THEY ALL CARRIED THEIR shoes, even Mrs. Jefferson. The Sensitive walked beside her son, swinging her Mexican huaraches. The huarache sandals were made of woven leather strips that smelled to heaven when they got wet. Mrs. Jefferson waved the huaraches around so everyone could get a good whiff.
“Ain’t that somethin’? Hee, hee, hee,” she laughed.
That’s rank, Thomas traced, moving away from her.
“Bet nothin’ in the future smell like them of my shoes,” she said.
“I don’t remember smelling many different smells there,” Dorian said.
“W-welll, I d-do,” Thomas said darkly. And had a clear vision of far-off, filthy Slakers.
Justice had her mind on the road. The hard feel of the blacktop surface deserved her full attention. The pavement was still warm from the day’s blistering heat and felt deliciously wet under her toes. Moisture steamed up from it like ghostly breaths. The whole night was thoroughly warm. It had dark fluffs of cloud with sudden rushes of wind, and a moon blinking on and off. This had to be the best night in all of their lives, she thought. They had returned.
She, along with Thomas, entertained on the long, exhilarating homeward hike, while Levi pondered the future’s whereabouts.
On a steep turn of the winding road Thomas planted a McDonald’s with its golden arches, and with cars pulling up, full of happy teenagers. Astonished, Justice and the others laughed, then applauded loudly. They groaned as the bright and perfect illusion faded away in the darkness. Kindly Thomas did leave them with the mouth-watering aroma of Big Macs.
“No kidding, man,” Dorian said, “couldn’t we stop off at the chicken place on the way home? I’m so hungry. I ain’t eaten in a million years!”
They burst out laughing again, for it could have been true, considering where they had just been.
“What’ll we do for money?” Justice asked him.
“Mom, did you bring any?” Dorian asked, then noticed his mother wasn’t carrying a pocketbook.
“I never thought once …” she said. “Bet it ain’t open this time of night, that chicken place—no way. But the truck stop, the Grill, now it’s most likely open still. About a mile out of the way, though.”
“Hey, man!” Dorian said to Thomas. “You could make up the money! Just give the dude some green magic. Let him put that in his cashbox. He won’t know it’s gonna fade.”
Again they laughed. Except for Thomas.
Justice glanced at him. She knew he hadn’t once considered using illusions in that way until now. And now he would think about never using real money again. She would have to give him a counter-suggestion deep within the fabric of his mind; she was quick to shield the thought from him.
At the very top of the final Quinella Road hill, the B&O Railroad tracks cut across the road like two silver scars. Beyond these tracks was Morrey Street, running parallel to the tracks where the Quinella Road came to an end. They would travel Morrey to Tyler Street, which would take them clear across town.
Ten minutes later they reached the top of the hill. Justice projected an image there on the night. Sitting on the tracks and blocking the entire end of the Quinella Road appeared an image of a huge Justice smiling up at the stars. Her head alone was twenty feet high on massive shoulders that dwarfed the tangle of forest trees on either side. They could see her face shining up there as clearly as they saw the moon caught in the black ripples of her curly hair. Hair like an ocean now.
“Wow!” Dorian said. “Wow-weee!”
The Justice projection was something like watching a movie screen. Unlike one of Thomas’ illusions that beclouded their minds, which they accepted as absolutely real—no question—this was a picture of something, definitely, and an entertainment.
“Justice Grown Very Large,” Levi said.
Justice grinned, admiring her own handiwork. They paused at the foot of the image as it looked down and smiled on each one of them.
“Goodness gracious,” Mrs. Jefferson said, “that’s real pretty, isn’t it?”
Thomas couldn’t help adding to the Justice projection. All at once tiny arrows zipped around the image’s head. They pierced the Justice’s ears and nose and turned into golden rings.
“Oh, you, Thomas!” Justice told him, only mildly angry with him.
It was a mystery how, just then, two hands reached out of the night and plucked at the outline of Justice’s image. The hands pulled the image out, as thread is pulled from a hem. The hands neatly tied the outline in a large silver bow.
They oohed and ahhed, laughed and applauded as, grandly, Thomas bowed to the ground.
“You are great at it,” Justice told him, “no doubt about that.”
I’m the master, he traced.
They heard a car coming up the road. Turning behind them, they saw its headlights coming on. They all bunched close to Thomas as he planted magic trees around them. It wouldn’t do for someone to come upon them in the dead of night so far from town. The car slid past them, unable to see through the make-believe trees, in which, for some odd reason, Thomas had placed gray monkeys leaping from branch to branch.
“We best hurry,” said the Sensitive, “’fore we wake some folks up or somethin’. Cause some wonder.”
“There’s no one around here,” Levi said. “Thomas wouldn’t let anyone see us. And anyhow the fresh air is just fine.”
You feel okay? Thomas traced to him.
“I’m okay, really. I’m feeling better every minute,” Levi said.
Justice hung on his shoulder, the way she had done before, when they’d been merely brother and sister and not ones of power. Levi let her pull on him in this way, although he had not much strength for her added weight. He liked being near her. She was always so open and honest with him. He knew they must return to the future, to solve the riddle of Dustland.
“Glad you feel good,” Justice told him. Then she folded her arms with her shoes against her chest and walked with him as before.
Thomas walked in front of her and Levi and behind Dorian and the Sensitive. He kept his hands in his pockets. He had tied the laces of his shoes together and slung them around his neck. The way he hunched his shoulders and his hands thrust in his pockets made him seem older, more mature than Justice or Dorian or Levi.
Well, we’re all older, aren’t we? Justice thought. Silly to think we could be the same as we were even a few days ago, after what we’ve seen and done.
But Thomas did seem to her to be at least ten years older now than his twin brother. She thought of reading him. She could do this as swiftly as she could close off her own mind from any probe. But rarely would she read Thomas, not unless she had a suspicion he was controlling Levi. She felt that his mind was rightfully his own, as Lee’s was privately his and Dorian’s his. Yet she was curious about all those troubling and mixed emotions Thomas had. One moment he could hate so hard. The next, he would be so considerate of his brother. Justice never knew when to suspect him, which kept her constantly on the alert for trouble.
Probably he doesn’t know how he’ll act either, she thought. That sure would keep him on edge, too. ’Course, he resents me. Oh, admit it, he hates me. Thomas, my brother, my own flesh and blood, hates me to death!
The thought made her cringe. It hurt her and made her feel sad. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
He’d like me all right if I didn’t make him go to the future, she went on to herself. But we just have to go back. I mean, go forward—isn’t it?
As though guessing what was in her mind, Levi started talking about the future.
“Have any of you thought about where it is?” he asked them.
“No,” Dorian said, for all of them.
Thomas shrugged, turning to glance around at Lee.
“What I mean,” Levi went on, “when you talk about in the future or a hundred years from now, you have to be thinking they are a good ways off, that they are far away.”
“True,” Justice said. “To me, the future, at least the Dustland future, is a far-distant place.”
“You agree with that, Tom-Tom?” Levi said.
Well, for the sake of whatever you’re playin’ around with, Thomas traced, agreeing. He nodded.
“No kidding,” Levi said. “Don’t you think of the present as here and now and the future as something like then and there?”
Thomas nodded. I guess so. He kept on walking his easy, yet careful gait, as if he were strolling through an unfamiliar park.
“So the future is far away and a long time to come,” said Levi, “just as the past is a long time ago and far away in the opposite direction.”
I’ll accept that as an accurate definition of future and past, Thomas traced.
“Okay, then,” Levi said. “But you know … we didn’t go anywhere. Where could even our minds go? We—us with our minds—stayed in the same place. The future was right there at the Quinella. Our thoughts didn’t go to the future. The Crossover has to be in our heads, right in front of our eyes at that river.”
“Wh-what’s yourrr p-point?” Thomas asked impatiently.
“The point being,” Levi said, “that all of it, every single bit of it, happened behind our eyes. Inside our heads. It’s all inside us. Our minds didn’t go anywhere!”
Silence. Thomas stopped, looking down at Morrey Street, on which they were now walking. Then he moved on again. No, he traced.
“Why not?” Lee asked him.
Suddenly, Justice said, “I agree with Thomas. It has to be no.”
“You, Dorian?” Levi asked.
Dorian nodded. “Yeah. I mean, no, I don’t think the future is inside us. You know, Dustland in our minds, inside us.”
“Because,” Justice said, “the present isn’t just in our minds. The present is us right on this road, is under us, over us, all around us, and we keep it in mind. Yet, it’s really here,” pointing around them. “We can see it and feel it. Hear it. Also, we can think about it.”
“But that’s it!” Levi said. “Hey, I want to ask you some questions,” he said to Justice. “And you please answer ‘my mind’ to each of them.”
“My mind?” she said. “Is this some test?”
“Just do it, please?” he asked.
“Okay.”
Levi said, “Justice, what do you see with?”
“You want me to start now?” she asked.
“Yes! What do you see with?”
“My mind.”
“And what do you feel and hear with and smell with? And project images with?”
“My mind.”
“So,” he said. He was quiet a moment.
“Is that it?” Justice wanted to know. “Do I say ‘my mind’ anymore?”
“No, that’s it,” Lee said quietly, and then: “Everything we know about anything comes through our senses. Which is another way of saying it comes through our minds. It’s our minds that control our senses. So we can’t get outside of our minds. We can’t know that we haven’t made up everything we feel and hear and smell about the future. We could have just made it all up, the way Justice made up that huge image of herself up in the sky.”
Oh, I get it now, Thomas traced to all of them. Justice, you remember when Mom was taking some course and she’d come home with these mental games, mind gymnastics?
“Yes,” Justice said. “She wanted to know if a tree fell in a forest and no one saw it or heard it, did it actually fall, or something.”
Right, he traced. But I believe, just because we only know with our minds doesn’t mean that we don’t know the truth. That we don’t know what we’re seeing. I mean, we all see a tree is a tree and not some bloody frog … and I’m not talking about projections or illusions, either. They’re something altogether else.
“The future has to be another dimension,” Justice said. “We found a way of uncovering it. I think it surrounds us, just like now surrounds us when we’re here. If this were the future, we’d be strolling through Dustland. And we have to cross over to get to it. We have to bridge time. Because to live like we’re living now is to be in time. We’re right here taking our time.”
“It’s too neat,” Levi said.
Not any neater than your way, Thomas traced. But what does it matter? We’ll probably never know where the future is. It just is, and we get to it, that’s all I know. I know bloody well I was there. I sure as hell do! Miacis, blah! He laughed scornfully. Them awful-looking winged things. Meaning Slakers. He had certainly gotten his hate up over the Bambnua and her crew, Justice realized.
“What’s he talking bout?” Mrs. Jefferson asked them.
Their minds verged as Justice informed the Sensitive, through tracing, all that had transpired with the Slakers before the Roller and Miacis brought Thomas and Levi back again. It was news to the two boys as well.
“We didn’t have time to tell you before we left there,” Justice told them. “I think it won’t matter what Slakers look like, or whether they die out sometime farther along in the future. What matters is that they get a free chance to see what they can do.”
“Mercy!” cried Mrs. Jefferson. “All that goin’ on—must take all your strength just to keep it straight. Thinkin’ about it and even been in it!”
“That’s why we have to rest,” Justice said. “And a good long time.” She glanced through the dark at Levi, seeing him in the opaqueness of sensory. “Time to study the Crossover and its dangers,” she said. “And all the wrong things about Dustland.” But that’s only the beginning, she thought to herself.
Oh, take your time, traced Thomas. The tracings quivered with sarcasm. Have all the time you need. Have a good time at it.
They fell silent, knowing how much Thomas hated his predicament. They did feel for him; but they would not stop what Justice had to do.
Are we slaves to her? Levi wondered. It was so sudden a thought, with not an inkling that it was coming. He shuddered in shock at the very idea.
We go there because we are the first unit. We have to go, to do whatever the first unit must do.
That calmed him. And all the way across town on Tyler Street, he trudged undisturbed.
Their bare feet made no sound on the street. There were absolutely no cars moving in the middle of the night. And yet they were fearful they might be seen. Houses were dark, but an occasional porch light had been left on by some forgetful homeowner. Thomas let a mist surround them, a kind of dark mist, not unlike the darkness in the melancholy corners of his mind. But he was tired, exhausted clear through by their ordeal. Often as not, his mist faded away. But cars parked at curbs and shiny with wet did much to block the view of them from houses.
What happened when they were at the end of Tyler and ready to cross Dayton Street on the short distance home occurred without warning. There was not an inkling that anything unlikely was coming, just as there had been no inkling of Levi’s shocking thought that they all could be slaves to Justice.
Only she was given a fraction of an instant’s clairvoyance, in which the glow of the Watcher was there in her eyes. She traced, screaming: DIVE! DIVE!
On pure reflex, they dove to the ground, shoes flying every which way. Justice knocked Levi down with her. Thomas and Dorian dived to either side of them, at once locking hands across their backs. Somehow Justice and Levi caught hold of Thomas’ and Dorian’s free hands. In two seconds the four of them were joined. They were the first unit and power, immense with light.
An unspeakable, malevolent sweep of something deadly came out of the future. It hovered unbearably above them. It swept by, reversed itself and swept over them again. Then it went on, out of the present, back from whence it came.
It had Mrs. Jefferson, who hadn’t been quick enough. Caught her mind in its dreadful, relentless will and carried it away.
But the unit was present and power. It was the Watcher and knowing. It overtook the sweep at the edge of time-present. It had no moment to study whatever it was that was malevolent and yet was wise with the wisdom of time. The thing was energy, blind energy, light’s darkest side, if that were possible. There was no moment to wonder what could come out of the future, the way the first unit had gone to it. The unit would perhaps study that later. Now it wanted only the Sensitive. It would not permit her or anything to be taken from the present.
The unit did not win Mrs. Jefferson back by its superior power. It was rather more like the Malevolence handed her over. As if saying, “Here, you want her? You can have her. She got in the way. It was you we came to find.”
The unit brought back her mind. But such frenzy had jarred her senses; she was knocked out, flat on the ground.
After the sweep had gone, having found what it had been searching for, the four of them released one another’s hands. They found their shoes scattered over the dark street. After a time Mrs. Jefferson came to, although feeling numbed still.
“What have we done?” she whispered to Justice. “Baby-girl, what have we brought forth!”
“Here, you got yourself all muddy,” Justice said, trying to brush her off. They helped Mrs. Jefferson to her feet.
“Listen,” Justice said, “whatever came looking for us left when it found us. It could have hurt us, could have taken any one of us, I guess, if it could take Mrs. Jefferson. Probably couldn’t take the unit though I’m not sure of that.”
“It … it came from the future,” Levi said. He was shaking with fear. The thing’s power of ill-will gave him the worst feeling.
“It must’ve come from somewhere beyond Dustland,” Justice said.
“So.” It was Thomas. He gazed into Justice’s eyes. He knew now what an enemy really was; or, at least, where to find it. It was not Justice.
Dustland, he traced. Dustland’s a bloody zoo! Letting them all in on the tracing.
“No.” Quietly she answered him. They stood together at the side of the street. Steam rose around them, ghostly warm from the cooling pavement. She could look over beyond Dayton Street to the Union Road, where her dear home was hidden by trees. Only a little longer now and they would be home.
“What came after us doesn’t want us disturbing things,” she said. “I wonder if all in Dustland are caught by it, including Miacis. Poor, beautiful Miacis! Poor Slakers, and worlmas, too. Dustland’s a prison.”
Yes! I can see that now, Thomas traced. Worse than any zoo!
“Oh, boy,” Levi said, like a moan.
There was utter quiet in which each of them sensed separately, probing the night with their different abilities. They had a moment to think about all they knew and had guessed and wondered about Dustland.
Whatever was here is gone now,” Mrs. Jefferson said. “But it haunts me—mercy, it haunts me still!”
With that, she put her arm through Dorian’s. Without another word, she and her son passed along Dayton Street to their home. Justice and her brothers quickly crossed to the Union Road, which dead-ended at their own house.
Soundlessly they came up on the dark lane leading to the house and passed beneath branches of an enormous cottonwood tree. It was the property’s sentinel, the tree which for many years Justice had called Cottonwoman.
Grand old woman, you! Sensing now that the tree would forever be her friend.
Take off that shawl, Cottonwoman. But keep your bonnet on. The night’s too warm for covers, and the rain may come again.
High up, the cottonwood tree caught the wind. Leaves whooshed and rustled, sounding to Justice as though the tree laughed heartily in agreement with her.