Read Online Our Children's Children by Clifford D. Simak - Free Book Online
Authors: Clifford D. Simak
Ads: Link
of wealth that is found in our world. No one is rich and there is none of the abject poverty that today oppresses millions. Apparently there has been not only a change in life style, but a change as well in life values. Life is simpler and kinder and less competitive; there are few eager beavers in that world of 500 years ahead.â¦
15
A crowd was gathering in Lafayette Park, quiet and orderly, as crowds had gathered through the years, to stand staring at the White House, not demanding anything, not expecting anything, simply gathering there in a dumb show of participation in a nationâs crisis. Above the crowd, Andy Jackson still sat his rearing charger, with the patina of many years upon both horse and rider, friends to perching pigeons.
No one quite knew what this crisis meant or if it might even be a crisis. They had, as yet, no idea how it had come about or what it might mean to them, although there were a few among them who had done some rather specific, although distorted, thinking on the subject and were willing (at times, perhaps, insistent) on sharing with their neighbors what they had been thinking.
In the White House a flood of calls had started to come in and were stacking upâcalls from members of the Congress, from party stalwarts ready with suggestions and advice, from businessmen and industrialists suddenly grown nervous, from crackpots who held immediate solutions.
A television camera crew drove up in their van and set up for business, taking footage of the Lafayette crowd and of the White House, gleaming in the summer sun, with a newsman doing a stand-up commentary against the background.
Straggling tourists trailed up and down the avenue, somewhat astonished at thus being caught up in the midst of history, and the White House squirrels came scampering down to the fence and through it out onto the sidewalk, sitting up daintily, with forepaws folded on their chests, begging for handouts.
16
Alice Gale stood in the window, gazing across Pennsylvania Avenue to the gathering crowd in the park beyond it. She hugged herself in shivering ecstasy, not daring to believe that she actually was there, that she could be back in twentieth-century Washington, where history had been made, where legendary men had lived, and at this moment in the very room where crowned heads had slept.
Crowned heads, she thought. What an awful, almost medieval phrase. And yet it had a certain ring to it, a certain elegance that her world had never known.
She had caught a glimpse of the Washington Monument as she and her father had been driven into the White House grounds, and out there, just beyond it, a marble Lincoln sat in his marble chair, with his arms resting on its arms and his massive, whiskered face bearing that look of greatness, of sorrow and compassion that had quieted thousands into reverent silence as they came climbing up the stairs to stand face to face with him.
Just across the hallway her father was in the Lincoln bedroom, with its massive Victorian bed and the velvet-covered slipper chairs. Although, she recalled, Lincoln had never really slept there.
It was history back to life, she thought, history resurrected. And it was a precious thing. It would be something to remember always, no matter what might be ahead. It would be something to remember back in the Miocene. And what, she wondered with a little shiver, might the Miocene be like? If they ever got there, if the people of this time should decide to help them in getting there?
But whatever might happen, she had something she could sayââOnce I slept in the Queenâs Bedroom.â
She turned from the window and looked in wonder once-again-renewed at the huge four-poster bed with its hangings and counterpane of rose and white, at the mahogany bookcase-secretary that stood between the windows, the soft white carpeting.
It was selfish of her, she knew, to be feeling this when so many others of her world at this very moment stood
15
A crowd was gathering in Lafayette Park, quiet and orderly, as crowds had gathered through the years, to stand staring at the White House, not demanding anything, not expecting anything, simply gathering there in a dumb show of participation in a nationâs crisis. Above the crowd, Andy Jackson still sat his rearing charger, with the patina of many years upon both horse and rider, friends to perching pigeons.
No one quite knew what this crisis meant or if it might even be a crisis. They had, as yet, no idea how it had come about or what it might mean to them, although there were a few among them who had done some rather specific, although distorted, thinking on the subject and were willing (at times, perhaps, insistent) on sharing with their neighbors what they had been thinking.
In the White House a flood of calls had started to come in and were stacking upâcalls from members of the Congress, from party stalwarts ready with suggestions and advice, from businessmen and industrialists suddenly grown nervous, from crackpots who held immediate solutions.
A television camera crew drove up in their van and set up for business, taking footage of the Lafayette crowd and of the White House, gleaming in the summer sun, with a newsman doing a stand-up commentary against the background.
Straggling tourists trailed up and down the avenue, somewhat astonished at thus being caught up in the midst of history, and the White House squirrels came scampering down to the fence and through it out onto the sidewalk, sitting up daintily, with forepaws folded on their chests, begging for handouts.
16
Alice Gale stood in the window, gazing across Pennsylvania Avenue to the gathering crowd in the park beyond it. She hugged herself in shivering ecstasy, not daring to believe that she actually was there, that she could be back in twentieth-century Washington, where history had been made, where legendary men had lived, and at this moment in the very room where crowned heads had slept.
Crowned heads, she thought. What an awful, almost medieval phrase. And yet it had a certain ring to it, a certain elegance that her world had never known.
She had caught a glimpse of the Washington Monument as she and her father had been driven into the White House grounds, and out there, just beyond it, a marble Lincoln sat in his marble chair, with his arms resting on its arms and his massive, whiskered face bearing that look of greatness, of sorrow and compassion that had quieted thousands into reverent silence as they came climbing up the stairs to stand face to face with him.
Just across the hallway her father was in the Lincoln bedroom, with its massive Victorian bed and the velvet-covered slipper chairs. Although, she recalled, Lincoln had never really slept there.
It was history back to life, she thought, history resurrected. And it was a precious thing. It would be something to remember always, no matter what might be ahead. It would be something to remember back in the Miocene. And what, she wondered with a little shiver, might the Miocene be like? If they ever got there, if the people of this time should decide to help them in getting there?
But whatever might happen, she had something she could sayââOnce I slept in the Queenâs Bedroom.â
She turned from the window and looked in wonder once-again-renewed at the huge four-poster bed with its hangings and counterpane of rose and white, at the mahogany bookcase-secretary that stood between the windows, the soft white carpeting.
It was selfish of her, she knew, to be feeling this when so many others of her world at this very moment stood
Similar Books
