Elvissey (11 page)

"Excuse," she said to John. "Give full ear. Drive lightfooted, as up a driveway. Five miles per transports at secure
rate, allowing passage sans location displacement. Visibility
returns, following whiteout. Speed at emergence point
won't top thirty."

"Certain?"

"Certain. Proceed as per plan, tracking symptomologies
at all times with twicedailied healthchecks."

"All grasped and understood," John said, onehanding the
wheel. He switched on the windshield wipers, sweeping clear a semiview; between the Window and ourselves the air heatshimmered, throwing no mirage equal to what lay ahead.

"Mind, too, as told," Leverett said. "Minimize interaction
with all. Readied?"

"Readied."

"Whatever results with primary goal, fulfill secondary," he
reminded us. "Retrieve contemporary history text wherever
availabled, to satisfy info needs. Facts forever best inference,
however circumstanced."

John pressed the ignition. "Later, alligator," I said.

"Begone, then," said Leverett, slapping the roof. "Behave. Return."

We unbraked; our car lurched ahead, bumping along a
length of rutted concrete that led into the Window. Those
seeing us off raced for their cars, tossing their umbrellas
behind them, all but Leverett; he stood unmoving, his suit
dark with rain, as if to ascertain that, attaining point zero, we
wouldn't grow chary, and at the last moment reconsider, and
steer away.

"Handling easy?" I asked my husband.

"Coasting, thus far."

The rain's pelting loudened, as did the everpresent hiss;
sounds of crackling audibled round, as if our air crumpled
over us. Plasmas skated over the car's hood, leaping skyward,
gravity-heedless as a fire's embers. From eyecorner I glanced
clockways; expected without reason that I might see its numbers reverse, or transform in some manner, as we closed in,
and of course saw only the seconds tick off as before. The
Window loomed ever larger overhead, blotting our world;
the rapping on the roof grew louder, and came faster; our
tires skidded on the road.

"What's falling?" John asked, demisting the inner windshield with his sleeve. "Hail?"

"Frogs." All manner of unlikely events occurred midworlds-in the fence, our professors put it, theorizing-and
so it evidenced. Hundreds of tiny frogs, likely extinct with all others in our world, showered onto our car, all spring-green,
none larger than coinsize; they splattered the glass and
crunched beneath the wheels, appearing no less surprised
than were we. The fall tapered within the final few meters of
our approach, and, as we brushed the Window's edge,
ceased entirely.

"Iz," my husband said, "I love-"

"You too," I completed. As whiteness enclosed us, I imagined we stopped; knew at once a frozen feel, as if we'd been
sealed within a glacier. Neither John nor I worded during
that motionless eternity; as void swallowed us, my worries left
me for the first time in months, and peace overwhelmed.
The thought that this might not be so dissimilar from death
struck deep; would this be so bad, after all?

A smile came to my lips; without intended effort stretched
into sneer, and then grimace. When I attempted to draw
breath, I couldn't; felt myself pressing into the seatback as if
flattened by unseen Godness. A harsher light flashed, halfblinding us; I heard a scream, and as my breath returned I
saw our car smashing through a fence, and a uniformed
man flying off the front fender.

"Iz!! Hold-!- John braked our car, steering left, his
hands slapping the wheel; burning rubber's odor extinguished ozone's and we stopped short of plunging into a
long reflecting pool. Sunlight's glare shone upon our backs
as we stared into night; it wasn't raining on the other side.
"Thirty per," he shouted, highvoiced, as if in transit he'd
recovered so many years as to be left prepubertied. "Sixtyplus, rather-"

Wheeling right, he steered us onto a roadway alongsiding
the pool, and floored the car, accelerating full. "You're
safe-?" I asked.

"Our casualty," he said, fixing eyes on the straightaway,
speedheedless. "Moving? Dead? Others seen?"

Rolling down my window, staring behind us, I saw a kneel ing silhouette evidence sustained, if shaken, life. "Moving.
No others visible."

"What's that light?" John asked.

"Drive!"

Beyond the actual fence through which we'd crashed, a
house-wide pillar of light shot skyward from our arrival
point, tossing sparks, streamlining as it flowed; at azimuth,
it split and medusaed into churning coils of lightning. As we
further distanced, I clarified that the yellow-white current
streamed groundways, rather; poured down from a framework encircling a tall spire's tip. The spire and its alongsiding ball familiared; Luther kept their correspondents' photo
on his wall. Here, however, the Trylon had no red warning
lights attached, and the Perisphere was not illumined as to
resemble a globe; imprinted upon its curve was the single
letter T.

"This way to exit?" I asked.

"So believed. Still no followthrough?"

"Nada." Looking out, letting my hair fly as it never had
before, I felt this world's breeze blow twenty degrees warmer.
Stationary searchlights, interspersed amid shrubbery, outlined the road ahead, showing it as a high white hallway;
over the distancing electrical roar I heard a flapping at the
front tire, a sound resembling wings beating against glass.

"Give a noisecheck, once cleared," John said. Two large
windowless buildings faced off across the road, exit-near;
along their smooth cornices ran backlit black letters reading
NEW YORK CONSOLIDATED POWER AND LIGHT. No workers or
guards showed, no sirens sounded; we drove through the
gate, a brick archway outlined with small incandescents and
topped with a figure limbed with lightning bolts, crowned
with a lightbulb head. Slowing, feeling more secured, we
moved undisturbed along the streets beyond, passing long
rows of small buildings, and smaller houses; all must have
semimatched Queens's onetime look. "Iz," my husband
said. "We're-"

"Safe," I said. "Pull over. Let's exam."

John curbsided and stopped the car, switching off the
engine. Closing his eyes, inhaling as if to hyperventilate, he
slid closer, took my hand and kissed me. His hand's tremble
ran body-wide.

"All'll better now, Iz," he said. "All's recoverable again."
I eyed the street updown, certifying that we'd not been
trailed by the man we'd struck or any others after speeding
away from where we'd crossed. Neither cars nor passersby
showed; we were as alone in this world as we were in our own.
"None to interrupt."

"We'd best damage-assess," I said, opening my door.
Judging the lightening east, I estimated dawn wouldn't be
long in coming. John got out and lowered himself to examine underwheel. Staring past the Trylon's glowing discharge,
sighting New York's skyline lights, I saw that they outlined so
much lower here as to seem another city's.

"All's fine," John said, favoring his leg as he stood; I
suspected the day's earlier damp was working delayed effects
upon his joints. Limping around to where I stood, he embraced me. "Love, Iz."

"Yes, John, love," I answered. "It'll not harm to pause
momentslong. Work enough awaits."

I held him until at last his shaking ceased, and assured
calm came to him anew. None trailed us, and for a time we
sat sleepless in our car, resting upon each other as dawn
brillantined the city's skyscrapers. Their America lay beyond,
and in it, if lucked, our E; if blessed, our reunited soul, its
unity once more a given.

Having transversed the middle passage safely, I attempted to
reset my mindwaves, that I might process all thought in the
words of their lingua, turning my tongue so white as my face.
As I employed their wordpatterns-those rambled phrasings, rich with prepositional flow and adverbial complication-I thought I must have learned the lines as a child, so
naturally did they come to me. By thinking in their mode, I
allowed a penultimate layer to be flayed from my soul's skin;
it essentialled that I become what I beheld.

"Situate me, Iz," John said as we drove away from where
we'd rested. "We're westbounding?"

"On Northern Boulevard, I believe. Hold, I'll assure."
When I unfolded our period-vintage map it fragmented,
crumbling in my hands, as if having accumulated so many
years it couldn't withstand losing them. "Northern Parkway,
on this side," I said, spotting a sign as I rained map-flakes
floorways. "Similar route, evidently. Cross at the 59th Street
Bridge, then over to Fifth and from there down to the library."

"It's assured there're phonebooks to peruse there?"

"Library provided such service once, they said. If there's
one for Memphis we can certify his existence before moving
on.

John glanced out his side window as we aimed toward
Manhattan. "Iz, eye that," he said, nodding leftward. "What
is it? They've walled off Brooklyn from Queens?"

"There'd be no reason here," I said, gleaning through a
haze's shroud what appeared to be a high concrete barricade, stabbing between buildings, lofting over roofs. "It's an
expressway, I think. The old LIE, could be. There's a bridge
in the mid-thirties here never built in our world. Possibly
that's its feeder."

Above Manhattan the haze patinaed the sky sepia. Some
few familiarities poked through the ocher clouds: the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, Dryco's old shaft, several
others familiar enough though long-erased. Lemony morningshine bronzed their brick, transmuted their stone into
gold. The 59th Street Bridge emerged from the strata ahead,
its iron webs blood-red and fuzzed, appearing as a primeval
relic confronted in some island swamp.

"Fog's an eyeburner, however thick the glass," said John,
rolling up his window. My lenses stung me till I readied to
pop my tearing eyes from their sockets; the pain almost
supplanted my nausea, for which I was grateful. I'd eaten
nothing to so unsettle my stomach. "Check the color," said
John. "Toxicity plus in that. A spillcloud, mayhap."

"Peasoup," I murmured to myself, recalling a phrase of
my mother's.

"Soup?" he repeated. It surprised that he caught my mut-
terance over the metal roadway's hum, a beebuzz raised by
our tires' spin. "Hungry, Iz? I've fruit-"

I shook my head; marveled at the myriad untried paths to
misunderstanding we would surely discover here. As I eyed
their Manhattan our trainers' warnings came again to my
mind: that, if thoughtless, we would look upon theirs not as a separate world, but rather see within it our own as it had
once shown, enabling insidious nostalgia sans reason for a
place never known to affect our actions. But even as the
strange spires clarified before me, I knew I was reading my
wishes into the city's image, as I did into my husband's,
chancing again that perception, for once, could roughshod
reality. Leaving the bridge we bumped over 59th Street's
cobblestones, entering a cliff-walled stream along with a
thousand other cars.

"Careful now, Iz," said John. "Caution essentials hereout
till we're countrysided."

"We're already sunk," I said, grasping at once a prime
problematic. My couture unhauted to such a degree here as
to be laughable. It evidenced that this world's women
garbed themselves in nothing resembling my sheath; wore
instead kneegrazing skirts puffed out by starched slips, ensembles apted more for revelation than concealment.
Women trotted along on heels higher than mine, and I
couldn't imagine how they walked with such hooves.

"What is it? What troubles?" John asked.

"Your executive drag'll do you right," I said. "I'll never
pass go. Check the dolls."

John shifted his look from curb to curb as we crossed Park
Avenue. "None match you," he said, pleasing me enough to
reassure, if but momentslong. Watching the women struggle
to keep their skirts from flipping up in the wind gladdened;
nothing enslaved me, fashion least of all. We lefted onto
Fifth; we'd reached Rockefeller Center when I realized, looking downtown, that the expressway we'd earlier seen crossed
Manhattan aboveground.