Hazards of Time Travel. Joyce Carol Oates

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СКАЧАТЬ of the other teletransported was hyperventilating in panic. Something must have gone wrong with his medication. I could not turn my head to see. Or, my head was strapped in place. I held myself very still and breathed calmly as Dad would instruct me in the presence of the Enemy. I thought—They will vaporize him. It was a desperate thought—They will vaporize him, and not me.

      At the next stop, I was taken from the van.

      Unstrapped from the stretcher, and made to stand.

      “Use your legs, miss. There is nothing wrong with your legs. Your brain sends the signal—left leg, right leg. And your head—lift your head.”

      I was able to walk a few yards, before I collapsed.

      In the morning I woke beneath a thin blanket, on a lumpy cot. The bandages were gone from my head. The straps were gone from my wrists and ankles. Most of the grogginess had faded.

      It would be explained to me: I was a freshman student at Wainscotia State University in Wainscotia Falls, Wisconsin. I had arrived late the previous night, feverish. I had been brought to the university infirmary and not to my residence. And now, in the morning, since my fever had disappeared, I was to be discharged.

      “Your things have been delivered to your residence, Miss Enright.”

      “Yes. Thank you.”

      “Your residence is Acrady Cottage, on South University Avenue.”

      “Thank you.”

      Acrady Cottage. South University Avenue. It was up to me to find this place, and I would do so.

      I was feeling hopeful! Small gulping waves of wonder would rush over me from time to time, amid even the paralysis of fear.

      For the crucial matter was: my parents were living, and I would return to them, in four years. My parents had not been “vaporized” even in my memory.

      And the crucial matter was: “Mary Ellen Enright” was evidently a healthy specimen. She had not died in teletransportation. If her brain had been injured, it was not a major injury.

      If it was a minor injury, maybe it would heal.

      When I tried to rise from the cot, however, I felt faint, and would have lost my balance—but the strong-muscled young woman in the white nurse’s uniform reached out to catch me.

      “There you go, ‘Mary Ellen’! On your way.”

      She laughed. Our eyes locked, for a fleeting second.

      She had pinned-back blond hair, so pale it was almost white. Above her left breast, a little plastic name tag—IRMA KRAZINSKI.

       She knows who I am. Yet, she is not an Enemy.

      Later I would think—Maybe she is one like me and will pity me.

      AT THE RESIDENCE a large cardboard box awaited M. E. ENRIGHT in the front foyer.

      “You are—‘Mary Ellen’? This just arrived.”

      The box measured approximately three by four feet. It was so crammed, one of its sides was nearly bursting.

      And the box was badly battered, as if it had come a long distance, in rainy weather. Transparent tape covered it in intricate layers crisscrossing like a deranged cobweb. Even with a pair of shears provided by the resident adviser of Acrady Cottage it was very difficult to open.

      “My! Someone took care that this box would not rip open in delivery!”

      Inside were clothes: several skirts, blouses, sweaters, a pair of slacks, a navy-blue wool jumper, a fleece-lined jacket, flannel pajamas, white cotton underwear, white cotton socks, a pair of sneakers, and a pair of brown shoes identified by the resident adviser as “penny loafers.” There were also “Bermuda shorts” and a “blazer”—clothes of a kind I had never seen before. And sheer, long “stockings”—I’d never seen before. All these items were secondhand, rumpled, and smelled musty.

      I was staring inside the box. I felt dazed, dizzy. I thought—These are castoff clothes of the dead.

      “Shall I help you carry these upstairs? It might be more practical just to leave the box here and take your things up in our arms …”

      “No. I can take them by myself. Thank you.”

      The resident adviser, Miss Steadman, was being very kind. But I did not want even to look at her. I did not want to speak with the woman more than necessary and I did not want to be alone with her in the room to which I was assigned for even a few minutes.

      I did not want her to see these clothes close up. I did not feel comfortable with her registering that, to me, some of these things were unfamiliar. Nor did I want her to smell the sour, stale odor that lifted from them, any more than she already had.

      I did not want her to feel sorry for me. That poor girl!—indeed, she is poor.

      Also, Miss Steadman’s words, her manner of speech, were strange to me. It was clear that she was speaking English yet so slowly, with such odd nasal vowels, it made me anxious to listen to her.

      At the bottom of the box was an envelope with M. E. ENRIGHT stamped on it. I would not open this envelope until I was alone in room 3C when I would discover that it contained five twenty-dollar bills that were crisp as if freshly printed, and a stiff sheet of paper headed THE INSTRUCTIONS.

      There was no personal note. I felt a small stab of disappointment for I had thought—I mean, I’d wanted to think—that S. Platz had taken a personal liking to me.

      In my arms I carried my new belongings upstairs to room 3C. I grew short of breath quickly for I had not recovered from my long journey. Miss Steadman watched me with concerned eyes but did not attempt to help me another time.

      Freshmen would be arriving on the Wainscotia campus the next day. I’d been sent into Exile at the perfect time and I did think that S. Platz must have had something to do with this timing.

      Room 3C was at the rear of the cottage. A large room with two dormer windows and a slanted ceiling. Bare floorboards, bare walls with scattered holes for picture hanging and small nails.

      Four beds, four desks: four roommates!

      It was surprising to me, I would be rooming with three other girls and not alone.

      But a relief, the room was ordinary. Except for the slanting ceiling that, if I wasn’t alert, would bump against my head.

      Quickly my eyes glanced about. It would be an involuntary reaction in Zone 9: establishing that a new space held no (evident) danger. Nothing in it (that I could see) to frighten, threaten, or disorient.

      Nothing unique to Zone 9. Rather, a room that could be anywhere.

      I took the bed in the farthest corner, beneath the slanted ceiling. I would leave the windows, the better-positioned beds, and the largest closets for my roommates for I did not want them to dislike me.

      “‘Mary Ellen’! СКАЧАТЬ