Читать книгу City Out of Time - William Robison III - Страница 11

The City Central Plaza

Minutes Later - Relative

“So, how do you like the life of a time traveler so far?” Seth asked his brother, as the three of them set off for lunch.

“It has a lot more paperwork than I imagined,” Lanz replied.

Celeste laughed, but Seth barely smiled.

They crossed the plaza and came to the tube stairs. Seth turned at the top of the stairs and looked at his brother.

“There’s a lot of administration to consider in a city of this size and complexity, Lanz,” Seth began, “I mean you’re taking a completely non-native population and resettling them – not only into different social groups, but also into different eras. That takes a lot of paperwork to keep it all straight.”

Lanz gave his brother a queer look. Seth cared about as much for paperwork as Lanz cared for NASCAR. Seth ignored his older brother, though, and started down the steps.

Lanz followed his brother and Celeste into the tube station. Instead of going to the tube platform, though, they proceeded up another set of stairs marked with a big sign that said, “50”.

“I’m not shocked at the amount of administration involved, Seth,” Lanz answered, “I just thought that for a city full of time travelers, things would have been… cooler.”

They re-emerged into the plaza again. Only this time, things were vastly different. The main buildings were there, unchanged, but the people walking through the plaza were dressed in business suits and hats, or long dresses for the women. There were no children present, nor teenagers. At least half the men were smoking, some were even smoking pipes. A few catcalls whistled out for one of the rather buxom young ladies walking by, but instead of being insulted, she demurred as if she’d been paid a huge compliment. Lanz was stunned.

Celeste and Seth kept walking – crossing the plaza as if nothing had changed.

“Well, Lanz, you have to understand that…” Seth finally noticed that his brother was no longer walking with them and stopped. When Celeste saw Lanz’s bewildered look, she turned away trying to suppress a tiny laugh.

“What the heck?” Lanz asked as he turned around and took in the entire plaza. “Is this a movie set?”

“Movie set?” Seth was perplexed by the question. “Don’t you remember this from the orientation movie?”

“I didn’t see it,” Lanz reminded his brother.

“Oh, yeah…” Seth smiled, sheepishly, “Then I can see how this might be a little bewildering.”

Celeste came back to where Lanz was standing and slipped her arm into his and started walking him across the plaza. As they walked, she explained.

““The City is divided up into ten year increments starting from the year of its incorporation in the 1940’s. We live in the 1990’s because that is the decade when we arrived. As part of the process of keeping everyone sane, every citizen is allowed to live in the decade of their choosing – though most choose to live in the decade from which they left where they already know the language, the culture, and the news of the day. It’s hard enough getting used to the City, but to have to get used to a new way of thinking, speaking, and living with one another would be almost too much to bear. Normally, we’re supposed to stay in our own era, but members of the Corps are encouraged to visit earlier eras in order to soak up the language, ambience, and culture of those periods. But we don’t just visit these other eras as part of our field work… they also happen to have really good food.”

“Or dancing,” Seth agreed. “I love the USO dances in the 40’s.”

“So… Did we time travel here?” Lanz asked. “Is this the same City only ten years earlier?”

“Time Travel in the City is frowned upon, and unnecessary in most cases,” Seth answered. “No, this is all done with a lot of staging and temporal mechanics. We’re physically in the same plaza we just left; we’re just forty years earlier. Think of it like different floors of the same mall – and each floor is themed to a different decade.”

Lanz looked at the vintage cars on the streets – a ’57 Bel Air drove by with a guy behind the wheel that looked like Rock Hudson and his secretary in the seat next to him – and he whistled.

“It all looks so real,” he said.

“It IS real, you idiot,” Seth replied. “Just 40 years ago real. So… is this cool enough for you?”

Lanz nodded.

Celeste led Lanz and Seth up the street to a drive in diner straight out of American Graffiti – they even had cute waitresses rolling by on roller skates. Inside, they sat down in a vinyl booth and waited for a blue haired old lady to serve them.

“Whaddaya have?” she asked.

“Patty Melt,” Seth replied. “Cherry Coke and fries.”

She looked at Lanz. There were no menus, so Lanz just winged it. He was beginning to get the feeling that there weren’t a lot of directions to life in the City.

“Bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate milkshake,” Lanz answered.

“And for the lady?” the waitress asked.

“Cheeseburger, onion rings, and a glass of water, please,” Celeste said.

The waitress walked off towards the kitchen.

“They can make you pretty much anything you want,” Seth explained to Lanz.

“I’m not sure I can get used to this idea of eating without paying,” Lanz commented. “Didn’t we just fight a cold war to prevent exactly this kind of communist activity in the United States?”

“In your time, maybe,” Seth smiled. “In here, the cold war is in full swing… and you’d better not suggest to the waitress that she’s some kind of red menace, or you’re likely to get bounced out of here.”

Celeste was clearly growing annoyed with all this talk of time travel and leaned in between the two brothers to change their point of view. They both looked at Celeste and forgot whatever else they were going to say. Celeste pretended not to notice.

“Where did you live out there, Lanz?” Celeste asked.

Lanz looked out the window and pointed over a nearby peak. “About fifty miles over that hill… in Vegas.”

“Vegas? Is that a nice town?”

“You’ve never been to Vegas?”

Celeste thought about it for a moment and then said, “No. I don’t think so.”

Lanz looked at Seth who just shrugged his shoulders, “Travelers come from all over, Lanz. Some have never been anywhere but home and here. Just because most of us have some sort of wanderlust doesn’t mean we’ve always been able to act upon it. Even normal people want to travel to far more places than they could ever visit.”

Lanz leaned back in the booth and gently rested his hand on Celeste’s hand. “Someday I’ll have to show you my home town.”

Celeste pulled her hand out from under Lanz’s and asked, “In what year?”

“We could go tomorrow,” Lanz suggested, “It’s only 50 miles away.”

“I think she was asking in what year you wanted to visit… personally, I’ve always loved the Rat Pack years,” Seth returned.

The waitress returned just then with their orders. She placed them expertly in front of each of them, but stopped just after she had delivered Lanz’s meal and frowned.

“What sort of outfit is that supposed to be?” she asked.

Lanz was wearing his rewashed clothes from the day before – a t-shirt and a pair of Dockers stretch pants. But he was completely underdressed for business attire and over-dressed for casual. His brother and Celeste were in their Corps uniforms and were apparently inconspicuous in the City – but Lanz stuck out in his 90’s specific attire.

Seth leaned in to rescue his brother. “He’s an actor from over at the theater. It’s a costume.”

“What’s it supposed to be?” she asked.

“The future,” Lanz said, theatrically.

“Disrespectful, if you ask me,” she replied, and walked away.

“What? They’ve never seen James Dean here?”

“James Dean was cool, bro,” Seth noted.

Lanz tucked into his Bacon Cheeseburger and was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted. It was one of the freshest, juiciest, and tastiest cheeseburgers he’d ever had. The look on his face must have said it all, though, because Seth was nodding in rhythm to Lanz’s chewing.

“See what I mean,” Seth said. “It’s good, yeah?”

Lanz nodded and immediately took another bite. It was just as good as the first.

Even Celeste seemed to enjoy her burger, though she didn’t eat it as vigorously as Lanz and Seth devoured theirs. Lanz finished his burger in what felt like record time and was ready to eat another one, but decided to munch on his French fries and drink his chocolate shake instead. He was just finishing his shake when Celeste finished her cheeseburger.

“Well, guys,” Seth said between burps, “I’d love to stay and chat but I’ve got to get back for debrief – and then, I think, maybe I’ll head over to the bar before heading home for the night. Anyone care to join me for a drink later?”

“I’ve got to work in the morning,” Lanz noted.

“Me too,” Celeste replied.

“Okay, then… see you later, guys,” Seth said.

He got up and walked out of the diner.

Lanz turned to Celeste and asked, “What about you? Do you have a debriefing to go to?”

“No… I’m pretty much off duty.”

“I was just going to take a tour of the City when I ran into you,” Lanz said. “I could really use a good tour guide.”

“I don’t know, Lanz… I’ve got things that I was planning to do.”

“Like what?”

“I have a ton of laundry,” she noted. “And… well, I’m… there was a book I was going to read.”

“Right… laundry… and reading…” Lanz said. “Or… a nice tour of the City and some good conversation?”

Celeste smiled. “So you see my dilemma then?”

“Oh, definitely… these are such impossible choices,” Lanz intoned seriously, “A decision of this magnitude must be weighed with the utmost conviction.”

“I don’t think you’re taking my lack of laundry seriously,” Celeste noted.

“If you run out of clothes… we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” Lanz winked.

“And then there is the book…”

“Yes,” Lanz said, as he stood up, “I hadn’t thought about that just yet. What sort of book is it?”

“Hard cover,” she returned.

“Hmm… very important then,” Lanz held out a hand for Celeste and helped her to her feet.

For a brief moment they stared into each other’s eyes.

“If you come with me, I’ll tell you a story that you’ll never find in any book,” Lanz commented.

“What sort of story?” she asked.

Lanz stepped away from her and started walking towards the door, “You’ll have to come with me to find out.”

Lanz walked aimlessly in the direction of the Plaza until Celeste caught up to him and said, “If you want a proper tour, we’d better return to your own time.”

They passed through the tube station again and headed up a staircase marked “90” and emerged in the Plaza that Lanz had come to know as his own. But very quickly, they turned and exited the Plaza and for the first time in his own time, Lanz was walking the streets of the City.

He noticed immediately the lack of any name-brand stores or offices or marketing. It was like the TV ad people had gone through town air-brushing out all of the various signs, logos, and markings of pop-culture. It looked like a normal town in every other way, but that one way was quite apparent in its invisibility.

“What are all these stores? If nobody owns anything?”

“It’s not quite like that,” Celeste explained. “Just because you can’t buy a television, doesn’t mean you can’t own one. If you wanted a TV, for instance, you’d go to Jay’s Television Emporium on New Hampshire Street. It looks like any other television store on the inside, except that once you select the TV that you want, instead of paying you go to the counter and enter your name on the want list. When the next TV becomes available, they deliver it to your home.”

“Just like that?”

“There’s really no reason for it to be more complicated than that,” Celeste answered. “There’s no real need for capitalism here. How rich can you possibly want to get when you can take anything you want from anywhere and anywhen? Possessions become kind of meaningless with time travel.”

They continued walking, looking into the shop windows along the way, until they came to a large boulevard that crisscrossed the valley down its center spine – parallel to the river but a few blocks removed. A trolley line ran up the center of the boulevard – east and west. They boarded a trolley heading east. The trolley was quite full, and the two of them had to stand.

The trolley looked old-fashioned and Lanz wondered about the sort of nostalgia that would guide such trains to be allowed in a modern era. Celeste noted that trolley fans voted to have authentic old school trolleys versus newer trolleys because they were roomier and easier to maintain – especially with an easy supply of older parts available via time travel.

As they traveled, Celeste noted the avenue names as they passed – Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, etc… Each of the North/South streets were named after the States of the Union in alphabetical order. She explained that it made it easier for everyone to remember where they were in the City.

She noted that the name of the boulevard they were on was McKinley Way – and that it was the 25^th east / west street in the city. Each of the east/west avenues were named after Presidents of the United States and went in order that they were elected.

“Except that Grover Cleveland only gets one street – otherwise everyone would just get confused.”

“Clearly the person that laid out this town loved Jeopardy,” Lanz Franco replied.

Celeste wrinkled her face and asked, “What’s Jeopardy?”

“It’s a TV quiz show…“

Celeste said “I don’t have much time for TV.”

As the trolley continued east down McKinley Way, Celeste returned to pointing out useful, if not terribly interesting things like the bank, the movie theater, a library. Lanz’s eyes would always wander to whatever she was pointing at, but then immediately snap back to her arm and follow her supple form back to her shoulder, neck, and then face. Celeste’s eyes were captivating with a gravity of their own, pulling Lanz’s gaze to them almost involuntarily.

“You certainly know your way around here. Did you grow up here?”

“Something like that,” she replied.

“Must have been a boring life… is that why you joined the Retrieval Corps? To see the world?”

She turned her gaze to the window and watched the street racing by them.

Almost absently, she said, “Not everything I’d been told was true. I needed to see things for myself and come to my own conclusions.”

“Did you find the truth?”

Celeste turned back to Lanz, a quick flash of anger in her eyes; almost as quickly subdued. She smiled false sincerity.

“All I found was more lies,” she noted. “The truth is as elusive in the past as it is in the present and future.”

She looked out the window again and said, “Our stop is coming up.”

At Ohio Street, they got off the trolley. Ohio and McKinley Way was a major intersection – not only for automobile traffic, but also for foot traffic and for trolley lines. Two trolley lines crossed here; the McKinley Way East/West Line and the Ohio Street North/South Line. Celeste crossed the street to the Ohio Street trolley stop and Lanz ran to keep up.

“If you really want to see this town, you need to go up to the Heights.”

They boarded the northbound trolley a minute later and found a couple of seats midway along the car. Lanz took the window seat this time and Celeste sat next to him on the aisle.

The second the trolley started moving, Lanz spotted a building approaching and asked, ‘What’s that?”

Celeste leaned across Lanz to see what it was that had drawn his attention while Lanz surreptitiously smelled Celeste’s hair and perfume and thrilled at her touch as her body crossed his frame.

“What? That?” Celeste asked.

“Mmm hmm,” Lanz agreed without even looking at whatever it was that Celeste was now pointing to. He was really admiring her… attributes… up close.

“That’s a requisition center,” Celeste noted. “For any appliances you want to ask for, but don’t probably need. Bloody nuisance hauling those appliances through time.”

Celeste sat back in her chair and Lanz turned his head away quickly so that she wouldn’t notice that he’d been staring.

“Everyone wants… no… Needs their gizmos and appliances and whatnots,” Celeste continued, “And yet, they leave all of that stuff behind to come here – in order to see the world. Why? What do they hope to find here that they can’t find in their world of appliances?”

“What does anyone look for?” Lanz returned. “They don’t call it the pursuit of happiness for nothing. People just want to be happy and together.”

“Life isn’t about being happy,” Celeste countered. “It’s often cruel, uncompromising, and completely random.”

“People don’t care. They want to be happy anyway. They want to defy the world and live happily ever after – free from want, free from fear, free from oppression. They never stop trying to be happy.”

Celeste turned to look at Lanz, “Is that why you came here?”

Lanz thought about this for a moment as the trolley rolled up Ohio Street. He hadn’t actually set out to come here. He hadn’t even known here existed. And yet, if he really thought about it, he had been about to leave Las Vegas for parts unknown. His life was in such a shambles that casting about in any other direction had been preferable to staying behind in wasted existence. In short, Lanz had finally overcome the lethargy of his life to seek happiness in whatever form he might find it.

He’d ended up in the City.

“I guess it is,” Lanz admitted.

“Was your life out there that bad?” Celeste asked.

“It wasn’t good. I was struggling just to exist. I felt like I was getting nowhere – like I was spending up my best intelligence, my best effort, and the best years of my life in a meaningless pursuit of just getting by. I did what I could to help others, but it never really seemed to matter. No matter how high I aspired to reach, there was already someone there ahead of me not only ready to collect their toll, but also to remind me that I owed everything I’d ever accomplished to some sort of hierarchy that I was only vaguely aware of and that didn’t need to reward my allegiance. I just wanted to get away from that and to achieve something on my own. I want to own my own soul.”

The trolley reached the end of Ohio and turned right, entering a tunnel in the side of the mountain. The car plunged into darkness. Lanz looked out the window and could see light at the end of the tunnel up ahead. The trolley banked left and started up hill.

“We’re going to the Heights now,” Celeste explained. “We’re almost there.”

For five minutes they ducked in and out of tunnels that bore through solid rock as the trolley worked its way higher up the side of the mountain. Every time they emerged from a new tunnel, it was to an increasingly more spectacular view of the City. The trolley ride reminded Lanz of a trip he’d taken through the Alps by train when he’d been stationed in Germany.

Finally, the trolley emerged at the top of a large clearing with rolling hills off to the right leading to the higher elevations, and with a two story low slung building off to the left nestled into the side of the hill. The trolley rolled to a stop and Celeste took Lanz’s arm and pulled him towards the exit.

They stepped out onto the street and moved away from the trolley. It sped up and disappeared through a tunnel on the other side of the clearing, already heading back down to the City below. With the trolley out of the way, they both turned and admired the view.

Even with the building in the way, the City stretched below them in a surreal almost water-color painting way. The clear desert air bounced the reflected light of the sun off the river in such a way as Lanz had never seen water reflected before. It almost seemed alive – as if the light and the shadows were playing with each other in the air above the water; like a flock of geese playing tag. Stretching away from the river both north and south, the City’s grid pattern made it very easy to pick out highlights of the City’s design. There in the upper right quadrant was the Central Plaza, and McKinley Way stretched away from it a few blocks away. Lanz could see parks and gardens and farms that he never would have found by walking the streets or looking at a map. There were surprisingly no swimming pools, which Lanz almost considered a staple of existence in the desert southwest. But before Lanz could ask about any of these things, his eyes were drawn to a giant structure almost exactly dead center of town – near the river, but not at a vantage point that Lanz would have seen it before.

It looked to be a cross between the Roman Coliseum and the Tower of Pisa. It was round and had many columns supporting its outside walls, but it was also tall – several stories tall at least – and open at the top. Lanz tried to imagine what it was that he was seeing.

“That,” said Celeste without any prompting from Lanz, “…is the Pan Forum.”

“The Pan Forum,” Lanz repeated. “What is it?”

“Archaeologists believe that it was a gathering place for time travelers from as far back as Roman times,” Celeste explained. “Travelers would arrive here out of a sandstorm or some such – using their powers to travel sometimes without even being aware of doing so – and meeting others of their kind here. It became a meeting place, a market, a town square before there was a town. It is the only indigenous structure here in the entire City. Everything else was built by the Founders in the early 1940’s.”

“Can we get a closer look?” Lanz asked. “Something without this building in the way?”

“Yes,” Celeste said. “There’s a viewing platform on the other side of the school. I’ll show you.”

“Wait,” Lanz replied. “This is a school?”

“High School,” Celeste noted. “But don’t worry… school’s out today.”

“Wait… why?”

“Spring break,” Celeste replied. “Come on.”

She went to the left of the school and there was a path there that sloped down past the school and past the school’s main courtyard to a playing field. The field was a multi-purpose field that was just wide enough for a football field and stands on one side. Currently, it was striped for Lacrosse. On the other side of the field, the City stretched below them – a view unhindered except for a single viewing platform.

Celeste ran across the field like a school girl and Lanz jogged after her to keep up. The second she reached the platform, Celeste walked straight to the edge and looked down at the City below. Even from quite a distance behind Celeste, Lanz could see that she really loved the view. Eventually, once he caught up to her and looked over the edge of the platform himself, he could completely understand why.

The City stretched below them without filter. There was nothing before them – no power poles, no TV antennas. Nothing blocked their view. Below them, the hill sloped down at a steep angle until it just reached the bottom, then it eased into the relatively flat George Washington Boulevard that ran along the entire base of the mountain. It was quite a view.

They didn’t say anything for a number of minutes. The hot air of the afternoon drifted upward and created a slight breeze that was the only sound they could hear except the distant humming of a functioning City. The sunlight gleamed off the towers of the downtown area and Lanz imagined that his apartment was out there somewhere.

In the mid-afternoon of a lazy Wednesday, Lanz finally understood that there was something special here in this City; and it wasn’t time travelers or crazy socialist economics. There was a sense of peace and tranquility here. It floated over the town and it permeated its every surface. Lanz began to feel right at home.

“I love this view,” Celeste said. “The first time I ever came here, I found this spot. There wasn’t even an observation deck here yet. The City was a little smaller, but its outline was already there. Somehow, I fell in love with it. It felt like home.”

“Yeah,” Lanz agreed. “I know what you mean.”

“So you’re going to stay?” Celeste asked.

It seemed like such a crazy question, but then Lanz remembered that right now he was missing classes at UNLV and that he was due to go back to work on Friday. His rent was due in a week. He had a credit card payment and bills to pay. The real world felt so distant. Its patterns felt so foreign and wrong. But part of Lanz felt dirty for abandoning all those responsibilities at once. Sure, he’d been ready to leave Las Vegas for good… but he would have gone back, probably. Unless… unless he found something better.

“I don’t want to just be another cog in a giant machine,” Lanz said. “I want my life to make a difference to somebody, somewhere. As long as I feel that I can do that here… I’ll stay.”

Celeste turned away from Lanz and looked towards the far end of the City, but then her hand came up to her eyes and she wiped them.

“I hope you never lose your idealism and passion,” she said, without turning towards Lanz. “I hope you never change.”

Lanz put his hand gently on hers and she turned around to look at him.

“What about you?” Lanz asked, “Have you lost your idealism and passion?”

“I’m not sure I ever had any,” she said, and without another word, she started to walk back towards the trolley stop.