John Barnes - Kaleidoscope Century

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Kaleidoscope Century

John Barnes, 1995

Joshua Ali Quare wakes in 2109 at the age of 140 in a strong, youthful body with no memory of his

past, to find he is at the center of a vast and deadly conspiracy. The only clues to his identity

are the records he has left -- messages from the man he once was.

As Quare journeys through his past, he discovers he has been a key figure in the history of a

turbulent, violent century -- soldier, criminal, assassin, spy. A century filled with killing

plagues and warring cults, ruthless corporations and dying nations. A century where treachery is

often the only wav to survive.

Now someone is looking for him. Someone from his past. And Quare must learn the terrifying secret

of his history before it unleashes devastating consequences for the future of the human race.

What Rough Beast

I wake up for the fourth time I can remember. The first two times were longer ago. Each time I got

up, drank water, and took a piss. I think the third time I was looking for a dark-haired girl,

maybe ten years old. I might have known her name, and called it. I don't think she was there. I'm

not sure.

I know the third time, the time before this, I wandered around the room. There was a battered old

werp in the corner, its case dented and scraped, all sorts of stickers and slogan plates pasted

and glued to it. I didn't get farther than noticing it was there and wondering if it might be

mine. I felt sick and tired so I went back to bed.

I'm awake and much better now. The dreams from before are fading. I sit up in bed and think, My

name is Joshua Ali Quare, and I have a whole life behind me, but I don't remember much of it. This

is normal. I think.

In the mirror by the toilet, my image is hideously thin, muscles wasted as though by a long fever,

immense dark circles under my eyes.

My hair's gray, face lined, beard grizzled. I had thought I was about twenty or twenty-five,

possibly younger. Clearly not.

I wish the girl would come back and explain. If I could remember her name, I would call for her.

What baffles me most is that I seem to be in Martian gravity. Not as low as the moon's but lower

than Earth's, anyway.

How do I know how much gravity the moon, or Mars, has? The Augmented Shuttle Mission never even

left for Mars, and that was just an orbital mission, a near approach to Phobos that would have

arrived on my thirtieth birthday. I was planning to get drunk with my friends and watch it.

Inventory of the room:

One steel door, with handle, unlocked, leading into a kitchen.

In kitchen: airlock door with stamped logo that reads

SEARS MARSHACK. SEARS OF WELLS CITY, LTD.

One window looking out on a darkening pink sky and reddish dunes streaked with gray and brown,

beyond which a lake -- or an arm of the sea? -- rolls with lead-dull waves impossibly big and

slow.

Bed. Smells like I had a bad fever in it for a long time.

Toilet. Foul. Probably missed it a few times while I had the fever.

Sink and drinking glass -- Christ, I'm thirsty. I take another glass of water before I continue.

Rack: ten shirts, four pairs of pants, socks and underwear on top shelf. Most of it still in the

package.

Bathrobe hanging on corner of rack. I put that on.

Fresher in the corner. I must remember to stuff the sheets into it soon.

Recycling shower, must use that too.

Mirror over toilet.

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Werp in the corner, in a case that looks more like an old-fashioned portable typewriter than

anything else.

Small box, beside the werp, with a key in its lock. A space allocation box, what they give you

before you get on a ship, it fits into the slot at the end of your bunk, you have to fit all the

belongings you're taking into it.

They used to do that. Nowadays spaceships have a bigger space and weight allowance than airliners

had when I was young. I just use it because it's a convenient container. It's mostly empty. I know

because it's mine.

I feel a rush of memory, much of it confusing, little of it useful. I thought at first that I

recognized low gravity because I read so much sci-fi when I was a kid. I don't seem to remember

anything reliably after I was about twenty or so, though all sorts of things lurk at the edge of

memory. Most of my past seems to be in the corner of my mind's eye, vanishing if I look directly

at it.

No, I know about low grav, had experience with regular, no-, micro-, and low. Definitely.

When?

I think, that box contains seven things. A brass key, a Boy Scout knife, a bar napkin with a name

and phone number on it, a book of matches from Gwenny's Diner, a picture of a young girl, an Army

dog tag for John Childs, and a plastic white knight from a cheap chess set. At once I have to

know. My fingers scrabble over the surface, find and turn the key. Tears in my eyes -- I don't

know what that's about.

They are all there, inside, and the first thing I do is lift up the Boy Scout knife and press my

face to its cool handle. I recall that it is rusted shut and I can't unfold the blades anymore.

Touching it makes me feel better, but I am still crying. I heft the brass key in my hand. My

mother gave it to me the last time I ever saw her -- a key to the kitchen door. I squeeze it so

hard that it bites my flesh, and that feels good, and comforting.

The name on the bar napkin is Anastasia, and I know that wasn't her real name, but I don't

remember anything else. The phone number's an old-fashioned ten-digit one from back when there was

local and long-distance. The area code's for Supra New York. I don't remember when phone numbers

changed to twelve digits, either, or when SNY was built.

I have an odd feeling that I might be John Quids. The dog tag feels strange; it's on a chain and I

slip it around my neck for a moment, before taking it off again with a shudder that I can't quite

explain.

I don't know what Gwenny's Diner was, but handling the book of matches (they are very deteriorated

and I don't think they would light) makes me feel sort of warm and safe.

When I hold the white knight in my hand, my fingers begin to do a strange little maneuver, like a

magician passing something, so that the knight flows around the fingers. I don't understand why I

do that. I feel nothing much emotionally but I keep the knight moving.

The little girl is the one I was looking for. I'm pretty sure of that. The picture is a color

holo, not the ribbed kind I remember used to be in cereal boxes, but just a flat piece of paper,

about two inches square, no slick surface, into which I can look and see a three-dimensional image

of the girl. I turn it over and sure enough, there's the back of her head. By angling it around I

can see the picture was shot in a basketball gym, using three cameras, and that the photographer

was trying to squat in one of the blind spots and not quite managing it -- I see one of his

sneakers, his checked pants, his red jacket, and just a little of his curly brown hair and

mustache. I'm sure I never met him.

Over the girl's right shoulder, with the paper almost perpendicular to my eye, I can see the other

kids waiting to be photographed.

I turn it back over and look at the girl. Long dark hair hangs limply, most of the way down her

back. Her chin is just a little prominent, though whether that's a feature she will keep when she

grows up, or a freak of being about eleven and very thin, isn't clear. Just a bare suggestion of

breasts shows through her thin pullover. She looks uncomfortable, like the gym was cold or perhaps

she just didn't want to be photographed. Maybe it's not a school photo but a shot for a refugee

i.d. or something.

I can't remember her at any other age. I don't know whether, when I woke up the time before, I was

looking for her because I could reasonably expect to find her, or because I was out of my head and

raving about things that had happened long ago.

More things are pressing into my memory, and for one moment I'm breathing hard, afraid of being

overwhelmed ... but the surging memories never quite break through to the surface and explain

themselves.

I turn to the battered old werp case and open it up. Inside, the werp looks like it's seen better

days; there's a prominent dent in the keyboard and the screen has two stains mat won't wipe off

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with my bathrobe sleeve.

The touch of my thumb on the security plate activates it. Must be mine. The screen clears. Words

swim up:

YOUR NAME IS JOSHUA ALI QUARE. HIT RETURN.

I do.

THIS IS YOUR WERP. MANY OF YOUR MEMORIES ARE IN HERE. PASSWORD CHECK: WHAT DID YOUR FATHER CALL

YOUR MOTHER THE VERY LAST TIME YOU SAW HIM?

The question startles me. I speak the answer aloud, "A Commie cunt." I reach to type it in but

apparently the werp has voice processing because it's already responding.

When did werps get voice processing? And when did werps come along, anyway? When I was younger

there were only laptops, and I sure couldn't afford one.

The screen scrolls up:

WELCOME TO 2109, JOSHUA, YOU MADE IT AGAIN. READ THIS NEXT PART CAREFULLY.

2109? But that would make me one hundred forty-one years old ...

Memories flood back, now, more than before, and I bend forward to read the document: YOU ARE ON

MARS. THE YEAR IS 2109 AND YOU NO LONGER WORK FOR THE RGB, MURPHY'S COMSAT AVENGERS, NIHONAMERICA,

OR THE ORGANIZATION. THERE IS NO MORE SOVIET UNION, NO MORE FREE SOVIET ASSOCIATION, NO MORE

EUROPEAN COMMONWEALTH, AND NO MORE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. EARTH IS COMPLETELY CONTROLLED BY

RESUNA. YOU ARE PHYSICALLY JUST OVER SIXTY YEARS OLD. YOU HAVE ONLY FRAGMENTARY MEMORIES OF YOUR

FORMER LIFE AS JAMES NORREN, NOR DO YOU RECALL MUCH OF YOUR FORMER LIVES AS JASON TESTOR, BRANDON

SMITH, ULYSSES GRANT, FRED ENGELS, EURIPIDES FREDERICKSON, ELISHA TESTOR, OR KINDNESS O'HART. A

NEW IDENTITY HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED FOR YOU AS "REAGAN FOSTER HINCKLEY," A JOKE WHICH YOU AND MAYBE

A DOZEN HISTORIANS WILL GET.

Below that: directions. On the morning of Thursday, June sixth, if I haven't reported in yet,

someone will come to see me and take me to Red Sands City, where I can get a hotel room, activate

a bank account, and get my new life underway.

June 6 is ten days away. Today's Memorial Day, I think, men laugh. Who would remember?

The werp says there should be food in the kitchen. I open the door. Fridge, stove, cabinets, sink.

Pressure suit on a rack. The airlock door has an elaborate warning sign about conserving air and

proper airlock procedure, so I guess whatever's outside isn't fit for breathing. I still don't

remember Mars having water, let alone a lake.

In the fridge I find a lot of packages with labels that don't match their small square shapes:

things like "rabbit," "peas," "onion soup," all of them in packages the size and shape of the

small package of Velveeta Individual Slices. I look around and see that the gadget that I had

thought was a microwave is a "Westinghouse Foodzup! Reconstitutor." Taking a wild guess, I toss a

square labelled "tomato soup" and another labelled "Four grilled cheese sandwiches" into it -- it

looks like a microwave inside, but who can tell? -- carefully putting "tomato soup" into a large

bowl first.

The readout on the reconstitutor says "select finished or prep for manual." I have no idea so I

select "finished" and push the button.

It hums for about two minutes, then chimes. I open the door. In the large bowl I had put the

square package of "tomato soup" in, there's a small, covered bowl, and it's full of hot tomato

soup. A stack of four grilled cheese sandwiches sits on a plate, though I had not put any plate in

there with that package. And there's no sign of the wrappers from the food packages.

I move the food to the table, sit down, eat. It's wonderful.

After the meal, I'm tired. I go back to bed. When I wake up again, it's dark, but I remember

everything from before. I check the clock on the werp and find that I am up at 5:00 A.M. local

time, or whatever time the werp was set to.

I've slept a long time. No hope of getting back to sleep. I turn on the lights -- strange to see

pools of yellow light on the Martian soil outside the windows -- and go into the kitchen.

Plenty of square packets labelled "coffee, one liter pot." A dozen labelled "eggs," "hash browns,"

"bacon," "toast." I put one of each into the reconstitutor, not putting a plate or bowl underneath

this time. I set it for "finished" and start it running. A coffee cup? A few in the back of one

cabinet, all white, small circle on each side of them, and fine print in the circle. I hold the

cup at almost arms' length to see the print clearly -- I wonder if I have any reading glasses

anywhere? And why I'm not surgically corrected?

The text reads: "The use of coffee is associated with bowel cancer, genetic damage, and several

disorders of the nervous system. If you are a proven frequent and/or irresponsible coffee user you

can be denied health benefits under the Uniform Care Act of 2094."

So some things have changed a lot, others have gotten more the same. I rinse out the cup. The

reconstitutor pings.

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I move the hot plate of breakfast and steaming pot of coffee to the small kitchen table, sit, and

eat. I have to work on gaining back some weight. Whatever's going on, you can't fault the chow.

After I've finished the solid food and poured the second cup of coffee, I get the werp from the

other room. Supposedly my history's in here; so far I have a list of seven names, besides my own,

apparently aliases I've used at one time or another. And I have my seven objects.

I get up and get the space allocation box, so it's sitting next to me as I begin to read at the

werp. I don't want to let the box get far from me, or the werp either.

When the sun comes up I am still reading and scanning. Tens of thousands of separate documents in

the werp. Doesn't look like I've been much of a diary keeper, more of a collector, just grabbing

up anything that seemed interesting. The werp camera seems to have been used mainly to take short

videos of friends. Mostly they just wave and say "Hi" without identifying themselves. Also

homemade porn -- several shots of women, mostly undressed, right after sex, looking bored. A

couple of them are saying things like, "That will cost extra." Several holograms of enormous,

sagging breasts, shot up close so that all I can see is the breast.

I find four more pictures of the little girl whose picture is in the box, one each at ages nine,

ten, thirteen, and eighteen. Her name was Alice.

The text documents don't reveal much. I wasn't much of a writer. When I do write it's mostly

things like shopping lists. From these I learn I like Iron City beer.

Every so often, I find my own voice, usually just audio, sometimes with the video focused on my

face, always talking urgently and urging me to remember, not to forget ... something or other.

I try identifying the dates on all the documents. Perhaps if I read them from earliest to latest,

I will learn something.

The one hundred and fourteen earliest ones all have the same date and time, Friday, October 8,

2021, 1745 GMT. One says "Guide note." I cue it up. It says all the other documents were copied

from a stack of loose paper, video tape, photos, and cassette tapes that "Brandon Smith" had been

carrying with him for a long time. I look about thirty in the note. I say I hope the

"Reconstruction-issue" werp will hold up. The werp I have is not nearly that old, I'm sure --

werps in those days did not have built-in cameras or holography. Or at least "Reconstruction-

issue" werps didn't.

I keep working at it, as the sun comes up over the Martian beach outside. I take a minute to get

up and stretch, look out the window at a bright point in the sky -- Deimos, probably. I can't see

it moving visibly. The small white sun climbs up out of the water toward the moon. It's a windy

day and the waves out on the -- lake? bay? sea? whatever -- are bouncing about crazily. I feel ill

looking at them.

Pull the curtains. Reconstitute another pot of coffee. Keep going. I have more than one version of

my early life. They can't all be true. But the different versions all seem to be supported by

fragments of my memory.

Taking a break from the early documents, wandering at random through all the others, I see a note,

dated 2093, called "Inconsistencies." I call it up and discover it's a short clip of myself --

looking not much younger than I look now, though it's twenty-six years in the past -- talking

earnestly into the camera, stopping every now and then for a pull on a beer. "Start with a list of

questions. Is the girl in the picture named Anastasia, Bambi, or Alice? Is she my daughter, a girl

I befriended, or perhaps my wife or girlfriend at a younger age? Could she have had more than one

identity and more than one role?

"Did I get the Boy Scout knife from the body of John Quids, as I seem to remember, or was it a

gift from someone? If a gift, who from? And how did it get rusted shut? I remember both finding it

after several years of not having it, and burying it in the ground once. Did I do any of that?

"I think I make up stories based on the few documents I have and the few memories that leak

through. Some of them are dreams I think. Then the stories end up in the document files looking

just like everything else. Wish I was better at keeping records. Even with stuff from within this

lifetime, I'm not even sure which files in here now are by me and which ones I edited when I moved

them to the new werp. I just don't know. Sorry."

My image clicks off. I sit, stare at the screen for a long time, get up, look out the window. Late

afternoon. Don't know any more than I did by mid-morning, just know it more ways.

At least I have some idea what's behind my being here. One of the earliest documents, if it's a

real one, says I come back into the world differently every time a "transit" happens. Maybe this

time the transit made me a better writer. I'm not sure, but I'm sitting here typing.

I wonder when and where I learned to type. I don't recall being able to when I left home. I

couldn't do shit when I left home, if you want to know the truth.

I want to know the truth.

I sit and type as the sun sets on the other side of the building. Now that the waves aren't so big

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I leave the curtains open.

The water never gets blue here on Mars -- except right at sunrise and sunset when the sky is

sometimes briefly deep blue and the water reflects it. I keep looking up at the window, away from

the werp screen, because I don't want to miss the moment when that happens.

I was born in 1968. Till past 2000, you could say practically everything about me by saying that

my mother was a black lawyer's daughter and my father was a white ex-con with a political history.

Grandpa got Daddy out of jail for the ACLU, and lived to regret it (I heard him say that himself).

Mama was an activist, passionate in her battle to overcome everything about the past, in her early

twenties in 1966 when they married. She was ten years younger than Daddy, and Daddy was the big,

strong, handsome, innocent man that had written two books in prison.

Except he wasn't innocent. He liked to rub Mama's nose in that. He had brains, looks, and a lot of

charm when he wanted to, but he was guilty as all hell of the rapes he'd been convicted of. He

hadn't been convicted by a proper procedure, was all. It was only that if he'd been innocent,

he'd've gone to jail anyway. Hence the "matter of principle" -- which is a "technicality" you

agree with, as Grandpa used to say -- that was known to lawyers as Quart v. Tennessee.

He was huge -- a tall man, with a deep chest and arms like iron. Gray-blond hair in tight curls.

Fine-boned face always red from the sun, from drinking, and probably from whatever he was doing to

his lungs with all the Camels he smoked, lighting each one off the previous, so there was always

one clenched between his bared, yellow teeth. From the time I was able to remember how, he had a

permanent squint, as if he always looked into the sun.

I remember his voice was soft, even, and polite around Mama's parents, and that whenever he got

onto a tear working on a book, he'd barricade himself into his little office and just type away

for hours. He never finished one after getting out of the pen, though. He claimed that without

being locked up he didn't have the incentive to revise.

My mother was light-skinned, anyway, and as a result I was one of those people of no definite race

that you see everywhere now. Call me ahead of my time. When Daddy would get drunk and mean, he'd

sometimes call me "that little half-nigger" in front of Mama, just to hurt her, which was why he

did most things as far as I could tell. I don't think I invented my memories of him hitting me, or

her; I don't think there's much exaggeration in my believing he raped her twice a week during all

the years they were married. Maybe it was different back before I could remember.

Mama stayed. If there were a God, he might know why. Maybe the shame of the mistake she'd made, a

bright, talented, beautiful woman giving herself to a big, vicious ape with a smooth line of talk?

It couldn't have been fear it would come out. It was out. I saw Grandma Couandeau bandaging Mama

up when I was seven, and I already knew that was nothing you wanted to ask about.

I was never close to Daddy's size. I had Grandpa Couandeau's build, slight and small. I hated

Daddy as much as I would ever hate anyone, and I fell asleep dreaming of beating him up and

throwing him out of the house. It never happened.

I was a third-generation Red Diaper baby. Andre Couandeau, my grandfather's father, had joined the

Party in the 1920s, and, at least according to family legend, died under a cop's nightstick during

the sit-down strike at Firestone ten years later. Mama, in her stroller, had attended Paul

Robeson's last concert in America, claimed she remembered the backs of the longshoremen and

truckers as they stood down the Legionaires "for free speech." She always told me, "You get free

speech when you get the power to stand up for yourselves. Till then all you have is tolerated

speech, Josh, no matter what they tell you in school."

We argued a lot about what I got taught in school, because I saw no sense in arguing with

teachers. I was perfectly willing to agree with Mama that it was all bourgeois lies, but I didn't

see any reason why I should have to correct it. Not when I could quietly drift along in the back

of the room, ignored by everyone, and keep my concentration on basic issues like saving up for a

car out of my job at McDonald's. It was okay with me that we went to CP stuff all the time, and

the demonstrations were kind of fun, but it was like being born a Witness or a Mormon -- you

weren't exactly like the people around you, but you weren't not like them, either. You just had a

slightly different set of adult friends and links to different families than other kids did.

When I was little, Mama's cell used to meet at the house, but that stopped pretty soon because

Daddy was not what you could call "reliable." I get the impression he was never invited to join

the Party. Anything that excluded him rankled him, but he mostly confined himself to claiming he

was going to turn Mama in (even though the Party had been legal for years) "for the reward." Then

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he'd laugh and say he was just kidding.

Now and then they'd ask him to talk to a meeting about his time in prison. He'd tell the same

stories, all from his first book, over and over.

He was also jealous, I think, of Mister Harris. I think of rum that way, even now, Mister Harris.

In Mama's and Grandpa's eyes, this was the most important person they knew. Mr. Harris "traveled,"

which meant he drew a stipend from the Party and went from cell to cell on regular visits. Kind of

a circuit preacher, kind of a beat cop.

Mama and Grandpa were both on the state Central Committee. Grandpa was known on sight to Gus Hall.

Mama had shared a hotel room once, at a conference, with Angela Davis, but somehow Mr. Harris was

more important. It took me a long time to figure out why.

I left home forever on my sixteenth birthday. Two of the earliest documents I've got -- both audio

recordings of me reciting as much as I could about my own past -- agree that it was my sixteenth

birthday.

I passed the driver's license exam at 3:50 P.M. that day -- the earliest moment after school it

could be managed. My score was perfect, which was no surprise since driver's ed and auto shop had

been my only "A" subjects. That meant I had to run to make McDonald's in time for my job, with so

little time that I couldn't even pass by the house, just a few blocks out of my way, where a

beautiful little silver RX-7 -- merely 120,000 miles and only six years old -- was parked, for

which the owner wanted just $1600.

The guy was holding it for me -- $2200 in my account, $1600 for the car, $45 to register it, $12

plate fee, first insurance payment $130 -- two days and that car was mine.

Like most kids I knew, I was working five hours a night, piling up cash so I could have things.

Might as well. They didn't teach shit in school. If you took General Math and General Science you

didn't need to learn anything after eighth grade to pass, and no one needed to stay up all night

studying to "express feelings" in English class or "give opinions" in American History. Half the

class never read the books and got B's, anyway.

I wasn't expecting anything real big for my birthday -- there never had been before. Turning

sixteen was about the best present I could have had, anyway.

I trotted home all the same. Mama had told me there'd be a cake and a gift or two. I did take the

time on the way home to swing by and make sure the RX-7 was still there.

Mama had made a cake, chocolate since that was my favorite -- something from a mix, she was a

lousy cook but could follow directions. There was a new shirt, wrapped, and I put that on.

Daddy had been drinking I guess. He usually had. I have no idea what started it. Like always, it

happened too fast.

I was still in the chair, but leaned back on the back legs, my not-quite-finished cake spilled

into my lap. His hand was on my shirt and he hit me again, several times, hard, beating my face so

that it went numb and soft, as he explained to me that I didn't fucking need a fucking car and it

was about fucking time for me to start fucking supporting the family. "Fuckin' kid thinks he's too

fucking good to be one of the family," he said, and threw me backwards. The chair flipped out from

under me and my tailbone hit a rung.

My head banged on the wall but I wasn't dazed or stupid enough to put my hands up. Once he started

one of these, trying to protect yourself just made it worse.

He grabbed me again, dragging me to my feet, tearing my shirt -- a new one, a gift I had just put

on (why is it I remember every button of a plain blue shirt so clearly?). His thumbs digging into

my armpits, he shook me back and forth and said, "We're going to fuckin' start chargin' you rent,

boy. It's a good thing you saved up for it"

He cuffed me once more across the back of the head, slapped my face once more and said, with the

exaggerated sarcasm of a mean drunk, "Oh, he's not happy. Oh, he's mad. Well, he needs to say

'Thank you, Daddy!' for putting a fuckin' roof over his head, that's what he needs. He's got no

fuckin' business being mad, does he. Say 'Thank you, Daddy!' "

I don't know if I was too dazed or too mad. I didn't speak.

He drove his knuckles into my face. "Say 'Thank you, Daddy.'"

I still said nothing. Too numb. Or couldn't think.

He started slapping my face, with his open hand, one blow after another. My left cheek took about

ten blows. It was bruised almost black for a week afterwards. Then he threw me on my back and

said, "Your rent's due tomorrow, boy. I'll let you know how much." He stood for a moment,

breathing hard, and then added, "Here's your cake," and threw the rest at me. Then he laughed a

stupid-sounding half-laugh as if he were about to decide whether or not to tell me it was all a

joke, or kill me.

I stayed still. After a few seconds his office door slammed. He shouted through the door that he

could never get any fucking work done, he fucking had to put up with a lazy free-loading half-

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nigger and a Commie cunt.

Mama stood by uselessly. Typical. Daddy was crazy, mean, and dangerous. But I hated Mama more. She

was useless.

I cleaned myself up, pulled on a sweatshirt, threw what remained of my new shirt in the trash. It

didn't seem worthwhile to do anything about the mess in the dining room.

All the clothes I wanted to keep went into two gym bags. I'd never read much and there weren't any

books I cared about, but I threw a bunch of tapes and the Walkman in, figuring it might help if I

got lonely. It wasn't cold out but I put on my leather jacket.

The passbook for my bank account was in my jeans pocket. Thank god there had never been an ATM

card, or he'd already have the cash. I figured the bank opened at 8:30 the next morning and hell

if I was going to let the old bastard bully Mama, the co-signer on my account, into getting the

money out for him. Probably he'd lost some cash gambling, or wanted to go on a spree with some of

his barfly friends, or maybe go hit the whorehouse a couple of times so he could come home and

tell Mama about it. Probably he hadn't been able to get the cash out of her because she didn't

have it. That would have been all he needed to set him off on this "paying rent" business.

When I got downstairs, I could hear him snoring -- he usually passed out in his office, ten

minutes after he would go in there, because before he started working he'd have a few off the

bottle in his desk.

Mama was trying to get the cake up off the rug by picking up the crumbs one at a time, too scared

to turn on the vacuum and wake him up. I didn't bother to say goodbye. She'd figure it out.

But as I opened the back door, I felt her hand in the middle of my back. "You should go to an

emergency room," she said. "I can give you some cash for that. What if you have a concussion?"

"I don't," I said, pulling away from her, but she caught my hand and pushed something between my

fingers. I looked down. A hundred dollar bill and a house key.

"You know what times he's not in. Come in and take food, clothes, anything you need," she said.

"And you know he sleeps real sound. Help yourself. You're entitled."

I nodded and went out the door. I kept the hundred and the key in my hand, inside my pocket, for

blocks, just holding them. I knew I would have to part with the hundred soon.

Years later I regretted not having kissed Mama goodbye that night. I guess maybe I figured I'd be

back.

The old bastard had locked me out a few times. Never for two nights running, fortunately. But I'd

gotten pretty good at knowing how to keep myself out of serious trouble for a night. I knew what

places in town would be open at 11 P.M., and would stay open.

So I headed straight to Gwenny's, a diner out toward the edge of town. My face was hurting with

every step, and I could feel it swelling. A couple teeth felt loose, but more like I just needed

to be careful than like I was going to lose them. My nose was bent and bruised, but probably not

broken. Years of drinking had sapped the force of those arms, so the muscles were still big, but

they were filled out mostly with lard. He was in pretty shitty shape, and the thought crossed my

mind, if I wanted to chance getting killed, maybe I could take him.

Not worth it. So far I didn't have any damage around the eyes, or probably even any broken bones.

It would cost something if I got hurt worse. And what would I want to fight him for anyway? The

right to leave?

My face pulsed with pain as I crossed the river. The bridge was long and not high, and when I was

younger I used to stand on it and look down at the trout behind the pillars. The moon was corning

up now, over the willows in their tangled masses, clinging to the sandbars downstream, and I

paused for a moment. No longer numb, my face ached pretty badly. I could feel tears and snot

streaking over my cheeks and lip, but it seemed like too much bother, just now, to wipe any of

that off.

My hand was still in my pocket, digging that old brass house key into my palm like I was trying to

drive it into the bone. It wasn't much, but she had defied him more, just now, than she ever had

before.

I knew I wouldn't use the key. Sure, I could get in and out and take stuff, but I didn't want

liquor. After smelling him all these years I figured I'd never touch it. Anything else I took

would just make Mama that much poorer.

The front of my knuckles was brushing something else. I let go of the key, gripped the hard lump I

had found, and pulled it out, careful not to lose the key or the hundred.

In the moonlight it shone like magic. The eagle was worn down, and the ring for clipping it to

your belt was gone. I opened the blades and checked; I had kept it sharp.

When I was eleven, every boy in my class became a Scout. Not me. That's not something a Red Diaper

does. I also couldn't hang out with the kids who were too cool for it. They were lumpen.

So Mama threw her fit, and I gave up on it, like I had on a dog, or a BB gun, or youth hockey.

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Then one afternoon, early in the spring, Daddy gave me a brand-new Boy Scout knife. Told me to

keep it in good shape and it would serve me well. It had never been out of my reach since.

I looked at it. He'd won it at cards or dice. Or maybe he'd been feeling too ill to get a pint,

he'd seen it in a pawnshop and been generous in the spontaneous, random way of a nasty drunk. I

thought about how a thousand times since I'd heard him tell the story of the knife to his friends,

and how they -- drunken pigs all -- had nodded for the thousandth time and agreed what a great guy

Daddy was.

It was the only proof I'd ever had that that man had given a shit whether I lived or died. Not

worth carrying the weight.

I was crying harder now -- maybe my face hurt more -- but I could see plenty well enough to hit

the river with that Scout knife. It made a low-pitched reverberating plonk, right where I knew

there was a deep hole.

The splash made a ring-ripple that drifted downstream maybe a hundred yards before it faded into

other disturbances on the water, and the moon wavered and flickered m fragments and bits all over

the silver surface. I shuddered and was glad to be wearing the jacket.

Not midnight yet, still my birthday.

I kicked the post a couple times, bounced back and forth. Maybe, once for a second, I thought

about flipping over the railing.

Sure. Give the old fuck twenty-two hundred. That'll show him.

I wiped my face on my coat sleeve, pulled out a handkerchief, cleaned up as well as I could

without a sink or mirror. I looked once more at the pool of black water where I had thrown the

knife, just off the nearest pillar and behind the boulder that always stuck out late in the

summer. I sort of thought a goodbye at it, and headed on over the bridge, walking fast to warm up.

Somehow, having done that, I felt lighter on my feet. I cradled the key in my fingers, squeezing

it hard until it was warm as my own blood.

There were three reasons I was headed for Gwenny's. One, it was open all night, and Gwenny, the

owner, generally took the night shift. I'd been in mere some nights when I was locked out,

drinking coffee and slowly eating chili, watching the big TV screen in the corner, and she'd been

friendly and concerned in a not-pushy way.

Two, she had furnished rooms for rent, or she had had them last week, anyway, and maybe I could

talk her into taking the hundred down and the rest in the morning. I had no idea what rent might

be but it would sure be less than Daddy would have taken.

The most important thing was that her place was close to the bank. Whether or not I got a place to

stay for the night, I needed to be there on the dot at eight-thirty.

Besides Gwenny, her cook Paula, and Verna, the older woman who waited tables, only three other

people were in Gwenny's: a couple who sat with their arms around each other looking like they were

trying to stay awake, and a guy who talked endlessly to them. That group was in a booth far over

to one side, out of sight of everyone else. The rest of the Formica tables and Naugahyde booths

waited, napkins, silverware, and cups laid out, for a crowd that there was no sign of. Probably it

would fill up more later that night.

"Jesus, Josh, how did you do that to yourself?" Gwenny asked.

"I didn't. My father did," I said, trying to sound tough and failing. Anyone could have heard the

tears in my throat.

"Don't look like nothing's broke," Verna said. "But you're gonna look like hell for a while."

"You going to press charges?" Paula asked. She was big on knowing the official way to do

everything. "What he did's illegal, you know. He can't be hitting you that way. You're his son."

I shrugged. "Mama would lie for him. He'd get acquitted. And they'd make me go back to live with

him. Do you still have furnished rooms, Gwenny?"

She looked at me closely then, a piercing stare that seemed to see farther into me than I had

known existed. "Yes," she said slowly, "I do. You know if you rent a room and then move back home

next week, the money's gone? And you're going to have to pay for the whole term of the rental

agreement, even if you don't stay that long?"

"Yeah, I know all that," I said. "It doesn't matter. I'm not going back there, ever. He'll kill me

if I stay there. How much is it?"

"My smallest one's eighty-five a month. If you and what's in those bags is all you're gonna have

in it, it might suit. You get two towels and two sets of sheets and things, and keeping them

clean's up to you -- laundry-mat's round the corner. One shelf in the common fridge, privileges to

use the stove, but you got to get your own pans and dishes. Usually I get some student at the

university who's really broke to take the deal."

"Well, I'm a student, I guess," I said, "though I'm not sure how safe it'll be for me to go to

school. I want that high school diploma for a job ... " The world suddenly seemed to reel, and I

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almost fell.

Gwenny caught me, in her strong arms -- she was taller than I was and muscular -- and said,

"You've just had a pretty awful shock. I think we better get you up to the room, get you settled

in, and then in honor of your being a new tenant and all, we might just find you a meal on the

house, or some coffee if you're not hungry."

I felt myself blushing all over; I hadn't meant to faint, and now I could feel tears burning down

over my cheeks. None of the women seemed to notice. Gwenny guided me back outside, up the exterior

steps, and then down the hall to my new home.

In a room about fifteen feet square she had a small bed, two end tables, an old kitchen table, two

chairs, and a wardrobe without a door. We got the business of money and keys taken care of, and

she told me not to worry about the security deposit. "I'm not worried, Josh, I mean, where would

you go?"

Five days later I stopped going to school because I got another job in addition to the one at

McDonald's. I was a mechanic's helper at a gas station; at least it meant I could work on cars.

Between the two jobs I could afford my car, insurance, and room, with a little extra left over.

Mostly I put that extra in my new, me-only bank account. If I wasn't exactly set for life, I had

the RX-7 to drive around in.

I kept the brass key Mama had given me in my pocket all the time. I was always pulling it out when

I meant to pull out my building key, car key, or room key -- but I didn't mind. At night, I put it

in a special place on the end table, so that if I woke up I could see the key from my bed, by the

light of the diner's sign.

I sit back and look at what I've written. I can't believe how long it took, and it all looks

stupid and wrong. I know what story I meant to tell, but all the first paragraph says is "Mama was

black, Daddy was white, and he used to hit us both a lot. So I left when I turned sixteen and he

said I had to pay rent. I stayed with a woman named Gwenny." There's too much about fixing up the

RX-7, and a list of the kinds of bowties Grandpa Couandeau used to wear, and like that. I set down

all these details but it doesn't make a story.

And there's just two and a half pages and most of what I remember isn't there. Maybe I write more,

this time around, but I sure don't write any better.

I stretch, yawn, feel the way my shoulders cramp. God, I didn't get down a thing about Harris. And

I don't know how much of this I'm making up. I suppose the thing to do is to put today's date on

what I just finished writing, so I do that. Now at least I'll know I wrote it long after the fact -

- god, more than a century -- and that it's a mix of things I remember, things I think I remember,

stuff I figured out from older documents, and god knows what-all.

Maybe tomorrow I'll just talk into the machine. Meanwhile I'm tired and I've had too much coffee.

I get up and pace around, wondering if there's any equivalent of TV. If they've got flashchannel

or something somewhere, maybe, then I could get caught up on what's going on.

It's also high time for a shower. At least the water seems to be on its first trip through. I use

the bathrobe as my towel and spread it out so that it'll dry.

If I were at normal weight the clothes would probably fit pretty well. As it is they hang on me in

a loose, baggy way that reminds me of the "gangsta" clothes a lot of kids my age-wore, back in the

last part of the twentieth century. That makes me laugh, looking at this old man in too-big shirt

and sagging pants in the mirror.

Still much too awake and wondering when I'll feel like sleeping, I put the makings of another big

meal into the reconstitutor, and then put some more effort into looking for a television, a

holobox, or even just a flashchannel reader. Finally I have a vague memory that things aren't

separate anymore, and I sit back down at the werp and play around for a minute on the menus.

Sure enough, the werp's also the receiver. I turn it to the "News and Views Basic" channel, since

that has no surcharge and I'm not sure who is picking up the bills on any of this, or how much

money I have, if any. Then I set the werp a little distance away from me. One thing TV had that

these don't, you could take up a whole room with a TV so nobody had to talk and it didn't feel

empty. This way leaves you sitting in a lonely little spot, just you and the werp screen a couple

of feet apart with the rest of the room empty. Not to mention I have already looked at the werp

all day.

The reconstitutor rings, and I get out the meal -- goat meatloaf, potatoes, asparagus, beets.

Probably healthy as all shit but what do I know? I remember Woody Allen had a movie, a real old

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one I saw once. A health nut woke up in the future and it turned out all the things like hot

fudge, steak, and cigars were what was really good for you.

No hot fudge or steak among the stacked meals in the fridge. No beef at all, in fact. Are cows

extinct or am I Hindu?

I dim the room lights and power up the werp. It's almost like TV. Sort of comforting, but I wish

the screen were bigger so I could put it farther away.

Well, one thing hasn't changed: whenever you tune in to a news channel the first thing you get is

weather from someplace nowhere near you. In this case it's a weather report for North America on

Earth. There are no borders. It sounds like whatever runs the Earth is called Resuna. At first I

think Resuna is the name of the government, then that maybe everyone on Earth is named Resuna.

When they stop talking about it I'm more confused than when they started. A lot of what the voices

are talking about is storms blowing in off "Hudson Glacier" menacing the "Floridas." That makes me

take a second glance, and now I see that there's a splash of big islands where the peninsula used

to be. To judge from the square shape of some of them, they're probably doing something like the

old Dutch dike-and-polder system to get the land rebuilt, and it looks like it must have been

going on for a while.

Now that I am looking for changes in the land, I see that the Great Lakes drain through the Ohio

and the Hudson; the big white blob at the end of the St. Lawrence must be ice? Pretty clearly Lake

Ontario has expanded enough so that Oneida Lake is just a bay, and Chatauqua Lake has been gobbled

in the same way by Erie. The main drains must be through the Mohawk and the Beaver.

I wonder when I got to know that area so well, and I have a sudden flash of tents pitched in the

snow, of men on skis with rifles. Murphy's Comsat Avengers, that's who I was with. I was in that

outfit with Sadi.

I noticed, when I was first browsing through and looking at all the pictures, that there were a

few of me from when I was Euri Frederickson, around 2060-something. I call them up now. The

pictures show me grizzled, middle-aged, on skis, wearing a pale blue uniform under an open white

parka, rifle in hand.

They switch to a weather report for South America. I don't remember anything about the geography

there except that I am pretty sure that the passage between South America and Antarctica wasn't

ice-covered when I was growing up, and I don't think there used to be big glaciers in the middle

of the continent.

A little box pops up in one corner to say "Option Point" and I reach out and push a key

combination on the keyboard before I can think about what the box means or what I might be doing.

I sit back, take a big bite of meatloaf, and wonder what my fingers remembered that I didn't.

The screen clears and there's an anchorman sitting there, saying "Hello, Mars. Here's the quick

break -- "

What follows is much like any smalltown covers-the-county FM station, back in the 1980s. A fire in

Red Sands City, inside the main habitat. They had to vent some atmosphere and re-pump to pressure.

Olympia reports a rash of petty theft. The Planning Council of Marinerburg announced yesterday

that the sea level had risen another 120 cm in the last year and that within ten years the water

should be up to the piers. Today local elections are being contested in several places, and the

current General Coordinator of Mars is in minor political trouble over some complex financial

dealings years back, when she had headed up the Port Authority for Deimos.

I can't tell how long people have been living here, but at least I get some idea where the water

and air are coming from. They broadcast a list of times and targets for the next day -- scheduled

impacts for about a hundred chunks of comets and carbonaceous chondrites.

I have to spend a long minute thinking how I knew what a carbonaceous chondrite is. Despite my

best efforts I still have no idea where that knowledge had entered my brain from.

But I do know: it's an asteroid made up of a lot of rocky and tarry stuff, along with the usual

bits of iron. They are being used as feedstocks for life on Mars. The Development Corporation's

crashing fifty-metric-ton chunks of them, dozens at a time, into the South Pole, to make feeding

grounds for the oxyliberators. It also releases vast quantities of planet-warming CO2 and water.

Later in the Martian year, at the equinox, they will switch to the North Pole -- they always

bombard the pole that's having winter, forcing much of the carbon dioxide and water back into the

atmosphere.

I hoped the big meal and a little time watching the news would knock me out, but it hasn't helped.

I'm still wide awake, trying to piece together memories, documents, memories of documents, and

documents of memories ... "History is a dull party at which we struggle to fall asleep," I say,

out loud, quoting Sadi, then realize I've thought about him ten times, and I don't know -- I ask

the werp. "Who's Sadi?"

"Reference document list appears offscreen, want it brought up to front?" the werp asks, in my

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John Barnes - Kaleidoscope Century

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