Word Puppets Read online

  And right then, Wilbur stepped out of the open door of the hangar. “This has gone on long enough. Madam, you should be ashamed of yourself, filling this boy’s head with nonsense in order to get him to help in your espionage.” He held out his hand to Homer. “Give me the camera, son.”

  “Espionage?” Elois lifted her cane so it served as a barrier between the man and Homer. “I don’t rightly know what you’re talking about, but the opera glasses are mine and I’ll thank you to leave them be.”

  “I overheard everything and though your story is designed to play upon the fancies of a boy, I could hear the elements of truth.” He reached over the cane and snatched the opera glasses from Homer’s hand.

  “Hey!” Homer pushed Elois’s cane out of the way and stepped toward the man. “Give that back.”

  “We’ve been at pains to keep our invention out of the wrong hands.” He brushed past both of them and hurried across the field, waving the opera glasses.

  Homer ran after him and caught his coat. “Please, Mr. Wright. I was just funning with her. I didn’t think anyone would take me seriously.”

  Elois hurried after them, focused more on the uneven ground than the man in front of her.

  Wilbur shrugged off Homer’s hand and shook his head. “We didn’t advertise this test flight, so how do you suppose that she knew to come out here today, except through spying.”

  Elois laughed to hide her discomfiture. This was the sort of thing that it would have been nice for the Time Travel Society to let her know. “You can’t think that folks aren’t talking about this in town, can you?”

  “The folks in town aren’t out here snooping around. Who looks at things up close with opera glasses?” Wilbur lifted the opera glasses and mimed snooping.

  The moment he looked through the opera glasses he cursed and jerked his head away from the eye piece. Slowly he put it back to his eyes. His face paled. Wilbur wiped his mouth, lowering the opera glasses to stare at Elois. “Who do you work for?”

  “I’m just a body that’s interested in seeing you fly.” She could barely breathe for fear of the moment. “You’re making history here.”

  “History.” He snorted. “You were talking to the boy about time travel.”

  Before Elois could think of a clean answer, Homer said, “She disappeared earlier. Utterly vanished. I . . . I think she’s telling the truth.”

  “And if she is?” Wilbur turned the glasses over in his hands. “I look at this and all I can see are the number of inventions that stand between me and the ability to do . . . If I weren’t holding it, I should think it impossible.”

  Elois could not think of a thing to say to the man. He looked as if his faith had been as profoundly shaken as a small boy discovering the truth about Santa Claus. Elois shook her head. “All I want is to watch you fly; once I’ve done that I’ll be gone and you won’t have to worry about the pictures I took.”

  “This is why you were so certain the Flyer will work today, isn’t it?” There was no wonder his voice, only resignation.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what you told the boy, about Orville rebuilding the plane. True? So, we’ll be enough of a success that someone builds a museum and sends a time traveler back to visit. That’s something, even if I’m not around to see it.”

  Startled, Elois replayed the things she had told Homer. “How do you reckon that?”

  “Because everything you said was about my brother. At some point, I’ll stop registering on the pages of history.” He twisted the glasses in his hands. “Is the future fixed?”

  Elois hesitated. “The Good Book promises us free will.”

  “You have not answered my question.” He took his bowler off and wiped a sheen of sweat from his scalp before settling it back in place.

  When he looked back at her with eyes as blue as a frozen river, she could see the boy she’d read about. Self-taught and brilliant, he had been described as having a voracious mind. Everything she said would go in and fill his mind with ideas.

  “Y’all understand that I’m a traveler and don’t really understand the science of it, right? If you think about time like a stalk of broccoli, what Mr. Barnes’s machine does is it takes a slice of the broccoli and shuffles it to a different point in the stalk. My past is one big stalk. My future is made up of florets. So the only places I can travel back to are the ones that lead to the future I live in. If I tried to go forward, they tell me that the future will be different every time. Which I reckon means that you can do things different and wind up in a different stalk of the broccoli, but I’ll only ever see the pieces of broccoli that lead to my present.” She shook her head. “If that makes a mite of sense to you, then I’ll be impressed.”

  “It makes sense enough.” Wilbur lifted the glasses to his eyes again and with them masked said, “I’ll thank you not to intimate at this to my brother.”

  “Of course not.” Elois shuddered.

  “Very good.” Wilbur spun on his heel. “Well, find a spot to watch.”

  “But Miss Jackson’s opera glasses . . . ” Homer trotted after him.

  “I’ll give them back after I’ve flown.” Wilbur Wright grinned. “If your history is going to lose track of me, then perhaps the future needs to be reminded.”

  On the far side of the hangar, the other men were still celebrating the flight. Eighteen minutes and forty-two seconds precisely. She’d spent time recording their joy but every time Wilbur looked at her, Elois got the shivers and finally given up to wait out her remaining time out of sight. She leaned against the side of the hangar, studying her watch. Time was almost up.

  At a run, Homer rounded the corner of the hangar with the opera glasses in his hands. He relaxed visibly at the sight of her. “I was scared you’d be gone already.”

  She held the watch up. “Two minutes.”

  “He didn’t want to come. Said that the doubt would be better than knowing for certain.” Homer chewed his lip and handed her the opera glasses. “What happens to him, Miss Jackson?”

  Elois sighed and remembered all the things she’d read about Wilbur Wright before coming here. “He dies of typhoid when he’s forty-seven. Wish I’d not let on that I was from the future.”

  Homer shook his head. “I’m glad you told me. I’ll—”

  And he was gone.

  The tall grass of Huffman Prairie was replaced by a crisply mown lawn of chemical green. Where the weathered hangar had been stood a bright, white replica. Neither the hangar nor the lawn seemed as real as the past. Elois sighed. The air burned her nostrils, smelling of carbon and rubber. The homing beacon in her handbag ought to bring them round to her soon enough.

  She leaned back against the barn to wait. A paper rustled behind her. She pulled away, afraid that she’d see a big ole “wet paint” sign but it was just an envelope.

  An envelope with her name on it.

  She spun around as quick as she could but there wasn’t a soul in sight. Breath fighting with her corset, Elois pulled the envelope off the wall. She opened it carefully and found a single sheet of paper. A shaky hand covered the surface.

  Dear Elois,

  You will have just returned from your first time travel mission and meeting me, so this offers the first opportunity to introduce myself to you in your present. I wish I could be there myself, but that would mean living for another forty years, which task I fear would require Olympian blood. You have been such a friend to me and my family and so I wanted you to know two things.

  1. Telling me the truth was the best thing you could have done for me. Thank you.

  2. We are (or will be by the time you read this) major share-holders in the Time Travel Society. It ensures that your future trips to my past are without incident, and also will let my children know precisely when your first trip takes place in your present. I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of asking my children to purchase shares for you as well. I wish we could have presented them to you sooner.

  Be well, m
y friend. And happy travels.

  Sincerely yours,

  Homer Van Loon

  At the bottom of the sheet was a bank account number and then a list of addresses and phone numbers arranged in order of date.

  Her eyes misted over at the gift he’d given her—not the account, but the knowledge that she had not harmed him by telling the truth.

  In the parking lot, the Time Travel Society’s minivan pulled in, barely stopping before Mr. Barnes and the rest of the team jumped out. “How was the trip?” he shouted across the field, jogging toward her.

  Elois grinned and held out the opera glasses. “I think you’ll like the footage I got for you.”

  “May I?” He stopped in front of her as long and lanky as she imagined Homer being when he was grown up.

  “Of course. That’s why you sent me, isn’t it?”

  He took the opera glasses from her and rewound. Holding it to his eyes as the rest of the team gathered around, Mr. Barnes became utterly still. “Miss Jackson . . . Miss Jackson, how did you get the camera on the plane?”

  Dr. Connelly gasped. “On the Wright Flyer?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I watched from the ground with the hat-cam while Wilbur was flying. I’m real curious to hear the audio that goes with that. We could hear him whooping from the ground.”

  “But how did you . . . ” Dr. Connelly shook her head.

  “I told him the truth.” Elois sighed, remembering the naked look on his face at the moment when he believed her. “He took the camera because he understood the historical context.”

  Evil Robot Monkey

  Sliding his hands over the clay, Sly relished the moisture oozing around his fingers. The clay matted down the hair on the back of his hands making them look almost human. He turned the potter’s wheel with his prehensile feet as he shaped the vase. Pinching the clay between his fingers he lifted the wall of the vase, spinning it higher.

  Someone banged on the window of his pen. Sly jumped and then screamed as the vase collapsed under its own weight. He spun and hurled it at the picture window like feces. The clay spattered against the Plexiglas, sliding down the window.

  In the courtyard beyond the glass, a group of school kids leapt back, laughing. One of them swung his arms aping Sly crudely. Sly bared his teeth, knowing these people would take it as a grin, but he meant it as a threat. Swinging down from his stool, he crossed his room in three long strides and pressed his dirty hand against the window. Still grinning, he wrote SSA. Outside, the letters would be reversed.

  The student’s teacher flushed as red as a female in heat and called the children away from the window. She looked back once as she led them out of the courtyard, so Sly grabbed himself and showed her what he would do if she came into his pen.

  Her naked face turned brighter red and she hurried away. When they were gone, Sly rested his head against the glass. The metal in his skull thunked against the window. It wouldn’t be long now, before a handler came to talk to him.

  Damn.

  He just wanted to make pottery. He loped back to the wheel and sat down again with his back to the window. Kicking the wheel into movement, Sly dropped a new ball of clay in the center and tried to lose himself.

  In the corner of his vision, the door to his room snicked open. Sly let the wheel spin to a halt, crumpling the latest vase.

  Vern poked his head through. He signed, “You okay?”

  Sly shook his head emphatically and pointed at the window.

  “Sorry.” Vern’s hands danced. “We should have warned you that they were coming.”

  “You should have told them that I was not an animal.”

  Vern looked down in submission. “I did. They’re kids.”

  “And I’m a chimp. I know.” Sly buried his fingers in the clay to silence his thoughts.

  “It was Delilah. She thought you wouldn’t mind because the other chimps didn’t.”

  Sly scowled and yanked his hands free. “I’m not like the other chimps.” He pointed to the implant in his head. “Maybe Delilah should have one of these. Seems like she needs help thinking.”

  “I’m sorry.” Vern knelt in front of Sly, closer than anyone else would come when he wasn’t sedated. It would be so easy to reach out and snap his neck. “It was a lousy thing to do.”

  Sly pushed the clay around on the wheel. Vern was better than the others. He seemed to understand the hellish limbo where Sly lived—too smart to be with other chimps, but too much of an animal to be with humans. Vern was the one who had brought Sly the potter’s wheel which, by the Earth and Trees, Sly loved. Sly looked up and raised his eyebrows. “So what did they think of my show?”

  Vern covered his mouth, masking his smile. The man had manners. “The teacher was upset about the ‘evil robot monkey.’ ”

  Sly threw his head back and hooted. Served her right.

  “But Delilah thinks you should be disciplined.” Vern, still so close that Sly could reach out and break him, stayed very still. “She wants me to take the clay away since you used it for an anger display.”

  Sly’s lips drew back in a grimace built of anger and fear. Rage threatened to blind him, but he held on, clutching the wheel. If he lost it with Vern—rational thought danced out of his reach. Panting, he spun the wheel trying to push his anger into the clay.

  The wheel spun. Clay slid between his fingers. Soft. Firm and smooth. The smell of earth lived in his nostrils. He held the world in his hands. Turning, turning, the walls rose around a kernel of anger, subsuming it.

  His heart slowed with the wheel and Sly blinked, becoming aware again as if he were slipping out of sleep. The vase on the wheel still seemed to dance with life. Its walls held the shape of the world within them. He passed a finger across the rim.

  Vern’s eyes were moist. “Do you want me to put that in the kiln for you?”

  Sly nodded.

  “I have to take the clay. You understand that, don’t you.”

  Sly nodded again staring at his vase. It was beautiful.

  Vern scowled. “The woman makes me want to hurl feces.”

  Sly snorted at the image, then sobered. “How long before I get it back?”

  Vern picked up the bucket of clay next to the wheel. “I don’t know.” He stopped at the door and looked past Sly to the window. “I’m not cleaning your mess. Do you understand me?”

  For a moment, rage crawled on his spine, but Vern did not meet his eyes and kept staring at the window. Sly turned.

  The vase he had thrown lay on the floor in a pile of clay.

  Clay.

  “I understand.” He waited until the door closed, then loped over and scooped the clay up. It was not much, but it was enough for now.

  Sly sat down at his wheel and began to turn.

  The Consciousness Problem

  The afternoon sun angled across the scarred wood counter despite the bamboo shade Elise had lowered. She grimaced and picked up the steel chef’s knife, trying to keep the reflection in the blade angled away so it wouldn’t trigger a hallucination.

  In one of the Better Homes and Gardens her mother had sent her from the States, Elise had seen an advertisement for carbon fiber knives. They were a beautiful matte black, without reflections. She had been trying to remember to ask Myung about ordering a set for the last week, but he was never home while she was thinking about it.

  There was a time before the subway accident, when she had still been smart.

  Shaking her head to rid herself of that thought, Elise put a carrot on the sil-plat cutting board. She was still smart, today was just a bad day was all. It would be better when Myung came home.

  “You should make a note.” Elise grimaced and looked to see if anyone had heard her talking to herself.

  But of course, no one was home. In the tiny space of inattention, the knife nicked one of her knuckles. The sudden pain brought her attention back to the cutting board. Stupid. Stupid.

  Setting the knife down, she reached for the faucet before stopping
herself. “No, no Elise.” She switched the filtration system over to potable water before she rinsed her finger under the faucet. The uncertainty about the drinking water was a relatively minor trade for the benefits of South Korea’s lack of regulations. They’d been here for close to three years, working on the TruClone project but she still forgot sometimes.

  She went into the tiled bathroom for some NuSkin, hoping it would mask the nick so Myung wouldn’t worry. A shadow in the corner of the mirror moved. Who had let a cat inside? Elise turned to shoo it out, but there was nothing there.

  She stepped into the hall. Dust motes danced in the afternoon light, twirling and spinning in the beam that snuck past the buildings in Seoul to gild the simple white walls. There was something she was going to write a note about. What was it?

  “Elise?” Myung came around the corner, still loosening his tie. His dark hair had fallen over his forehead, just brushing his brow. A bead of sweat trickled down to his strong jaw. He tilted his head, studying her. “Honey, what are you doing?”

  She shivered as if all the missing time swept over her in a rush. Past the cookie-cutter skyscrapers that surrounded their building, the scraps of sky had turned to a periwinkle twilight. “I was just . . . ” What had she been doing? “Taking a potty break.” She smiled and rose on her toes to kiss him, breathing in the salty tang of his skin.

  In the six months since she stopped going into the office at TruClone, he had put on a little weight. He always had a sweet tooth and tended to graze on dark chocolate when she wasn’t around, but Elise was learning to find the tiny pot belly cute. She wrapped her arms around him and let him pull her close. In his embrace, all the pieces fit together the way they should; he defined the universe.

  “How was work?”

  Myung kissed her on the forehead. “The board declared the human trial 100% effective.”

  Adrenalin pushed her breath faster and made the back of her knees sweat. “Are you . . . ?”