To Sail Beyond the Sunset (32 page)

I agreed that Nancy and I could (and did) borrow clothes from each other. “I’m an inch more in the thighs and about the same bigger in the bust. But, Lazarus, we don’t dare touch Eleanor’s dress—wait till you see it.”

Although Eleanor was taller and bigger than I, the wedding dress was close to my size as it had already been cut down once for her daughter Ruth, three inches shorter than her mother. It was a magnificent gown of white satin, lavishly beaded with seed pearls. It had a Belgian lace veil and a ten-foot train. It had originally had mutton-leg sleeves and a derrière cut for a bustle; these had vanished in the alteration for Ruth.

All the money in the world could not produce a wedding dress of that quality in the few hours until it would be needed; my Nancy was lucky that her Aunt El was willing to lend it to her.

Eleanor fetched it. Theodore admired it but did not seem intimidated by it. “Eleanor, let’s fit it snugly to Mama Maureen, then there will be just room for its slip under it for Nancy. What other underclothes? Corset? Brassiere? Panties?”

I said, “I’ve never put a corset on Nancy and she says she’s never going to start.”

“Good for Nancy!” agreed Eleanor. “I wish I never had. Mau, Nancy doesn’t need a brassiere. What about underpants? Can’t wear bloomers with that dress. Both Emery Bird and Harzfeld carry sheer underpants…but they will still make lines under this dress if it is fitted as well as it should be.”

“No pants,” I ruled.

“Every old biddy there will know she’s not wearing any,” Eleanor said doubtfully.

I explained in Chaucerian terms my lack of interest in what old biddies thought. “I’ll put round garters on her. She can shift to hose supporters when she changes to leave.”

“At which time she can put on underpants,” Theodore added.

I was startled. “Why, Theodore! I’m surprised. What need has a bride for pants?”

“The tiniest, scantiest, sheerest girl panties that are sold today, I mean—not bloomers. So Jonny can take them off when he gets her there, darling. Symbolic defloration, an old pagan rite. It tells her she’s married.”

El and I giggled. “I must be sure to tell Nancy that.”

“And I’ll tell Jonathan so that he will make it a proper ceremony. Eleanor, let’s put Maureen up on that low table and start shoving pins into her. Mama Maureen, are you clean and dry all over? I’m about to turn this dress inside out. Satin shows water marks something ’orrible.”

For the next twenty-five minutes Theodore was very busy, while I held still and Eleanor kept him supplied with pins. Presently El said, “Lazarus, where did you learn women’s clothes?”

“In Paris, about a hundred years from now.”

“I wish I hadn’t asked. Are you descended from me? As well as from Maureen?”

“I wish I were. I’m not. But I’m married to three of your descendants… Tamara, Ishtar, and Hamadryad—and co-husband to another, Ira Weatheral. Probably—certainly—other connections, but Maureen was right; I checked the archives only for my own ancestors. I didn’t guess that I would meet you, El of the beautiful belly. I’m almost through. Shall I go ahead and make the alterations? Or do we take this to your ladies’ sempstress?”

El said, “Maureen? I’m willing to risk the dress; I have confidence in Lazarus—I mean M’sieur Jacques Noir. But I won’t risk it for Nancy’s wedding without your permission.”

I answered, “I don’t have any judgment about Theodore, or Lazarus, or whatever name he’s using today—I mean this stud who’s treating me like a dressmaker’s dummy. But—Sergeant, didn’t you tell me you have retailored your breeches yourself? Pegged them?”

“
Oui, Madame.
”

“
‘Oui, Madame’
my tired back. Where did you leave your pants, Sergeant? You should always know where your pants are.”

“I know where they are!” said El, and fetched them.

“Around the knees, El. Turn them inside out and look.” I joined her in checking Theodore’s tailoring. Shortly I said, “El, I can’t see where they were altered.”

“I can. See? The original thread is just barely faded; the thread he used in altering is the same shade as the cloth of the outlets—the cloth that has not been in sunlight.”

I agreed. “Mmm, yes, once I get it into stronger light. If I look closely.”

El looked up. “You’re hired, boy. Room, board, ten dollars a week, and all the tail you can use.”

Theodore looked thoughtful. “Well…all right. Though I usually get paid extra for that.”

El looked surprised, then laughed merrily, ran to him, and started rubbing tits against his ribs. “I’ll meet your terms, Captain. What is your stud fee?”

“I usually get the pick of the litter.”

“It’s a deal.”

The wedding was beautiful and our Nancy was dazzlingly lovely in a magnificent dress that fitted her perfectly. Marie was flower girl; Richard was ring bearer, both in Sunday white. Jonathan was (to my surprise) in formal cutaway, ascot in pearl gray with pearl stickpin, gray striped trousers, spats. Theodore was his best man, in uniform; Father was in uniform and wearing his many medals and acting as usher and groomsman; Brian was utterly beautiful in boots and Sam Browne and spurs and saber and his ’98 medals and forest-green jacket and pinks.

Carol was maid of honor and almost as dazzling as the bride in lime-green tulle and her bouquet. Brian Junior was the other usher and groomsman and was dressed in his grammar-school graduation suit, brand new only two weeks earlier—double-breasted blue serge and his first long pants and very grown-up in his manner.

George was charged with just one duty, to see to it that Woodrow kept quiet and behaved himself, and was authorized to use force as necessary. Father gave George this instruction in Woodrow’s presence…and Woodrow did behave himself; he could always be counted on to act in his own self-interest.

Dr. Draper did not indulge in any of the nonsense with which the Reverend Timberly had almost spoiled my wedding; he used the ME service right straight out of the 1904 Discipline, not a word more, not a word less…and in short order our Nancy was going back down the aisle on her husband’s arm to the traditional strains of the Mendelssohn recessional, and I sighed with relief. It had been a perfect wedding, no rough spots whatever, and I thought to myself how dumbfounded Mrs. Grundy would have been had she seen a majority of the wedding party thirty-six hours earlier, behind locked doors, in a gentle orgy inaugurating Carol’s Day.

It was the first celebration of the holiday that would spread at the wave-front of the Diaspora of the human race: Carol’s Day, Carolmas, Carolita’s Birthday (it was not!), Fiesta de Santa Carolita. Theodore had told us that it had become (would become) the midsummer fertility rite for all planets, anywhen. Then he had toasted Carol’s graduation to womanhood in champagne, and Carol had answered his toast with great seriousness and dignity—and got bubbles up her nose and gagged and coughed and had to be consoled.

I did not know then and do not know now whether or not Theodore granted my second daughter the boon she craved. All I can say is that I gave them every opportunity. But with Theodore (stubborn, difficult man!) one never knows.

On Saturday afternoon there was a rump session of the trustees of the Ira Howard Foundation, Judge Sperling having come all the way from Toledo for that purpose: Judge Sperling, Mr. Arthur J. Chapman, Justin Weatheral, Brian Smith (by unanimous consent), Sergeant Theodore…and me. And Eleanor.

When Judge Sperling cleared his throat, I understood the signal and started to withdraw. Whereupon Theodore stood up to leave with me.

There was some backing and filling, but the result was that I stayed and Eleanor stayed because Theodore headed for the door when we did. He did explain that the Howard Families, in their permanent organization, used absolute equality of the sexes…and, as Howard chairman in his own time, attending this meeting as a courtesy to the twentieth-century Howard organization, he could not in conscience take part in any Howard meeting from which women were excluded.

Once they got past that hurdle, the meeting simply consisted of Theodore’s repeating his prediction of November 11, 1918, as the day the war would end, followed by his prediction of Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929. On being questioned he embellished this latter, with mention of devaluation of the dollar, from twenty dollars to the ounce down to thirty-five dollars to the ounce. “President Roosevelt will do this by what amounts to decree, although Congress will ratify it…but this doesn’t happen until early in 1933.”

“Just a moment, Sergeant Bronson, or Captain Long, or whatever you call yourself, are you saying that Colonel Roosevelt makes a comeback? I find that hard to swallow. In 1933 he will be, uh—” Mr. Chapman stopped to think.

“Seventy-five years old,” Judge Sperling put in. “What’s so unusual about that, Arthur? I’m older than that, but I have no intention of retiring anytime soon.”

Theodore said, “No, gentlemen, no. Not Teddy Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt. Now assistant secretary to Mr. Josephus Daniels.”

Mr. Chapman shook his head. “I find that even harder to believe.”

Theodore answered rather testily, “It does not matter what you believe, Counselor; Mr. Roosevelt will be inaugurated in 1933 and shortly after that he will close all the banks and call in all gold and gold certificates and devalue the dollar. The dollar never does regain its present value. Fifty years later an ounce of gold will fluctuate wildly, from around a hundred dollars an ounce to around a thousand dollars an ounce.”

“Young man,” Mr. Chapman pronounced, “what you describe is anarchy.”

“Not quite. It gets worse. Much worse. Most historians call the second half of this century ‘the Crazy Years.’ Socially the Crazy Years start at the end of the next World War. But from a standpoint of the economy the Crazy Years start on Black Tuesday, October twenty-ninth, 1929. For the rest of this century you can lose your shirt if you don’t maintain a strong cash position. But it is a century of great opportunity, too, in almost every field.”

Mr. Chapman closed down his face. I could see that he had made up his mind not to believe anything. But Justin and Judge Sperling exchanged some side remarks, then the Judge said, “Captain Long, can you tell us what some of these ‘great opportunities’ will be?”

“I’ll try. Commercial aviation both for passengers and for freight. Railroads will be in deep trouble and will not recover. The present picture shows will add sound—talking pictures. Television. Stereovision. Space travel. Atomic power. Lasers. Computers. Electronics of every sort. Mining on the Moon. Asteroid mining. Rolling roadways. Cryonics. Artificial manipulation of genetics. Personal body armor. Sunpower screens. Frozen foods. Hydroponics. Microwave cooking. Do any of you know D. D. Harriman?”

Chapman stood up. “Judge, I move we adjourn.”

“Sit down, Arthur, and behave yourself. Captain, you realize how shocking your predictions are, do you not?”

“Certainly,” Theodore answered.

“The only way I can listen to your words with equanimity is to recall the changes I have seen in my own lifetime. If your prediction as to the day the war ends turns out to be accurate, then I feel that we must take your other predictions seriously. In the meantime, do you have anything more to tell us?”

“I guess not. Two things, maybe. Don’t buy on margin after the middle of 1929. And don’t sell short if a wrong guess could clean you out.”

“Good advice at any time. Thank you, sir.”

Carol and I and the children kissed them both good-bye on Sunday June thirtieth, then went back inside as Captain Bozell’s car drove away, to cry in private.

The news got worse and worse all that summer.

Then in the late fall it began to be apparent that we were gaining on the Central Powers. The kaiser abdicated and fled to Holland, and then we knew we were going to win. The false armistice came along and my joy was shaded by the realization that it was not the eleventh of November.

And the real armistice did arrive, right on time, November the eleventh, and every bell, every whistle, every siren and horn, anything that could make noise all sounded at once.

But not in our household. On Thursday George fetched home from his route the Kansas City
Post
. In its casualities report it listed as “MISSING IN ACTION—Bronson Theo Cpl KCMo.”

Torrid Twenties, Threadbare Thirties

During the fifty-odd years on my personal time line from my rescue in 1982 to the start of the Time mission which aborted into my present predicament on this planet I spent time equal to about ten years in study of comparative history, in particular the histories of the time lines that the Circle of Ouroboros attempts to protect, all of which appear to share a single ancestral time line at least through
A.D.
1900 and possibly through about 1940.

This sheaf of universes includes my own native universe (time line two, code Leslie LeCroix) and excludes the uncounted but far more numerous exotic time lines—universes in which Columbus did not sail for the Indies (or failed to return), ones in which the Viking settlements succeeded and “America” became “Great Vinland,” ones in which the Muscovite empire on the West Coast clashed with the Hispanic empire on the East Coast (worlds in which Queen Elizabeth died in exile), other worlds in which Columbus found America already owned by the Manchu emperors—and worlds with histories so exotic that it is hard to find even a remote ancestral line in common with anything we can recognize.

I am almost certain that I have slipped into one of the exotics…of a previously unsuspected sort.

I did not spend all my time studying histories; I worked for a living, supporting myself first as a nursing assistant, then as a nurse, then as a clinical therapist, then as a student rejuvenator (all the while going to school), before I shifted careers to the Time Corps.

But it was this study of histories that caused me to think about a career in Time.

Several of the time lines known to “civilization” (our name for ourselves) appear to split off about 1940. One cusp at which these splits show is the Democratic National Convention of 1940 at which Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt either was or was not nominated by the Democratic party for a third term as president of the United States, then either was or was not elected, then either did or did not serve through the end of the Second World War.