All the Colors of Time (23 page)

“What was it, Mr. Jones?”

Tam shook his head. “The only thing I put away just now was
my pocket dictionary.”

Mr. Schiflin’s pointing hand turned palm up. “Give it to me,
please.”

“I was just taking notes and needed to look up a word—”

“Hand it over. Now.”

Tam hesitated just long enough to make Schiflin’s face turn
red, then he withdrew the curiosity from the satchel and laid it across the
teacher’s outstretched palm.

Schiflin turned the thing over, frowning at it. “What is
this, Mr. Jones?”

“I told you, sir. It’s a dictionary. I was looking up words
from your lecture.”

Schiflin stared at him. “A dictionary . . . .
If you don’t mind, Mr. Jones, I think I’ll just hold onto this ‘dictionary.’
And I’ll expect you to deliver a note from me to your parents.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Schiflin started to turn away, then glanced back. “How
does this work?”

“You just turn it on—the little red switch at the top. Press
it; it turns green to show the unit is on. You press it again to turn it off.
To look up a word, you can either enter it from the keypad or just tell it.”

“Tell it?”

Tam nodded, enjoying himself much more than he knew he
should. He’d always wondered what it would be like to take Jules Verne for a
ride in a hover-lite or show Edgar Alan Poe a computer. This had to be almost
as good.

“Just say the word,” he said.

Schiflin frowned, then reddened. He glanced around the room
as if he’d only just realized how big an audience they had.

“C’mon, Mr. Schiflin!” urged Greg. “Try it. I’ll bet he’s
full of it!”

Schiflin didn’t even censure the outburst. “It would serve
you right, young man, to be caught with your pants down.”

“I’m not lying, sir. I promise. Give it a word.”

Scowling, Schiflin pressed the red button. It turned green
and the flat, black screen not much bigger than a business card displayed the
words: “Dictionary.” Below that was: “Input Word?”

He held the thing close to his mouth and said, “Outrageous.”

The screen filled with text. “Outrageous,” echoed his own
voice. “Grossly offensive, disgraceful, shameful, extravagant, immoderate.
Shall I spell it?”

Face white with small patches of intense red at the cheeks,
Schiflin stared at the tiny machine. “Shall I spell it?” it repeated.

“No, thank you,” he answered, and flushed more deeply. Tam
sensed his anger warring with wonder, with curiosity . . . with
fear.

The bell rang, jolting everyone out of the shared stupor.

Still, no one moved. Mr. Schiflin cleared his throat. “Class
dismissed for lunch. Mr. Jones, you may go home.”

“Why, sir? I haven’t done anything wrong. It’s all right to
look up words—you said so.”

“In a book not—”

“It’s just a dictionary, sir.”

“It’s more than a dictionary, Mr. Jones. Even I can see
that. What you’ve done is lied boldly and outrageously. You have disrupted my
classroom. I can only assume, you’ve stolen this obviously valuable piece of
equipment. Now, go home. I’ll speak to your parents at their earliest
convenience.”

“I didn’t steal it.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Tam nodded. “Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.” He gathered
his books into the mysterious pack and left the campus.

He managed to get into the house without being seen by
either parent. That wasn’t difficult. Troy Jones was at the Air Base posing as
a scientist of some sort and his wife was cheerfully working on their joint
research somewhere in the Lab/Office.

When the others came in at 1630 hours, Stasi had her friend
Elaine and two other giggling girls in tow. Tam came out to the landing, giving
his sister the thumbs up sign as she entered the front hall. She returned it,
looking purposefully intense and sporting a twisted, half-manic grin.

“Hi, Mom! I’m home!” she called through the front parlor. “I’ve
got some friends with me. We’re going up to my room to do some homework, okay?”

There was a moment of silence, then Helen Jones’s voice came
back to them from the “restricted area.” “Is your room clean?”

Stasi’s grin widened. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Well . . . okay, then, I guess.”

“Thanks, Mom!”

The girls loped up the stairs, school books in arms,
looking, Tam realized, like Anastasia Jones Clones. Their hair was tugged off
to one side in fans or sprays; their Mary Jane shoes mimicked her nearly
weightless astrolon flats. They wore what looked like their big sister’s
hand-me-down skirts and from every earlobe dangled earrings made of gaudy
goo-gaws home-mounted on scavenged clips and wires.

All in all, a most up-to-date group of young ladies—if the
date was 2112.

Tam said, “Hi,” and returned to his room.

“Your little brother’s awful cute,” observed Trudy Wessa. “For
a kid,” she added.

“I heard he got in trouble today,” said Elaine. “Do you know
why?”

Stasi dumped her books on her desk and flopped into her
study chair, a fulsome papasan they’d picked up in Japan.

“Gosh, no,” she said, wide-eyed. “I didn’t see him at lunch,
though.”

“I heard he got caught with some kind of Air Force secret
weapon,” offered Beth.

Elaine glared at her. “I heard it was just a toy.”

Stasi laughed. “Sure. What’s my little brother doing with an
Air Force secret weapon?”

“Well, your dad works at Offutt, doesn’t he?” asked Beth. “Maybe
he brought something home and Tam just . . . borrowed it.”

“Tam wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, Mr. Schiflin was real mad,” Trudy interjected. “I saw
him talking to Mr. Benoit about it while I was in the Administration Office
this afternoon.”

“Sounds like you heard him, too. Eavesdropping, were we?”

Trudy figured Elaine’s smirk warranted retaliation. She
grabbed a pillow from under Elaine’s elbow and smacked her with it, sending her
on a giggling roll against the headboard.

“Ow!”

Elaine sat up again, rubbing her elbow and glowering at the
two very hard objects it had connected with. Her expression changed
immediately.

“Oooh, wow! What are these?” She abandoned the wounded elbow
in favor of checking out her find. “
Dune
,
by Frank Herbert,” she read. “Winner of the Nebula Award.” She looked at the
other one. “
Studies in Physics and
Metaphysics
by Dr. Jamal Am-a-di-yeh.” She glanced over at Stasi. “Those
sound like book titles.”

Stasi pretended embarrassment and leapt (belatedly) to
collect her property.

“Uh, they are.”

Elaine swept them out of her way only to have Trudy grab
one.

“What are these? Some kind of ritzy slip covers?”

“Slip covers!” snorted Trudy. She tapped the one she held
with her fingernail. “They feel like metal or plastic or something. What’s this
red button do?”

Of course, she pushed it, and the Reader opened and
presented her with a full-page menu which enquired politely if she wished to go
to the last bookmark and, if so, would she like a summary of what had happened
in the story so far, or would she rather start at the beginning? Would she like
the book in black on white or white on black or would she rather select colors
from a palette? Did she want pictures as well as text? Did she want audio output
in addition to visual? Would she like to print hard copy?

“Wow!” she said. “Wow! What is this? Did you get this in
Paris?”

Stasi scratched her nose, hiding a grin. “San Francisco.”

Trudy gaped at her.

“Who are these guys?” asked Beth. “Herbert and Ama- Ama—”

“Amadiyeh. Herbert’s a science fiction writer. Dr. Amadiyeh
is my educational counselor.”

“Your what?”

“I thought Mrs. Hester was your Counselor,” said Elaine, “same
as me.”

“Well, this is different. This is for my, uh, home study
program. You know, supplemental education.”

Beth nodded. “’Cause you’re a brain, right?”

“Something like that.”

Stasi reached for the books again.

“2100 edition,” Elaine read. “Another Cyber-Book from—”

Stasi snatched the volume from her hands. “We’d better start
on our skit.” She tossed the books into a drawer of her dresser. Three pairs of
eyes locked on the drawer.

Elaine giggled. “Are you from Mars?”

oOo

“Any idea what this parent-teacher conference is all
about?” Troy Jones asked the general assembly, since there was nothing in the
usual “to discuss (your child’s name here)” blank.

Four innocent stares met him over the edge of the paper. He
waved it in the air over his dinner plate.

“Anyone care to claim this?”

The four innocent stares converged over the tofu loaf in a
hasty, silent conference. Then, Stasi spoke, which was, in itself, was enough
to give both Doctors Jones pause. A speech by the eldest child generally meant
she had been elected Ring Leader which, of course, meant there was a ring to
lead, which could only lead to parental aggravation.

The Doctors Jones simultaneously recalled the last such
occurrence, which had centered around the appearance of an unauthorized
mongoose on the house manifest after a Shift to colonial India. The resulting
furor in their quiet, well-modulated environment had gotten them and the
mongoose evicted from their inner city condominium to a rambling house in the
Berkeley hills.

“It’s probably just further repercussions from Tam’s
disagreement with Mr. Schiflin,” Stasi said sagely, then added, “although, Miss
Tindall did talk to me the other day about my clothes.”

“What’s wrong with them?” asked Helen warily.

Stasi shrugged. “She thought they were a little, um, bright . . .
different—you know, too individualistic.”

“But, I bought you some new skirts and blouses.”

“I like my old clothes better sometimes. They remind of who
I am. Where I’m from . . . really.”

“Are there some problems here we’re not aware of?” asked
their father.

Stasi and Tam shrugged in unison and glanced at each other.

“I got reprimanded for looking up some words during one of
Mr. Schiflin’s lectures the other day,” offered Tam.

“Mr. Matthews didn’t like the way I did my math problems,”
added Constantine.

Both Joneses Senior moved their eyes to Tahireh.

“I’m fine!” she said and smiled.

oOo

Tahireh Jones was not fine. Not according to Mr. Matthews
and a sampling of mothers. She was a fomenter of discord, a libertine, a Bad
Influence. Parents had complained that the daughter they’d assumed would work
at the library until she married and settled nearby, now showed a sudden
interest in their brother’s college fund. Some even showed an interest in his
toys and books. Others played at being Sarah Bernhardt or Katherine Hepburn;
their dolls gathered in audiences so entranced as to be left unblinkingly
wide-eyed and speechless.

While Helen and Troy Jones, seated in the principal’s office
with that gentleman and a delegation of three teachers, pondered their response
to these charges, Miss Tindall fired her volley. Their eldest daughter was an
equally negative influence, encouraging the most ridiculous extremes in dress
and hair styles. Distressed mothers wondered why their daughters had suddenly
taken to ripping the hems out of their dresses and twisting their hair into
shapes reminiscent of ornamental shrubbery.

Mr. Schiflin observed darkly that excesses in clothing were
nothing compared to the sort of un-American, irreligious philosophy expounded
by Tamujin Jones in his treatise on the future role of America in the free
world.

“And then,” he said, pausing dramatically, “there’s this.” He
reached into his pocket and withdrew—

“My God!” Troy Jones gasped. “Where did you-?”

“You recognize it, I see,” said Schiflin mildly.

“Ah . . . that is, well . . .
yes. It belongs to— That is, it’s . . . a piece of my lab
equipment.”

“Really? Your son said it was his dictionary. May I ask how
this obviously sophisticated piece of equipment came to be in the hands of a
fourteen-year-old boy?”

“And how your daughter, Anastasia, came to be in possession
of equally sophisticated reading devices with books written by unknown authors
with no record in the Library of Congress?” added Miss Tindall.

“And how Constantine appears to be able to write without a
pencil?”

“What?” said Mr. Benoit, and the other teachers stared at
him.

“I saw him,” Matthews said, his voice low. “I did not
imagine it.”

Helen tried to dart in before a panic ensued. “The children
weren’t supposed to—” she began and stopped. Weren’t supposed to what—unleash
future developments on this poor, unprepared, narrow environment? She glanced
at her husband, who cleared his throat.

“In our line of work, Helen and I are . . .
privileged to make use of many rather startling new technologies.”

“Your line of work?” repeated Mr. Benoit. “And what would
that be? Espionage?”

“Good Lord, no. We’re research scientists—archaeologists,
anthropologists, sociologists, historians.”

“Come now, Dr. Jones. We’ve seen enough to know that you and
your family are digging up more than bones. This equipment, what Beth Silverberg
and the others saw in your daughter’s room, the things your children have said
and done, all lead to the obvious suspicion. You are Communist spies, Doctor
Jones.” Benoit sat back in his principalian throne, looking quite pleased.

“Absurd!” said Troy irritably. His eyes followed on Tam’s
dictionary to the principal’s desk, wondering how to get it back.

“Ridiculous,” added Helen, and wondered the same thing.

“Is it? Even your children’s names are foreign. Tamujin—that
was Genghis Kahn, if I’m not mistaken; Anastasia—a member of the Russian
aristocracy; Tahireh—the name of a Mohammedan suffragette—”

“That’s Muslim,” Troy corrected absently. “And she wasn’t.
She was a Báb’í.”