“I suppose I see what you mean. But Kemp gave up true authenticity as soon as he built the City, didn’t he? It changes everything just by being there.”
“That’s why the City has a limited life span. Five years as a tourist resort in what still plausibly resembles the past, then he hands over the buildings and the land to Union Pacific and turns off the Mirror for good and all.”
“Because beyond that point it becomes too obvious that our histories differ.”
“Right.”
“But there’s money to be made mingling past and future.” He was thinking of the price tag on that Shining book.
“Well, yeah, and Kemp knows that. That’s why, come January, we stop being so coy about where we come from, we start handing over our medical and scientific knowledge—we turn the country into one big Futurity Station, and Kemp milks it for twelve months before he switches off the lights and hands over the keys. But not until then.”
“You make Kemp sound mendacious.”
“I don’t know what that word means. But it’s not such a bad bargain if you think about it. You guys get a jump on things like electricity and the combustion engine, plus all the lessons we learned by doing that stuff crudely and badly. You also get a better look at the way we really live up there in the twenty-first century, which might make your pastors blush and your matrons clutch their pearls, but are you going to turn it down?”
They reached the intersection of Lookout and Depot. Turning south onto Lookout was like stepping onto the midway of a traveling carnival, Jesse thought. Here, every commercial establishment had been hung with yard-lengths of bunting—to celebrate both the centennial year and Grant’s visit—and painted with fanciful illustrations of flying machines and ringed planets. What was offered inside these buildings appeared to be random collations of pamphlets, mounted tintypes of the City, toy helicopters carved in wood, festive whirligigs, fried sausages, steamed corn, pickled eggs, and doughnuts. Jesse cast a wistful glance at the sausage sellers. He was a big man. He liked to eat plentifully and regularly. He wasn’t sure Elizabeth understood that about him.
At the southern reach of Lookout was the Stadium of Tomorrow, a high wall of pineboard that blocked any view of the prairie. Here the gimcrack vendors gave way to restaurants and saloons. Where there were saloons there would of course be whorehouses, and some of the crude shacks on the side streets, sleepy in the sunlight, looked as if they might conduct that business after dark.
Onslow’s Unusual Items was a small storefront situated between a tavern and a magic-lantern theater. Jesse and Elizabeth slowed as they passed it, but they needed to agree on a strategy before they went in. “Let’s take in the show,” Elizabeth suggested.
“The magic lanterns?”
“The Stadium of Tomorrow. It seems to be where everybody’s headed.”
“It’s a cheat,” Jesse said. “I’ve heard all about it. It’s just stacked bleachers facing south. All you get for your nickel is some patter and a look at the airship when it flies over.”
“A place to sit and talk,” she said.
He shrugged. It was the City’s dime, not his.
“Money back if the flying machine don’t show,” the ticket seller told them. An easy promise to make: It was a rare day the City helicopter didn’t fly, weather permitting, and the weather today was fine. “Entertainment starts in a few minutes.”
They headed for the less desirable seats, where the crowd was thinner and they could speak without fear of being overheard. A peanut vendor wandered past, and Jesse bought a bag for himself and one for Elizabeth. If she didn’t want her portion he would eat it himself. But she accepted the bag with only a brief dubious look. He guessed roasted peanuts were unlikely to be dusted with poison or infected with deadly diseases, even in 1876. She ate from her portion unselfconsciously—like a man, Jesse thought—brushing shell fragments from her billowing dress with the back of her hand.
“So here’s what we know,” she said. “The would-be assassin bought a Glock here in town. He was working solo, without partners or connections, so the weapon probably came from a novelty vendor like Onslow. The question is, how does the vendor lay his hands on an automatic pistol?”
Jesse thought about it. “Most of the goods in these shops are lost items or copies of lost items, like that Shining book. Supposedly, the merchandise comes from tour groups. You put a hundred or two hundred City people on a train to New York or San Francisco, lodge them for a week, carry them back—they’re bound to leave a few things in the Pullman car or the hotel room. At least that’s the story I’ve heard.” City management was aware of the trade and for the most part had ignored it.
“So someone like Onslow,” Elizabeth said, “must get his goods from a City employee, or someone with access to a City employee.”
“That’s a whole lot of people, though, and lots of them are local hires. Railroad porters, hotel staff, coachmen—”
“What if Onslow decides he’s tired of fencing two-bit castoffs? He knows he can sell anything that’s authentically City, way more than he can get his hands on. He might figure he’d be better off with a steady supply—someone on the inside feeding him a little of this and a little of that, in quantity and on a predictable schedule.”
Horses and riders marched out onto the parade grounds of the Stadium of Tomorrow for the warm-up show. The riders wore spangly red-white-and-blue uniforms and put their mounts through some synchronized rearing and prancing. A brass band played “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” and the audience gave back a tepid round of applause.
“It would affect the nature of his stock,” Jesse said. “It wouldn’t be random, and it wouldn’t necessarily be the kind of thing that people tend to leave behind.”
“So we need to see his stock.”
“Onslow might be reluctant to show us. If he has a source inside the City, he’ll know all about the attempt on Grant. If we’re too obvious, he’ll play dumb. But he’s a businessman,” Jesse said, “and if he scents cash, he’s bound to show us something.”
It was almost noon. The horse show came to a desultory conclusion. The parade grounds cleared. There was a wooden tower to the left of the bleachers, and a man in nautical garb climbed to its highest point, a sort of crow’s nest, where he trained a theatrically huge brass telescope on the southern horizon. Down on the ground, in what would have been the center ring if this had been an actual circus, a master of ceremonies in a claw-hammer coat addressed the crowd through a megaphone. Something about how the people in the bleachers were about to witness an “indisputable miracle of the future,” meanwhile consulting a pocket watch on a chain and glancing at the tower, where the man with the telescope eventually rang a bell and shouted, “Airship ho!”
The crowd grew hushed with anticipation. Elizabeth leaned toward Jesse’s ear and said, “That was pretty fucked up last night. The way you were yelling. Maybe we should talk about it.”
“No,” Jesse said, horrified.
The helicopter appeared first as a mote on the southern horizon, small as a blown leaf but remarkable for the precision of the curve it etched against the blue September sky. It seemed to increase in size as it approached, and the noise of it increased in step until it rattled the bleachers, thunder with a clockwork rhythm in it. At its closest approach the airship hovered in midair for all to admire. Then it darted at the audience, deft as a steel dragonfly.
“That’s Vijay,” Elizabeth said. “The pilot. Showing off. He can’t resist a crowd.”