Futures Near and Far (17 page)

“Spare me the pity gestures, Viv. I like it just fine where
I am.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Terri. Look around. This is so
primitive. So . . .
filthy
.”
The cat lowered its nose to the gap between the bench and the closed toilet lid
and snorted at the fumes wafting up from the cesspit. “You can’t tell me you
like having to put up with this stench every time you go to the bathroom. I
have to believe you’d see how much you don’t belong here if you were in a
rational frame of mind.”

The fact is, outdoor plumbing was one adjustment to life in
the 1880s that I didn’t cope with as gracefully as I accepted others. But I
wasn’t about to give Vivica the satisfaction of hearing me say that.

“This isn’t intervention,” I said. “It’s just intrusion. You’ve
had your say. I want you to leave.”

“Your money’s almost gone, you know,” Vivica said. “What
will you do then?”

“My credit is excellent. Now I believe I asked you to leave?”

The cat rolled its eyes, not at all a feline mannerism. “All
right, all right. The timer’s running down anyway. But this isn’t over, Terri.”

“Bye bye,” I said.

I shut the dampers, restoring the darkness. When I opened
the outhouse door and the moonlight shone in, the cat was nowhere to be seen.

o0o

In the morning, Daniel came in from milking the cows, ate
his breakfast, and headed for the barn again almost before he had finished
swallowing the last bite. As he crossed the yard, Sarah’s gaze followed him
through the frosted kitchen window. She glanced at me, then down at the floor.

Only after Marancy went down for her nap did Sarah summon
the courage to speak. I was at the sink peeling potatoes. She was at the
kitchen table, grating cheese.

“It’s been so good since you came,” Sarah said. “Pa was so
sad when Mama died.” Once she might have added, “and even before Mama died,”
but I had weaned her from such talk. “Did you two have a fight?”

“A fight? Not exactly.”

I put down the peeler and moved to the chair across from
her. I reached out and cupped her hands.

“He’s . . . upset with something he learned
about me. He’s disappointed in me,” I said.

Sarah’s brows drew together until a pair of vertical
wrinkles scored her normally doll-like forehead. “Pa thinks you’re his Helen of
Troy. He told me so.”

“He said that before he knew certain sides of me.”

“What’s so awful about you? What didn’t he know?”

To my surprise, the words came easily. “Do you know what an
addiction is?”

“No, ma’am.”

“It’s when someone has a craving for something that makes
them feel good. They want it all the time, and they do anything to have it. They
get so they can’t help themselves.”

“Like Uncle Caleb, and his drinking?”

“Like that.” I had not met Daniel’s brother-in-law. Daniel
didn’t allow him to come ’round anymore. Caleb might even be dead; he hadn’t
been seen in Stephenson or Green County in quite some time.

“But you don’t drink more than a sip of cordial, now and
then,” Sarah protested.

“My problem is not alcohol.”

“Then what do you hanker for?”

“All this.” I waved at the hand-carved dining table, the
knothole in the rafters, the rag carpet in the hallway, woven by Daniel’s
grandmother when she lived back East. Things unique to this house, and to this
particular juncture in time. “I can’t stop wanting to be with your father,
wanting to be with you. Wanting to be here.”

“That doesn’t sound so wicked.”

“No. No, it doesn’t,” I answered. “I don’t believe it is.”

“Pa shouldn’t worry about it, then.”

“I agree,” I said. I offered her my lap. She climbed into it
and I held her tight. “I promise you everything will be fine soon. One way or
another.”

She cuddled, and for a moment I thought things between us
would be fine. But she was so quiet, and the frown hadn’t gone away.

o0o

Once again, I found an intruder in the outhouse when I
arrived. This time the avatar was a weasel. Weasels were a common enough sight
on the farm. After all, we had hen’s eggs to steal. This one, though, didn’t
run away upon being discovered.

“A varmint. How appropriate,” I said.

“I don’t think Sarah quite believed your explanation of the
difficulties between you and her father,” the weasel said. Small and rodentish
as the voice was, I recognized it as belonging to Andrew, from my old therapy
group. “She’s a bright child. I imagine she’s going to keep digging until she
gets a thorough explanation, don’t you think?”

“And I suppose you plan to help her along with that?” I
snapped.

“Oh, no. That would be out of line. I’m not Kenneth, you
know.”

“Thank goodness for small favors,” I replied.

“I’ve taken a look at your session logs. You handle your
responsibilities so well as Annabeth. You should try that as Terri. You do have
responsibilities, you know. People you should be there for.”

“So you say. Right now my responsibility is to empty my
bladder. Are you planning on helping me with that, too, or can I have some privacy?”

The weasel hesitated. Andrew had clearly come to say more,
but perhaps he had been expecting that I would be more willing to listen. He
wasn’t great at being a point man. “As you wish,” he finally said. He hopped
off the bench and down the wooden step.

He turned around when he reached the footprint-littered
snow. “You know, you were a real help to me when I was in over my head. I wish
you could take some of the advice you gave me then.”

I shut the door.

o0o

At lunchtime, I sent the girls out to the barn to fetch
their father. He hadn’t come in all morning.

I watched through the window. Daniel met the children at the
barn door. But he didn’t accompany them as they set out for the house.

The girls stopped midway back, confused. They waved for him
to follow. Still he stood there.

What I saw confirmed my fears. I had lost him. He wasn’t
able to be my Daniel anymore. His matrix couldn’t adjust enough to deal with
the information Kenneth had given him. He was too aware of the nature of his
existence. He couldn’t forgive me.

Sarah was picking up on the dissonance. At any moment, she
might begin to ask him questions I couldn’t have her knowing the answers to.

“God damn it,” I murmured.

I had no choice. I went to the kitchen wall and placed my
palm against it. “Access,” I said.

The interface appeared. I quickly re-set the Character
Parameters to baseline. I’d lose the enrichment incorporated since then, but it
couldn’t be helped.

I also authorized Highest Level Security. The modification
would ding my account more than I had planned, but my credit was adequate, if
not as robust as I’d implied to Vivica.

My “friends” would not be able to hack in again, not even to
view the logs as Andrew had. Their measures had inconvenienced me, but I wasn’t
done here yet.

I restored the wall to its 1880s look and returned to the
window. Out in the yard, Daniel and the girls were now behaving as they should.
Daniel was grinning as he swung Marancy in a circle. Sarah was giggling. Soon
all three headed for the house, full of good cheer and looking forward to their
midday meal.

o0o

I opened the oven. As the aroma of potato and cheese and
onion poured out, smiles beamed all around. I put the casserole on the table,
served everyone’s portions, and we began to eat.

The cheese contained an authentic pungency that few of my
era would know, but that wasn’t what made the meal special. Its value came from
the lack of pretension, from the company, from the setting, from the sheer
comfort of familiar ingredients prepared in a familiar way. No declaration of
approval from some culinary maven was needed to know I had done well. This
recipe and way of enjoying it fulfilled the soul.

In this place and time, I knew where I stood.

Not a hint of the recent troubles tainted the scene. Sarah
had no questions. Daniel exuded his traditional good humor. When he stood up
from the table, he gave me a little kiss that set the girls to grinning behind
their hands.

“I’d better get the team hitched up if we’re going to make
it to over to Buster Hastings’s place on time,” he said.

Sarah brightened. “We’re going visiting?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Didn’t you notice the extra
casserole?”

The children cheered and scampered out to the barn at their
father’s heels.

I followed more sedately, filling a wicker basket not only
with the second casserole but a loaf of the bread I’d baked the day before. Charity
for an old widower who lived nearby.

By the time I came out Daniel was in the midst of
positioning the horses in front of the sleigh. The animals tossed their heads
and whinnied, eager to be heading out after days of confinement. I helped the
children tie bells to Meadow’s tail. The mare tolerated it with only a twitch
or two. Dusty, the gelding, snorted his disdain at the prospect. “One of these
days,” Sarah promised him, but she wasn’t ready to force the issue this time,
nor would I have let her.

The song praises the delights of an open sleigh, but an open
sleigh is hardly meant for comfort. Ours was closed, its chassis rounded inward
to form a cockpit. Daniel filled the footwarmer with hot charcoal and set it
down in the front with a metallic clunk. He draped it with the fitted flannel
cover and we climbed in. The heavy sleigh blanket went round us, supplementing
the smaller ones around our bodies. I fastened the cover by its hooks and we
were cozy in our cocoon, only our muffed heads and Daniel’s gloved hands poking
through into the chill air. Daniel flicked the reins and we were off.

Buster lived close by. In a later day and age, the distance
between our dwelling places would be inconsequential, but for us it was a shift
from the everyday world to the special. The girls shouted hurrahs as we rounded
the hillock and saw the old farmhouse, smoke rising from its chimney, golden
retriever barking in the yard to announce our arrival.

Buster limped onto his porch. “Jake!” he bellowed at his
pet. “Get over here.” Fortunately he was obeyed, or the hairy beast might have
licked us to death as we fetched the casserole and bread from the luggage
compartment.

As we paraded inside, warmth enveloped our weather-reddened
noses and made them glow. Buster had a glow of his own, a bright-eyed energy as
his loneliness was broken, at least for the next hour. “You two have growed an
inch since Christmas,” he declared with enthusiasm, patting Sarah on the head. He
didn’t bend to do the same to Marancy; his stiff spine didn’t allow it.

We continued in to the kitchen to put the food down, and
found a ham lying on the table. “That’s for you,” Buster said.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Daniel protested.

“It’s little enough in return,” the old fellow insisted. “I
have a little too much of some things, now that Myrna’s gone. No use it going
to waste here.” He patted the ham. “I may not be much good in a kitchen, but I
do know how to hang a pig in a smokehouse.”

The old farmer sounded pleased with himself, and he had a
right to be. “We’re grateful to you,” I said.

“Any word from that son of yours in California?” Daniel
asked.

Buster opened a drawer and lifted out an envelope. I made
out a San Francisco postmark.

“Still making a good life for himself,” Buster informed us. “Wants
me to come and live with him now that his eldest is gettin’ married. I told you
about young Will, right?”

“Yes.” Daniel chuckled. Buster had mentioned his grandson’s
engagement the last five visits in a row. “So are you going?”

“Shucks no. I’ll stay right where I am, thank you. Couldn’t
imagine it any other way.”

Buster had homesteaded this farm. It had never been owned or
operated by anyone else. I knew he would stay until the day the dog trundled in
and found him laid out stiff and cold in his bed, a tintype cameo of his wife
on the nightstand beside him.

“Neither could we, Buster. Neither could we,” I said,
squeezing his hand.

He blushed to have a woman touch him. “You’re right good
neighbors to me. Keeps a body goin’.”

We stayed as long as Buster remained talkative. He made sure
we understood we were welcome to stay longer, but we didn’t want to wear him
out.

The old man escorted us out to the sleigh. As we approached,
Jake padded up and looked at us with a regard that I found disturbingly human. I
studied him to be sure his behavior didn’t resemble that of the cat and the
weasel in the outhouse.

The retriever’s tail wagged and the exuberant tongue made
its traditional assault on little Marancy’s face, much to her delight. The dog
was a dog. The integrity of the milieu was secure. Everyone was behaving
according to pattern.

o0o

On the way home, we let Meadow and Dusty set their own
pace, the horses’ natural laziness balanced by their desire to get back home to
their stalls. Buster’s farm slipped over the horizon, and we cruised along
beside sparkling white fields.

Marancy climbed into my lap and leaned back against me. Sarah
leaned in from the side, and together we settled against Daniel. My big
handsome man wrapped his free arm around my shoulders and braced so that we
were all steady and could, if we chose, remain nestled all the way home.

Daniel’s gaze swept over the landscape. He looked at me and
smiled. “Ain’t it a wonder, Annabeth? Could it be any better?”

A family outing. A good deed accomplished. Beauty all
around. And a simplicity and peace I’d never found in the 22nd Century. No, it
couldn’t be any better.

“It’s like a dream,” I replied.

The words carved out a chunk of me below my sternum. It
added to the awful, hole-in-the-middle sensation already there. I wanted to
blame Kenneth and Vivica and Andrew for creating it, but the truth was, the
hollowness had taken root well before the first intervention episode.