Rachel said. “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody’s feelings.”
Blue eyes as large as ponds gazed deep into Rachel’s soul for a long moment. Then the sheepdog head bobbed in acknowledgement and the giant gray legs carried the creature back into the jungle.
Rachel shuddered. “This is going to sound strange, Katie, but Karolla reminds me of my grandfather.”
“Your grandpa?”
“Yes. My zayde was a rabbi in a little shtetl—a Jewish village out in the forest called Bilgoray, very backward. He was always going on about loshon hora, the need to avoid malicious gossip and hurting people’s feelings. My father couldn’t get away from him and his scolding fast enough. He ran away to the city and got into the university by sheer stubbornness, even though they didn’t want him because he was a Jew.”
Katie scratched her head. “So the Venusians are, like, Jews? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. No offense.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t. And that’s not what I wrote, or meant to write. But somehow my ideas, my background, must have influenced things more than I realized. Also with Anya! I didn’t think the Martian language was Polish. That’s just crazy!”
“I found a book about Polish Jews in the library once. Didn’t y’all speak a language called Yiddish?” Katie asked.
Rachel shook her head. “I understand Yiddish thanks to my grandfather, but we don’t speak it at home. My parents are embarrassed by it. They speak Polish and German to me, and now Hebrew since they got all enthusiastic about Zionism. We were all going to move to Palestine before the war started, but we couldn’t get visas.” She stopped walking and rubbed her eyes.
Katie put a hand on her shoulder. “I understand. My family’s like yours in some ways. Leastaways, my grandpa was like your dad. He ran away to the big city to get away from his daddy, who was a Baptist preacher. Went to college, too, graduated with honors and was all set to become a computer programmer.”
“What’s that?”
“Ladies, we need to keep moving!” Jack called. “We got another hour to go till we get to our campsite.”
Katie explained what a computer programmer was as they slogged along. The ground turned marshy, and their feet sank with every step. Rachel’s shoes had big holes, and wet and muddy feet just added to her misery. But she was transfixed by Katie’s story. It sounded a little like the worlds the pulps described. “So how come your grandpa didn’t get to become a computer programmer?”
“He did, for a while. But then New York got atom-bombed by the terrorists, and the Internet crashed, and the old United States broke up, and there wasn’t much call in Texas for computer programmers, what with everyone scrambling to find enough to eat. So he had to go crawling back to his daddy, who had a little farm up in the Panhandle. Grandpa died when I was a little girl, and all I remember of him is an old guy with a sad face.”
Rachel didn’t understand half Katie’s words, but she knew trouble when she heard about it. Before Katie got upset, she changed the subject. “Did you ever see any of his computers?”
“Sure I did. We actually have his favorite one. But we don’t—we didn’t have a generator, so the only way to get it to work was to take it over to the Montoyas’. They had beautiful solar panels on their roof, before a big hailstorm wrecked them when I was ten.”
“Oh. And what did the computers do? Did they walk and talk? Serve you food, help out with the chores?”
Katie laughed. “No, like I said, they were computers, not robots. But what they could do was a lot more exciting than carrying water and feeding the pigs! They could send messages to other computers, all over the world! They’d patched up a partial Internet by then, and I got to email with a guy in England, and a lady in India!” Her mouth drooped. “But it didn’t last long. There was that hailstorm, like I said. And then the Dixies started coming around hassling people, and nobody had time to worry about electricity and all that. Joe Montoya, he tried raise a militia, but my daddy said he could defend our homestead just fine himself.”
Katie’s lower lip trembled, so Rachel asked her where she’d found her story about Jack Flash. Katie explained about the book, and the ruined library on the road to Abilene.
“But why was there a library in the middle of nowhere?”
“It wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, not when they built it. There was a whole town around it, but all the people left during the Troubles. Me and some of the other kids liked to go exploring in the abandoned houses, though of course we weren’t supposed to, which just made it more exciting. I was the only one who cared about the library. Well, me and this no-good character called Johnny Marshall. It was in a glass and steel building, the kind of thing they used to build back in the twentieth century.”
“Katie, what year was it, where you lived?” Rachel asked.
“Hmm? Oh, 2140. Though the Mormons get pretty mad if you call it that. According to them, it’s the year 297, but we don’t use the Deseret calendar in Texas.”
“What are you talkin’ about, little lady?” Jack called back, making both girls jump. “2140 was more than thirty years ago.”
“What? No it wasn’t!” Katie said.
Rachel elbowed her and whispered, “Don’t argue with him. He’ll get suspicious. Besides, by me it’s 1942! Who says your time is any more accurate in this world? Remember Einstein!”
Katie scowled, thinking it over, then nodded slowly and said loud enough for Jack to hear, “Well, I guess maybe I’ve been gone a long time.”
“I guess maybe you have!” Jack replied.
After a moment Katie continued, a little more quietly:
“All the windows in that library broke long ago, of course. A lot of those books were nothin’ more than pulp—real pulp, not what they used to call science fiction magazines. The stink of all that mildew would’ve driven everyone away if nothin’ else did.”
“So what drew you?”
Katie shrugged. “I’m not really sure. Mom and Dad taught me to read and write, and to do basic sums so I won’t get cheated by some scumball grain buyer, but that was about it. And I didn’t know my grandpa long enough for him to get me excited about science. Maybe he had some kind of indirect influence on me, from Dad talking about him. Mainly though, I was just bored and keen for anything that might get me the heck out of the Panhandle, though there ain’t, or there weren’t, anything like the kind of opportunities a girl like me could have had fifty years ago.” She spoke without bitterness: these were the facts of her life, like dust-storms and hostile Dixies.
“So anyways, there were a whole bunch of sci-fi books that hadn’t been damaged too bad, because they were buried under a lot of other ruined books. And Lost Classics of Science Fiction was my favorite.” Katie’s dreamy expression faded for a moment, and her lips thinned. “I almost had to fight Johnny Marshall for it. I could hardly believe it—that that snake took enough time off from beating up little kids and stealing people’s stuff when they weren’t looking to learn to read. But it seemed like he wanted that book as bad as I did. Luckily we found two copies.”
“‘Lost Classics,’ huh?” Rachel mused. “It’s nice to be classic, but not to be lost.”
“A-men to that, little lady.” Jack popped out from behind a tree so abruptly both girls jumped. Jack grinned. “Just came to tell you gals, we’re done walking for the day. Past those trees over there is a nice dry clearing where I’ve got a permanent base camp. We’re staying there for the night.”
“Sounds good to me,” Katie said. “Got any grub, mister? I’m awful hungry.”
“Me too,” Rachel admitted.
“Course I do! I hope you two are really, really hungry, ’cause while you were jabbering