Part 30 (1/2)
”I had no idea it was so tall”
”Taller than the Washi+ngton Monuranite or li?”
”Plaster of paris, I believe”
”We've been doing very well, haven't we? Not talking aboutabout it?”
”Not ht”
”Was there anything inside them?”
”Not in the Trylon But yeah, inside the Perisphere they had this whole show Democracity It was like a scale model of the city of the future, and you sat in these little cars going all around the outside and looked down on it It was all superhighways and garden suburbs You just felt like you were soaring over it all in a zeppelin They would s and streetlights would sort of light up and glow It was great I loved it”
”You don't say I'd like to see that I wonder if it's still in there, Sammy, what do you think?”
”I don't know,” said Sammy, with a kind of wary thrill By now he knew Bacon well enough to recognize the i tone, that had sent his friend up to aat s ”Probably not, Bake I think-hey, wait for me”
Bacon was already on his way around the low circular wall that surrounded the i layer of burlap, in which the Perisphere once had swum Sauards, but they appeared to have the place to themselves It made his heart ache to look around the vast expanse of the fairground that, not very long ago, had swar whizzed around in jitneys, and see only a vista ofnewspaper, broken up here and there by the spindly stump of a capped stanchion, a fire hydrant, or the bare trees that flanked the empty avenues and promenades The candy-colored pavilions and exhibit halls, fitted out with Saturn rings, lightning bolts, shark's fins, golden grilles, and honeyco in a perpetual cascade of water, the gigantic cash register, the austere and sinuous temples of the Detroit Gods, the fountains, the pylons and sundials, the statues of George Washi+ngton and Freedo the Way to Freedom had been peeled, stripped, prized apart, knocked down, bulldozed into piles, loaded onto truck beds, dues, towed out past the mouth of the harbor, and sent to the bottom of the sea It ory or harsh sers in this translation of a bright su over at the end of a Septes-but because he had so loved the Fair, and seeing it this way, he felt in his heart what he had known all along, that, like childhood, the Fair was over, and he would never be able to visit again
”Hey,” Bacon called ”Clayboy Over here”
San of Bacon Sammy hurried, as quickly as he could, all the way around the loashed ith its rain stains and patchy skin of wet leaves, to the doors of the Trylon, which had led, via an i When the Fair was on, there was always a huge line of people coiling up to these big blue doors Now there were only the scaffolding and a stack of planks Sootten the tin coffee-cup cap of his thermos Sammy went over to the metal doors They were heavily barred and padlocked with a thick chain Sae in the least
”I tried that,” Bacon said ”Under here!”
The Perisphere was supported by a kind of tee, a ring of evenly spaced pillars joined to it at its antarctic circle, so to speak, all the way around The idea had been for the great bone-white orb, its skin rippled with fine veins like a cigar wrapper, to look as if it were floating there, in the middle of the pool of water Now that there was no water, you could see the pillars, and you could see Tracy Bacon, too, standing in the middle of them, directly under the Perisphere's south pole
”Hey,” Sa across its top ”What are you doing? That whole thing could coht down on top of you!”
Bacon looked at him, eyes wide, incredulous, and Sammy blushed; it was exactly what his mother would have said
”There's a door,” Bacon said, pointing straight up Then he reached up over his head, and his hands went into the bottom of the Perisphere's hull Bacon's head vanished next, his feet rose off the ground, and then he was gone
Sa over the wall, then the other, and lowered himself down into the pool bed The da sounds under his shoes as he ran across the gently curved bottoot underneath it, he looked up and saw a rectangular hatchway that looked as if Tracy Bacon h it
”Come on”
”It looks pretty dark in there, Bake”
A big hand e Sammy reached for it, their palms crossed, and then Bacon pulled hiin to feel, or s of his own heart, the lights came on
”Gee,” Bacon said ”Look at that”
The syste of Democracity and its companion exhibit, General Motors' Futurama, were quite literally the dernier cri dernier cri of the art and ancient principles of clockworkthe elaborate sound track of voice and ht-ears, pulleys, levers, cas, wheels, switches, relays, and belts that was sophisticated, co, a sudden snap of cold, or the accu underground trains could throw the syste the ride to an abrupt halt, occasionally trapping fifty people inside It was because of the need for frequent minor adjustments and repairs that there was a hatch in the Perisphere's underbelly It led into an odd, bowl-shaped room Where Bacon and Sammy caated steel platform On one side of the platform, a series of cleats had been welded onto the inner fra the inside of the bowl, toward the elaborate clockwork underside of Democracity of the art and ancient principles of clockworkthe elaborate sound track of voice and ht-ears, pulleys, levers, cas, wheels, switches, relays, and belts that was sophisticated, co, a sudden snap of cold, or the accu underground trains could throw the syste the ride to an abrupt halt, occasionally trapping fifty people inside It was because of the need for frequent minor adjustments and repairs that there was a hatch in the Perisphere's underbelly It led into an odd, bowl-shaped room Where Bacon and Sammy caated steel platform On one side of the platform, a series of cleats had been welded onto the inner fra the inside of the bowl, toward the elaborate clockwork underside of Democracity
Bacon took hold of one of the lower cleats of the ladder ”Think you can e it?” he said
”I'o first,” Bacon said ”I'll give you a hand if you need it”
So Sas climbed a hundred feet into the air At the top, there was another hatch Sah
”It's dark,” Sao”
”Just a minute,” Bacon said Sammy felt a sudden push fros and e blackness Soh abraded Sam sounds as Bacon pulled hiht”
”Indeed” Sa for the hatch ”Good You're crazy, Bake, you know that? You just won't take no for an answer I-”
Sahter, the scrape of its flint, and then a spark swelledface of Tracy Bacon
”Now yours,” he said
Saenerate just enough light to see that they were camped far to one side of the display, in the h Tracy stood up and started toward the center Sa the flame The surface of the floor beneath their feet was covered in a kind of rough, dry artificialhills of trees It h eh they tried to be careful, one of them stepped on a model farmhouse, or crushed the ae of a town of the future Finally they reached the major city, at the very center of the diorama, which had been known as Centerville or Centerton or sole skyscraper rose fros looked streao, or the Eot down on one knee and brought his eyes level with the top of the lone tower Bacon got down on one knee and brought his eyes level with the top of the lone tower
”Huh,” he said He frowned, then lowered hi care not to extinguish his flaround ”Huh,” he said again, grunting it this tiround ”Yeah This is the way I don't think I would have liked just floating over it near as much”
Sammy went over and stood beside Bacon for a round beside hi his head slightly, squinted his eyes, trying to lose himself in the illusion of the model the way he used to lose hi board in Flatbush a million years before He was a twentieth of an inch tall, zipping along an oceanic highway in his little antigravity Skyflivver, streaking past the silent faces of the aspiring silvery buildings It was a perfect day in a perfect city A double sunset flickered in the s and threw shadows across the leafy squares of the city His fingertips were on fire
”Ow!” Sahter ”Ouch!”
Bacon let his own flao out ”You have to kind of pad it with your necktie, dopey,” he said He grabbed Sammy's hand ”This the one?”
”Yeah,” Saers Oh Okay”
They lay there for a few seconds, in the dark, in the future, with Sa to the fabulous clockwork of their hearts and lungs, and loving each other
12
ON the last day of November, Joe had a letter fro hand, he announced, e a sardonic tone that had not been present in his first letters from Lisbon, that the old tub-after a series of delays, reversals, iversations, had finally been cleared- yet again-for departure, on the second of Deceht months had now passed since Thous The boy had turned thirteen on a cot in the crowded refectory of the convent of Nossa Senhora de Monte Carmel, and in his letter he warned Joe that he suffered fro off paternosters and Hail Marys at the drop of a hat, and had become partial to winize him for the spots on his face and the ”apparently pere on my upper lip that some have the te the letter, he kissed it and pressed it to his chest He renized in a land of strangers, of being lost in the translation froht to the Empire offices from the TRA and burst into tears in Joe's arht, placed a call that afternoon to the Washi+ngton offices of the President's Advisory Coees, just towas in order To his astonishment, he had been told by the chairh all of the children's visas were going to be revoked for reasons of ”state security” The head of the State Depart, a man with, as the chair since established a clear policy of refusing visas to Jewish refugees Hoffued, the visas had already been issued, the shi+p was about to depart, and the ”security risks” were three hundred and nineteen children! The chairret and embarrass up
”I see” was Joe's only response when Rosa, perched on his high stool, had finished her tale With one hand he stroked mechanically at the back of her head With the other he spun the striker of his cigarette lighter, sparking it over and over again Rosa was asha Joe, but here she was, in theat her over their drawing boards, bawling into his shi+rtfront, while he stood patting her hair and saying, ”There, there” His shoulders were tensed, his breathing shallow She could feel the anger building inside hihter sparked, she flinched
”Oh, honey,” she said ”I wish there was so we could do Someone we could turn to”