the never-to-be-forgotten hospital number. There was more than one way to learn something indelibly. Sandy’s oncologist was naturally not at the hospital at this time of the evening, nor was Marge on hand. But the nurse on the floor—one who, after the long struggle, Norlund thought of as something of a friend—reported that the patient was better today, eating well and resting comfortably.

Norlund announced this when he got back to the dinner table. Ginny and the doctor smiled to show that they were pleased; neither was in the least surprised.

The food, brought by the casual waiter, was okay: roast beef, mashed potatoes. Plain home-cookin’, folks. Norlund, retreating into his thoughts, tested himself silently, determining that everything Ginny had taught him before he slept was still clear in his mind, as available as if he were reading it from a printed page. There wasn’t much talk at table, and none of it about anything more consequential than the weather. Norlund had coffee again, and enjoyed it, though he was reasonably sure that they had drugged his coffee earlier. If they wanted to drug him again they’d find a way, as long as he stayed here. And he was not about to jump up and run out. Not as long as they kept their word on Sandy . . .

That was true, but it was also rationalizing. Actually, and it surprised him to realize it, on some deep level he was starting to thoroughly enjoy all this.

But he was also tired, in spite of his nap. He turned to Ginny. “Have we got anything else planned for tonight?”

“Not at all. Wait a minute and I’ll walk you upstairs. I want to get something in my room.”

When the two of them reached Norlund’s room, Ginny said, “I think all your new clothes have probably arrived by now,” and walked in with him. She looked at the garments hanging in the closet, and checked the dresser drawers, which Norlund now saw were stocked with clothing too.

He took down the coat of the gray suit now hanging in the closet and tried it on. The mirror mounted on the bathroom door showed him it was a good fit. Though the suit was clean it didn’t look new; it looked used as well as old-fashioned, a little baggy at the elbows. Of course men’s suits didn’t age much in terms of style. On a hunch Norlund reached for the hanging gray trousers and examined the fly. Sure enough, buttons and not a zipper.

Ginny was at the door. “I’ll let you get settled in.”

“Okay. See you in the morning.”

He was sleepy again; it had been a day not easily matched in any lifetime. No need to hypothesize more drugs to explain his tiredness, he thought.

His room had a small television and a radio, but he didn’t feel a need for noise. He was down to his underwear, looking out into the night from a darkened room and not seeing much, just about ready to turn down the bed and retire, when a light tapping sounded at his door.

There sprang to mind the image of Ginny coming back, wearing something filmy . . . It had been a day of miracles; why not? “Just a minute,” he called quietly, and pulled on his pants again. Then he switched on a light and opened the door.

Nineteen-year-old Andy Burns was standing there, dressed as he had been when Norlund saw him in the afternoon, with the sling still supporting his altered right arm.

Andy said: “Al? It is you, ain’t it?”

“Yeah,” said Norlund, letting out a sigh. He had the feeling that he was dreaming, though he knew that he was wide awake. He stood back from the door. “Come in,” he told the kid waiting outside.

Young Andy Burns entered, looking ill-at-ease. He peered around as if he expected to find someone else. “Ah wanted t’talk t’you,” he said. “Ah’m still tryin’ to get it straight in m’mind. They’ve told me what happened and all, how they caught me right outta the air, and Ah gotta believe ‘em . . . You mind if Ah smoke? Ah mean, here, maybe you want one?”

“No.” Norlund had quit decades ago, and declined the offered pack. “But you go ahead. Here, sit down.”

“Thanks.” Andy dug out matches and lit up, the flame making his face look, to Norlund, quite incredibly young. Then he located an ashtray, and threw himself into the one padded chair.

Norlund sat down on the edge of the bed.

Andy gave him a look in which nervousness, fear, and recognition were all mixed. “You’re really . . .” He didn’t know quite how to say it.

Norlund nodded. “Alan Norlund. Yes. Not the same one you remember, not by forty years. But it’s me.”

Andy nodded, obviously relieved to have his reaction understood, his doubts accepted.

“Andy, tell me. For you, how long has it been since we—were in that plane together?”

“Oh. T’me it was only three weeks ago. Three weeks today. Ginny Butler and them caught me outta the air, Ah dunno exactly how. Ah don’t remember that. I do remember bein’ in the Fort, and knowin’ that Ah was hit, real bad. They say you put me out the waist.”

Norlund spoke slowly and softly. “I was afraid that if I waited any longer I couldn’t get you and myself out, both. I thought any minute we’d blow up or go into a spin. I figured the krauts took care of wounded prisoners, Americans and limeys anyway, so . . . As it turned out, we made it home. I had a shell fragment in my leg, too. Yeah, I put your hand on the D-ring and put you out.”

Andy nodded solemnly. “And then,” he said, exhaling smoke, “Ah woke up in a kind of hospital these people got. It ain’t here, in Eighty-four. Ah think it’s somewhere in the future but they won’t say where. You been there?”

“No.”

“It’s quite a place. All these hah walls like a prison but . . . Anyway they been breakin’ it all to me gradually these three weeks. About time travel and how Ah’m never gonna be able to go home and all. They fuckin’ tell me that Ah . . . ‘scuse me . . .” Suddenly Andy looked flustered, almost as if he were home on leave and had forgotten and used foul language in his mother’s hearing.

Norlund told him: “You can swear if you want. We both of us used to swear a lot.” My God, he thought to himself, did I look as young then, in Forty-three, as this kid does? Of course I did, I must have. “I guess I kind of got out of the habit,” he concluded, “when I was raising a kid myself.”

“Ginny an’ them have kinda started hinting that Ah oughta get outta the habit too. That, and smokin’ butts.” Andy looked at his cigarette, then back at Norlund. Still marveling, he shook his head and blurted: “You sure do sound like him.” Confusion. “Ah mean . . .”

“I am him,” said Norlund. “As far as I know,” he added in deference to the lately re-demonstrated insanity of the world. “What’re they going to do with you now? They say you can’t go home?”

“Too many problems, with timelines and all, if they tried to send me. They tell me Ah’ll have me a choice of jobs, once Ah get through orientation. Ah’m in a different kinda fix from you, see. You’ll work a little while and then go home, that’s how they’ve told me it is. Ah dunno what kinda job Ah’ll have, but it’s better’n bein’ dead. Tell me, did Graham ever get outta the tail?”

“Ah.” It had been years, or maybe decades, since Norlund had thought about Graham. “Yeah, that was after you got hit. He did come forward from the tail, I remember, because both his guns back there were out. We were all shot to hell. Damned old Forts. They sure could take it.”

The years were blowing away like clouds; for a moment everything was clear. “Graham came forward and took your gun. Another FW made a pass at us . . . they had everything up after us that day, one-oh-nines, one-nineties, everything. I was hit in the leg myself.” The immediacy of it all faded. “They sent me home, and I became a gunnery instructor.”

“What about Graham?”

“Oh yeah. I think he flew two more missions after that, and his tour was up. Never got a scratch, as far as I know. I lost track of him a long time ago.”

Andy was once more looking at Norlund oddly—or perhaps he had never stopped looking at him that way. “For me all that was just three weeks ago.”

Norlund couldn’t seem to find a good answer to that. Andy ground out his butt in the ashtray and lit another. Norlund felt no desire at all to smoke again. Finally he asked: “How’s the arm?”

Andy brought it slowly out of the sling, moving it mostly under its own power. Norlund could see that the fingers moved a little. “It’s okay. It’s pretty good, they say it’ll be real good soon. That’s another thing—if Ah did go home, Ah couldn’t keep it.” Now Andy rotated the forearm gingerly and made the gloved fingers clench, a slow but natural movement. “Actually it’s pretty keen,” he said without too much conviction. “Ah cain’t feel nothin’ in it yet but Ah kin do things. Later it might even be better’n mah own arm. Later they can fix th’ skin so’s it looks more real.”

“That’s good. That’s great.”

Andy was looking at Norlund intently. As if repeating a lesson learned, Andy said: “Arm’s good and Ah’m glad t’ be alive. Ah just ain’t never gonna see any of mah family again, that’s all.”

Shortly after that, Andy broke off the conversation fairly abruptly and took his leave. It was not as if he were upset or even tired; more as if his mind was suddenly busy elsewhere.

Norlund could sympathize. But he himself was yawning. Something was running through his mind about Scrooge, confronted by the ghost of Christmas past. Trying to really think about anything had become hopeless . . .

In the morning, his first impression was that of having been awakened by some kind of alarm. But whatever it was must have ceased its signal in the second before he became fully conscious of it.

Now the room was quiet, and looked quite ordinary. Norlund lay still for a while, trying to fit the strange experiences of yesterday into some kind of pattern of reality that could be trusted. During the night there had been strange dreams, but he could no longer remember them.

Andy Burns. That had been no dream. And Ginny had said that he, Alan Norlund, was the main reason they had gone back forty years and somehow plucked Andy to safety out of the aerial inferno over Regensburg. It had cost them to do that, she said, and Norlund could well believe it had. So it would seem that he, Alan Norlund, truly was important.

But Ginny hadn’t said why.

Norlund got up and went to the bathroom. He remembered Ginny telling him how he should dress today, and he followed her instructions. He picked out clothing they had issued him, letting his own garments hang in the closet against his return. Sort of like leaving the barracks to fly a mission, he thought. Though in this case the special clothing was not high-altitude stuff. Here instead he got cotton drawers, and a white cotton undershirt with thin straps across the shoulders. The business shirt was white, wrinkly cotton also, lightly starched in collar and cuffs—he’d forgotten how the starch felt when you wore it. The pants of the gray suit with the used look were, as he’d expected, just a trifle baggy in the knees. There was a matching vest, and a red tie.

Beside his own reading glasses on the dresser had appeared a different pair, in an old clamshell case, and he put them on and slipped the case into his pocket. The glasses worked beautifully. Also on the dresser was a small tray that he was sure hadn’t been there last night. The tray held the potential contents of his Thirties pockets and a wristwatch, leather-strapped and ticking. Norlund gave the winding stem of the watch a few turns and put it on, leaving his own quartz model in its place.

Then there was a leather billfold, slightly worn. It was packed with what certainly looked like real US money, circa nineteen-thirty. Norlund counted two hundred and twenty dollars in assorted bills, some crisp and new-looking, some old and worn. None of them were dated after nineteen-thirty two. Thoughtfully Norlund rubbed the money in his fingers before he replaced it in the billfold. The money bothered him—whether because it might be counterfeit or because it might not be, he wasn’t sure.

The billfold also held some business cards, with Norlund’s own name on them—someone must have been sure of his recruitment. The cards gave a Wheaton address for the Radio Survey Corporation; he wasn’t sure whether it was the address of the building he was standing in. No zip code, of course, but the cards did bear a phone number—he’d have to ask what that connected to. There was a New York driver’s license, looking new but old-fashioned, also made out to Norlund and dated nineteen thirty-three. He wondered why there was no Social Security card, and then he recalled that in the year he was supposedly visiting, no one in the world had yet seen one of those.

Something made of cloth was folded up on the dresser beside the tray. It was an old-style money belt, the kind that you wrapped around your body under your clothes. Snapping open the belt’s pockets, Norlund discovered two thousand dollars more. God, if the unimaginable really happened, and he found himself living in the depths of the Depression, he’d be able to buy himself a house and a small farm and settle down . . .

When he’d gotten the belt on, and his clothing readjusted, he inspected the modest handful of coins that the tray held. Holding up a quarter dollar, he saw that the coin was of real silver, its milled edges of the same brightness as the faces. The quarter was dated nineteen thirty-two, and it was hardly worn at all. Also mostly unworn were the Liberty-head silver dimes, the buffalo nickels, the bright copper wheat-wreathed pennies. There were no Indian cents in the assortment; to the best of Norlund’s recollection the early Thirties would be a little late for them to appear in common circulation.

Dropping the coins into his left-hand pocket, Norlund absently ran a finger up his fly, checking that all the buttons were fastened. Old habits returned quickly. Now, fully dressed except for the hat that still waited on the dresser, he looked at his reflection in the mirror. The old clothes made him look older in some way . . . not like his father, no, he’d never looked much like him. But in another odd way he felt that he was younger, returning to the days of youth. Buddies again with Andy Burns . . . no, never again really that. Suddenly he wondered what Ginny Butler really thought of him, of old man Norlund.