Страница 17 из 96
She looked slowly around. She saw … a river, little no‑account buildings, strange structures like long‑legged birds with sails that turned in the wind, a few large terracotta and yellow buildings and one blue dome, irregular buildings, none bigger than a supermarket of her day, an ordinary supermarket in any shopping plaza. The bird objects were the tallest things around and they were scarcely higher than some of the pine trees she could see. A few lumpy free‑form structures overrun with green vines. No skyscrapers, no spaceports, no traffic jam in the sky. “You sure we went in the right direction? Into the future?”
“This is my time, yes! Fasure, look how pretty it is!”
“You live in a village, you said. Way out in the sticks. Like if we went to a city, it’d be … more modern?”
“We don’t have bigcities–they didn’t work. You seem disappointed, Co
“It’s not like I imagined.” Most buildings were small and randomly scattered among trees and shrubbery and gardens, put together of scavenged old wood, old bricks and stones and cement blocks. Many were wildly decorated and overgrown with vines. She saw bicycles and people on foot. Clothes were hanging on lines near a long building–shirts flapping on wash lines! In the distance beyond a blue dome cows were grazing, ordinary black‑and‑white and brown‑and‑white cows chewing ordinary grass past a stone fence. Intensive plots of vegetables began between the huts and stretched into the distance. On a raised bed nearby a dark‑ski
“Got through, uh?” he said to Luciente.
Luciente asked, “Can you see the person from the past?”
“Sure. Had my vision readjusted last month.”
“Zo!” Luciente turned, hopping with excitement. “Good we were cautious in your time. I may be visible there too–that could bring danger!”
“Why isn’t it dangerous for me to be seen here?”
“Everybody knows why you’re here.”
“Everybody except me.” The roofs of the huts–that’s all she could call them–were strange. “What’s on top? Some kind of skylights?”
“Rainwater‑holding and solar energy. Our housing is above ground because of seepage–water table’s close to the surface. We’re almost wetland but not quite, so it’s all right to build here. I’ll show you other villages, different … . I guess, compared to your time, there’s less to see and hear. That time I came down on the streets of Manhattan, I’d thought I’d go deaf! … In a way we could half envy you, such fat, wasteful, thing‑filled times!”
“They aren’t so fat for me.”
“Are you what would be called poor?”
Co
Luciente put an arm around her waist and walked her gently along. A gaudy chicken strutted across the path, followed by another. The path was made of stone fitted against stone in a pattern of subdued natural color. Along it mustard‑yellow flowers were in bloom. Low‑growing tulips were scattered like bright stars on the ground.
She caught the whiff for a moment before she saw them. “Goats! Jesъs y Marнa, this place is like my Tнo Manuel’s in Texas. A bunch of wetback refugees! Goats, chickens ru
“But we like it this way! Oh, Co
“So you have some machines? It isn’t religious or anything?”
“Fasure we have machines.” Luciente tapped her ke
“Own what?”
“Ownfed. Self‑sufficient as possible in proteins.” Luciente stopped short and clapped both hands firmly on Co
“Forward, into the past? Okay, it’s better to live in a green meadow than on 111th Street. But all that striving and struggling to end up in the same old bind. Stuck back home on the farm. Peons again! Back on the same old dungheap with ten chickens and a goat. That’s where my grandparents scratched out a dirt‑poor life! It depresses me.”
“Co
“I’m not going to meet a bunch of strangers in this filthy bughouse dress. I’m not! Besides, I’m not hungry. Thorazine kills my appetite.”
“We can work on that later. We may be able to teach you to control the effects of the drug … . But about the clothing–come, we’ll get you some and a jacket. I’m sensitive as rock salt, as Bee and Jackrabbit both tell me. So come to my house a minute and we’ll find something.” Luciente guided her through a maze of paths and huts and small gardens where people who must be women because they carried babies on their backs were planting seeds. They hurried past a series of covered fish ponds and greenhouses, to a hut near the river where domestic and wild ducks mingled, feeding among the waterweeds. They had come nearer the hill of spidery objects, which had to be windmills turning. Again she remembered windmills on the dry plains, on ranches without electricity. The hut was built of old cement blocks eroded in soft contours and overrun with a large climbing rose just opening red sprays of crinkled leaflets. “I bred that Wait till you see it bloom! Called Diana. Big sturdy white with dark red markings and an intense musk fragrance, subzero hardy. It’s popular up in Maine and New Hampshire cause it’s so hardy for a climber. I bred back into Rugosa using Molly Maguire stock … . Oops! I barge on. Come!”
The door was unlocked and in fact had only a catch on the inside. Windows on two sides lit the room. The cherry and pine furniture was sturdy: a big desk and a big worktable and a big bed, over which a woolen coverlet was casually pulled, hanging down at a corner. The floor was wooden and on it two bright woven rugs lay with a pattern of faces peering like tropical fruit out of foliage. Drawings and kids’ paintings were tacked up here and there, as were graphs and charts, stuck on the wall somehow. Obviously Luciente liked red and gold and rich brown.
“Three of you live here?”
“Three? No. this is my space.”
“I thought you lived with two men. The Bee and Jackrabbit you’re always talking about.”
“We’re sweet friends. Some of us use the term ‘core’ for those we’re closest to. Others think that distinction is bad. We debate. Myself, I use core, cause I think it means something real. Bee, Jackrabbit, Otter are my core–”