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New Mexico and Arizona. Spain hung on to Mexico and most of Spanish Latin
America 'cept Brazil and the places the Brits had colonies, but they mostly
governed themselves.
Britain wiped our slavery in the whole Empire in the eighteen thirties, but it
was the old pattern here, convertin' slaves into sharecroppers. As machines
and industry grew up, as we had it, in the north, a lot of black folks went up
there lookin' for work and you had the ghettos formin' anyways pretty much as
they looked back home. But, in a number of ways, it was worse.
There hadn't been near as many wars, they hadn't yet discovered the bomb or
transistors, for that matter, airplanes was still for the rich and was real
funny lookin', and radio was there but TV, while invented, wasn't a big
commercial thing and wasn't in nobody's homes. The public schools was really
private schools, and the ones for the poor folks was lousy. There was still
segregation of sorts, too; not no back-of-the-bus stuff, but there was black
schools and white schools, black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods, and
the blacks, as usual, got the poorest education, lousiest jobs, and most of
the unemployment. Not that there wasn't black doctors, dentists, lawyers, and
the rest, but they came from black colleges and had black practices. You
needed money to vote, and that was where the power was. This was an America
without the
Votin' Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and a lot of the rest.
Each of the commonwealths, which was what they called states, was much
bigger-Pennsylvania, which still called itself a commonwealth in my world-went
all the way to the Mississippi, for example, and parts of Canada and Michigan
were in New York. They ran themselves like little independent countries 'cept
for money, trade, and foreign affairs, which was taken care of by a national
Parliament with only them powers. The country's capital was Philadelphia, of
all places. Washington, D.C., just didn't exist. It was like steppin' back in
time to the forties, or maybe the thirties. The cars looked funny and
old-fashioned and drove on the left side of the road with the steerin' wheel
on the right, and although they had penicillin and a few other things medicine
wasn't that great, neither.
The American pound was the currency, divided into twenty shillin's or a
hundred pennies. Football was soccer, somebody did invent basketball but there
was cricket fields instead of baseball. The national drink was tea, but
somehow Coke and Pepsi managed to get invented but beer was the standard. The
pound bought about what a dollar buys here, but the average wage was less than
a hundred pounds a week. What medical care there was, though, was free, only
if you had money you could see somebody real good and real quick. Abortions
was illegal and back-alley affairs, and the only birth control they seemed to
have was condoms.
I had the Center do their version of tyin' my tubes; it was quick, painless,
and you couldn't tell, but it relieved my mind a little in a place like this.
I had to come in down in Tennessee; they forced the weak point open just long
enough to get me in and close it down again. The other side controlled the
only regular substation -and it was theirs, not ours-and that was in
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Pennsylvania near State College, which wasn't called that or nothin' else,
there bein' no
Penn State there. There was only a few sleepy little farm towns around
there-and
.the country estate of one George Thomas Wycliffe, a real nice name for a
country gentlemen who happened to be the boss of organized crime from New York
to the Virginia border. It also happened to completely contain not just the
weak point there but also just about all views of the weak point.
I stepped out into the late afternoon of what in my world would be the
Tennessee countryside but was now just the Boone District of the Commonwealth
of Virginia and the Labyrinth closed behind me. Aldrath worked it so it opened
when it did by forcing a spontaneous opening of the thing so one of his agents
could go to a world nearby on that track on some pretend mission. Fact was,
only three people really knew I was here-Aldrath Prang, Bill Markham-and
Aldrath's resident agent in the world who was meetin' me. She was supposed to
be born here, and knew her way around. Even she was told as little as she
could, only that I was on some mission for Aldrath. To her, too, I was Beth
Parker. No sense in takin' a chance that this Carlos or Addison might know who
Brandy Parker Horowitz really was.
She was there, all right; a thin, slightly built young woman maybe five two or
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20-%20The%20Shadow%20Dancers.txt three, with shoulder-length black hair. Her
face was long and she had a real sharp nose and thin lips. She was wearin' a
fur jacket, knee-length skirt, and high-heeled boots. Me, I had on a blue wool
sweater, jeans, and sneakers, and I
had one of my satchel handbags packed with toiletries and stuff and a small
suitcase with just things I thought I might need and might not be able to pick
up here.
"Hello," she called to me. "Over here." She had one of those middle voices and
middle accents that seemed just about average for American women. I half
expected some kind of British accent or something, but I guess we was already
polluted in our talk by the time of the Revolution. Of course, the Canadians
of my world had been with the British and they didn't sound like no Brits, now
that
I thought of it. As I went over to her, though, I could see on her face that I
wasn't exactly what she was expectin'.
"I'm Beth Parker," I told her, bein' friendly as I could.
"Lindy Crockett," she responded, but she didn't offer a hand. "I-I've seen
that thing work a couple of times, but it always gives me the chills. Sorry."
"That's okay. Somethin' else is botherin' you, though. Better clear the air
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