A Century of Progress by Fred Saberhagen Read Free Book Online Page A

reaction understood, his doubts accepted.
    “Andy, tell me. For you, how long has it been since we—were in that plane together?”
    “Oh. T’me it was only three weeks ago. Three weeks today. Ginny Butler and them caught me outta the air, Ah dunno exactly how. Ah don’t remember that. I do remember bein’ in the Fort, and knowin’ that Ah was hit, real bad. They say you put me out the waist.”
    Norlund spoke slowly and softly. “I was afraid that if I waited any longer I couldn’t get you and myself out, both. I thought any minute we’d blow up or go into a spin. I figured the krauts took care of wounded prisoners, Americans and limeys anyway, so . . . As it turned out, we made it home. I had a shell fragment in my leg, too. Yeah, I put your hand on the D-ring and put you out.”
    Andy nodded solemnly. “And then,” he said, exhaling smoke, “Ah woke up in a kind of hospital these people got. It ain’t here, in Eighty-four. Ah think it’s somewhere in the future but they won’t say where. You been there?”
    “No.”
    “It’s quite a place. All these hah walls like a prison but . . . Anyway they been breakin’ it all to me gradually these three weeks. About time travel and how Ah’m never gonna be able to go home and all. They fuckin’ tell me that Ah . . . ‘scuse me . . .” Suddenly Andy looked flustered, almost as if he were home on leave and had forgotten and used foul language in his mother’s hearing.
    Norlund told him: “You can swear if you want. We both of us used to swear a lot.” My God, he thought to himself, did I look as young then, in Forty-three, as this kid does? Of course I did, I must have. “I guess I kind of got out of the habit,” he concluded, “when I was raising a kid myself.”
    “Ginny an’ them have kinda started hinting that Ah oughta get outta the habit too. That, and smokin’ butts.” Andy looked at his cigarette, then back at Norlund. Still marveling, he shook his head and blurted: “You sure do sound like him.” Confusion. “Ah mean . . .”
    “I am him,” said Norlund. “As far as I know,” he added in deference to the lately re-demonstrated insanity of the world. “What’re they going to do with you now? They say you can’t go home?”
    “Too many problems, with timelines and all, if they tried to send me. They tell me Ah’ll have me a choice of jobs, once Ah get through orientation. Ah’m in a different kinda fix from you, see. You’ll work a little while and then go home, that’s how they’ve told me it is. Ah dunno what kinda job Ah’ll have, but it’s better’n bein’ dead. Tell me, did Graham ever get outta the tail?”
    “Ah.” It had been years, or maybe decades, since Norlund had thought about Graham. “Yeah, that was after you got hit. He did come forward from the tail, I remember, because both his guns back there were out. We were all shot to hell. Damned old Forts. They sure could take it.”
    The years were blowing away like clouds; for a moment everything was clear. “Graham came forward and took your gun. Another FW made a pass at us . . . they had everything up after us that day, one-oh-nines, one-nineties, everything. I was hit in the leg myself.” The immediacy of it all faded. “They sent me home, and I became a gunnery instructor.”
    “What about Graham?”
    “Oh yeah. I think he flew two more missions after that, and his tour was up. Never got a scratch, as far as I know. I lost track of him a long time ago.”
    Andy was once more looking at Norlund oddly—or perhaps he had never stopped looking at him that way. “For me all that was just three weeks ago.”
    Norlund couldn’t seem to find a good answer to that. Andy ground out his butt in the ashtray and lit another. Norlund felt no desire at all to smoke again. Finally he asked: “How’s the arm?”
    Andy brought it slowly out of the sling, moving it mostly under its own power. Norlund could see that the fingers moved a little. “It’s okay. It’s