All Around Atlantis Read Online Free Page B

in the accident.”
    â€œHuh?” Francie said.
    â€œAmazing as it seems,” the lady said, “I believe no one was hurt. Although you’d think, wouldn’t you, that an accident of that sort—a blimp, simply sailing into a building…”
    Francie felt slightly sickened—she wasn’t going to have another opportunity to tell someone for the first time that her mother had died, to learn what that meant by hearing the words as she said them for the first time. “How could a blimp just go crashing into a building?” she said crossly.
    â€œThese are things we can’t understand,” the lady said with dignity.
    Oops, Francie thought—she was really going to have to watch it; she kept being mean to people, and just completely by mistake.
    â€œâ€˜How could such-and-such a thing happen?’ we say,” the lady said. “As if this moment or that moment were fitted together, from…bits, and one bit or another bit might be some type of mistake. ‘There’s the building,’ people say. ‘It’s a building. There’s the blimp. It’s a blimp.’ That’s the way people think.”
    Francie peered at the lady. “Wow…” she said, considering.
    â€œYou see, people tend to settle for the first explanation. People tend to take things at face value.”
    â€œOh, definitely,” Francie said. “I mean, absolutely.”
    â€œBut a blimp or a building cannot be a mistake,” the lady said. “Obviously. A blimp or a building are evidence. Oh, goodness—” she said as the bus slowed down. She stood up and gave her sack a little shake. “Here I am.”
    â€œEvidence…” Francie frowned; Cynthia’s red jacket flashed against the snow. “Evidence, of, like…the future?”
    â€œWell, more or less,” the lady said, a bit impatiently, as the bus stopped in front of a small building. “Evidence of the present, really, I suppose. You know what I mean.” She reached into her sack and drew out some papers. “You seem like a very sensitive person—I wonder if you’d be interested in learning about my situation. This is my stop, but you’re welcome to the document. It’s extra.”
    â€œThank you,” Francie said, although the situation she’d really like to learn about, she thought, was her own. “Wait—” The lady was halfway down the aisle. “I’ve still got your handkerchief—”
    â€œJust hold on to it, dear,” the lady called back. “I think it’s got your name on it.”
    The manuscript had a title, The Triumph of Untruth: A Society That Denies the Workings of the World Puts Us at Ever Greater Risk . “I’d like to introduce myself,” it began. “My name is Iris Ackerman.”
    Hmm, Francie thought: Two people with situations, sitting right next to each other. Coincidence? She glanced up. The sickening thing was, there were a lot of people on this bus.
    â€œMy name is Iris Ackerman,” Francie read again. “And my belief is that one must try to keep an open mind in the face of puzzling experiences, no matter how laughable this approach may subsequently appear. For many years I maintained the attitude that I was merely a victim of circumstance, or chance, and perhaps now my reluctance to accept the ugliness of certain realities will be considered (with hindsight!) willful obtuseness.”
    Francie’s attention sharpened—she read on. “Certainly my persecution (by literally thousands of men, on the street, in public buildings, and even, before I was forced to flee it, in my own apartment) is a known fact. (One, or several, of these ruffians went so far as to hide himself in my closet, and even under my bed, when least expected.)
    â€œWhy, you ask, should so large and powerful an organization concentrate its efforts on tormenting a single individual?