Shuteye for the Timebroker (20 page)

With the last of his strength Moreton stood. At the same time, an oddly clad stranger appeared from nowhere through the gate. Moreton saw it was not himself—time did not repeat so neatly—but one who might have been his brother. The newcomer appeared transfixed by the scene, at once frightened and overjoyed.

The guards moved to pinion the newly arrived man. Moreton raised a shout.

“Wait,” he called.

“I know that man.”

Here’s a shameful admission: I’ve actually read very little Jules Verne. While masquerading as a major Verne aficionado during my attendance at a French convention in his hometown of Nantes, I quaked and quailed inside, fearing exposure at any minute.

But the work of Verne that I have read, I’ve enjoyed very much. So when editor Mike Ashley invited me to contribute to an anthology honoring Verne’s creations by extending them, I jumped at the chance. Luckily, I had just finished reading Verne’s
The Mysterious Island
in a fine new translation, and so I had a platform from which to leap.

Here’s hoping I did some acrobatic twirls on the way down.

The Mysterious Iowans

“I am inclined to think that in the future the world will not have many more novels in which mind problems will be solved by the imagination. It may be the natural feeling of an old man with a hundred books behind him, who feels that he has written out his subject, but I really feel as though the writers of the present day and the past time who have allowed their imaginations to play upon mind problems, have, to use a colloquialism, nearly filled the bill.”

—Jules Verne,

“Solution of Mind Problems by the Imagination.”

On the morning of May 24, 1898, Mr. Bingham Wheatstone disembarked from the transcontinental train famously dubbed “The Gray Ghost” for its swift and whisper-quiet mode of propulsion, alighting at the very doorstep of the city known far and wide as Lincolnopolis, capital of the enigmatic sovereign empire known as Lincoln Island, a dominion incongruously situated in the vast heartland of the United States of America, bounded roughly by the borders of what had once been the state of Iowa.

Descending the automatically unfolding steps of the streamlined railcar, which resembled the gaudily ornamented hull of an oceangoing submersible, Wheatstone glanced about the several platforms of the Lincolnopolis station for a brief moment, before the eager push of fellow passengers behind him forced him to fully descend. He saw a bustling scene, as thousands of brightly dressed visitors and natives mingled beneath the great vitrine-roofed, adamantium-girded enclosure, which dwarfed any old-world cathedral in its spaciousness. Parallel sets of tracks hosted numerous trains from all across the continent. Wheatstone thought he recognized the Boreal Breeze from Montreal, the Orange Blossom Special from San Diego, the Raging Gator from St. Augustine, and the Happy Haciendas from Mexico City, among others. Arrivals and departures were perpetual, a constant flow of trains. And yet the air within the station remained fragrant and wholesome, thanks to the clean gravito-magnetic engines that pulled the various expresses.

Although a young man of only twenty-nine, and thus too youthful to more than dimly recall the era of coal-powered propulsion that had been the rule up until 1875, Wheatstone was a student of history sufficiently well-versed to realize that such a pristine environment had not always been associated with rail travel. His parents, for instance, would have been forced to endure the soot and smut and cinders belched by coal-burning steam engines, both while in transit and while hustling through the gritty, shadowy sheds that had served as terminals. How amazing were the bold advances of technology in but a single generation! And how widely disseminated and now mostly taken for granted were those selfsame improvements!

And all these improvements could be laid ultimately at the feet of a genius named Cyrus Smith, president-for-life of Lincoln Island, and his many capable comrades-in-invention.

Hefting his single valise, Wheatstone leisurely traversed the space separating him from the nearest egress, threading his way among the many exotic specimens of humanity thronging the platforms. There were sheiks from the Holy Land, Zulus and Watusi from darkest Africa, Laplanders, Muscovites, Mongols, and Manchurians.

Lincolnopolis as a general rule during any period of the calendar attracted numerous representatives of every nation on the globe— diplomats, tourists, and business folk eager to experience the wonders of the city or to conduct negotiations or to facilitate trade. But this day was unlike any other, and had occasioned even greater numbers of foreign visitors. For this very day marked the inauguration of the grand festivities connected with the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of Lincoln Island. The celebrations had been heralded as fully the equal of any prior international exposition or fair, however elaborate, and perhaps would prove even more extravagant. Naturally, given the Iowans’ reputation for startling displays of scientific prowess, the whole world was desirous of seeing how they would commemorate their third decade of existence.

But even more startling than the cosmopolitan mix of humans was the presence of innumerable ape servitors, all neatly garbed in red vests and pillbox hats, busy trundling steamer trunks, polishing brightwork, and sweeping the immaculate tiled floors. These intelligent quadrumanes belonged to the same race as the legendary Jupiter, the anthropoid servant who had been a loyal member of the household on the original Lincoln Island. Jupiter and his tribe had perished in the destruction of the ocean-girded Lincoln Island, but his cousins had been discovered on neighboring Tabor Island in subsequent expeditions to that region, adopted and brought back to North America. Although not widely employed outside sovereign Iowa, the quadrumanes formed an essential component of that nation’s working class.

As Wheatstone drew closer to his chosen exit, the travelers bunched into a line focused on the portal, one of many such queues. This line of arrivals moved with all expedition, however, and Wheatstone feared no delay, assuming that the ultracompetent Lincolnopolis officials had fully prepared themselves for the expected crush of visitors.

And when he drew even with the customs station, holding his credentials expectantly, he found his faith in the efficiency of the Lincoln Island government fully justified.

Teams of inspectors, their impressive white linen uniforms featuring the governmental crest that depicted the starfish-shaped outline of the original Lincoln Island, were rapidly and dispassionately going through the luggage of each visitor. While this procedure was under way, another official verified the identity of the person seeking entrance via his ordinator console.

Soon it was Wheatstone’s turn. He surrendered his valise and handed over his passport. He watched as the ordinator operator—a competent-looking young fellow with a spray of freckles across his face lending a schoolboy charm to his person—expertly stroked the complicated controls studding the surface of the big mahogany cabinet that bore its proud brass plate identifying it as a Saml. Clemens & Co. Mark Two model.

Once the unique code attached to Wheatstone’s citizenship in the United States had been translated into a format sensible to the ordinator’s machine intelligence, the information was transmitted telegraphically to the central clearinghouse of such data. In less than a minute, the response returned, activating a piece of attached equipment that featured a scribing pen moving over a continuous sheet of paper. With remarkable speed, the pen engraved a likeness of Wheatstone with all the verisimilitude of any illustration from, say,
The London Illustrated News
. Following the portrait, the pen dictated some text.

Wheatstone marveled at the paper reproduction of his own open, ingenuous face, complete with handsome mustache and disordered shock of hair. Utterly uncanny, how this stored image had been transmitted over miles of wire so swiftly!

The ordinator technician ripped the inscribed paper off its roll and studied the picture and text, frequently glancing at Wheatstone’s visage for purposes of comparison. At last he seemed satisfied, turning to Wheatstone with a smile and a handshake.

“Welcome to Lincoln Island, Mr. Wheatstone. I note that you are a journalist.”

“Yes, indeed. I am employed by the
Boston Herald
. I have been dispatched to report on your grand anniversary celebrations.”

“You’ll need a press pass then. One further moment, please.”

“Of course.”

The second response to the ordinator operator’s fiddling took but an additional ninety seconds, at the end of which a solid
thunk
signaled the arrival of a capsule delivered through the pneumatic-tube system that threaded all of Lincolnopolis. The capsule disgorged a wallet-sized, flexible sheet of adamantium inscribed using a diamond stylus with the particulars of Wheatstone’s employment and the terms of his liberty in Lincolnopolis.

“Once you are settled into your hotel,” said the customs official, “present this at the Bureau of Public Information at the intersection of Grant Boulevard and Glenarvan Way. They will have further instructions and counsel for you.”

Wheatstone took the flexible rectangle of adamantium. “Thank you very much for your help. I hope your duties are not so burdensome that you cannot participate at some point in the festivities connected with this proud occasion.”

The clerk shrugged. “That is as it may be. All citizens of Lincoln Island stand ready to render whatever our nation demands of us, happily and without cease.”

“An admirable attitude. If only the members of some of Boston’s trade unions exhibited the same selflessness, the
Herald
might be able to lower its price from a nickel to three cents once more.”

Wheatstone collected his valise, neatly repacked, and strode off toward the broad exterior doors of the rail station. Within a few seconds, he found himself outside the crystal transportation palace, on the actual sidewalks of Lincolnopolis, drinking in the vistas of that magnificent city.

Avenues lined with stalwart buildings in marble, granite, and travertine stretched away radially from the hub of the train station. (Lincolnopolis had been laid out on an exceedingly rational plan based on certain of Fourier’s proposals.) The wide sidewalks were thronged with bright-eyed, happy, strong-sinewed citizens of both sexes, all clad in pleasant modes of costume suitable for the Iowan spring climate; with awestruck tourists goggling at the sights; and with scuttling quadrumanes busy running errands for their masters.

The avenues themselves boasted a steady traffic of wheeled vehicles of every elaboration, all propelled by clean gravito-magnetic engines. The slices of sky visible above the urban canyons featured the occasional passing aircraft. So far the sciences of Lincoln Island had managed to permit the construction of only smallish atmospheric craft capable of hosting one or two riders at most, and not useful for much more than aerial observation or pleasure jaunts. But there was already talk in such gazettes as
Scientific Iowan
of scaling up these vessels into long-range behemoths that would revolutionize travel.

The overall effect of this panorama, Wheatstone thought, was to conjure up fancies of a classical Athens that had never fallen to savagery, but rather had been transformed by centuries of continuous progress into a veritable paradise on Earth! No wonder that all the countries of the globe admired Lincoln Island, courted her, purchased her manufactures, aped her social systems and customs, and licensed her technologies.

As Wheatstone hailed a passing jitney, he was already mentally casting the lead paragraphs of his first story, a paean to this tiny nation.

“Hotel Amiens, please.”

“Sure thing, mister!”

The Hotel Amiens proved to be a superior establishment, from its natatorium and billiard rooms to its corps of quadrumane bellhops. Every room featured ordinator-mediated communication outlets and piped music from the central Lincolnopolis chamber orchestra, which performed twenty-four hours a day thanks to an extensive complement of musicians. Wheatstone silently praised the largesse of his flush employer, and began to entertain second thoughts about the wisdom of letting the price of a copy of the
Herald
revert to three cents.

After refreshing himself and replacing his travel-sweaty shirt collar and exchanging his informal checkered coat for a more somber black one, the young reporter set out for his appointment with the Bureau of Public Information.

The impressive columned government edifice at the corner of Grant and Glenarvan bore an inscription chiseled above its entrance: INFORMATION WISHES TO BECOME DISSEMINATED. As he climbed the broad steps to the heavy front doors, Wheatstone contemplated this sentiment insofar as it related to his own profession. It tallied neatly with his own feelings when, on prior occasions, he’d been confronted with large stories with great public impact that practically begged to be told. Wheatstone believed that a modern society demanded efficient and open channels of communication, and was grateful to see that the Iowans apparently felt the same.

Presentation of his adamantium press pass to a bureau concierge earned Wheatstone swift admission to the office of one Andrew Portland, an undersecretary responsible for foreign reporters. Portland sported a magnificent set of muttonchop whiskers and a vest-covered cannonball of a gut that hinted at certain large appetites. On the wall behind the undersecretary’s desk hung a portrait of Cyrus Smith, president-for-life, looking fatherly and compassionate as he gazed off into some half-apprehended future.