Part 1 (2/2)

And so the train reached Columbus. We stopped in Cincinnati dome and left fifteen cars but I did not get off the train; I had been warned against it as Cincinnati was on a slightly different system than L.A. which might kill me or at the very least make me sick. I heard rumors that their dome would not be there much longer; they had thought out an undomed system. Bravo, I said, not believing. But I had been immunized for undomed Columbus and Columbus only, though I had 6 clearance which meant protection for me--if it held, which was doubtful. The 6 guaranteed immuni zation wherever I went it was only a matter of verification and then the proper sheets supplied by local authorities. But that presupposed, of course, the existence of local authorities, and the definition of proper sheets had become by that time loose, had most likely drifted. I was out in the wilderness on my own and I relished that.

What a joke all that folderol was! For in Columbus--but why complain about what happened there? You gave me the maps which brought me here, beneath the diamond skies I bonded to once I got far enough north, have you seen the Pleiades? They are my favor ite the Seven Sisters my very Sisters though I know well enough they are just radio waves, glowing gas, the artifacts of our birth whose light only exists. The stars toward which You may travel, any one of you, if you wake and stretch in some other age, and if you are so misguided as to travel through s.p.a.ce instead of coming here, may well have not been born. Or may have died long ago.

How strange.

But then my heart is as well, to You, glowing and perhaps in an unborn wave, in radio wave fibrillation. Yet I selfishly hope you don't doubt that I am really here, let me tell you more, let me tell you how I bend in the brief spring and yank fledgling weeds from among the soybean rows. Lettuce and peas grow well here because it is so cool; I eat the lettuce before it gets to the house and the peas which survive my greed for sweet green things dry on large screens. The soybeans have furry green pods; I boil them whole then squeeze out the beans, which are utterly delicious. Someone else built this cabin, not I; his name was Peter Johnson and I often thank him. His virtual life is here though it does not interest me much; still I do not wipe him but leave him compressed out of respect. Sometimes he leaps from the walls to join Grandfather and we discuss the deep structure of s.p.a.cetime and forget that they are both dead as I stir the soup and tend the fire. Perhaps they are not. Dead that is, for what is death?

You must tell me sometime if you think you know, for you will have been the same place they are, more or less, except that I had the foresight to see that you had a body when you woke. They do come in handy. Grandfather and Peter often complain bitterly about being limited to this cabin.

Some summers have been far too cold, and I think I must leave my glorious paradise and cease waiting here for You, but there have never been two bad summers in a row and when I get depressed about the vegetables not growing I travel to little Flin Flon, quite cautiously, and the most life I detect with infrared are wild animals and not humans. I take what I need from the hotel's inexhaustible freeze-dried stores in a cart pulled by Mildred. Are You convinced? I am lonely, that is all. The rush of wind, which we never experienced in the dome, which makes me feel so alive, is more than enough to keep me here. This beauty is sharp. I ache to share it.

So. In Columbus the train door slid open and I was the only one debarking there, the only one properly initialized, the other pa.s.sengers braving on toward Toronto, NYC, D.C. I stepped off the train.

After my first astonished gasp I reeled beneath the blue sky, I danced, I laughed, then I rushed right across many empty tracks and here is concrete for you, here is actual: Mildred. I love my water buffalo and depend upon her, but not as much as I depended upon my original Mildred, who hurried after me, laughing. Are You her?

I will talk about You as if you are not listening, because the odds are very much against it. Someone else entirely might be listening, which is why I am a bit cryptic. Or, and this is most likely, no one.

Mildred's hair was blonde and waist-long, fine as corn silk. That day it was loose, and the wind caught it. Her eyes were wide, the curious shade of blue which I saw that summer matched the delphiniums in her mother's garden. She said she was Norwe gian, when I asked her, over coffee, in a small shop which disap pointed with no mozzarella but which fulfilled my expectations with cappuccino, which I still miss, the ceremony of it. Once in awhile I rummage through the huge kitchen of the Pointed Fir Lodge to try and find a stovetop steamer, but there is only a ma.s.sive ornate machine in the dining room, electric.

Mildred did not like Don her husband very much, by that time, though she did not quite realize it yet. It was he who prepared the wrong sheets for me, and it was Mildred who helped me into them. But it rather backfired.

”h.e.l.lo Dr. Chang,” Don said, stumbling after me across the tracks. When he stopped he stared at me for a very long minute as if surprised. Well, apparently he was. He had expected a man, I'm not sure why nor why that would make a bit of difference to him. Communication was not terribly good in those times, though it was much better than now. He had very short red hair and was partly bald. On his long face was a small mustache which struck me as being rather unpleasant. His brown eyes were as closed as Mildred's were open. I tried to feel enthusiastic about my new colleague. Give him time, I thought.

”We have been waiting for you. Your train is very late,” he said, after recovering from his staring fit, then laughed in a way which frightened me, but Mildred's calm blue eyes caught and settled me. Standing next to Don in a bright green thin parka, unzipped as it was March and warming, she reached out to shake hands with me after a brief odd hesitation during which I had the strange feeling that she was going to hug me, tight.

”We will have your trunks taken to our house, for now,” said Mildred.

”Thank you,” I said, unworried about all the nan inside, all of my research materials. They had been packed in antic.i.p.ation of any number of catastrophes, anything else would have been terribly irresponsible.

”Are you hungry?” asked Mildred.

I shook my head. ”We just had breakfast,” I said.

”Well, then,” said Don, obviously pleased. ”It's just a few blocks to the hospital, and you can have your sheets there.”

”Yes, might as well get that over with,” I said, excited. I wanted to know all about this new place, about my new patients; I wanted to find out how many of the local population had survived each plague wave, and how the survivors had been affected. That, and more, would all be in the sheets.

They walked very fast along the sidewalks. On the streets I saw all manner of vehicles--horses, horse-drawn carriages, and many bikes. I saw only one electric car, tiny and battered and yellow, and found later that it was owned by Tolliver Townsby, the man who also owned the Ice Cream Parlor. I was suddenly in another age, the one which I so craved.

”Where are all the people?” I asked, used to dome satura tion. On either side of me, Don and Mildred looked at each other. ”Our population, including the county, is fifteen thou sand,” said Mildred gently.

”Oh,” I said. Much less than I had expected. The sheets toward which we were heading would prevent me from asking such silly questions.

We pa.s.sed many stores on the ancient main street, with huge plate gla.s.s windows, and a requisite amount of patrons. Thomp son's Feed and Seed, Elya's Organic Feast, The Snyder Cafe, it was a community of farmers, really, a completely self-sufficient organism which I now admire enormously. Above the storefronts rose tall, old-fas.h.i.+oned skysc.r.a.pers, completely empty. At the time I was stunned. Where are the Italians, I wondered, but was too shy to ask. Don and Mildred received nods and greetings from every person they pa.s.sed on that five block walk.

Then we arrived at the hospital where they kept the coc.o.o.ns and that's where I picked up Thurber, with his funny drawings of blunt angry women and cowed men with big noses and tiny eyes. His grandmother who believed that electricity leaked from outlets I could identify with in a way for when I actually saw the co c.o.o.ns after walking through a building which I thought could simply not exist any more in this day and age I stopped. Did a slight chill envelope my heart? It should have, but I don't really remember. I do remember trepidation.

The coc.o.o.ns were old, on the top floor of the nearly- deserted hospital, at the end of old dun-colored halls which had not been grown but built, probably fifty years before. The sociologists in L.A. had told me that I probably couldn't under stand the pride involved and at that point, staring at the co c.o.o.ns which Don and Mildred showed me with decorum and reverence, I realized the sociologists had been right and wondered what other good advice I might have ignored. Though the hospital smelled of disinfectant the walls were grubby and this room did not quietly gleam with nan cleaners as I was used to. It was lit with a bare bulb and pipes mazed the ceiling with an old fire- protection system. The coc.o.o.ns themselves filled me with a strange poignancy, for at the instant I saw them I realized how far in time I actually was from L.A. There were four. They looked like one of the original models, and probably the city had purchased them during the initial surge of faith, when it was thought that nan could cure everything. The style was unmistak able, the curve of the coc.o.o.ns, the oldstyle computers which regulated them visible, small crystals set on shelves above, connected to the coc.o.o.ns with cables. An antiquer's delight, the kind of thing you see campily displayed in lofts, or even mu seums. I wondered what long-abandoned programming might lurk within those crystals. I should have wondered harder. As for the hospital itself, it simply staggered me with its age.

One of the things I had learned was how much the natives would dislike me.

Though I looked at Don and wondered, I had been carefully programmed to be nonjudgemental about that. Well, that part worked a bit too well, I must say.

The natives had good reasons for rejection. Nan had laid waste to most of the country through all sorts of vectors.

”Are you sure . . . ?” I asked and Don looked at me in an exasperated fas.h.i.+on with veed eyebrows dark and s.h.a.ggy, Mildred behind him a bit more anxious. ”Our population is--different from that of L.A., Dr. Chang,” he said, still scowling.

”I would be the first to acknowledge how rural we truly are, how backward. But I personally ran the checks . . . ”

”Fine, fine,” I said, too hastily, please remember and stop laughing at my idiocy that I had never been out of the city and knew nothing, directly. Inforam does not come into play until your hands, as it were, touch. To put it simply, you may not even know that you are filled with the works of Bach, until you sit down in front of an organ and then it all floods out, per fect. No, I knew nothing of Thurber, the Great Plains, or Don's particular fears. I didn't even know how to suspect or infer them, or that I ought to. Mildred was married to Don and did, but did not suspect him of perfidy; I was to learn that was not an emotional possibility for her. And his action sprang from pride, from anger at having some hotshot newdoc sent out with all that authority, jurisdiction, though I was ten years younger than he was, and from fear that I knew a lot more than he did, which was absolutely true. If I had had some sort of background in schlepping delicately among the egos of those who had more--or less--at stake than the mere salvation of humankind, I might have been more cautious.

Don left, and Mildred made a few adjustments to the crys tals, silent with a technician's concentration. She smiled and squeezed my shoulder, then I was alone in the warm dry room and I stripped off my skinsuit and stepped into the coc.o.o.n. I lay down and felt the familiar clasp as it molded itself around me and was satisfied via the fuzzy logic code which flashed within my retina that this coc.o.o.n, Don's sheets, and my internalized system were compatible. It required a standard suppressant of various pre-set biochemical barriers, and I complied.

The slight blip of yellow light gave me to know that though something was minutely off, parity was very close, close enough to function, and I put it down to lack of sophistication on the part of the coc.o.o.n. Ha!

The next day I opened my eyes enormously changed, in a very good humor. I stared at the pipes above me and knew that one day in Columbus around 1910 or so, the erroneous rumor that the dam had burst spread, and saw Thurber's swift line drawings of stubby rounded Columbus citizens hoofing it out of the city in droves. I knew that his family had an Airedale named Matt who bit a lot of people. That story really made me howl, no pun intended, for I'd always longed to have a dog (and now I have you, wonderful G.E. and very strong jaws you have too! and one or two yous--the wrong ones--may have been bitten by them, far down the road where I couldn't see). All those delicious Thurber stories, which so lovingly described Columbus, hovered in my mind, in my vision, and I began to laugh.

Just the knowledge that I was here, in Columbus, was enough to bring Thurber out of inforam. My laughter echoed through the large empty room, bounced off the pipes. My mission, so sharp when I left L.A. (you must understand I was second in my cla.s.s and they were extremely annoyed that I chose to leave; they had other uses in mind for me) was faint and hazy in my mind, like an almost-forgotten dream, when I opened my eyes. But not entirely forgotten. No, not entirely.

And so I rolled out of the coc.o.o.n after twenty-four hours, alone. Light came in through a high frosted window and I felt at home in this new place and thanked the sheets, for they had historied me into everything. I knew the past of the region and the medical history of all Don and Mildred's patients as well as that of their parents and grandparents. I knew how to grow corn on the flood plain in the spring. If an Iroquois had shown up, by G.o.d, I would have been able to speak her native language with her, though without that stimulus I never would or could utter a word of it.

I took a shower in the small dank concrete-floored stall. There were at least fifty lockers there so I surmised that there had been a time when the coc.o.o.ns had heavy use. I dried myself, pulled on my skinsuit, and covered it with the native clothing someone had thoughtfully left--overalls. I wear trousers now which do not cling, and plaid s.h.i.+rts from the broken nan ski shop in Flin Flon, which was fortunately well-stocked before the fluid dried up after the townsfolk fled. Ah, what did I know of the fears of the people who lived outside the domes? Sure I used to be an MD once but what did I know? I could cure fear with the proper pheromones but you had to have the receptors first, and I had to have diagnostic equipment, and the pher-pak. Such is life. I can set broken bones now, I couldn't have then. I only knew how to use a computer, that's all, thought I could block the plague but it took me as easily as anyone. Only much more brief ly. It left me with respect.

And I like living here, save for the loneliness. It's all for the best and that optimism comes direct from those Columbus sheets. Because of them I am able to be amused though not at the vagaries of others for there aren't any others here.

I am just generally amused, and I'm always ready to be further amused, though not at your expense of course. You would find me pretty amusing too I am sure.

You?

I am really here, really, concrete, flesh. Believe it. If You are kind, we could have children; I am fully functional. Kindness is not really programmable, unfortunately; it's largely an environmental thing. Don was not kind because he thought it wouldn't help him get results, but people who are kind are so under almost all circ.u.mstances, save for certain extremes when they may get snappish and that's always understandable when it happens. But if you have turned out kind, children would be interesting. Now if that doesn't tempt you you just aren't the one I'm looking for. There's a fifty percent chance they would have receptors; I don't know whether that sounds good or bad to you, that germ line stuff. Who knows what tomorrow may bring. I'm ever so glad I have mine it makes me more versatile. I am not so lonely as sometimes the fitful satellite gives me Grand dad, I told you that, and we can talk. Other than that I have delusions of recreating civilization, only better and in a foolproof way, so now you know that I am insane and incapable of learning from history. So what? I'm human. If you are kind, you will like that. Don't come if you don't. I am armed, I tell you.

I fell in love with Mildred, and if you are Mildred I don't know what you will think about that, though I did not sleep with her. With You. Oh, I'm getting confused now. I blush. Well, actually, I barely thought of it, though later I did, and plenty, after I'd shrugged off her touch and made her cry. I am sorry about that it is my one regret. All the others are for myself only and therefore silly as errant neutrinos, as meaningless, yet as powerful in the disruption of communications. Her feelings were real and she needed me. Maybe just once. Who else was there, for her? Mildred? You would know why I named my most valuable ally after you. You would like that. I know you. After a year of life with you, my dear, I know you. Apparently that was the most important year of my life. And though I look young, and though I think I could have children, I am old. Old and very, very amused. How good it would be to have company. Especially yours.

Perhaps it was the Ohio sheets which made Mildred and I so close. Without them it all might have been so foreign to me that I would have run screaming back to smooth surfaces, information at a touch.

She and Don lived in her mother's house. It was a three- story white frame house with tilting oak floors. The foundation was surrounded by rose bushes which had been mature when Mildred was a child; she tended them with great care and they yielded overblown blossoms which filled the house with color and fra grance from spring to fall. She gave me th.o.r.n.y bouquets for my own little room on 5th Street, a room with high ceilings and a steam-heat vent, utterly unlike anything in the dome.

The three of us visited one another's houses in the evenings and cooked for one another and had the same vision, I thought, combating the plague. Except that we had endless arguments about the best way to do it. Don found it hard to trust inoculation. This was not entirely irrational on his part, but it was the best stopgap we had and better than nothing. Isolation, what they were trying in Columbus, was simply impossible. He tolerated me because he knew he had to.

Sometimes I found him staring at me with an unreadable expression after a particularly fierce ex change. I did not find this pleasant. But I was trying to forge some connection with him, because he was my link to his patients. Perhaps he misunderstood my attempts.

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