The Disunited States of America

Five

"Mornin', gents," said the waitress in Elizabeth's one and only diner, across the street from the one and only motel. "What'll it be?" By now, she was used to them coming in for breakfast every day.

"Ham and eggs today, I think, Irma," Mr. Brooks answered.

"Sausage and eggs for me," Justin said.

"Potatoes or grits?" Irma asked.

"Potatoes," they said together. Mr. Brooks added, "See? We sing in hominy."

The waitress started to nod, then stopped, did a double take good enough to go on TV, and sent him a dirty look. Justin gave him another one. "Did you have to do that, Uncle Randy?"

"No," Mr. Brooks admitted. "But I enjoyed it."

"That makes one of us," Justin said. This time, Irma did nod.

She set coffee in front of Mr. Brooks and ice water in front of Justin. He still couldn't get stoked about coffee, and it was too early in the day for a soda. A fizz, he reminded himself. I've got to think of them as fizzes, or I'll call 'em by the wrong name one of these days. That wouldn't be so good.

A local came in and sat down at the counter a few stools away from Justin and Mr. Brooks. He gave them a polite nod and spent a couple of minutes chatting with Irma before he ordered ham and eggs for himself. He chose grits to go with them. Chances were he'd been eating them all his life. If you got used to something when you were little, you'd go on liking it once you grew up.

Justin hadn't eaten grits when he was little. He feared he would never get used to them. In states like Georgia and Alabama, potatoes were hard to come by. There, most of the time, it was grits or nothing. That made Justin glad he at least had a choice.

"Terrible thing about Parkersburg," the local remarked when Irma gave him his coffee.

"Good Lord, wasn't it!" she exclaimed. "The front window rattled when that boom got near. I was afraid it'd break to pieces. Don't know what we would've done if it did. That's a big old piece of plate glass."

"Mighty dear," the man said, by which he meant expensive.

"Isn't it just?" Irma said. "Isn't everything nowadays? I had to have a tooth filled last week, and it cost me twenty pounds. Twenty pounds, can you believe it?" She paused and looked startled. "I had to go to Parkersburg to do it. I hope my dentist's office is still there. I hope my dentist is still there."

"How did you get them to let you into town with the travel ban on?" Justin asked.

"Sweetheart, I told the cops at the checkpoint I was from Elizabeth, and they let me by," Irma answered. "Nothing ever happens here, so they knew I wasn't carrying any stupid disease."

"Have there been any cases in Parkersburg?" Mr. Brooks didn't say any more than that. He didn't want to come right out and ask if the waitress had brought the sickness back with her.

And she didn't seem to catch the drift of the question. "My dentist didn't talk about any," she said. Then she went back to the tall counter between the kitchen and the outer part of the diner. She plucked two plates off it and set one in front of Justin and the other in front of Mr. Brooks. "Here you go. Enjoy your breakfasts, now."

Justin dug in. The diner would never win any prizes, but it wasn't bad, either. Irma went on shooting the breeze with the other customer till his food was ready. After she gave him his plate, she came over and refilled Justin's water and Mr. Brooks' coffee. Justin felt her breath on the hairs of his arm. After the question Mr. Brooks asked, he wished he didn't.

The older man was thinking along with him. "Well, we'll find out, won't we?" Mr. Brooks murmured. "Find out how good our shots really are too."

"I'm afraid we will." As soon as Justin heard what he'd said, he wished he hadn't put it like that. He didn't believe in omens and bad luck—not in the top part of his head he didn't. Believe or not, he knocked wood. He hoped it was wood, anyhow, not some synthetic. He didn't knock loudly, but Mr. Brooks noticed. "It can't hurt," Justin whispered. The older man nodded.

They both left the little diner as soon as they finished. Would that do any good? Justin had his doubts. By Mr. Brooks' somber expression, so did he. Again, though, it couldn't hurt.

"What now?" Justin asked.

"Now we hope," the coin and stamp dealer answered. "Hope we have some immunity. And Irma's not sick, so chances are we'll be all right. Of course, who knows how long the virus takes to incubate?"

"Yeah," Justin said, and then, "That isn't really what I meant. What are we going to do today?"

"Oh. That." The way Mr. Brooks said it, it didn't sound very important. He had a point, too. He had to think for a moment before he went on, "Well, laundry would probably be a good idea."

"Yeah," Justin said, more happily. They were washing their clothes at the Snodgrasses'. Elizabeth didn't boast a washeteria, which was what they called laundromats here. They'd also had to go down to Palestine to buy more for themselves after they got stuck here. Now they had three or four days' worth of outfits, not just what they'd worn when they got here.

Mr. Brooks smiled at him. "You won't be sorry to see Beckie again, will you?"

"Why should I be?" Justin answered. "She's nice. I'm not going to bring her back to the home timeline or anything, but she's nice." He suddenly wondered when—and if—he'd be able to get back to the home timeline himself. Crosstime Traffic wouldn't be eager to let people who might have been exposed to a genetically engineered disease bring it back with them. Diseases from other alternates had ripped through the home timeline more than once. People were a lot more careful now.

"Okay." Mr. Brooks set a hand on his shoulder. "Why not? Let's go deal with the laundry, then."

Beckie listened to Justin with rising horror. The more she tried to fight it down, the more it rose. Even the waitress' name somehow fueled it. Irma? Nobody in California would carry such an old-fashioned handle. "She came back from Parkersburg, and there's sickness there?" she said.

"She came back from there, anyhow," Justin told her. "She said her dentist didn't talk about any cases. That proves nothing one way or the other. But Parkersburg's a fair-sized town, and it's close to the Ohio border, and it's on a main road, so. ..."

"Yeah. So," Beckie echoed unhappily. "Well, I don't think I'll get a whole lot of sleep tonight. Thanks a lot."

"I'm sorry. Would you rather I didn't tell you?" Justin sounded unhappy, too.

"I don't know." Beckie had to think about that. She finally shook her head. "No, I guess not. I'd rather be up on what's going on. Then I know what to worry about, anyhow."

"Good. I didn't think you'd want to be a mushroom," Justin said.

"A mushroom?" Beckie frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Sure. You know—they keep you in the dark and they feed you, uh, horse manure."

"Oh." The more she thought about it, the wider she grinned. "I like that. I really like it. Did you make it up yourself?"

He shook his head. For a split second, he looked—worried? The expression disappeared before Beckie was sure she saw it. "Not me," he said. "I deny everything. They say it in school back home, that's all."

"Oh," Beckie said again. She didn't have any particular reason not to believe him. She wasn't sure she did, though. He brought it out too pat—maybe that was what bothered her. And she couldn't imagine that kids in a place like Fredericksburg, a place that was Nowhere with a capital N, could some up with something so neat all by themselves. Maybe she wasn't giving them enough credit. Maybe .. . but she didn't think so.

"Do you know where the closest doctor lives, just in case?" Justin asked. "I don't think there's one here, and I don't think there's one in Palestine, either."

"If I were a doctor, I wouldn't live in a place like this," Beckie said. Justin nodded, and this time she had no trouble believing he really agreed with her. She went on, "I bet I know where the nearest doctor is." He raised an eyebrow. She told him: "Parkersburg."

He winced. "I bet you're right. If the disease shows up there, they'll be busy enough so they won't want to come out here, too."

"I know," Beckie said. "But look on the bright side. Even if they did come out, how much could they do?"

"Is that the bright side?" Justin asked. "If it is, what's the dark side?"

We all die. Beckie wished that hadn't gone through her head. She didn't want to say it. Saying things made them seem realer. She knew that was foolish, which didn't make it any less true. So she said, "Something worse," and let it go at that.

She watched Justin as he nodded. Watching him, listening to him, made her want to scratch her head. She knew what she wanted to ask him: something like, Where are you really from? Everybody else she'd met in Virginia made her feel as if she'd stepped back in time here, as if California were years and years ahead of this place. Maybe that was right, maybe it was wrong, but it was how she felt.

With Justin, it was different. It was as if he thought she was the one who was out of it. He didn't make a big deal out of that, but she felt it was true. And she wanted to know why.

Was it just that he was stuck up? With some people, she would have said yes right away. But he didn't act like that. He went out of his way not to act like that, as a matter of fact. He wanted to fit in as well as he could. It was as if he couldn't help thinking the way he thought, even if he didn't mean to show it.

Since she didn't want to ask him about himself and why he thought the way he did, she decided to ask about what he'd said instead. That seemed less likely to spook him. "I do like that thing about mushrooms," she told him. "What else do they say at your school?"

He turned red. She might have thought she wouldn't make him nervous, but she turned out to be wrong. "I don't know," he mumbled. "We talk, that's all."

"I can't believe it," Beckie said. "I bet that line will go all over the continent. Has it been on TV here?"

"I've never noticed it," Justin answered.

"Only goes to show that TV writers don't listen to people," Beckie said. For some reason, that made Justin turn red all over again. She went on, "What are some of your favorite shows?"

"I don't watch a whole lot," he said. "News and sports, mostly." He yawned. "Boring, right?"

He sounded as if he wanted to be boring, as if he hoped it would be boring. But Beckie said, "I like football, too. I like rounders, but 1 like football better."

"Oh, yeah?" Justin said. Now Beckie knew exactly what he was thinking. Guys always had trouble believing it when they found a girl who was interested in sports.

"Yeah," Beckie said. "Which kind of football do you like better, rugby or association?"

"Uh, rugby," Justin answered, now sounding like somebody who was in over his head. But Beckie hadn't expected anything else. They played games where you could throw the ball more in the eastern states than they did in California.

"We play association most of the time in California," Beckie said. "Some of our sides go down to the Mexican states and take on their best clubs. We win a lot of the time, too."

"That's ... impressive," Justin said. "Uh, I think maybe I ought to go in now. See if the laundry's dry." He almost fled into the house.

The laundry wasn't dry. Mr. Brooks and Mr. Snodgrass sat hunched over a chessboard. Mr. Brooks pushed a pawn. Mr. Snodgrass said, "You'll pay for that."

Justin looked at them in what seemed like real dismay. Beckie said, "Hey, I've got a rounders question for you, since you live on the East Coast. Was George Herman really as good as people say he was?"

"Uh . .." Justin blinked. Beckie would have sworn he'd never heard of George Herman. But if you paid any attention to sports, that was impossible . . . wasn't it?

Mr. Snodgrass looked up from his game. "He wasn't as good as that, Rebecca—he was better," he said. "He could hit a ball farther than any man who's played the game since, even if he is a hundred and fifty years dead. That season he had stomach trouble, the Highlanders finished next to last. And he really did aim his club out toward the sign, like people say, and then smack the ball over it."

"Oh, my. The called shot," Mr. Brooks murmured. So he knew something about George Herman, too.

"I've heard that," Beckie said. "Is it really true? Is there video to prove it? I've never seen any in California."

"Well, I don't reckon I have, either." Mr. Snodgrass sounded as if he didn't want to admit it. "But everybody says it's so."

Beckie started to laugh. Everybody else looked at her— everybody except Gran. That only made it funnier, as far as she was concerned. They say was an article of faith with her grandmother. They said this, that, and the other thing. Gran never quite knew who they were, but they said it, and she believed it, no matter how dumb it was.

"George Herman must have been one ruthless player, all right." Now Justin sounded like somebody trying to make up for lost time.

Mr. Snodgrass nodded politely. As for Mr. Brooks . . . Mr. Brooks turned red and wheezed and choked, for all the world as if he was trying so hard not to laugh that he was hurting himself. Beckie wanted to scratch her head. Justin hadn't made a joke— or not one she got, anyway.

In the laundry room, the drier beeped to show the clothes in it were finally done. Mr. Brooks went in and loaded them into a duffel bag. He said, "We can pick up the game tomorrow, Ted, if that's all right with you."

"I suppose," Mr. Snodgrass said. "You just want to wait a spell before you see what I'm going to do to you, that's all."

"In your dreams," Mr. Brooks said sweetly. They both laughed.

After Mr. Brooks and Justin left, Beckie said, "I'd swear Justin never heard of George Herman."

"How could you not have?" Mr. Snodgrass said. "It's like not hearing of Stephen Douglas or Franklin Delano Truman. You'd have to come from Mars not to."

"Mars," Beckie echoed. "A couple of things he said make me wonder if he's from even farther away than that."

Justin kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk as he and Mr. Brooks walked back to the motel with their clean laundry. "Well, I blew it again," he said, angry at himself. "Who'd figure that a girl would like sports? I mean really like sports, so she knows more about 'em than most guys do."

"Life is full of surprises," Mr. Brooks said, which didn't make Justin feel any better.

He kicked at another pebble. "She made me look like a jerk. She made me sound like a jerk," he said. "People I never heard of—but I'm supposed to, if I'm a proper fan."

"Ruthless," Mr. Brooks muttered. "I ought to punt you for that, except it's the wrong game."

They turned the corner onto State Route 14, then both stopped in their tracks. Red lights flashing, an ambulance was parked in front of the diner across from the motel. Justin's stomach did a slow lurch, the way it would have when an intercontinental shuttle went weightless.

He glanced over at Mr. Brooks. The older man licked his lips. Was he paler than he had been a moment before? Justin thought so. But then, he was probably paler than he had been himself. "That doesn't look so great," he said.

"No, it doesn't." Mr. Brooks tried not to sound worried. That only made him sound more so.

"Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with . . . stuff like that," Justin said. "Maybe somebody got burned or something."

"Maybe." Mr. Brooks didn't sound as if he believed it. Justin bit his lip. He didn't believe it, either, no matter how much he wanted to.

The paramedics or whatever they called them here brought somebody out on a wheeled cart. Justin bit his lip harder. That was Irma, all right. And the men taking care of her wore gas masks and orange rubber gloves.

Mr. Brooks and Justin both took half a step back before they knew they'd done it. Justin laughed at himself, not that it was really funny. As if half a step could make any difference in whether they came down with whatever it was.

"She always seemed fine," Mr. Brooks said. "I thought we were worrying over nothing."

"I hoped we were worrying over nothing," Justin said. Amazing how changing one word in a sentence could change the whole meaning.

Siren wailing, the ambulance zoomed away—back up Highway 14 toward Parkersburg. Justin and Mr. Brooks both watched and listened till the flashing lights vanished in the distance and the siren dopplered away into silence. Then the coin and stamp dealer kicked a pebble of his own. "Well, not much use pretending we haven't been exposed," he said. "Now we see what happens next."

"Yeah." Justin didn't see what else he could say. He took his phone off his belt. "I'd better let Mom know what's going on."

"She won't be happy," Mr. Brooks said.

"I'm not real happy myself," Justin said. "I'm especially not real happy 'cause we're stuck here." Any of the locals who overheard him would think he meant stuck in Elizabeth. And he did. But he also meant stuck in this whole alternate. And he and Mr. Brooks were stuck, because no transposition chamber would take them back to the home timeline, not with a genetically engineered disease loose here.

He punched in Mom's number. The phone rang—once, twice. "Hello?" Mom said.

"Hi. It's me."

"Hi, you. What's up?"

"An ambulance just took Irma the waitress away. She may have it." There. Justin had said it. He waited for his mother to pitch a fit.

She just said, "Oh," in a strange, flat voice. Then she said, "I was hoping you'd miss it in a little town where nothing ever happens. It's here in Charleston, too."

"It is?" Justin said in dismay. But he wasn't only dismayed—he was angry, too. "They haven't said anything about it on TV or anything."

"They wouldn't," Mom answered. "They don't want to make people jump up and down and worry or anything. But it's here, all right."

"That's ... too bad," Justin said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along. Mr. Brooks raised a questioning eyebrow. He pointed south, toward Charleston. Justin nodded. The older man clapped a hand to his forehead.

"Stay well, you hear me?" Mom said.

"I'll try." Justin didn't want to tell her that someone who'd come down with it had been breathing into his face every morning for the past week. "You stay well, too," he said. What kind of things was Mom not telling him? Did he really want to know? He didn't think so.

"I'll do my best. The doctors say they're getting close to a cure." Mom spoiled that by adding, "Of course, they've been saying the same thing since it broke out, and there's no cure yet. Dummies." Anyone who overheard her would think she was complaining that the local doctors weren't as smart as they thought they were. And she was. But she was also complaining that they knew less than their counterparts in the home timeline. She was right about that, too.

Sometimes being right did you no good at all. This felt like one of those times. "Love you, Mom," Justin said. Some things you didn't want to leave unsaid, not when you might not get another chance to say them.

"Love you, too," she answered. "Be careful."

"Sure," he said. "You do the same."

They were both whistling in the dark. Justin knew it. No doubt his mother did, too. They both did it anyhow, to make each other feel better. Justin didn't feel much better. He hoped Mom did.

"It's really in Charleston?" Mr. Brooks asked as Justin put his phone away.

"Uh-huh." Justin nodded. No, he didn't feel very good about the way things were going, not even a little bit. He glanced over at Mr. Brooks, hoping the older man would do or say something to cheer him up.

Mr. Brooks was looking south, toward the city where he lived and worked. His face usually wore a smile, but now his mouth was set in a thin, hard, grim line. "A lot of nice people down there," he said. "Oh, plenty who aren't so nice, too, but I can't think of anybody who deserves to come down with a mutated virus."

Justin, by contrast, was looking around Elizabeth. By now, it was more familiar to him than Charleston ever got the chance to be. "I can't think of anybody here who does, either," he said. "Including you and me."

Mr. Brooks managed a smile for that, but it was a halfhearted one, not one his face really meant. The corners of his mouth curled up and he showed his teeth, but his eyes. . . . Behind his glasses, his eyes didn't brighten at all. "Well," he said, "if you're going to fuss about every little thing . . ."

"I don't think you ought to let them in the house any more," Gran said to Mrs. Snodgrass. 'That woman has it, and they've been eating where she works."

"You know the saying about locking the barn door after the horse is gone?" Mr. Snodgrass said. "Well, Myrtle, you're trying to lock the horse out after he's already got his nose in the barn."

"Are you sure, Ted?" Mrs. Snodgrass said. "Maybe they weren't catching yet, and now they are."

"Maybe." In Mr. Snodgrass' mouth, it came out, Mebbe. "Don't reckon it's what you'd call likely, though."

Beckie didn't reckon it was, either. She laughed at herself for even including the word in her thoughts. She didn't think she'd ever heard it in California, even if it seemed natural as could be here. She almost said what she thought, but at the last minute kept quiet. These people were four times her age. They wouldn't pay any attention to her no matter what she said. The only people Gran ever paid attention to were her mysterious they.

"I don't want to turn them away," Mr. Snodgrass said firmly. "I just don't. It wouldn't be neighborly. How could I do business with Randolph Brooks again if I told him he wasn't welcome inside my house? I'd be ashamed to, I would."

That got through to his wife. "Well, you're right," she said. She didn't sound happy about it, but she didn't argue any more, either.

Neighborly, Beckie thought. That was another word you didn't hear much in California—certainly not in enormous Los Angeles. In little towns in the mountains or the desert? She supposed so, but she wasn't from one. She'd never stayed in one till now.

She'd never stayed anywhere with a tailored virus loose, either. She could have done without the honor. Only trouble was, it didn't look as if she had a choice.

"How is the woman, anyway?" Gran asked. "Does anybody know?"

"The hospital in Parkersburg doesn't want to say anything," Mrs. Snodgrass said. "You know how hospitals are."

"But we need to find out," Gran said, as if that made all the difference.

"Good luck," Mrs. Snodgrass said. You could tell she and Gran were cousins, all right—she was ready to argue about anything, too.

"Maybe somebody could call and say they're a relative."

Gran actually had an idea. Beckie blinked. She couldn't remember the last time that happened. It wasn't even a bad idea.

Mrs. Snodgrass turned to her husband. "Take care of it, Ted," she said in tones that brooked no argument. "Tell 'em you're Irma's husband."

He didn't look thrilled about getting drafted—or maybe about the idea of being Irma's husband. "And what'U I tell 'em when they ask how come I'm not there with her?" he asked.

Mrs. Snodgrass had all the answers. "Tell 'em you weren't with her when she came down sick. Tell 'em you're hoping you don't catch it yourself. Heaven knows that's true."

"I don't reckon they'll talk to me," Mr. Snodgrass said dolefully. But he looked up the number and called the hospital. The longer he talked, the less happy he looked. He clicked off the phone with more force than he really needed. "They said I'm the fifth different husband she's had, by the phone numbers from incoming calls. She's had two mothers, three sisters, and five daughters, too—oh, and two sons."

"Okay, you tried," his wife said, unabashed. "So they wouldn't tell you anything, then?"

"Oh, I didn't say that," Mr. Snodgrass answered.

"Well?" Mrs. Snodgrass and Gran and even Beckie all said the same thing at the same time.

By the way Mr. Snodgrass shook his head, it wasn't well or okay or anything like that. "She died last night, a little before midnight."

The diner had a sign on the door: SORRY, WE'RE CLOSED. PLEASE COME BACK SOON. Justin and Mr. Brooks eyed it in identical dismay. "Is there any other place to eat in Elizabeth?" Justin asked.

"If there is, they've hidden it someplace where I haven't found it," the coin and stamp dealer answered. "And I don't reckon this town is big enough to have any places like that."

Justin didn't think so, either. "What are we going to do?" he asked.

"We could go down to Palestine." As soon as the words were out of Mr. Brooks' mouth, he shook his head. "No, by now they'll have heard Irma's sick. Anybody from Elizabeth will be as welcome as ants at a picnic. I think we'll have to go to the grocery store and pick up whatever we can find that we don't have to cook much."

"Oh, boy," Justin said in a hollow voice. "Junk food and sandwiches and frozen dinners. Yum, yum." Some of what this alternate's Virginia used for junk food grossed him out. Mr. Brooks had had to explain where pork rinds came from. Once Justin knew, he didn't want to eat them any more, even if he didn't think they were bad before. Mr. Brooks said people in the home timeline ate them once upon a time. People in the home timeline had done all kinds of disgusting things once upon a time. They'd kept slaves. They'd worn furs. Pork rinds probably weren't that bad, but they weren't good, either.

Mr. Brooks understood his expression perfectly. "If you see something in the deli section called 'head cheese,' chances are you don't want that, either," he said.

Even the name was enough to make Justin gulp. "You're so helpful," he said.

The grocery was a mom-and-pop. Even in Charleston, there weren't many chain stores here. Because this North America was split up into so many states, corporations couldn't get enormous the way they did in the home timeline. Things were more expensive than in the home timeline, but there was more variety here.

"Mornin'," the grocer said when they walked in. He knew who they were. Everybody in Elizabeth knew who they were by now.

"Mornin'," Justin and Mr. Brooks answered together.

"You'll have heard Irma passed on day before yesterday?" The man's voice held a certain amount of doubt. They were strangers, so who could say for sure what they'd heard?

"Yes," Mr. Brooks said. "We heard that." Justin nodded. You didn't just walk in and buy what you wanted in a place like this, the way you would in the home timeline. Oh, you could, but that would mark you as not just a stranger but a foreigner. People from states like Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York did abrupt, rude things like that. If you were a Virginian, you chatted with the storekeeper for a while.

"Hope you gents are doing all right," the grocer said.

"Well, now that you mention it, so do we," Mr. Brooks said dryly.

"Just a little, yeah," Justin added.

"I believe it," the grocer said, chuckling. "I ate over at the diner a couple of times myself the last two weeks, and Irma's been in and out of here, too."

Why was he laughing, then? Justin had trouble understanding it. The only thing that occurred to him was that laughing at fear was better than giving in to it. Not needing to fear would have been better still.

"You know what's worst about the whole thing?" Mr. Brooks said. "What with the travel ban and the worry about getting crowds together, there are no games on TV. If you're stuck in a motel the way we are, they help make the time go by."

"Or even if you're not stuck in a room," said the man behind the counter. "I was a pretty fair rounders player in the old days, if I say so myself." Justin judged that would have been forty years, thirty kilos, and three chins ago. The grocer went on, "I know how the game's supposed to be played, and I like watching it when it's played right."

"Sometimes, I bet, you like watching it when it's played wrong," Mr. Brooks said. "Then you can tell them what a bunch of fools they are, and how they don't deserve to wear the uniform."

The grocer laughed again. "There is that. Yes, sir, there is that."

Now that the social rituals were satisfied, Justin and Mr. Brooks could go on into the store and get what they wanted. They had an old microwave oven, a gift from the Snodgrasses, in their room so they could nuke frozen dinners. (Here, though, it was a radio range, and you zapped things instead of nuking them.) Frozen dinners in this alternate were even less exciting than they were in the home timeline, but they did give the illusion of sitting down to something cooked instead of eating sandwiches all the time.

Mr. Brooks was buying some bread and Justin was getting some canned chicken and canned fruit when another customer walked into the store. "Mornin', Charlie," the grocer said.

"Mornin', Mr. Kerfeld," answered the janitor who was, as far as Justin knew, the head of the one and only black family in Elizabeth.

"How are you today?" the grocer said.

"Not too bad, sir. Not too bad," the black man answered.

"Wife and kids doing well?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you. Terrible thing, this sickness, isn't it?"

"It really and truly is, Charlie. You heard Miss Davis died?"

"I did. It's a shame, Mr. Kerfeld, and that's the truth. She was a nice lady, a mighty nice lady."

"That's a fact."

Their chat was almost the same as the chitchat Justin and Mr. Brooks had had with the grocer—almost, but not quite. Yes, there was the ritual of gabbing a while before getting down to business. But Mr. Kerf eld had spoken with Mr. Brooks and Justin as equals. They were whites, the same as he was. The janitor, by contrast, called him mister and sir, while the grocer used the African American's first name. The waitress was Irma to whites, but Miss Davis to Charlie.

In the home timeline, racism lingered even after more than two centuries had passed since the Civil War. It didn't just linger here—it was alive and well. In most of the Southern states, whites still oppressed blacks, even if blacks were legally free. In Mississippi, where the black majority had risen in revolt, it was the other way around. And most of the states that had only a few Negroes didn't want any more. It seemed sad and scary to someone who'd grown up knowing better.

Charlie seemed to accept things. But what else could he do? If he fussed, the law would land on him like a ton of bricks. Under his politeness, though, what was he thinking? In his shoes, Justin would have hated Mr. Kerfeld and every other white person he saw. If the janitor didn't, why not?

If he did, on the other hand, what could he do about it? Blacks had rebelled in several states besides Mississippi, and got crushed every time. If they tried it again in Virginia, weren't they bound to fail again? Of course they were . . . unless, perhaps, Ohio gave them a hand. Ohio wouldn't do that from the goodness of its heart—oh, no. But Ohio might do it to give an enemy a hard time.

One thing that hadn't happened in this alternate was a peaceful civil-rights movement. Negroes here hadn't set out to persuade whites that they were as good as anybody else. Justin wondered why not. Maybe their being crammed into the Southern states and not spread across the continent had something to do with it. And maybe the history of uprisings left whites and blacks too distrustful of each other to look for common ground.

More questions than answers, Justin thought unhappily. Things often worked that way out among the alternates. Crosstime Traffic tried to keep an eye on so many of them, it hadn't had the chance to study them all as well as it might have.

"You ready, Justin?" Mr. Brooks asked. He couldn't know what Justin was worrying about.

"Yeah," Justin said. "I guess so."

They talked with the grocer a little more as they paid for their food. "Take care, now," Mr. Kerfeld said when they walked out.

The air felt hot and sticky. Clouds built up in the west. "Rain coming," Mr. Brooks remarked.

"I guess so," Justin said, and then, softly, "Do you suppose anyone here but Charlie knows what his last name is?"

"People know," Mr. Brooks answered. "They just don't care. There's a difference." Justin nodded. But didn't that make it worse, not better?