Collection 2: "Another Place, Another Time" by Cory Doctorow

Emmy rolled her eyes with the eloquence of a thirteen-year-old girl whose tutor had already explained all this to her.

Outside Gilbert’s house the summer roared past like a three-masted schooner before a gale, with all sails bellied out.

“Belgium! Poor lad. I’ve been marooned there once or twice. Land of bankers and cheese-makers. Like hitting your head, Belgium, because it feels so good when you stop. What else?”

His father nodded judiciously.

Gilbert floated downstairs to the kitchen as though trapped in a dream that compelled him to seek out the housekeeper, even though some premonition told him to hide away in his room for as long as possible.

Gilbert floated downstairs to the kitchen as though trapped in a dream that compelled him to seek out the housekeeper, even though some premonition told him to hide away in his room for as long as possible.

So he stood, rooted to the spot, while she came and took him up in her frail arms and clutched at him, sobbing dry, raspy sobs.

But by the second week, they were back to something like normal, scampering up the trees and down the cliffs, ranging farther and farther afield on their bicycles.

But by the second week, they were back to something like normal, scampering up the trees and down the cliffs, ranging farther and farther afield on their bicycles.

Inside, the cobwebby, musty gloom yielded a million treasures: old time-tables, a telegraph rig, stiff denim coveralls with material as thick as the hall carpet at home, ancient whiskey bottles, a leather-bound journal that went to powder when they touched it...

He got his oilcan and lavishly applied the forty-weight oil to every bearing he could find.

Once they had bullied Kalamazoo onto the tracks—using blocks, winches, levers, and a total disregard for their own safety—they stood to either side of its bogey handle and stared from side to side.

Gilbert laid out his sailor suit—his father bought him a new one every year—and his book about time and space and stuffed a picnic blanket with Mrs. Curie’s preserves, hardtack bread, jars of lemonade, and apples from the cellar.

He opened the small oak box holding Grandad’s sextant, but as he’d never mastered it, he set it down.

Gilbert took out his grandfather’s spyglass, lifted off the leather cap from the business end, extended it, and pointed it out to sea, sweeping from side to side, looking farther than he’d ever seen.

It showed a spit of land, graced with an ancient and crumbling sea fort, shrouded in mist and overgrown with the weeds and trees of long disuse.

Emmy quirked her mouth at him, a familiar no-nonsense look that he ignored.

At the mention of food, Neils and Erwin clamored for snacks, and Emmy found them cookies she’d snitched from the big jar in the Limburgher kitchen.

Gilbert pulled out his spyglass and looked ahead at the fort. All the rails converged on it, but without ever meeting. And some stretched beyond.

And somewhere there was a father on a ship that weathered a storm rather than succumbed to it.