Kindred by Octavia Butler

I be if I met a man who claimed to be from eighteen nineteen—or two thousand nineteen, for that matter. Time travel was science fiction in nineteen seventy-six. In eighteen nineteen—Rufus was right—it was sheer insanity. No one but a child would even have listened to Kevin and me talk about it.
    “If you know California’s going to be a state,” said Rufus, “you must know some other things that are going to happen.”
    “We do,” I admitted. “Some things. Not very much. We’re not historians.”
    “But you ought to know everything if it already happened in your time.”
    “How much do you know about seventeen nineteen, Rufe?”
    He stared at me blankly.
    “People don’t learn everything about the times that came before them,” I said. “Why should they?”
    He sighed. “Tell me something, Dana. I’m trying to believe you.”
    I dug back into the American history that I had learned both in and out of school. “Well, if this is eighteen nineteen, the President is James Monroe, right?”
    “Yeah.”
    “The next President will be John Quincy Adams.”
    “When?”
    I frowned, calling back more of the list of Presidents I had memorized for no particular reason when I was in school. “In eighteen twenty-four. Monroe had—will have—two terms.”
    “What else?”
    I looked at Kevin.
    He shrugged. “All I can think of is something I got from those books we looked through last night. In eighteen twenty, the Missouri Compromise opened the way for Missouri to come into the Union as a slave state and Maine to come in as a free state. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about, Rufus?”
    “No, sir.”
    “I didn’t think so. Have you got any money?”
    “Money? Me? No.”
    “Well, you’ve seen money, haven’t you?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Coins should have the year they were made stamped on them, even now.”
    “They do.”
    Kevin reached into his pocket and brought out a handful of change. He held it out to Rufus and Rufus picked out a few coins. “Nineteen sixty-five,” he read, “nineteen sixty-seven, nineteen seventy-one, nineteen seventy. None of them say nineteen seventy-six.”
    “None of them say eighteen-anything either,” said Kevin. “But here.” He picked out a bicentennial quarter and handed it to Rufus.
    “Seventeen seventy-six, nineteen seventy-six,” the boy read. “Two dates.”
    “The country’s two hundred years old in nineteen seventy-six,” said Kevin. “Some of the money was changed to commemorate the anniversary. Are you convinced?”
    “Well, I guess you could have made these yourself.”
    Kevin took back his money. “You might not know about Missouri, kid,” he said wearily. “But you’d have made a good Missourian.”
    “What?”
    “Just a joke. Hasn’t come into fashion yet.”
    Rufus looked troubled. “I believe you. I don’t understand, like Dana said, but I guess I believe.”
    Kevin sighed. “Thank God.”
    Rufus looked up at Kevin and managed to grin. “You aren’t as bad as I thought you’d be.”
    “Bad?” Kevin looked at me accusingly.
    “I didn’t tell him anything about you,” I said.
    “I saw you,” said Rufus. “You were fighting with Dana just before you came here, or … it looked like fighting. Did you make all those marks on her face?”
    “No, he didn’t,” I said quickly. “And he and I weren’t fighting.”
    “Wait a minute,” said Kevin. “How could he know about that?”
    “Like he said.” I shrugged. “He saw us before we got here. I don’t know how he does it, but he’s done it before.” I looked down at Rufus. “Have you told anyone else about seeing me?”
    “Just Nigel. Nobody else would believe me.”
    “Good. Best not to tell anyone else about us now either. Nothing about California or nineteen seventy-six.” I took Kevin’s hand and held it. “We’re going to have to fit in as best we can with the people here for as long as we have to stay. That means we’re going to have to play the