by John Barnes
The big surprise was that another governor nobody had ever heard of was president, and again, after electing him, people mostly didn’t like him. Porter had turned out to be unusually talented musically so she was getting a lot of private piano and violin lessons. My sister Carrie was apparently continuing her career in physics and getting some kind of acclaim for it, my father was on some consulting gig in the Middle East, and everyone was pretty much fine.
Oh, and with accumulated pay converted first to gold, then to marks, and finally to dollars, I was now a millionaire twenty times over, after taxes. Not a bad thing to know …
The transfer was simple. An ATN courier who looked something like me got onto an airliner headed into Pittsburgh, with a ticket in my name, checking all the bags I had taken with me to the alternate timelines. The courier went into the bathroom, locked the door, and signaled; then the ATN crew opened a portal between the two timelines, right into the airliner bathroom. He stepped out and handed me the ticket; I got in, they closed the portal, and I walked back to my seat.
I noticed one bored-looking man, balding with a bushy beard and huge black eyebrows, a typical college-prof type, who looked up from his book and watched me closely, as if he didn’t quite recognize me. He shrugged, as anyone would; after all, there’s no way for one guy to go into an airliner bathroom and another to come out, right? Still, the fact that he had noticed at all would have to go into my report. No point getting sloppy—the Closers know where our timeline is and there’s always a risk of reinvasion.
If you like giant shopping malls with high prices and a lot of very upset children, the Pittsburgh air terminal is terrific. Otherwise, it’s a place to hurry through. I got off the plane, not really expecting there to be anyone to meet me, and to my surprise Robbie and Porter were waiting for me. Robbie Wilmadottir looked her usual self—small, lean, dark-haired, with a crew cut, eyes darting around all the time. She was in skirt, flat shoes, and sweater, dressed more like a woman than usual, though I noted that the jacket she was wearing over the sweater was the usual heavy-grade polyester thing that hides (not well) a thin sheet of Kevlar and provides enough space to make a shoulder holster less conspicuous. Go to any rock concert, any place where a prominent politician is speaking, or any time a big movie star has a press conference, hang around looking crazy and talking to yourself, and you get to meet people who wear jackets just like that.
Porter Brunreich, my ward, seemed to be three inches taller. She was wearing ripped jeans, a sweatshirt for Oxford University (I wondered for a moment if Oxford actually had sweatshirts), a backward tractor cap, and a pretty amazing number of earrings in each ear; it occurred to me that after all the trouble I’d gone to keeping her from getting holes in her body, she’d probably put more holes in her ears than the Closers would have in the rest of her. I told them they both looked terrific, and I meant it about Robbie.
“Nice to have you back, boss. Do I have to stop embezzling from the till?” Robbie asked.
“Hi, Mark,” Porter said. “You look pretty good yourself. Who picked out your suit?”
I grinned at her. “I don’t suppose the court would look on it kindly if I locked you in your room for the next five years, but think of the studying you could get done for college.” I draped an arm around her shoulders, and we went off to catch the silly little train that takes you to baggage claim.
Robbie had the Mercedes convertible waiting for me in short-term parking; knowing she likes to drive it a lot, I suggested she drive us home. Porter got into the backseat, we rolled the top down, and we were off.
It was a bright, clear, not-cold October afternoon, the kind that makes you think about football and hayrides and all that other Americana, when you know it will get cold that night but right now the air just has a pleasant bite to it. Porter leaned forward to get her head between me and Robbie, and we conversed in occasional shouts.
“I’m legally required,” I bellowed, “to ask you how school is going.”
“Ça va,” Porter shouted.
“You’re taking French?”
“No, but all my friends are. I’m taking Latin.”
It was a typical Pittsburgh fall day, all right; people were lurching onto the Parkway like maniacs, and Robbie was veering around all those pop-up roadblocks gracefully. I saw a couple of surprised old codgers suddenly realizing we had been there as we roared past. Public conveyances eight hundred years in a more advanced future may actually move faster and be safer, but there’s a lot more romance in a plain old piece of German iron with a ragtop.
A lot of Porter’s blond hair had escaped from the back of her cap and was whipping around in the wind; it occurred to me that uncool as it might be to be seen with adults, when I was her age I’d certainly have been delighted to be seen in a car like this.
“Okay, so school’s okay. Now I’m supposed to tell you that you can bring all your problems to me.”
“Sure, if anyone’s trying to shoot me!” she said. “Violence to you; math, science, and love life to Carrie; Latin and history to the Prof [that’s what she calls my father]; and athletic coaching to Robbie and Paula.”
“I wasn’t aware you had a love life!” I kept my tone light, but I have to admit that the idea made me a little nervous; first of all, it’s bad enough to be the de facto father of a teenager, but when she’s a target for an organization which could, if it wanted, infiltrate an assassin who looked for all the world like a ninth-grade boy … well, let’s say it doesn’t really add to the normal Dad-paranoia, but it sure gives you a great excuse for it.
“Not yet!” Porter said. “But with Carrie’s advice, there’s always hope.”
Well, Sis wouldn’t steer Porter too far wrong, anyway. Not necessarily in the direction I’d pick, but not wrong. Always assuming you could steer Porter at all. I tried not to assume that.
“What’s this I hear about you and music?”
“Well, they say I have talent,” she said.
“Hah!” Robbie said.
“‘Hah’ she has talent, or ‘Hah!’ they say that?” I asked.
“‘Hah!’ Porter has talent like water is wet and the sky is up.” Robbie downshifted, shot us around a truck through a hole that I wouldn’t have said was there, whipped us back into the right-hand lane, and added, “Let me steal her thunder. She’s performing with the symphony tomorrow night. One piece each, piano, violin, cello, and flute. The critics are calling her the phenomenon of the century, and they’re right, whatever you might think of them.”
“You don’t even like classical music much,” Porter pointed out. “And, okay, yeah, I’m pretty good, but I know I could be a lot better; I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
By now I was gaping. “You learned all four instruments in the two years since I saw you last?”
“No, I started Suzuki violin when I was three and did it for five years. But I didn’t have much idea what music was all about when I was eight, and my hands wouldn’t do what I wanted them to, so I got bored.” That last sentence came out as a shriek; Robbie, who always drove with the radio on, had heard that the Fort Pitt tunnel was closed, and made an across-four-lanes last-minute diversion to 51 South, to take us through the Liberty Tubes and into the city that way. “Yeah, I know I’m supposed to be good and all that,” she added as we began to rocket down the highway again. Fifty-one winds a lot, working its way along the back side of the ridge that separates it from the Allegheny, and it’s in comparatively lousy shape; Robbie was being held down to not more than twenty over the speed limit. A lot of cops knew me, knew her, and knew the car, and it was a good thing most of them liked us.
“It sounds more like you’re a genius,” I said, and from the face she made at me I knew she’d heard that particular word too often.
“Yeah, right,” she said. “You know what a genius is?”
“A chick who stays home on prom night,” Robbie volunteered.
“No kidding,” Porter said. “And not only that, it’s also somebody
that teachers and everyone act completely weird around. I mean, I love you and your family, Mark, and Robbie and Paula are great, but … you know, I want some friends who are … uh …”
“Your own age,” I finished for her. “Understood. I hope I’ve at least got a ticket to see you play. I promise I’ll wear a suit and behave myself at the performance.”
“Of course you have a ticket!” she said. “Um, um … there’s this one other thing, too.”
“I’ll be sitting next to a boy, and you don’t want me to act like a geek in front of him.”
“Don’t I wish! No, it’s just something else … Carrie said I could ask you after the concert but I thought if maybe you got a chance to think about it first. … Well, anyway, I just don’t want to sneak around and surprise you or anything, I wanted to ask permission …”
“If it’s marriage, heroin, or enlisting, the answer is no; otherwise, we can discuss it,” I said.
“I want to have my nose pierced.”
“Then again, if it’s marriage, heroin, enlisting, or getting your nose pierced …”I tried to keep the tone light because I really didn’t want to have an argument with her about it. It also occurred to me that I’d better see what Sis had come up with in the way of answers to that one; Porter was a good kid, but any kid will try to play both ends against the middle.
“Aw, Mark …”
“I didn’t actually say ‘no,’” I pointed out. “I was teasing you till I get used to the idea. I know a lot of women younger than me—a lot younger than me—do that. It looks horrible to me, and I hate like hell to imagine having a cold with one of those. But I also know that if you change your mind later the hole will heal up pretty fast, so it’s not like a tattoo; I figure chances are that there aren’t many infections or I wouldn’t see so many girls doing it; and besides, you aren’t interested, really, in how your guardian reacts to it, but in how kids your age do. So I’m going to wait and think a little, okay?”
“Okay. I knew you’d be reasonable.”
“If I’m being reasonable, it’s only with an effort. Bear in mind that your guardian also thinks of it as ‘mutilating your nose,’ okay?”
“’Kay. I won’t bring it up for … oh, a week?”
“Deal,” I said. “By that time I’ll try to have an opinion instead of a reaction.”
I’m not parent material, and getting stuck being one was not the best of things that could have happened to me. Still, if you have to do it, I recommend the way I got into it—Porter already knew me and trusted me long before her dad died and left me as her guardian, and she didn’t move in with my family until she was thirteen. That meant nobody had a habit of thinking of her as a little girl to overcome, and moreover she didn’t have any past memories of thinking of us as omnipotent.
She thought of Robbie as omnipotent …
It left me smiling a little to think that. From the first day we’d been guarding that kid, Robbie had been her hero.
“What?” Porter demanded.
“What what?”
“You were smiling.”
“Well, I’ll never do that again, then.”
“Mark!”
“You’re a terrific kid, Porter, I’m very proud of you, and I love you very much.”
“Oh, sure. Pull out your sneakiest tricks,” she said, but she was smiling, and she didn’t hassle me again about my mystery smile.
Robbie took a second to wink at me—I’m never sure how I feel about her taking her eyes off the road—zipped around to the left, and took us into the Liberty Tubes.
Say what you like about Pittsburgh, coming into it from any direction, the view is amazing. From either of the tunnels, you come bursting out of the dark and there’s the whole mighty array of skyscrapers in the Golden Triangle right in front of you across the Monongahela. From there it was only a few minutes home to Frick Park.
Dad came bustling out, a big healthy guy with a mane of white hair, and a moment later Paula (Robbie’s partner and the other reason my agency keeps functioning in my absence) came around the corner pushing Carrie’s wheelchair. The gathering was complete.
There was a certain awkwardness, glad as I was to see Robbie and Paula, for they always had the impression that I was doing secret work for a federal agency that couldn’t be named, and thus I couldn’t exactly talk about where I’d been or what I’d been doing. Dad had set up sort of a small party that afternoon, and we all sat around and talked about nothing and laughed.
Finally, at dinner, after Robbie and Paula had gone—and for Porter’s safety, I had made sure the .45 was ready for action and that the SHAKK was in easy reach—we all sat down around the table, and I told them about what I’d been up to. I wasn’t sure whether I should be pleased or embarrassed at the interest that Porter and Carrie took in Chrysamen. I explained again that I wasn’t likely to see her for a long time, that we were actually from centuries apart, and that anyway Crux Ops age at different rates from each other because we get different durations and schedules for missions. “Chrys and I could end up thirty years apart in age or more, within just a few years,” I explained. “And it’s just … well, it’s a very close friendship,” I said, “but it’s not exactly a romance, yet, and we’re going to write, but it’s important not to have too much hope about that.”
They both nodded solemnly, which immediately told me that they didn’t believe a word of it. It figured. Carrie had been twenty-three when the bomb went off, which made it a lot tougher for her to have a love life. Porter was still too young to have any idea. That is, they were both naive enough to believe that love conquered all.
After Porter went off to do some homework, and Carrie was enlisted to help her through it, I was left alone with Dad. Now that there were just the two of us, he said, “Welcome home again, son. Sounds like you’ve given a good account of yourself.”
“Fair, I’d say,” I said. “Dad, what the hell do you suppose all this means? I know I’m smarter than most people, and I’m good in a fight, but why, out of all the tens of thousands of Crux Ops scattered across a couple of million timelines, would the Closers dedicate themselves to killing just one rookie?”
“Well,” Dad said, “my first thought is that the Closers who have attacked you are from somewhere in the future of the timelines you were in. There’s something they know will happen because of you and this Chrysamen ja N’wook. That’s about all I can say.”
“But what am I going to do?” I asked.
“You may not even know when you do it,” Dad pointed out. “Suppose you were a machine gunner for the Brits in World War I. One day things went just a little differently, and you bagged Adolf Hitler; a month later you were with an antiaircraft battery and you got Goering with a lucky shot. World War II would be a pretty different affair, and all because of you, but how would you ever know that? Even if you knew about the existence of other timelines—how would you know which, of the thousands of things you had done, had made the difference? Grant, Sherman, Lee, and Stonewall Jackson all served near each other in the Mexican War. Get them all into one bar and give them bad liquor, and what would have happened to the Civil War? And would the guy who distilled the liquor, or the unimportant lieutenant who invited all of them to come along, have ever known what he’d done?”
I sighed. “Yeah, I know. Still, it’s a pretty oppressive thing to have hanging over your head. I’d a lot rather have been insignificant.”
“Wouldn’t we all. Nobody gets that choice, Mark, nobody. If you’re a king or president, it might be very obvious that you’re significant, but think about what I just said. You never know. The guy that washes a windshield doesn’t do his job right, a smear on the windshield picks up the glare, a car goes off the road, and the girl who would have been mother of a Nobel Prize winner dies at age ten. That windshield washer doesn’t know.
“You don’t even get to pick which way things go, or whether doing your job well is the best thing you can do. Suppose you’re a bus driver and you’re carefu
l to be on schedule. A guy running late for the bus doesn’t get on yours—and he never meets the people who would have given him his start in business, and a whole giant corporation doesn’t happen. You can only see a short way into the future, and absolutely not reliably. You don’t have to have traveled across twenty timelines to know that.”
I leaned back and thought for a long moment. Dad had sort of a sardonic grin under his halo of white hair. Sourly, I said, “That’s not fair, all the same.”
“Unh-hunh. If we had any choice, none of us would go to the future without a firm contract.”
I had to grin at that. If we had the choice …
Anyway, I quit worrying and let myself relax into my old life. At the bodyguard agency, I answered the phone, talked to people, set them up with guards, and did no work myself. I spent a fair amount of time walking in the park with Porter, talked with Dad about various alternate worlds I’d visited or heard about, tried to get Carrie to explain a few things to me about what she was doing—apparently what I had told her was possible was having some kind of influence on her work, and she was trying to figure out how a projectile could draw on the heat of its passage for propulsion—and, in general, spent two glorious months of working out to stay in shape, shooting a lot to stay sharp, and unwinding till I was comfortable, healthy, and bored out of my mind.
Porter played her date with the symphony, and offers started to come in from everywhere. There was a brief period of reporters tromping through the house, because besides Porter’s status as a prodigy, they connected her with me, and me with my father’s long battle with Blade of the Most Merciful, the Closer front group in our timeline, and with the “heroic recovery” stories they used to do about Sis. They dredged up the fact that Blade terrorists had killed Porter’s mother before her eyes (in fact, Closer agents had been trying to kill Porter, but her mother had switched passports) and that her father had died in prison. There was even a little bit in there about me; just who I worked for that caused me to be absent for so much of the time (and made me so well-off) was a regular matter for speculation.
