First Flight - By Mary Robinette Kowal Page 0,2
I trust you’ll want me to tell the Board about him.” People shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that being old meant she was sweet.
* * *
Louise sat in her costume in a conference room with Dr. Connelly, Mr. Barnes, and two other members of the board, both white men who looked old but couldn’t be much past retirement age. The conference room had flat-panel screens set up with the other board members on them. They had been debating the issues for the past half hour, largely going into details of why it was too dangerous to try to make her reappear on the wagon on account of it being a moving vehicle.
Louise cleared her throat. “Pardon me, but may I ask a question?”
“Of course.” Mr. Barnes swiveled his chair to face her. The boy didn’t seem that much older than Homer Van Loon for all that he’d invented the time machine.
“I hear you talking a lot about the program and I understand that’s important and all, but I’m not hearing anyone talk about what’s best for Homer Van Loon.”
Dr. Connelly swiveled her chair to face Louise. “I appreciate your concern for the boy, but I don’t think you have an understanding of the historical context of the issue.”
Her disdain lay barely under the surface of civility. Louise had seen this sort of new money back when she’d been working in the department store, and she always had been required to smile at them. No need now.
“Young lady,” Louise snapped at Dr. Connelly like one of her own children, “I’ve lived through two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Collapse. I lived through race riots, saw us put men on the moon, the Spanish Flu, AIDS, the Titanic, Suffrage and the Internet. I’ve raised five children and buried two, got twenty-three grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren with more on the way. And you have the nerve to say I don’t understand history?”
The room was silent except for the whir of the computer fans.
Dr. Connelly said, “I apologize if we’ve made you feel slighted, Louise. We’ll take your concerns under advisement as we continue our deliberations.”
If she hadn’t been a good Christian woman, she would have cracked the woman on the head with her cane for the amount of condescension in her voice.
“How many people do you have that are my age?” She knew the answer to the question before she asked it. She might not use the Internet but she had grandchildren who were only too happy to do searches for her. A person couldn’t travel back before she was born, and Louise was born in 1905. There weren’t that many people of her age, let alone able-bodied ones.
“Six.” Dr. Connelly looked flatly unimpressed with Louise’s longevity.
Mr. Barnes either didn’t know where she was headed or agreed with her. “But you’re the only one that’s a native English speaker.”
Louise nodded her head in appreciation. “So it seems to me that you might want to do more than keep my concerns ‘under consideration.’”
A man on one of the screens spoke. “Are you blackmailing us, Mrs. Jackson?”
“No sir, I’m not. I’m trying to get you to pay attention.” She straightened in her chair now that they were all looking at her. “You saw the video of me meeting him. Homer Van Loon is a boy out of time himself. He’s reading the Odyssey, which if you know anything about farm boys from 1905 ought to tell you everything you need to know right there. Not only will he believe me, he’ll understand why it needs to be kept secret—as if anyone would believe him anyhow. And if you think on it, having someone local to the time might be handy. He’s twelve now. When you send someone back to Black Friday, which you will I expect, he’ll be in his thirties. You think a man like that wouldn’t be helpful?”
Mr. Barnes shook his head. “But we researched him today. His life was entirely unremarkable. If he knew you were a time traveler, wouldn’t that show up?”
Louise took a breath to calm herself. “If he’s told to keep it a secret, and does, do you think his history would look any different?”
One of the board members in the room, a lean man with wire-rim glasses, spoke for the first time.. “You’ve convinced me.”
“Gerald!” Dr. Connelly swiveled to glare at him. “Conversations with a pig farmer are not what our investors have paid for.”
And that was the real point that they had been