This Shared Dream - By Kathleen Ann Goonan Page 0,1

homes, historical artifacts, even entire lives. Hurricane Jill.

She had kept it inside until she was forty-one, a doctoral student in political science at Georgetown.

The tall, wavy-glassed windows in the old classroom stood open. A cool, page-riffling breeze, the distant cries of children, and the first sunlight in weeks encouraged students to think of little else. Certainly, no one but Jill was paying attention to their professor, a Soviet expat.

A slow and measured speaker, Koslov framed his English precisely. His pause after “In this case…” seemed to last forever.

Jill said, “I disagree.”

“On what grounds?” Koslov responded, his normally placid expression roused to interest. One of the undergrads sighed loud. Koslov, a seasoned debater in his seventies, was Jill’s doctoral adviser, and they often got into long, obscure disagreements.

Jill stood, and leaned forward. Her palms pressed against the desk. “After the Soviets took Berlin—”

“Would you mind repeating that?” Koslov’s eyes narrowed. He pushed his shaggy gray hair from his forehead and waited, hands on his stocky hips.

“I…” She paused. Everyone was looking at her with great interest.

Wait a minute. The Soviets had not taken Berlin. The Allies had not handed East Germany to Stalin on a silver platter. Instead, Patton, ignoring orders, forged through Germany and took Berlin before the Soviets could get there, which dramatically changed postwar politics and territories.

She said, “I mean, after Patton argued with Eisenhower about taking Berlin and finally obeyed Eisenhower’s orders—” That was right, wasn’t it? Yes. That was what had happened, here … or was it there, before?

Damn.

She stopped speaking. Somewhere, a bell rang.

Relieved, she stuffed her Q, an all-purpose computer and communicator, into her pack and hurried toward the door, tired and wondering what the hell had gotten into her. It was the last class of her last day at Georgetown—a makeup class, actually, to satisfy her doctoral requirements, one that she would have ordinarily taken when working on her master’s degree. She worked part-time at the World Bank, and the full-time job she had taken a hiatus from awaited her, with near-doubled PhD salary. She also worked part-time in her bookstore, Serendipity, and took care of her five-year-old son, Stevie. She didn’t have time for this, or much of anything else either.

Koslov boxed her in by the door as the other students rushed out behind him. “Jill?”

“I have to get to an appointment.” She tried to get past him. He stepped sideways, blocking her exit.

“Please.” Lev Koslov, tie askew, as usual, and his brown suit rumpled, moved in a perpetual haze of acrid cigarette smoke. He favored a Russian brand with a wolf on the package, and did not care if the ashes fell on the floor, on his suit, or on a student’s desk as he strutted past, waving his arms and expounding. With a reputation for being blazingly intelligent, he had little patience with idiocy. Several students, all much younger than Jill, glanced back in surprise as they left, having expected, no doubt, a more barbed approach to her outburst. Like other professors at Georgetown, he frequented her nearby bookshop, Serendipity, so she was not at all intimidated by him.

However, she did not want to discuss her lapse.

He fished his classbook from his jacket pocket. “This is not the first time that you have mentioned such … ideas.” The book-sized screen lit with print when he touched it. He found what he was looking for and handed it to Jill. “Last week’s test.”

“I already checked my grade.”

“Yes, I gave you an A. As usual. It was the extra-credit question, which you did not need for the grade, as it turned out. I didn’t take off for your answer.”

She read, “‘Since the assassination of John F. Kennedy…’ Oh.” She gave the reader back to him. Kennedy had not been assassinated. Not here. He was an international statesman, a celebrity, the father of the space program, as well as the father of several children born to women not married to him. “I’m sorry. I think…” She tried to imagine how to gloss over her idiotic outburst, and failed. Either she could say she was going crazy, which she didn’t think would cut much slack with Dr. Koslov, or …

“I’m writing an alternate history,” she said.

“A what?”

“An alternate history. I used to write comic books when I was in high school, and…” Damn. Worse and worse. She still had to defend her dissertation before this man. “Well, I must have been thinking about it when I wrote this.” She smiled briefly, and, she hoped,