"Thank you, Godfather,” Chambers said.
"Someday, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. That day may never come, but it will probably be May 15, 2367. Or possibly October 3, 1491. We'll be in touch."
"Yes, Godfather,” Chambers said.
"Thank you, Godfather,” Martin said.
"Go,” the Godfather said. “And remember to check your equipment."
* * * *
"What was all that stuff about teeth?” Chambers whispered to Martin as one of the Godfather's attendants led them off the estate, past the long line of people waiting to ask favors of the Godfather. Janine walked ahead in a daze. “Do you think being a paradox has finally melted his brain?"
"He wasn't talking about teeth. He was talking about destiny,” Martin said.
"It sounded like teeth."
"You weren't paying attention."
"I was too intimidated to pay attention."
"Let's hope Janine wasn't."
The attendant left them outside the last gate.
"People are spending a lot of time waiting in line,” Janine said. “Why doesn't anyone salvage it?"
"Nobody'd be crazy enough to take time from the Godfather,” Martin said.
"But you wouldn't be taking it from him."
"We were searched every time we went through a gate,” Chambers told her. “We couldn't get a Pauser inside."
Janine pointed to a queue that extended well beyond the last gate. “Looks like you wouldn't have to."
Martin turned to Chambers. “It's a terrible idea,” he said.
"Yeah,” she said.
"I mean, really, just ... terrible."
"Dangerous."
"Foolhardy."
"Crazy."
"Yes, crazy,” Martin said. “Completely crazy."
"Absolutely,” Chambers said. “Let's get the equipment."
* * * *
Back on the ship Chambers gazed into a briefcase even scruffier than the one they lost in Russia. She'd never seen so many glowing threads of time packed so tightly in one place. “There's gotta be at least a hundred thousand hours in here."
"All that time...” Martin said. “Years and years..."
"It's beautiful,” Janine said, her face lit with time. “I mean, I knew it was beautiful, I saw Tolstoy's, but so much of it, all together like this. It's beautiful."
Chambers snapped the case shut. “All right, next stop April 17, 1983."
"We've got about twenty minutes to kill before the launch slot,” Martin said as he handed out ZABA tabs from a box on the console. “I might as well go hook us up to some fresh air and a little juice."
"I, uh, need to go to the bathroom,” Janine said when Martin reappeared. She headed toward the back of the ship.
"Do you want a burrito?” Martin asked Chambers. “I'm going to zap a frozen burrito."
"I thought those things were expired."
Martin checked the date. “Not until next week."
"Which means that counting salvage runs they've been around at least a year longer."
"Eight months, tops."
"Fine, it's your gastrointestinal system."
Martin sat down on the couch with his steaming burrito. “Hey, how many frozen burritos do you think we could buy with all that time?"
"We're not using that time to buy frozen burritos."
"I know, but as a thought experiment—"
"It's not a thought experiment. It's just math."
"So how many?"
Chambers sighed. “Seven hundred thirty-three thousand eight hundred twenty-four."
"That's a lot of burritos."
"Yes. Yes, it is."
* * * *
"We good to go?” Chambers asked Martin when he returned from releasing the atmosphere hookups.
"Let ‘er rip."
Chambers piloted the ship to the Rail queue. Martin sat down next to her. “Janine's been in the bathroom a long time,” he said.
"Must have had one of those burritos."
"Stop mocking the burritos.” He rattled off their destination coordinates to the Rail operator. “Now that,” Martin said, glancing over at her, “is the smile of a woman who just salvaged her way to freedom."
"You look pretty happy yourself,” Chambers giggled.
"You giggled,” Martin said, then confirmed their standard offset.
"I'm happy. This is my ‘time beyond my wildest dreams’ giggle.” She maneuvered the ship to the Rail.
"Funny,” Martin said. “It sounds just like your nitrous oxide giggle."
"I have a nitrous oxide giggle?"
"In all the years we've been working together the only time I've ever heard you giggle was when I accidentally hooked nitrous into the atmosphere.” He gave the Rail operator the go-ahead to launch the ship. “I remember, because you usually yell about that kind of mistake. Face it, you are not a natural giggler."
"No,” Chambers said. “I'm not."
Martin adjusted the offset. “Here we are. April 17, 1983.00, 22:06:53.” He swiveled the chair around. “You know, I'm feeling a little dizzy..."
Chambers stood up, then fell back in her chair. “Janine,” she said.
* * * *
"She's not here,” Martin said after he and Chambers let themselves into Janine's apartment.
"Of course not."
"She took the textbooks."
"And left the pizza boxes.” Chambers held up the top one. Janine had written “SORRY” and “THANKS” on it in large letters.
"We could go back—"
"Are you kidding?” Chambers said. “And mess with the timeline again? The Godfather would not be happy."
"Or forward. She's got to be in the logs somewhere."
Chambers sat down on Janine's couch and sighed. “There's no point. You were right. The Godfather was talking about destiny. He knew this would happen. This is ‘everything as it should be.’”
Martin sat next to Chambers."It was Janine's idea, salvaging from the line."
"And she did leave us half."
"Half of a hell of a lot is still a lot."
Chambers smiled over her post-nitrous headache. “Three hundred sixty-six thousand nine hundred twelve burritos,” she said.
* * * *
The Chair of Chronobiology at the University of California, Berkeley, pushed her gray hair out of her eyes and spoke to the single thread of time looped around itself at the bottom of a dull silver canister.
"I didn't waste you,” she said. She put the lid on the canister, and the canister in a desk drawer that also contained a pair of gloves, a small black box, three tiny pieces of faded pink paper, a Nobel prize medal, and a pack of watermelon flavored bubble gum. She took out the gum—a guilty pleasure that made her feel young again—then closed the drawer and locked it.
Physics had gotten weirder in her lifetime, but not weird enough for practical time travel. No alien species had introduced themselves to humanity, and Janine never caught anyone else recycling time. Her life, in the end, was surprisingly mundane.
Still, she'd used her time well. Her research led to new treatments for jet lag and more serious circadian rhythm disorders at the root of a dozen mental and physical illnesses. Her colleagues in chronobiology discovered more applications every year.
She leaned back in her chair, put her feet up on her desk, and snapped her gum.
Physics would catch up, and physiology would be ready.
Copyright © 2009 Heather Lindsley
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Novelette: WIFE-STEALING TIME by R. Garcia y Robertson
Rod Garcia tells us that his twenty-year-old daughter Erin has just returned from spending four months in Panama studying tropical birds and cathching poison arrow frogs with her bare hands. His own life is not so adventurous. He is completing a historical fiction novel about Mary Magdalene's Daughter, currently titled Magdalene's Daughter, which combines the gospels with Roman and Jewish historians. He's also working on a new serie
s of science fiction stories set in modern America.
PRETTY BOTTOM
SinBad sat in the lee of his stalled sand sail, feeding a thornbrush fire, listening as ba'aths called to each other over the dark sward. They had smelled his fire on the night wind, a whole hunting pride from the well spaced cries, out looking for a late snack.
Too bad. Tonight's wind was dead against him. He had a cargo for Kaol, a couple of hundred haads to the east, a legal cargo even, offworld nanoelectronics, but a fitful easterly breeze kept him from making any headway.
Ba'ath calls got louder, closer. Reaching over his shoulder, into the sand sail's cargo bay, SinBad unshipped his repeating crossbow, cranking back the bow. Claw marks on the tough skeel-wood stock were unpleasant reminders of his last close encounter with a ba'ath. He slid in a clip of six explosive bolts, hearing the satisfying click.
SinBad had nothing against ba'aths. Even hungry ones. Leo barsoom, the big black-maned Barsoomian lion, was a dozen sofads long, a bio-engineered carnivore twice the size of Numa on Old Earth, ending in twin sets of sabertooth canines. Megafauna require mega-predators.
Aiming to be at best a mini-meal, SinBad settled in between the sand sail's tricycle tires, his cocked crossbow pointed at the night. Half a haad behind him glowed the fires of a nomad camp. Red men. Crows, from their tall hourglass shaped tipis. Being a Huron outcast, SinBad had not hurried to introduce himself. Now it was too late. Thuria was up, and the Slaver Moon made the usually friendly Crow wary of strangers.
As the fire sank down to embers, SinBad pulled his sleeping furs tighter, then flicked his sand goggles to night vision, peering into the infrared, seeing by Thuria light. Slavers had made Barsoom's inner moon highly reflective, so they could scan the planet's surface more closely at night.
Nothing moved. Aside from some ghostly acacia trees, swaying in the wind.
Ba'ath calls slackened, replaced by mounting boredom, while the strange stars of Carthoris system wheeled overhead. Thuria set, and the Crow camp stirred behind him. Fear alone kept SinBad from drifting off.
Then he saw a silver form slither out from beneath a wait-a-bit thorn tree, barely thirty sofads away. Too small to be a full-grown ba'ath, the lithe shape stayed low to the ground, creeping toward him. Juvenile ba'ath? Dire wolf ? Jackal? At full charge a ba'ath covered thirty sofads faster than you can say it—if this was a ba'ath.
He shifted his crossbow to cover the approaching shape with the cold sight. Dark metal formed a sharp black V, blotting out the infrared glow. His finger found the curved trigger.
Even in the dark, he was a decent shot at this range. Explosive bolts made any hit hurt. By holding down the trigger, while working the cocking lever, he could empty his clip in a quarter xat.
Whatever was coming froze, as if it could feel his intent through the darkness.
Predators and prey had a psychic relationship. At a sward waterhole south of Ptarth, he once saw steppe gazelle grazing beside some sleeping ba'aths. Suddenly, the grazers bolted, disappearing into dawn fog. Presently the ba'aths perked up, starting to yawn, stretch, and sniff the wind. The gazelles had sensed the carnivore's hunger, before the ba'aths themselves.
Without warning, the shape in the dark hissed at him, “Sush. Outcast. Do not shoot."
Hastily, he lowered his bow. It was a woman's voice, a young woman. Pretty, too, from the sound of her. Sex offenders also had psychic links to their prey. “Who are you?"
"Pretty Bottom,” the woman replied, confirming his instincts. Lest he get any ideas, she added, “Third wife to Alligator Stands Up."
SinBad had heard of him, an aging Crow war chief, with a famously young harem. “Kaor, Pretty Bottom."
Standing up, a buxom black-braided teenager in beaded buckskins strolled into the firelight. SinBad could not see her bottom, but the rest of her was enticing, from her dark smiling eyes, to the bone-handled skinning knife tucked into her calf-length boot. Old Alligator Stands Up had notoriously sweet taste in wives. “Kaor, outcast."
SinBad set aside his crossbow, still cocked. “How do you know I am an outcast?"
"Why else would you be sitting alone in the dark?” Pretty Bottom wrinkled her pert nose. “I can smell it on you, along with the fear. Sex offenses, right?"
He nodded. Too true.
"Is that why you are shaking?"
"I nearly shot you.” That still had him rattled. “What are you doing, sneaking about at night?"
She laughed. “Silly, it is Wife Stealing Time."
"Already?” He would be late getting to Kaol.
Setting her namesake down by the fire, Pretty Bottom asked, “Isn't that why you are here?"
Hardly. “I was headed for Kaol, when the wind failed.” Right at Wife Stealing Time, half a haad from a Crow camp. Why did these things always happen to him? His parole specified that he could not come within a thousand sofads of a commercial sex operation, fertility festival, or communal orgy. Technically, Wife Stealing Time was none of these, but try telling that to a judge. Especially a married one.
Ba'aths called in the blackness. SinBad reached for his crossbow, but a slim hand stopped him. Her brown fingers felt firm and exciting.
"Just ba'aths.” Pretty Bottom seemed totally unconcerned by a pride of saber-toothed killers. “Afraid they want to eat you?"
"Maybe.” Not him personally perhaps, but they were out flesh shopping.
His visitor smirked. “They are not that hungry."
"Let's hope so.” He kept the cocked crossbow within reach.
"Here, this will help.” Pretty Bottom got up, dusted off her buckskinned butt, then wiggled into his sleeping furs, totally taking his mind off the prowling ba'aths. Pretty Bottom was barely into her teens, Barsoom years, twice as long as those on Old Earth. Ten years younger than him. But that did not stop her. She whispered, “You are scared. I am cold. This will please us both."
"I'm not that scared,” he protested, unlacing her buckskins.
Pretty Bottom slyly stroked his crotch. “See, it's working already."
It was. How weird that young women like her had such power over men, especially men like him. He had been running late on a trip to Kaol, risking his on-time bonus, beset by starved ba'aths, afraid for his life. Suddenly none of that mattered. Not a bit. He reminded Pretty Bottom, “I am twice your age."
"And half my husband's.” Pretty Bottom was aching to feel younger flesh. His even, absurd as that seemed. Who was he to complain?
Pushing up Pretty Bottom's buckskins, SinBad saw she deserved her name. No rawhide nomad underwear, just bare enticing flesh.
"So tell me about your sex crimes,” she suggested, sliding her hand inside his loincloth.
He shrugged. “Unnatural copulation, aiding in adultery, cohabiting with lesbians, that sort of thing."
Pretty Bottom sniffed. “I hoped for something spicy."
"You can learn a lot from lesbians,” SinBad protested.
"Or from living in a crowded tipi.” She snuggled closer. “You are already aiding in adultery."
"I am?"
"It is Wife Stealing Time. Anyone who hides me is committing that crime."
Wife Stealing time was two weeks in the spring when Crow romeos were free to kidnap wives they had seduced during the year. Then their own wives and girlfriends would dress the victims up, so their paramours could parade them around camp, showing off their success with other men's wives. Unmarried women and faithful wives were immune. Husbands could do nothing to interfere. Guilty wives had to flee the village, bedding down with the ba'aths and jackals. There was no embarrassment in being eaten. “Alligator Stands Up is smoking in his lodge. He will lose his standing if he comes after me."
"How many wives does old Alligator have?” SinBad asked.
"Eight.” Enough Panthans to play Jetan. “Half of them are hiding out. Leaving just old wives, and young favorites to pound his meat and flatten his sleeping furs."
Since poor neglected Pretty Bottom had already done the
crime, and made him her accomplice, SinBad saw no sense being shy. Slipping off his loincloth, he prepared to put her most famous asset to use. But his partner in crime preferred natural copulation. “Don't worry,” she whispered. “I am pregnant."
Nature's best birth control, already knocked up. He ran a hand over the smooth curve of her belly, which was just starting to swell. “Did Old Alligator stand up?"
"Not for me,” she sighed. “My baby is from the scout, Goes Ahead."
Who got in ahead of her husband. Old Alligator's loss. Pretty Bottom was full of youthful, guilt-free enthusiasm, which was plainly going to waste. SinBad had never had so much fun breaking parole.
Afterward they slept, wrapped in his sleeping furs. Near to dawn, she nudged him. “Listen?"
He heard nothing. “What?"
"Do you hear the ba'aths?"
"No.” He had totally forgotten about the toothy cats.
"They have made their kill.” Pretty Bottom kicked off the furs, pulling on her beaded boots. Then she stood up, drawing her skinning knife, looking incredibly fetching in just the calf-length boots.
He hated to see her leave. “Where are you going?"
"To get breakfast."
"By driving ba'aths from their kill?"
"No,” she replied coyly, “by convincing them to share."
He grabbed his crossbow, starting to get up. “Let me come with you."
She shook her head. “They would not like that."
"Probably not,” he admitted.
"Then get the fire going again, and leave the ba'aths to me.” With that she walked off into the chill of first light, without looking back. He hoped she returned in one pretty piece. On less than a day's acquaintance, SinBad could already tell what Alligator Stands Up saw in her. Goes Ahead, too.
Blood-red day broke over the slowly terraforming landscape, sand and sward, dotted with acacias, and wait-a-bit thorn trees. SinBad relit his fire, listening for ba'ath calls, but hearing only birdsong. Dawn wind blew in the wrong direction. He was worried and hungry, and Thuria would be up soon, adding to his troubles. If Pretty Bottom survived her breakfast with ba'aths, he would have to hide her from the Slaver Moon.
Asimov's SF, October-November 2009 Page 9
