Lightning

suspicion. Most decrepit motels had become boarding houses for illegal immigrants, hundreds of thousands of whom had taken up not-so-secret residence in Orange County alone. Whole families lived in a single room, five or six or seven of them crowded into that cramped space, sharing one ancient bed and two chairs and a bathroom with minimally functional plumbing, for which they paid a hundred and fifty dollars or more every week, with no linen or maid service or amenities of any kind, but with cockroaches by the thousands. Yet they were willing to endure those conditions and let themselves be outrageously exploited as underpaid workers rather than return to their homeland and live under the rule of the 'revolutionary people's government' that for decades had given them no brotherhood but that of despair.

At the thirteenth motel, The Bluebird of Happiness, the owner-manager still hoped to serve the lower end of the tourist trade, and he had not yet succumbed to the temptation to squeeze a rich living from the blood of poor immigrants. A few of the twenty-four units were obviously rented to illegals, but the management still provided fresh linen daily, maid service, television sets, and two spare pillows in every closet. However the fact that the desk clerk took cash, did not press her for ID, and avoided meeting her eyes was sad proof that in another year The Bluebird of Happiness would be one more monument to political stupidity and human avarice in a world as crowded with such monuments as any old, city cemetery was crowded with tombstones.

The motel had three wings in a U-shape, with parking in the middle, and their unit was in the right rear corner of the back wing. A big fan palm flourished near the door to their room, not visibly touched by smog or limited by its small patch of ground midst so much concrete and blacktop, bristling with new growth even in winter, as if nature had chosen it as a subtle omen of her intention to seize every corner of the earth again when humankind passed on. Laura and Chris unfolded the wheelchair and got the wounded man into it, making no effort to conceal what they were doing, as if they were simply caring for a disabled person. Fully dressed, with his wounds concealed, her guardian could pass for a paraplegic— except for the way his head lolled against his shoulder.

Their room was small though passably clean. The carpet was worn but recently shampooed, and a pair of dustballs in one corner were far from the size of tumbleweeds. The maroon-plaid spread on the queen-size bed was tattered at the edges, and its pattern was not quite busy enough to conceal two patches, but the sheets were crisp and smelled faintly of detergent. They moved her guardian from the wheelchair to the bed and put two pillows under his head.

The seventeen-inch television set was firmly bolted to a table with a scarred, laminated top, and the back legs of the table were in turn bolted to the floor. Chris sat in one of the two mismatched chairs, switched on the set, and turned the cracked dial in search of either a cartoon show or reruns of an old sitcom. He settled for Get Smart but complained that it was 'too stupid to be funny,' and Laura wondered how many boys his age would have thought so.

She sat in the other chair. 'Why don't you get a shower?'

'Then just get back in these same clothes?' he asked doubtfully.

'I know it sounds like purest folly, but try it. I guarantee you'll feel cleaner even without fresh clothes.'

'But all that trouble to shower, then get into wrinkled clothes?'

'When did you become such a fashion plate that you're offended by a few wrinkles?'

He grinned, got up from his chair, and pranced to the bathroom as he thought a hopeless fop might prance. 'The king and queen would be shocked to see me such a mess.'

'We'll make them put on blindfolds when they visit,' she said.

He returned from the bathroom in a minute. 'There's a dead bug in the toilet bowl. I think it's a cockroach, but I'm not really sure.'

'Does the species matter? Will we be notifying next of kin?'

Chris laughed. God, she loved to hear him laugh. He said, 'What should I do — flush him?'

'Unless you want to fish him out, put him in a matchbox, and bury him in the flowerbed outside.'

He laughed again. 'Nope. Burial at sea.' In the bathroom, he hummed 'Taps,' then flushed the John.

While the boy was showering, Get Smart ended and a movie came on, The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligaris Island. Laura was not actually watching the set; she left it on for background, but there were limits to what even a woman on the lam could endure, so she quickly switched to channel eleven and Hour Magazine.

She stared at her guardian for a while, but his unnatural slumber depressed her. From her chair she reached to the drapes a few times, parting them far enough to scan the motel's parking lot, but no one on earth could know where she was; she was in no imminent danger. So she stared at the TV screen, uninterested in what it offered, until she was half hypnotized by it. The Hour Magazine host was interviewing a young actor who droned on about himself, not always making much sense, and after a while she was vaguely aware that he kept saying something about water, but now she was beginning to doze off, and his insistent talk of water was both mesmeric and annoying.

'Mom?'

She blinked, sat up, and saw Chris in the bathroom doorway. He'd just gotten out of the shower. His hair was damp, and he was dressed only in his briefs. The sight of his thin, boyish body — all ribs and elbows and knees — pulled at her heart, for he looked so innocent and vulnerable. He was so small and fragile that she wondered how she could ever protect him, and renewed fear rose in her.

'Mom, he's talking,' Chris said, pointing to the man on the bed. 'Didn't you hear him? He's talking.'

'Water,' her guardian said thickly. 'Water.'

She went quickly to the bed and bent over him. He was no longer comatose. He was trying to sit up, but he had no strength. His blue eyes were open, and although they were bloodshot, they focused on her, alert and observant.

'Thirsty,' he said.

She said, 'Chris—'

He was already there with a glass of water from the bathroom.

She sat on the bed beside her guardian, lifted his head, took the water from Chris, and helped the wounded man drink. She allowed him only small sips; she didn't want him to choke. His lips were fever-chapped, and his tongue was coated with a white film, as if he had eaten ashes. He drank more than a third of a glass of water, then indicated that he'd had enough.

After she lowered his head to the pillow, she put a hand to his forehead. 'Not so hot as he was.'

He rolled his head from side to side, trying to look at the room. In spite of the water, his voice was dry, burnt out. 'Where are we?'

'Safe,' she said.

'Nowhere… is safe.'

'We may have figured out more of this crazy situation than you realize,' she told him.

'Yeah,' Chris said, sitting on the bed beside his mother. 'We know you're a time traveler!'

The man looked at the boy, managed a weak smile, winced in pain.

'I've got drugs,' Laura said. 'A painkiller.'

'No,' he said. 'Not now. Later maybe. More water?'

Laura lifted him once more, and this time he drank most of what remained in the glass. She remembered the penicillin and put a capsule between his teeth. He washed it down with the last two swallows.

'When do you come from?' Chris asked, intensely interested, oblivious of the droplets of bathwater that tracked out of his damp hair and down his face. 'When?'

'Honey,' Laura said, 'he's very weak, and I don't think we should bother him with too many questions just yet.'

'He can tell us that much, anyway, Mom.' To the wounded man, Chris said, 'When do you come from?'

He stared at Chris, then at Laura, and the haunted look was in his eyes again.

'When do you come from? Huh? The year 2100? 3000?'

In his paper-dry voice, her guardian said, 'Nineteen forty-four.'

The little bit of activity had clearly tired him already, for his eyelids looked heavy, and his voice was fainter than it had been, so Laura was certain that he had lapsed into delirium again.

'When?' Chris repeated, baffled by the answer he had been given.

'Nineteen forty-four.'

'That's impossible,' Chris said.