Jefferson scowled. “Perhaps some Madeira,” he said. “If you have it.”
Sutherland nodded to her secretary, who stared for a moment in incomprehension, then hurried off. “How was the flight?” Sutherland asked.
“Your engines are most impressive,” Jefferson said, “as you well know.” Rice saw the subtle trembling of the man’s hands; he hadn’t taken well to jet flight. “I only wish your political sensitivities were as advanced.”
“You know I can’t speak for my employers,” Sutherland said. “For myself, I deeply regret the darker aspects of our operations. Florida will be missed.”
Irritated, Rice leaned forward. “You’re not really here to discuss sen-sibilities, are you?”
“Freedom, sir,” Jefferson said. “Freedom is the issue.” The secretary returned with a dust-caked bottle of sherry and a stack of clear plastic cups. Jefferson, his hands visibly shaking now, poured a glass and tossed it back. Color returned to his face. He said, “You made certain promises when we joined forces. You guaranteed us liberty and equality and the freedom to pursue our own happiness. Instead we find your machinery on all sides, your cheap manufactured goods seducing the people of our great country, our minerals and works of art disappearing into your fortresses, never to reappear!” The last line brought Jefferson to his feet.
Sutherland shrank back into her chair. “The common good requires a certain period of—uh, adjustment—”
“Oh, come on, Tom,” Rice broke in. “We didn’t ‘join forces,’ that’s a lot of crap. We kicked the Brits out and you in, and you had damn-all to do with it. Second, if we drill for oil and carry off a few paintings, it doesn’t have a goddamned thing to do with your liberty. We don’t care. Do whatever you like, just stay out of our way. Right? If we wanted a lot of back talk we could have left the damn British in power.”
Jefferson sat down. Sutherland meekly poured him another glass, which he drank off at once. “I cannot understand you,” he said. “You claim you come from the future, yet you seem bent on destroying your own past.”
“But we’re not,” Rice said. “It’s this way. History is like a tree, okay? When you go back and mess with the past, another branch of history splits off from the main trunk. Well, this world is just one of those branches.”
“So,” Jefferson said. “This world—my world—does not lead to your future.”
“Right,” Rice said.
“Leaving you free to rape and pillage here at will! While your own world is untouched and secure!” Jefferson was on his feet again. “I find the idea monstrous beyond belief, intolerable! How can you be party to such despotism? Have you no human feelings?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Rice said. “Of course we do. What about the radios and the magazines and the medicine we hand out? Personally I think you’ve got a lot of nerve, coming in here with your smallpox scars and your unwashed shirt and all those slaves of yours back home, lecturing us on humanity.”
“Rice?” Sutherland said.
Rice locked eyes with Jefferson. Slowly, Jefferson sat down. “Look,” Rice said, relenting. “We don’t mean to be unreasonable. Maybe things aren’t working out just the way you pictured them, but hey, that’s life, you know? What do you want, really? Cars? Movies? Telephones? Birth control? Just say the word and they’re yours.”
Jefferson pressed his thumbs into the corners of his eyes. “Your words mean nothing to me, sir. I only want… I want only to return to my home. To Monticello. And as soon as possible.”
“Is it one of your migraines, Mr. President?” Sutherland asked. “I had these made up for you.” She pushed a vial of pills across the table toward him.
“What are these?”
Sutherland shrugged. “You’ll feel better.”
After Jefferson left, Rice half expected a reprimand. Instead, Sutherland said, “You seem to have a tremendous faith in the project.”
“Oh, cheer up,” Rice said, “You’ve been spending too much time with these politicals. Believe me, this is a simple time, with simple people. Sure, Jefferson was a little ticked off, but he’ll come around. Relax!”
RICE FOUND MOZART clearing tables in the main dining hall of the Hohensalzburg Castle. In his faded jeans, camo jacket, and mirrored sunglasses, he might almost have passed for a teenager from Rice’s time.
“Wolfgang!” Rice called to him. “How’s the new job?”
Mozart set a stack of dishes aside and ran his hands over his short-cropped hair. “Wolf,” he said. “Call me Wolf, okay? Sounds more… modern, you know? But yes, I really want to thank you for everything you have done for me. The tapes, the history books, this job—it is so wonderful just to be around here.”
His English, Rice noticed, had improved remarkably in the last three weeks. “You still living in the city?”
“Yes, but I have my own place now. You are coming to the gig tonight?”
“Sure,” Rice said. “Why don’t you finish up around here, I’ll go change, and then we can go out for some sachertorte, okay? We’ll make a night of it.”
Rice dressed carefully, wearing mesh body armor under his velvet coat and knee britches. He crammed his pockets with giveaway consumer goods, then met Mozart by a rear door.
Security had been stepped up around the castle, and floodlights swept the sky. Rice sensed a new tension in the festive abandon of the crowds downtown.
Like everyone else from his time, he towered over the locals; even incognito he felt dangerously conspicuous.
Within the club Rice faded into the darkness and relaxed. The place had been converted from the lower half of some young aristo’s town house; protruding bricks still marked the lines of the old walls. The patrons were locals, mostly, dressed in any Realtime garments they could scavenge. Rice even saw one kid wearing a pair of beige silk panties on his head.
Mozart took the stage. Minuetlike guitar arpeggios screamed over sequenced choral motifs. Stacks of amps blasted synthesizer riffs lifted from a tape of K-Tel pop hits. The howling audience showered Mozart with confetti stripped from the club’s hand-painted wallpaper.
Afterward Mozart smoked a joint of Turkish hash and asked Rice about the future.
“Mine, you mean?” Rice said. “You wouldn’t believe it. Six billion people, and nobody has to work if they don’t want to. Five-hundred-channel TV in every house. Cars, helicopters, clothes that would knock your eyes out. Plenty of easy sex. You want music? You could have your own recording studio. It’d make your gear on stage look like a goddamned clavichord.”
“Really? I would give anything to see that. I can’t understand why you would leave.”
Rice shrugged. “So I’m giving up maybe fifteen years. When I get back, it’s the best of everything. Anything I want.”
“Fifteen years?”
“Yeah. You gotta understand how the portal works. Right now it’s as big around as you are tall, just big enough for a phone cable and a pipeline full of oil, maybe the odd bag of mail, heading for Realtime. To make it any bigger, like to move people or equipment through, is expensive as hell. So expensive they only do it twice, at the beginning and the end of the project. So, yeah, I guess we’re stuck here.”
Rice coughed harshly and drank off his glass. That Ottoman Empire hash had untied his mental shoelaces. Here he was opening up to Mozart, making the kid want to emigrate, and there was no way in hell Rice could get him a Green Card. Not with all the millions that wanted a free ride into the future—billions, if you counted the other projects, like the Roman Empire or New Kingdom Egypt.