The zenith angle by Bruce Sterling

his free hand at the walls. “Grandpa, how did you get in this place?”
    “I’m hiding out here, that’s how! After I broke out of that damn nuthouse!” Grandpa Chuck tapped the thin skin on his skull. “Old Kelly, he never knew when to leave when the time was right! Hardening of the arteries up here, that was Kelly Johnson’s problem . . . I used to see ol’ Kelly laid up in his hospital bed, all crippled-up and cussing-out Allen Dulles, when Dulles was already dead . . . His mind went! Now my boy Srini, though . . . He’s just this young kid, Srini, but he’s a good engineer, one of my best . . . He fixed up this computer for me, to read things out loud for me . . . A lotta contract work now, he’s a busy boy . . . This was his room.”
    “He sure likes planes,” Van observed.
    “I pay his mom room and board, you know. His mom, she’s a widow now. Family values, that’s a good deal.” The old man turned back to his desk. He looked with resigned confusion on the clutter of small plastic parts. “Now this here was the P-38 Lightning. Kelly Johnson’s first classic design. America killed Admiral Yamamoto with those P-38s.” He tapped the plastic fuselage with a mechanical pencil. “So much for your Pearl Harbor, huh, Admiral? Welcome to hell!”
    One of Van’s phones rang. He pulled it from a hip pocket. “Vandeveer.”
    “Where are we?” came a plaintive cry. “Where are you?” It was Helga.
    “We’re here now. We’re in Burbank.”
    “But there’s no one in the street! I looked everywhere! I’m scared. Why don’t these phones work better? I forget which big numbers to dial first.”
    “I’ll come get you,” Van promised.
    “Is Disneyland in this town?”
    “I’ll just come get you, Helga.”
    Van opened the bedroom door to leave. Surprised, his grandfather came after him in a shuffling old man’s hustle.
    The old man swung his arms. “I never got to work on the Lightning. That was before my time. But that’s your future, boy! That Pearl Harbor business!” He bared his irregular teeth. “Dang, I’m hungry.”
    Once in the hall, Grandpa Chuck briskly turned the wrong way and hastened to an outside door. He clawed at the round brass doorknob, his fingers slipping. The doorknob clicked, but the door was firmly locked at the top with a cheap brass bolt. Grandpa Chuck never looked up at the bolt. He never thought to do it. He just pawed at the round brass knob, muttering in frustration, while Van stared at him in dismay.
    The old man gave up at last, and tried to look jaunty. “How’s about some breakfast, son?”
    Van followed his barefoot grandfather into the kitchen. Mrs. Srinivasan was there, quiet and polite. She fetched the old man a box of bran flakes, some whole milk, an indestructible metal bowl with a big wooden spoon. The old man sat at the corner of the Formica table, scowling at her. “Television,” he snapped. She obediently clicked the set on.
    Van left Mrs. Srinivasan’s duplex and fetched Helga from the street. Helga was overjoyed to see him. She chattered at him nervously. Van put up with this. Helga was tall, shapely, and gushy. Van knew that for some men she had a lot of sex appeal, but he had never understood why. She was not his type at all and he had never felt even a twinge of chemistry. Van was pleased that Helga was good with infants, but basically he felt about Helga the way he might feel about a tame llama. Inside the duplex, Mrs. Srinivasan and Helga stared at each other as if they had come not from Sweden and India, but from Venus and Jupiter. They both seemed like decent women to Van, or at least okay women, but they couldn’t get the remotest grip on one another. They kept addressing each other through Van: “Ask your blond girl if she wants to sit down,” “Ask the nice lady if she has a real bathroom here, you know, with a toilet.” Irritated, the old man turned up his morning cable news show. The TV blared war and terror, headache pills and