by Darrell Bain
“Oh, gosh,” Wanda said, relieved. “Is that all?"
Sheila rubbed at her eyes. “Isn't that enough? What do you expect me to do? Take up with a woman?"
Wanda felt her heart beat a little faster. “That might be an option if it were the right woman, but I'm sure we can work out something even better. Weren't you listening? There's so many more women than men that some of us are going to have to share.” Still holding Sheila's chin with one hand, Wanda leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to her lips.
Sheila backed off in surprise, then relaxed and let Wanda brush her lips again. She stared at the older woman.
“Do you mean you and Mike—"
“Or you and Mike.” Or you and I, for that matter, Wanda thought wistfully.
“I thought—I mean—Mike—you—” Sheila found that she couldn't absorb the full import of Wanda's words all at once.
Wanda curled her arms around Sheila, holding her close. “Don't worry about it, sweetheart. I think the three of us can work out an arrangement, don't you?'
Sheila hesitated then nodded shyly.
Michael was going to be awfully surprised.
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EPILOGUE
The man was clad in deerskins. He held a spear upright by his side, taller than he was. It was tipped with a beautifully constructed flint point, an anthropological mark of pre-glacial North American aborigines. He kept the spear by his side, not for protection, but because it was the mark of his tribe, hunters of the holy bison and great mammoths. He hoped it would serve him now, as he prepared to confront the strangers. They wore odd, flimsy skins and hunted with lightning and thunder. They tamed horses and rode on their backs. They were too powerful to ignore, and he had been selected to confront them. Quaking, he stepped into the clearing, hand raised and open. One of the pale men set aside his lightning stick and came to meet him, hands as open as his. His prayers to the great coyote had been answered. The strangers were peaceful. Now his tribe could learn, and perhaps in time, hunt with the lightning and thunder as these new inhabitants of the world did.
In this incarnation of the infinite lines of history, the New World would discover the old and all would be different, as it had been so many times before.
THE END
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