Grant’s second term as president would be ending soon, and Jesse wondered whether he might secretly be happy to leave office. It had been a rough seven years—rough years for everyone, especially since the crash of ’73; therefore politically difficult for Grant. The railroad scandals had reached all the way into the White House, and his tenure in office had not achieved all he had hoped or promised. He had promised a reconstructed South—what he got were serial lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan. He had promised peace with the Indians—what he got were Crazy Horse, trouble with the Nez Percé, and the Little Bighorn.
But he was still the hero of Appomattox, the man who saved the Union, and Jesse could not imagine what to say to him or even how to address him. He knocked, and Grant opened the door. The two men stared at each other. Grant seemed speechless. Finally Jesse murmured, “Your Excellency, I was told you wanted to see me?”
“Jesse Cullum.” Grant put out his hand, and Jesse shook it. “Please come in.” Jesse stepped into the room and Grant closed the door behind him. “Sit down. No need for formal address, Mr. Cullum. I’ve noticed strangers often prefer to call me ‘General,’ and it doesn’t displease me.”
“Thank you, General.”
The room was plush. Jesse’s duties had occasionally taken him into Tower Two guest rooms, so he knew how this one compared. The furniture was of the future: finely made but almost aggressively plain. The window was almost as large as the one in Booking’s office. Beyond the flawless glass, dusk had turned the western sky blood-red. Jesse imagined he could see as far as Montana by the fading light. Maybe the State of Oregon, if he stood on his tiptoes.
“Mrs. Grant is out taking supper with one of our hosts. She knows nothing of the events in the courtyard, by the way. And given that no shot was fired, I prefer to keep it that way. You’ll forgive me for not introducing you to her. But I wanted to thank you personally for what you did on my behalf.”
“I took away a man’s gun, that’s all.”
“Your modesty is commendable. In any case, I think Mrs. Grant feels easier away from the window.”
“The view makes some guests dizzy at first, but they usually grow accustomed to it.”
“Yes, and I expect she will, and I will, too, but just now I feel like a swallow nesting on a cliff.”
“May I draw the drapes for you?”
“Please, if you can—it’s not obvious to me how they operate. How long have you worked here, Mr. Cullum?”
Jesse tugged the rod that rotated the vertical blinds. “Going on four years.”
“From the earliest days, then. May I ask how you came to be employed at the City of Futurity?”
“It was an accident, more or less. I was traveling east from San Francisco and I had to leave the train unexpectedly.” Because he had foregone the formality of buying a ticket, but he left that part out. “Futurity Station didn’t even have a name in those days. It was just another coaling depot out in the middle of nowhere. I meant to head toward Chicago on foot, but my directions were bad. The next day I saw a plume of dust from the construction site and showed up looking for food and water. The people here fed me and offered me work.”
“Just like that?”
“The City people weren’t looking for publicity until the major construction was finished. They figured I’d be more use to them as a hired hand than I would be spreading stories about what I’d seen. The road you came by from the station? I was part of the crew that laid it down.”
“And a fine road it is, though it pales by comparison with what lies at the end of it. Of course I’ve read a great deal in the papers about the City of Futurity. The testimony is unimpeachable, but the reality of it is so much more…” Grant groped for a word and gave up: “Real. You must have seen many marvels in your time here.”
Jesse tried to imagine how this room must seem to Grant. The electric lights and the switches that controlled them, the cool air flowing from ceiling vents, the thermostat to adjust the temperature. The explanatory notes printed on paper and affixed to the walls: how to lock and unlock the door, how to summon an elevator, the finer points of indoor plumbing. A button for summoning a City host or hostess, if the instructions proved inadequate. “What seems to impress visitors most,” Jesse said, “is the airship.”
Grant winced. “I’ve seen photographs. And I’ve been invited to ride it. And not just me, but Julia as well, if she can be convinced. Is the thing as safe as they claim?”
“I’ve seen it go up and down hundreds of times without any problem.”
“Though I suppose the greatest marvel is that these things have come among us at all, from a place that is and isn’t the future. Do you understand it, Mr. Cullum, the story of where these people come from?”
“I would never claim to understand it, General. They say there is a whole sheaf of worlds, and that the City people have learned to travel from one to another. They live on one stalk in the sheaf and journey to nearby stalks. But for the traveler, all those stalks look like the past.” Jesse felt himself blushing at his own incoherence. No, he did not understand it. “I imagine they’ll explain it to you better in the orientation session.”
“We are their past, but they do not necessarily represent our future. That’s what the brochure says.”
“I guess the brochure’s right.”
“I value your opinion precisely because it’s not printed in a brochure. All these mechanical marvels are impressive, but I wonder about the nature of the people themselves. You must know many of them.”
“They prefer to keep us separate. But some mixing does go on.”
“As employers, have they treated you well?”
“Yes, sir. They cured me.” He spoke without thinking, then realized with dismay that Grant was waiting for him to continue. “When they hired me on, you see, the first thing they did was send me to the City clinic—sort of a miniature hospital with a half dozen doctors on duty. At the time I was suffering from … well, it’s not easy to discuss. Being a military man, I guess you’ve had experience of camp sicknesses among your troops.”
What Jesse could not bring himself to say was that he had arrived at the clinic barely able to pass urine without shrieking like a cat with its tail on fire. Grant cleared his throat and said, “I take your meaning.”
“Sir, they cured that. And not with a syringe full of nitrate of silver. They gave me pills. They said I had other conditions that weren’t so obvious, and they cured those, too. They gave me injections to the arm that made me impervious to rubeola and smallpox and other diseases whose names I can’t recall. So, yes, I can testify that they treated me well. For all I know they may have saved my life.”
Jesse wondered if he had said too much. For a few moments Grant seemed plunged in thought. “That is a marvel,” he said at last. “I hope they can be convinced to share the secret of these cures.”
“They plan to do so. I’ve heard it discussed.”
“Perhaps they should have shared it when they first arrived. Many lives might have been saved already.”
“Yes, sir, but who would have believed them? Who believed the City was anything more than a trumped-up Barnum show, those first few months? Now that the skeptics are routed, it begins to become possible. You know 1877 is the last year of the City, before they close the Mirror and go home. They say, in the last year, they’ll be even more frank and forthcoming.”
“Now that they’ve prepared the ground.”
“Yes, sir.”
Grant tugged at the sleeve of his woolen suit. Even now, with all the weight he’d gained since Appomattox, he looked as if he’d be more comfortable in a Union uniform. Or maybe his restlessness meant Jesse had overstayed his welcome. But he couldn’t politely leave until he was dismissed.