Revise the World

Brenda Clough

On March 16, 1912, British polar explorer Titus Oates commits suicide by walking out of his tent into an Antarctic blizzard, to save Robert Falcon Scott and the other members of the English exploration team. His body is never found —because he was snatched away into the year 2045 by scientists experimenting with a new faster-than-light drive. Arriving in the future, Oates stubbornly sticks to his old explorer job and sets off on an intergalactic adventure that leads to both knowledge and self-knowledge. The first section of this novel appeared as a novella in Analog Science Fiction magazine (April 2001) under the title “May Be Some Time.” It was a finalist for both the Nebula and the Hugo awards.

Part 1

Chapter 1

Epigraph

Ah Love! Could you and I with Him conspire

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,

Would we not shatter it to bits – and then

Remold it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!

From the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,

translated by Edward Fitzgerald, 1879.

Friday, March 16, or Saturday, 17 [1912]. Lost track of dates, but think the last correct. Tragedy all down the line. At lunch, the day before yesterday, poor Titus Oates said he couldn’t go on; he proposed we should leave him in his sleeping bag. That we could not do, and we induced him to come on, on the afternoon march. In spite of its awful nature for him he struggled on and we made a few miles. At night he was worse and we knew the end had come.

Should this be found I want these facts recorded… We can testify to his bravery. He has borne intense suffering for weeks without complaint, and to the very last was able and willing to discuss outside subjects. He did not — would not — give up hope till the very end … He slept through the night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning — yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, “I am just going outside and may be some time.” He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since … We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman. We all hope to meet the end with a similar spirit, and assuredly the end is not far.

From Scott’s Last Expedition by Robert Falcon Scott, 1913.

Part 1

It’s said that death from exposure is like slipping into warm sleep. Briefly, Titus Oates wondered what totty-headed thick had first told that whisker. He no longer remembered what warmth was. He had endured too many futile hopes and broken dreams to look for an easy end now. Every step was like treading on razors, calling for a grim effort of will. Nevertheless without hesitating he hobbled on into the teeth of the Antarctic storm. He did not look back. He knew the Polar Expedition’s tent was already invisible behind him.

Finer than sand, the wind-driven snow scoured over his clenched eyelids, clogging nose and mouth. The cold drove ferocious spikes deep into his temples and gnawed at the raw frostbite wounds on brow and nose and lip. Surely it was folly to continue to huddle into his threadbare windproof. What if he flung all resistance aside, and surrendered himself to the wailing blizzard? Suddenly he yearned to dance, free of the weighty mitts and clothing. To embrace death and waltz away!

He had left his finnesko behind. Gangrene had swollen his frozen feet to the size of melons, the ominous black streaks stealing up past the ankles to his knees. Yesterday it had taken hours to coax the fur boots on. Today he had not bothered. Now his woolen sock caught on something. Excruciating pain jolted his frozen foot, suppurating from the stinking black wounds where the toes used to be. Too weak to help himself, he stumbled forward. His crippled hands, bundled in their dogskin mitts, groped to break his fall. They touched nothing. He seemed to fall and fall, a slow endless drop into blank whiteness.

And it was true! A delicious warmth lapped him round like a blanket. Tears of relief and joy crept down his starveling cheeks and burnt in the frost fissures. He was being carried, warm and safe. Rock of Ages, cleft for me!

For a very long time he lay resting, not moving a muscle. Stillness is the very stuff of Heaven, when a man has marched thirteen hundred miles, hauling a half-tonne load miles a day for months, across the Barrier ice, up the Beardmore Glacier, to the South Pole and back. He slept, and when he wasn’t asleep he was inert.

But after some unknowable span Titus slowly came to awareness again. He felt obscurely indignant, cheated of a just due. Wasn’t Heaven supposed to be a place of eternal rest? He’d write a letter to the Times about it …

“Maybe just a touch more?” one of the celestial host suggested, in distinctly American accents. Silly on the face of it, his unanalyzed assumption that all the denizens of Heaven must be British …

“No, let’s see how he does on four cc. How’s the urine output?”

Shocked, Titus opened his eyes and looked down at himself. He was lying down, clothed in a pure white robe, all correct and as advertised. But were those a pair of angels lifting the hem? He used the drill-sergeant rasp he had picked up in the Army. “What the hell are you at!”

Both angels startled horribly. Something metallic slipped from a heavenly hand and landed with a clatter on the shiny-clean floor. A beautiful angel with long black hair stared down at him, eyes blue as the Aegean and wide as saucers. “Oh my God. Oh my God, Shell! Look at this — he’s conscious! Piotr will be like a dog with two tails!”

“Damn it, now the meter’s gone.”

As the other angel stooped nearer to pick up her tool Titus stared at her face. It was tanned but flushed with irritation. The nose had freckles. She wore huge coppery hoop earrings, and her short curly hair was dull blonde, almost mousy. “You,” Titus stated with conviction, “are not an angel.“

The happy angel — no, blister it, a woman! — exclaimed, “An angel, Shell, did you hear that? He called you an angel.”

“He did not! Don’t you ever listen, Sabrina? He just said I was not an angel.”

“This isn’t the afterlife,” Titus pursued doggedly. “Am I even dead?”

“Shell, this what we have you for. Hit it, quick!”

The irritable angel elbowed her companion into silence and spoke, clear and slow. “No, Captain Oates, you are not dead. We are doctors. I am Dr. Shell Gedeon, and this is Dr. Sabrina Trask. You are safe here, under our care.”

Titus could hardly take her words in. His mind hared off after irrelevancies. He wanted to retort, “Stuff and nonsense! Women can’t be doctors. They don’t have the intellect!” But he clung to the important questions: “What about my team? Bowers, Wilson, Scott: Are they safe too?”

Dr. Trask drew in a breath, glancing at her colleague. Dr. Gedeon’s voice was calm. “Let’s stop the drip now, why don’t we?”

“Excellent idea. If you’ll pass me that swab …”

“They are all right, aren’t they?” Titus demanded. “You rescued me, and you rescued them.” The doctors didn’t look round, fiddling with their mysterious instruments. “Aren’t they?”

He wanted to leap up and search for his friends, or shake the truth out of these bogus ministering angels, these impossible doctors. But a wave of warm melting sleep poured over him, soft as feathers, inexorable as winter, and he floated away on its downy tide.

Again when he woke he was met with pleasure: smooth sheets and a cool clean pillow. No reindeer-skin sleeping bag, no stink of horsemeat hoosh and unwashed men! He lay tasting the delicious sleek linen with every nerve and pore. How very strange to be so comfortable. His gangrened feet no longer hurt even where the covers rested on them. Double amputation above the knee, probably – the only treatment that could have saved his life. He was reconciled to the idea of footlessness. Lazily he reached down the length of his left leg with one hand to explore the stump.

The shock of touching his foot went all through his body, a galvanic impulse that jerked him upright. He flung back the covers and stared. His feet down to the toes were all present and accounted for, pink and clean and healthy. Even the toenails were just as they used to be, horn-yellow, thick and curved like vestigial hooves, instead of rotten-black and squelching to the touch. He wiggled the toes and flexed each foot with both hands, not trusting the evidence of eyes alone. It was undeniable. He had been restored, completely healed.

He examined the rest of himself. At the end in spite of the dogskin mitts his fingers had been blistered with frostbite to the colour and size of rotten bananas. Then the fluid in the blisters had frozen hard, until the least motion made the tormented joints crunch and grate as if they were stuffed with pebbles. Now his fingers were right as ninepence, flexing with painless ease: long, strong and sensitive, a horseman’s hands.

The constant stab from the old wound in his thigh, grown unbearable from so much sledging, was gone. He leaped to his feet, staggering as the blood rushed dizzily away from his head. He sat for a moment until the vertigo passed, and then rose again to put his full weight on his left leg. Not so much as a twinge! He was clad in ordinary pyjamas, white and brown striped, and he slid the pants down. The ugly twisted scar on his thigh had opened up under the stress of malnutrition and overwork, until one would think the Boers shot him last week instead of in 1901. Now there was not a mark to be seen or felt, however closely he peered at the skin. Most wondrous of all, both legs were now the same length. The Army doctors had promised that, with the left thighbone set an inch shorter than the right, he would limp for the rest of his life.

He had to nerve himself before running a hand down his face. Such a natural action, but the last time he’d tried it the conjunction of blistered fingers and frozen dead-yellow nose had been a double agony so intense the sparks had swum in his eyes. Now it didn’t hurt at all. His nose felt normal, the strong straight Roman bridge no longer swollen like a beet-root. No black oozy frostbite sores, but only a rasp of bristle on his cheek. Even the earlobes – he was certain he’d left those behind on the Polar plateau! Incredulous, he looked round the room for a glass.

It was a small plain chamber, furnished with nothing but the bed and a chair. But there was a narrow window. He leaned on the sill, angling to glimpse his ghostly reflection in the pane. He ran his tongue over his teeth, firmly fixed again and no longer bleeding at the gums. The brown eyes were melancholy under the deep straight arch of brow bone, and his dark hair was shorn in an ordinary short-back-and-sides.

Suddenly he saw not the glass but through it, beyond and down. He leaned his forehead on the cool pane, smearing it with a sudden sweat. He was high, high up. Below was a city the like of which he had never seen, spread from horizon to horizon in the golden slanted light of either dawn or sunset. Buildings spangled with lights, gleaming in sheaths of glass, reared mountain-high. His own little window was thousands of feet up, higher far than the dome of St. Paul’s even. Far below, vastly foreshortened, people scurried along the pavements. Shiny metal bugs teemed the ways and flitted through the skies.

“This isn’t London.” His voice had a shameful quaver. He forced himself to go on, to prove he could master it. “Nor Cairo. Nor Bombay …”

“You are in New York City, Captain Oates. As you will have observed, you have traveled in both space and time. This is the year of our Lord 2045. How do you feel?”

Titus turned slowly. Though every word was plain English, he could hardly take in what the man was saying. With difficulty he said the first thing that came into his head: “Who the devil are you?”

Unoffended, the slim fair man smiled, revealing large perfect teeth. “I am Dr. Kevin Lash. And I’m here to help you adjust to life in the 21st century. We’re connected, in a distant sort of way. My three-times great-grandmother was Mabel Beardsley, sister of the artist, Aubrey Beardsley. You may know her as a friend of Kathleen Scott.”

“The Owner’s wife.” Titus grasped at this tenuous connection to the familiar. “Then — you’re an Englishman!”

Dr. Lash continued to smile. “I was born in America, but yes, I’m of English extraction. Insofar as several generations of the melting pot have left me with any claim to …”

Titus crossed the room in a bound. He wrung Dr. Lash’s slender hand as if he were his best friend in the world. In a sense this was true. The doctor was his only friend. Such was his inner turmoil that Titus only belatedly realized the doctor was continuing to talk. “Sorry — it’s all quite a lot to take in.”

“Absolutely, I don’t doubt it.” With an amiable nod Dr. Lash sat down in the chair and waved Titus towards the bed. “A very natural reaction, given the tremendous change in your circumstances. I was outlining your schedule for the next day or so …”

And Titus was off and away again, sucked into an interlocking series of irrelevancies. It was stress, the alien environment all around, that made it so hard to concentrate. But recognizing why didn’t help him focus any better. This time it was Dr. Lash’s pronunciation that set Titus off: ‘schedule.’ Titus himself would have said ‘shed-jool.’ But Dr. Lash used ‘sked-jool,’ the American pronunciation. Indeed every word, his every tone and posture and gesture, spoke of the United States. So it must be true. “Damn it! Sorry — I’m trying to attend, believe me. But I keep going blah. My head’s full of cotton wool.”

Dr. Lash smiled. “Not at all, Captain. I’d be happy to repeat or amplify anything you haven’t quite grasped. I was giving you a quick outline of time as our theories suggest it applies in temporal travel. No man is an island, you know …”

Complete unto himself, Titus finished silently. So Lash was a man of education — must be, if he was a doctor. A doctor of what? Those two women, the sham angels, had obviously been doctors of the medical sort. But curse it, he had to listen!

Lash was saying, “… the tiniest change can have an incalculable impact. The death or life of an insect, a microbe even, may not be inconsiderable. Nothing can be plucked casually from the past, for fear of …”

The past? But of course. If this was the year 2045, then 1912 was long ago. “Is it possible to go back?” he interrupted.

“What, you, you mean? Return to the place and time you left? I believe it is impossible, Captain. But you would not wish it — to return and freeze to death in Antarctica? That was another subject of debate: the moral dimension of what we were attempting. It would be surely wrong to wrench away some poor fellow with a life ahead of him, family and friends …”

My family, Titus thought. Mother, Lilian, Violet, Bryan. My friends. I will never see them again. They might as well be dead. No — they are dead. Died years ago.

“… an ideal subject,” Dr. Lash was saying. “Not only are you a person rescued from a tragic death, but your removal is supremely unlikely to trigger any change in the time-stream, since your body was lost: presumed frozen solid, entombed in a glacier for eons …”

Titus stared down in silence at his pale bare feet. They were a little chilly now from resting so long on the uncarpeted floor, but that was all. Impossible to think of them frozen rock-hard, embalmed in eternal ice. Yet only a short time ago (or was it 133 years?) they were nearly so. “My team.”

Interrupted in mid-discourse, Dr. Lash said, “I beg your pardon?”

“The others. Scott, Wilson, Bowers. Did you rescue them too?”

“Ah … no.”

“Then they made it. They got back to the depot, back home!”

Dr. Lash’s copious flow of words seemed to be suffering a momentary blockage. “No.”

Titus sat silent, his shoulders bowed. So his companions too had died. Had it all been for nothing then, all their work and sacrifice and heroism? “Why did you save only me, then?”

“Remember, Captain,” Dr. Lash said patiently. “You are unique. Your body was never found.”

“Just as well, since it was here. I’m here.” He grappled with slippery verb tenses. “This is the future. You must have histories, newspapers. Records of Scott’s Polar Expedition.”

“And you shall see them. But, if I may make a suggestion, not today. You should recover your strength a little. The doctors have further tests —”

Titus growled in disgust. “No more doctors! Now!”

“Tomorrow,” Dr. Lash promised. “Tomorrow I’ll get the books. As you can see, it’s already evening. Not the time to start a new project.”

Titus stood to look out the window. Only the closest observation revealed that night had fallen. The city outside glowed and throbbed like a gala ballroom, its lights smearing the dark sky, blotting out stars and moon. So beautiful and strange!

“ … a good night’s sleep.” Dr. Lash rose to his feet. “And breakfast. I’ve tried to have food that isn’t too strange for you …”

Titus hardly noticed the doctor’s departure. The moving lights outside held him. The soaring or darting small sparks must be the metal bugs of before, lit for night work. Presumably behind every glowing window were people working and living. There must be thousands, millions of them. By night or by day the city was alive. He leaned his ear to the cold glass and heard its murmur, a dull continuous roar.

He wanted nothing to do with it. This strange monstrous city was far more foreign than the Antarctic ice. The thought came to him that this was all delirium, the final flicker of phantasy in the brain of a dying man already half-buried in blizzard-drift. It wasn’t even a delusion he enjoyed! A tremendous hollow longing for home filled him, for England, his family and friends, anything familiar. And there was nothing left to him now, except perhaps his own renewed body. At least this was as it had always been. He climbed back into bed and hugged himself, curled under the covers, diving into sleep’s reprieve.

Chapter 2

With the morning Titus’s courage rose. No point getting the wind up, he told himself. I coaxed those sodding ponies halfway to the Pole. I have the sand to cope with anything.

The breakfast Dr. Lash had promised did a great deal to restore his strength of mind — streaky bacon, odd toasted bready rounds, and buttered eggs. The tea in the flask was cat-lap, weak and bitter at once, and he could not identify the fruit from which the juice had been squeezed. But there was plenty of everything, a heaped plate on the little serving trolley and additional servings on the shelf below under covers to keep them hot. After months of short commons, the sight of so much food made him weak at the knees.

When Drs. Lash, Gedeon and Trask came in, Titus was mopping the plates clean with the last crust of bread. “Where are you putting it all?” Dr. Gedeon said, watching. “It’s been a long time since your last decent meal.”

Dr. Lash’s slim fingers twitched in alarm. “Gently there, Shell. I’m trying not to confront him with too much just yet.”

Dr. Trask fished a stethoscope out of her pocket, hung it round her neck by the ear pieces, and beamed upon him as if she offered a splendid gift. “I’m going to check you over, Captain.”

Warily he allowed her to listen to his heart, and look into his eyes and ears with the shiny metal instruments. It was downright indecent, even with full chaperonage, for a woman to do this sort of work on a man. If she had asked him to remove any clothing he would have jibbed. But her mysterious tasks, with rubber tubes and bits, or holding little tools that blinked or flashed colors against his arms and legs, didn’t seem to be impeded by pyjamas. “Physically okay,” she pronounced at last. “He was strong as an elephant in the first place, to survive what he went through. So he had a good foundation to build on.”

“And you always do good work, Sabrina,” Dr. Gedeon said. “What about his mental and cognitive recovery, Kev?”

“Well, yesterday we weren’t quite ourselves, were we, Captain?” Dr. Lash said. “But at his suggestion — his insistence, in fact — I have a simple test all prepared.”

“All that historical stuff? Don’t tell me you want to teach him to use a site.”

“Of course not — the books will be plenty.” Dr. Lash pushed the serving trolley out into the hall and returned immediately with a different cart, loaded with several dozen books of all sizes. “Captain, you asked about the fate of your friends. As you can see, there’s quite some literature on the subject. Also, in preparation for your reception I had much of the archival material, the articles and so on, transferred to hard copy — forgive me, I should say printed out onto paper and fastened together into these makeshift volumes.”

“These?” Tentatively, Titus touched a stack of weird shiny books. “Are they glass?”

Dr. Trask smiled, but Dr. Gedeon said, “Titus — I hope it’s all right to call you Titus — I’m going to teach you one of the most important terms of this modern age. No, hush up, Kev — you have to give the poor man a few tools to handle his environment. These floppy covers are plastic. So is this binding on the spine. Plastic, remember that word.”

“But the pages inside are plain old paper, just like in your day,” Dr. Lash added.

Titus picked up the topmost book. The slick but stiff substance — plastic! — of the cover slipped in his unaccustomed fingers. The book flopped open in its fall to the coverlet, and he looked down at a photograph of a familiar face: Dr. Edward Wilson, his hands in their mitts akimbo on the ski poles, grinning into the camera from under the rolled brim of his sledging cap as if death could never touch him. “Uncle Bill,” he said, stunned.

“We know he was your friend,” Dr. Gedeon said.

Dr. Lash sat down on the bed beside him. “Keep in mind though, Titus, that you’ve traveled. Even if all had gone well with your Expedition, he would be long deceased. Your loss is no less. But it’s inevitable, a natural progression.”

Titus seized a less strange volume, a fat grey book titled Scott’s Antarctic Expedition. More ferocious than the need for food, the thirst for his past was suddenly overwhelming, parching his mouth. “For God’s sake, leave me alone and let me read!”

“You wouldn’t prefer to have me present, to answer any questions?”

“No — please! Go away!”

“Come on, Kev.” Dr. Gedeon jerked her blonde head at the door. “Leave him in peace.”

“We can come back in a while,” Dr. Trask said.

Reluctantly Dr. Lash allowed himself to be drawn away in a trail of discourse. “During this initial adjustment period I think that slow progress is the ideal …” And mercifully they were gone.

The books, the proper ones, were antiques. Everything about them proclaimed it, their smell of yellowy paper and dust, the alarming crack of their spines when Titus opened them, the flakes of brittle glue that sprinkled his pyjama lap. A film of fine grey grime coated the top edges of the pages and rubbed off on his fingers — the dust of ages. How terrifying then, to see the photographs he remembered posing for only months ago! These men, that pony, those dogs: they weren’t old. How could they be, when the memory was so new? But the books belied him.

And it was a jolt to read excerpts from Scott’s personal diary. The Owner was — had been — a meticulous diarist, but the volumes were of course private. Titus flushed with embarrassment, to thus pry into a comrade’s innermost thoughts. But here they were, all the juicy tidbits printed in a book, an old one at that. Everything in them was common knowledge, public property for more than a century.

Titus had kept journals himself, sent letters home, written to family and friends. He gulped, wondering now if they were printed here too. Figures of history have no privacy. He remembered at Eton reading of Henry the Eighth’s turbulent married life, or Bonnie Prince Charlie’s mistresses.

But enough shilly-shallying! He paged rapidly through the book, skimming along the months and days. The journey to lay One-Ton Depot; daily life in the camp; the Polar trek; a photograph of Roald Amundsen and his team standing bareheaded before the Norwegian flag at the Pole. Titus glowered at it and turned the page. Towards the last he had lost track of the days, but Wilson or Scott would have kept good count.

And here it was. Titus bent over the book, scarcely aware of the chilly floor or the crick in his neck. The end of the story at last: eleven miles short of the depot, Scott and Wilson and Bowers had frozen and starved to death. Titus exhaled a long breath. The unfairness of it, the waste! The print blurred as his eyes filled.

This is history, he reminded himself. It’s over, long over, poor devils! Sound reasoning, but his heart refused to go along with it. Suddenly the coolness of the room seemed malevolent. He piled the pillows up at the head of the bed and sat against them, armoured in covers pulled up round his chest, to read — to dive into the books that held all that remained of his world. Automatically he felt at his pyjama pocket for his pipe and tobacco pouch, but of course they weren’t there.

He devoured them, the different journals — the egotists, had every member of the expedition published his journal? — the scholarly analyses, the biography of Amundsen, the biographies of Scott. The strange floppy books were compendiums of shorter articles culled from scholarly periodicals. When he had read them all, he looked at them again and then yet again, chewing them over, extracting new meanings and significances.

He noticed for instance that different meanings could be wrung out of the same set of events. Scott was praised as a hero and damned as an incompetent, his expedition the last flower of the golden Edwardian afternoon or the first tremor of a collapsing empire. A twitch of history’s kaleidoscope, and all the facts fell into a different pattern.

And the theories of why the expedition failed! There were more candidates than he would have ever imagined: deteriorating washers in the fuel tins, crocked Manchurian ponies, Wilson’s scrappy medical supervision, Scott’s bungling, even — this made him wince — his own excessive endurance and bravery. There was a grain of truth in it. At the end all exploration is a voyage into the self. The prize of his valour, the only tool he had brought from 1912 to 2045, was a will triple-forged like a Damascus blade, the resolution to hew to a path even as the body crumbled and rotted away.

Eeriest of all was reading the accounts of his own death. Scott’s journal entry was quoted time and again. ‘Able and willing to discuss outside subjects’? Titus could recall nothing of it — perhaps he had muttered something about his yacht in semi-delirium. Odd, but entirely characteristic of the Owner to find that admirable. And the paintings and memorial statuettes of himself! He turned past them, averting his eyes.

Vaguely he was aware of Dr. Lash popping in, talking and asking questions, of the rattle of the food trolley as it came in and out. Titus paid none of it any mind, focused with a ferocious concentration on the past. He only looked up when a slim pale hand laid itself flat on his page. “I beg your pardon?”

“Titus, you’ve been slaving away for the entire day. How do you feel? Shouldn’t you quit for the night? Maybe have a meal? You have to take care of yourself — “

“Hell’s bells, man, must you hover? I’m perfectly fine!” Titus jumped to his feet and to his dismay fell head-foremost onto the food trolley. He didn’t quite faint, but the black buzzing in his eyes was curiously reminiscent of it. There was the hot oily splash of soup or gravy, a tremendous clatter of falling crockery, and over it Dr. Lash shouting for help.

He came to himself in bed once more, clean and dry in fresh pyjamas, blue and white striped this time. The female doctors were there again, the plumper blonde holding his wrist while the tall dazzling brunette directed mysterious tools at it. “Dr. — Gedeon, is it,” he murmured. “And Dr., Dr. Trask.”

“Oh, so you’re talking again,” Dr. Trask said. “And you remember our names — that’s a good sign.”

Dr. Gedeon scowled at her little machine, her rather wide mouth downturned. “He read all day yesterday? Wonderful. Very clever of you, Kev.”

“That’s unfair, Shell,” Dr. Lash said, tightlipped. “And the vid record will bear me out.”

“He said he felt perfectly fine,” Dr. Trask said.

“And Kev believed him, yeah, right.” Dr. Gedeon folded up one tool and took out another. “A man whose claim to fame is that he committed suicide to save his team. You wouldn’t keep a Pomeranian kenneled up this way — “

“I’m giving him the dignity of a rational being. Living high on the hog with the Fortie team, you wouldn’t realize how few resources I have to work with — “

Titus lay back and let the quarrel roll over him. He couldn’t grasp what the difficulty was, and didn’t care. In the Army he had learned to hole up when the brass had a row. Instead he assessed his surroundings again. Vaguely he remembered that while he was reading the sunshine had crept across the window and faded, an entire day’s passage. And then a period of oblivion, and now the light streamed in through the glass again, a new day. Perhaps midmorning, judging from the angle of the light. The trolley stood near the bed, laden anew with covered dishes. It would be a great pity to let the meal get cold. He slid the nearest plate off the shelf onto his knees and seized a fork, suddenly famished. Would he ever get enough food again?

Dr. Lash thumped the hospital bed rail with both hands. “All right, a walk then! But let’s try to keep the chronal displacement shock minimal, all right? Through the park, not the streets.”

“Shell will go along, won’t you, Shell.” Dr. Trask’s brilliant blue gaze shifted to her associate. “You can fit him into your exercise routine.”

Dr. Gedeon turned to Titus, who hastily gulped down his mouthful. “Be dressed and ready at 12:30,” she said. “And make them give you a pair of decent shoes. You can’t walk in slippers in New York — there are always jerks who don’t scoop after their dogs.”

On that gnomic statement she swept out of the room. “I’d hoped to postpone this, Titus old man,” Dr. Lash said, shaking his head. “But the ladies, God bless ‘em … At any rate, while we fit you up with some walking shoes, we can go over a couple of routines that may ease the chronal displacement for you.”

Titus found this incomprehensible. “How difficult can a walk be?”

Dr. Trask sighed at this, folding up her shining tools.

Titus’s cocky self-confidence only began to sag when he and Dr. Lash met Dr. Gedeon in the hall. She wore the most outré clothing he had ever seen on a female. Even the street beggars in Calcutta didn’t go about bare to above the knees! It was indecent, shocking — wrong! The only possible conclusion to draw was that the woman was a whore. If they allowed women to become doctors, surely it was not a very much further descent to let in whores? One respected doctors, but lightskirts were owed only contempt. Nothing in Shell’s demeanor seemed to allow disrespect, however. The contradictions inherent in the situation made him giddy. Suddenly Dr. Lash’s words, repeated over and over, sank in: “Don’t let it get to you. All that stuff, it’s unimportant, nothing to do with you. Let it roll off your back, like water off a duck. Accept, nod, and move on …”

Titus nodded at Dr. Gedeon and moved on. Dash it, there were more important things to do now. He would worry about bare knees later. Dr. Lash held the door for them. Titus followed Dr. Gedeon down and down, dozens of flights of echoing steel stairs quite empty except for themselves. “Does nobody else use this building?”

Dr. Gedeon glanced back, surprised. “Most Paticalars use the elevator — oops, sorry, Kev!”

Water off a duck, Titus said to himself. Nothing to do with me really. But he was unable to resist adding the new words to the list. Paticalar, elevator, plastic — he could emulate the Polar scientists and start a notebook, and illustrate the entries with water-colour. “And ought I have a hat?”

“A hat?” Both moderns looked so blank, Titus immediately saw that hats were dead out of fashion. In his day a gentleman rarely stepped out of doors without some sort of head covering, summer or winter. In fact the entire party was free of the impedimentia an Edwardian outing would entail — no gloves or walking sticks, muffs or card-cases, hats or topees, reticules or parasols. For a moment it was discomposing, to have nothing to fill one’s hands. But then he thought of his walks as a child, when the grown-ups had to do all the carrying, and it was deliciously freeing instead.

The stair ended at another door. Through, past a lobby beyond, and …

Titus felt his mouth go dry. He had stepped into a street as strange as the far side of the moon. And so damn busy! Machines he couldn’t name whizzed past, big and small, making noises he had no word for. People surged round him, hatless indeed, dressed in colourful grotesque garb and doing or eating or saying things that he could not name. Were those little machines on their heads, or merely elaborate hairdos? Were those scars on the bare legs and arms, or paint, or some attenuated garment? Strange smells assailed his nose, tempting appetite, revolting, attracting in turn. Colour and light poured over him too quickly for comprehension. And the noise! Worse than the beggars in Cairo, worse than Covent Garden market. The wail and clatter and roar of the 21st century slapped him in the face and drove all rational thought from his head.

He found he was clutching his companions, Dr. Lash on his left and Dr. Gedeon on his right, flank to flank as if they were breasting a mighty river in full flood. Somehow they passed together through the howling chaos to a haven, a refuge of calmness and green, and Titus became aware of Dr. Lash’s steady lecturing again. Apparently he had been talking all this while: “Don’t think about it. Ignore her. It’s all rolling off you. Has no effect, eh? Someday when you’re up to it you can easily figure it out. But now, today, you don’t have to …”

“You know,” Titus mumbled.

“Yes?”

“You know, Lash, you can be bloody damn tiresome,” Titus said, all in a breath. His vision cleared. The object in front of him was blessedly familiar. “A tree! First one I’ve seen in — “ He halted, confused. Was it a year and a half, or a hundred and thirty?

“You’re feeling better,” Dr. Lash noted.

Titus nodded. The vertiginous sense of unreality seeped away as fast as it had come. The vista before him now would have been familiar to a man of any era: rolling grassland studded with handsome clumps of trees. If one didn’t look beyond, at the cliff-like buildings towering above the tree line, it was an environment Titus knew down in his bones. Carefully, he didn’t look. He drew a deep happy breath, eased from a constraint he had not recognized until now.

Dr. Gedeon lifted what he realized was a small rucksack from her back — he had assumed her jacket was merely cut strangely. She took from it two dumbbells. “You want to set the pace, Kev?”

“I’m not going far,” Dr. Lash said. “My asthma will start up if I push it.”

“Let’s take the reservoir path then.” Dr. Gedeon clenched a weight in each small fist and began to walk briskly down the path. Titus and Dr. Lash followed.

An almost frightening sense of well-being possessed Titus. He had not felt so fit, so confident, so brimful of vigour, in ages. Everything seemed brilliantly clear, sharply focused. The dear old sun shone behind leaves as cleanly cut as paper, and birds sang with enthusiasm. A breeze blew cool and damp from the reservoir below, freighted with a slight scummy smell. Titus inhaled it like incense. He stretched his legs, striding out with long steps.

Dr. Gedeon grinned at him when he caught her up, her teeth very white. “Great, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Carefully he did not look down past her face. She had accurately pinpointed the medicine he needed. Perhaps she wasn’t a bogus sawbones after all.

“Hold up, you two,” Dr. Lash called. He had fallen far behind, wheezing.

Dr. Gedeon reversed course immediately. “Did you bring your inhaler?”

”Of course.” Dr. Lash sniffed medicine from a large white tube. Concerned, Titus watched him closely. The dose did seem to help.

Dr. Gedeon said, “You’d better go back to the office and take an antihistamine. Shall we come back with you?”

“No, don’t bother,” Dr. Lash said. “I’ll be fine. This happens all the time,” he added to Titus.

“It shouldn’t,” Dr. Gedeon said. “You should have your condition assessed by a qualified allergist. Asthma can be a killer.”

Asthma, Titus mused — another new word. Dr. Lash brushed her concerns aside. “Keep a close eye on Titus,” he said. “Once only around the park, and then come straight back. This is his first experience, remember.”

“A walk round the park?” Titus snorted. “Don’t make me laugh.”

“I’ll take good care of him,” Dr. Gedeon said. “Now off you go.”

Only when Lash was out of sight did Titus realize how confining his fuss had been. Dr. Gedeon, a real medico and female to boot, had a robust outlook more to Titus’s taste. “I think we should run,” he said. “Fast.”

“All right. Race you to that bench!”

And she was off, surprisingly speedy in spite of a womanish rocking-horse gait that would have made a pony blush. How delightful it was, to use the limbs like this! Titus made his best effort, trying to use his greater length of leg to advantage, but she beat him handily. Carrying a weight handicap, too! He felt only a moment of obscure outrage before laughter overtook him. “Bravo!”

She laughed too. “Not a contest, against a disabled vet.”

“Ludicrous. The leg wound hasn’t bothered me in years.”

“Not till recently.”

He stared in astonishment — how could anyone know that? He had hidden the disintegrating scar even from Scott and Wilson until the very end. And he knew from the books that Scott, the last expedition member to keep records, had not mentioned it. She went on, “I watched Sabrina glue you back together again, remember? One of the symptoms of scurvy is old wounds breaking out again.”

“Whatever she did patched it up fine. I couldn’t even find the scar.”

“Isn’t she a whiz? It was worth all the expense of cloning to see you trying out your leg, and feeling your toes for the first time.”

“You saw me? But I was alone in my room.”

She grimaced. “Titus, you’re unique and valuable: the first and possibly last man to travel through time. And not only that — you are a patient. We’ve been monitoring you all during your recovery. You’ve never been alone or unobserved since you arrived.”

He remembered the shiny metal tools, the gleaming examination table cleaner than anything he had ever seen. “How long have I been here?”

“You traveled to the modern era a year and a half ago.”

He stared at the trees, trying to take her words in. For eighteen months he had been dough under the rolling pin, a chunk of inert material upon which skilled hands worked. It was a sodding liberty! And he could not have spent all that time flat on his back in a hospital bed. He had done that in 1901, and knew well how one’s legs became weak as string and the muscles wasted away for want of use. Now his legs were a little shaky and his skin unusually pale, but otherwise he was himself, in good nick. They must have been exercising his limbs, working and testing and using his body in ways he couldn’t conceive of, with all the conscious consent one would get from the clockwork goatherd in a Swiss cuckoo clock. Returning him to consciousness day before yesterday was merely the capstone of a major project — it was obvious in retrospect that his first short encounter with the 21st century, swearing on the shiny-clean table, had been unplanned. He wondered how many people were employed on the task. The thought of unseen eyes spying on him day and night made his spine crawl. “Are they watching us now?”

“Here in the park? Well, I’m in charge, watching you, but that’s all. C’mon, Titus, don’t let it worry you. There’s a lot for you to get used to. Here.” She halted at what seemed to be a pillar-box, a glossy white metal cylinder as high as his chest, and made what he could only call a conjuring gesture — passing her hand over the enameled surface. A hatch popped open lower down, and she took two small pale bottles from inside. Opening one, she passed it over. It was water as cold as sherbet, astonishing on this warm day.

He drank. Emptied, the weird featherweight container was revealed to be almost as frail as paper, light enough to crumple in one hand but sufficiently tough to be re-inflated like a balloon with a puff of breath. “Plastic?”

She smiled. “You’re a sharp one.” He felt absurdly chuffed at this praise from a modern, tawdrily clothed though she might be. And how protean this plastic substance must be!

They walked on at a slower pace. The path was narrow here, crowded to the tall wrought-iron park fence by trees and brush. Beyond the palings was a city street, a quieter one, without the surging crowds and thundering vehicular traffic near the first building. Still Titus felt like a lion safe behind the zoo bars. “Are those commercial buildings?”

“Those tall ones over there? Oh no — co-ops, I think. Damn! What I mean is, they’re residences. People live there.” He knew his face was blank with ignorance, because she waved her hands in rhythm with her stride, trying to explain. “I mean separately, not all together. Condos. Cells. Divisions.” She groped for more synonyms.

The penny dropped. “You mean, it’s a block of flats.”

“Is that what you call it? Okay then!” She blew out a relieved breath. “Kev only had time to go through his British-versus-American word lists with us once.”

Titus had to smile. “‘Two countries, divided by a common tongue.’“

“Exactly. It’s surprising how hard it can be to communicate clearly.”

“And that.” The architecture was so powerfully familiar he could hardly believe it. “A church.”

“Yep.” She peered through the railings at the signboard on the pavement. “Saint Somebody’s Noontime Service. And will you look at that sermon! ‘Is God a Fortie?’”

Titus’s religion was nominal, no more than a tradition of his class. But the organ music pouring forth from the open doors of the church drew him in like a hooked fish. “I know that tune!” He hummed along, and then sang the words that rose unbidden from the depths of memory. “‘Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne …’”

Dr. Gedeon sighed. “You must be a Christian. Everybody was, back then. You want to go in? I’m dying to hear that sermon.”

He nodded. She found a gate, and they crossed the street, she holding him back until a gap opened in the traffic. But Titus took the lead up the steps into the dark Romanesque arch of the portico, and dragged Dr. Gedeon into the haven of a pew.

A number of wrongnesses immediately struck him. Electric lights dangled from the arched ceiling and spotlighted the stained glass windows — Titus could not remember ever seeing a church fitted with electricity. The windows themselves were gratingly ugly in their modernity. Uplifted in the homily, the voice of the celebrant rang jangly and loud, amplified in some uncouth modern way. The dozen members of the pi-squash were almost blasphemously dressed. Were they were all prostitutes and pimps, or was indecency the prevailing mode? Titus gulped down a deep breath and tried to concentrate.

“ — not only are they ineffable. As Jehovah in the Old Testament had his chosen prophets, the Forties communicate through those who can understand them — in this case the scientists and astronomers who have translated their message …”

Titus scowled, uncomprehending. Were the Forties the time period, the 2040s? Dear God, what had befallen the faith of our fathers! But then a hymn from his boyhood rolled from the organ. The last time he had heard this tune was at Sunday morning prayers in the little stone church in Gestingthorpe village, where as the young squire of the manor he had presided in the family pew. Homesickness rose up in his throat. His soul balked like an over-tried horse at the new and ugly and strange. He ached to go home, to the place and time where such songs were part of daily life. Though he knew the words he could not join in.

It was the closing hymn. The priest pronounced a benediction, and the congregation straggled down the aisle and out into the sunshine. Dr. Gedeon fidgeted but did not rise, while Titus struggled with his misery. The priest, saying goodbye to the tardiest old lady, noticed the new faces in his flock and came down the aisle. Dr. Gedeon smiled up at him. “Just visiting.”

“You’re very welcome all the same,” the priest said. He was a tall balding man in a dog collar, the image of the regimental padre.

Dr. Gedeon stood up and shepherded Titus out into the aisle. He noticed with discomfort how much closer to each other the moderns liked to stand — no sense of a proper distance or respectful room. “I’m so thrilled to hear a homily about the Fortie project!” she said.

“Every denomination has to throw in their two cents’ worth. There’s even a rumor the Pope is writing an encyclical.”

“I think Titus here is an Anglican,” she said. “And I’m Shulamith Gedeon.”

“So you’re the dancing doctor! I’m Rev. Pollard. We call it Episcopal in this country, but that’s just terminology.”

“Shulamith?” Titus’s jaw slacked with astonishment. ‘Shell’ must be a nickname, just as ‘Titus’ was. “What on earth kind of a name is that?”

“Jewish, isn’t it?” Rev. Pollard said.

“My grandmother,” Dr. Gedeon said. “And my father was a Santeria wizard from Bermuda. So I really don’t fit in with your churchy stuff — though the building’s absolutely gorgeous.” She looked up at the stained glass windows.

The priest smiled with gentle pride. “All the original Art Moderne glass too — “

Titus wanted to laugh. “How did you ever become a doctor? A nigger, a Sheeny, and a woman!”

To his complete astonishment Dr. Gedeon turned on her heel and slapped him across the face. He would have tumbled over if the priest had not caught him by the elbow. She continued turning, marching away out the door, her thick strange shoes plopping angrily against the stone floor. “Did I say something wrong?”

Rev. Pollard stared at him from under his grey eyebrows. “You were very rude.”

“Was I?” The padre’s cold disapproval whipped the blood to Titus’s cheeks as a blow could not. I can’t go back, Titus realized. The world he had known was gone forever, never to be found again. It had been a natural impulse but an utterly false step, to pursue familiar old things like this church service — to wind himself into a cocoon that resembled, more or less, the past. To retreat rather than advance was shameful, a coward’s ploy. He had assumed the job was to retain what he had always been, the well-bred Edwardian soldier and explorer. Now he saw he had been pitchforked into a war, the scope of which made his heart sink: the war to make a life for himself in the year 2045, a fight he had no choice but to wage and win. “You’re quite right,” he almost gabbled in his haste. “I must beg her pardon.”

He sprinted down the dim aisle, through the narthex and out into the summer sunshine, acutely aware that she was fleeter than he. If she had run beyond view, he would never be able to follow. He cursed his own helplessness, and grimly promised himself it should be short-lived. But there she was in the street, standing next to a shiny-yellow beetle. “In you go,” she said as he ran down the steps. “Let’s go back to the TTD.”

“In?” He realized it was a vehicle, a fantastically futuristic motor of some sort, and she was holding the door open. Awkwardly he climbed in. She would have banged the door on him, but he kept it from latching and ducked his head through the window to grab her sleeve. “Doctor — Shell — I apologise. I’m not sure what I said wrong, but I’ll do my best to learn. Please give me a chance.”

“The PTICA-TTD, at 93rd,” she was saying to the driver. “Look Titus, it’s not your fault, I know. But even though you don’t look it, you’re a sexist, racist, anti-Semitic old fart! So let go my arm, okay?”

The grinning driver made a tasteless remark in what Titus recognized as Hindi. Automatically he flung the fellow a viperish oath picked up during his Indian service, and went on: “You can’t send me back alone in this thing. I’ll suffer from chronal displacement, just like Dr. Lash is afraid of. I’ll have the blithering vapours. I’ll get lost. I’ll be robbed by the driver.”

The cabdriver, cowed by amazement for the moment, seemed unlikely to do anything of the sort. But Dr. Gedeon sighed. “I suppose Kev would never let me forget it.” She pulled the door open again.

Titus made room for her on the slick seat — plastic again, they must love the substance. And, God! “I’m sorry, I didn’t ask if I could call you Shell,” he said quickly.

“What?” Her grey eyes were blank with astonishment.

“It’s an unwarranted liberty — isn’t it?”

“Goodness, that’s not important. I only assist Sabrina with your treatment as a favor, so we don’t have a doctor-patient relationship. Keep on calling me Shell. Although I know it gives Kev a charge when you call him Dr. Lash, so maybe you should keep that up.”

“I shall. A bit of resolution, and I’ll find my feet — “

The vehicle lurched into sudden vehement motion and then screeched to a halt, flinging him against the sliding window that separated the driver from the passenger compartment. The driver turned, shrilling, “Careful! Son of a fool, hold onto the handle!”

Horns blared. Titus obeyed, cursing the driver comprehensively to the third generation. The seemingly solid handhold under his fingers suddenly gave way with an ominous click as some mechanism in the body of the door activated. The door swung perilously open out into unsupported space, taking him with it.

“No, Titus! Not that one!” Shell reached across him and pulled the door to. Titus got a terrifying glimpse of the roadway speeding past not a foot below, before she slammed the door shut.

The vehicle swerved wildly as the driver leaned on the horn while turning to abuse them. “You destroy my beautiful taxi! Taxi-drivers are already driven out of business by automation, without your help!”

“Sorry!”

“Will you keep your eye on the road and drive!” Shell yelled. “And you, Titus, don’t touch anything! Just sit!” With a positively mannish strength she pushed him back into his place, touching some button or control with her other hand. A restraining strap slid out of a recess and clasped itself round his torso and waist, pinning him courteously but firmly to the seat. “My God, Kev will wet himself …”

The vehicle barreled along at an impossible pace, fast as a railway engine but darting in and out like a fish. Every moment new collisions and fresh disaster seemed imminent. Lights blinked in a blare of colour, metal hulls glittered like talons, and the traffic roared its hunger. Titus felt that dizzying disorientation creeping over him again. He licked his dry lips and clutched his hands together in his lap where Shell had placed them for safety. He focused on the turbaned back of the seething driver’s head, reasoning away his discomfort. This driver is not a man of unusual gifts, he told himself. I’ve driven motors myself, just not as fast — and the road was empty! I could manage this vehicle. It can’t be difficult, if a native can do it. “You see why I need to learn,” he said hardily. “As long as I don’t know what’s what, I’m a danger, to myself and others.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, Titus.” Shell slumped against the seat in not-entirely-exaggerated exhaustion, her short blonde curls escaping from their headband. “You’re going to need a minimum of information before you can even begin to learn. But give yourself some slack, okay? Take your time. The 21st century isn’t going anywhere. We don’t have to do it all today.”

“You tell him,” the driver snarled. “The fool, the idiot! He cause an accident to my taxi, I sue!”

“What is ‘sue’?” Titus demanded of Shell. “It sounds like some hell-and-tommy impertinence.”

“I’ll tell you later,” Shell said. “Look, here we are, thank God! One more word out of you, driver, and I’ll report you to the taxi commission. No, Titus, don’t pull like that! Let me unbuckle it — oh, all right, unbuckle it yourself. You push this bit right here, and voilà. Yes, yes, here’s your fare, and the hell with you, pal. That’s right! and if you don’t like the tip you can stuff it up your ass and set it afire.”

Titus’s mouth dropped open again. In all his wide travels, he had never heard such red-blooded invective from the lips of a female. A hard-bitten cavalry trooper could say no better. Torn between admiration and horror, Titus followed Shell inside.

Chapter 3

Titus began the new regime the next morning by stacking all the antique books back onto their cart and rolling it out into the hallway. He wanted to add a label, the sort they put on steamer trunks: “Not wanted on voyage.” He had learned everything he needed to know about the past. Onwards, to the present! He capped the gesture by demanding the morning paper. “You do still have newspapers?”

“Not paper papers,” Dr. Lash said. “I mean, not usually printed on paper.”

“What do they print them on then?”

“Screens, old man. Like this.” He tipped the sleek little black machine he held so that Titus could see the square glowing window on the front, small as a postcard. It looked nothing at all like what Titus would call a screen — screens were for fireplaces, to shield the glare. “Trust me, Titus — you would not understand one word in fifty. It’s too soon for you to dive into current affairs. Wouldn’t it be easier to start with a précis of world history for the past century and a half? Work yourself up to the present day?”

Titus knew this was only common sense. Nevertheless he felt it was time to be shit or bust. He had pretty well proven that he could do anything he set his will to. “I can do both. I know it.”

“At least let me find you a paper newspaper,” Dr. Lash pleaded. “We don’t have to learn to surf the Net today. Let me print out a paper edition of the Times.”

“The Times? Truly?” The last newspapers he had seen, in June 1910, had been full of accounts of Edward VII’s funeral.

“The New York Times. But there’s no reason why other papers shouldn’t be available too.”

“The only Times is the London Times,” Titus growled. When Lash went out, he pulled a piece of paper from under his pillow. He had found it in the wastepaper basket of his bathroom — from the printing on the outside it must have once formed the wrapping for a roll of toilet tissue. Now Titus started his list on it. To ‘plastic’ and ‘elevator’ he now added ‘screen’ and ‘net.’ He was going to need a proper notebook, and a pen rather than this pencil. And no more of this keeling over like a stunned ox from swotting at the books. He would pace himself sensibly for the long haul.

Dr. Lash returned triumphant. “You’re in luck, Titus! Jackie had last Sunday’s New York Times printed for her son’s history project. A couple days old should make no difference to you, eh?”

“I’ll overlook the deficiency this time,” Titus said with mock severity. He spread the undersized paper out on the counterpane. But soon he had to admit Dr. Lash was right. The New York Times was almost completely incomprehensible: not because any given word was beyond him, but because he had no context in which to place each sentence. What was the pork-barrel? If they were building a freeway, then it should be free — so why was funding it cause for vituperation? Where had all these new nations come from? Who was the Internet AG, and why were some people called Doomsters berating him? It had been the same when he listened to Rev. Pollard’s sermon yesterday. And the paper was too small and felt odd. Frustrated, he tossed it aside.

“Had enough, huh?” Shell came in with an armload of brightly-coloured books and magazines. “Maybe these will go down better. Kev’s been buying up antique children’s texts, reprints of old comic books, things for education and relaxation.” She balanced the stack on the chair.

“Children’s books?” He glowered at the topmost volume, TAM LIN AND OTHER TRADITIONAL ENGLISH FAIRY TALES. “You must have a poor opinion of my intellect.”

“Not at all. But you’re not interested in scholarly analysis or minutiae. You want the broad overview — just enough to go on with. Did you know that to understand a written text you have to already know seventy percent of the words? Some TTD expert worked it out that this level of difficulty should be about right for you now.”

Not quite right, Titus noted. Not seventy percent of the words, but seventy percent of the knowledge. Grasping seventy percent of the meaning was the fence he was finding rather high. In any case the size of the stack was disheartening. “What I really want,” he said boldly, “is another walk. Longer this time.”

“Sorry, Titus. I’m booked today, and so are you, with that reception this evening. Let me just give your vitals a check-over, okay? Sabrina is in consult today, so I promised her I’d do it.”

“I don’t want to overwork myself again with the books,” he said, pressing his advantage. “Walking is good for me. You said so yourself.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” But she was smiling as she consulted her medical tools. “They didn’t tell me you were persuasive. Tomorrow, how about.”

“I shall look forward to it. Oh, and what is — “ He consulted his list. “‘Paticalar’?”

“Oh! The initials PTICA stand for Pan-Terran Interstellar Contact Agency. Everyone calls it the Fortie Project, though. This building you’re in, everyone here, is the Time Travel Division, the TTD. And people who work for PTICA wind up being Paticalars. Silly name, but a newsie coined it in ‘39 and it stuck.”

This was in fact not very helpful, but Shell was obviously in a hurry to some other appointment, so he let her go. Instead he noted down the definitions. With the prospect of another outing comfortably in hand, Titus turned to the stack of books. He had never been of a scholarly turn. Now he found the large letterface in A BOY’S BRITISH HISTORY soothing. King Arthur, William the Conqueror, Henry the Eighth, oh yes. There will always be an England. It was disappointing that Scott and his Expedition didn’t rate a chapter, but merely a paragraph. And good God, Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts project had flourished! Then wars and more wars, battles with strange names like Passchendaele and Anzio and Stalingrad and Tet. Titus groaned aloud. He had missed all the fun, curse it.

“I’m here if you have any questions,” Dr. Lash said, coming in.

Shell was less of a fuss, but it would be foolish to carry prejudice too far. Lash was a bit of an ass, but a decent chap on the whole. “What is this Fortie business you’re all on about, Lash?”

“You could say that the Forties are the reason you’re here, old man. They’re certainly the raison d’être for the entire PTICA-TTD.”

“Then they’re very important. Come then, tell!”

“I’m trying to choose the best way, Titus. Have you ever seen a film? A movie, a motion picture?”

“Of course,” Titus snapped. “They took cinematographs of the Polar Expedition, you know.”

“So you think you’d be comfortable viewing an educational film?”

“About this Fortie business? Certainly!”

Lash consulted his watch — Titus noticed it was a wristwatch, strictly ladies’ wear in his day. Instinctively he felt in his trouser pocket for his own watch. It was of course empty. “There’s enough time. And it would be good if you had something to converse with the Ambassador about. But you’re sure it won’t be upsetting, Titus? How would you feel about pictures of your rescue — “

The mere suggestion made his blood rise. And why did they always ask how he was feeling? What did that have to do with anything? “Don’t coddle me, Lash. I insist on seeing this film.”

“Well, let’s risk it. While you get ready, Titus, let me give you a brief summary of the phenomenon. The first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence in 2015 set the world ablaze with excitement…”

Attending with only half an ear, Titus pulled on his brogans. He was rather ashamed that he’d fallen into this habit of tuning poor old Lash’s blather right out, but at least Lash’s self-importance blinded him to it. He led the way to the stairwell and briskly down the metal stairs while Lash trailed behind. Titus felt like a terrier straining at the leash, urging the slow-footed human along.

But instead of pushing through the big double glass doors, Dr. Lash turned the other way in the lobby. The single steel door he chose gave onto a plaza on the other side of the building. It was a fine hot day, blazing with sunshine, and beneath the shade of leafy trees were booths and stands and placards and bright-clad people. “A market,” Titus hazarded. “Like in Egypt.”

“Not a bad guess,” Dr. Lash said. “But this is a marketplace of protesters and cranks, in the main. Better to let them have their say here, where PTICA has some control over the process. Ignore them all, old man. After the film you’ll know what’s what.”

The doctor linked an arm through his. Titus suppressed the impulse to pull free, remembering how modern people were comfortable in a much smaller compass. The booths and placards did look beastly dull. Nothing edible or alive was on offer, but only leaflets. Titus remembered with brief nostalgia the teeming markets of Bombay. He had bought heavy silver bracelets for Lilian and Violet, and —

Dr. Lash suddenly stopped dead. “The brass-balled nerve of the fellow! No, this is too much! Titus, stand right here. Don’t move an inch, all right? I’m just going to fetch the police.”

“The police? I — “ But Lash was gone, darting away through the press. Titus stood as instructed, and stared at the cause of Lash’s ire. Just another set of placards, presided over by a lean old man absurdly dressed in pale pink. The fellow was shouting some service or product and passing out leaflets.

“— safety for you and yours, when the aliens come,” he said rapidly. “Condos burrowed into the rock on Easter Island, the most isolated place on earth.” The people filtering through the plaza didn’t pause to listen, even when the old coster thrust leaflets into their hands.

Titus’s motionless stance made him very obvious. “How d’you do, sir?” the old fellow greeted him. “Here you are.”

Titus took the offered leaflet. “What’s it all in aid of then?”

“Don’t ever trust what those PTICA people tell you, sir.” His watery old eyes shone with sincerity. “What are they getting out of this? You think about that, sir, because you’ll find it’s the key to everything. They’re all grinding their own axe. A secret agenda, do you understand me, sir? They don’t have our interests at heart at all.”

Titus wondered if he meant Shell or Dr. Lash. It came to him that this fellow was the first modern he had truly spoken to, who wasn’t involved in his rescue. But the old fellow was rattling on: “They tell us the Forties are too far away to be dangerous. But, come on! Nobody knows what they’re really after. Everybody agrees on that. Do you want to risk your family, sir, your children, on the unfounded assumption that they’re nice folks? Safety first, that’s my policy.”

“And a damned craven one,” Titus interjected.

The salesman evidently didn’t know what ‘craven’ meant, because he didn’t pause. “Easter Island, the most remote place on earth, that’s where we’re erecting the first series of shelters, sir. And construction is already beginning under the Antarctic ice cap — “

That one word was enough to galvanize Titus. “In Antarctica? Where’s your base camp? Has the British government approved this incursion?”

“Britain?” The old man was momentarily derailed. “What do they have to do with it?”

Conceding Amundsen’s prior claim still stuck in Titus’s craw, but in justice he had to add, “Or the Norwegians.”

But suddenly the old man clapped his placard together, scooping up the stack of leaflets and shoving them into his pocket. Without a word more he began to scuttle away through the crowd. Titus heard a distant shout, “He’s running for it!”

That was Lash’s voice! Without thinking about it, Titus lunged and clapped a strong hand onto the old man’s shoulder. The placard went flying. The fellow squealed and writhed like a pig, no more that one would expect from a professed coward. “Oh, buck up,” Titus said in disgust.

A pair of women in blue uniforms swept up on either side of him and collared the captive before Titus could say more. “Thank you, sir,” one of them said to him in passing.

Dr. Lash trotted up, panting. “I didn’t mean you, Titus!”

This was not worthy of reply. “What’s it all about, then?”

“This is the fourth time we’ve caught this old fraud here, selling shelters against alien invasions.”

“Under the Antarctic ice cap,” Titus recalled.

“Is that the latest? Naturally there’s nothing there. The scheme’s fake as a wooden nickel. Thank God nobody seems to have fallen for it today.”

None of this made sense to Titus. The familiar sense of overload was creeping over him again, triggered perhaps by the crowded plaza and its noises. He trailed after Dr. Lash, masking his discomfort behind a cavalryman’s reserve. Surely they were nearly there, wherever their destination was? They were approaching the building that formed the other side of the plaza now. Titus had to make a deliberate effort not to hurry up to its big glass doors.

Inside the crowd was thicker yet, clustering at one end of the lobby. Titus was weakly grateful when Dr. Lash bypassed the crush, opening an inconspicuous door behind a pillar. Beyond was a vast dim space. “Mind your step!”

“It’s a bleeding cliff.” Titus peered over the railing.

“Not at all, there’s a stairway to your left. Let’s find a seat before the crowd comes in.”

As his eyes adjusted, Titus realized it was not really so dark. Not until they were descending the stair did he grasp that seats formed the steep slope. This was a theatre, a very oddly-shaped one. He sat where Lash indicated. “But where’s the stage? The curtain?”

“This is a film theater, Titus.” Lash dropped into the seat beside him.

“Film theatres need curtains too,” Titus grumbled. The crowd was filtering in, entering from the lower doors. And a bunch of trippers they were, too — children with jujubes, women carrying big bags or sniveling tots, men sipping from cups — like an outing to Bournemouth. A long time dragged by before everyone took their place. Instinctively Titus stood up to give his seat to a laden woman, only to have Lash drag him down again. “No, Titus! We don’t do that any more.”

There seemed to be no screen, but only a smooth blank wall six storeys high. The lights faded slowly to pitch dark, filled only with the anticipatory rustle of the crowd, the crackle of candy wrappers, and the whimper of a baby.

Violins, a swooping bit of romantic fluff by some German composer. A spot of light appeared in the darkness, so small that Titus almost mistook it for a trick of his eyes. With a sudden swoosh the spot grew into a familiar blue globe. “What’s all the cotton-wool round it, though?”

Titus felt rather than saw Lash’s glance. “Clouds. That isn’t a model, Titus. It’s a motion picture of the Earth itself, taken from a satellite.”

Questions surged up in Titus’s chest: How did they loft anything so high? Who was turning the camera crank? Since when did they take pictures in colour? But the entire wall suddenly exploded into light and life, and it was as if he were hurtling in a taxi driven by that Hindu again. The Earth whizzed by, six storeys high and tipping alarmingly until his stomach heaved. He gripped the arms of the seat and swallowed bile. It’s only a blistering film, he reminded himself. This speed and size — it’s a deliberate effect, damn them.

A voice spoke and made him jump. So they had learned to add sound to the moving pictures, the clever little buggers! Why had no one done it in 1912? But he wasn’t going to give way to distraction. He forced himself to put amazement aside for the moment, and pay attention strictly to what was being said.

“… LN-GRO, the most powerful gamma-ray space telescope in existence,” the voice was saying. “The pulsar is a natural stellar phenomenon modified by alien intelligences to carry a message, transmitted in a series of gamma rays bursts. The message was enormously long, taking three years to capture in its entirety. It took another ten years to translate it.”

Incomprehensible patterns of light and dark squares, moving back to reveal that they were merely depictions upon screens, the glowing rectangular screens of machines like those Shell and Lash used. Then the image moved back yet again, to show people sitting and standing at those machines, puzzling over the patterns. An instant soundless dissolution, and the huge image split into nine images — some of them continuing to depict scientists staring at screens, and others showing things Titus could not name, machines working or people doing things. For a moment he was totally at sea.

The music buzzed, busy and driving and joyous, giving Titus the clue he needed. He blinked with tardy understanding. The film was depicting a process: thought, research, the work of many people all driving towards a solution to the translation problem. He had never thought of telling a history in this way, but he dimly perceived the power of it. If only he knew more of what was being shown! To his astonishment the film’s voice intoned, “A minimum of information is necessary for comprehension to even begin.” Shell had told him the same thing. It must be a proverb of the era.

But the film was going on about the mysterious star message, the possible interpretations of the signals and the final conclusion as to what they meant: “An invitation? Someone in the stars wants us to come to tea, perhaps.”

“Shh,” Dr. Lash whispered. “Watch, they’ll explain.”

“ — an invitation, and perhaps the means to get there,” the voice said. “Albert Einstein told us that it was impossible to travel at the speed of light. But the Forties’ theories of space and time have showed us how to warp space — and time. Their clues have helped us make theory into reality, and build a faster-than-light interstellar drive. The ultimate proof was achieved by pulling a historical figure from the past to the present, the single personage in history known to be out of the biosphere loop — “

It was a single image now, of this door into the past shining with weird white light. Titus stared in jaw-dropping horror at the colossal screen. It was himself up there six storeys tall, falling through that door, the Rock of Ages cleft from the other side: the slow endless drop into blank whiteness. And not his clean whole current self, but the emaciated and gangrened cripple, stiffly clad in frozen mitts and tattered windproof, collapsed forward out of the glowing portal onto the gleaming white floor in a flurry of blizzard-driven snow and cold mist. Chunks of ice, or perhaps bits of his frozen flesh, shattered off at the impact to melt into brownish disgusting puddles. The researchers in the film cheered loud and long, clapping each other on the back at this living proof of their theories. Dr. Trask and a horde of other medicos armoured in gloves and masks dashed forward to the rescue, turning the icy dying thing over, their shining tools poised.

Titus gazed up at his own face sideways on the screen. Several tots in the audience wailed at the horrific sight. The frozen white lips had writhed back, revealing a red-black slice of rotting gums and bloody teeth. Scarred with frostbite, the skin blackened by the wind and pocked with scurvy pustules, the countenance was inert and deformed as an Egyptian mummy’s. The back of Titus’s nose and throat constricted at a powerful memory of the nauseating aroma, the overwhelming rotten-sweet gangrene stench of his own body shivering into decay around him as he dragged himself along. “God, I shall be sick,” he gulped.

“I beg your pardon?”

Titus lurched to his feet. He had to get out of here before the bubble of vomit rose to the top. He almost fell down the stair, his leaden feet catching on the carpet, trapped in a nightmarish slowness. Above him the music blared triumph and joy, and the film’s voice boomed, “…heroic explorer lost in Antarctica in 1912…” And where was the blasted door?

He pushed through and fell flat gasping onto the carpet. Dr. Lash, close behind, nearly tripped over him. “Hang on, Titus, I’m calling the doctors. Don’t try to move!”

Of course this was intolerable. Titus immediately sat up, breathing hard. He wiped his clammy forehead on his sleeve. “Oh God. Oh bloody fucking hell. Lash — that was I!”

“But you knew that, Titus. I told you, it would explain all about your journey here.” One of the ever-present pillar boxes was in the lobby, and Lash pressed the chilly water bottle into his hand.

“I don’t understand. I do not understand.” With self-contempt Titus listened to the weakness, almost the whimper, in his own words. Was he actually unable to grasp the knowledge offered to him, the way a dog is unable to manipulate a pencil? Were these people so far beyond him? Seventy percent, they said. Get seventy percent by the throat, and the rest will come. He reeled to his feet and walked, brushing aside the water and ignoring Lash’s protests. He was a soldier, and a soldier could not give in. This was the true war, the one he was going to have to fight for the rest of his life: the battle to adapt and understand and survive here. No surrender, damn it. Never!

The lobby was thronged. Faces swam and spun past him, busy and self-absorbed. Thank Heaven people were unlikely to recognize him, thawed out, cleaned, and healed as he was now. Moving, using his arms and legs even in blind purposelessness, was the solution he instinctively clung to. The creed in the Antarctic was, if a man could walk, he could live. And it did not fail him. His stomach steadied and his courage returned. When a familiar quacking blatted out as he passed, he turned to look.

It was a duck call, just as he’d thought. A very young black man was blowing on the short wooden tube for the benefit of a gaggle of children, and making a damned poor job of it. The raspberry noise he made was ludicrous. “Now, what does this call say?” the young man asked them.

The only reply was giggling. Titus couldn’t stand it. “Give me that.” Without waiting for a reply he held his hand out over the heads of the seated children. Such was the power of his expectation that the young Negro meekly handed the duck call over. Was it done, to call them Negroes? In his day Titus had flouted class and race divisions not from any burning sense of the brotherhood of man, but in pure anarchic bloody-mindedness. The egalitarian quality of modern society caught him on the hop, as discomposing as kicking a huge weight that suddenly was no longer there. He held the little tube to his lips and blew. The call was not quite the same shape as the long thin ones he was used to, and there was something entirely novel about its innards. But it was not too odd, and he had been well-taught by the old gamekeeper at Gestingthorpe when he was a boy. An utterly authentic-sounding quack echoed through the lobby, the cry of a mallard patriarch in his pond hailing a passing flock. Titus could almost see the ducks gliding in towards the water. His palms itched for his old fowling gun.

“Oh, nice!” the young man said. “And what does that say, can anybody guess?”

“Hello!” “Or g’bye!”

“When a duck says quack, that’s what it means, probably,” the young man said. “But when he blows the call, what does he mean?” He pointed at Titus. “Sir, why do you say ‘quack’? What do you want?”

Titus handed the duck call back. “Roast duck for dinner.”

The black man beamed at his audience. “So we might know what the Forties are saying, but we might not know what they actually intend, you get what I mean? If the ducks knew that this gentleman was a hungry hunter they wouldn’t come when he calls …”

A boxful of noisemakers, animal calls, and other toys had been passed round the group, and the nippers seized this moment to try them all out at once. Wincing at the cacophony, Titus moved off. He saw now that the lobby of the building was fitted out with a series of displays and exhibits. How slack of him, to have come in earlier without noticing!

Titus halted to stare without comprehension at a spidery metal erection taller than he was. It was asymmetric and gawky, a derrick adorned with shiny rectangular boxes and flaps and the odd white plastic plate here and there. “A model of the trans-solar gamma ray satellite,” Dr. Lash said at his elbow.

Putting the pieces together was like assembling a jig-saw puzzle cut out of granite. No wonder they’d chosen children’s books for him! “The satellite received the message,” Titus said slowly. “The message from somebody out in outer space, in what’s-the-place.”

“Tau Ceti, that’s the name of the star system. Yes, it was the newsies that dubbed the aliens the Forties — because the gamma-ray source was numbered 4T 0091, you know.”

Titus didn’t know, but wasn’t going to say so. He strolled towards the next exhibit, which was made up of black boxes stacked in tiers around rows of chairs. All the chairs were occupied by rapt people, but someone stood up to leave and Lash nudged him forward. As Titus took his place in the semicircle of boxes, the sound enveloped him — a thump or pulse or syncopation. He looked up, and on a large screen directly above their heads was colour, washes of colour throbbing from red to yellow and back again to blue. Neither sound nor picture made the least bit of sense, and Titus sat in mystification for several minutes before he noticed the words crawling past on the ceiling at the edge of the coloured lights. Admiring the ingenuity of the system prevented him from actually reading for another couple of minutes. How did they make the words creep right round in a circle? A cine-projector could only project in a straight line, could it not? Look as he would, he couldn’t even spot the projector. But finally he was able to absorb what the words were saying. “So this is it? This is what the Forties sent, this light and sound? Coy little creatures, aren’t they!”

“More precisely, this is one of the interpretations we’ve made of their binary signals,” Dr. Lash said.

Titus could not imagine how an invitation could be extracted from this. Or advice on how to travel to Tau Ceti. But he remembered the film, how many thinkers laboured for years at it. What damned smart people these were! He felt both pride and an uneasy inadequacy.

In his world, courage had been the paramount virtue. Now the rules had changed, and he had a distinct sense that courage was well down on the list. Look at that leaflet chap out in the plaza, for instance. What did they value nowadays? Communication, perhaps — being able to talk to unknown star-men, and children, and ducks, and yes, even the occasional time-travelling Polar explorer. Suddenly he felt a feverish desire to get back to those books Shell had brought. He had a lot of catching up to do, no leisure to idle about. He must never waste a moment again. “Shall we go back now?”

“Had enough, eh? I don’t blame you.” Lash sighed with relief. It was only when they got outdoors that Titus saw the white vehicles waiting at the kerb flashing their red and yellow lights, and Dr. Trask hovering with a stretcher crew at her back. “I told you I was calling them,” Lash defended, when Titus glowered at him. “It’s our job to keep a close eye on you, old man.”

In the tone of a nanny dangling a toy before a baby Dr. Trask cooed, “A ride in the ambulance will do you good.”

“I’m going to walk back.” Titus strode off across the plaza. Lash, and all of them, meant him only good, he was sure. But the way they clutched the reins, the modern obsession with safety and security, weighed on him like chains. It was part and parcel of this too-nearness of modern life. Couldn’t they give a man some room? Shell had mentioned he was closely observed. Even now Lash was trotting behind, blathering.

“Are you still watching me somehow, Lash?” Titus interrupted him. “I won’t have it!”

Dr. Lash frowned. “Shell is such a chatterbox. My boy, you’ve only returned to the land of the living a couple days. It’s our job to keep a close eye on you. This is, count them, your fourth day of waking life in the 21st century. Be reasonable!”

Titus could not deny it. But he could refuse to concede defeat. He stalked tightlipped into their own building, Lash panting behind like an overweight lap dog. “The elevator for me,” he wheezed. “How about it, Titus?”

“Instead of the stairs? A pleasure.” Titus thawed instantly at the prospect of being initiated into yet another modern mystery. Tall panels slid aside, revealing themselves to be doors. The room beyond was very small. “Nowhere to sit,” he remarked as he followed Lash in.

“We’ll only be in here for moments,” Dr. Lash said. “Thirty-nine,” he added, mysteriously. Titus noticed that the discreet digits 39 lit up in blue on a wall panel a moment after Lash’s spoken words. The metal doors slid shut, and only the discreet murmur of an engine betrayed any motion. When the doors opened, a disembodied voice made him start by sweetly announcing, “Thirty-nine.” So machines these days could talk and be talked to! And there was the familiar corridor with the door of his own chamber standing ajar at the far end.

“Delightful,” Titus admitted. “Better by far than humping up all those stairs. But what’s this?”

“Hi, Titus!” Dr. Trask popped out from a room just behind. The anticipatory gleam in her sea-blue eyes would make a cavalry brigade falter. “Did I mention that an ambulance ride would be faster, too? Just step in here for a moment — I left an entire surgical board meeting just for you.” She held her stethoscope up.

“I’m fine! Lash, call these harpies off!”

“Harpies?” At his other elbow, Shell glanced at her little machine. “Ooh, there’s a nasty word. I’m hurt, Titus. Is that nice? I thought you were going to learn modern manners.” He babbled apologies until he saw the twinkle in her eye and realized she was jesting. By then they had him jockeyed onto the examination table, tapping and probing with their shiny tools.

He made an effort to be gracious. “I quite appreciate the work you’ve put into my restoration. I very much enjoy having use of my limbs. But the job is finished! I’m in good nick. There’s nothing wrong with me now.”

“Nick?” Shell murmured.

“I don’t like these spells of dizziness,” Dr. Trask said. “But on the whole we’ve made a fine job of you, Titus.” She beamed at him with pride, the way one might admire a prize steer.

Titus held his commentary until they let him go. Then he snarled to Lash, “Don’t I get any credit for my own sodding health? She makes me sound like a house pet.”

“She made a spectacular job of you, old man,” Lash said. “I could show you the film — they cloned bits of you and reattached them, extracted samples of diseases of your time and inoculated you against modern ones — “

“Film? There’s another damned cinematograph?” Titus was aghast.

“Of course there are complete records. Titus, not only are you an important historical figure. You’re the first time traveler, probably the last to — “

Titus could imagine the pictures six storeys high of himself in the altogether, being patched together and reassembled by Dr. Trask and her team. Had he a scrap of privacy left? Seething, he flung himself into his chair, picking a book up at random and pretending to be absorbed in it until Lash went away.

As his anger faded however Titus was drawn into the book. It was something he had never seen before, a story told in pictures and labels, something like Hogarth engravings but more colourful. He turned back to the title page: BUCK ROGERS: THE FIRST 60 YEARS IN THE 25th CENTURY. He gathered from the foreword that these things were called comic strips. At first he could not imagine why Dr. Lash had selected this. But when he began at the beginning he understood. This Buck Rogers fellow was a soldier who had travelled into the future too! The discovery made him chuckle. And how clever of Lash’s cohorts, to take an idea from a children’s book and make it reality!

And the comics themselves were ripping in a juvenile sort of way — evil Asiatics kidnapping shapely blonde girls, battles across land and sea. They were the sort of fare his boyhood chums at Eton would have thoroughly enjoyed. He whiled the afternoon away very pleasantly. The only thing he missed was his pipe.

“Titus, old man,” Dr. Lash came in to say. “Time for dinner — the banquet, you remember. Would you care to dress?”

“A bean-feast? Nonsense. I don’t know a soul in this world, except you and the other doctors.”

“Titus, we haven’t discussed this much. But think about it. You are famous, the first time traveler. Furthermore, you’re the quintessential British hero, an historical figure. Naturally people are interested in you. Now you’re on your feet again, let us show you off a little.”

“Claptrap!” But Titus noticed Lash’s nervy air as he laid out new garments on the foot of the bed. Perhaps it would be letting down the side, not to indulge him. “So what’s this then? Can’t I wear the trousers I have on now? They fit well enough.”

“These will too. They’re the same size, just a more dressy cut.”

“What has the world come to,” Titus grumbled, dressing, “when clothes like this are dressy?” None of the garments were what he would have called a mess uniform, these ill-tailored trousers and the nasty coarse shirt and unnaturally-sheer socks. Everything fitted well enough but felt tatty and fake, like stage costume. He would have spurned a necktie, but none was offered. Only the wool jacket was tolerable, though its blue was a hair too assertive. “But I know — knew, I should say — a tailor in Mhow who could make a far better job of it.”

“I’m afraid that after technological advances, the changes in dress will be the most trying for you,” Dr. Lash said. “I wish you could have seen your own face, when you saw Shell in her shorts the other day. Yes, just step into those shoes. Now, this way…”

Titus followed Dr. Lash down the elevator, congratulating himself on how commonplace the ride already had become. They got out on an unfamiliar level. Beyond the elevator hallway was a large room with nobody in it. “Good, the Secret Service finished their sweep,” Lash said. “The President and the British Ambassador were anxious that the occasion be kept as casual as possible for you — “

“You mean the President of this country? Of the United States?”

“Yes, Titus, I was telling you. But there’ll be photographs and so on. You’re used to that. Also more video — film, moving pictures.”

“Yes, yes.” Titus recognized the experience now: codswallop, the sort of slathering attention-grabbing that the nibs, nobs and snobs arranged to amuse themselves. Some things never changed. He regretted now not smuggling the BUCK ROGERS volume in.

But then the doors opened, and a horde of people came surging in. Dr. Lash said genially, “Titus, this is the TTD’s Medical/Cultural Management Section, essentially everyone who works here in New York — Marjie’s on vacation, and a couple people are out sick…”

The faces and names blurred in Titus’s mind as Lash presented them. Only Dr. Piotr, pinkly plump and overly well-groomed, seemed to be important. Titus gathered that he ran the entire show on the time travel side. Everyone seemed hugely delighted to meet him, smiling and squeezing his hand with enthusiasm, crowding just that little bit too close for comfort.

Sabrina Trask startled him speechless with her bright yellow trousers. Women wore trousers in this era! Though he had been too flustered to notice at the time, he dimly recalled now that females out in the street and in the museum had been similarly clad. Lash had warned him that the sartorial fence was going to be a high one — perhaps it was not necessary to clear it today!

Even women in skirts didn’t walk like ladies any more, with the delicate slow saunter enforced by corsetry and skirts that bloomed like the trumpets of lilies. They walked like men, brash and bold. And the thrill of glimpsing a well-turned ankle was gone, when a man could see all the way up to well above the knees. In his day even the shilling dockside Gerties were not so bold! Yet it passed belief that so many bits of muslin would be presented to the swells, and there was no lasciviousness in their manner or faces. He was forced to conclude that all the women he’d met in the 21st century must be respectable after all. The lewd signals sent by their clothing were to be ignored. He thrust the confusion aside to think about later.

Last in line, Shell was gowned in electric blue — were there no sober colours in this time? “Shell, how can you people live like this? Mewed up in towers, surrounded by metal and stone — is this all there is of your world?”

“It’s not all like this, Titus, I promise you.” Her wide generous mouth quirked in sympathy. “Maybe tomorrow we can get out — let me see what I can do.”

Everyone stood in loose rows, like troops being reviewed only much more casual, Lash and Dr. Piotr flanking Titus. Titus suddenly noticed the buffet tables laid out at the far end of the room. Dinner! Though the body had been restored, yet the mind still lived in the posture of starvation. His stomach rumbled audibly, and he crossed his arms over it in embarrassment.

But there, thank God, was a stir at the door, and a number of new people came in. Only a few of them came forward to be greeted by Dr. Piotr. “Madam President, may I present Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates. Titus, this is President Livia Hamilton.”

In a slight daze Titus shook the President’s hand. He would have placed her as the headmistress of a dame’s school, with that firm mouth and pinned-up grey hair. Had American presidents ever been women in his time? He could not recall. “This is an honor,” the President said in a deep horsy voice. “Captain, welcome to the 21st century.”

“Thank you.”

His concise reply seemed to disconcert them — Yanks were so talkative. Dr. Lash said, “And this is the British Ambassador, Sir Harold Burney.”

More handshaking. “Sir,” Titus acknowledged with reserve. Dr. Lash bobbed his head in an encouraging manner, but Titus was damned if he was going to bark on command like a trained seal.

“On behalf of His Majesty the King, I welcome you back to the land of the living,” the Ambassador said.

How fine it was to hear a British accent! But, “His Majesty?” Titus demanded, startled. Surely King George V was not still alive?

“Oh! His Majesty King William V. You poor fellow, haven’t they caught you up to date yet?”

“In due course, sir,” Dr. Lash broke in. “We’ve tried to bring the Captain up to speed gently. It’s a big adjustment to make.”

The Ambassador beamed with pride. “But if I know anything about it, you’ve been damned plucky, eh? And I have just the thing to help: a parcel for you, Captain. Family notes, photographs of modern-day Gestingthorpe and its environs, the latest parish newsletter, some handouts assembled by your old regiment, leaflets from the Essex Tourism Council — a little news from home.” An aide brought up a large bulging brown envelope tied shut, and passed it to the Ambassador to present to Titus.

“Thank you.” Titus clutched the bundle awkwardly. How was he going to manage a meal with this thing to haul about? He was glad to relinquish the burden to Dr. Lash. “What I want to know,” he began in his plummiest drawl.

“Yes?”

Titus pinned the Ambassador firmly in his gaze. He was tired of being a tame poodle. “I wondered why a pack of Yanks are making these great discoveries. I get the distinct sense that Britain’s no longer in the forefront of human endeavour.”

The Ambassador turned red. Only a few disjoint syllables came from his open mouth. “Shameful backsliding, I call it,” Titus pursued, twisting the knife. “The work we put into keeping the Empire on top of things, fighting the Boers, trekking into the hinterlands of the globe, and now look at it!”

Dr. Lash’s grip on his elbow was almost painful as he swivelled Titus back to face the President.

“So, Captain,” the President said. “Now that your life has been restored to you by Dr. Piotr and these folks, what do you intend to do?”

“There’s a facer,” Titus said, at a loss. The question had not occurred to him till now. Which just showed how pulled down he was, since it was obviously of the first importance. “Something useful.”

“A fine idea.”

“Facer?” somebody murmured.

“I don’t suppose Britain’s at war,” Titus said with dissatisfaction. “A pity, that. Perhaps we could try and claim the Colonies again, eh?”

The President’s smile did not waver, but her gaze flickered, searching for rescue. The Ambassador gallantly flung himself into the breach. “No wars on at the moment — but your old regiment, the Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, is anxious to welcome you back into the ranks.”

Titus had kicked his heels in an idle peacetime regiment before — codswallop, pointless parades, catering to the whims of the brass — and was not about to take the shilling for more. “Perhaps I could work at the TTD here. Lend a hand with the time traveling business. I have the experience, after all.”

The Ambassador gave a small polite laugh. “Oh, very good.”

The President glanced at Dr. Piotr. “You planning another jaunt into the past, Doctor?”

“Not soon,” Dr. Piotr said. “And not another person. Captain Oates here is probably the one and only man we’ll ever pull through time, because that’s a dangerous trick to try. Even the Doomsters aren’t completely misguided, you know! But by plucking him out of the past we have more than just the proof of the fundamental theories. It was a test of the Fortie technology. They taught us how to build a drive that can twist space — or time. This was the easy part. The Captain is living proof that the time travel works. Next, we test the technology on the main job: travelling to the stars.”

Titus listened closely, sifting nuggets of meaning out of the incomprehensible. “Do I understand you correctly?” he cut in, interrupting Dr. Piotr in mid-peroration. “You didn’t set out to travel through time? You didn’t intend to rescue me?”

The scientist cast a pained glance at Dr. Lash, who said, “But, Titus! I explained this to you. And the film this morning discussed it in detail!”

“This is the Fortie project, Captain,” Dr. Piotr said patiently. “Your rescue was part of it.”

“Ah, you took him over to the museum, very good,” the Ambassador said. “I love IMAX films …”

For a moment Titus was speechless. No one had said that he was the sole beneficiary of a titanic temporal rescue effort. He had only assumed his was the central role. Apparently he wasn’t the pivot of the project: had never been. He was an unimportant cog in a big engine that was driving across the heavens towards Tau Ceti. The readjustment in his picture of the situation was painful but nearly instantaneous. He had enough self-confidence to speak up right away: “Right-oh. Count me in then. I’ve never been to another planet! When do we leave?”

Embarrassment, shuffling feet, a nervous laugh. Had he said something wrong? “Now isn’t that just the spirit of exploration,” the President said, with the air of a schoolteacher determined to find something positive to say about a rowdy pupil. “You’re so romantic, Captain. Larger than life!”

Romantic? The supreme silliness of this description deprived Titus of speech. “A credit to the nation,” the Ambassador said. “Ah, sherry!”

An overall relaxation, as trays of drinks circulated and people began to move towards the buffet. Titus captured a glass of sherry and hung back as the nobs went forward. “Monster,” Dr. Trask murmured, grinning. “So this is how Victor von Frankenstein felt!”

“You’re a troublemaker, Titus,” Shell agreed. “You’ve got your nerve, jerking the poor Ambassador’s chain like that. I thought I’d bust a gut.”

Titus refused to be distracted. “I like the idea of going to Tau Ceti. Who else is going? You, Lash?”

Dr. Trask rolled her blue eyes at the idea. “Not with his asthma! And you’re never getting me up in one of those things. Clonal surgeons have plenty of work Earthside, grafting new limbs and boobs and organs onto people. Shell’s the one who’ll sweep those Forties off their feet.”

Titus blinked. He had not meant to suggest that women could be explorers. “If they have feet,” someone else in the line remarked.

Shell sipped her sherry and laughed. “Did you see that awful cartoon on the Today page?”

“Metaphorically speaking, prophylactics might be all you’ll need. A decent atmosphere composition, free water — the way the Forties describe their home it sounds like the Bahamas …”

The talk veered off into jokes and chatter that went right over Titus’s head. “It sounds like a perfect job for me,” he grumbled, accepting the plate someone handed him. What an odd and casual way to eat — and they called this a banquet? Banquets meant waiters and service, not shuffling through a line for bangers and mash. At least there was plenty of food, a real tightener for a Polar man.

Dr. Trask plopped a scoop of potatoes onto her plate. “Titus, the teams have been in training for ten years. It’d be an awful lot of work for you to get up to speed.”

“Frankly, old man, you were the highest example of the explorer as amateur,” Dr. Lash said. “But this is the age of the professional. It’s no reflection on your own worth.”

Titus did not believe this. His entire experience, leavened with the example of Buck Rogers in the 25th century, assured him that all he had to do was exert a little resolution. After all it had got him so far already. He helped himself to an enormous plateful of food, only belatedly noticing that he had cleared off half the sausages. How odd, that meat should make up such a small fraction of the offerings! But he had always been a carnivore, and it would surely be incorrect to shovel part of his portion back onto the platter. Instead he allowed them to guide him to his place at the head table. Without thinking about it he held a chair for Dr. Trask. She stared at it, her mouth open in surprise, until Shell poked her and hissed, “Go on, sit!” Flushing, Titus sat down himself.

The President had asked Dr. Piotr a question about the economic impact of speedy space travel, and the talkative scientist was off and away. “At FTL,” he said with enthusiasm, “the planets are just suburbs. We can colonize the solar system! No more of this three-years-to-Mars stuff. We’ve already gained so much from this one Fortie contact, I can’t wait to see what else is coming.”

Every word was English, but Titus found he had no idea what was being said. He leaned nearer to Shell. “Do you understand him?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t.”

She laughed. “And Piotr prides himself on being a populizer, too! Don’t disappoint him by telling him.”

“Hamilton’s such a show-off,” Sabrina Trask muttered from beyond Shell. “Just because she taught economics and math at Stanford.”

Titus regretted now paying so little attention to the ongoing controversies of his time about women’s education. Wasn’t too much book learning supposed to induce lassitude, and have a deleterious effect on the female reproductive system? These women did not appear prey to lassitude. And he wasn’t even sure what economics was. Something to do with money, he hazarded. Born to wealth, all he knew of money was how to spend it. What precisely Buck Rogers had lived on, and how he had got into the 25th century’s military? An exam, perhaps. “Shell, how much education have you had?”

“Me? Gosh, let me think — twelve years of school, four years college, medical school, another two for my communications doctorate…If you count the Fortie training, I’ve been in school just about all my life.” Titus’s heart sank into his boots at this appalling recitation. Between private tutors and the year or so at Eton, his own education could most kindly be described as spotty — scrappy bits of history, some painfully-memorized tags of rubbishy poems, barely the rudiments of mathematics. Well! No use repining — at least he hadn’t clogged his noddle with a lot of knowledge that was now out of date.

Dr. Piotr had finished his remarks, and the President applauded, saying, “Doctor, I swear if you ever want to quit the Paticalar business, I have a job for you in politics.”

The doctor grinned, pinker than ever. “Once, Madam President, you might have tempted me. Now, I know the better part. This is where the fun is going to be.”

This is beyond me, Titus admitted silently. He bowed his head to the inevitable. Buck Rogers was a cheat, the invention of some fantasizing pillock who’d never actually had to work with less than seventy percent of the knowledge necessary. Titus would live the reality, and he could acknowledge now that much of it would be forever beyond his comprehension. To swallow down the entire 21st century was too big a mouthful. His only hope was to select an area to worry at and, please God, to master.

But which area? “Lash, what am I going to live on? They must have proved my will and settled the estate. I don’t suppose my heirs’ descendants, my great-grandnephews and so on, will want to part with the money even if there’s a bean left after all this time. Will you people support me until I die?”

“A stipend’s in the works,” Dr. Lash said. “PTICA is responsible for your existence, Titus — you won’t starve.”

“But I bet anything you like, you’re not going to want to live out your life as a couch potato,” Shell added. “I can’t wait to see what the newsies will say, about your re-conquering the American Colonies!”

Dr. Lash shuddered. “I could wish, Titus, that you’d be more careful about what you say!”

Titus ate steadily, thinking hard. His life had been handed back to him on a platter. But the President, of all people, had put her finger on the crucial question: what could he do with it? He knew how to fight, and he knew how to die. He had a sense there was very little call for such skills in the 21st century. As useful as knowing how to blow a duck call, he thought sardonically.

He had it now — enough information so that he could make a beginning at last. Clear as day, he saw that if he didn’t carve a niche for himself somehow, he would indeed become a couch potato — he was repelled without even knowing what that was. There was a higher fence to clear than just learning to exist here. The true battle lay not in the past, nor in the present, but in the future. He had to find a destiny, a new one to replace the one he’d left behind in 1912. Else he’d become a pet, a parasite, leeching off the moderns for the rest of his useless life, trotted out for display every now and then to bark for the visiting brass.

It reminded him of his first sight of the Himalayas, in India. Some dashed impressive mountains, but then the morning haze lifted for a moment, and the eye took in the colossal heights beyond, snow-capped peaks rearing up to pierce the sky. What he had thought was the real battle had again been nothing but the first skirmish. How much easier a sharp crisis would be! Walking to one’s end in a blizzard, perhaps. It seemed unfair that an inner journey could be longer and brutal than a Polar one. “May be some time,” indeed! This uphill slog would last till his dying day — in the spirit of locking the barn door too late, he resolved that when he drew that final breath it should not be expended on feeble ironies that would come back to haunt him.

For a moment the prospect was unspeakably daunting, and he slumped over his empty plate. But with an effort he straightened. Stiff upper lip and all that. He had conclusively demonstrated that he could do anything he set his resolution to accomplish. “I’ve survived far worse,” he said aloud.

Dr. Lash glanced up from his plate. “What’s that you say, Titus?”

“Just getting ready for a second round.” The buffet still groaned with food. Titus picked up his well-polished plate and joined the stragglers going back for seconds.

Chapter 4

Titus forgot all about the Ambassador’s parcel, but Dr. Lash dropped it off at his room. The following morning Titus untied the string and upended the envelope. Papers and pictures slithered out onto the counterpane. He picked up a glossy Royal Inniskillings pamphlet. On the cover was a photograph — in color! — of a drab-clad man steering a huge dark metal machine, a land-boat, across a field. He puzzled over the text for some time before he realized the word for the thing was ‘tank.’ He frowned at the picture in disgust. How could any soldier prefer this ungainly hulk, this tank, to a horse? Chilled, he realized that the art of war too had marched on, keeping pace with aviation and medicine and science. The fresh-faced soldier in the tank would look at Titus the way he would look at a coronel of the Napoleonic wars. He was a soldier of the previous century now, an antique. There was no useful future for him with the Inniskillings and their tanks.

He turned over the loose photographs with the same chill round the heart. How could he go back and meet these people, his kin? They would have no memory of Lilian or Violet or Bryan, their great-grandparents. He peered at the faces, foolishly grinning or caught in poses of awkward unawareness, cramming a biscuit into an open mouth or sipping from cups. None of them resembled the sisters or brother he remembered. He would be a ghost, creaking round the estate carping about innovations. Worse yet, he might have the appearance of hanging out for his inheritance. If he returned, to Gestingthorpe Hall or to the regiment, he’d be a curiosity, an odd old animal on display in a zoo. Unbearable!

And why was this here, this leaflet with a photo of a church memorial? It was a large gleaming brass plaque. He flipped past at least once, not being much interested in monuments and art. But then he looked at the picture more closely. It was a memorial to himself! Fixed to the north wall of St. Mary the Virgin no less, his own village church! He felt unreasonably put out. Not only was he not dead yet, but how dare they add such a vulgar, garish fixture to the old building? Portions of the structure dated back to the 13th century! That he couldn’t remember the original decoration of the wall was irrelevant. The change in itself was ill-judged and displeasing. And to be commemorated so publicly was the most fearful rot.

And here was the insignia of the Inniskilling Dragoons. The plaque had been erected by the officers of his own regiment! And according to the text Mother had made a ritual of coming down every week of her life to polish the thing. And keeping fresh flowers under his portrait, carrying one of his epaulettes about? Where had she acquired such, such Victorian notions? The idea, of poor Mother wasting her time on such pointless sentimentalities — if he had been there he would have jollied her out of them in twenty minutes.

“By God, I’ll have the thing removed,” he muttered. “Pried off the wall.” After all here he was, not dead at all. Surely one could not commemorate a visible and patent untruth, and in a church, too! But, reading to the very end, he saw the leaflet had been printed by some Historical Commission. This plaque was a monument, an historical artifact kept up by the government. A slathering waste of rates and taxes! But after a hundred and thirty years, it was probably no more possible to shift it than to uproot Nelson’s Column from Trafalgar Square. Though the past had changed with his travel to the future, he could not revise the world to fit it.

But most disagreeable of all was the large glossy brochure about Gestingthorpe Hall. He admired the colourful photograph of the manor house on the front. How tall the oaks had grown! And the ivy grew thick as ever on the brick walls, contrasting well with the woodwork which someone had recently repainted a crisp white. But he read the text with growing horror. His sister Violet had sold the place in 1946. The estate had passed through many hands, and was now a conference and meditation center, run by some Buddhist sect. There were interior photographs of the library now converted into a reception room, the billiard room an office presided over by a smiling black.

“No, by God! Not my home!” The hours he had spent, using dreams of the old place to turn his mind from starvation and pain! He jumped to his feet, crushing the brochure in his hands. He would return like vengeful Odysseus, reclaim his own, and throw the bastards out!

His noise brought Dr. Lash in at a run, and Shell too. “Titus, is something wrong?” Lash asked.

For answer Titus flung the crumpled paper at his feet. “And Violet! My own younger sister — how could she sell the old place like that? She should be bloody well ashamed of herself! Some man in the family should have been there, to restrain and guide her!”

Shell took up the brochure and smoothed it, reading. “Titus, did you notice she was ‘Miss Oates’? In 1946 she must have been getting on for sixty, and still unmarried. Maybe a big expensive manor house was the last thing a little old lady needed to live in all alone. You don’t know her circumstances. She could have been sick, and needed the money.”

“After the war it was hard times in Britain,” Lash added. “And don’t forget the death duties.”

Titus sat on the bed and covered his eyes with one hand. The image of his lively sister, only a year younger than himself, rose before him. He could almost hear her laughing as she chased her terrier through the sunny shrubbery, her long skirts fluttering around her ankles as she ran pell-mell down the smoothly-raked graveled paths. That delightful laughing young beauty, to grow elderly and ill alone, selling off the only home she had ever known to survive! He should have been there. He should have come back, to help her. He swallowed and swallowed again, choking down the tears.

“Maybe this isn’t the best time for a walk,” Shell was saying uncertainly to Lash. “How do you feel, Titus?”

“We’ll put it off for another time, old man, shall we?”

“No!” That brought him to his feet. “It’s nothing. Just the surprise, that’s all.” Fighting to control himself, he shoveled all the papers and photos back into the envelope. He didn’t have to look at them again until he was ready. There was nothing to be done about Gestingthorpe, or Violet, or the regiment, so the moment could be a long time from now.

“There’s no rush, Titus,” Lash said.

“Yes, there is.” He had lost his home, his job, his family, even his country — a nation that would tolerate a Buddhist meditation center in rural Essex was no longer the England he loved. He had thought he was desolate that first evening, looking out the window at the strange new world outside. He hadn’t known the half of it. His heart had been stripped as naked as his body. But he could not show a morsel of his pain. It simply wasn’t done. The two doctors were watching him with a curious intentness — for signs of weakness perhaps. He schooled his voice to a light brisk tone. “Well, let’s be off.”

Again they walked down flight after flight of empty echoing stairs. “Why not the elevator?” Titus demanded.

Shell laughed. “You’re progressing, Titus! But we’re supposed to exercise, remember?”

There was no denying the crowded surging street outside was nerve-racking. Dr. Lash wanted him to stand inside the big glass doors and watch the traffic for a while. But the park beyond beckoned Titus with its tall trees overtopping the fence, and he pressed on.

Both doctors insisted on tucking his arm through theirs to cross the avenue, and nattered on in a steady distracting dialogue that he was actually able to attend to this time. “Did they have traffic lights in his day, Kev?”

“Can’t recall. Red for stop, green for go, Titus. As long as you cross with the crowd in New York you can’t go wrong — even if they’re jaywalking.”

“Yeah, the cars won’t ram a crowd.”

“No! always let the scooters go by. If you try and beat them, they’ll crash into you, isn’t that right, Shell?”

“Yes, they go much too fast.”

“Whew! Here we are, safe and sound!”

Again he felt that clearing, the sense of relaxation and perils past. “How can you worry so?” Titus asked, ungratefully. “I’m not some fragile petal, confound it.”

“You’re solid as oak, physically,” Shell assured him.

“It’s the cultural and social transition we’re trying to ease for you, old chap.” Dr. Lash folded his arms, and with an unpleasant shock Titus recognized pity in his tone. “Do you even realize what you’re trying to accomplish, Titus? Don’t you see? You’re moving from the age of steam to the interstellar age in one gigantic leap. It’s a stupendous feat. You’re doing what no man has done before, and probably no one will ever attempt again. You must let us try and help you.”

“He doesn’t see,” Shell said. “What are mountains to us are just molehills to him. Too courageous.”

“No, Shell, that’s just what’s so dangerous,” Dr. Lash said earnestly. “It’s not courage. It’s his underpinnings, the cultural ground he’s standing on. We have here an Edwardian Tory who comes from a world that has never known doubt — never seen the Somme, or Buchenwald, or Hiroshima, or Pyongyang. He’s standing on what doesn’t exist any more.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Titus growled, bewildered. “If there’s anything despicable about the modern day, it’s your habit of turning everything into a palaver. Let’s walk, shall we? We’ll catch you up later, doctor.” Remembering Lash’s comment about his reaction to modern clothing, he added, “I like that headband, Shell. Is it the latest mode?”

“It’s a sweatband — stretchy, see?”

“Sweatband,” Titus muttered, fixing the term into memory. He called to Dr. Lash’s retreating back, “If you can find me a notebook of some kind, Lash, I’d be grateful. Too many new words.” The doctor waved in reply.

“I suppose Kev is right,” Shell said. ”It’s his area of expertise. But it sure looks like courage to me.”

Titus was sure that when a man had no choice it did not count as courage. But he didn’t want to waste time in blather. He ducked his head and strode out, instinctively selecting a new turn of the path. Shell fell in beside him, trotting along and waving her hand weights in her exercise routine. The trees opened out into a wide green lawn, scruffy and marred by several paths. The late-June sunshine lay like a fevered hand across them, as humid as India. Titus reveled in the warmth. After the Pole he was never going to growl about heat ever again. “Show me the trick with these pillar boxes,” he suggested.

“Pillar box? Oh, you mean the drinking fountains.”

“Bosh. These aren’t fountains.”

“They replaced the things that you called drinking fountains — the name carried over. I guess it does sound funny. Like this.”

He watched her carefully. The gesture looked strange because she passed the back of her hand along the surface, not the palm as one might expect. Immediately the hatch popped open, accompanied by a solid internal thump, and she pulled out the usual small water bottle. “More sanitary for drinking than running water,” she explained. He tried it himself and nothing happened. “No, your left wrist.”

And indeed when he tried it with the left, the hatch opened and the bottle appeared. “How is it done?” he asked, impressed. “Did it recognize my hand?”

“Feel, here.” They sat down on a nearby bench to drink, and Shell put a forefinger on her own left wrist, just at the joint. “Yes, that’s right, your own wrist.”

Titus felt nothing. “What am I supposed to be finding?”

She probed Titus’s wrist with a doctor’s expert touch. “There. You can feel it, like a tiny bead or pellet just under the skin.”

This time Titus found it, a firm pinhead too small to be seen and only just palpable. “What is it?”

“An ID chip. Think of them as dog-tags, or identity discs — those things that soldiers wear.”

“My regiment never had any.”

“Were they after your time?” She frowned with thought. “A sig. An e-ddress. A, a calling card — is that the right term? No one can impersonate you, and you can prove your identity wherever you go. It’s also your wallet, your medical record, and a dozen other functions. They’re powered by a bio-battery that draws on your body heat. And you can program it as a pinger, or use it to open doors at the TTD building — remind me to show you how to work the main door sometime.”

He stared at his wrist, impressed. “Does everyone have one?”

“Mostly — you find a couple people here and there who are philosophically opposed to the idea. There are people around who’re philosophically opposed to everything. But anyone with a medical condition is supposed to have one, so that their records will be available.”

Ruffled, he said, “I don’t have a medical condition.”

“You had your limbs cloned and replaced.”

This was veering off into the terra incognita that Titus never intended to explore — he still didn’t know what cloning was, and was ruddy sure he didn’t want to find out. But at that moment, trotting towards them from a side trail, came something that drove the wonders of the future completely out of his head — a tall chestnut horse carrying a man in uniform. Titus assessed horse and rider with a cavalryman’s eye. Drags a little with the rear hoof, possibly re-shoeing would help. Handsome beast, sixteen hands if an inch, well-used but well-cared for, with a wise calm eye — a good city mount. The rider had spent years in the saddle, getting a little past it but still in fine form, back straight, hands relaxed on the reins, no daylight at the seat — the first man he’d seen here who might be a good one to hounds. And ought that saddle be set so far forward on the withers?

The heavenly vision swept past, the rider’s stern eye evaluating and dismissing Titus as harmless. Titus stood to watch them post by. He had to gulp to get the lump out of his throat. “Shell,” he croaked.

She had been stowing her weights in the rucksack. “What is it, Titus?”

“My God, you still have horses! Cavalry!”

“Who, the cop, you mean?”

“Yes! I, I…“ He could hardly form his desire into words. “Is there a stable? Could I just, just go and smell the horses? Touch them?”

She stared. “Why? What for?”

“I’m — I mean, I was a cavalry officer. I’ve worked with horses all my life.”

“Oh, I get it! Well, I’m sure the mounted police don’t allow tourists. But there’s a riding stable on West 89th — Miranda takes lessons there.”

Titus was unable to take any interest in Miranda, whoever she might be. He began to walk fast, as if mere speed would bring him nearer. “Is it close? Could we go there?”

“God knows what Kev would say. But if we get his okay, and the approval of the Board, we might get you into the saddle again, Titus. You’re going to need some physical activity, tennis or something, for your health. So why not something you’re into, like riding?”

“You mean that?” He could have shouted for joy.

“Sure.” She frowned, thinking as she strode along. “Somebody’ll have to keep you company, me or Miranda, I guess. Not Kev — animal hair is deadly to him. Now that I think about it, you’d fit in great with the handicapped riding group. I bet anything you like, that Sabrina’s going to insist on another physical for you. And we’ll have to get you boots, a helmet — there has to be a couple bucks left in the miscellaneous part of the budget…“

“You are an angel. I knew it!”

“Nah.” She grinned. “It’s good to see you hot about something, Titus. Americans are always hot about stuff. That stiff-upper-lip thing of yours, that British reserve — when you don’t respond and don’t react, it seems so strange to us.”

He felt this was obscurely insulting. “We get hot, as you call it, if there’s something to become excited about.”

“Sometimes you’re so cool, it’s downright creepy. Alien, even.”

He stared at her, this bizarre woman in her immodest clothing and sweatbanded frizz of hair, maneuvering through her gaudy futuristic world with the effortless grace of a fish in water. “Alien? I?” He wavered between rage and laughter. But if she could get him on horseback again he could forgive her anything.

Chapter 5

Shell was as good as her word, proposing the idea to the brass and faithfully promising to chaperone Titus on horseback. With the lure of returning to the saddle before him, Titus tolerated all the silly physical and cognitive tests he had to go through. He plodded on futuristic treadmills, submitted to needles and tubes, and allowed nurses to tape bits of metal to his chest. He was learning to sort out what had to be understood in this new era from what could be safely ignored. And all this difficult medical and time-travel stuff was absolutely in the “pass” column.

It was with unspeakable delight that Titus walked with Lash and Dr. Trask to the stable for the first time. The day was muggy and grey, pregnant with rain, but to Titus the sky was blue. “Who are these people that Shell rides with?”

“It’s a therapy group,” Lash said. “Handicapped children find it empowering to work with animals.”

“With some of them frankly it’s hard to see any result,” Dr. Trask said. “But Shell says Miranda loves it, so somebody is doing something right.”

“Miranda…” Titus racked his memory. “Do I know a Miranda?”

“You’ve never met her,” Lash said patiently, “but surely you’ve heard Shell speak of her daughter.”

Titus caught his mouth from dropping open. “Daughter? Shell is married?”

“Well no, not at the moment. I believe the divorce was in ‘40. Miranda must be eight years old now.”

“A divorcee…” Titus tried to speak casually. Why, the poor creature! Only a blackguard would subject a woman to divorce proceedings. “I’ve never met a divorcee before.”

Lash smiled. “You’ll find that it’s a far more common state these days than it was in your time. I’m on my second marriage myself. And what are you up to, Sabrina?”

“Lordy, I don’t keep count.” Dr. Trask pretended to think. “Must be three or four now at least.”

Deprived of speech, Titus concentrated on keeping his pace steady. What kind of world was this, with everyone round him a product of immoral miscegenation and depraved unions? Then it came to him — could it be that his instinctive tut-tuttery had an element of envy about it? He had never married, hadn’t even seen a female after November 29, 1910 when the expedition departed for the southern continent. And all this time, if one could think of time in that way, the natives of the 21st century had been leaping like spawning salmon in and out of each other’s arms. It seemed horribly unfair, yet still repulsive — attractive but something he didn’t want to probe.

Thank Heaven, at this moment he didn’t have to. From the large building they were walking past came a most delightful odour of horse manure. Titus sniffed, grinning so widely his cheek muscles hurt. “Wonderful!”

“This is where the real cultural gap comes in for me,” Lash said, blowing his nose. “To me, that is a stench.”

“You’re a city boy, Kev,” Dr. Trask said. “There must be millions of rural people who aren’t bothered.”

“Well, it’s no rose garden,” Titus conceded magnanimously. “Come along, step lively then — where’s the door into this place?” Only the smell spoke of animals; the structure was otherwise utterly unstable-like, a city building like every other on the street.

Dr. Trask pointed. “There’s a courtyard on the Central Park side where they tack up and load the kids on.”

She directed them round the corner and through a gateway into a yard paved with grimy and much-patched concrete, and milling with people and horses. Shell came pushing through to them, towing a chunky child with long dark pigtails sticking out from under her black-velvet helmet. “This is Miranda,” she said. “Miranda, this is Titus.”

It was Shell’s clear enunciation that warned Titus. He looked warily down into the child’s round stolid face. Her gaze was averted, the sloe-black eyes fixed on some point over his left shoulder. Definitely there was something wrong with the child, and he remembered they described this group as handicapped. He nearly blurted something tactless like, “What’s wrong with her?” But thankfully he caught the words back in time. After a pause that felt an hour long he resorted to the safety of convention: “How do you do, Miranda?”

He held out his hand, and after a prompting nudge from Shell the child responded. Her hand was damp and clammy in his large strong one. “Do you feel up to joining us, Titus?” Shell asked.

“Of course. I only wish I had proper boots.” He stared enviously at Shell’s tall brown-leather boots. His own brogans laced on firmly and had heels adequate for stirrups, but that was all that could be said for them.

“Later,” Dr. Lash said. “They’ll authorize the expenditure if you do all right today.”

“I shall.”

“You’re not going to gallop off by yourself into the sunset,” Dr. Trask said. “You’re going to let Shell hold onto your leash or rein or whatever you call it. Right, Shell?”

“We’ll pony along, I promise.”

“We shall not! I absolutely will not be ponied!” On this Titus knew he was on firm ground. “I’m a cavalry officer, captain in a crack dragoon regiment. I’ve been a dab at riding since I was a boy! And, unless I’m very much mistaken indeed, your mounts are going to be screws and hacks, with no more spirit than dishwater!”

Dr. Trask’s sunny smile evaporated. “If you break your nice new limbs, Titus, I’ll strangle what’s left of you.”

“Not on your first horseback outing, Titus, please!” Dr. Lash pleaded. “Of course you know all about it. But you’re still not fully recovered!”

“Well, I have a perfect solution,” Shell said with pardonable pride. “We’re short one adult, and some of these children really do need close supervision. So my idea is, Titus will lead Miranda. Or Miranda will lead Titus, depending on how you want to think about it.”

“I’ll take good care of her,” Titus said quickly.

“You’ll take good care of him, won’t you, Miranda?” Dr. Trask bent to address Miranda face to face, and to Titus’s annoyance the child nodded solemnly.

“Can she really manage such a big responsibility?” Dr. Lash fretted. “Both her own horse and his? Supposing one of them runs away?”

“I can manage my own mount,” Titus snapped.

“Don’t worry,” Shell said. “I’m afraid Titus is right. The mounts they use for this class are the slowest, safest, tamest horses in the stable. There’s no question of running away — in fact the problem usually is keeping them moving.”

“Thank God nobody I know will see me,” Titus couldn’t help exclaiming.

His cri de coeur went unheard as the horses were led out. Titus silently assessed the beasts as old and tired, with all the fire of a rocking horse, undeniably safe for children and cripples. And coloured browbands were vulgar — horse furniture should never be anything but severe!

“I’ve spent too many years in New York,” Dr. Trask remarked, retreating. “These things are too big, and too animal, and not sanitary. They smell! And they had better be safe, Shell.”

“Don’t be such a noodge, Sabrina,” Shell said. “I’m on it.” She checked the fastening on Miranda’s riding helmet, and passed a larger white plastic one to Titus. He put it on — it was obviously the mode, since every rider here wore similar headgear. The unfamiliar plastic chin clasp utterly defeated him however, and Dr. Trask had to fasten it for him.

Shell gave the waist of her daughter’s riding breeches a final tug. “All right, darling, ups-a-daisy.” The stable hand led an ancient pinto pony up.

“Allow me.” Titus held the bridle while Miranda stepped up onto the mounting block and from there into the saddle. Not a sidesaddle, he noticed — ladies rarely rode astride in his day. The pony was a riding-school job if he ever saw one, as much of a crock as the Siberian ponies they’d used in Antarctica: bony, sleepy, and old as Methuselah. Titus patted its lank neck. “What a beauty you are,” he told it — a bald lie, and yet the truth of his heart.

Miranda spoke so suddenly and loudly it made him jump. Her voice was unchildlike, deep and hoarse and toneless. “Like him.”

“Er, yes. Yes I do. I love horses.”

Shell said, “Here you go, Titus. Do you need the block?”

For answer Titus swung straight up onto the back of his mount, a tall overweight bay gelding nearly asleep on its hooves. When he took the reins in his hands the thrill of the creature’s mouth on the bit ran all the way up his arms. Automatically he settled into the saddle, checking the length of his stirrups and arranging the reins through his fingers. The gelding noticed it had a no-nonsense rider up, and chirked up a bit. “Acquit yourself well and you shall have a piece of bread,” Titus told the beast — he had pocketed a piece from breakfast for precisely this purpose. Unfathomably, sugar bowls were no longer filled with cubes, but with sugar in paper packets unsuitable for feeding to horses.

Only then did he notice Shell, in company with a number of the other stable people, watching him closely. He would have done the same if he were lending a horse to an unknown rider, so he suppressed his irritation. They certainly had no loophole for criticism. He knew without false modesty that his seat and posture were beyond reproach, that every line of his back and movement of his fingers exhibited complete mastery. He grinned down at them with sardonic joy. “Should you like an all-round view?” A curvet or levade was as beyond this sausage as winged flight, but he was able to nudge the beast into motion and use reins and leg aids to spin round in a tight figure-eight. Everyone looked surprised, not excluding the horse, and Shell shot a triumphant smile at Dr. Trask.

The knowledge rose into his head like wine, that it was in his power to collect this beast, awaken its interest, and gallop away. His personal proverb was that a man and a horse can go anywhere. Liberty and power were his, as long as he was on horseback! Before he could act, Shell clipped a lead rope onto his mount’s bridle. “We’re always careful until we’re across the street and safe on the trail.”

This common sense brought him back to earth. He had a job to do. These children had to have a safe ride. He thought of the surging city traffic, the taxis and cars barreling heedlessly along, and knew this was no small responsibility. Every child was in the charge of an adult, either mounted or walking alongside. Shell herself was up on a fat pony and leading another. One of the stable people stepped out into the street to hold the cars back for them to cross. Dr. Trask waved — Lash was sneezing into a tissue — and Titus replied with a cavalry officer’s salute. The horses walked in a sedate line past the waiting traffic, their heads nodding sleepily with each stride.

Then peril was past, and they were safe in the park. In a long file, two and two, they walked along the riding trail. Tall on his tall horse, Titus had to duck his head under the occasional low branch, but the children had no difficulty. It was the tamest ride imaginable, and it filled his heart with joy. Merely being on a horse was enough to make his troubles fall away. When Shell looked over her shoulder at him he grinned and waved.

The trail looped back far too soon. “Can’t we go further?” he called to Shell.

“Not today, sorry.”

“Tomorrow,” Miranda asked loudly, startling him.

“We’ll see. You have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, sweetie.”

“Want tomorrow,” she insisted.

“I also,” Titus chimed in, quickly aligning himself with this new ally.

The child looked at him, expressionless. “We both ride,” she announced.

Harassed but laughing, Shell said, “I’ll find out if there’s horses free, all right?”

“Ah! That gives me time to get some proper riding gear,” Titus said.

oOo

He felt quite the old hand that afternoon in the taxi, carefully not touching the handles and latches but pressing the button to extrude his seat belt. Then he noticed the empty front seat. “Bloody hell! Where’s the driver?”

“An autopilot, dear fellow.”

“Is that safe? In all this traffic?”

“As houses — would you like to hear how it works?” Titus nodded, relaxing onto the plastic seat with an effort of will. It must be safe — now that he came to notice it, many of the vehicles on the road were unmanned! Lash obligingly discoursed on the automated highway system, human versus driverless taxi metering, and modern traffic management, all the way to the riding-tack shop.

Once inside, Titus took charge. “Black calfskin, English style, nineteen inches in the leg…” He examined the riding boots on offer, rejecting one after the other as too shoddy or of repellent design.

Lash peered at a price tag and flinched. “Perhaps Manhattan is not the place to buy this sort of gear.”

Money had never made a habit of sticking to his hands, and it was astonishing now how the purchases mounted up — boots, riding breeches, boot-trees and polish, socks, a proper helmet, a hacking jacket, all the little oddments that one simply had to have. Lash called a halt before he began choosing his own saddle. “We can’t afford any more, Titus. I’m on a very tight budget! And this may just be a passing hobby for you. You may become drawn into other activities.”

“More up-to-date ones, you mean? No Lash, I believe you’re mistaken. I’ve always ridden, always will. If I have to, I’ll sign on as an equestrian nanny for handicapped children, and pony tots through the park for the rest of my life.”

The picture made Lash wring his hands. “Only the other day you were talking about going to Tau Ceti with the Fortie Expedition! Titus, I cannot believe you’d be content for the rest of your life with Central Park.”

Titus couldn’t either. For a moment his mind’s eye saw the endless white vistas of the Antarctic, a wilderness unvisited by man — except for those confounded Norskies — stretching bleakly towards every horizon. After this, would any tame citified existence suffice him?

The clerk helped them to carry all the parcels out and load them into the vehicle. Titus noticed that Lash paid no fare, but merely passed his hand across a glassy panel. He’d have to practice and master the nuances of this chip system. But there were no directions posted in the interior of the vehicle, nor for that matter on the pillar-box water fountains. Perhaps everyone picked up this knowledge in childhood, the way one learned to manage doorknobs and commodes. And how did one hail a driverless taxi?

Titus was still musing on this when the taxi halted at the corner in front of the TTD building. A porter with a rolling cart came out to help with the parcels. Signaled in the same way that Lash had hailed the taxi? It was dashed uncanny, how rapidly people communicated in this era. As they fussed with the load Titus considered the water fountain at the kerb. Perhaps a bit of practice? He lounged over and casually passed his wrist in front of the thing. Nothing. Perhaps this was the wrong side. Round to the other blank white face of the structure, and again. This time the hatch dropped open as it ought.

“Aagh!” Just at that moment a passing woman dropped her bag, one of many piled in her arms. Bits of feminine paraphernalia spilled tinkling across the pavement. Titus’s reaction went far deeper than thought — pretty young women in distress always received assistance. Abandoning other concerns, he stepped up to help.

In the instant he turned away from the water fountain, it burped or coughed. Something, a projectile or a dart, shot out from the hatch and passed under Titus’s elbow, bowling a passerby beyond him right over. All that Titus saw was that an older gentleman fell over with a cry of pain.

“Get him inside!” Lash cried. Titus moved to give the sufferer a hand and was astounded when Lash and the porter grabbed him instead, haling him right through the glass doors and into the TTD lobby.

“Wow, those Doomsters don’t quit!” the porter marveled. “I’ve buzzed security, doc. Maybe you want to get him upstairs.”

“What the hell?” Titus dug in his heels as Lash tried to cram him into the elevator.

Lash had become noticeably rattled, almost grey with it. “I’m sorry, Titus, but we must get up to safety!”

“Safety?” Something important was happening. Delay was his only chance of seeing the fun. “If you think I’m abandoning my boots — “

“They’re not important, Titus!”

“You were complaining they cost the bloody earth.”

“That’s true,” Lash moaned. “All right, I’ll be right back — stay here!”

As Lash darted out again Titus took refuge behind a large potted palm. The scene was plainly visible through the glass doors. Blue-clad officials had sprung up as if from sown dragon’s teeth, clustering around the water fountain. A contingent of white-coats were carrying the fallen man away on a stretcher. Lash was drawn into the maelstrom to argue with an official about the parcels. The woman with the bag had burst into tears. It was all entirely mysterious. Titus could make nothing of what the excitement was about.

“What are you doing here?” Dr. Trask peered indignantly through the palm fronds. “How come you aren’t safe upstairs? Kev buzzed me — where is he?” Without pausing for an answer she grabbed his shirt sleeve and tugged.

Titus sat down on the broad edge of the plant pot. Was he a spaniel, to be hauled hither and yon by the scruff? “You’re just the person I wanted to see, doctor,” he lied unblushingly. “What’s all the hubbub out there?”

“Shell, help — we’re in the lobby! Titus, it has nothing to do with you personally, okay? We’re delighted to have you, we adore the idea of learning more about you. These people are a misguided fringe element, so full of it their eyes are brown.”

Titus passed over everything he couldn’t understand. “Do you know, it sounded just there like you were praying aloud to Shell,” he remarked, idly crossing his legs. “What was it really?”

With an air of teeth-clenching patience Dr. Trask held out her machine. “We’re linked, okay?”

“Explain some more. What is linked?”

Before the steam could actually start pouring from Dr. Trask’s ears, Shell came barreling through the plaza-side door. “There’s no place to sit in this lobby,” she greeted them without the slightest preamble. “I don’t think it’s fair, Titus, that you have the only possible perch. My feet hurt. Let’s go have some tea — the books say that afternoon is the time for tea.”

Titus was almost but not quite certain that she was joking, and the doubt brought him slowly to his feet. “You poor benighted nation of heathens! You know of tea-time only from books?”

“There was a lovely cookbook about the institution of afternoon tea published ten years ago, and Kev loaded it into the kitchen program,” Shell replied. “Let’s go see how well it works — there’s muffins and something called sugar scones.”

“If this is the device in charge of the cat-lap I get for breakfast, I can’t be optimistic.”

“You can tell us exactly what’s wrong with it,” Shell promised, shepherding him along.

“I’m hungry too.” Dr. Trask leaned on the elevator button, almost dancing with impatience. “C’mon, Titus, please!”

Titus eyed the two jittering medicos with the gravest suspicion. He detested the managing sort of woman. But on the other hand he was pretty peckish, and it went against the grain to resist any overt appeal from a female, and the activity out on the sidewalk was not going to become any clearer from here. “Tea, from books,” he said with disgust. “And you two are going to tell me what’s going on out there, over and over again if necessary, until I understand it.”

“Yes, yes, anything!”

The elevator doors parted and he let them usher him in. Both doctors sagged with relief as the doors slid shut. “Well?”

Dr. Trask stared appealingly at Shell, who took a deep breath. “Titus, this is just an idea we’ve got. But it could be that someone’s just tried to off you. Dammit — eliminate. Ace. Rub out. Murder. Kill.”

“Me?” His mouth open, he stared at her until the doors slid open and the mechanical voice announced their floor.

“Food,” Dr. Trask said firmly, and Shell nodded agreement. Stunned, he trailed after them down the hallway, past his own small room and the offices beyond. Round a final corner, the hall opened out into a sort of common area. Big windows let in a flood of cheery light and gave a fine vista over the rooftops. They sat down at one end of a long table, where an eclectic selection of crockery was laid out. Titus automatically held a chair for Shell, who suggested, “That’s nice, Titus, but you don’t have to keep doing that.”

“ — not us,” Dr. Trask was saying. “Honestly, I don’t understand these people. Yahoos! They don’t have any grasp of the scientific method, is the problem. The idea that you propose a hypothesis and then discuss the pros and cons is just alien to them — “

“Take this, Sabrina,” Shell interrupted, taking platters and plates from a hatch. “Titus, show us how it’s done.”

Mechanically Titus took the china pitcher which was doing duty for a teapot. He added milk and sugar to a teacup, and poured. “Been stewing far too long, and made with water that’s come off the boil,” he said. “And why the devil should anybody want to murder me? I haven’t been here long enough to mortally offend anyone.”

When Dr. Trask took a tiny sip of the bitter brew her eyes grew round as a doll’s. “Kev said he explained this to you, about how the big danger of time travel.”

He took two muffins and a scone. “Danger? No, he didn’t think to mention it, the skiver. What danger?”

“Not for you. For us.” Her mouth stretched wide as Shell took a bite of her muffin. “We had to be careful changing the past, because the past is the foundation for the present. We didn’t want to accidentally revise the world.”

“All our effort,” Dr. Trask grumbled. “Years of it. You can’t please some people.”

“Yes, there’s a bunch of folks who just wouldn’t believe time travel could be safely done,” Shell said. “And who still don’t believe it, even after you arrived here and everything was fine.”

“What was supposed to happen, is what I’d like to know,” Dr. Trask said. “Did they look for the universe to dissolve into electrons, or what?”

The effort to understand this made Titus’s head feel full and hot. “And their solution to the danger is to rid the cosmos of me.”

Shell helped herself to a second muffin with plump fingers, and tipped another onto his plate in a casual manner that must be American, because it certainly wasn’t what his nanny had inculcated into him. “Doesn’t it just drive you nuts?”

“That’s not precisely how I’d put it. But I do have rather a personal view!”

“Those people are a minority,” Dr. Trask assured him. “A tiny bunch of malcontents. Interstellar travel is kind of dicey in the polls, but rescuing Captain Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates has a ninety-four percent approval rate. You’re our poster boy, if you know what that is.”

Titus did not, but he grasped that a poster boy might draw unfriendly fire. He downed the revolting tea at a gulp and poured himself another cup. He wasn’t precisely nervous, but there was a cold prickle on the nape of his neck. He had to combat the impulse to shift his chair so that his back could be in the corner. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a mucking thousandth of a percent. All it takes is one sniper with a rifle. Was there someone watching for me to approach that water fountain?”

“The police will tell us all about it,” Dr. Trask said. “But I’ll bet it was keyed to your chip.”

“The chip? Jesus bleeding Christ! Are you going to remove it?”

“Wouldn’t help — it’d better to nail the bastards.” Shell patted his clenched hand. “Look, Titus, don’t brood too much, all right? It’s scary at the moment, and we’ll have to be careful, but the Doomster movement has no foundation. You jerked the rug out from under them, just by appearing here safe and sound a year and a half ago. They’re desperate, at their wits’ end — on a par with the millennialists who were stocking up on beef jerky and dried lentils fifty years ago.”

“At some point the last remnant will wake up and realize that the universe is fine, and then it’ll be all over,” Dr. Trask said soothingly.

“Of all the yellow-bellied capers — at least when the Boers shot at me I could shoot back! Cowards like that shouldn’t be given an inch.” Anger was better than fear. Titus set his cup down with a clatter and scowled at Shell. “You’d set it up for riding tomorrow, hadn’t you? Don’t dare alter a thing.”

“Bad idea,” Dr. Trask protested. “Not the very next day, come on! At least keep a low profile for a little while!”

“Absolutely not. Besides, Miranda would be sadly disappointed.” He watched Shell, gauging the effect of his words.

To his relief she shook her head at Dr. Trask and sighed. “It’s probably safer tomorrow than any other time, Sabrina. The police will be breathing down the Doomsters’ necks for days. They won’t dare try again.”

Chapter 6

There was no point in half measures,so Titus had Shell give him a tour of the stable before their ride. Nobody should accuse him of showing the white feather! And he’d wager that, in the effort to keep him calm and unworried, if he didn’t bring up assassination nobody else would. Out of sight, out of mind, that was the strategy. He found however that he was inspecting the street throngs the way he used to survey the South African veldt. He had got into the trick of regarding this future era as a perfectly benign place, a Heaven on earth where miracles were a daily occurrence. Well, now the bloom was off the rose. He sneered at his own innocence.

He had never seen a stable arranged on vertical principles, with several levels of stalls connected by ramps. How the moderns loved height, if even their stables had to reach for the sky! Neither Shell nor Miranda seemed to think it strange. “Miranda loves it here,”Shell said. “She’s more comfortable with animals than people.”

How sadly she spoke! Titus watched the child work her way down the dimly-lit aisle, patting noses and dispensing bits of carrot. Ponies and horses leaned over the rails of their stalls,waiting their turn. He chose his words, acutely conscious that he had the power to cause pain. “Is it incorrect,” he began. “Would it be all right to ask — what is Miranda’s ailment? I don’t want to upset you.”

“Oh no, Titus, it’s all right…Miranda has an autistic disorder. That means she has a neurological birth defect that interferes with language and social interaction.” This was Greek to him,but others must have reacted similarly because she immediately offered an example: “For instance, she has problems telling what details are important and which are irrelevant. Luckily she’s quite high-functioning in some areas. She can read and write, and you can understand her speech when she wants to talk. You did really well with it last time.”

He listened carefully to the terms she used. “She talks like wires. Telegrams.” She blinked, and he realized telegrams must be as obsolete as togas. “She’s like —like Ariel. The spirit imprisoned in the cloven pine. You had the right Shakespeare play when you named her, but the wrong character.”

Shell seemed impressed with this morsel of erudition, which was fortunate since it was nearly the only thing he could recall of the West End performance of The Tempest that Mother had dragged him to. She said, “If we keep up her progress, she’ll be able to live independently as an adult.”

He had never heard of this autism problem — where had all these ailments been in 1912? — but he knew what to say.“It must be a grief to you, Shell. She’s a beautiful child.”His new boots, not yet broken in, creaked annoyingly with each step,underlining the inadequacy of his words.

“I try to be optimistic. That’s an important quality, don’t you think so?”

“The mental game absolutely essential. There are times when you have to concentrate on the positive, even if it’s against all common sense.”

“I guess you would know.” She dusted some chaff off the front of her riding breeches. “It was studying autism, and working to communicate with Miranda, that got me into communications theory. And that’s what got me into the Fortie project. So there is a bright side.”

He was ashamed of his relief that the talk had turned into another channel. “Communications theory? Is that what’s called for, to be an explorer these days? I don’t even know what that is.”

“Have Kev show you the film. They’re always running it over at the museum. The dancing doctor film is one of those cases where a picture really is worth a thousand words.”

He recalled the phrase. “That’s right. You’re the dancing doctor.”

“If I’m not careful they’ll carve it on my tombstone.”

“Have you ever seen the photograph of mine? Actually it’sa memorial plaque. Mother polished it every week. A blazing great brass thing like a tea tray, in the village church at Gestingthorpe. I’d be ashamed to ever go near it.”

She laughed, and the sound in the low passageway made Miranda turn. Was she concerned? Amused? Jealous that her mother was laughing with a stranger? Under the straight-cut bangs her round face was wooden, unreadable. For an instant Titus got a glimpse into Miranda’s strange world. She could know and feel, but to communicate that knowledge and emotion called for supreme effort. At least he, drowning in the incomprehensible and alien, could fall back on the eternal basics of human discourse — laughter, conversation, smiles. He had the seventy percent that made comprehension possible. He would never complain of his difficulties again.“I’ve always had the luck of a pox doctor,” he said fervently.

“You sure do.”

He scowled at his own carelessness— they had been well on the way to forgetting the entire water fountain business for a time. But she seemed willing to let it drop again. “Are the carrots all gone?” she said to Miranda, very clearly. It reminded Titus of the way she had spoken to him, when he woke on the hospital table. Miranda didn’t reply, but held out the empty plastic bag.

He spoke to the child with the same clarity. “Is it time to ride?”

Miranda looked at Shell, who consulted her wristwatch. “Oh, I think so. Come dear, let’s show Titus the way down to the yard.”

Today he was up on a fat black horse named Bouncer. One of these days he’d look over the stable stock,select the best animal, and ensure that he always rode it. Riding in a small party was better than chaperoning children. The horses had room to trot down the main trail, splashing grandly through the puddles. Titus noted that Miranda knew how to post, and had a better seat than Shell. “How long have you been riding?”

“Only a couple years. I took it up to keep Miranda company, but she has more time for it than me.”

“You’re quite good,” he called to the child, who didn’t look round. “It must come naturally to her. You,on the other hand, are not going to set the Thames on fire, Shell.”

“I do have other commitments on my time, Titus! But do you hear, Miranda? Praise from a cavalry officer is worth something.”

“That’s the sort of job I should plump for. Work on horseback, like that mounted policeman.”

“I don’t think they’d let you be a cop,Titus. Mostly, people who ride pay for the privilege these days.”

Miranda said, “Pinto canter.”

“Ripping idea!” Immediately Titus clapped his heels into Bouncer’s sides, urging him into a run. The only thing better than letting your horse go was jumping, which there were probably no facilities for in a city park. Even cantering was possible only on this long straight stretch of the trail. It was like a sweet draught of wine, as Bouncer splashed through the puddles and kicked the wet gravel up in passing. Titus forgot everything in the pleasure of it.

Behind him, Miranda on Pinto kept up gamely. Poor Shell was left quite at the post. When he pulled up he could hear her hallooing from back among the trees, distant and small and more than a little alarmed. “Are you all right, Miranda?”

“Fun.” For the first time she smiled at him, and he smiled too, at one with her in delight.

Shell came trotting belatedly up. “Don’tdo that! Suppose something came out of a side trail? This is a city park!”

“Daddy lets gallop,” Miranda said.

“When you’re in Wyoming it’s different.”She appealed to Titus. “Here in town you have to ride more sedately,right?”

“I suppose,” he conceded reluctantly. “But we went like fun. Where or what is Wyoming? Do they ride there?”

“It’s one of the western United States. There are bits of it that are pretty unspoiled and wild. My ex moved out there when he couldn’t stand city traffic any more.”

“Wise fellow. Ah — is it bad form, to praise a man to a woman who has divorced him?”

“Nope.” They were walking their horses abreast now, with Miranda a little ahead. Shell grinned across at him. “Titus, I’m so proud of you, working like that on your social adaptation! You’redoing better than anyone expected.”

“Did you really expect me to curl up and die at the sight of a taxi?”

“Of course not. But we worried about culture shock. The sort of thing that drove Native Americans to alcoholism, or that kills off New Guinea tribesmen.”

“But they’re just natives — what do you expect…“ He could see from her expression that he was heading off on a wrong tack, and hastily corrected himself. “I think you underestimate the basic qualities that all men have in common. Any man, of any age or time,would — “ He racked his brain for examples. “Would see this wood and lake as beautiful, for instance. Or would recognize you as a lovely woman.”

She stared at him, her mouth open,and indeed he himself could hardly believe such brazen words had tripped off his tongue. But then she said, “Oh! Whew, I get it — this is the gallant British gentleman thing, like helping women who drop their bags or giving them your chair. For a second you had me worried. You can’t distract me with flattery, Titus. Whether you like it or not, you are getting a quickie history lesson — it’ll do you good. For the past couple generations,discrimination for reasons of gender, race, age, or sexual orientation has been illegal, and as a result…”

He listened with only half an ear. Egalitarianism was an American hobbyhorse — even in his day Yanks had been foolishly obsessed with equality. The rest of his attention was focused within. What on earth had he said there, and why? It was totally untrue, for one thing. Shell was no beauty by any standard, with her unladylike ways and freckles — too long in the tooth, too down-to-earth, and yes, too competent, like Mrs. Scott. And, in his sisters’ term, a bossy-boots: full of notions!

But now he came to think on it,Titus realized he had actually known very few eligible females. He had had little opportunity in the Army, and there were none on the Polar expedition. No doubt this now gave Shell a spurious value, simply because he was spending so much time with her. Pinto had seemed a handsome pony yesterday, though Titus could have enumerated the creature’s conformation faults with exactitude—

“Titus! I don’t think you’re listening to a word I say!”

He jumped so that Bouncer almost shied. Automatically he took his mount in hand. “Not at all, Shell. I was attending closely.”

She hooted. “Huh! I could watch you drifting away. But it’s my own fault. The lecture is not your mode of learning.”

“I was indeed listening! I was thinking how Mrs. Scott would have enjoyed the liberalism of your modern era.”

“Mrs. Scott — oh, Captain Scott’s wife, the artist. Kev brags how he’s descended from one of her pals. Yes, I reads he was something of a feminist. How did you like her?”

Cautiously, Titus said, “She was a topper. An absolutely beautiful creature.”

She chewed on that for a second,extracting the true meaning. “She scared the lot of you spitless.”

He fought back a grin. “Iadmit I avoided her as much as possible.”

“And now, poor Titus! You’re marooned on a planet full of liberated women.”

“If Buck Rogers managed, so can I.” Damn it, was she pitying him? That was intolerable. Quickly he changed the subject. “Shell,where do I find a tobacconist’s?”

“A what?”

“A shop that sells pipe tobacco,” he said impatiently. “You can’t tell me that tobacco is unknown in this country. I know for a fact that Raleigh brought it back from America. It was in the history book.”

“Forget it, Titus. As your doctor Sabring would never allow it. Smoking is unhealthy.”

He rejected an ungentlemanly comment on Sabrina. “Where did you pick up that odd idea? Tobacco is good for the lungs, if anything. I’ve been smoking fags and pipes for ten years myself. No, fifteen.”

“Where is Kev when I need him? All right, Titus, let’s keep this simple. We’ll go into the history of tobacco health research some other time. Every building in New York is a no-smoking zone, so you can’t possibly smoke while you’re within doors. And I don’t even know where you’d buy the stuff. On the net, maybe? I’ve never even seen a pipe, except in a museum. Could you postpone the entire question for awhile?”

There seemed to be no help for it,so he accepted and moved on. “Can that slug you’re riding run? Race you to the corner!”

“You have your nerve, Titus, when you just promised you would do no such thing!”

He grinned at her. “Come,Shell. When was the last time you were able to get shot of being responsible,and just indulge a whim?”

She gave him another one of those pointed looks, but then laughed and urged her horse into a fast trot. Sweeping Pinto and Miranda up along in their progress, they clattered in fine style to the end of the avenue.

oOo

That evening at bedtime Titus reckoned up the days in the notebook Lash had brought him. He got a total of eight. Eight days of new life in the future! He felt he was beginning to get the hang of 21st century existence. He knew this sensation was misleading. This strange world had its enemies as well as friends. But still a sense of triumph stole over him. All this time, he had been doing as he had advised Shell: concentrating on the positive and deliberately not seeing the negatives. But now perhaps, he had found his feet enough so that a balanced view could be achieved.

He lay down in the bed with its hard high modern mattress, and pulled the delightful sleek covers up with a sigh. It was going to be difficult living here, but not impossible. In fact he had played himself in damned well, probably better than most. The naval habits of rank would have made the classless and egalitarian American philosophy an insuperable obstacle for Scott. And Wilson, a man who left the room whenever anyone swore, would have blanched at the age’s bare female knees and casual profanity.

So Titus slept, and he dreamed: not of England or Antarctica, but of Syria and Lebanon. In the Army, posted in Cairo, he had gone to Damascus in 1906 with the Colonel to buy polo ponies. The real-life trip had been uneventful, a jaunt to the Holy Land. But in the dream, he wandered through the mazy alley ways of Damascus, lost. Beggars whined and clawed at his coat, and vendors in grimy robes thrust rubbish at him insisting he buy, edging too near. Horns wailed, and strange odours sweet and appalling assailed his nose. Nobody understood him when he asked his way in English, and he spoke no Aramaic. He tried to think calmly, to find his direction, but tripped on baskets and matting and heaps of ordure, so that he never got himself straight. The swarthy faces around him leered and twitched, alien. And the cold breath of lurking danger blew down on the back of his neck. A foolish panic seized him that he would miss the ship to Cairo, never to return to places he knew. He began to hurry, and found himself running until he thought his heart would burst.

He woke gasping, streaming with sweat. Without thinking he flicked the light on and sat up in bed. Just a nightmare! Roll over and think of something pleasant — that was Mother’s advice from his nursery days.

His door swung open, and an older woman he had never in his life seen before put her head in. “Hello Titus,”she chirped. “Are you all right?”

Titus clutched his covers. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Sigrid, your night duty nurse. If you — “

“And how the devil do you come to be spying on me?”

“Captain Oates, it’s our job to keep an eye on you. Now, I’m just going to check your vital signs…“

“If you come in here, I’ll — “ Well, damnit, what threat could he use? These brassy female medicos hadn’t the modesty to be put off by the sight of a man in his pyjamas. A male orderly he could come to blows with, but no gentleman could strike a woman. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” he said, resorting to snobbery with his most well-bred drawl. “I just want to sleep!”

For a moment she looked nervous. “Well,if you’re sure you feel all right…”

“Good night.” He punched his pillow with such vehemence that she retreated immediately. Titus glowered around the little room. They must have some way of watching him. Surely people who could explore the stars didn’t need judas peepholes. But he couldn’t imagine how a spying system would work. The walls and ceiling were white and smooth,blandly denying all complicity. Finally he clicked out the light again, taking refuge in darkness.

Chapter 7

He had never been much for writing, but on the Expedition Titus had seen how useful a journal or record could be. With notes a man could remember, think clearly, marshal arguments. The next morning, lounging comfortably in bed after a hearty breakfast, he creased open a fresh leaf in the notebook. On the blank page he began a new list in his spidery illegible hand: of reasons he needed to get shot of the Time Travel Division.

Privacy and independence were paramount. Merely nagging Lash about it was a waste of breath. He could not or would not put a stop to the spying. Action was necessary. In addition, cities were cursedly depressing places to live, too noisy and crowded. Snipers and assassins lurked too easily. And one couldn’t keep a horse.

The reasons independence was impossible were so numerous that he decided not to list them, lest it become disheartening and take up too much paper. With neither money, skills nor acquaintance in this modern era, he had no assets whatever. The only people he knew were his caretakers, if one didn’t count Miranda.

This last, however, he could do something about. He could get out and meet other people of this time. He didn’t have to confide his end goal to Lash. Surely it was already a part of their adjustment agenda, for him to learn to operate in modern society. All he had to do was to skip ahead to that part of the programme.

And he recalled with a thrill of hope Shell’s motherly ambition that Miranda would someday live as an independent adult — not in an institution or asylum, he gathered she meant. If little Miranda with her handicaps had that chance, a fine strapping fellow like himself was in a strong position.

A tap on the door, and Lash came fussing in, holding his perpetual small machine. “‘Morning, Titus. What would you say to cognitive and psychological tests today?”

“I say to Hades with it,” Titus replied. “My thought was to go over to that museum and view some more films. Perhaps that dancing doctor thing of Shell’s.”

Lash clutched his machine. “You didn’t sleep well last night, I understand. We wanted to check on your brain function.”

“My brain function?” They repaired my feet and fingers, Titus reminded himself. To peep at the gubbins inside my skull should be nothing. “No, I think not. I would far rather go out.”

“You went out yesterday.”

“What does that have to do with it? These modern sedentary ways can’t be healthy. Let us walk a bit, and then view a film. Or, I know! Suppose you teach me how to drive a vehicle?”

“Surely you’re jesting!” Lash’s cheeks lost colour.

“I can handle a motor,” Titus assured him. “My brother and I motored across France once.”

“It’s a very different proposition to drive a modern city automobile,” Lash moaned. “I think a film would be safer!”

“Just a tick, then — let me put on some boots.”

Outmaneouvered, Lash sighed. “I don’t understand your hurry, Titus. You have all the time in the world. What’s the rush?”

Titus looked up from double-knotting his bootlaces. “The trade secret of the Polar explorer, old man. Or the sportsman. When it’s time to hustle — when the blizz lets up and the sun’s shining — one moves heaven and earth, full on and the devil take the hindmost. The instant it’s no longer worth while, one lies doggo and accepts fate. Never waste a scrap of energy fighting the inevitable. One has to keep a perfect balance all round, to play the game. Midway between jam-tomorrow optimism and a pessimism that would sap your spirits, for example. Or between victory and defeat — it only takes a twitch of the sledge or one false step. It’s like standing on tiptoe on the top of a fence post — a man fully accepts the conditions, and defies them, all at once.” He had the sense that Lash, visibly no sportsman, hadn’t an earthly what he was on about. He tried to put it yet more simply. “We’re all pushed for time, Lash, every man jack of us. Never waste a moment of it.”

Now why had he revealed so much of himself? The vehemence of his tone seemed to embarrass Lash too. “Carpe diem, eh?”

Titus was relieved to turn to casual matters. “Is Greek and Latin still a necessary prerequisite to get on in the world?”

“Not at all, thank Heaven.”

“Thank Heaven indeed,” Titus said. “Never been any good at classics myself.” With the conversation safely planted amongst indifferent subjects, they were able to ride pleasantly down the elevator. This time Titus gave way to Lash’s suggestion about surveying the plaza first. But what was he looking for, a Boer with a carbine? He would not recognize a modern assassin if the rotter came up and shook his hand. In frustration he threw it in and pushed through the door.

It was another sultry city morning. Already the sun pounded mercilessly down, and the heat reflected up off the pavement until the air was oven-hot. The vendors and pamphleteers clustered into the shady nooks and under the shelter of the several trees. And it was not even July. What kind of hole would New York be like in August? Titus hoped he wouldn’t be here to see it.

He slouched with determined casualness round the plaza, trying to decide what a modern weapon might look like. How clean everything was! No smoke hung in the sky, and no plumes of petrol exhaust followed the vehicles. There was not a chimney on any of the gleaming glass towers, and there had been no stove, fireplace or coal hod in the TTD’s kitchen area. Heating and cooking must be managed in an entirely different way. And this frightful cleanliness was not confined to the surroundings. The people too were clean, right down to their fingernails. Titus had assessed Dr. Lash as effete and delicate, but all moderns were like that. One glance at the soft bright clothing and tender uncallused hands, and it was plain that nobody here ever touched a tool heavier than a little machine. There were no lower classes, at least to the eye — nobody who was visibly marked with the labour of shoveling coal or weaving in mills or digging ditches.

The most amusing pushcart was loaded with small stuffed toys, every one a different monster or alien. Some of them were decked out in colourful guernseys or jumpers adorned with the number “40.” Young customers and their parents flocked to this cart like bees. “What is ‘B.E.M.’?” Titus pointed at the letters painted on the cart.

“An acronym for Bug-Eyed Monsters,” Dr. Lash said. “It’s an antique term for the Forties.”

Not as antique as myself, Titus reflected. He would have to write it down in the notebook. “These things may be monsters in truth. How can they sell them as toys?”

“Did you never play with toy soldiers in your boyhood?” Lash asked. “Or have a stuffed tiger or bear? No child would wish to meet a real tiger or bear, or confront a genuine soldier. But frightening things are preferred as toys for some reason. Besides, you mustn’t be a pessimist. The Forties are already proven to be generous. Probably they’re fine fellows.” Titus said nothing to this — it sounded like frantic folly to him — and Lash went on, “I’m afraid the film will seem very strange to you. Remember, if you feel stressed, we can walk out, just like last time.”

“Not just like last time! In fact, I apologise for my weakness then.”

“It’s not a matter for apology, old man,” Lash said with every appearance of astonishment. “You felt ill — wasn’t your fault at all.”

“Wasn’t my…” Titus could only shake his head in incomprehension. How could your weakness not be your fault? “You know, Lash, it’s statements like that that really bring home to me how odd you people are. I feel like a tiger, penned in with a herd of sheep. Has the species lost all concept of courage, of endurance?”

Lash sighed. “Titus, consider a journey to a place where no human being has ever gone. In vehicles which have never been tested, brand-new for the occasion. And — “ He held up a slim pale hand to keep Titus from interrupting. “And, no one can say how long the journey will last. Possibly a few years, possibly many more. A foray into the unknown, like Magellan or Columbus, with no possibility of communication. Possibly never to return.”

“Well, the uncertainty is certainly an eye-opener,” Titus said, disconcerted.

“Your Polar expedition was only going to be a few years.”

“So it was. I was going to study for my Major’s exam on the way back. Who are these explorers then? I ought to meet them.”

Lash blinked. “But, Titus — you have. I’m talking about the Fortie expedition. I’m so sorry, I thought you knew. And Shell is going.”

“I thought your ships could travel very fast — can’t you calculate how long it will take?”

“It’s further than one would think to Tau Ceti, but that’s not where the uncertainty lies, Titus. If you travel faster than light, you also travel through time. What will happen is, they will travel very fast indeed, faster than any human has ever gone, through time and space — just as you did. To the people on the voyage, the journey will total eight years, there and back. But time will flow differently for them than for us, because they’ll cut across time as well as space. The Contact Teams will be back in a year or two by our calendar. But they’ll be eight years older. From our point of view, they’ll suddenly age six years. And that’s only if everything works perfectly.”

Titus looked up. “And that is why Dr. Piotr had to prove it would work — by pulling me through time.”

“Precisely! Very good, Titus!” Lash beamed at him. “That’s quite a sound way to put it. Perhaps it really is time for you to see this film.”

Titus walked with Lash towards the museum building, thinking hard. The explorers would go into the unknown, possibly never to return. “What will happen if nothing happens?” he asked. “If they go, and no word ever comes back?”

“Then we do it again.”

“Ah! Now there’s the spirit — keen as mustard.”

“Much, much more carefully, of course. Somewhere in PTICA there’s somebody working on that.”

“I unsay my first judgment, Lash. Humanity hasn’t lost its edge yet.” They had strolled through the plaza almost to the museum, Lash unobtrusively steering a wide berth round all the water fountains, when Titus spied a familiar word on a placard. “‘Doomster’? Is that them? How is it that they’re still at large? Shell said the authorities would make arrests — shouldn’t the entire vipers’ nest be suppressed?”

“This is the United States of America, Titus — a democracy. Law-breakers can be tried and convicted, but otherwise people have the right of free speech.”

“Unadulterated cheek, is what it is!” Americans were mad as hatters! “But if free speech is in order — “

“Titus, no! I don’t think that a face to face confrontation can possibly result in any useful — “

Titus brushed aside his clutching hand and stormed up to the pitch, which consisted of a folding table, the usual stack of leaflets, and a white cloth banner that proclaimed in blue letters, “Time Travel Will DOOM Us All!”

His first indignant impulse was simple: to thrash the villains. He was forced to rapidly revise the strategy when he found the table manned by an older woman and what appeared to be her grandson, a pear-shaped lad of perhaps twenty. Instead he slammed both open hands on the tabletop and fixed the woman with a masterful eye. “Well? Here I am. What do you propose to do about it?”

“Excuse me?” Rattled, the woman peered up at him from under the brim of her billed cap. Grey-haired and plump as a partridge, she had almost no shoulders, so that the line from ear to elbow was a smooth curve. She made a wildly unlikely murderer.

The youth goggled at him. “Ma, it’s him!”

“My name is Lawrence Oates,” Titus announced in ringing upper-class tones. “I don’t give a rush, your wishing I was dead. But I do strongly object to sneakish and cowardly attacks! Here I am. If you think I’m superfluous, now’s your moment. Do something about it in an honest way, here and now! Lash, do you have a weapon that you could lend to this lady? A knife or a pistol or some such.”

“Of course not!” Lash almost gibbered with horror. “Titus, I don’t think that these people can be connected with that water fountain business.”

“Only at the philosophical level,” the woman said weakly. “Mr. Oates — “

“Captain,” Titus corrected her. Out of sight below the edge of the table he trod warningly on Lash’s toe. Surely Lash could see there was no danger? Descending like Jove with a thunderbolt, he had the upper hand on these meek little prats. And damned if he wasn’t going to stampede them into an apology and a promise of better behaviour!

“Our point is that tinkering with the fabric of space and time is very dangerous and a waste of resources,” she said. “Captain Oates, no one bears any personal grudge against you — “

“Nor against that poor sod who got it in the neck yesterday in my stead either, I daresay,” Titus put in. “Your lot should be dashed well ashamed of yourselves!”

“We had nothing to do with that!”

Suddenly the young man spoke up. “Captain, you’ve had your life. You’re history. You’re trying to cheat fate. It wouldn’t even be a crime to kill you — not when it says in Wiki that you died in 1912. You aren’t real.”

It was the mild and commonplace way he said this that froze Titus in his tracks. The boy really believed this. How could such a belief be shaken? To clout him and so demonstrate his undeniable reality would not convince the dozens or hundreds or thousands of others who believed likewise. This was not a physical battle, but one of the mind and heart — precisely the sort of arena he loathed. It was like at the banquet, when a simple problem of adaptation suddenly turned a corner and became hugely more complex. No sudden solution was going to be possible. This would be another damned long haul across the glacier.

His confusion was further compounded when a bystander chipped in. “That’s bullshit,” he said to the boy. “I mean, here the man is. You can’t deny that. How much more real do you want?”

Titus turned, his first impulse to tell the newcomer to dashed well stick to his own knitting. He was horrified to see that the confrontation had gathered an attentive audience. Perhaps half a hundred people were gathered around, too close, shamelessly eavesdropping, waving black machines, and enjoying the show. Was this Yankee manners? In fact several people were making a beeline at him, obviously hellbent on contributing to the debate.

Lash plucked at his elbow. “Titus, the film is going to start!” Suddenly a retreat seemed eminently sensible and prudent. Unsure what to do, Titus allowed Lash to hustle him away, into the museum lobby and on into a theatre.

This was a different, smaller space. The chamber was round, with a curved screen at the front, and rows of carpeted benches. Lash sat down heavily in the middle of one and blotted his wet forehead on his sleeve. “Titus, tell me the truth. There is such a thing as carrying heroic too far. You wouldn’t have stood there while she took a shot at you, would you?”

“Possibly not,” Titus admitted. “But the question doesn’t arise. She’d never have taken me up on it.”

“Thank God for that!”

“Lash, what should I do? It’s as if I’m not even a human being!”

“Well, it’s not as bad as that, Titus,” Lash said unconvincingly. “I assure you, these people are a tiny minority…”

“Something must be done! I could, could — “ Nothing came to mind. How did a man assert his membership in the human race? It was a problem he had never encountered before, that possibly no one had ever faced. Sod it, he had wanted to be an explorer of unknown lands, not dangerous new social dilemmas!

Lash cleared his throat. “Well, here’s a thought. I have a stupendously huge file of interview requests for you, Titus. From historians, school groups, the Antarctic Society, everyone you could possibly imagine.”

“The Antarctic Society?” Titus considered this: hordes of people, to whom he could demonstrate his reality by conversing and answering questions and being lionized. Of course he had always hated that sort of thing, but perhaps he could grow accustomed — needs must when the devil drives. And blathering about Antarctica or events of his time would be an easy and natural way to move into wider circles of society. “It would be a pleasure after all your kindnesses, to give back something to the 21st century,” he said, with only a slight stretch of truth.

“That’s very generous of you, Titus. And I won’t conceal from you that the vid hosts have been pressing us terribly. Pulling you forward through time was a tremendous feather in our cap, but then we refused to display you until you recovered, which frustrates them no end. I’ll tell Rick, and see what he organizes.”

There was no time to ask who Rick was. The glowing ceiling was dimming to pink. Colour and light sprang to life on the curved screen. Through some magic of cinematography the picture was very wide but not distorted in any way, so it was like looking out through a broad curve of window. Depicted was a large open indoor space, a gymnasium or barn floor. Like so many of the amenities of this museum, the film was targeted towards children. Shiny-bright alphabet letters walked across the screen on tiny trousered legs, complete with shoes and socks. Every now and then the letters would break into a little dance step or jig, waving canes or hats. The phenomenon was so amusing Titus neglected to read what the letters spelled out, and so missed the title of the film entirely. The lush voice of the narrator said, “We are sending people to meet the Forties! But nobody knows how they will talk. People talk with words. Suppose the Forties talk like this?”

A squeal of woodwinds and a rapid pulse of drums, and three of the oddest beings Titus had ever seen dashed on to the bare floor. They must be people, he decided, dressed up in striped and spangled fabric. And surely those long trailing wings were fake? They didn’t look like the wings of a true flying creature. But the dancing figures were humped and oddly elongate, not humanly proportioned, and when the picture widened to show the audience it could be seen that the dancers were at least seven or eight feet tall.

The picture shifted and slid to quickly show more than a dozen watchers standing round the edge of the dance floor. Titus recognized a few of the faces from the banquet. These were the contact teams, who would travel across the cosmos to greet the aliens. And there was Shell, slightly younger but entirely recognizable. She was leaning to whisper irrepressibly into the ear of a man beside her. Titus wondered who he was.

The music whined and twittered, and the metallic drums made an earsplitting din. The humped ungainly figures writhed and bowed, bumping and jerking and flipping their wings like bugs on a hot skillet. A manic and earsplitting crescendo, and everything stopped. The three creatures flopped or leaned against each other in an unsteady pyramid in the center, exhausted. One or two of the team members clapped a bit, obviously unsure whether the show was over. Titus said, “Is it supposed to be arty, or what? Nothing would ‘talk’ like this.”

“Nothing on earth,” Lash agreed. “But hush, watch this.”

The unsteady syncopated clatter started up again, and once more the three figures began to twist and twitch to the squawk of flutes. It was mystifying and surely meaningless, Titus decided. One of those high-brow folderols that aesthetic types like Mrs. Scott claimed were full of deep significance — ”What is she doing!”

Shell was stepping out from the sidelines. She bowed to the nearest humped winged figure, and began to dance too. She did a sort of slow skip, waving her arms above her head and circling the dance area. Another woman and a man joined her, so that it was three and three. The humans were ungraceful, inexpert but more or less rhythmic, and the humped draped figures fluttered their wings more energetically than ever. The woodwinds and drums picked up the pace, squeaking and clattering. Titus got the sense that the dance was becoming a unit with six dancers, rather than three and three. He glimpsed Shell’s flushed face as she whirled by, happy but full of concentration.

Finally the climax, and the humans were in the central huddle too, clapped by fluttery fake wings. This time the team members did applaud, enthusiastically.

With creamy enthusiasm the announcer said, “The team have been learning how to interact with strangers on their own terms.” The picture split into three sections. In one a young woman tried to imitate an elderly Asian man painting with black ink on a scroll. The center image was entirely incomprehensible to Titus, people standing in a circle waving and wiggling their hands — more airy-fairyness, he surmised. In the third a chimpanzee made faces at a zookeeper. Shell’s bit was obviously over.

“I’ve about had enough,” he whispered to Lash, and they got up and stepped over legs and edged past prams to the exit. Once out in the central museum area he asked, “What were those winged things? Surely they’re not real Forties.”

“No, nobody knows what the Forties are like, although there’s been endless conjecture. PTICA made an arrangement with a dance theatre troupe, to create a communicative dance.”

“Dancers? Like that Isadora Duncan female?”

“Exactly.”

Titus growled, “Dancing, she called it — running round in a tunic waving scarves. Bilge! And your lot today were like nothing on earth.”

“That was exactly the idea,” Dr. Lash said. “Clever, don’t you think? The Forties almost certainly don’t communicate the way humans do — by moving our lips or waving our hands. So the teams have been training to think broadly — to recognize meaning in as many forms as possible.”

Dancing still seemed to Titus an asinine way to communicate, but he felt disinclined to argue. The museum, unusually crowded today, was beginning to give him jip. “Let’s get out of this. Is there nowhere in America where there’s room to breathe?”

“That would be too much to ask for in New York. But there’s more to the country than this town.”

“Quite right. Do you know, this is my first visit to the New World?”

“Yes, of course I knew — it was in the books.”

A new and horrid thought struck Titus. “Lash, are there biographies of me?”

“Surely, old man. Why are you surprised?”

Titus could not articulate his dismay. Perhaps it was that everyone else knew all the details of his life, while he was ignorant of theirs. An essential parity of social intercourse had been violated. He had always been taciturn, slow to give away bits of himself. Now the entire bag had been emptied out for all the world to pick over. Perhaps every biography was a violation. Yet he had read Scott’s biographies happily enough, not to mention Cherry-Garrard’s memoirs and even Gran’s published journal. So it was a natural enough impulse. Like cannibalism, perhaps: easier to condone if you were not the one served up on a platter with an apple in your mouth!

He was cogitating on this, following Lash without paying much attention to his surroundings. Suddenly Titus became aware they were walking along a narrow corridor, quite empty, somewhere in the back premises of the museum. Lash was talking energetically, and once again he hadn’t been attending. Luckily, as he focused on the words, Lash was talking to his machine, which replied in a metallic little voice.

“ — supposed to be carefully orchestrated,” the machine complained bitterly. “Tantrums in the kook plaza and suicide by little old lady, this is not what I had in mind for the media debut of our star time traveler.”

“I couldn’t stop him, Rick,” Lash said. “And the current hullabaloo is surely nobody’s fault but the Doomsters.”

“The newsies are fanning the flames,” Rick said. “With any luck the yahoos ‘ll come out with egg on their faces. In the meantime, keep him out of view! Can you get back to the TTD all right?”

“I know these skyways like the back of my hand,” Lash boasted.

“And the minute there’s trouble, yell,” Rick instructed in his tiny machine voice.

“Of course, of course.”

As Lash clipped his little machine back onto his belt Titus demanded, “What is all this about? Why are we going this way?”

“Well, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be prudent for us to go back through the plaza at this moment. Your, ah, righteous indignation seems to have fueled some vigorous debate. And someone had a feed to the newsies going, so it’s all over the information network. Up this way — maybe we can get a view.”

He led the way through another door. Now that he knew what to look for, Titus saw that Lash was unlocking the doors as he went by passing his wrist over a tiny screen. Carefully Titus kept his hands in his pockets. No more experimenting with chips for him!

Up the stairs and around several more corners, and they emerged into a more public passageway. A few people strode in a businesslike way down a glassy corridor. Titus walked more and more slowly. “Lash, this is amazing.”

“What? Oh, sorry, Titus. Take as much time as you like. The longer we dawdle the better.”

The corridor was a bridge, crossing from one building to another right over a busy city street. Midway across Titus stopped and looked down its length. Glass buildings towered and crowds teemed as far as he could see. It was like looking down a colossal river canyon, only this one was forged by man. It was obviously impossible to walk out of the metropolis. Only the living green heart at the center of the city kept it from calcifying into solid pavement. Wonder and envy filled him again, at the power and glory of it. Some of those buildings must be a hundred stories high. These Yanks!

“And if we step round the corner and up here, to this next skyway…”

“By Jove. Is that smoke?”

“Riot gas. It has gotten ugly, oh dear. Rick, are you getting this?”

“O’ course,” Rick replied from the little machine. “You shoulda seen it ten minutes ago when the nightsticks made their sweep.”

Titus stared in horror and delight at the plaza below. From this vantage point he could see most of the area. Tables had been kicked over, and fallen placards and leaflets swept by the sultry breeze into untidy drifts. A few angry people were scuffling with blue-clad police, while others swarmed over the planter boxes and garden walls tussling with each other. Official vehicles were parked at the kerb, so many that their blinking yellow and red lights seemed to pave the roadway. “What’s it all about?”

“I’m afraid it’s probably you, Titus,” Lash said.

“But why? What is there to fight about?”

“You could call it democracy in action, I suppose. The time travel project is tied into the entire Fortie project, which has been undeniably expensive. Probably it hasn’t escaped your attention that the TTD end of things runs on a shoestring.”

In fact it had escaped Titus’s notice rather — his attention had been occupied of late. But now he came to consider it, the time-travel business did not seem to be run in quite a silk-lined fashion. For whose convenience was it that he was housed in a spare room in the TTD office building? Under Lash’s sole supervision, was not his acclimatization process something of a hodgepodge? His journey to the future was a minor corner of a much larger Fortie project, of course. But it had not occurred to him that this would be reflected at so basic a level as funding. His conscience smote him now as he remembered his lavish shopping at the riding equipment store. “Money is always the sticking point in exploration,” he said. “The most irritating part of the business by a long chalk.”

“It makes sense,” Lash assured him. “Building a starship is stupendously expensive. The problem being debated down there isn’t the balance between the TTD and PTICA. It’s the balance between PTICA and every other expenditure the world government has to make. And there’s no true solution or end to it. I knew those two at the table must have had backup — we left in the nick of time. We haven’t had a shindy here in so long, I’d hoped they’d gone out of style. Let’s move along this way. Hi, Shell. Oh, he’s fine, I have him right here. Yes, tell Sabrina…”

They went down stairs and across another skyway or two, debouching at last into the lobby of another building. “Two blocks uptown and we’re home,” Lash said, pointing out to the street.

Titus had lost his bearings long ago. “I’ll never sort out this rat’s maze.”

“That’s what I’m here for, Titus — the native guide. Now this bit we want to do rather smartly, because the newsies are still about. Right this way…”

Outside was hotter than ever, a sensation made worse by the astounding number of people. The pavements were wide enough, yet crammed. Titus shouldered awkwardly past other pedestrians. They battled through to the corner, where a tidal wave of pedestrian traffic surged across as the traffic light changed. Titus took his eyes off Lash for no more than an instant. But it took only that flicker of time for the other man to vanish into the maelstrom of humanity. Suddenly Titus was alone, lost in an utterly alien city, buffeted by malevolent strangers. The terror of the nightmare seemed to squeeze the heart in his chest.

But this was waking life, no dream. He kept his head, breathing slowly to quell the irrational panic. It was only a block or two to the TTD building, and they had been heading towards it. If he pressed on in the same direction, it should be only a minute’s walk. Still it seemed to take all the sand he possessed to continue forward. It came to him that Lash had been right the other day — what he was attempting was a feat, a stupendous jump that might not even be achievable. Well damn it, if anyone could do it, he was the man. I’ve bloody well sledged to the South Pole, he reminded himself. An urban block, however far in the future, is a fleabite compared to that.

Slowly he walked one block. None of the buildings was familiar. It had really not been unreasonable after all, for them to hang tightly onto him by each arm while in traffic! Recalling Shell’s advice, he crossed the street with the lemming-tide of other pedestrians, and went another block. It seemed very long. Hell’s bells, there was no denying it: he was lost. But he could backtrack and make another cast. Not until all other possibilities were exhausted and starvation imminent would he ask a passerby for help. It would be unmanly, and perhaps dangerous to boot — what if he petitioned a Doomster?

At this second corner he halted again. The living and eternal roar of the city surged in his ears like the thunder of surf. There must be some signage or marking or direction here, indicating the name of the streets. But the lamp-posts were hung with what seemed to be half a hundred signs, billboards, posters and hoardings, and he couldn’t pick out the information he needed. Typical Yank mismanagement, but in justice he remembered that the heart of London had been little better. Probably it had been the same in Nineveh and Tyre — cities had been the devil since the dawn of civilization.

“Captain Oates? Captain Lawrence Oates?”

He started and turned. The sight of a complete stranger bandying his name about made him scowl. But no! He was going to broaden his circle of acquaintance. And sure enough, the tall young man introduced himself: “I’m Talbot Graham, Captain, with the InterCyber News Service. And am I correct? You’re Captain Titus Oates?”

“I am. And what is the InterCyber — a newspaper?”

The young man smiled. “Yes, you could put it like that. Only it’s online and vid as well as text, which makes us a newsie.” He jerked his head at an assistant who seemed to be wearing rather more than the usual number of little machines. “I would love a few words with you, Captain, if you wouldn’t mind. I can’t believe my luck, running into you on the street like this! The first live-vid appearance of the heroic time-traveler!”

A soldierly instinct had prompted Titus to get his back to the lamp-post at the corner. Bolstered by that security, he now called to mind how newsies were nearly instantaneous. A few moments of chat with this fellow would draw Lash here as sure as the moon pulled the tide — far preferable to begging passersby for help! Titus assessed this Graham with new interest. Not military material — modern men were lamentably hollow-chested and willowy in build. And Titus had to make an effort not to gape at his clothing. Floppy yellow knee pants must be the latest mode. Titus silently vowed he would be hanged before anyone made such a guy of him. But otherwise Graham seemed harmless enough, positively panting to please in fact. “I daresay it would do no harm,” Titus said. “But I don’t much care for just answering questions. Turn about is fair play, wouldn’t you say?”

“Of course! I would be eternally grateful, Captain. Just five minutes of your time, no more! We’ve heard so much about PTICA’s forays into time and space, and excitement about your arrival has been so high! May I say that you look wonderful? The restoration team has worked miracles!”

“Thank you.” Perhaps fulsome admiration was an American trait. Unnervingly, the presence of Graham and his assistant drew attention the way that Titus alone had not. A crowd had rapidly assembled behind the assistant, clogging the pavement and staring in happy fascination. The unpleasant animal-in-a-zoo sensation made his blood rise. “My turn. This conversation, shall it be written up and printed in a newspaper?”

“Not at all! We’re linked, and this is a live InterCyber broadcast!” This seemed to be a cue of some kind, because the bystanders grinned and waved in the most inane fashion. “So you’ve been seeing the sights! Tell me, Captain, how do you feel about the 21st century?”

“It’s an era of wonders,” Titus said truthfully. The rustle of approval encouraged him to expand. “You’ve all done marvelously well. Everywhere I turn, there’s something nobody could ever have imagined in 1912.”

Graham smiled. “I envy you, seeing all the glories of our age for the first time! We’re looking forward to hearing all about your adjustment to the modern era. Perhaps you’ll write your memoirs?”

Titus hid his disgust. “One never knows.”

“And your opinion of the Fortie phenomenon? What do you think the residents of Tau Ceti will be like?”

“You want my genuine opinion? In my humble estimation, you Yanks are far too trusting a lot.”

“Trusting?”

“Absolutely. To plunge into the unknown counting on a benign reception is folly. Think about what’s-his-name, visiting the Japanese for the first time.”

“Perry,” Graham said helpfully. “Commodore Matthew Perry.”

“Quite so. Now there was a man who had the right pig by the ear,” Titus said, warming to his theme. “Steam in and make cordial noises if you like, but run the guns out and have the hands standing by. If you begin from a position of strength, you get respect. We saw the same thing in the Boer War.”

“Then you don’t feel that any space-faring intelligence is likely to be benign?”

“I can’t think of an historical one, can you?” Titus demanded. “It gave me a chill, to see the contact teams practicing dance, of all the damned nonsensical claptrap! Small-arms practice would be far more useful.” It was plain as paint that the concept of fair turns and good sportsmanship had not struck any chord in this puppy, so Titus quickly threw in his question: “It gave me the vertical breeze, to find that there are people who don’t approve of time travel. Is that a prevailing sentiment?”

“Well, let’s consult the man in the street! Hi, miss — would you like to meet a real live time traveler? What’s your name? Captain Oates, this is Suze Santangelo from the Bronx!”

Titus stared appalled at the scantily clad young female Graham plucked out of the crowd. The brazen woman stood far too close to him and gushed in an utterly unladylike fashion: “Don’t listen to those parabs, Titus — or do I call you Lawrence? Those poovs, they’re absolutely un-mist. I think you’re just the noon! Could you give me your autograph?”

What the devil was she saying? If only Lash would turn up and translate! Titus stared dumbly at the creature as the unspeakable Graham produced what might have been a writing implement. “What do you want him to sign?” Graham asked her.

Beaming from ear to ear, she lifted the front of her already-too-short blouse, revealing a slice of plump brown midsection. “Would you sign it too? Please?”

Graham laughed heartily. “Sure, sweet cheeks! How about right here, beside your belly button?” He signed his name with a flourish and held the pen out to Titus.

Shocked beyond words, Titus realized that he had run full tilt into an impossible cul-de-sac. Was this really happening? The entire situation had suddenly metamorphosed into unreality. He was surrounded by aliens. Half a dozen contradictory options rushed into his head: flinging the vile futuristic pen into Graham’s teeth; bellowing at this hussy to cover up like a decent female; pelting down the street foaming at the mouth; curling up into a ball right here on the pavement until the sun set and everyone went away. But it wasn’t allowable to show a loss of composure before inferiors — it went without saying these were inferiors. Suddenly the solid metal lamp-post at his back was no refuge but a trap, and his mouth was dry as sand. Hardly knowing what he was doing, he stepped sideways.

He had forgotten the kerb. His foot came down wrong and he tipped backwards into the street, flat onto his back like an overset doll. A tremendous cacophony roared over him, filling his ears: horns, shouts, squeals, and the sustained shattering crash of metal and glass. Stunned, he let it wash over him. But it was for only a second. Hands seized him, dragging him up and away to safety. He looked back — a long silvery omnibus had veered sharply to avoid him, and crashed into the taxi beside it. Even as he watched another motor smashed into it from behind at an angle. The omnibus heeled over majestically, like a beached whale washing onto shore, and the muffled shrieks of the passengers inside could be heard.

People and faces boiled past, buffeting and clutching and calling out advice, as he staggered for footing. When a familiar one whirled past he lunged, seizing it. Thank the Lord, here was Lash at last! He could only express his relief in blasphemy.

Lash panted, “This way, quick. I have a taxi for us around the corner.”

Titus tumbled in. “Where did you get to?” Lash almost wailed, slamming the door behind them.

“I might bloody well ask you the same thing!”

“And a newsie, of all the people to talk to! If we can get back to the TTD fast enough, and Rick can get on top of it — “

The taxi ride was very short — Titus had been within half a block of his destination all the while. He was too exhausted to castigate himself. All he wanted now was to hole up and lie doggo for awhile.

Chapter 8

Titus woke in his own room just where he had fallen on top of the covers. Someone had drawn the curtains, but a finger of sunshine crept between, so it couldn’t be late. Groggily he fumbled for his watch before he remembered it wasn’t there. His chin was still smooth and his stomach rumbled with hunger. It appeared he’d only napped for an hour or so. It was astonishing how a little rest could revive the courage. Nevertheless Titus felt no urge to go out any more today. Time for a little peaceable domestic exploration, perhaps.

He wandered down the hall, peering into doorways. Definitely this was not a residential building, nor an hospital, but a place of business! An office with nobody in it; Dr. Trask’s surgery — no, he remembered now that Americans called it an examination room; a windowless meeting room furnished with a large table and a dozen chairs; a larger office with several people at desks working on little machines. He was startled to see a photograph of himself on the wall, looking stupid as an owl in an ivy bush and shaking hands with some simpering whelp he didn’t recognize. His dark wool jacket placed the occasion — the picture must have been taken at that banquet. Well, Lash had mentioned photographs.

He emerged in the common area. Ensconced at the long table, Shell was eating from a tray, clicking buttons on the perpetual small machine, and talking to her machine. He prowled the room quietly so as not to disturb her.

He could identify none of the machines or devices in the kitchen area, recognizable only because there was a washbasin piled with dirty dishes. He didn’t even know how to work the taps. He realized now that his own bathroom had been specially fitted with antique fixtures that he could use without thought. Possibly Lash was the man to thank for that bit of thoughtfulness.

A machine in the cabinetry above the counter seemed to be a coffee dispenser — he could see the coffee inside a built-in flask, and when he touched the glassy vessel it was warm. This would account for Shell and Dr. Trask’s appalling ignorance about tea. The cat-lap he got must be specially procured for him by someone who knew nothing about it — no wonder it was so foul. When in Rome and all that — he had no objections to coffee. But getting this coffee out into a cup baffled him. The flask didn’t slide out, nor was there a spout or hose, so how did the damn thing work? Rather than risk breaking the device he gave up and moved on.

Shell said to her machine, “I would have told her. Maybe she needs to hear it, you know? A floor length skirt doesn’t suit every figure.”

Titus sat down opposite her. When he looked at Shell’s lunch he realized that they’d been giving him special food and utensils, too. She was using tong-like tools that he had never seen before. The food tray was divided into sections. None of the foods in the compartments looked even remotely edible. Bits of coloured leather in gravy perhaps, or wood shavings fried in oil, but not food.

Shell said, “If you let her bake the cakes herself, she’ll be a rag by the big day, you know. Have it catered, and save everybody the headache.” She picked up a bite in the tongs and transported it neatly to her mouth without a drip. Then she lifted a bit of food in the tongs, and reached it across to Titus. In a mild panic, he examined it narrowly. It looked exactly like a wet scrap of chamois leather. If he had not seen Shell eat some he would have rejected it. But the tongs poked forward impatiently, and he did not dare to do other than open his mouth. It was cold, and sweet-sour, and surprisingly crunchy — something vegetable? He could not say, even after chewing thoroughly and swallowing.

“Have him try it on beforehand,” Shell advised her machine. “Nat is so tall, they had to add a piece of black cloth to the bottom of each pants leg.” She slid her entire tray across to Titus. He would have refused it. Surely this was her meal? But she leaned back and stirred her coffee in an inarguably post-prandial way.

He experimented with the little tongs, which were of thin pale plastic and hinged at the top, too delicate for long use. It wasn’t difficult to handle them, however. He practised on the contents of the tray. Even polishing off all the crunchy stuff did not help him determine what it was. The brown food seemed to be rice in thin gravy, difficult to manipulate with the tongs, but there was no spoon. The thing that looked like a rolled washcloth revealed itself to be bread-like in nature and very tasty. He devoured it with pleasure. But the mysterious green slices were vile, salty and slick, and he left them in their section of the tray. Another packet, still sealed, bore no label. He tore it open and pondered the rolled washcloth within. If he had not already devoured the first, he could compare the two. Finally he took a nibble. It was nothing so tasty as the first, worse than the green stuff in fact —

“No, Titus! That’s a wipe!”

“Wipe, did you say?”

She snatched the thing from his fingers and unfolded it. It didn’t look any less papery than some of the foods he’d just eaten. But when she swabbed her fingers with it he understood it wasn’t food, but some sort of ready-moistened napkin. “Sorry, Bel, minor crisis here,” she said to her machine. “You were saying, about the out-of-town contingent?”

Embarrassed, Titus got up and drifted over to the coffee dispenser again. Damned if a seething machine was going to foil him! By chance more than intent, he found that the flask slid out of its niche for pouring if one grasped and turned it by its curved black handle. This minor victory bucked him so much that he hardly cared that he couldn’t get the lid off the flask, or that the cups were immured in a glass-fronted cupboard that defied him. He carried the flask over to Shell, who absently took it and topped off her own mug, thus revealing that the thing worked like teapots — one didn’t have to take off the lid to pour.

All he needed now was a cup, and were there not plenty of used ones in the sink? He chose one and nearly jumped out of his skin when the water turned on of its own accord, arching from the sleek metal tap onto the dishes below. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, he hastened to rinse the cup and pour himself some coffee. The water turned itself off again, too. Apparently the sink could tell when a person wanted to wash up. Perhaps it was keyed to the chip? Charmed, he played with the device, waving his hand above the tap in the manner of a stage magician to make the water appear. “Abracadabra, eh?” he said to Lash, as he came bursting in.

“Hallo, Titus, glad you’re finding your way around. Shell, we’re having an emergency meeting — you’d better sit in.”

Shell gave him a nod. “Look, Bel, I have to run. I’ll call you later, all right? Give Pats a kiss for me.” She scooped up the tray and pushed the entire thing into a slot in the wall before hurrying out after Lash.

It occurred to Titus that Lash’s emergency might have something to do with the tumultuous events of this morning. Suddenly uneasy, he followed, cup in hand. If they had gone to another floor in the building he would never find them, but to nose round on this level should be simple enough. And indeed, people were assembling in the meeting room down the hall, Lash and Shell among them, to watch half a dozen screens let into one wall. Titus slipped in, and Lash pulled out a chair for him.

By jingo, that was himself on a screen! Talking to that Talbot jackanapes! They were, yes, on the crowded street corner being ogled by interested throngs. He always looked a fool in photographs, either laughing or scowling at the camera, but there was a weird fascination now in seeing himself in motion. Shell had not been out at all, complaining of his stiff manner: beside the rubbery and loose-jointed Talbot he looked as unbending as the lamp-post at his back. From the angle Talbot’s assistant must have been filming him all that time. Doubtless one of his little machines had been a cine-camera. He had not realized that cameras could be got so small.

“Titus, how could you?” Shell fixed him with an ominous look. “Spouting off to that little vid weasel!”

“I didn’t take him seriously,” Titus had to admit. “You can’t tell me that a man who goes about in yellow knee pants is a person of consideration.”

Dr. Piotr snorted with laughter. “He’s got you there!”

Titus tasted his coffee. It was dreadful, worse even than the tea. Perhaps sugar and milk would improve it? There were paper sugar packets and little sealed pots of milk on the side table. He added both lavishly until the brew was palatable.

And here he was on another screen again! Rick had mentioned that someone in the crowd had been filming in the plaza. Perhaps one of those elfin cameras was the way they were keeping an eye on him in his room? This time he looked a frightful bully, pounding a table beneath a white and blue banner while ladies and boys cowered. A shocking exhibition of foul temper and poor manners! He stepped up to face the music immediately. “Inexcusable behavior on my part,” he apologized.

Shell grinned at him. “This the self-deprecatory British bit, isn’t it?”

“It’s absolutely perfect,” Piotr said. “Offering to let them finish the job on you? Titus, you’re a living wonder. Thrilling’s the only word for it.”

“Or insane.” Lash shivered at the memory. “You wouldn’t say it was thrilling if you’d been standing there beside him.”

Titus could only shake his head. By what standard were his one set of actions considered admirable, and the other not? He watched, trying to sift the problem out.

“Damn,” someone watching the screen said. “Latimer is asking questions on the Senate floor again.”

Groans. “Just what we need!” “Why didn’t the good people of Iowa put a sock in him?”

“I thought we’d dug a hole for this issue and buried it,” Shell said. “Until you, Titus, went and dug up the body!”

“Me? Are you on about the dancing? You were very graceful, Shell, but it’s balderdash to believe that any native would be impressed.” An unmistakable undercurrent of dismay from the group made Titus add, “Curse it, should I not say ‘native’?”

Dr. Piotr made an exasperated noise. “There’s no time to explain now, Titus. Just keep away from vid crews!”

“No one will take note of a clown like that,” Titus said, nodding with contempt at his image on the screens. His glassy expression as he confronted the brazen woman lifting her blouse would have made a cat laugh. And this inane image was doubtless being shown on screens all over the country, perhaps the world. “I’ll be a figure of fun for the rest of my life.”

“Tasteless but funny — the typical on-the-street newsie,” Dr. Trask said.

“I think you’ll be surprised and pleased, old man,” Lash said soothingly. “You can see that you don’t lack for rescuers.”

“True enough,” Titus had to concede. His backwards tumble into the street was the stuff of music-hall farce. But the chorus-like wail of dismay from the watching crowd was undeniably a spontaneous expression. Obviously the bulk of the populace did not regard him as superfluous. And the stupendous traffic tie-up was triggered by the impulsive surge of Good Samaritans into the street as much as by the toppled omnibus. He could hardly make out his fallen figure in the rush of helpers bearing him to safety, and the hapless Graham was nearly trampled in the stampede.

“If only you’d kept your mouth shut about the Forties!” Dr. Piotr shook his head. “Christ, it would’ve been perfect.”

“It would’ve been all right if you’d laughed at his pants,” Lash explained. “Or criticized the food, or the climate. But you have to realize that you’re tied in with the Project, Titus. We brought you here, and you’ve captured the public imagination. And when you touch on a hot issue like the Fortie program — “

Titus snarled with frustration. “I don’t understand where they got the idea that I know anything about it! Who cares what an antique soldier like me thinks? I can’t even open the kitchen cupboards!”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Shell said, immediately sympathetic. “Was that what you were fussing around the kitchen for? You should’ve asked — “ Her machine peeped, and she said to it, “What? Oh, hi, Rick. Yes, I saw Graham. Sure I’ll make a statement. Well, you could send me a draft.”

“Have I really dropped a clanger?” Titus said dismally.

“Clanger,” Piotr murmured to his machine.

“Not to worry, Titus,” Lash said, without a scintilla of conviction. “You have to grasp how public affairs work in this era. There’s always vigorous contention between various projects for scarce resources. The Fortie project had fine innings for a number of years, but there’s always a faction insisting that the money would be better spent on feeding the poor, or restoring the Everglades, or some such. Debate is healthy, a part of the democratic process…”

Titus stopped listening. According to his moral system, deliberately ragging authority was good fun, but to drop a brick due to ignorance was unacceptable. It still baffled him that anyone would solicit his opinion about anything, but if they regarded it so highly, so be it. “Let me go back to that young whelp, and put him straight.”

The cries of horror that greeted this proposal quenched his enthusiasm. “They’d eat you alive, Titus,” Dr. Piotr said. “Haven’t we already seen that?”

Still clutching her little machine, Shell said, “Rick says they’d all love to see him. He’s telling them no — wait a second, Rick, and I’ll get you up. And they aren’t buying it.”

“A medical reason,” Dr. Trask said. “I can cook up a medical excuse for him to be unavailable.”

The glint in her bright blue eyes gave Titus a distinct qualm. “I feel fine, truly!”

“No, you don’t, Titus,” Shell contradicted. “You feel dreadfully ill.”

She was fidgeting with her machine, and suddenly a new voice squawked from it. This must be Rick himself saying, “That sounds damned smart, Shell. Let’s pursue it. What’s wrong with him, Sabrina?

“He’s sick as a dog,” she said promptly. “Needs quiet, not to be bothered by newsies and worried about Doomsters gunning for him.”

“Quiet is damned attractive,” Titus said, remembering his list. “If it doesn’t smack of the white feather, I’d like to get out of this city.”

“Did you hear that, Rick? Excellent idea, Titus.”

“Chronal displacement syndrome,” Dr. Trask said, shaking her head gloomily. “Very serious. We’ve been worrying and preparing for it for months. Let me feel your pulse, Titus. Tch! Terrible. No, the only hope is to recoup his strength somewhere far away.”

“At this point PTICA will be much more comfortable if he’s stashed in a safe place,” Dr. Piotr said. “My only stipulation is that somebody keep him under supervision.” Titus growled at this, but Piotr pointed out, “Titus, today you incited a riot, and kicked off a traffic tie-up that’ll keep the upper West Side gridlocked till midnight — and that was just before lunch. You’re too hot to let out alone.”

Lash added, “And by the time Titus has had more time to adjust, all this Doomster nonsense will have died down.”

This was not how plans were made in England — or was this another one of those chronal things? Titus was used to a clear chain of command, with one’s superior officer making all the decisions. Meetings were for announcing them to the staff and perhaps elaborating strategy. When he thought about this conclave, its oddity became very plain. Decisions were not handed down, but debated and discussed until a consensus emerged. It seemed like a lunatic way to operate, throwing away the reins — possible only to feckless civilians.

Rick’s voice rang from Shell’s machine on the table. “So where could we park him that would be quiet — and cheap? Titus? Talk to me, man. Give me your take. If you could hoop anywhere in the world for a couple months, where would you like to lay it?”

Another straw in the wind — no British officer would ask for a subordinate’s opinion! “You sound so, so American,” he couldn’t help remarking.

“Can we focus?” Rick asked impatiently.

“How about England?” Lash suggested.

“Not with a barge pole!” There was little left for Titus in England now but memories he hadn’t yet the strength to face. The idea of seeing how terribly his country had altered in the past 133 years made him quail.

“Barge pole,” Dr. Trask murmured, apparently to her machine.

Rick said, “Bad move, Lash. The conquering hero returns home in triumph, and the media is over it like white on rice: parades, presentations, the works. Antarctica is more secluded. What do you say to returning to the old territory, Titus? The National Geographic Society is planning a special on the old explorers, and they’d like you to do color commentary. How about some video of you walking in the snow on the old route, standing like a hero at your own monument, huh?”

Without thinking Titus exclaimed, “I’d sooner be shot!” Somehow this was even worse than the idea of returning to England.

To his annoyance Lash noticed his distress. “He’s not ready for that, Rick. It’s much too soon. Give him time.”

“Antarctica is too exciting,” Piotr said. “We want someplace boring. Where nobody goes and nothing happens. And I have just the thing. My family leases a beach house on St. Simon’s Island, in a gated community down the Georgia coast. Private, exclusive, and relaxing.”

“What does one do at a beach?”

Dr. Piotr sparkled with enthusiasm. “Lie on the sand, swim in the ocean, drink blender cocktails, surf-cast, paraboard. And there’s four gorgeous golf courses. The back nine at the Hampton Club takes you right through the wetlands — miss the green and your ball is gone forever, eaten by alligators.”

“It sounds charming,” Titus said, unenthused. He had tried golf in England, and found it deucedly tame. “What is paraboard?”

“A sport,” Shell said. “You’d probably like it, Titus. It’s dangerous and expensive.”

“Well, how about something with more flavor?” Dr. Trask proposed. “And safer, too — I don’t want to risk my patient with alligators and paraboard. Shell, you met my brother Howard.”

“The one who married the history professor, sure,” Shell said.

“Well, she converted him, or he converted himself, I don’t know which, and now they’re living in this strict Orthodox community on Long Island. It’s about eight square city blocks, and they have a real job for somebody like Titus.”

“A job!” Titus sat up, electrified.

“Are you sure, Sabrina?” Lash said. “He has so few qualifications for employment.”

“For the Shabbos, Kev,” Dr. Trask said. “That’s the beauty of it. He doesn’t need any qualifications except being a Gentile. And he’d only need to work on Saturdays.”

Shell clapped a hand to her head in exaggerated amazement. “It’s so high-concept, Sabrina. Absolutely glorioso! You shouldn’t be wasting your talent in medicine. You should be in Hollywood, where there isn’t any real life, only sitcoms. Edwardian time traveler as a Shabbos goy — I’m going to bust a gut.”

“Exactly,” Dr. Trask said modestly. “Nobody would ever look for him there — it’s just too wacky. And he’d be close enough to the TTD to come in and get checked over every now and then, which is what I’m interested in.”

With a feeling that events were entirely running away with him Titus demanded, “What is a Shabbos?”

Shell said, “Titus, it’s important that you understand: Sabrina is suggesting that you hole up in a community of very conservative Orthodox Jews. You would do odd jobs for them once a week on the Shabbos, the Jewish day of rest, when they’re forbidden to work.”

Titus frowned, thinking hard. “You mean, live in a Jewish ghetto. Is that the right word?” he added, suddenly uneasy.

Nobody replied, sure sign that he had somehow dropped a brick once more. Lash said to Dr. Trask, “Isn’t your sister-in-law that Holocaust scholar?”

“Yes. You probably saw her book, the one about the concentration camp at Buchenwald.”

“‘Concentration camp’ — that’s British,” Titus said. “Coined during the Boer War, if it the same term.”

“I don’t think there’s time to explain, Titus,” Shell said, adding to the others, “Maybe Titus would increase the stress in the household more than they would like.”

“Miriam does like to argue,” Dr. Trask sighed.

Rick’s voice boomed out from the speaker: “Oh for God’s sake. How about this: my aunt and uncle raise soybeans in Ohio. A nice visit to the farm — what do you think, Titus?”

“Would I get to do any farm work?”

“You wouldn’t have to do a thing, pal. It’s all automated. Aunt Claudia does some hand-spinning from her angora bunnies. You could help hold the skeins of yarn.”

The ghastly prospect of months helping an old lady wind fluffy wool forced Titus to be frank. “You don’t understand. I don’t want to lounge about on perpetual holiday. I want to do things, contribute. To have no role, no job to do in the world — it’s hellishly depressing.”

The listeners he could see seemed sympathetic, but from the machine Rick said, “Problem is, you aren’t very marketable, Titus. None of your skills transfer over from the 19th century to the 21st.”

“It’s not your fault,” Lash said earnestly.

“But it’s true.” Titus held his head in his hands and tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “How can even farming be beyond my skill?”

“It was the default career in your day,” Rick said, “but times have changed.”

“I hadn’t really planned to do this.” Shell sighed and leaned both plump elbows on the table. “But I suppose you could come out to Wyoming with Miranda and me.”

“Wyoming?” For a moment Titus couldn’t recall what Wyoming was. “Where there’s room to gallop horses!”

“Shell, you’re a softy,” Rick said. “Isn’t that the last slot allotted for your family?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shell said. “But he really does get on well with Miranda. He has the right attitude. When I introduced you,” she added to Titus, “you shook hands with her — just like with a regular person. That was nice. I know from the books that you haven’t had much exposure to handicapped children. So it beats me, how you can talk to her so well.”

Miranda and I are fighting the same sort of battle, he would have said. But this might be misunderstood. “I’ve already seen there’s a crying need for equestrian nannies in this era. I’m admirably qualified for that kind of work.”

“But, but it’s dangerous out there,” Lash said, staring at his little machine. “Look at this list of liability waivers! Titus, are you aware of what they do for a living? And you’ll have to deal with the public!”

“You make it sound like prostitution,” Dr. Trask said. “What it really is, Titus, is a sort of living history thing. Nat and Mag dress up in historical clothes, and take tourists for rides in covered wagons.”

“Usually four or five-day camping trips,” Shell amplified. “They can always use another wrangler. You live rough, there’s no denying it. But you’re used to that.”

“Certainly. And I take it these wagons are drawn by horses? I can help with them.”

Dr. Trask whistled. “Wow! Can you drive, as well as ride?”

Titus looked at her open-mouthed. “It was as necessary in my time as driving a motor must be for you.”

Lash said, “But — there are rattlesnakes! Lightning strikes! Heat stroke! Grass fires! Falling rocks!”

“Better and better.” Titus rubbed his hands in anticipation.

“Aren’t you a pistol,” Dr. Trask said. “But you are not going to fall off a rock, Titus. For my sake.”

“They only list those things for insurance purposes,” Shell said. “The only snake I’ve ever seen out there was road-kill.”

“But you’ll keep a close eye on him,” Lash pleaded. “I won’t be able to come along, Titus — the horse dander, you know.” This was an advantage that had not occurred to Titus until now. Carefully he said nothing.

“I’d worry more about Nat,” Shell said. “Titus, you should know that my ex is an Indigenous American.”

Dr. Trask said, “Only one quarter at most, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but it’s the important quarter, in his mind.”

Titus sighed. “What is an Indigenous American? Or is that another one of those touchy questions?”

“They used to call them Native Americans,” Lash said helpfully. “And before that, Indians.”

“Indian — ah, I understand. She means he’s a Red Indian.” Titus’s mind raced as he tried out and discarded possible comments. Finally he fixed on one that was probably safe: “Miranda must resemble him, rather than you.”

“She does,” Shell said.

“And who is Mag?”

“His wife, owner and manager of Prairie Schooner Tours.”

Owning and managing a business was not a task adapted to the fragile female mind — but Titus held his tongue. Lash said, “Will they mind if you turn up with an extra passenger?”

“I’m not going to be a passenger,” Titus said.

“That’s right, he’s going to work,” Shell said. “Although possibly not for a wage — I’ll discuss it with Mag. But if you’re fed and not paid, I don’t see how she could beef.”

“These are minor details,” Rick said. “It sounds excellent from this end. Ain’t nobody going to look for an Englishman in the grasslands of Wyoming. That’s better even than Ohio. Use an alias, okay? And I’ll start leaking rumors immediately, that Titus is going back to South Africa or something.”

“So it’s settled,” Piotr said — apparently the role of a leader was merely to confirm the decision of the group. “Shell will open discussions with the tour people, and Kev will help Titus pack.”

“A few clothes,” Shell advised. “You’ll have to dress right, Titus — Mag will take care of that.”

“Right, as in how?” Titus demanded, suspicious. “I won’t wear baggy knee pants.”

“To fit in with the period,” Lash said. “What is it supposed to be, Shell, the late 1800s sometime?”

“Little House in the Prairie country,” Shell agreed.

“My God,” Titus said. “Do you realize what this means? For once I’m going to be too modern!”

He had not intended to be witty, but when everyone laughed and applauded he couldn’t help grinning too.

Part 2

Chapter 9

Ever conscientious, Dr. Lash amassed a cart full of books and films about prairies and the American West a century and a half ago. It weighed on Titus that he felt no interest in these materials. Instead he took refuge in the children’s books. The best was the story of Tam Lin, dragged into Faerie and held as paramour by the Queen of Air and Darkness until Sweet Polly Plunkett rescued him. It was curiously comforting to read of another Englishman haled off into unspeakably strange realms. The tales were old, but Titus sardonically noted a modern taste in their selection. Heroines in his day waited modestly for rescue — they didn’t boldly seize Tam Lin and hang on while the evil Queen turned him into monsters and flames.

Behind the stoic façade he fretted like a kenneled hound. If they didn’t get away he’d murder someone, or take to drink! “Suppose you make a list, Titus,” Lash coaxed. “Of what you think you might like to bring on a camping trip.”

“The tour people have clothes for me.”

“Of course, but you’ll want more than clothing, won’t you? Your riding boots, for instance.”

Titus considered. “You mentioned snakes, I believe. I ought to bring a pistol. It’ll come in handy for Doomsters, too.”

“But Titus! You have no license for one.”

“License? People need a license here to own a firearm?” Titus could scarcely imagine such a lunatic practice.

“It’s necessary, Titus. Guns can be dangerous.”

“That’s the whole ruddy point of firearms! Do you regulate kitchen knives and forks, too?”

”No — but you need a license to drive a car or a motorcycle. Also to own a dog, a dangerous reptile, hold a tag sale, or light an open fire.” Titus was unable to keep his mouth from dropping open at this recitation. Lash went on with a touch of impatience, “This is a major metropolis, Titus. You can’t just wander around doing anything that seizes your fancy.”

Dear God, what a society! “My life is in danger,” he argued. “I need a weapon for self defence!”

“That’s the last thing you need, believe me. Nobody is going to assault you in person.”

“Cowards, I wish they would! It’s the principle of the thing. Do you realize how different the final Polar journey would have been, if only I’d had the sense to bring a pistol along?”

Lash’s thin cheeks turned pallid. “Titus, these wagon tours are nothing but tourist jaunts, I assure you. Desperate measures will never be necessary. We would never put you into a position where your life was in peril. And recall, Shell will be bringing Miranda — she would never endanger the child!”

Silently Titus cursed his own stupidity. Perhaps out in the West attitudes would be more relaxed. He turned the subject: “It’s a jolly long way to travel. Shall I go by train, or what?”

“Would you prefer that? Or would you care to try traveling by air?”

“Flying, you mean? In those vehicles that soar over the city?” The mere idea made his heart leap. “An absolutely ripping idea! I should enjoy that tremendously. In my time commercial flight was no more than a dream. Shall I have to take lessons?”

“No, no! We’ll just be passengers. It takes extensive training to become a pilot, and you also have to earn a — “

“A license,” Titus finished for him. This was the tamest, most milk-and-water society he could imagine. No smoking, no booze, no guns — surely the entire 21st century could not be equally bloodless? If it was, he might as well cut his throat at once before he perished of galloping ennui. Even those thrice-damned Doomsters had let him down, lying low instead of taking another shot at him. He lay in bed at night and yearned not for the future but the past: for motorcycles sputtering and bucking underneath him, or the tap-tap of his sword-sheath against his left cavalry boot, or carbines glinting in the African sun, or Polar gales thrashing a fine icy fog off the white sastrugi. Larger than life, they called him? He was the same size as ever. It was the world round him which had shrunk and become tame.

But there were other accoutrements of civilized life besides guns. “Did my watch ever turn up, Lash? It was in my pocket at the Pole.”

Lash consulted his machine. “Every scrap was carefully preserved for study. If you were carrying it on the morning of March 17th 1912, it’s around.”

Titus winced at the thought of those stinking rags being picked over by scientists. “Where?”

“In Cambridge, at the Scott Polar Research Institute. I could show you the preliminary studies. Everything’s been photographed and measured. Ah, here’s a preliminary report — they’ve extracted all the dust from your clothing for analysis. Are you sure you want to disrupt their research? The final report is going to be fascinating — they’re highly-respected scientists.”

“I don’t care if they’re the Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s not a sodding artifact for study. It’s my watch, and I’m not done with it yet. I want it back.”

Lash sighed. “You have a point…Yes, the watch is listed. But to get it back you may have to go to Cambridge. You can imagine they’re all a-quiver to meet you.”

“To get their hooks in me, actually.” Titus could foresee what that would be like. The historians would interview him until he dropped. His letters, memories, and mentions in the other members’ writings would be discussed, chewed over, analyzed, and held up to the light for hidden meanings. He would return to the past right enough, but not as a living man — only as an artifact to be studied. Silently he resolved to evade it for as long as possible.

He could have shouted for joy when the departure day finally dawned. It was so early the sun had not quite risen, and the narrow stripe of sky visible between the glass city towers was colorless. His meagre dunnage easily packed into a small sausage-shaped case. Titus tossed it into the front seat of the taxi, reflecting with pleasure on how natural modern motoring came now. At the back, Lash struggled with a huge orange sacklike suitcase that sagged as he tried to heave it into the boot. Titus fixed a commanding eye on the taxi driver, who was idling near the front of the vehicle. “You! Look nippy with the bag!” It was gratifying when the driver leaped to obey.

“I hope Shell will meet us all right,” Lash said when they were safely on their way.

Titus fastened his seat belt. “At the terminal, or dock, or whatever it is?”

“Airport. It’s always challenging to travel with Miranda.”

“I’d wondered why you’ve come for the ride — so she wouldn’t be burdened with two deadweights.”

“Not at all, Titus, you’re no trouble! But until you’re familiar with public places a little more, it’s better to have another man as a companion, wouldn’t you agree? It took you some moments to master the kitchen faucet. If during the course of the journey you were to feel the, ah, call of nature, you could not ask Shell or Miranda to — “

“Too right,” Titus said, much struck. “Admirable forethought! That aspect never occurred to me.”

Lash smiled. “Well, it’s my allotted task, after all.”

The taxi was speeding like fun over a high long bridge. The tremendous arching structure soared carelessly above the river below, carrying the taxi on its long smooth spine. It was better than the elephant he’d ridden in India, better than a motorcycle. On the other side of the water the city spread and spread. The metropolis seemed as limitless and inexhaustible as the ocean. Even the airport was enfolded within it, a place of smooth concrete pathways for winged vehicles. Titus pressed his nose to the glass to get a glimpse of them.

The sun was on the point of rising, the eastern sky washed with primrose light. And there, high up, was a sight that made a shiver of awe trail down Titus’s spine: a new star! No, not merely a star, a constellation, a close complex grouping of celestial bodies moving with visible speed across the heavens. For a moment he was gobstruck, with the dumbfounded wonder that aborigines felt when presented with a camera. The moderns meddle with the stars, he reminded himself, gulping. They’ve talked to the unknowable beings who live there. “Lash, what stars are those? The bright ones.”

“Aren’t they pretty? Like jewels. It’s the Space Station, and three or four of its support vehicles and shuttles. When you’re in luck you can see a smaller light moving away from the cluster — that’d be either an orbital shuttle or an earthbound vehicle on its rounds.” Lash spoke with pride, but no excitement. To him this was commonplace!

The taxi disgorged them in front of an enormous low building. Lash flung first his bag and then Titus’s into a kerbside chute. Titus decided not to ask why they could not carry their own luggage onto the plane. Instead he followed Lash through the big glass doors.

Inside was thronged. Was there nowhere in America where one could experience solitude? Obedient to Piotr’s orders, Lash kept one hand on Titus’s elbow through the crowded wide corridors and interlocking glassed-in lounges. Titus immediately lost his bearings. The familiar sense of overload was beginning to steal over him when they halted at a high desk, one of many they had passed.

Titus stood well back as Lash slid his left hand underneath what looked like a large kitchen tap. A ticket popped out from a console underneath. “Not I,” he declared. “Suppose it’s rigged again?”

“Never in an airport, Titus. That would be a federal crime.” Lash did it again, extracting a second ticket, and guided him to a nearby seating area.

“It’s less of a crime to kill me out in the street?”

“Well, yes — the draconian penalties for interfering with air travel date back to the beginning of this century. The history of the combat against air piracy and terrorism would fascinate you, Titus, the way it’s driven the development of wrist chips and universal ID — “

“Some other day, perhaps,” Titus said hastily. This sensation of being tracked by a hidden foe was intolerable. He was a hunter, not the prey! And how odd, that air terminals were something of a sanctuary. The only analogue that came to mind was fox hunting, where one could not shoot a fox — an arbitrary rule, but immutable as the laws of the Medes and the Persians. “How shall we find Shell in all this huggermugger?”

“She’s meeting us here,” Lash said. “Sit down and keep an eye out for her, would you? I’m just going to check the status of our flight.” He took out his little machine.

Titus felt sure that gaping at the view marked him as a hayseed. But he couldn’t resist. The window extended from floor to ceiling, giving a fine view of the endless concrete pavement outside. The silvery vehicle passing seemed large as a whale and about the same shape. Only when it turned did he see the sleek triangular profile, swept back into broad wings as wide as the vehicle was long. Not a whale: a manta ray, perhaps. The windows were tiny, mere freckles set into the flanks of the thing, and inside he glimpsed faces. Then size fell into perspective. It was huge, bigger than an ocean liner. Impossible to believe that so enormous a structure could leave the earth, and yet there one went, gliding past in the sky above. The wings looked nothing like the canvas-and-strut arrangements of the planes that Titus knew. And no propellers! How did the thing move itself then? Another huge class of things that he didn’t know and probably would never grasp!

He surveyed the crowd as Lash had asked. Still no sign of Shell. But surely that was a familiar hock-bottle silhouette just emerging from a side lounge? So many new faces had poured into his life these past few weeks that Titus had to think for a moment. This plump matronly partridge was surely the Doomster advocate who had been sitting at the table in the plaza. And yes, there was the son who had inherited her unfortunate physique, following behind and carrying the baggage.

Without thinking about it Titus leaped to his feet and followed. It had been rather a mistake to try to bullock his detractors, more productive of heat than light. Surely reasoned argument would put paid to this nonsense now and forever? And it was safe enough, if airports were a sanctuary. “Madam, a word,” he called, catching up.

At the sight of him the pear-shaped young man almost dropped a bag. “God, it’s him again!”

She flushed pink, but didn’t slow down. “Captain Oates, I’m not going to be persecuted by you!”

“Persecuted? That’s like your sauce, when it’s your lot gunning for me!” But damn it, he was not going to get diverted into a tirade. “All I’d like to do is talk to other members of your organization. You happen to be the only one I recognize by sight.”

“We’re in the phone book,” she snapped, picking up her pace.

“The what?” He had to stretch his legs to keep up. Why would they use unfamiliar terms? He would have to ask Lash —

“Wait.” She halted in her tracks so abruptly that both he and the lad swept right past her. “What you were saying in the plaza…Would you really? Come with me, to an executive meeting maybe?”

“Certainly. I said I would, and a man’s word is his bond.”

“It’s a wonderful idea!” She gazed at him as if he was the prize she’d pulled from a Christmas cake.

A slow thinker, but Titus reminded himself that women could not have a man’s natural gift for affairs. “At any convenient time,” he said magnanimously.

“Right now would be perfect!”

The plump youth stared open-mouthed at his mother. “Ma, are you sure about this?”

“Don’t nag, Roger,” she said, taking out her machine. “I want to link to Steve right away.”

“You might mention to Lash the change in plan,” Titus suggested. How easily one became accustomed to the convenience of chattering to any person from a distance at any moment!

“Of course, Captain. Don’t worry about it.”

“But Ma, we’re going to Toronto!”

“Not any more we’re not, Roger dear. Find us a taxi, would you?”

The youth led them through the airport maze to an exit where the driverless taxis waited in a long queue. They climbed into a passenger compartment and sped off. At the further side, the woman dived into her little machine the way one would into a book. Doubtless when the meeting was arranged she would be free to converse. Titus eyed the plump youth, hunched beside him in the middle seat as if he wished devoutly to be elsewhere. Insist on human status, he reminded himself. “You know I’m Oates, of course. What’s your name?”

“Sorry — Brabazon. Roger Brabazon.”

Titus called to mind the dissolute marriage practices of the modern era. “And your mother here is Mrs. Brabazon?”

“No, she’s Rena Zonderman. Look — is there any way you can get back to 1912?”

“They said it was impossible.”

“That’s what they always say. But are you sure? Because if it really is impossible, then…”

He seemed unwilling or unable to finish the thought. “I was in a damn tight place when I stepped out of 1912,” Titus recalled. “I’d as lief not pick up precisely where I left off.”

“You’re in a damn tight place now.”

Titus stared in astonishment. There was nothing dangerous about riding in taxis as long as he kept his hands away from the door latch. But before he could demand more information Mrs. Zonderman prodded her machine until it squawked. “I’m surrounded by idiots. Wasn’t it one of you British history guys, who said that great plans should leave room for improvisation?”

“Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington,” Titus offered.

“You see?” she told her machine crossly. “Exactly what I’ve been saying.”

“You mean you have him there?” it demanded in horrified tones. Disgusted, she folded the device shut without answering.

“You can’t compare yourself to the Iron Duke,” Titus said indulgently. “He was Napoleon’s nemesis, the greatest general Britain’s ever produced.”

Mrs. Zonderman had turned her attention to the taxi’s little passenger control panel, pressing buttons with an assured hand. “Well as a matter of fact, I think the comparison’s very apt. I’m obliged to you for the name — I’ll have to look the Duke up. Would you step out of the car now, Captain?”

“Certainly. Have we arrived?”

“We’re just switching cars. After you.”

The motor halted and the door at his elbow popped open. Courteously Titus stepped out. Without wasting a second the door slammed shut again and the vehicle accelerated, speeding away into traffic. In an eyeblink it was gone.

“What the devil?” Titus stared after it, his mouth dropping open in astonishment. Where were the other two going? Wasn’t there supposed to be another motor? He looked round, taking in his surroundings. He was standing on a strip of concrete less than eight inches wide. To either side of him huge motors whipped by, as big as locomotives and faster, the roar of their engines like continuous thunder. The wind of their passage battered at him like blizzard gales. He had spoken to Lash blithely of perfect balance, the mental ability to stand tiptoe on top of a fence post. Now he had to demonstrate it. He closed his mouth against the hot dust thrashed up by thousands of passing tyres, very carefully not moving an inch, and gulped.

Lash had alluded to modern rules of the road — that traffic was organized in lanes, for instance. Titus counted the lanes on this roadway. There were twenty-five in one direction, parting to flow past his island the way a river in full spate would surge round a rock. Somewhere nearby must be twenty-five lanes heading the other way. Perhaps above or below — other roadways soared overhead and swept to the right or the left, curving up or diving down, carving the daylight into slabs and slices. The rhythmic glassy flicker from the windscreens as they arrowed through a shaft of morning sunlight was faster than his pulse, almost hypnotic. Was this even real? It would have made a convincingly horrid nightmare. But this could not be nightmare. It was beyond any dream he could imagine.

Titus pushed aside all questions for later consideration. Ride each fence as it comes, and the fence now was to get to safety. To stay here for any length of time was impossible. It was too narrow to even sit down. A motor with a wide load might speed by at any instant. And even a momentary loss of footing would bring him tumbling under the whizzing wheels — there would be no amiable crowd of city pedestrians to haul him to safety.

He considered waving down a passing car. Did anyone offer lifts to hitchhikers any more? None of the huge segmented cargo vehicles thundering past had drivers, and the smaller passenger motors were obviously also being managed by machine. Autopilots, that was the term — the only way that millions of vehicles could speed along inches apart at over a hundred miles per hour without smashups. Occasionally he glimpsed an automobile passenger reading or consulting a little machine, never watching the road. Anyone who happened to glance idly up would think nothing of a man, a workman perhaps, standing in the roadway.

Obviously the thing to do was to nip smartly across the road to the verge. Traffic was dense but not impenetrable — there were occasional gaps between the vehicles. He could choose his moment and make a dash for it. There were fifteen lanes to the left, but only ten lanes to the right, so that was the best direction to go. He breathed down a deep gulp of the hot fume-laden air, plucking up his courage. There was no time to waste in dizziness and chronal distress. He had done this before, with Shell and Lash flanking him to either side. He could do it again. He had trodden more difficult paths in his day.

Now! He stiffened the sinews and ran, dodging neatly across one, two, six, eight lanes of traffic as sweet as a fox threading through a hedge before the hounds. But as he raced towards the kerb a towering goods vehicle towing two waggons hooted its horn at him, so that he nearly jumped out of his skin. Only an instant’s loss of timing in his dance with peril, immediately recovered, but that was enough. A motor whizzed by too close, nearly nipping his toes. The blast of its passage blinded him. Something struck him a glancing blow and snagged his garments. He was jerked off his feet before the flimsy modern cloth tore away, and rolled over and over breathless and bruised to safety on the narrow pavement.

Titus huddled on the gritty surface, gasping. By God, that had been as close a squeak as he ever cared to have! And when he sat up he found that it had all been for naught. This strip of pavement was perhaps twice as wide as his former perch and edged with a low wall. When he dragged himself up to look over, there was nothing beyond but another roadway crossing at an angle far below. It too teemed with vehicular traffic. And beyond that was another, and then another. There was no way out of this deadly maze on foot.

At least this new pavement was wide enough to sit on. Titus licked the blood off his scraped knuckles and picked embedded gravel from his knees, all the while expressing his feelings in the most dry and picturesque emergency vocabulary he could muster. His shirt had been ripped asunder, and a jagged triangle had been torn from one side of his trousers — some protrusion on the motor must have caught a pocket. All the fly buttons had taken the opportunity to scarper as well. When he staggered to his feet his tattered garments showed little inclination to follow. He had to hold his grimy trousers up with both hands. His tatterdemalion appearance would make a cat laugh.

Suddenly the humour of the situation did strike him. He sat on the low wall and sniggered at his plight. Debagged, alone and helpless! It reminded him of the elaborate boarding school japes in the Stalky stories. And as he laughed the solution came to him — a schoolboy prank to extricate himself from a schoolboy dilemma.

The task was to signal to the infrequent observers that he needed rescue — to communicate. He stood up and turned his back on the highway, gazing nobly out over the wall at the tangle of roadways below, and folded his arms. Unsupported, the remnants of his trousers immediately gave up the unequal struggle with gravity. They collapsed round his ankles, leaving his bare arse exposed to the winds. It was a pity he had no watch. Otherwise he could time exactly how long a man could do a moon job on passing traffic in this era, before some scandalized passenger glimpsed his bum and tattled into a little machine.

He was still chuckling at his own cleverness when a vehicle passed, slowed down, and stopped with a squeal of tyres. POLICE was stenciled prominently on the rear panel, and ominous red and blue lights flashed in echelon on the roof. A frowning uniformed officer emerged. “Mister, what in hell are you playing at?”

Titus hitched his trousers up again. “Good day, constable,” he said cheerily. “Before you bring me up before the Beak, I wonder if you would oblige me by contacting Dr. Kevin Lash of the PTICA-TTD. I last saw him in a lounge at the airport, waiting for a flight to Wyoming. And if you happen to have a spare belt on hand, I should be most grateful.”

There was the usual argy-bargy and delay while frantic messages winged back and forth through the little machines, but eventually it all ended as Titus knew it must, in a short ride back to the airport. When they pulled up at an entryway he saw familiar faces in the throng.

“Titus!” Shell leaped to the rescue with Miranda in tow, clamping his arm in a grip so strong he blinked. “You’re hurt!”

“He’s ours, we’re in charge!” Lash exclaimed. “Officer, whatever the problem is, I can explain everything!”

His self-congratulatory mood vanished when Titus saw that it was Miranda’s impaired behavior that turned the tide. The police officer looked from Titus, holding his battered trousers up with both hands, to the child swaying from one foot to the other, and his tone became one of lofty kindness. “Ma’am, traveling with two disabled persons is going to call for more manpower than you got. You have to keep them under your control. Did you download the regulations that apply to air travel with persons of diminished capacity?” Only Lash’s pleading expression kept the hot words between Titus’s teeth.

In the end they were saved by their flight’s imminent departure — it had already been held up while Titus was returned to the fold. Titus was accustomed to seeing his mode of travel, the locomotive or ship or whatever. It was disappointing to board through a tube, so that nothing could be seen of the jetwing itself at all. He might have been walking down a rather narrow and curving corridor in the bowels of the airport building. And the travelling compartment was enormously large but very low in the ceiling, packed with rows of seats full of passengers who gaped at his rags. “Where does the driver sit?” Titus demanded, balking.

“Come along, don’t block the aisle,” Lash said.

“Miranda gets the window seat,” Shell said grimly. “You are sitting right here between Kev and me, where we can keep hold of you. Kev is going to lend you his belt, to keep you decent. And I have safety pins for your shirt, and a first-aid kit. Let me patch up your shins before Sabrina goes ballistic.”

“Titus, what happened?” To Shell Lash added, “He was sitting beside me all snug and tight, and then he vanished.”

Titus told the entire story, distracted by Shell’s ministrations — she hardly needed to roll up his trouser leg to wipe off the blood, the fabric was so raveled. Lash’s little machine glowed softly. His words were somehow being shared with the rest of the TTD. But it was important that they be caught up — Lash had been obliged to reveal their names and business to the police officer, and for certain the news would leak out. So he made his account clear and complete, recounting every word of the conversation with young Brabazon and Mrs. Zonderman. “I still don’t understand where it went sour,” he concluded. “It was a damned odd place to change vehicles.”

“Shell, this time they’ve blown themselves wide open.” Lash’s pale face flushed with excitement. “It’s attempted murder.”

“Come now, Lash,” Titus protested. “Letting a man out of a motor is hardly malicious.”

“Letting you out, on a major freeway interchange? Titus, don’t you see? You couldn’t find a tidier way to kill someone who can’t manage modern traffic, if you worked at it with both hands for a week.” Shell folded the unused sticking plasters back into her first-aid box with an unfaltering hand, but fury had dashed the color from her cheeks. “Look at your injuries — it’s a miracle you weren’t killed. It’s like tossing a child or a dog out onto the highway!”

“Deliberately putting Titus into peril.” Lash clicked busily away at his machine. “Oh, we’ve got them now. Probably not on legal grounds — “

Shell blew out an indignant breath. “What more evidence can the police possibly need?”

“Well, he has been known to open a moving car’s door before, Shell. She’ll just say it was his own idea. But at least Rick can spin this so that we get the moral high ground.”

Titus slumped in his seat, aghast. Another attempt on his life, such an important and vital event, and he had not even noticed! Mrs. Zonderman had mentioned the plaza, where he had brashly invited her to take a shot at him — a suggestion that in retrospect was like offering a lioness the first bite. Presented with a chance-met opportunity she had frozen onto it as cleverly as Napoleon or Wellington, coming to an immediate decision and swiftly developing an ideal murder method. And not an iota of proof — she hadn’t touched him, and he had opened the door with his own hand. Never, under any circumstance, would he ever underestimate a female again. “A child or a pet indeed,” he said bitterly. “And not a bright one either. Dear God, this is unbearable. I’d be better off dead in the blizzard.”

“Oh no, Titus!”

“It’s not so bad as that,” Shell chimed in almost in the same breath. “I really do know what I’m talking about on this, Titus, so believe me, okay? It’s not you, in there, that has a problem.” Her forefinger tapped briskly on his chest. “And it’s not us either, out here. The problem is here, in the space between.” She flapped a plump competent hand in the air between them. “You just have to learn to make the right noises, to connect, to get through to other folks.”

“In other words, everything I’ve learnt in my life is useless, and I have to shovel it over the side and begin again.”

“But Titus, you did connect. Beautifully! You did so great, I’m proud of you — got the attention of the highway patrol to rescue you, as smart as if you’d lived here all your life. I wish you could’ve seen poor Kev’s face, when the State Highway Patrol linked.” She giggled at the memory so that he had to laugh too. After all, he had not done so badly, to escape with his life! She glanced past him, at Miranda. “It is a big jump, I know. But bigger ones have been made. And not only by the Fortie Project.”

“All’s well that ends well,” Lash sighed. “Out in Wyoming the Doomsters won’t get another chance at you. You’ll have some elbow room and peace.”

And less opportunity to get into trouble, Titus reflected sardonically. But damned if he was going to repine. Shell was right — others had it worse. None of these irritations mattered now that the flight was starting. The connecting tubes fell away and their vehicle began to trundle slowly along. There was far less engine noise than he would have guessed, nothing like the diesel clatter of a sledge or a motor. He held his breath, looking forward to a sudden skyward leap, but let it out slowly again when it became plain that he was getting ahead of the horse. The ascent was going to be gradual, with a long run-up.

Still his stomach was tense with anticipation. How could the other passengers be so calm? At the end of their row, Lash had taken out some papers. Shell was consulting her machine. Even the child was uninvolved, counting the magazines and pamphlets crammed into the seat pouch. Flying is commonplace, he reminded himself. They do this every day. Even Miranda has done this before. And Shell flies to — was it Texas? every other week to work with the Fortie teams. “When do you have to go back to training?”

“Oh, that’s over, Titus,” she replied absently. “I get eight weeks off to do family stuff, and then we spend September gearing up for takeoff.”

“Takeoff? You mean, leaving?”

Shell gave him a look of astonishment. “Titus, you’re maximal and beyond. Everyone’s been saying that the Amity Star blasts off in October.”

“Of this year?”

“Yes, Titus. It’s been scheduled for a decade. You can not-listen better than any man I know.”

Titus would have retorted that he hadn’t been here ten years ago, but another thought struck him. “Then this is your last summer here. Because you’ll be gone for years, maybe — “ Hastily he caught back the word ‘forever.’ She was still clicking away at the little machine, and he realized the idea was nothing new to her.

Lash looked up from his paperwork. “Could you be discreet, Titus?”

Titus recalled he was supposed to be going into hiding. More quietly he said, “You shouldn’t be spending these last days dragging a stranger like me round. You should be devoting the time to your family and friends.”

“Don’t fret about it, Titus. All part of the job, and I’m spending the time with Miranda too. How can you call yourself a stranger, after I’ve talked the New York State Highway Patrol out of arresting you for indecent exposure?” She gave him a smiling glance.

“I wouldn’t presume to count myself among your friends, Shell.”

She laughed. “That’s so — so British! Of course you’re a friend, Titus. And Miranda, if all you’re going to do is play with the magazines, maybe you could switch seats so that Titus could look out the window.”

Miranda was if anything more anxious to explore a new seat pouch, so the switch was made. Lost in thought, Titus didn’t appreciate the view at first. How could she call him friend? The puppy-like friendliness of the American character was proverbial — never backward in going forward, the saying went. But surely friendship called for more than one month’s acquaintance, even among Yanks. It is Shell herself who is rare, he decided. This quality was as she said, part of the job. Now that he came to think about it, he realized she was the only modern who didn’t crowd him — who instinctively kept the right distance. Being a Christ-almighty wonder at making friends was an incomparable gift in a person who was going to Tau Ceti to meet unknowable aliens.

A tug at his sleeve interrupted this train of thought. Miranda pointed at the window. “We’re in the air!” he exclaimed. He pressed his forehead to the plastic pane. A huge blue world had opened beyond, the sky clear and pure as glass. With a thrill of delight he realized that the white cottony surface below was clouds. He was seeing the tops of clouds! Not even eagles flew so high!

Since they were sitting towards the front of the vehicle, he could get a fine view of the wing. Its silvery metal skin gleamed in the sunshine almost too bright to look at. No method of propulsion was visible, and nothing within his sight moved. For all he could tell, the jetwing utilized the same flight principles as a witch’s broom.

Through gaps in the clouds below he could see the earth beneath. It was hard to say what they were passing over, but the map Lash had showed him had not depicted any mid-American oceans, so Titus assumed it was land below. Shell was quite right. He had to start paying attention to what was going on around him. “The problem,” he told Miranda, “is like yours — distinguishing the important from the incidental.”

The child replied, “Seven.”

“Seven magazines, very good,” he interpreted, correctly he hoped.

When the jetwing landed he began exerting attention immediately. “May I see the pilothouse, or whatever you call it?”

“The cockpit,” Lash said. “I don’t believe there’ll be time, Titus — we have to make our connecting flight.”

“The hop to Grizzly is on a smaller airplane,” Shell said. “You’ll have a better chance to see then.”

Titus kept this in mind, and when they climbed aboard the smaller plane demanded a tour. They were the only passengers, so he felt confident he wasn’t giving too much inconvenience. “And perhaps Miranda will like to see too?”

“I don’t think so, Titus. She’s getting over-stimulated.” Shell fastened Miranda’s seat belt. The child was trembling like an overdriven horse, visibly nearing the end of her resources. Shell herself looked little better. He would have remarked upon it, but nothing could be done, so it would be more polite not to notice.

This vehicle was very different from the jetwing. For one thing it had true wings, just like the aeroplanes of his day. There were seats for a mere two dozen passengers. There were no stewards or stewardesses, but only a pilot and co-pilot. Titus went forward to peer into the cockpit, careful not to disturb the preparations for takeoff. What a lot of screens and switches! Was there nothing simple in this era? But the controls were not outrageously much more complex than those of a taxi. And I am sure I could drive their motors, Titus reminded himself. This is not out of my reach.

Even the flight felt simpler, closer to the way birds flew. Titus had a clear view of the pavement speeding along under them, and felt the wheels leave the pavement when they became airborne. And they soared not to the godlike heights, but at a more human level, close enough to make out a car on the one road. He could pick out very few signs of human habitation now. “It’s the Prairie Wilderness Area,” Lash told him. “No motors allowed.”

“Truly?” It sounded like deliberate insanity to Titus. To have motors fail due to extreme cold as they did in the Antarctic was one thing. But to bar them on a whim? “What for?”

“To keep the region pristine, of course.”

“Wouldn’t it be more productive to build houses, or plough the land and sow it to crops?”

“Titus, it’s a wilderness area,” Shell repeated, confused.

“But this is lunacy. Wilderness is for taming. It’s no good to anybody as wilderness.”

“Titus, think about it,” Shell persisted. “Would you want the entire world to be built over, like New York City?”

“Of course not. But that’s a very different thing from some nice productive farmland.”

“Shell, this argument is hopeless,” Lash interposed. “Titus, I advise you to not try and understand it now. Write it off as one of the peculiar things Americans do in this century. Some other day, you can read up on the entire history of the conservation movement.”

“You are surely a very odd race,” Titus agreed.

Chapter 10

Titus had not realized how large the airports in New York and Denver were until they arrived at Grizzly Springs. The single runway and lone hangar looked lonely and small in the middle of the flat prairie. The plane tilted in a wide circle before coming down, and he saw vehicles, their hoods gleaming like the carapaces of ten thousand beetles. “Well, it is the height of the tourist season,” Lash said.

“That’s the motel and the campground,” Shell said. “Don’t worry about it — we won’t be staying there. Mag’s place is on the other side.”

“Good,” Lash said. “I’ve never camped in my life, and I’m too old to begin.”

“Eyewash — you can’t be any older than I.” But then Titus thought about it. “Lash, how old am I?”

“Just stick to your physiological age,” Shell suggested. “You’re, what, 33?”

“It was my 32nd birthday when I — when you people came for me. So yes, I suppose I am 33 now.” Titus wiped a sudden prickle of sweat from his upper lip. “God, it just hit me again. Sorry.”

The plane was landing. But he could not give this exciting event the attention it deserved, confronted again with the past. I did what had to be done, he thought. But what a sorry performance, the lot of us starving and freezing to death like kittens lost in the snow! We should have had done better — we could have! But this shaming thought was so painful that a less scalding alternative instantly presented itself: perhaps I really did die after all. Froze to death, and things here don’t make any difference. They’re hallucination, Tam Lin in the country of the Fay, completely unreal —

But no — here was something real, pinching his fingers rather. Shell was squeezing his hand, surprising him again with her strength. “You’ve had a long tiring day,” she said. “Running out of steam?”

He sat up. “Not at all! I was just, just thinking.”

“Right, you keep it that way.” She patted his hand. “Come on, we’ve landed.”

This airport was too small to have any tube corridors. They climbed down some stairs from the plane to the sunny hot tarmac. There were a few people waiting in the shade of the terminal building. Unobtrusively Titus hung back. How did the modern woman greet a man she was no longer married to, and his second wife? An encounter of this sort in his own time, if it could even be imagined, would call for pistols or a horsewhip.

But nobody now seemed worried or tense. All the drama was supplied by Miranda, whose humming had become a sort of mumble or chant, almost weeping but without tears. An extremely tall rangy person loped forward, crying, “Oh, the poor li’l filly, it’s been a hard day in the saddle, hasn’t it!” Only her voice told Titus this creature was female — she was lean as a rail and clad in heeled boots and the blue trousers that he would have to learn to call jeans instead of dungarees, with a broad-brimmed hat and steel-rimmed glasses.

The child did not look up or reply, wound tightly in the cocoon of her own motion and noise. Shell said, “Mag, dear, I’m so glad to see you!”

Mag gave her a hug round the shoulders. “Honey, at least you’re looking prime. What would be best for Miranda here? Should we take her home, or hang here for a while so she can pull herself together?”

Behind her a huge wide man loomed. “Home,” he said in a voice as deep as cannon-fire. “Right away. We have a new jigsaw puzzle all ready ‘n’ waiting, Shell.”

“Wonderful, Nat. A couple hours assembling it and she’ll feel much better. Oh, and do you remember Kev here? Mag, this is Dr. Kevin Lash. And where’s Titus?”

“Here,” Titus said promptly.

“Nathaniel Longtree and his wife Mag,” Shell said, more formally for his benefit. “This is Titus Oates.”

“How do you do.” His clothing had not grown any less dirty and torn on the journey, but a horse’s size and action carried off a rugged appearance, so he could hope a man might do the same. Instinctively he held out his hand to Nat. Mag startled him by seizing it first and pumping it up and down in a strong narrow grip like a steel clamp, standing just that little bit too close for comfort.

“Shell’s told us all about you,” she said. “I hear you’re looking forward to working hard!”

“Yes.” He was at a loss what else to say.

“Mag’s gonna love you then,” Nat rumbled. He stood six and a half feet tall, nearly a head taller than Titus himself, and much broader. Titus made an effort not to stare up at the brown leathery face under the broad black hat-brim. Nat must be getting on for fifty, with streaks of grey in his long black hair tied back into a tail.

Titus could not imagine Shell married to him. “How on earth can they mount you?”

Nat laughed, a deep earthquake sound. “No problem as long as the horse is built right.”

“Let’s head ‘em up and move ‘em out,” Mag said. “We brought the van, so there’s room for everybody. And Kev’s found the baggage.”

They went into the small airport building, where Titus moved to take over several bags from the frailer man — Lash would never have made a sledger! In mid-handoff an earsplitting scream echoed through the room, startling Lash into dropping a case. Miranda had flung herself to the ground screaming. “Oh dear, the poor child!”

Titus watched, awed, as she flailed and kicked and bit. “By Jove, quite a tantrum. Good thing she waited till we were on the ground, eh?”

“Yes, I think Shell only just managed to get her this far without disaster.”

They were not going to progress for a while. Titus set the bags down again. The clerk behind the counter asked, “Do they need help?”

Titus scowled at this officiousness. “Thank you, but I believe her parents are in charge of the situation.” In fact he wasn’t sure of his own opinion. He had no experience of children, and in his time this sort of exhibition had properly been treated with severity. But Miranda laboured under unusual burdens, and Titus instinctively respected her endurance. He kept an eye on the Longtrees and Shell, who were on their knees trying to calm the child down, and when Shell rose and came towards them he was ready with a soothing word. “It’s been hard for her. And you, I can see.”

“Oh God, yes. I’m losing it, doing her more harm than good. Let’s take the bags on ahead to the van.”

They scooped up the luggage and followed her out to a small, glaring-hot parking lot. The van, a grubby red vehicle that obviously did much hauling, was easily found. Faded curly gold letters on the side read, “Prairie Schooner Tours.” Lash stuffed his saggy bag in the back. “Titus, will you feel all right riding in a motor vehicle?”

Titus stared. “Why on earth not?”

Lash coughed tactfully. “Well, they did try to murder you with one this morning.”

Titus had to remind himself that in this era suggestions of weakness were not insults, but merely a prelude to sympathy and help. “Balderdash. I’ve been wounded with a rifle too, but it doesn’t prevent me from handling firearms — Shell, is something wrong?”

Shell sat down heavily in the open door of the van. “Oh damn it…do you have a tissue?”

“Here, allow me.” Titus whipped a clean hanky from his sleeve, where he carried it military fashion, and passed it over.

She wiped her streaming eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s just her stress, you know? And the more stressed she is, the more tight I get, until something has to crack somewhere. I usually don’t let it get this far.”

“But on a confined air trip you hardly have a choice.” Titus would have liked to pat her shoulder or hand, but it might be a liberty. Instead he had to stick to inadequate words. “I quite understand how she feels.”

“You couldn’t possibly,” she wept.

“No, I do. Sometimes it’s so frustrating you want to scream and break things. That coffee dispenser of yours had a near squeak of it.”

Lash wrung his hands at this. “Titus, you horrify me. I’ll write up directions for all the kitchen equipment for you, the moment I get back!”

Titus could only hope he would forget, or mislay the directions once written. To Shell he said, “What you need is a good stiff peg. God, I hope it’s not wrong to say that.”

That made her smile. “Does that mean a drink? Great idea, if only we had any.”

“I could do with a tot myself.” He raised an eyebrow at the other man. “Lash?”

“Your faith in me is touching, Titus. But I can’t conjure a whisky out of the asphalt.”

Shell wiped her eyes. “Maybe when we get home. And wherever did you get a handkerchief, Titus? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one except in vids.”

“A stack of them were on the shelf in my room.”

“I bought them,” Lash interposed. “From an antique store — nobody uses cloth hankies nowadays.”

Shell blew her nose. “I appreciate the loan. And here they come. Here we are, darling. Last lap, and we’ll be home soon!”

The child seemed more composed, but was unable or unwilling to climb in. Nat scooped her gently up and set her into a seat. “You take five, Shell,” he said. “We can carry the ball now. I’ll sit with Miranda, and Mag will drive.”

“You are such a rock, Nat.” She clambered through the side door into the rearmost seat and powered the window down. Lash and Titus followed, and Nat brought up the rear, pulling the door to after himself.

The van was hot and dusty. Titus noticed that Mag drove it with steering wheel and gearshift, just like motors in 1912. Perhaps Wyoming was too rural for autopilots. Lash sneezed into a tissue. “They transport animals in this van, don’t they?”

“Just the dog — there’s a trailer for the horses. Don’t tell me you’re allergic to dogs too? I thought it was only cats and horses.”

Lash sneezed again. “I’m allergic to everything.”

“Tomorrow we’ll put him back on the airplane,” Shell said to Titus. “The house is air-conditioned, Kev, so that will help.”

The road was comfortingly narrow and solitary, running beside a shallow river. The further bank was entirely empty, tall yellow-green grass rippling all the way to where the sky-bowl came down to meet it, touched only by the wind. But on this side, tents and vans and trucks and vehicles clustered thick as flies. People were everywhere, butterfly-bright in their modern colours, cooking food, washing up, watching screens, playing with little machines. “Are they all waiting to go on a wagon train tour?”

“No, thank God! This is just the campground.”

The town itself lay beyond, a dusty little settlement of only a few streets, all thronged with tourists. Once past, the air seemed cooler and cleaner. “Look, there’s the ranch,” Mag called from the driver’s seat.

Titus glimpsed dusty pasture fenced with post and rail, sheds and barns, and a tall metal derrick with a spinning windmill at the top. Finally the van pulled up in front of a long low house. It looked nothing like the manor of a proper landowner. For a moment the image of his lost home rose before Titus, Gestingthorpe Hall with its pink bricks mellow in the sun, surrounded by the lush glories of Essex forest and field and meadow.

Titus stepped out of the van into a new world. The air was heavy with a dry oven-like heat. Shrill music was everywhere, the endless creak and stridulation of insects in the grass, in the low dusty shrubbery, in the air. The land was intensely alive, thrumming with vitality, as overpopulated and unsleeping as New York City but much more to his taste. He sniffed the air like a horse turned out to new pastures.

Lash was sneezing again and the other adults were busy with Miranda, so Titus carried the bags in. How good it was to do something useful! He had always had the knack for pitching in when there was work to be done. A blast of frigid air washed over him as he stepped across the threshold, like stepping from August into February.

From the well-worn furnishings and general messiness, he decided this large comfortable room must be the main living space. Its dark wood paneling and lofty ceiling did not look like any of the rooms at the TTD, and still less like the grand stuccoed and paneled drawing-room at Gestingthorpe Hall. A large black-and-brown Rottweiler came up wagging its tail to sniff the bags when he set them down. Titus had owned dozens of foxhounds and other dogs, and knelt, a little stiffly because of his bruises, to make friends. “Hallo, lad. What’s your name, eh?” He stroked the black-velvet ears and examined the tags round the creature’s neck. “Red? It must be American. What kind of a name is that for a Rottie?”

In a window alcove was a low table with the largest jigsaw puzzle Titus had ever seen spread out on it, several thousand tiny cardboard pieces. Immediately she was through the door Miranda dashed over and began turning the pieces over with a ferocious concentration. Titus made no comment, privately assessing the job as impossible for a person of diminished capacities. But at least she was calm and happy now. Mag sighed with relief. “Now you come on in and settle yourselves down. Shell will show you where the guest rooms are, and then we’ll have a nice dinner. You must be starving, Mr. Oates — Shell told me you have a big appetite!”

“I’m sorry to say I’ve always played a good knife and fork. And please call me Titus — everybody does. Or, wait a moment — Lash, didn’t the brass say I’m supposed to use an alias?”

Lash sneezed again. “You’ve got a mouthful of given names. Why not choose one of them?”

Mag said, “That’d be okay — a lot of Westerners traveled ‘under a flag.’ What are your names?”

“Lawrence Edward Grace. But if you shouted ‘Lawrence’ at me in the street I doubt I’d look round. Only my family calls me Laurie. Titus is a nickname that’s stuck for years.”

“Wait, I got a better idea,” Mag said. “Didn’t Shell say you’re an Army man? What rank?”

“Captain, actually.”

“There you go,” she said in triumph. “A perfect summer name, and so period! We’ll call you ‘Captain,’ or maybe even ‘Cap’ when our hair’s down, and no one’ll know you at all.”

“What is ‘period’?” Titus asked, as he followed Shell with the bags down the hall. The way Mag used it the word had a specific meaning, an epitome of perfection perhaps.

“Oh, she’s talking about the time frame they try to keep to for the wagon tours. Anybody or anything that fits in is ‘period.’ Just after the Civil War would be right — 1880, maybe.”

“I was born in 1880,” Titus said uneasily. “This is going to be very strange.”

“It’s fun. People pay a lot of money to do this.”

“They must be totty-headed.”

“You only say that because you were actually there. For us, it’s like seeing a Shakespeare play — a window into the past. Here we are. I’m sharing this room with Miranda, and you and Kev will be over here. Make Kev show you how the bathroom faucets work — this house is built on a slab, so if you flood the bathroom all the rugs’ll be ruined.”

Titus promised to do this, and sat down on one of the narrow beds to take off his brogans. He could at least change out of his rags for the meal. The room was small and plain, its single window shaded to keep out the sun. The heavy wooden furniture looked more like the furnishings he was used to. But the electric lights, the chilly blast of the air conditioning, even the colourful napless rugs that Shell was so concerned about, all these marked the place as of the 21st century. Perhaps these wagon trains, whatever they were, would be truly familiar. Or would it be better to say ‘period’?

At the long kitchen table Nat delighted him by offering a beer. “You still have beer!”

Nat gave Lash a glance. “You haven’t been feeding this boy right.”

“There’s beer in New York, Titus,” Lash apologized. “But Sabrina was concerned that alcohol would throw off her biophysical data.”

“We’ll bring some along,” Mag said. “Shell told us not to prepare any special meals for you, all right?”

“It’d be impossible on the trail anyway,” Shell said, “so you might as well begin.”

“I would much prefer that.”

“But Titus!” Lash broke in. “Are you sure? You probably haven’t noticed, but you’ve been on a separate menu all this time. We’ve tried to give you things that weren’t too strange, that you wouldn’t have to waste energy on.”

“No, Lash, I think it’s high time. What’s on your menu tonight, Mrs. Longtree?”

“Mag,” she corrected him. “We have a lot of Western food on the trail. Nat saves the gourmet experiments for home — tonight he programmed the kitchen to make chicken chop suey in crêpes.”

The only word of this Titus recognized was chicken, but it might seem like complaining to inquire. Besides, the food was already arriving on big platters carried in by Nat and Shell. No tongs or picks, thank God, but only familiar knives and forks and spoons. Carefully he imitated the others, using the implements they used. The food was unfamiliar but savory, something whitish and flat rolled round a coarse mince of assorted bits. The brown oily broth in the bowls wasn’t soup but a dipping sauce, very palatable.

“After dinner we’ll tog you out,” Mag said to Shell. “Cap, too. I got my eye on a long riding skirt for you.”

Shell said, “Just don’t put me in that ruffled number from last year. I looked like a mop, and blondes shouldn’t ever wear avocado.”

“And the problem with you, Cap, is the way you sound.”

It took Titus a moment to recall that Cap was his new cognomen. “The way I sound? What do I sound like?”

“English. What’s a Brit doing, roaming around the prairie with a wagon train?” Titus stared at her, uncomprehending, and she went on impatiently, “We need a scenario, hon — a reason for you to be here.”

With an almost audible click of the mental gears Titus grasped, not so much what Mag was on about, but what she actually was. Of course! This woman was an eccentric, just like the potty spinsters one could find any day in England. The ladies who kept twenty-four King Charles spaniel lap dogs in their drawing-room, or collected antique tatting, or drew up family trees showing their descent from William the Conqueror, or sculpted statues like Kathleen Scott — Mag was their descendant and heir. He felt a glow almost of affection for Mag, so handily categorized.

And with a category in hand, Titus knew how to respond. In England, that land of eccentrics, one learned rapidly that there was no arguing with obsessions — either leap into their interests feet first, or avoid them entirely. Luckily Mag was not so imposing as Mrs. Scott. He only had to think for a moment. “Suppose I’m a younger son, seeking his fortune in America? I seem to recall gold-mines or some such out here.”

“Aren’t you the smart one!” Mag beamed at him over her glasses.

Nat helped himself to another crepe. “That was California, and the gold was mostly all gone by the Civil War.”

“There’s an idea,” Shell said. “What about togging him up in one of your Civil War jackets?”

Mag clapped her hands in joy. “You say you were a captain? Of cavalry? I have just the thing! And I can guess how it was. You came over from England to make your fortune, and were hired by a rich Boston family to take their son’s place in the Union Army. And now the war’s over, you’re riding shotgun for the wagon train.”

Titus nodded his acceptance of this. “I hope that’s not just a turn of phrase,” he added. “I can handle a gun.”

“We only carry rifles sometimes for show,” Nat said. “They’re a mix — some props, and a few old guns that used to belong to my uncle. You can look ‘em over — they’re in the cabinet.”

Titus gloated inwardly at the prospect. Let those accursed Doomsters take a shot at an armed man! He would have liked to look into it immediately after dinner. But instead Mag collared him and dragged him off to his bedroom, where deep closets bulged with clothing. Shell followed. “You’re probably going to have to alter things to fit him. Is there going to be time? When does the next tour leave?”

“Day after tomorrow, so there’ll be time as long as I don’t have to rebuild anything major. Let me see your shoulders, Cap. My, you’re a husky one. I think that pants will be hopeless. We could buy you some jeans.”

“I’m afraid the clothes I wore here are fit only for the dustbin. But I brought some riding breeches, and my boots.”

“Good. Oh Shell, don’t toss things like that! Here, this might fit you.” In moments the clothing was dragged out and piled in heaps all over the beds and floor. Titus retreated to a chair in the corner while the women discussed the relative merits of a grey coat versus a dark blue one.

“This blouse should fit me,” Shell said. “Just look at these teeny pleats!”

“Try it,” Mag said. “And here, Cap, could you put this on?”

She tossed him a dark blue uniform jacket. Titus fingered the dense smooth wool with approval. “This is the way garments should be. Modern clothing is — “ He broke off with a silent hiccup of shock. Shell was pulling her shirt over her head, revealing a startling expanse of tanned bare back. Titus knew almost nothing about women’s underpinnings, but even to his ignorant eye Shell’s undergarments seemed to be fantastically abbreviated.

And he should have taken the hint, when that hussy on the street corner had suggested autographing her stomach! Apparently stripping off clothing was not an event worthy of remark for ladies in this era, because Shell was saying, “How come there’s always a button missing? Do you still have that enormous bag of odd buttons?”

“Sure do. Don’t worry about matching it. Even a close-enough match would be all right. Cap, if you’d put that thing on we could see if it’s long enough in the sleeve.”

“Certainly.” Titus dragged the jacket on and fumbled to button the central row of gold buttons, resolutely averting his eyes.

Mag pored over a large illustrated volume. “A Civil War cavalry captain wore yellow stripes down his trousers,” she said. “Also yellow shoulder straps, and two silver bars on his epaulettes. We can’t do the trousers, but we could fix up the shoulder straps. And you could’ve pawned the silver bars or lost them at cards, devil-may-care rascal that you are.”

“I feel certain I did.” The jacket was loose through the waist, and he was glad to turn round while Mag took the seams in with pins.

“But otherwise it fits like a charm,” she gloated. “Don’t he look fine, Shell?”

“Like a million bucks,” Shell agreed. “And what do you think about this, Titus?”

He turned back, stiffening the sinews to meet anything, but was vastly relieved to see Shell in long skirts and a sprigged calico shirtwaist, a bonnet clapped on over her curls. “You look like — like a civilized woman.”

“For the first time, you mean,” she said, grinning.

“Yes — I mean, no!” He knew she was teasing him, but couldn’t help flushing with embarrassment. “You know precisely what I mean, Shell. Until this month I’ve never seen a female in trousers. Or with bare legs, for that matter. Now, dressed like that, you look so right.”

Mag blinked at him over her glasses. “Guess I didn’t really believe it deep down till now. You surely are a time traveler, Captain.”

“And he’s been as brave as a lion,” Shell said. “It’s been dreadfully hard, Titus, I know it.”

She held out a hand to him and he took it, bowing as the dancing-master had clouted him into learning in boyhood. “No,” he said honestly. “I’ve done harder things.”

Chapter 11

Titus did not sleep well that night. He blamed Dr. Lash, wheezing and sniffling in the other bed. Or perhaps it was that odd supper? But fiery-hot dreams kept Titus tossing and turning, dreams that slipped away in the moment of waking leaving him to sift memory in vain.

Mag’s excellent breakfast did much to restore him: eggs, ham, and potatoes fried together, washed down with strong black coffee. “I’ll be driving Kev back to the airport,” she said. “Nat honey, you can take Miranda and Cap out to get acquainted with the horses and their rig. Shell, you come with me, and we’ll pick up a truckload of groceries on the way back. We’ll pack the wagons this afternoon. Tomorrow we start at first light.”

Titus was touched at how the impending departure seemed to affect Dr. Lash. “I won’t be able to help worrying, Titus,” he said. “Be sure and call if you have any questions or problems, or even if you just want to talk. Shell will have her uplink going when she can. And just in case, this is something you won’t have used before: a drone card. Any phone or communication board will accept it — just stick the card into the slot, and it’ll find me. Keep it carefully in a safe place, because it would be a distinct bore if you lost it.”

Titus took the card. “I will,” he promised. “I’m truly grateful for all your help, Lash. You’ve been damned conscientious. Without your thoughtfulness I should soon be in the soup.”

“In any case I’ll see you in September, when Shell goes to Florida for the final departure prep.”

“Shall we all go see her off?”

“Oh, we must. It’ll be the event of a lifetime!”

“Cap, if you’re ready we need to get going,” Nat called. “Horses got to be fed.”

Titus gave Dr. Lash a quick handclasp. “Have a good trip, Lash, and we’ll see you soon.” It rather touched his conscience, that it was such a relief to say goodbye. Lash was the biggest stick in nature, but he meant only well by him. A true gentleman would respond with genuine warmth and gratitude, rather than aping it by an act of will.

Nat’s truck was open at the back in a way Titus had not seen even on the freeway interchange, the better to accommodate a heap of tack and gear. The fashion in the West apparently leaned towards heavy mud splashes halfway up the sides, and rubber boots wedged upside-down between the cab and the truck bed. “We’re going to our staging point,” Nat said. “Over hard by the wilderness area.”

“Horses,” Melinda said, with as much excitement as Titus had ever heard from her.

“Yep. You can ride Taffy, hon, same as you did last year. Cap, you look over the stock and see if there’s a mount you cotton to. Shell tells me what you don’t know about horses could be carved on the head of a pin.”

“How many do you bring on each trip?”

“We drive a couple wagons, pulled by two horses each. Depends on how many riders we get, but usually another eight or ten. So there’s a total of ten or twelve guests, and four guides and wranglers.”

“‘n’ me,” Miranda said with naive pride.

They turned off the narrow road at a gate. Titus would have climbed out to open it, but Nat pointed a tiny black machine, and the gate swung back like magic. ”Solar-powered opener,” Nat explained, which meant precisely nothing to Titus. Behind a slight rise in the prairie huddled a cluster of sheds. The horses were just visible at the far end of the pasture, which was fenced with wire netting stretched between wooden posts. Nat pulled up and cut the engine. “Get a saddle first,” he said. “Guess you want English style.”

“I’d like a look at the other kind,” Titus said cautiously. But the Western saddle looked so awkward and unnatural with its high cantle and tall horn that he was glad to select the best of the English ones on offer.

While he did this, Nat forked a rectangular bale of hay from the back of the truck. He clipped the wire that held it together and kicked the bale to loosen it. Already the horses were approaching to investigate. Nat chose a small bright-bay gelding. “Here’s your Taffy, hon. And you, Cap — pick yourself a horse.”

Titus looked them over. Six or eight of the animals were big draught horses, probably Belgian crosses with their light bay coats and blond manes — the wagon teams. The remaining horses were obviously job animals, hard-mouthed and tame as tabbies. Titus wondered whether he’d mount a spirited horse ever again. The best was a spotted grey gelding with white hindquarters, markings he had never seen before. When he took the halter the animal rolled a dark eye at him. “Quietly, old chap.”

“Why that one?”

“Good bones here.” Titus ran a knowledgeable hand over the horse’s shoulder and back. “A deep chest and good legs mean he’s strong enough to carry weight all day. Let’s see your feet, lad.” He got the front hoof up for a moment — quite sound, no founder rings or quarter cracks. But the gelding was having none of it and wrenched away with a snort. “You don’t shoe them, I see.”

“Don’t need to, on grass trails.” Nat smiled. “You got a good eye, Cap. Cloud here is my horse, mostly. Indians look convincing on Appaloosas.”

Titus straightened, embarrassed. “I’d better choose another, then.” And how confusing! Wasn’t the term Indigenous American or some such?

“Nope — you’re welcome to ride him when I’m driving. Get a saddle on him.”

Titus obeyed, his hands carrying through the familiar tasks without supervision. He checked the girths and swung up into the saddle. Hopping with excitement, Miranda cried, “Wait for me!”

“Certainly.” He kept Cloud in hand, curbing his sudden impatience, while she clambered onto her mount. “Is this the place we can gallop? I’ll race you.”

She almost smiled at him. “Yes!” And they were off, faster and faster, to the far end of the pasture and then thundering round to the sheds again. It was glorious. The sensation of space, of unlimited freedom under the tremendous dome of blue sky, was sweet as champagne. He wanted to shout with joy.

Instead he got Cloud by the head so that Miranda could speed ahead. She could have been any little Amazon on horseback, the dark plaits whipped by the wind, squealing with excitement. And for the first time Titus could read Nat’s expression clearly, the happiness mixed with fatherly concern. “I won!” Miranda shouted.

“You sure did!”

“Taffy has the legs on poor Cloud here,” Titus agreed. “She’s a cracking good rider, Nat — wasted in New York City.”

Nat smiled again. “We’re gonna do something about that. Meantime, suppose you come look at the wagons.”

Titus helped to back two of the wagon horses up to the shaft and hitch them up. He drove a short turn round the yard to get the feel of the high long wagon — Nat obviously had no more doubts about his competence. “She’ll ride a lot more logey when we’re loaded up,” Nat warned. “We’ll get the canvas tops on, and pack up when the gals come with the food.”

It was pleasant labour, out in the hot windy sunshine. Titus had captured covered wagons very like these from the Boers in South Africa, so he could handle the wooden bows and canvas top. They looked familiar, but the wagons carried equipment that would have astounded the Boers — solar-powered refrigerators, water filter jugs, self-inflating mattress pads to go under the sleeping bags, and the usual assortment of sleek little machines. “For emergencies,” Nat said of these last.

He also taught Titus how to handle the colourful nylon tents and the big dining canopy. These popped open at a touch like umbrellas, very different from the clumsy pyramid-shaped canvas tents of the Polar Expedition. Titus could have played with the equipment all day. “If only Scott had sleeping bags like this,” he said, marveling. “We used reindeer-hide bags — warm, but they smelled beastly and weighed like lead.”

“We’re taking two family parties out this round, so you even get your own tent.”

“You’ll spoil him, Nat!” Shell hopped down from the van, which had just pulled into the yard.

“I don’t think so.” Nat gave him a nod of approval. “I think he’s gonna pull his weight.”

“Good!” Mag beamed at Titus. “You can start now by helping to unload.”

They unloaded more food than Titus believed anybody could eat in a week. For only a five-day jaunt! And this was no mingy menu of pemmican and biscuit, the iron ration of the Polar sledger. Mag had brought bags of fruit, meat, fresh bread, layer cakes, and deep-dish pies. The wagons were packed according to a complicated system managed by Mag’s little machine that minimized repacking en route. When the van was empty Shell undertook to drive back and finish dinner. “Miranda can have a bath, and Titus can look at the guns,” she proposed.

“I would like that very much,” Titus said. “If I can get one operational I could do some shooting for the pot.”

“Uh, no hunting in the wilderness area, Cap,” Mag said. “But it’s a grand idea, very period.”

“No hunting?” Titus demanded of Shell in the van on the way back. “How can that be? It’s preposterous.”

“I promise you, Titus, if you shoot a deer or a bunny the tourists will lynch you on the spot. Not only is it illegal here, nobody will understand or approve.”

“I’d wager Nat and Mag would,” he grumbled.

“Well, but it’s the tour groups who are paying the piper. Everything caters to them. But they’d love to see you shoot. So authentic, you know. Maybe at a target. I’ll bet you’re good at it.”

“Target shooting is poor fun,” he said, mollified in spite of himself. “But we’ll see.”

“And what do you think of being a tour wrangler, Titus? Will a working vacation here suit you?”

“Down to the ground, Shell. Nat and Mag are fine people, and you’ve smoothed the way for me. There probably isn’t another job on earth where I could contribute usefully.” Only when he said this aloud did a feather of doubt brush him. Did a vacation in the past count as facing and mastering the future?

Concentrating on the road, Shell didn’t notice his wavering. “Well, we haven’t really begun yet. You think that riding herd on a bunch of daffy tourists will drive you nuts?”

“As long as I can do it from horseback I’ll be happy. I only hope I don’t muff it somehow.”

She smiled. “Gosh, I love it when you talk British.”

From between them Miranda piped up, “Talks good.”

“My truest supporter,” Titus said.

The guns were locked in a cabinet in the main room. While Shell hunted out the key, Titus peered through the dusty glass door. It did not look promising. “Be careful of the rugs, okay?” she said. “They’re Navaho textiles. Maybe I better give you a dropcloth.”

Titus obediently spread out the piece of plastic she gave him on the floor. (How could something plastic be a cloth?) Then he sorted out the contents of the cabinet: three things that looked like shotguns but with solid barrels and no moving parts — toys or stage props, he assumed. One battered and rusty lever action .22 Marlin rifle, with a stock that had apparently been chewed by a large toothy animal. A broken starter pistol, a revolver made out of orange plastic, and a wooden gun made to shoot gum-bands.

“A sorry collection,” he grumbled. Junk! Only the Marlin might be worth salvaging. He examined it more carefully, opening the action to see if there were cartridges in the chamber or magazine. From what he could make out, peering down the barrel, the bore wasn’t pitted. Perhaps the weapon wouldn’t blow up in his face when he fired it. He wandered round the house looking for Shell. To his amazement he saw that on the table near the window Miranda had almost completed the jigsaw puzzle, which depicted an Alpine scene. Shell was in the kitchen, and he told her, “I’ll need some steel wool, a long stiff wire, and some gun oil, if it can be found.”

Shell slid a pan loaded with crisply-roasted chickens out of the oven. “I don’t even know what gun oil is. Do they squeeze it from guns, the way you get olive oil from olives?”

“Ignorant creature. A light machine oil would do. Are we really going to devour all these birds? You must have a dozen of them.”

“Most of them are for the tour tomorrow, but if you’re very good we’ll have a couple tonight.”

The brown greasy aroma was irresistible. When she turned to reach down a serving platter Titus gave a chicken wing a tug. It was piping hot and refused to part company with the parent bird. When Shell saw she laughed. “Titus! Paws off!”

“Just checking for doneness.” He cooled his scorched fingers in his mouth. “Delicious! You’re a wonderful cook. And I’m pretty hungry, Shell. When’s dinner?”

“Oh, you persuasive skunk.” With the poultry shears she snipped off a wing joint. “Here. Dinner will be when the others get back, nobody knows when.”

“You’re an angel,” he said, returning her grin.

“I know the way to a man’s heart. Feed them and they love you. Now let me alone to finish the potatoes. Nat probably has some machine oil out with the tools in the garage, that way.”

Gnawing on the chicken wing, he went out the door she indicated into the empty garage. It was a cinderblock structure with a wooden shed roof. A long workbench filled one entire wall, and woodworking tools hung neatly above. Nat must do his own wagon repair. There was some oil in a small can on the shelf. Titus selected a few tools, some wood putty, and some pads of steel wool, rolling everything in a bit of rag.

Over supper he mentioned his depredations to Nat. “I didn’t think any of those guns were salvageable,” Nat replied.

“The Marlin is the only one with a prayer.” Titus helped himself enormously to fried potatoes.

“And they’re the same? I mean, you can make a modern gun work?”

“Until I do a test-fire, I don’t know. But it’s not too strange. I take it guns haven’t changed that much over the years.”

“Do it on the trail,” Mag said. “The guests will love it. I still have to run your jacket through the sewing machine. We’ll have a dress rehearsal tonight for you and Shell and Miranda, just to be sure you have all the bits and pieces you need.”

“A saddle holster for the rifle would be good,” Titus said.

“We got that,” Nat said. “There’s even a box of .22 cartridges somewhere.”

“Miranda is going to need a string or a scarf or something, to hold her hat onto her head,” Shell said.

“We better find Cap a hat too,” Mag said. “And a shirt.”

After dinner Titus put on his riding breeches and high boots for Mag, who had set up her sewing machine in the kitchen. “This shirt should fit, Cap. Slip it on, will you?”

Hiding his shyness, Titus took off the shirt he was wearing and put on the new one, which was comfortably well-worn and made of sturdy blue-and-white striped cloth. It not only looked right, it hung and wrinkled the way clothing should. The wrongness of the modern garments Lash had provided for him went past cut and color, right down to their novel uncreasing fibers.

“That one looks long enough in the sleeve. We can probably find you more the same size, so you’ll have a change. Go root out a hat and some suspenders for him from the closet, Shell. I’ll have this jacket done in two shakes.”

He almost protested — suspenders were women’s gear! — but then he realized she was talking about braces. As he buttoned the shirt up, a button sprang off the front placket and rolled away. Shell pounced on it before the dog could investigate. “Will I have to sew this on for you, Titus, or can you do it yourself?”

“I can sew, but my buttons look horrible, as if they’d been nobbled.”

“We can’t have that — I’ll do it while you try on hats.”

They adjourned to the bedroom, where Shell extracted dozens of hats from boxes and bags. Titus tried on the round blue kepies that went with the blue jacket, but they were all too small. “A wide brim gives you better protection from the glare,” Shell advised, sewing away. “How about that officer’s hat? A stampede strap is always a good thing.”

Titus put on the broad-brimmed dark felt hat with the brass wreath insignia, and eyed his reflection in the bureau mirror with disfavour. “How odd that Mag looks perfectly natural in these hats. While I look like a clot. Perhaps it’s because she’s American and born to it.”

“Oh, you do not, Titus, you look very handsome.” She snipped off the sewing cotton and stuck the needle into the reel of thread. “All right, put it on again. She’ll want to see the shirt with the jacket and hat.”

He obeyed, but the button had been so firmly reattached that it refused to go through the buttonhole. “You can’t have done it right.”

“Oh for pete’s sake, let me see.” She took the scissors to snip a thread or two on the buttonhole edge. “Brute force and ignorance, that’s the solution.” Triumphantly she forced the button through. He looked down at her deft fingers and bent head, and suddenly the blood pounded so hard in his ears he was afraid she could hear the thump. Like a fool he stiffened, not a pulling away but merely a slight tensing of muscles, and the tiny motion alerted her. She looked up. “What is it?”

And he was lost, pinned in her gaze. He gaped down at her, voiceless. The dreams last night, the ones that kept escaping me. This was the dream, she — and I! But he could not say this. Discussing dreams was the height of egotism in any case, and these dreams were beyond impossible. One would sound like a villain, a fool —

She had evidently been thinking too. “Here,” she said, in a firm no-nonsense tone. She slid an arm round his neck, and pressed her mouth against his. For a moment he was utterly at a loss, stunned. Then sensation roared past him like the traffic on a freeway interchange, the sweetness of her lips, the solid muscles of her back under his clasping hands, the warm bumps of her bosom pressing against his chest through the blue and white shirt. An incredible amount of information and hot vibrating life seemed to distill into a tiny span of time, because she let him go almost immediately.

“Not here,” she said, smiling. ”Not under a roof. On the trail, maybe.”

His heart hammered in his chest so that he gaped like a fish, and had to sit on the edge of the bed. She plucked the hat off, dropped a kiss onto his forehead, and put the hat back before she went out. He sagged against the hatboxes as the sparks swam in his eyes. It was impossible to think coherently. A more primal part of his nature seemed to have leaped from the depths fully fledged, dominating reason and rationality, fighting for its share of life in the narrow compass of his torso.

He sat weakly until Mag called from the main room, “Hey Cap, here’s your jacket!”

oOo

The routine on the first day of a tour was for the family, including the dog, to roust out at the crack of dawn, don historical costume, and drive out to the staging area. There was just time for final packing and preparations, while Nat went on with the van to pick up the tour guests at various local motels and campsites. In an ideal world, by midmorning all the guests would have arrived, and the wagon train could roll out. Reality was seldom so kind. Because the party this time consisted of only two family groups, Nat made his round with unusual speed. Far too soon the van came in a cloud of dust down the road, sending Mag into a spiral of efficiency.

“Get your hat on, Shell. Is the point of my shawl even at the back? Cap, have you finished hitching the teams up? Where’s the saddle blankets?”

“Shall I drive?” Titus asked. He was bog-eyed from lack of sleep, and he felt clubbed stupid, unable to think. The only thing he clung to was the work, and the necessity of keeping as far away from Shell as possible. The box of the wagon would be safe, since Shell would be on horseback.

“Not yet — come say howdy first. Miranda honey, hitch Taffy to the rail for a moment.” The van halted in a cloud of dust, and Mag darted to open the big passenger doors. “Come right on down, everybody, and welcome!”

There were eleven of them, a bunch of gaudy trippers with children in tow, their luggage piled high on the roof luggage rack. Nat seemed to already know everyone’s name, rattling them off too quickly for Titus to take in. “And this is Mag, my wife. Miranda, and Shell, and the Captain over there. Cap, let’s get these bags going, huh?”

“Absolutely.” Titus plunged into the task, climbing up onto the van and handing bags down to Nat. Meanwhile Mag and Shell took charge of the guests, sorting out the riders from those who wanted to ride in the wagons. Then horses had to be assigned to each rider and tacked up. It seemed a long time before Nat was able to swing up onto Cloud and call, “Okay, let’s move out!”

Mag swished in a flurry of gingham skirts to the first wagon, loaded with passengers. “You just follow me, Cap. Give ‘em room, don’t come too close, and remember you’re ponying the two spare mounts. The trail’s narrow but passable, and the teams know all about it.”

“I can manage. Allow me.” He handed her up to the wagon-seat with automatic courtesy.

“Now you see that, Renee?” one of the mothers remarked to a child. “That’s the way they used to do it.”

Gritting his teeth, Titus went back to his wagon and climbed up to the seat. His wagon was laden with only luggage and supplies, deliberately arranged, he suspected, for his first trip. He was going to have to learn how to hold up his end with these tourists. Mag and Nat seemed entirely easy with it, and with her enormous gifts Shell already had the group of riders laughing and trotting ahead. Nat on Cloud followed behind the riders in case anyone had trouble, and Miranda rode with him accompanied by Red the dog. Mag waited until the riders were ahead, and then clucked at her team. The wagon lumbered into motion. Well content to be the very last in line, Titus waited until she had a good lead, and then tightened the reins and spoke to his horses.

They trundled back down the dusty road and out the gate. Their way went on, down the slope to the river. The water was merely inches deep, and the horses seemed hardly to notice the ford. Tourists lined up on the bank to photograph the cavalcade. When his wagon’s turn came, Titus saw the riverbed was paved here for better footing. It was all of a piece, he reflected with gloom — the thinnest possible veneer of pioneering and exploration laid over a sturdy understructure of modern conveniences. Once horses and wagons had been genuine tools of everyday life. Now they were nothing but toys for rich Americans, as unreal as mist. Impossible to wind himself into a cocoon flavoured of the past here, even if he wished it. Nobody could mistake this for anything but the 21st century. Solar refrigerators, mattress pads — the entire business was a travesty.

But this festering cynicism was only a symptom of a deeper trouble, and now that the furor of starting was past he could think properly. “What am I to do about Shell?” he demanded of the team. The off horse twitched one ear backwards as if to listen.

Back in his own era the question would never even have arisen. The saying was that an officer ought not to take a wife until he knew what to do with her, which for practical purposes meant attaining the rank of major. Titus’s world had been almost entirely male, oriented towards career achievement and physical activity. A man had only so much energy, and to waste any of it on women was deucedly unpatriotic when there were wars to be fought, ships to be sailed, and ponies to be cosseted across Antarctica. One was supposed to be like the Knights of the Round Table, keeping pure until some distant day when marriage became possible.

Titus had not found this morality difficult, had never even bothered to analyze it, not being of a reflective bent. But that was then. He had not realized it, but he had been surrounded and supported by the entirety of his society and culture. He contemplated those mores now, and realized that removed from their native clime they were not nearly as deeply rooted as he had flattered himself. Did anybody live that way now? He cast his mind back to what he knew of Sabrina, and Lash, and Shell, and even Nat. The human race had gone as loose and lax as a grandmother’s stockings. Perhaps they made up for it by banning hunting!

He had come to another of those seemingly simple tasks that suddenly burgeoned with fantastic complexity. If this were 1912, the proper thing to do would be to freeze the woman right out. No gentleman could respond to Shell’s brazen and improper advances. He was willing to concede that she was not a lightskirt as an Edwardian would define the term. But there might be something radically wrong in modern dispositions. Perhaps all the people of this era were moral cripples, the women casually abandoning their persons to any applicant while the men took advantage of weak and affectionate female nature. That certainly would have been the diagnosis in 1912. But this was not 1912, he reminded himself. The very ground had shifted under his feet, and he no longer knew where to stand.

And in a sudden and violent reversal of feeling, he could admit it to himself: kissing a woman was marvelous! The memory, forgotten until now, of Birdie Bowers on the Polar trek came back to him. “Never been kissed, except by my dear mother,” poor Birdie had mourned in a moment of weakness, while the blizzard clawed at the thin green tent canvas and they had shivered, exhausted but too cold to sleep, in their moulting sleeping bags. Beat you there, Birdie old man, Titus thought smugly. What a delightful creature she was! Intelligent, competent, lovely, truly a compendium of everything desirable.

The trail was closely hemmed by tall yellowy grasses as it rose from the river, but they were coming to the top of the rise. Up against the sky the horseback party was plainly visible. He could just make out Shell, the image of the American West in her divided skirt and buckskin vest, waving her white cowboy hat at them. He snatched off his hat and waved back. Surely there every reason to be happy, with the sky all blue, and the white cloud-palaces rearing up to the zenith, and the sun shining on the endless grassland!

“How’re you doing, son?” Nat called. He and Cloud were waiting by the side of the trail.

“Very well.”

“A short trip today, since it’s their first day out.” Nat turned Cloud to walk alongside the wagon. “Won’t be in sight of the Grand Tetons until tomorrow. Maybe another hour and a half, and we’ll stop and make camp. I’ll mark out the campsite and start digging the firepit and the latrine. You can untack the horses and groom ‘em. They won’t need to be tied. Then we’ll set up tents and move luggage, before supper.”

“Excellent.” Titus watched Cloud trot ahead towards the head of the wagon train, and suddenly it hit him. He was going to sleep in a tent, one of those vividly coloured pop-up nylon bubbles. Not under a roof, Shell had said. My God, is something going to happen tonight?

The prospect gave him the vertical breeze. Events were sweeping past him far too fast, dazing him with the blast of their passage. He would be perfectly happy just to muse upon her charms for another couple weeks, perhaps experiment with kissing so as to get comfortable with it. The most arrant wind-up seized him. He would hide with the horses, hoping she’d be too busy with Miranda and the tour group. He would pitch his tent in the center of the group, and tie the flap tightly so nobody could come in without waking the entire party. He would climb a tree, and spread his sleeping bag out on a high branch.

By the time they arrived at the camp site Titus had worked himself into a pitiable funk. While Mag and Shell dealt with the guests he retreated to settle the horses. Fourteen animals meant a lot of work, but they were also a haven. When Scott had been rather too full of fuss, or when the enforced society of the Polar expedition began to chafe, he’d retreat to the stables to lounge by the blubber stove. He thought of that cosy shed with nostalgia. That had been a life fit for a man, pitting oneself against the unknown -—

“So how’d you do with the wagon, Titus?” Shell asked.

Titus started so violently the currycomb slipped from his fingers, vanishing into the deep grass. He groped for it, and the horse stepped on his foot. “Curse it!” He dug his shoulder hard into its ribs, forcing the beast to lift its hoof. The horse swished its tail, brushing his hat off, and in reaching for both it and the currycomb at the same time he overbalanced, saving himself from an undignified sprawl only by falling against the horse’s leg. The ill-tempered creature turned and gave him a nip. Shell grabbed the halter and pulled its head up. “Cut that out — where are your manners?”

It was now or never, before he made an even worse exhibition of himself. Titus straightened and drew in a ragged breath. “Shell, I am not comfortable.”

“I can see that.” She patted the horse. “Are those shiny boots reinforced through the toe, or did he really hurt you?”

“The devil with my boots!” He took a firm hold of himself. “Shell, I admire you enormously. But I — it…You are the soul of kindness, and you don’t realize…It wouldn’t be the act of a gentleman, to take advantage of you.”

Her mouth quivered, and for a horrendous moment he feared she was going to burst into tears. But then she said, “Take advantage of me? Oh, Titus!”

She was trying not to laugh! Somehow this was the last straw. “If you had been brought up properly, you would know that a woman’s reputation is fragile! It’s the duty of every gentleman to safeguard her good name, to avoid even the appearance of compromising her — “

“If I had been brought up properly?” With a single sweeping motion she snatched up his fallen hat and jammed it onto his head. “Listen to me, buster! I have been around the track — married, a mother, and divorced. I am not a delicate Victorian blossom you have to preserve. If anything, I am taking advantage of you!” She began to laugh. “In fact, that’s much more accurate. The older woman, snaring the handsome young time traveler before he can meet any other girls, and working her wicked will upon him. Oh, I have to tell Sabrina!”

“Don’t you dare! Shell, I’m perfectly serious. I —” Suddenly it came to him what a figure he must be cutting, chattering about his dignity with this ridiculous hat crammed down over his ears, and he began to laugh too. And from there it was so natural and easy to clasp her in his arms that all his nerviness fell away and he knew exactly what to do. Her mouth tasted wonderful, even better than last evening.

After an endless blissful moment she pulled away. “I was going to say, if you really don’t want to, then don’t. I know you’re at a vulnerable time. You shouldn’t do anything you’re not comfortable with. It was an impulse, you know? Just an idea. You were right, when you said I don’t get to indulge a whim much any more.”

“I…” The new and primal creature of passion inside seemed to rise up and grab him by the throat, defying him to lie. “Yes. I want to. But — oh God, Shell, I’m a coward after all. All those stupid books about my bravery and sacrifice are bosh. I’m too windy to grasp what I want.”

She smiled. “Last night you were white as a sheet.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said with feeling. “I thought I was going to faint.”

She patted him on the cheek. “Let me handle the grasping, dear. Tonight after lights-out I’ll come to your tent, okay? All you’ll have to do is lie back and think of England.”

One more fleeting kiss and she was gone. In a daze Titus picked up the currycomb and began grooming the nearest horse. It was several minutes before he identified her last comment, and then he laughed so hard he dropped the brush again.

The task now was to survive until bedtime. Titus groomed all the horses and helped Nat set up tents and carry luggage. And still the afternoon lingered! The sight of the sun stubbornly high in the sky filled him with both impatience and reluctance, a disquieting mixture that should have been impossible as oil and water. “Everything’s bung up and bilge free,” he reported to Mag. “What else is there to do?”

Mag had hung up her sunbonnet and girded herself in a big white apron. “Aren’t you the busy one! I’ve got supper under control, so put your feet up.”

Obediently he went to his tent and pulled off his high hot boots, and the oppressive woolen jacket. But the sight of the mattress pad and rolled-up sleeping bag made his pulse race. Rather than loiter fretting, he took the Marlin and the cleaning gear back to the campfire. Scouring the surface rust off would eat up a lot of time. The wagon tongue made a convenient working surface, out of the way of the cooking at the campfire.

Mag was preparing dinner at the fold-down table that formed the back panel of the other covered wagon, surrounded by a fascinated audience that had evidently never seen real hand cooking before. “Tell us what you’re doing, Captain,” she said. “What’s in the can?”

“Machine oil from your workshop. Real gun oil would be better.” The children were edging nearer to watch. “Would you like to see? I’m rubbing the rust off.”

They were too timid to reply, two boys and a very little girl. “And then what?” Mag prompted.

“I’ll take it apart and clean all the bits.” He worked the lever-action. “Hear that scraping sound? Cleaning will fix that. The barrel should come right off, like this…”

It relaxed Titus to work at a familiar task. A proper steel cleaning rod would have been pleasant, but the stiff wire borrowed from Nat’s workroom made a passable substitute. More than once he would have fallen into his customary silence, but Mag’s casual questions, with additions from the children, kept his slow absent-minded replies flowing.

“No, I’ve never handled a gun quite like this before, but it’s not really strange. All rifles have a lot in common. Maybe the steel is a little odd…Yes, I have bullets. They’re called cartridges, actually…No, I don’t know what happened to the wood at the end. I can fill in the holes with wood putty, though…Oh, one can shoot pretty well with guns like this. When I was a boy I saw Annie Oakley use a Marlin to shoot the center out of a copper penny piece. Ah, you’ve heard of her? She was in England with her Wild West show…A song, ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’? No, I don’t recall her singing it…No, I’m not nearly so good. They called her Little Miss Sure Shot for a reason. Yes child, girls can be good with a gun…No, I’d wager the Forties won’t have rifles…Well, you have to practise. Everyone does. Yes, even I.”

There were still some stubborn flecks of rust, but the barrel was about as shiny as it was going to get. A test fire with a dud cartridge showed that the firing mechanism was in decent form. Titus brought the reassembled rifle up into position and sighted down the barrel. Impossible to believe that the sights on such a battered piece were any good. But there was only one way to find out, and he was too impatient to wait until he could find a proper firing bench. The small risk of the piece exploding was not something he cared to bother his head about. He slipped the box of cartridges into his breeches pocket. “Do you have a piece of paper, Mag, for a target?”

“How about a can, like they use in Hollywood? Could you shoot it out of the air?”

“Not on a first attempt! Some other time, perhaps.” It took him a moment to realize that Americans said ‘can’ when they talked about tins. Paper targets were traditional in the Army, but for shooting out of the air tins were obviously preferable. He paced out thirty yards through the crisp golden waist-high grass, something short of the traditional fifty-yard firing range. The land beyond dipped, but in any case there was no point in making it difficult for himself. He wedged the tin in the crown of a convenient bush where it glinted, shiny and nicely visible in the low rays of the sun, just above grass level. Thank God, the day seemed to be drawing to an end…But quickly he got himself in hand. Thinking about tonight would make his hands shake, to the great detriment of marksmanship.

To his shock when he turned to walk back he saw the entire tour group hanging about the camp, watching. What had he been saying? The cunning of that Mag, drawing him out like that! He hated the idea of perhaps looking the fool, and would have far preferred a smaller audience for this first firing of a strange and probably unreliable piece. And he had by no means been the best shot in the regiment.

But there was nothing for it now but to put a good face on it. He lined up his feet carefully in a good solid stance, and loaded the gun and cocked it. The admonitions of the Inniskilling’s shooting instructor ran through his head: Keep the piece tight and high into the shoulder. Right arm horizontal, left arm well under, knees relaxed. Breathe in, and exhale slowly while squeezing the trigger.

The crack of the shot made everyone exclaim and chatter in surprise. Titus paused in wonder — the sound of a rifle was so commonplace in his time that in the country nobody would have looked twice. Hard to believe, but these people had never heard a gun fired! And blister it, the bullet had gone at least six inches wide to the left, flicking a twig off the bush. He adjusted the windage on the sights for another try. It took half a dozen attempts before he mastered the gun’s idiosyncrasies, but it was worth it when the tin leaped away with a clang and vanished from the top of the bush.

“Bravo!” Mag shouted, leading the applause.

“At this short range I’m making a sad job of it,” he said, flushing. In fact his accuracy had rather surprised him.

Shell said, “You’re much too modest, Captain. Must be because you’re British.”

The children dashed whooping through the tall grass to find the tin and inspect it — very dangerous on a firing range! But it was getting too dark for safe shooting anyway. Titus cleaned the gun and put it away in the wagon, hoping that supper wouldn’t be long now. Nat came by and passed him a freshly opened beer bottle. “Great job, Cap.”

“Not at all,” he replied. “Ah! That hits the spot.”

Nat sat on the tailboard and took a long sip from his own beer. “We’re creating a fiction here. And when someone like you comes by and drops a spoonful of truth into the kettle, it improves the flavor something wonderful.”

“With cartridges and enough practise, I might even progress to shooting a can out of the air.”

“You’ll get ‘em.” Nat looked at him. “You really saw Annie Oakley.”

“I was only a lad, younger than Miranda.”

Nat shook his head. “Pretty soon those historians and professors ‘ll get hold of you, Cap. You’ll tell ‘em all about it, and they’ll be happy as ticks on a tailhead. But in the meantime, we’ve got you. God bless her, Shell’s a wonder, to think of us.”

“God bless her indeed.” How inconceivably bizarre this conversation would have been at the turn of the previous century — the former husband, discussing his wife’s virtues with her aspiring lover! Sweet Heaven, Nat must never know about it. The mere thought made Titus stammer and stash up. Luckily Nat seemed content to sit and drink beer. And a couple minutes later, a thin musical clangour came from the campfire as Mag rang the triangle. “Does that mean supper?”

“Sure does. Let’s go.”

In the intervals of plying him with questions, Mag had contrived to cook an enormous meal over the open fire: chicken and rice with roasted vegetables, plus period fare like baked beans and sourdough biscuit. A real tightener! Titus sat inconspicuously against a wagon wheel and concentrated on putting away his full share, hoping that nobody would pester him with conversation. Afterwards Nat spoke about the settlement of the American West, and Mag brought out a guitar and led the group in cowboy songs.

A beer and a large meal on top of a hard day’s work preceded by two nights of short sleep had their inevitable result. Titus found himself nodding off as he sat. This would never do! Shell would laugh at him…Who was Old Paint, and why was he leaving Cheyenne? Perhaps it would be the better part of discretion to slip off to his tent early …Only a chucklehead would call the wind Mariah…Since Shell was obviously on the best terms with Mag, perhaps Nat would not feel he had to break Titus’s head? Dear God, these people…Why was she singing about the Red River valley? Was the creek they forded this morning the Red River, or did it have something to do with the dog?

Titus couldn’t remember going to his tent, but he came slowly to wakefulness flat on his back on the nylon groundcloth. It was night, but not utterly dark because of the electric lantern at the latrine. Only her silhouette showed that Shell was at the tent flap. “You’re supposed to unroll the mattress pad and the bag.”

“Mmmm.” He was too sleepy to argue. He dozed off again while she arranged the bedding to her liking. Drugged with sleep, he was free of nervousness as she dropped her bathrobe and slid into his embrace. Vaguely he was aware of her grumbling, something about how most men preferred to be fully conscious during sex. He drifted from slumber into passion, easy as a leaf floating downstream.

Just at first light he came broad awake in an instant, sitting bolt upright with a gasp. He was stark naked inside his sleeping bag, quite alone. Where was she? Had he dreamed the entire thing? It was the old disoriented feeling, the haunting sense that none of this was really happening because it was too strange, too unbelievable. Perhaps he had imagined everything. Good God, how could he ever face the woman in broad daylight? One could not bunk up females in dreams, and talk to them with any pretense of equanimity in the morning!

But before he could work himself up into a froth he saw her approaching through the long grass, wearing a striped dressing gown and grass-stained scuffs wet with dew. She bent and peered through the screened window at him. “You’re awake,” she whispered. “A nice change.”

He flung open the tent flap. “Shell, come in, please!”

“Keep your voice down, Titus. Everyone’s still asleep.”

“Hell’s bells. I could hardly believe it really happened!”

“I warned you it’s more fun when you’re awake.”

“I’m sorry.” He whispered as severely as he could. “But that proposition is entirely unproven. I must insist upon a demonstration.”

That made her laugh, very quietly. He was acutely conscious now of his clumsiness and inexpertise. He soldiered on irregardless, pulling her down to the sleeping bag. At his touch the dressing gown fell open like a flower. In the grey half-light her body shone like polished stone, but much softer, exquisitely soft! He could have explored her cushiony luscious roundness forever. But inexorable day was approaching, armed with spears of light. She knew what should happen, and he gladly let her guide his hands, and his mouth, and finally his union with her. Only at the last moment did he remember the need for quiet, and throttled his shout of ecstasy down to a muffled groan.

From the campfire came the distant clatter of silverware and the whistle of a kettle coming to the boil. “You can’t sleep now,” he told her at last. “The sun’s up.”

She burrowed her head into his shoulder with a sigh. “Someday we’ll have to do it right. Lounge around all day in bed, reading the Sunday papers and so forth.”

“And so forth. But in the meantime — perhaps tonight?”

“What have I done? I woke up a tiger.”

“And he’s famished.”

She rolled to her knees, reaching for her dressing gown. “What happened to the stiff upper lip and the stoic English phlegm? Okay, tonight then. But this time you stay awake!”

Titus climbed into his clothes in a reverie of bliss. He could not remember feeling so happy since very early childhood. He waded through the deep grass to the campfire. The dew sparkled like a myriad diamonds in the slanting sunshine. From all around came the shrill chorus of insects, joyfully hailing the new day. The wild green smell of the never-mown grass was solid enough to sink one’s teeth into. A blue speckleware coffeepot was keeping hot on a flat stone at the edge of the firepit, and he went down on one knee to help himself to a mugful of Mag’s superb coffee. Every molecule of his body, every drop of his blood, seemed to leap with joy.

Kneeling by the fire, he understood what was happening. He had come to this place of shimmering life from a country where every breath hurt, where the Polar winds cut like flensing knives and the touch of metal on bare skin raised blisters. For months he had needed to not-listen and not feel and above all not think, steadfastly shutting everything out except the bare minimum of sensation. It had been a matter of life and death to ignore frostbite and exhaustion and starvation and gangrene. The discipline of stoicism was armour and shield, tempered by implacable will to the strength of triple steel. To live, he had to die inside. Only now, at Shell’s touch, had the armour cracked open. And I’m alive! he said silently. I made it, I survived, I’m alive!

Mag bustled past with an enormous platter of scrambled eggs and toast with rashers of fried salt pork. “‘Mornin’, Captain. Sleep well?”

He had to make an effort not to grin from ear to ear. “Topping, thank you. That looks about enough for my breakfast.”

She rolled her eyes melodramatically at him. “Don’t push it. ‘Mornin’, Miranda. Cap, would you make sure she eats?”

“Certainly.” He had seen the way the child tended to forget the food on her plate. “Shall we sit here on this log, Miranda?”

He was intensely aware now, every nerve alight yet relaxed in a silent living present. Mag’s coffee was more delicious than ever, and the eggs and toast were the best food he had ever tasted. His mood of joyful charity was large enough to embrace everything and everybody. What a pretty girl Miranda was, with those dark plaits! It was going to be a gloriously fine day, the August heat scarcely a burden at all. How charming, that the horses could be left to roam untethered! The tour guests were amusing, the wagons a pleasure to drive, the United States a fine nation.

And best of all, here was Shell come to sit with him. Her face was scrubbed clean, the freckles on her nose nearly lost now in tan, and her blonde curls were still damp. “Oh, good for you, Miranda — you have toast and jam.”

“Taffy,” Miranda said.

“Jam isn’t for horses,” Titus said. “You should eat it yourself.” She took a bite or two out of the center of the slice, and then ran off with the remainder to the horses, who were loitering about in anticipation. “This is idyllic. Like paradise.”

Shell squinted at the huge empty prairie. “So-so. I prefer some trees. Tonight’s camp is nicer — by a creek with a swimming hole. We’ll spend a couple nights there. You’ll like it.”

“I know I will.”

She must have caught the fervent note in his voice, because she gave him a look. “Oh, Titus, you are the sweetest man. But don’t let it go too deep, all right? This is a summer fling. I have places to go, and — drat, look at that boy! They’re not supposed to pull the horse’s tail! Go find his mother, Titus.”

She thrust her plate into Titus’s hand and jumped up to haul the youngster out of harm’s way. Titus rousted out the mother, who was still asleep and had no idea her offspring had escaped.

It took hours to pull up sticks and get moving. Tents, pavilions, tables, and benches were folded up and loaded. Nat filled in the firepit and the latrine, and stamped the sod back down. People who had ridden yesterday were too saddle-sore today, while other guests now dared to give riding a try. Stirrups had to be shortened, horses swapped round, and a bag at the bottom of the wagon had to be extracted so that the little boy could wear his favourite shirt.

“You want to ride today, Cap?” Nat asked.

“I don’t know the way,” Titus replied honestly.

“Shell knows. It’s only a couple hours away.”

“Then I should enjoy riding, very much.” Titus saddled Cloud up, musing on the difficulties of managing a clandestine affair. A gentleman was properly the soul of discretion, confiding in no one, and he held by this. Call it Victorian hypocrisy, but anything less would be Bohemian and unrespectable. It would be prudent not to spend too much time in public at her side. Certainly he would never touch her when anyone else could see. Maintain a cordial distance! If one was going to sin, nobody should have a scrap of evidence that any hanky-panky was going on.

So it was a pity that it came so naturally to ride beside her across the prairie. The jungly waist-deep grasses gave way to a thinner shorter turf that flowed from horizon to horizon, undulating like an ocean swell, unmarked by so much as a footprint. Above soared the hugest sky Titus had ever seen, a clement and jewel-clear heaven without a single cloud. And far in the west at the edge of the flat world were mountains, jagged and white-limned, the Grand Tetons that Nat had promised they would see.

The tour group riders immediately spread out in all directions, chattering and laughing. Their noise, carrying in the pure air, flushed a dozen animals Titus could not recognize, antelope or deer perhaps. Brown and small in the distance, their white tails flashed as they bounded away and evaporated, hey presto! like sleight of hand, seemingly between one stride and the next.

“Deer,” Shell said, shading her eyes. “You can’t tell until you come right up to them, but there are plenty of dips and hollows in the prairie. Big enough to hide a wagon and team, or a smallish house. So we have to try and not lose anybody.”

“This is astonishing, Shell. You could almost believe we’re the first people to set foot here.”

“Exactly what it’s meant to be. Hikers and foot-travelers don’t usually get this far into the Wilderness Area, so we have a lot of room.”

“Room to run. Shall we?”

“Titus, you’ll set a bad example for the group! If these greenhorns step into a gopher hole, or take a fall — “ But he was already nudging Cloud into a canter, laughing back at her, and very soon she was thundering in his wake and hauling up fast.

An hour’s trek, and the horizon showed a streak of dark rougher green. Another hour brought them there. Only the tops of the trees showed as they approached, but once at the verge Titus could see the creek in its bed several yards below. The water ran shallow and sparkling over glinting gravel, shaded here and there by overhanging boughs. “Nat will pitch camp up on the bluff, in case the creek rises,” Shell said. Though there was no sign of previous camps, she seemed to recognize the spot well enough. The riders dismounted with groans and squeals of relief, and Titus set about watering and untacking and grooming. When the wagons arrived he set up tents, and was able to place his own tent well beyond the main group. Shell noticed this immediately. “You are so thoughtful, Titus.”

“I’m afraid my motives are entirely deplorable.”

A long golden afternoon, and supper, and singing round the campfire, before he could retire to his tent and wait for her. But it was all good, the anticipation as well as the fulfillment.

At sparrowfart she prodded him awake and dragged him down to the creek for a bath before anyone else woke. The stream was less than a foot deep in the center, but the water flowed fast and clean over round pebbles. He sat on a boulder to pull off his brogans. The first pale sunshine made black lace of the underbrush, and silhouetted a tall majestic form crowned with horns on the other side of the stream. He stared speechless, hardly daring to breathe, and for a single suspended moment the beast stared back, muzzle still wet from its morning drink. Then it turned with a flash of white rump and dashed away up the slope to the new day.

Soft as a breath Shell said, “Elk.”

“Marvelous.”

She stood up to pull off her tee shirt. “You didn’t wish for your gun?”

“That would have spoiled it.” Had Adam needed a rifle in Eden? He knew from the way she smiled that she felt the same. She waded out and lay down to get wet all over, and when she rose, gleaming and cool and naked, he took her hand and knew himself to be in Paradise indeed.

Chapter 12

It cast him down a little when the tour ended on Friday. A halcyon time was over. Not only would there be no opportunities for rendezvous in the house over the weekend, the time would be filled with hard work cleaning up from the previous tour and preparing for the next one. But on Saturday afternoon, while Titus sat at one end of the kitchen table polishing metal bridle fittings and bits, Shell came in to tell the kitchen what to cook for dinner. “Dinner for five,” she told it. “Pork fajitas and salad…I’ve pushed the beds together in your room and put on a king-sized sheet.”

“You what? What for?”

She stared at him. “What do you think for? What have we been doing all this time, gin rummy? Besides, you’ll enjoy it. A bed’s a different experience from a sleeping bag.”

For a moment he was at a loss for words. The sleeping bag had been an enchanting country to explore with her. No one had ever told him — had it even been known, when Victoria was Queen? — that women felt desire and excitement, even spent as men did. The cant he’d been taught about women disliking sex was as revealed as blithering nonsense, like expecting angels to be British. She had taught him so much, he felt he knew his way round now — though, as with food, appetite far exceeded physiological need. And there was more? Another one of those areas which looked simple but when examined burgeoned with delicious complexity! But he felt bound to say, “It would be deucedly improper, Shell, under your husband’s roof.”

“Not apple pie — let’s have lemon meringue. Titus, people are not blind. And it’s my ex-husband’s roof, and actually the house belongs to Mag.”

Mag came in with an armload of laundered towels and remarked, “We got Nat onto the title a year back, if you want to get pernickety. One of those mortgage things.”

Titus bent over his polishing, hoping that Shell would drop the subject, in vain. “Here, you tell him, Mag. Is it news to you that Titus and I are sleeping together?”

Titus’s mouth dropped open in horror. Mag balanced the heap of towels on a chair and began to fold them. “‘Course not. As I recollect, you hooked him Monday night — Nat spotted it right off. Fact, Shell, your mojo is so good, I was gonna ask you to share some of the secrets of your boo-doir. The way Cap here stares at you like he’s dumbstruck, it’s a fine sight to see.”

By this point both women were laughing. Titus yearned to crawl into the jar of metal polish and pull the lid down over himself. Seeing his discomfort, Shell slid an arm round him from behind. “We can’t tease him too much, Mag. The poor darling’s not used to it.”

He leaned back against her. “Oh my God. Shell, you have to forgive me. I thought I was the soul of discretion.”

“Why, Cap hon, you’re really bothered.” Mag shook a towel out and folded it in half. “Call me a plain-spoken country girl, but why the secrecy? You got a wife somewhere, locked in the attic?”

“Of course not!” He almost sputtered in indignation. “I would never treat Shell that way, like a charva.”

“A what?” Mag stared.

Shell took out her little machine and repeated the word aloud. “It’s not there!” She stared indignantly at the screen. “Could you spell that, Titus?”

“No, I could jolly well not. It’s not a term for mixed company, and I’m sorry I brought it up!…Shell, why would it be in your little machine?”

“You have a word list, dear, and so do I. Gosh, I’m going to have to go to the net dictionary. And it’s voice-operated and interactive, if you know what that means.”

“I do not.”

“It means this list is something we all share and add to within the TTD. So next time you call someone a charva, Kev can look it up. Which is why it would help if you spelled it — the software doesn’t recognize the word.”

Exasperated, Titus did so. “But isn’t that rather sharp practise, when all the other blighter has is pencil and paper and the brains in his noddle?” He remembered now, how often people in the TTD would repeat a phrase while talking to him, and then glance at their little machines: for the definition! Had they been chattering together, swapping gossip behind his back all this while? No wonder their culture was so close-woven a fabric!

“This isn’t a competition, dear. We’re only trying to be efficient. You don’t really want to waste time repeating definitions, do you?”

“They only want to communicate better, Cap,” Mag said. “You speak English all right, but it does sound kind of foreign sometimes.”

“Foreign!” This was so preposterous that Titus could only abandon the point to return to the main issue. “You have to understand, Mag. Shell could never be a bit of spare, a diversion. And even if a man and woman…well, it’s all under the rose. Nobody speaks of it.”

“That sure don’t sound like gals I know.” Mag shook out another towel. “Cap, how many women have you been well acquainted with?”

“Shell, and you, a little. And my mother and sisters.”

Shell clicked some more instructions into her little machine. “Titus, what do you think women talk about among themselves? All the girl-talk at tea parties and knitting circles and church socials: think about it. We talk about kids — and we talk about men.”

“You do?” The new and lurid light this cast upon the female character made Titus gulp.

Mag slapped her knee, laughing. “Dang, Shell — you tell the guys all our secrets, and where’ll we be?”

“This isn’t a chronal displacement thing,” Shell assured him. “It’s a gender thing. Titus, you remember what I told you in New York? Women are human beings, just like men. You know damn well that men talk about women. So why the surprise, when women talk about men? Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s share a tent next trip. I’m tired of walking back and forth when I want my toothbrush, and it’s bad to disturb Miranda’s sleep.”

“But that would be…everyone would think — “

“And they’d be right, wouldn’t they?”

“It’d sure make arrangements easier,” Mag said. “We got this group of birdwatchers next round. A feisty bunch — hardly a one wants to share a tent.”

Shell gave a little yip of pleasure. “Here we go, found it! ‘Charva or charver: a good-time girl, i.e. a casual sexual partner.’”

“Bloody hell! You keep dirty words in there?”

“It’s a dictionary of period slang, Titus. We should get Kev to put you in touch with these folks. I bet you could help them a lot — you know so much strong language.”

“Comes from being in the army,” Mag suggested, looking over her shoulder. “Look, synonyms. You could put them onto his list.”

“Only if he really uses them. PTICA supplies personalized vocabulary service. How about this one, Titus: ‘messer: an amateur prostitute.’ Would you ever say that?”

“Never!” Titus threw up his hands in surrender. They were going to do what they were going to do, as women always did. He jacked it in, and retreated to the safety of the garage.

But this slight ripple didn’t disturb the sweet tenor of the days. He had to admit that when fornication didn’t entail ignominy or ostracism it was deucedly pleasant. Skulking about pretending that a glorious thing was shameful was hypocritical, and damned inconvenient to boot. It was delightful to sit beside her at meals, or to exchange a smile on the trail. After years of ironclad conservatism he was suddenly a proponent of free love. How the regiment would stare, and he could just imagine what those lefty Australians on the Expedition would say!

Life became full of adventure and charm. The following Saturday Mag said, “Shell and I’re doing the big supply order today, hon. Can you and Cap inspect the hay on offer?”

Nat nodded. “Not much traffic on the road from here to the feedlot. Think you’d like to learn to drive, Cap?”

“Above all things!”

“Watch him, Nat,” Shell warned. “He doesn’t know the meaning of fear, and he’s a fiend for speed.”

“You can’t get by in the country without wheels,” Mag said. “If you spend another season with us, you’ll need to be able to drive. And hon, drop by the general store too. I sent ‘em a list, and it’s ready for pickup.”

Titus flushed with pleasure at the implication that he would be welcomed back. But, “Do I need a license?”

“Someday. Today we’ll just try it out.”

It was a relief to find that the modern world was not as hidebound as Lash had painted it. And Nat was an ideal driving instructor, monumentally calm and giving clear directions. Titus felt his former experience with the petrol-powered motors of his day translated fairly smoothly over to the pickup truck, which ran on principles he could not fathom. Someday he would find out what “solar-electric” really involved. Wyoming roads were simple two-lane affairs, not terrifying tangles of underpasses and overpasses like the New York highway system. And it was only slightly disconcerting to be driving on the wrong side of the road. Because it was the middle of the morning there was little traffic, and his confidence rose. Then he took the turn into a driveway too fast, and nearly skidded into the mailbox.

“Maybe that’s enough for one day,” Nat said, very evenly.

“I want to practise every chance I get. It’s all autopilots in New York.”

The general store was like the shoe shop and other emporiums Titus had visited, another queer blend of the strange and familiar. Though people and their needs had not changed, the ways of meeting those needs were dazzlingly varied. And wonder of wonders, in a dark neglected case at the back Titus found briar pipes, tobacco, and even proper wooden matches in matchboxes. He felt all the astonished pleasure of a man receiving a Christmas present in July. “If you tell me there’s a rule about smoking in wilderness areas, I shall scream,” he warned Nat.

Nat took off his hat and scratched his greying head. “My great-grandfather used to smoke cigarettes, but it’s a rare habit now, Cap. Addictive, they say — you sure you want to pick it up again?”

“Nonsense, it’s good for you. And very period, as you rightly point out.” The magic word seemed to win Nat over.

It even won Mag’s qualified endorsement: “Sure, if you’ll do it on the trail! Although you’re gonna be careful of your matches — the grass is like tinder. And don’t ever let kids get at your tobacco. That’d get us into a kettle of real trouble.”

Titus promised to maintain the utmost selfishness with his smoking equipment and to be fanatical about matches. He had not thought to mention the acquisition to Shell, but she smelled something new about him that evening and explored his person until she found out what it was. This was so entertaining that he refused to tell her until she guessed right. It took nearly all night, and by then she was too sleepy to argue much. “Sabrina can show you the medical literature about emphysema and lung cancer,” she yawned. “Me, I’ve always liked men who smell interesting.”

“An aphrodisiac effect, eh? Very convenient for me.”

oOo

With two tours under his belt now, Titus thirsted for real responsibility. Nat handed all the day-to-day horse management to him, so that Titus chose the horses for each tour. It was a nice judgment, balancing the stamina and temperament of each beast with the needs of the different tour groups. But it was inexpressibly comforting to do something he was good at — a return to his real self, the competent adventurer. Unfortunately he had no control over the riders, who consistently displayed more confidence than skill. This was the perennial weak point of the business. “It’s from a steady diet of vids,” Mag said. “Roy Rogers, the Black Stallion, National Velvet — folks see something done a thousand times, and they get to thinking they can do it too.”

Shell added, “They’re just greenhorns, dear. Sorry — it means tenderfeet, inexperienced. We have to nurse ‘em along.”

Grumbling, Titus made a note of the term. Between Americanisms, modern words, and cowboy terminology, his well of English was becoming an amazing muddle. Thank the Lord, his old masters at Eton would never hear him.

And not every tour was pleasant. The calamities of the next one were furnished by a pair of newlyweds off to a rocky start. Going on a wagon-train tour for one’s honeymoon was so stupendous a folly that at first Titus didn’t credit Shell’s explanation, the third morning of the trip. “Why didn’t they go to Paris or Italy like sensible people?”

“It usually works out okay, but not this time. Tammi — that’s the bride — told me all about it in the wagon yesterday.”

Titus refilled her coffee mug and then his own. “So you’ve been working your communication magic on the girl. Poor bastard, her husband doesn’t have a hope.”

“We shouldn’t laugh — they’re really unhappy. I don’t suppose you’d talk to the young man? Oh, don’t scowl like that, dear. It was just an idea.”

“I absolutely refuse to nosey-parker into private affairs that aren’t my business. Besides, what would I say to the fellow? I’ve never been married myself.”

“True enough. Well, keep an eye on him anyway today on the trial. That little blond guy — his name is Cameron.”

It was a large party on horseback this time, so this was not easy. Nevertheless Titus made an effort to keep the visibly unhappy bridegroom in view. Far too young to set up household! The poor blighter had come to his senses too late perhaps, after the knot was tied. Sardonically he reflected that easy divorce and a lack of moral standards were apparently no guarantee of happiness between the sexes.

There was sufficient work to do upon arrival at the campsite after lunch that Titus missed the newlyweds’ next brangle. He only knew of it when suddenly Cameron appeared among the horses, clambered onto his own mount, and made off. Titus was too startled to do more than exclaim, “That horse hasn’t been watered yet!”

“Let him go,” Nat said calmly. “There’s no place to go, and nothing to eat or drink when you get there, so he’ll mosey on back in a while. If he don’t, we’ll follow him. In a couple hours maybe — we don’t want to poke around in the dark.”

“Of all the nonsensical stunts.” Titus shaded his eyes against the afternoon glare to glimpse the retreating figure topping the nearest rise of the flowing green-gold prairie. The most slovenly seat he’d ever had the misfortune to behold! “Do you have a compass? It might be prudent to take a bearing.”

Nat grinned. “That’s too period even for me, Cap. Nah, we’ll fire up the GPS.”

Back at the camp the bride was sobbing in her tent. The sound made everyone uncomfortable. Mag’s spoon made an angry clinking in her kettle as she stirred the stew. “It’s really wrong, to spoil everybody’s wagon train experience this way,” she complained to Titus. “People should be more considerate.”

“I entirely agree. Perhaps dinner will help. I can’t think shooting a can out of the air is going to be a success today.”

“No, don’t bother. Besides, we’re going to need you to go search for that pip-squeak.”

Her choice of words made Titus smile. The term had been fire-new when he left England in 1910. Rather fine, to hear it still in play a century and a half later! But he watched mystified as Nat consulted the little machines in the wagon. Shell tried to explain it. “When they registered for the wagon train tour, every guest’s chip got logged into our system. So we can track Cameron anywhere on the prairie with the pinger function.”

“Isn’t your little machine back at home?”

“I’ll just carry the tracer here — it hangs around my neck, see? And it’ll point us straight at him.”

That was about the only bit Titus understood, and he wasn’t inclined to learn more. “He must have got lost, the young wanker.”

“No fair, when I don’t have access to the word list — I’m sure that means something horrible. Let’s get going. The sooner we get him back, the sooner we can have dinner.”

It was only after they left camp that Titus saw how easily a lone man could get lost out here. The crisp dry grass was chest-high. When the wind ran its fingers through the gold and green stalks, the rustle masked every other noise. The prairie was full of dips and little hollows. Without guidance from the tour wranglers, a lost traveller could wander for days, unable to hear or see. Titus was willing to wager only one modern in ten thousand would know how to find his direction from the stars — certainly this little pillock wouldn’t.

But Shell’s little machine led them straight to their goal. Half an hour’s ride, and they saw Buck the horse’s head toss for a moment above the grasses. “I wish we’d brought water for the poor brute,” Titus said.

“We’ll be quick…Halloo, Cameron, are you there? It’s going to be dark soon!”

“There’s something wrong,” Titus said sharply. He could tell by the way Buck held himself.

They dismounted and led their horses into a sort of grassy glade, a pocket of shorter grasses hidden among the taller ranks. The young man seemed to be entirely unhurt, sitting with his head in his hands. Shell said, “We brought you some water. You have to stay hydrated in this heat. And it’s about suppertime — aren’t you hungry? Let’s go back.”

Meanwhile Titus ran expert hands over Buck, down the off foreleg. The horse stood hunched, holding the hoof well clear of the ground. “Well, that’s torn it…What happened? Did he step into a gopher hole?”

“I guess. He stumbled, and wouldn’t go any more.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Titus said, with savage courtesy. “I’d like to see how far you’d get, on a broken ankle.”

“Broken?” Shell thrust the canteen into Cameron’s hands and got up to look.

“The cannon bone.” Titus watched her face as the truth sank in. She knew what it meant.

Cameron drank deeply and said, “Maybe it’s just a sprain. Could you bandage it?”

Suddenly Titus was shaking with anger. “Stand up, you filthy…” But Shell quietly grabbed his fist, forcing the clenched fingers down and apart, and Titus realized that punching a stupid nit of a tourist was not going to help. In fact there was no point in telling this swankey anything. He turned his back on him and drew a deep breath. “Take him back on my horse. I’ll start walking back with Buck.”

“How far can he walk?”

Titus shook his head very slightly. “You might send Nat out.” The final decision lay with the owner of the animal.

She met his glance. “I understand.”

His heart warmed at this competence. No fuss, no hysterics — how many women would react so well at the crunch? “You always do.”

“Can we go now?” Cameron demanded.

“Of course,” Shell said with determined cheer. “You can ride Cap’s horse. We’ll leave you the canteen, Cap. Can you mount? Good, let’s go!” In a flurry of hooves they were gone at a trot. Shell would not let the little prat dawdle while an animal was in pain.

Titus took off Buck’s saddle and blanket, but not the headstall. A pity the beast couldn’t drink from a canteen. “Poor devil, you must be parched. Still, it won’t be long now.” There was nothing else he could do to make him more comfortable, so he sat down in the grass. In the way of animals, the horse seemed to know he was in trouble, hanging his head so Titus could rub his ears. Would Nat use the tracer to find the way? Titus didn’t know if his own ‘pinger function’ had been activated. The marks of the hooves there and back were clear to see now in the long grass, so he might not need it.

Without a watch Titus had no way to tell the time. But it would be at least an hour before Nat could turn up, and he had brought his pipe. He smoked and watched the sky deepen in the east. To the west, high thin clouds brightened as the sunset gilded them. The grasses around him whispered, fawn and gold and the subtlest of browns, dry as toast. Buck trembled, balancing on three legs. “I’ve had it as bad,” he told him. “May your horse doctor be as good as Sabrina Trask.” A medical technology that could restore his limbs might well be able to heal a horse’s cannon bone.

Nat was so tall that he was visible from a long way across the prairie. He was riding Cloud and leading another mount. Titus stood to wave his hat, and he waved back. “Man, this sucks,” Nat said as he drew up.

“You brought a bucket, good.”

“And a big jug.”

And the gun — Titus noticed the holster. He poured a little water into the bucket and let Buck drink. “Not too much right off, old chap. It’ll give you the colic.”

Nat squatted to examine the injury. “Looks ugly. Have you tried to touch it?”

“I’d say a broken cannon bone. I’ve seen it before, on a polo pony. What can be done? That clone business, perhaps.”

Nat gave a short humourless laugh. “If I was willing to pay the bill, sure. But I’d have to sell the ranch to afford it.”

Titus understood. Such an investment might be worthwhile for a proven racing stud, or a beast of rare pedigree — or a time traveller. But Buck was only a trail horse. He watched Nat slowly pull the Marlin out of the saddle holster. A man’s duty was to care for his own mount, right up to the end if necessary. But Titus remembered the gentleness of this era, and how the guns in the cabinet had never been fired. “Should you like me do it?”

“I’d be much obliged.” Nat spoke with a relief he couldn’t hide.

“You’ll want the tack.” Titus unbuckled Buck’s headstall and dropped it to the grass next to the saddle and blanket.

“Will he stand to be killed?”

“Fill up the bucket and he will. No reason why he shouldn’t drink his fill now.” He took the rifle and loaded it while Nat emptied the plastic water jug into the bucket. Buck drank eagerly, splashing and dribbling, enjoying the water. Titus cocked the gun and sank to one knee on the trampled grass to get a clean shot between the eyes to the brain. He pressed the muzzle against the forelock. He’d misfired while putting down his own horse in the Antarctic, and it increased the misery tenfold. Very steadily he pulled the trigger. The report seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet, echoing in their ears so that Buck seemed to make no noise as he toppled. The bucket tipped too, sending the water trickling away into the deep dry grass.

Titus took a deep breath. “He was a good horse.” He noticed his voice didn’t sound like himself. “What now?”

“Vultures and ravens. And coyotes. He’ll become a part of the land here.”

“A comforting thought. Is that the American philosophy?”

“Indian.”

It did not seem the moment to ask whether Indigenous American was the preferred term. He helped Nat to gather the tack. They mounted up and set off at a walk, not looking back. Titus was glad of the slow trip. Nat seemed to feel likewise. They plodded for a good ten minutes before he said, “I’m grateful for your help, Cap. Never done this before — the last time a horse had to be put down, we called the vet.”

“Funny thing — for a chap who loves horses, I’ve killed quite a number of them. Eaten them, too.”

“Jesus, don’t tell the guests that!”

“A brutal business, but we were on deucedly short commons at the time…What are you going to tell them?”

“Dunno yet. They might not even notice we came back with one horse less.”

At this moment Titus would believe anything of tourists. “And that young clot?”

“No more horses for him — he can ride in the wagon. Nothin’ else we can do.”

Titus mused on a course of action that would keep young Cameron from smiling for a week. But it would never do to upset the party with fisticuffs. It was obviously better management to paper everything over, haul the guests back to base day after tomorrow, and wash their hands of the lot. He would control his indignation and spend the evening with Shell. Suddenly he yearned for her touch, her mere presence. For certain, she’d help him vent his energies usefully.

This pacific resolution unfortunately was overset by Miranda. With her passion for horses and obsession with enumeration, she immediately noticed Buck’s absence and demanded an accounting. “Where is Buck?” she asked loudly at supper.

“Come over here, hon, and I’ll tell you about it,” Nat said.

“Bring Buck back!” Miranda demanded.

“Sweetie, it’s supper time,” Shell coaxed. “Let’s eat first.”

Miranda pointed at Cameron. “He rode Buck,” she announced at the top of her voice. “Bring him back!”

Mag had laboured mightily to coax the tearful young bride to join the group and be pleasant. Now all her tactful work unraveled in an instant as Tammi exclaimed, “You were riding that horse, Cam! What happened to him?”

“Nothing, okay?” The young man scowled sullenly at Titus. “You were going to bring him back.”

The entire party stared at Titus. And buggered if he was going to be left holding the baby! He looked at Nat and got a nod in reply. Sweeping the entire incident under the rug was evidently not going to be possible. “I didn’t, because a horse can’t walk on a broken leg,” he said evenly.

The reaction to his revelation was disappointing. His words did not convey what they would have to hearers in 1912. “Splints and bandages,” someone suggested. “And you just left him out there?” another woman demanded, incredulous. “It’s getting dark!”

The sauce, of these damned stupid moderns! Titus set down his plate and rose, simmering. “A broken leg in a horse is incurable,” he said, measuring his words with precision. “If they can’t stand or run, they die. It would be wrong to let an animal linger on in pain. So I put a bullet through his head. Perhaps you heard the sound of the shot.”

The silence was complete. The open mouths and horrified stares all around forced him to continue: “Horses are our servants and friends. A horse will trust his rider to guide him safely and bring him out of trouble.” He was unable to resist a trenchant glance at Cameron, sitting speechless with his cup halfway to his mouth. “We are their masters, wiser than they. A man can see when there’s no way out. And then it’s our job to — to give them a decent end.”

He had almost said, to do as we would to ourselves, but caught the words back. A memory of the agonizing battle into the ferocious Polar wind washed over him in an inconvenient surge, trumping the reality of soft summer air and the smell of wood smoke and prairie grass. His throat closed, and he turned to stride away into the dark.

And his words might as well have been Latin hexameter. In justice he had to concede that all moderns weren’t benighted. People who worked with animals regularly, like Nat and Mag and even little Miranda, understood. But to most of these people, animals were little more than machines with hair. The horror they had felt at the shooting was lily-livered dithering, not the true sorrow for a necessary deed. Too soft to look death in the eye! This might be why the crowd had leaped to rescue him when he’d fallen into the street — not from any hospitable motive, but from mere squeamishness. And it explained why water fountains were the preferred murder weapon. By using the wrist chips, they could be targeted precisely at one person. Evidently even the most rabid extremists were not allowed to wipe out innocent bystanders — those Doomsters had taken a lot of stick for accidentally nailing that old man.

He no longer knew when it was permissible to kill or die. Hunting was out; there were no wars; and even assailing people who had tried to kill you seemed to fall into a grey area. It was another enormous gulf between the modern world and him. He strode across the night-mantled grassland, and it could have been the dark side of the moon, or the realms of Faerie, no place for a man. Alien, indeed — it wasn’t he who was alien, but they! When a people, an entire culture, had drifted so far away from the natural order —

Was that the flicker of an electric torch at his tent? He had placed the structure with his usual care, slightly apart from the others. It must be Shell, waiting for him. The one welcoming light made the warm night friendly again. How long had he been walking? He quickened his pace, to get there before she gave him up.

She was prowling round the tent. “There you are! Oh Titus, was it that upsetting?”

“One gets used to it.”

She came closer, lifting her mouth to his. “You don’t need the stiff upper lip with me, dear.”

Her kiss softened him shamefully. With a sigh he rested his head against hers, holding her solid reality close. “What’s truly upsetting is the waste. That injury was totally unnecessary. What I wouldn’t give, for a chance to take a hunting crop to that puppy.”

“Don’t bother. A couple other guests told him what they thought, and then his bride screamed at him again. Now Nat is talking to them about how Indians treated nature and animals.”

Titus was profoundly grateful he’d missed the catfight, and even more relieved that he’d missed running into the fellow. “What a day. For God’s love, let’s go to bed.”

“Would you mind coming to talk to Miranda first, Titus? It’s been hard for her.”

“Of course. What does she make of it?”

“She understands that Buck is gone, and that you were his friend.” The child’s tent was beside the Longtrees’. Miranda was not asleep, but sitting up in her sleeping bag. Shell ducked inside while Titus knelt in the low doorway. “Here’s Titus to say goodnight, darling. Are you sad about Buck, Titus?”

“Yes, very much so.” A familiar trembling tension filled the nylon bubble. Titus could only pray that the child wouldn’t go into another screaming tantrum. He tried to think of something soothing to say. “I like horses too much to let them suffer.”

“People?”

Titus gulped, peering. It was too dark to see more than the white blur of the child’s nightgown. Was she asking whether it was done to put down a sick person the same way? Please God that the moderns had a kind and wise end prepared for the hopelessly ill or deranged, because his era never had. He wondered what Miranda could know of her own disability, her prospects. Did she long for, could she even imagine, a long crucifying walk into a driving blizzard? The hideous cruelty of life ran him through like a cavalry lance: horses dying in useless pain, beautiful children struggling against insuperable defects, brave explorers sacrificed on the altar of blind optimism. Dismissing his own troubles came naturally, but suddenly the suffering of others was a hideous raw obscenity, an injustice that ignited not rage but pain. He sat back on his heels and pressed the back of his hand against his mouth, suppressing any unseemly loss of composure.

“Miranda, it’s all right to feel sad about Buck,” Shell said. “I’m afraid this may take a while, Titus. Suppose you go smoke a pipe, and I’ll join you when I can.”

Thank Heaven, her attention was focused on Miranda. How had he become so vulnerable? Such sensitivity would never have waylaid him in 1912. Relieved yet reluctant, Titus left her to it. It was jejune, low even, to feel disappointment. Surely an ailing child’s needs took precedence over his own. A man could stand on his own two feet. He recalled that Mag had packed a couple of deep-dish cherry pies for dessert. The Longtrees had the guests singing cowboy songs now, so no one would hear him prowling round behind the wagon. Yes, here was the pie plate, with a couple slices left. He rummaged in the cutlery basket for a fork.

Chapter 13

It was a relief to start afresh with a new tour. Blessedly, the next one was a four-day, starting on Tuesday. Mag used the free Monday to go shopping in Wilmer City, and Titus leaped at the opportunity to practise driving the truck over longer distances. When Shell heard this she insisted on going too, riding bodkin in the front seat in a most cosy way. “I don’t think Mag can cope with you and a vehicle together.”

He grinned down at her. “Bossy-boots.”

Mim as a mouse he drove down the driveway to the main highway, using the winkers and coming to a full stop as Nat had advised to look for oncoming traffic. But once out on the road he felt himself master of the situation. “Cap, you do know what the speedometer’s for,” Mag said nervously, as their speed steadily increased. “Shows you how fast you’re goin’ — fifty miles an hour, sixty, and so on.”

Titus had not noticed that dashboard feature before — his previous lesson with Nat had been taken up with larger issues like gears and pedals. “Fascinating! This vehicle can manage 130 miles per hour without an autopilot? By Jove, that’s faster than anything could do in my time. Let me try it.”

Inexplicably the women wailed in unison. “No, Titus!”

“Cap, don’t you dare, please!”

“But if the dial goes up to 130, surely that speed is an option.”

“Titus, you see that sign by the side of the road? Oh God! Be careful not to veer in the direction you’re looking, okay? It says, ‘Speed Limit 70.’ That means seventy miles per hour!”

“I should think that would only be a suggested speed, Shell. Any sensible man could judge for himself the safest speed for road conditions. And today’s dry, good visibility — “

“Titus, the signs are not suggestions. They are law, enforced by cops who will take away your license if you don’t obey.”

“If I had a license,” Titus grumbled, but he slowed down to a tamer speed. “Then I take it the Stop signs mean what they say as well.”

“They do. Promise me you’ll always obey them!”

Reluctantly Titus acquiesced. “But stiff the horse on the way up the jump, and she’ll stumble on the way down. If you folk leave no room for individual judgment, nobody will develop any. You’ll become a society of womanish weaklings.”

The plunging silence warned him he had come a nasty cropper even before Shell said, “Womanish…If you weren’t at the wheel, what a bart I could give you!”

“I apologise, truly! But it never occurred to me — I don’t think of either of you as women, really. You’re as good as most men I know, better even!”

“‘Don’t think of you as women’?” Mag choked with laughter. “You aren’t breaking this bronco right, Shell.”

“The first rule when you’re in a hole, Titus,” Shell advised, “is to stop digging.”

Titus was glad to sign on for that. “What is a bart?”

“A wedgie.”

“And that is?”

“Pull over and I’ll demonstrate.”

The twinkle in her eye warned him. “Thank you, but no.”

The emporium Mag directed him to was a large one — everything in this country was large. Titus parked the truck carefully in an uncrowded spot, ignoring the ostentatious sighs of relief from his passengers. The store was a fascinating place devoted to farming and outdoor supplies. He rummaged happily through the equestrian-supply section while Mag found cinches and replacement straps, and helped choose the best gun-cleaning rig on offer, and oddments like cartridges and a shooting sling. Then he saw the rifles in the cases behind the counter. “That one.” He pointed.

“It’s the most expensive one,” Shell told the clerk, who brought it out and agreed this was so.

“You didn’t even look at the tag,” Mag marveled. “How’d you know?”

“I’ve been riding herd on this natural aristocrat for weeks. He always picks the most expensive item, instinctively and without having to think about it.”

“Nonsense, Shell.” Titus sighted down the barrel. “I’m a country squire, no more. Yanks assume everyone with an English accent is aristocracy. No, I’m afraid I don’t care for this trigger mechanism. They do them much better in England.”

“Good,” Shell said, “because we can’t possibly afford the thing. Let’s get you some work boots.”

“Clothing for use, not preening,” Titus gloated, surveying the rugged garments on offer. With Shell’s help he selected dark denim trousers with enough give for comfortable riding, and Frye boots sturdy enough to wear while shifting muck. “Aristocratic instincts, pah!”

“It’s not on the surface, but deep down,” Mag said. “You truly are a gentleman, Cap. Genuine chivalry’s kind of scary to see.”

“Scary?” His veneer of Edwardian social graces, giving women his chair and so on, seemed to have deceived these gullible moderns into thinking he was a finer fellow than he actually was. But Titus was not so high-minded as to disillusion them. “I will show you scary, you hen-hearted females. I’m looking forward to driving back.”

“No!” both women exclaimed together.

Mag added hastily, “I have to drive, Cap, because we’re going to the solar station. But I’ll show you how to top the batteries. You’ll like that — it’s like pumping gas, as un-aristocratic as you can get.”

oOo

By now Titus presented a truly convincing figure. Days outdoors had tanned his face and hands back to their usual weather-beaten brown. The blue uniform jacket was well-rubbed at the elbows, and his hat was taking on character and conforming to his head and fingers. Up on Cloud, with the rifle in its saddle holster and a cartridge pouch on his belt, he lacked only a cavalry sabre to charge into battle. The current tour group, a lobbing set of non-riders, was awestruck, and Mag smacked her lips at the sight of him. “No one could doubt you’re a veteran, Cap.”

“It’s that air of languid competence.” Shell swung up into her saddle. “It suits you. You look like a man who could shoot a bandit dead, and then have a nice cup of tea.”

“I’ve switched to coffee, in deference to my American hosts…You will hear me then, Shell, when I say that your Commodore Perry was no fool.”

“Perry? Do I know a — oh, the Japan guy!”

“Yes.” He squinted at the sun, not looking at her. “Shell, this gun is reasonably reliable now. If you want to take it to Tau Ceti with you, I know Nat won’t mind. I could teach you how to shoot — “

“Oh, Titus!” From her very tone he knew it was hopeless. It was additionally annoying, to watch her shuffling through possible things to say. He wondered if it looked quite as irritating when he did it. “It’s sweet of you to be so thoughtful, dear. But I don’t think one rifle would make much difference.”

“Explain the strategy, then,” he said, striving to keep his tone reasonable. “If you can find terms elementary enough for my understanding.”

“Titus, it’s not your fault. There’s no way you could know about our Fortie strategies. You don’t feel bitter that you can’t fly a jetwing, do you?”

That made him smile. “Don’t underestimate me, woman. Motors first, then flight! So you can predict the belligerence of entities you’ve never met.”

“No. But we can lay out in advance what sort of opening is most likely to be cordial. You know what a computer is?”

“A little machine.”

“In other words, you don’t know. Computers manipulate data. It’s possible to program them to play games.”

“Hell’s bells, you’re going to lecture.”

She laughed. “It’s situational analysis — something you might enjoy, Titus. War and tactics and strategy, boiled down to games.”

Suddenly Titus had their fatal error by the tail. “Shell, just now you said I looked like a man who could kill — what was your word? ‘Languidly.’ I’m a professional soldier, and this is what I know for a fact: the battle plan hasn’t been drawn that survived the first contact with the enemy. No machine, no planning and playing, can ever substitute for field experience. The brass are always making that mistake — you should have seen the pathetic lash-up they made of it in the Boer War. Even Scott fell into that error! Nobody has ever met these Forties. How in hell can you know what they intend?”

“Think about it, Titus. What exactly can the Forties do? Eat us?”

He glared at her. “You innocent. Shell, the troopers would call you a tasty bit of crumpet. You have no idea what can happen in war.”

She met his gaze squarely. “No, Titus. You are the innocent. You were a soldier, but I was born in the 21st century. It’s you, who have no idea what man can do to man. I’m glad I won’t be here when you find out. Forgive us, all right? When you catch up on the history you missed. Forgive us for what we did to the sunny world you left in 1912.”

The bluff protests died on his lips. Her sober certainty chilled him to the bone. He sensed again the huge gaping crevasses in his knowledge, blank spaces that dropped away to frigid unknown depths marked only by names that fell strange on the ear — Ypres, Buchenwald, the Somme, Hiroshima. The books had described his era as the golden Edwardian afternoon. But afternoon implied an evening, and stormy black midnight, for here in 2045 they were certainly in a clement modern morning. Suddenly he was glad he had skipped the 20thcentury.

He said nothing, but when they reined in to let the wagons catch up she grinned. “And you can’t possibly believe that a Fortie would rape me. We’ll be utterly alien to them, not attractive at all. Even you, over the tiny gap of 133 years, didn’t get turned on until I climbed into a long skirt and ‘looked right’.”

He sputtered protests and half-articulated denials while she leaned on the horn of her saddle and laughed at him. “But they are aliens, Shell. You can’t trust them.”

“Titus, think about your own situation. You arrive here, a stranger in a totally bizarre world. If you had reacted with hate and fear, it would have been horrible. But you didn’t, because you’re a brave man, one of the bravest ever. You had the stones to trust us, and that’s been the baseline, the foundation for everything else. Including this.” She gestured at the space between their horses as if the affair were a visible thing.

“Balderdash.”

“Titus, you dummy, your problem is you’re so brave you don’t know it.”

“Don’t make me out to be a little putty hero, Shell. The claptrap in those books, about my bravery and self-sacrifice! When writers get hold of an idea, they gallop it to death.”

“Self-deprecation is so British! You probably didn’t hear that one of the things the TTD worried about was that you couldn’t handle the cultural shock.”

He stared at her. “I don’t understand you. Not handle it, how? Crawling into bed and pulling the covers over my head?”

“Exactly. You could have retreated into paranoia or schizophrenia. It’s been a real concern.”

Titus didn’t recognize those words, but assessed them as medical and therefore skippable. “Foolishness — nobody would do that. Making my way here has nothing whatever to do with courage, Shell. I had no choice, so I did it. Nothing especially admirable or interesting. Anyway, you can’t draw an analogy between me and those Forties. You people demonstrated good faith up front. I was dying, and Sabrina and her crew saved me. What else did she repair, besides my limbs?”

“Gosh, too many things to remember — I’d have to look at my palmtop. They were very thorough, did everything from cloning, to adjusting your vision — did you know you had some slight astigmatism? — and capping your teeth. But the Forties have been just as generous up front. More, even. Believe me, Titus, an FTL drive is a valuable technology.”

Titus ran his tongue over his front teeth. He had forgotten until now, how the intense Polar cold had splintered the very enamel in their mouths so that the entire party had been spitting out bits of tooth. “And you adjusted my vision? God!” No wonder his shooting had improved! “But what choice did I have, after you hauled me through time and space? Whereas you do have a choice, Shell. You are deliberately going forward to meet these Forties. The technology could be bait in a trap. Why are they giving this drive to you? What are they getting out of it? For God’s love, look the gift horse in the mouth. Suppose they’re of the same kidney as that Doomster female, luring you off to Heaven knows where? You are merely trusting them to be cordial.”

“You begin with a trusting gesture, and carry on from there.”

“No — you begin with a show of strength.”

“Titus, that’s the attitude that got your era into a World War. It’s actually easier to progress to mutual cordiality, if you begin by drawing a baseline of trust.”

“How do you know?”

“They’ve run it ten thousand times!”

“How can a machine tell what will happen in real life?”

She groaned. “This is going nowhere. Titus, I can’t figure out how to get you to understand.”

“And your explanations sound like blithering madness.” He hated this feeling of non-connection, of not getting through to her.

She hesitated. “This is going to upset you, Titus. But we’re going all the way with this. Everyone knows perfectly well that the invitation might be a ploy. It’s conceivable that the contact could go sour, and if it does we’re ready. A single ship couldn’t possibly fight. So there’s a self-destruct capability built into the Amity Star, and we’ll use a dead-man’s handle.”

It was queer to hear a railways term in this inconceivably futuristic context. “Suicide?”

“To save ourselves from becoming pawns, yes. And you, Titus Oates, of all people are not going to tell me that this is immoral or wrong. Maybe if you live here a couple more years. Get used to how we can use technology to assist reasoning power…Until then, Titus, please — believe me and trust me. Don’t worry about the Forties. Do I seem like the kind of person who’d march off a cliff?”

“One never means to,” he said somberly. “Only when you look back, too late, do you realize disaster could have been averted.” He looked at her, this confident competent woman, and knew that she was riding towards catastrophe, she and the entire expedition. Plucked out of his own time, he knew now how the mindset of an era was like blinkers, allowing one to see only a part of the whole. They were wrong. He was certain of it. Surely it was his simple duty to save her — Buck Rogers would have done no less for his Dale. But his feeble weapons were all of soft metal. Courage and will were not enough.

Chapter 14

The affair saved Titus from some real peril at the beginning of the fourth week. He was handing a guest up into the wagon, and the woman peeped coyly at him from under the brim of her hat. “You spoken for, cowboy?”

Titus could hardly believe his ears. “I beg your pardon?”

From up on the wagon seat Mag said, “Yes, he is, ma’am — roped and branded.”

“They always cut the prime ones out of the herd first,” she said discontentedly. Scandalized, Titus beat a hasty retreat before the hussy could say more.

The incident lingered in his mind, however. “What is ‘roped and branded’?” he asked Mag when the tour was safely over.

“It’s a white lie, is what it was,” Mag admitted. “A ranch’ll rope and brand the new calves every spring, so’s there’s no doubt whose property they are. So my meaning was, Shell had got you riveted permanent. But you didn’t want me to go into details.”

“I certainly did not, and I’m jolly grateful for the whisker.” It was Sunday evening, and the family was eating a leisurely supper at home round the long kitchen table. The next tour was another four-day, so everyone was looking forward to the Monday off. Titus took a roll from the basket as it was passed. “‘Riveted permanent’ — that means married, I surmise.”

“Right,” Shell said. “What happened to that word list in your notebook? It must be pretty long by now. If you loaded it onto a palmtop you could search it.”

“Too soon,” Titus said with conviction. “Let me live without your little machines yet a while.” Mag’s explanation had crystallized a decision that he had been groping towards, in his customary deliberate fashion, for weeks. “I want to return to my muttons, and not hare off after side issues. Mag has a very good idea.”

“I do?” Mag looked up from buttering Miranda’s bread. “What idea?”

“Marriage, of course. Shell, will you marry me?”

Shell didn’t even look at him. “No, of course not, dear. I’ll be too old for you.”

Mag said, “Cap, you’re not supposed to pop the question at a kitchen table with three other people all eating leftovers.”

Nat smiled. “I recollect proposing to you over meatloaf.”

Ignoring them, Titus set his fork down. “Old? Shell, you can’t be more than — “ He estimated her age and diplomatically subtracted five years. “Thirty.”

That made her laugh. “You smooth-tongued devil! I’m turning thirty-six in December. Don’t you think you’d like to shop around before making a commitment? You haven’t really seen very much of the 21st century.”

“You sound like a character in a novel,” he retorted. “A strict papa, lecturing the young heroine.”

“Titus, you aren’t serious. I’m leaving in October for Tau Ceti, and I’ll be gone for years by ship’s reckoning. Even if all goes well and we come back in 2046, I’ll be a different person: older. It’ll look to you like I aged a decade in a couple months. Suppose you wait, and see if you feel the same then?”

“Shell, I mean what I say.” He took a deep breath through his nose. He had the sense he was enveloped in mist, not connecting, missing the target. He pressed on. If he could just shuffle the words into the right order, understanding would follow. “You don’t have to go. I would much rather you didn’t. You could give up on the Fortie Project, and stay.”

“With you, you mean.” Suddenly he knew he had her full attention, because her grey-eyed glance was as level as a sword. ”Titus, I’ve been working towards space travel since I was twenty! How can I throw it all aside at the last minute? They’re counting on me. You would never ask that of one of your Antarctic buddies.”

He looked down at his plate. The roll he had taken lay crushed into crumbs. “But you don’t need to do this.” His voice rose in frustration. “Exploration is sweet bugger all of a job for a woman.”

Shell went white. “That’s not true! Titus, don’t you listen to anything I say? Didn’t I warn you at the beginning, not to let it go too deep? And now you have!”

“You have never appreciated it,” he shouted, “but I’ve tried to explain over and over that it’s just not done, accepting a woman’s favours casually. I’ve compromised you, Shell. And now I want to do right by you. I like you too well to do anything less than play the game, even though you bloody well don’t give a rap. And that means marriage!”

He was on his feet now, and she pushed away from the table to stand up too, shorter than he but defiant. ”No, Titus — it means you offer marriage. And you did, which fulfills your obligations. And I say no. So that leaves you with two options. You can either accept what I say — like a gentleman. Or you can not accept it. What are you going to do: hold that rifle to my head? Put me into chains? How deep does that chivalry run, when you don’t get your own way?”

The unfairness of her words stabbed like a bayonet. “It’s so simple! Why the hell can’t you understand?”

“Oh God, this is like a vid,” Mag moaned, and Miranda whimpered in terror.

“Lemme handle it, Mag.” Nat rose to his feet and took his hat from the rack. He set a huge hand on Titus’s shoulder. “C’mon, son. We’re driving out to check on the stock. Right now.”

With his greater height and weight Nat could lift him like a doll. Rather than submit to that ultimate indignity, Titus allowed himself to be frog-marched out the garage door to the truck. Outside, the long August day was burning to death in the west in a haze of scarlet and purple cloud, grand as a symphony — the kind of sunset one never saw in England. Anger and frustration choked all speech as Titus sat fighting for self-control. “I don’t understand,” he said at last. “What have I done wrong? I don’t understand.”

Nat’s only reply was, “We’ll walk the fence.”

They drove in silence up to the sheds. Out in the pasture each horse had a long black shadow trailing at his hooves. When Nat cut the engine the only sound was the wind sighing through the grass. “C’mon.”

He brought an electric lantern and a bag of tools out from the shed, handing the latter to Titus. As they made the circuit of the field Nat gave each fence post a shake to be sure it was still seated firmly, and tested the single strand of barbed wire strung across the top. They were halfway round before he paused to squint at the last of the sunset. “You know Shell used to be my wife.”

Titus turned, letting the tool bag fall. He had known this moment would come, and he greeted it now with a tigerish joy. A scrap was just what he was ready for! “So we’ve come out here to settle it.”

“Huh?” Under the low hat brim Nat frowned in astonishment. “There’s nothing to settle. They sure must be fire-eaters where you come from, Cap. Lemme have the hammer, will you?”

Confused, Titus dug the hammer out of the bag and passed it over. With slow deliberate blows Nat pounded down a protruding staple. “It was a good marriage, but it didn’t last. Took me a while to figure out why.”

Titus tried to think. What reason would justify divorce — treason, perhaps? He held his tongue. Nat went on, “There’s a couple or three ways to look at it. You could say that she had to go to the stars, leaving me behind. Or maybe it was me, needing to put down roots in the past, while she was born to wander the future. But at bottom, it comes down to the fact that our lives were heading in different directions.”

They walked on to the next fence post, and the next. It became plain that Nat had said everything he wanted to say. Finally Titus said, “Why are you telling me this?”

“‘Cause you wanted to understand. She knows where she’s going, that Shell, and nothing’s going to put her out of her way. Not me, not you, not even Miranda. And she’d go through fire for her.”

“But — but that surely is not right. She ought not to be like that. A mother’s place is with her child.”

Even Nat’s monumental patience seemed to be wearing thin. “Son, talking to you is like talking to this post here. I’m tellin’ you: you’re standing in the crossing, and the train’s blowin’ the whistle. Get out of the way, or get run over.”

The last few fence posts. “Thank you. I appreciate your concern.”

Nat did not reply until they had put the tools back. “I’ve known mules like you. Well, Shell’s cut from the same cloth. You’re quite a pair.”

As they drove back, Titus tried to decide what to do next. The circumstances were entirely beyond his experience. Should he move out of their bedroom? Where to? Or would she already be gone when he returned, perhaps to share Miranda’s room again? There must be a protocol — given their shamelessly abandoned proclivities, the moderns must spend hours mired in excruciating situations like this! But the proper thing eluded him.

The windows were dark when they pulled into the driveway. In the end he emulated Nelson, and went straight at it. Easing the bedroom door open, he saw the glow from the security light outside the garage filtered through the curtain, outlining the bulge under the bedclothes. He tiptoed in. Surely she was asleep, not expecting him to return. With his pyjamas he could doss down on the couch —

“Titus?”

When she sat up the creamy-smooth curve of her bare shoulder in the light made him catch his breath. She might be afraid — a man creeping into a sleeping woman’s room could not be assumed to have good intentions. The thought brought him to his knees at the bedside. “If we quarrel any more I think I shall run mad.”

“Then let’s not, tonight.” She kissed him. Under the sheet she wore nothing. He fell on her like a starving man at a banquet. The golden peaceful passion of before was gone; opposition and not unity reigned. Yet their mutual tensions did not dissolve, but instead ignited fiery bright. Surely it was no coincidence that love and war shared so much vocabulary: probe and penetrate, thrust and push, pound and advance, load and fire.

And as with war, victory lay side by side with defeat, inextricably mingled yet separate. He had her completely in his power, her pleasure his to give or withhold at will; and his will was up to the bumpers, the invader storming her every stronghold, tyrannically tasting her pleasure again and again. And yet her willing mouth, her eager hands, spoke of victory; she gasped not for mercy but for more. It was she, kneeling before him in the posture of defeat, whose eyes glowed with bliss, who read his face like a book, drinking in his oncoming delight. And it was too late to pull back even if he would, too late for anything except smothering his noise in her pillow, lest his tumult wake the entire household. And then, panting in a tangle side by side, who had won?

In the morning there was no need to rake out at dawn for the tour. He lay beside her, inhaling the aroma of her hair, his hands wandering over her luxurious softness. “Remember,” she said drowsily, “when we said someday we’d laze around in bed all morning? And here we are.”

“We can stop here often. For years.”

“Titus, I know we’re going to have to discuss this issue. But let’s agree to keep it rational, okay? And for Heaven’s sake, let’s not bring it to bed.”

This won his fervent endorsement. He winced when he thought about the sharp verbal knives she could wield. To fight here in the bed of love would be infinitely ugly and destructive. He clasped her, hoping to forget the future in the sweet present. Some distant memory of Tam Lin told him that the mere act of holding onto the beloved would suffice. But the moment was gone. “Where has our happiness gone?”

She rolled over to her feet. “It was never forever, dear. Come on, I bet you could use some breakfast. I’ll make waffles.”

After the exhibition he had made of himself last night he felt awkward confronting the family. But everyone kindly pretended not to notice. Shell went to buy groceries, Mag ran the laundry, and Nat agreed to let Titus drive the truck to the hardware store. He could tell that Nat felt more confidence in his driving. After all, he had not come close to sideswiping anything in weeks. He knew the town now, the stores, the airfield, the post office. He could even converse while driving. “Nat, what will happen to Miranda when Shell goes?”

“She’ll live with Mag ‘n’ me.”

Titus thought about the classes, the doctors that Shell took Miranda to in New York City. “Do they have the facilities for her here?”

“Nope. But in Colorado they do. We spend the winters there, in Aspen. Got a winter gig, running sleigh rides for the ski resorts.”

Titus had seen enough tour groups now to know that horse-drawn sleigh rides would be wildly popular. Nat and Mag probably did it up brown, with bells on the horse harness and lanterns on sticks and steaming wassail-bowls decorated with holly and clove-studded oranges. It had seemed damned unlikely before, but now he was quite able to believe that the Doomsters were indeed a disaffected minority. The vast majority of modern people had a fathomless appetite for old-fashioned things, and would hail a time-traveller with enthusiasm. But Shell had planned for Miranda’s care thoroughly. There was no flaw in her armour here.

After lunch Mag and Nat went to pack the wagons for the next day’s departure. Shell set Titus to shucking a bushel of sweet corn while she chopped onions in preparation for Mag’s old-fashioned hand-cooked trail meals. American corn on the cob had been new to him — maize didn’t thrive in England’s cool climate — but he had learned rapidly to like it. “I shan’t argue with you if you’re going to hold a knife,” he said, smiling.

“I get the idea that you’ve never known a woman with any spine.”

“My older sister Lilian cracked me on the head with a cricket bat once. I was in bed with the concussion for days.”

That made her laugh. “And Mrs. Scott.”

“She put the wind up me all right,” he agreed. “But my mother was a strong-willed woman.”

Shell inspected an onion for soft spots. “Would I have liked her?”

“I don’t know.” His widowed mother had kept tight hold of the purse strings, nursed him through convalescences, battled to keep him happy and healthy — the quintessential formidable Victorian mama, equal parts whalebone and steel. She had not been a ‘modern’ woman even by the standards of the nineteenth century. “I doubt you would have had an idea in common.”

“You’re wrong there, dear. We are women. And we both love you. I bet we could talk for hours.”

He had to blush, hiding it by bending to pick up another ear of corn. “The truth of it is, Shell, Mother was deucedly high in the instep. You aren’t the — “ The race? class? nationality? age? breeding? Rapidly he skipped over dangerous words. “You aren’t the type of female she would have chosen for me.”

“And I agree with her there too. Mom sounds like a smart cookie. You deserve someone much better than me, someone who’ll devote her life to you, just like she did.”

How on earth did she do that — co-opt his own mother as a supporter! “You’ve never even met Mother. How do you know she devoted her life to me?”

“Titus, you told me about that brass plaque, remember? The one dedicated to your memory in the village church, that your mother polished every week. That’s the kind of devotion you’re used to.”

“Sentimental tripe,” he growled. “In any case, Mother’s wishes don’t come into it. All that’s important is that I know what I want now.”

“So do I.” Shell chopped onion thoughtfully, with a rhythmic thump of the blade on the cutting board. “A nice girl in her late twenties maybe, well-educated but outdoorsy. Mmm, I see her with long hair, maybe reddish, very pretty. That’s the sort of woman who’d be perfect for you. I’ll put it to Mag — she can keep an eye on the tour group rosters. And New York is full of single women. We’ll get Sabrina in on it.”

“You shall do no such thing! Shell, I’ve been dodging predatory mamas with daughters on the Marriage Mart for years. You should have seen them in India, leaving cards at my bungalow, trying to lure me to tea. You can’t trap an old bachelor that way.”

“Well then, what’s the problem? You don’t want to get married. And I am not going to marry you. We’re both singing the same song.”

He stuttered, caught on the hop. Damn the woman, she had turned the argument on him yet again! “For you and me it’s an entirely different case.”

“Why?”

“Because…because I love you, and you return my regard. So we have to.”

“Have to?” She dropped the paring knife clattering into the sink and turned to stare at him. “Oh my God. I see it all now. Titus, I am so sorry! You poor man, it never occurred to me, I’ve been so dense! Listen, have you ever heard of Margaret Sanger?”

“Who?”

“Or Elizabeth Cady Stanton? Or Susan B. Anthony?”

“Wasn’t she a Suffragette?” he demanded suspiciously.

“I guess. But the important thing is that they’re the only proponents of birth control that you’re likely to have heard of. Sanger began publishing articles about birth control in 1912, so there’s just a chance you might know of her — well I guess not, if you were sledging in Antarctica.”

A nasty thought struck him. “Shell, you aren’t a Suffragette yourself, are you? Women ought not to vote. The idea is hell-and-tommy bilge, a hysterical and unfeminine fad that will destroy the British family.”

He could see her jaw square up as she set her teeth. “Titus, we won. American women have had the vote since 1920, and the family is fine. It’s a totally dead issue around the world, including Britain. I have voted all my life, my mother and grandmother before me, and I’m not going to debate it with you now.”

“Since 1920? That’s appalling! So that’s how you come to have women Presidents.”

“Forget it, Titus. The important thing for you to know is, I am not going to get pregnant. So you will never ‘have to’ marry me.” She picked the knife out of the sink and attacked another onion with it, cheerfully flinging the onion skins into the compost bucket. “Whew, you had me so worried. It was natural and right of them to grind it into your head that sex entails marriage. Because sex always led to babies in your time.”

“And now it doesn’t.”

“No. Modern medicine has severed that connection.”

He picked silk from between the rows of kernels, digesting this astonishing information. Men in his experience didn’t concern themselves about such things. In the officers’ mess one occasionally heard talk of sheaths or dreadnoughts, but they were used mainly to ward off the clap. The business was all disgusting and overly Continental, not something an English gentleman dabbled in. In their typical clever-Dick fashion the moderns must have brought those crude methods to the heights of refinement — he had no desire whatever to pry into the details! But he felt honour-bound to confess the truth. “Shell, this may prove me a bounder and a cad. But the thought of your, ah…Well, the prospect of fatherhood never occurred to me.”

“Well, it should have. You be sure to consider the issue, before you get too hot with your pretty red-headed history student.”

“My…Do you mind? The devil take this imaginary bluestocking you’ve wished on me! I tell you, Shell, I never thought about the consequences one way or the other until this moment. It had no impact on how I feel or what I want.”

“Oh. Oh God…Titus, are you sure?”

She was so blankly dismayed, he wanted to laugh. He dropped the clean ear of corn into the kettle and jumped up to take her hand. “I think it’s my turn to understand now. If it’s children you long for — I hadn’t considered setting up household, but it’s the obvious thing to do. Every good woman is by nature a mother, and if — “

“No, Titus! Oh, goddamn it to hell. Even if I weren’t going to Tau Ceti, it would be impossible. To live with a raging sexist like you would drive me bonkers!”

She slammed the onion and the knife hard onto the cutting board, and stormed out. Stunned, Titus sat down and took up another ear of corn. From outside came the crunch of tyres on gravel. After a moment Mag shouldered the door open, lugging a large plastic ice chest to scrub out. “Hi, Cap. Looking good with that corn.”

“Allow me.” He rose and took the ice chest from her, and began to run water into it. “Mag, enlighten me, please. What is this ‘sexist’ she keeps on calling me?”

She sat down in his chair with a thump. “Oh no. Lemme guess — you’ve been fighting with Shell again. I don’t have the cojones to step in the middle of this cougar fight, Cap. I’ll find you the dictionary, and then you’re on your own.”

It occurred to Titus that evening that he should use his nut: stop sharing her bed and pack it in. This was not war, where a no-surrender attitude had won him unanimous praise. It was an affair that had come to an impasse: like walking on eggs, with the perpetual sense of something fragile cracking underfoot. And he still had no clear idea what this blather about sexism was! No, it was hopeless. Better the thing should die a natural death.

But common sense didn’t save him from the bitter stab of betrayal when he went to the bedroom and found her packing. He clenched his teeth on all the questions and pleas and ultimatums, and went over to the window to lean both hands on the frame. The window faced the cinderblock garage wall two yards away, but he stared through the glass as if New York City hummed and flitted below.

“It’s just too painful,” Shell was saying. She sat on the edge of the bed, cramming feminine oddments into a sponge bag. “I told you, didn’t I, not to let it go too deep? Well, like an idiot I didn’t take my own advice. This was just going to be a summer romance. And I can’t bear to hurt you, dear. If we could just step back, just be friends again…”

Titus turned, hiding a sudden sense of triumph. They were smart, these women, but they had no sense of tactics! Shell was intelligent enough to know when to fall back. But she didn’t realize that choice of battleground was everything. Their love was strongest here, here in this room where she had nearly knocked him cold by kissing him for the first time. He could fight this here and he could win, not the main battle yet, but this skirmish. And any soldier would tell you that a skirmish might turn the tide of an entire war. He dismissed his earlier chicken-hearted windiness. Never say die; hold on; nail the colours to the masthead! “How much time do you have, Shell?”

“You mean here? Well, there’s the tour this week, and another four-day tour next week. Then it’s the Labor Day weekend, and I have to be in Florida on Tuesday. The takeoff is scheduled for October 12th, Columbus Day.”

“So we have a fortnight, before the end. Let’s not throw away what’s so good. We have a piece of time outside of time: a gift. Let’s live from day to day. We’ll forget about the past and the future, eh? And be happy with what we have.” He was sitting beside her on the edge of the bed now, kissing her, parting her clothing with slow skill and touching her until she trembled. She had taught him how to delight a woman, and now he turned the sweet weapons against her, sure of his power.

“It does sound like a crime to waste the chance,” Shell admitted, drawing in a deep shuddering breath. “I can’t stand it when you’re miserable, but if we could avoid that…”

“And your happiness means everything to me.” In this room, on this bed — this was where the root was green and strong, fighting to live. And he was not going to let it die.

Chapter 15

But Titus could not leave the issue alone. In his own time, instinct and propriety worked in concord — what he had known was right was hailed as such by one and all. Now he was blindsided time and again by wrong reactions, reflexes that ran too deep for mere argument. Lash would say it was a good sign, demonstrating that he was moving from superficial adaptation to a more profound revision. Yet he couldn’t help worrying at the problem, the way one would pick at a frostbite sore. “I will love you for the rest of my life — why is this so hard to understand?”

It was Wednesday evening, and they had left Mag and Nat presiding at the tour campfire to walk across the prairie in the starlight. “Titus, why is it that since our desires are incompatible, I’m the one who has to give in?”

“It has to be you, because I’m helpless. I would go with you to the stars like a flipping shot, but they won’t countenance it. Unless — could it be managed, Shell? Slip me in as a snottie, a cabin boy even.”

“Titus, this is not Horatio Hornblower. Starships don’t have cabin boys.”

“Or in the ship stores — even a starship must have stores. I could go on the docket as ‘recreational supplies.’”

“Zero G would crimp your style. It’s impossible, dear. The team’s been training together for eight years. Dropping you in would be like adding an extra piece to Miranda’s jig-saw puzzle.”

“I was right, what I said to that interviewer nit. You need soldiers along.”

“Titus, you know perfectly well that at this late date they’re not going to adjust the entire Fortie first encounter plan. You said you’d trust me on this, dear.”

The folly of this made Titus want to shout. Trust was not the issue. Didn’t she realize that it was their lives at stake? But vehement arguments were dangerous, destabilizing to the fragile balance of their joy. He took a long calming draw on his pipe. “Remember how you tried to explain about wilderness reserves?”

“You wanted fields and villages.”

“I was wrong. Look.” The stars above were illimitable in the vast black dome of sky. Until coming West he had never seen so many, either for want of attention or corrected vision. If one stared up long enough at them on moonless nights like this, a curious illusion of reversal took place. One got the dizzying idea that one was staring down into a bottomless well of sky, instead of upwards. The impulse to clutch the rim of the earth was almost irresistible, and he sat down on the dry grass to let the pleasant vertigo pass. “You can’t see that in the city.”

She sat beside him, the solid warmth of her hip against his. “Weren’t the stars as bright at the Pole?”

“It was too cold to stand outside and admire them. What I’m on about, Shell, is that they’ve saved a bit of paradise here. It’s like the first day of creation, when everything was perfect and new and glorious. The animals follow us the way they followed Adam in the Garden of Eden. Even the weather is warm and dry. It would be a crime to change it. Keeping it as a Wilderness Area is absolutely the only thing to do. You were right, and I was wrong.”

“I’m so proud of you, Titus! You’ve really got hold of a piece of the modern mindset.” It was too dark to see her smile, but he could hear it in her voice.

“Work on me long enough and I might even come round to women voting. To such depths I’ve fallen: consorting with a Suffragette.”

“Skunk!…Titus, I never meant for you to be unhappy. If I had known you would get so serious so fast, I never would have let this start.”

“A pity, but I was brought up to be a gentleman.”

“But plenty of people in your period were lechers. What about what’s-his-name, the Prince of Wales?”

He lay back on the deep springy grass to fall upwards into the sky again. “King Edward VII, you mean? A rake. Sad disappointment to the old Queen. But the actresses and bits of fluff were kept under the rose, and marriage supposedly reformed him. You would prefer a man like that?”

“Of course not. But you would be happier if you could take it more lightly, and I want you to be happy.” Her plump hand, callused from the reins, squeezed his. “Would it suit you to come help with the tours next summer?”

“Like one o’clock.”

“Good! Mag asked me to ask you. And Kev told you that there’s about a million colleges and universities and historical places that want to talk to you. You could set up a schedule and do them all. So you could keep busy with that in the winters and off-season, and get your riding and shooting here in the summers. That would be a good life, wouldn’t it?”

“If you were there to share it.”

That was wrong. He heard her drawing a deep breath, fighting for calm. “You forget, Titus. That’s where the pretty history student comes in.”

“I dislike her already. Shell, I am not Miranda, someone you have to lay out a life plan for. You insist upon the dignity of a rational being. Well, so do I. Do me the courtesy of allowing me to know my own mind!”

“This is what it always comes down to,” she said despairingly. “It’s your way or the highway, and you won’t compromise, and you won’t leave it alone.”

Another moment and they would be shouting at each other. He sat up. “My fault. We agreed to live in the present.” He didn’t have to see her mouth to find it. After a long moment he broke away, the blood singing in his veins. “Shall we go back?”

She made no move to rise. “You know, it’s dark, and perfectly warm.”

“Shell, have pity on a modest time traveller. Anyone could see us.”

“In the dark, out here? Who? A passing prairie-dog, maybe.”

He laughed. It was always gratifying when she was mad for it. He lay back again, drawing on his pipe and listening to the stimulating rustle of her blouse as she pulled it off. “Since coming to your era, I’ve become steadily more depraved. I shall have no standards left.”

She settled into the curve of his arm and began to unbutton his shirt. “Mmm, oh, you smell so good…We’re pretty far from camp. You can be as noisy as you like.”

“I…” Why had his alleged depravity not diminished the tendency to blush? So she had noticed his attempts to maintain decorum! “You are all so, so biological!”

“You’re going to have to do your boots yourself …You can’t have been raised in a bell jar, Titus.”

“The women of my time were.” He pulled off his boots, laying them carefully in the grass so he could find them again in the pitch dark, and put his pipe into his hat for safekeeping. “I wish I knew how the milk-and-water girls of my day became foremothers to goddesses like you, so beautiful and brown and bold. Ah, I know what it must be — the vote! The naysayers were right after all. Giving Suffragettes the vote is responsible for all this change.”

“Titus, you’re so terrible.” Her laughter vibrated under his hands, under the solid warm curve of the rib bones. “So the institution of the family has been destroyed?”

“Evidently. But from my viewpoint, over here on the far side of that destruction, it’s deliciously cosy.” The experience was different every time. Now in the dark the other senses carried the burden that useless eyes could not. His entire body seemed to be a palate, tasting her. The sweet toasted-grain aroma of the grass mingled with the woman-smell, and she tasted of vanilla and leather, with an exhilarating tang of salt added when she gasped and the sweat started to her skin. She was a new and virgin country whenever he embraced her, the dream of an explorer. “My America, my new found land,” he murmured into her rich flesh.

“As long as you have a reason why women voting is okay, I guess I shouldn’t complain. Oh, that’s so good…Can we quit discussing politics, and concentrate on what’s happening right now?”

“Anything to oblige a lady.” His voice sounded hoarse, muffled in the thunder of his pulse. Desire was vaster than vegetable empires and more slow. Making love to her halted time in its tracks. As in the poem, he could savour each of his coy mistress’s delights for centuries. Every moment shone in the eternal present, ponderous and rich as gold, each with its freight of pleasure. In the end exploration is a journey into self, and exploring her he had learned things more valuable than the treasure of Cortez: to open the armour and drink deep, to give joy and take it, to touch the earth and acknowledge the flesh. In the Antarctic it had been a steady progression of isolation, armoured in windproof and mitts and finnesko, until the only exit had been alone out into the storm. Almost his last thought in 1912 had been a yearning to strip it all off.

Now he was naked on the earth, covered only by sky, possessing a woman who loved him. He had shed everything, and it was glorious. He looked up at Shell, a more solid darkness against the star-strewn heavens as she swayed above him, and that sky-reversal took place. He was falling, flying into her, into her arms, into her body, and his cry was a shout of triumph.

Titus liked a daily shave. The Queen’s Regulations mandated moustaches for cavalry officers, but he had always been clean-shaven. A straight razor was standard British Army issue. Even on the Polar expedition a shave and clean clothing on Sundays was the rule, except while sledging. That first day in New York he had found an ordinary toilet set in his bathroom: leather strop, mug, round cakes of shaving soap, badger-bristle brush, and a rather poor-quality razor. He had accepted it without a thought. Only in Wyoming had he learnt that straight razors were utterly out of date. Where Lash had found the kit was a mystery.

Titus did not intend to change his ways. On the trail he was irritated and amused to find his morning grooming routine a perennial favourite with the tour guests. Mag exploited this to the hilt, setting an antique travel shaving mirror up every morning on the wagon-step so that people with vids could get a fully period backdrop. She also took her own pictures with special equipment that made the images look like daguerreotypes, to put onto the tour’s website and brochure.

“I should sell tickets,” he grumbled. “Sweet bugger all if I understand the attraction. Do they hope I’ll slip and cut my throat?”

“It’s that you don’t,” Mag said. “You’re so deft with that thing, it’s a pleasure to watch — those long sensitive fingers! And shaving with a six-inch cut-throat razor is a lost art. Nobody alive knows how to do it any more. We could rent the vids to producers of Sweeney Todd.”

Titus poured hot water from her kettle into the mug. “I could teach Nat.”

“His facial hair doesn’t amount to much — Indian blood, you know.”

His complaint was merely habit this Thursday morning. After last night, Titus felt in charity with the entire world. He was inured to shaving for an audience in his shirt and braces by now. Yanks enjoyed the strangest things — target practice, even his pipe! An outnumbered Englishman could only acquiesce. He had just worked the soap up into a good lather in the mug when some of the children ran up. “The dog’s treed a snake!” they screamed. “At the creek!”

“Jiminy!” Mag was just dishing up a large pan of piping-hot baking powder biscuit. “Shell, you go and get those kids away from the critter. They don’t have any more sense than a gnat.”

Titus set down his shaving brush. He knew of snakes from living in Egypt and India. “Better allow me.” But Shell was already off at a run. With a muttered excuse to the alarmed spectators, he climbed into the wagon to fetch the rifle. He trotted after Shell, dropping the cartridges through the loading port.

The children were rampaging round the bluff at the edge of the creek in a high state of pleasurable excitement. “It’s over there!”

“Wow, he’s gonna shoot it!”

“Ole Red found it!”

“Please keep back!” Shell commanded. “Don’t climb there, little boy — you could fall. Let’s leave the snake alone, and go have breakfast. I have Red, Captain, so you won’t need that thing.”

“Don’t be a fool, Shell.” Titus clambered down over the water-worn boulders to creek level, disgusted to see that everyone was barefoot. Greenhorns! Did they think that snakes had plastic for fangs?

“I don’t think it’s a prairie rattler.” She hung onto Red’s collar as the animal whined and tugged. “Just a bull snake.”

“We can’t take the chance. Let him go, Shell.”

“What? Titus — I mean, Cap, are you — “

With a mighty lunge Red jerked out of her grasp. “Find it, Red, there’s a good dog.” The mechanism slid with a smooth dangerous click as he cocked the gun. The dog dashed to a crevice in the stones at the edge of the creek, and began to bark. “Keep those children back, Shell.”

“Titus, if we leave the snake alone it will — “

“There!” The dog’s scrabbling and racket flushed the snake out into the open. Titus aimed and fired almost in the same instant, blowing the snake’s head to glory. The writhing body smeared the rock with blood as it slithered into the water.

The children surged forward down the bluff as one, shrieking questions. Shell grabbed at them. “Good girl,” Titus said. Even a dead serpent could be dangerous.

“Down, Red! Be good! Titus, how could you? That was totally unnecessary, and if you would only listen to me —”

The dog refused to calm down, barking in wild excitement so loudly that Titus had to raise his voice to be heard. “Shell, don’t be silly. Look at all these nippers — and the tour camps here every week.”

Between the dog and the children’s clamour it was impossible to talk. Titus took hold of Red’s collar, twisting it to partly throttle the beast. They herded the overexcited party back up the bluff. Once in sight of the camp most of the children dashed ahead, screaming, “He killed it, Mom!”

“He saved us!”

“It was this long and had fangs!” Only Miranda stayed with them.

“Loathsome brats,” Titus sighed when they were out of earshot. “You’re quite right not to want any more.”

“Titus, there was no danger at all!” Shell said. “I’m sure it wasn’t a poisonous snake. And even if it was, you had no business to kill it!”

“Now that is all of a piece. Snakes are friendly. And the Forties will serve you tea and scones with raspberry jam. Where do you moderns get these ideas?”

“Oh! That is so unfair — I didn’t say it was friendly. This snake was harmless. Why kill it? Titus, just last night, you said you understood!”

“But snakes are dangerous!” They were nearly back at the wagons now.

“They are part of the ecosystem!”

Titus couldn’t believe they were having a breeze up about this. “There’s a new word,” he said, hoping to placate her.

But she was having none of it. “Every time I think you’re settled in, you do something so strange, so alien! If only you’d get some therapy — “

Without the slightest warning Miranda turned on him. Only his boxing experience allowed him to dodge the clumsy haymaker she threw at him. “Devil a bit,” he exclaimed, startled. “What’s wrong, Miranda?”

“No fighting! No fighting!” The gabbled words were almost incomprehensible.

“Oh no, sweetie, Mom’s not angry, really! Oh Titus, see what you’ve done.”

“Me?” Titus held back a retort. Miranda was clearly winding up into another tantrum. “Everything’s fine, child. Look, Miranda, nothing’s wrong.”

Shell shot him a furious glance, but was equally constrained from pursuing the subject. “Could you fetch her father, Titus?”

“Here he comes,” Titus said with undisguised relief.

“I know what, darling. Let’s go back and see if we can identify that snake. Nat, do you have the wildlife guide? Does it have a photo of the prairie rattler?” And she was off, dragging Nat and Miranda back to inspect the snake’s remains.

Thoroughly bewildered, Titus leaned the rifle against a wagon wheel to clean later, and returned to his shaving. At least his entire audience had gone, following Nat and Shell to the creek and chattering like magpies. “Mag, I truly don’t understand it. What is she on about?”

Mag took off her glasses, troubled. “Well, nobody’s supposed to kill the wildlife here. It’s a reserve.”

“I grasped that. But even rattlesnakes?”

She sighed. “In my book, Cap, rattlers have always been varmints. And varmints have no place near packs of kids.”

Titus took up the razor. He wasn’t certain what a varmint was, but Mag’s tone conveyed a species of approval. “So why doesn’t Shell see that?”

“She’s an Easterner,” Mag said, as if that explained everything. “You just better hope it really was a rattler, hon. If it was a garter snake, she’s gonna make you eat it with barbecue sauce on a bun, extra crispy.”

Titus scowled at his reflection as he scraped the lather off his chin. Why was everything so bloody difficult? East-coast natives didn’t understand Westerners; Englishmen talked right past puzzled Americans; women responded to men with blank incomprehension; and the passage of 133 years had changed the world beyond all reckoning. It was a Christ-almighty wonder anyone could communicate with anybody else at all. The entire human race was like the Fortie team in the film, staring at twitching dancers and trying to extract some sense out of it.

He was washing up when the group came back, preceded as ever by the children. One lad dashed up and made straight for the rifle. Mag pounced to forestall him. “No, dear, not for kids!”

“You little tinkers!” Titus snatched up the weapon.

“I think you should shoot something else,” a little girl said.

The first boy said, “You could shoot a cow.”

“One doesn’t shoot cows,” Titus explained. “Cows give milk.”

“Milk comes from the store.”

Titus stared at this ghastly ignorance. “But where do you think the store gets it?”

“From factories!”

Mag intervened to get him out of the awful conversation. “I think you’d better put the rifle away now, Cap.” In passing she added quietly, “Lock it up!”

“An excellent thought. Oh, and did they find the snake, children?”

“Nope. A fox musta got it,” the boy said with deep disappointment. “I wanted to extract the venom and use it to become Gigantor!”

“Thank God for small mercies.” He gave the piece a quick clean and took it down into its two component sections. The barrel was less than thirty inches long, fitting nicely into the bottom of his bag with the shorter stock on top. The case’s buckles were stiff enough to deter childish fingers. He wedged the bag under the wagon seat and slid an ice chest in front to further hide it. And it was still before breakfast! He felt he had earned a good meal.

Chapter 16

The weekend was a return to real life. After days on the trail, washing in basins and wearing period dress, baths and clean clothing were glorious. Mag laundered everything that wasn’t nailed down, Miranda watched her favourite vids and assembled jigsaw puzzles, and Nat experimented with gourmet cookery. Titus had developed a taste for hot needle-spray shower baths, which were wonderfully convenient in the Longtrees’ guest bathroom. He wondered if the TTD would object to the expense of installing one for him in New York. Edwardian fixtures were all very well, but it was senseless not to concede that the moderns had unadulterated Sybaritic comfort down pat.

Shell plunged back into 21st century conveniences more avidly than all of them. At supper Titus watched with amusement and envy as she juggled her small machine while she ate, clicking keys, answering buzzes, and leaping away from the table on Sunday night more than once to converse aloud.

The second time she did this Titus said, “At first I thought she was mad, talking of cooking and riding and pitching tents as a holiday. But I see it now. Any occasion when she has only one task at hand is a holiday.”

“She never could just sit and watch the grass grow,” Nat agreed. “Born to run, fast and far.”

Mag endorsed this. “Besides, it wouldn’t be period to link on tour.”

Shell came back and attacked her salad again. “Your problem, dear, is that you’re not used to working women.”

“I’m a creature of my time, Shell. It’s not fair to blame me for not taking arms against the mindset of my era.”

“You do try to change,” Mag said. “You work on like Miranda pecking away at reading and arithmetic.”

This was a genuine accolade. “Thank you.” To Shell he added, “Why must I always be the one who alters? It’s becoming ruddy tiresome. Just once it would be pleasant for someone to say, ‘My word, you were right and we were wrong —- we’ll change the situation posthaste.’”

“What choice do you have, Titus?” Shell was obviously thinking in the abstract rather than applying the question personally. “You couldn’t change your era even if you wanted to. Why would this one be any easier to revise? And besides, we have your best interests at heart, dear. Nobody is making you change your shaving style, are they? It’s the inter-personal attitudes that we really work on. It would be wrong to let you blunder around hurting people.”

“The joke in my day was that a gentleman never insults anybody — unintentionally.” He felt impelled to add, “Even if I wished it, Shell, I don’t think I could hurt you. No one could. You are so strong.”

To a woman in 1912, the words would have indeed been an insult. Titus had changed enough so that the statement was a sincere compliment. Shell turned and planted a quick kiss on his cheek. “You are such a dear man. I’ll tell you a secret. If anyone could have sweet-talked me out of the trip, it’d be you.”

Somehow this was not consoling. “That should be a salve to my pride in time to come,” he said with a spice of bitterness.

Crack! Something slammed painfully hard against his ankle-bone. Mag glared and jerked a meaningful eyebrow at Miranda. “How’s Cap doing with learning to drive, hon? You hair isn’t any more gray, so I guess he’s getting the hang of it.”

Shell had turned away and begun to eat rapidly. Nat shook his head. “He didn’t ever flip us over, but it wasn’t for want o’ trying.”

Titus clung defiantly to normality, digging the dottle out of his pipe and repacking it. “It was only that once, that I skidded into the ditch. What does one have to do to get a driver’s license? Could I pass for one now?”

“Nope,” Nat said with conviction. “Next season we’ll give it a try.”

“Next season.” Suddenly the pipe tasted of sawdust in Titus’s mouth. Shell would not be here next season. She would be long gone, to where he could not follow. He had belied his fine words almost as they were spoken, and hurt her. He fought the impulse to blurt apologies. It would roil the placid surface of the meal, and Mag had a kick like a horse.

“I wanted to mention that,” Shell said. “Mag, could you keep an eye on the tour guests next year? I need someone reliable to watch out for a special woman.”

“Oh no, Shell!”

She ignored him, giggling. “My idea is that Titus is going to need a girl. And he’s had proven success, finding an interest on the trail.”

Mag laughed too. “A fine hot-blooded lad like him, he couldn’t scout up his own filly?”

“Yes, I could! I mean no, I wouldn’t care to!”

His response made Shell laugh out loud. “A nice girl. Not an idiot, either — someone with too much gumption to wait on him hand and foot.” Suddenly she became serious. “Someone he could love.”

Titus was angry and embarrassed and laughing, all at once. “I will have none of this, Shell. Where do you get this idea that women can be interchanged in a man’s affections like anonymous machine parts? It doesn’t sound like a Suffragette way of thinking at all.”

She patted his cheek softly. “I don’t think it’ll be difficult.”

“Are you saying I’m fickle?”

“I think ‘hot-blooded’ is low-balling it. You’re ready to fall in love, or lust, with any pretty face that passes by. And I’m asking Mag to choose you a good one.”

“I’m not sure I want to step into this hornet’s nest, Shell,” Mag said. “Seems to me Titus is old enough to know his own mind.”

“I certainly am!” Suddenly the other emotions were swallowed in yearning. “I have the common sense to know what I want. If you would just marry me, Shell, all would be well!”

She sighed. “Sometimes I think this is just a complicated ploy of yours to get onto the ship.”

There was just enough truth in that to sting. He had to look, to catch the twinkle in her eye. “Well, you might need a decent cook — Debenham, Meares and I were reckoned to be the best cooks on the Polar expedition. Or an odds and sods chap — a dishwasher and deck swabber.”

Even Mag and Nat had an expression that told him this was laughably out of date. Shell said, “Titus, the Amity Star will have dishwashers and cleanbots. The people who are going will all be front-line personnel: broad-based language and communication specialists, and scientists to do bio and tech assessment.”

“How you can do without a military contingent is beyond me.”

“The whole point is not to be aggressive!”

He stopped dead at this familiar and dangerous turning. Mag said soothingly, “‘cording to the newsies, nobody is bringing their spouse anyway, Cap. So getting married wouldn’t make any difference.”

“All those unions disrupted?” he said, aghast.

Shell smiled, determined to keep things on an even keel. “Are we back to women’s suffrage again?”

Suddenly Titus was certain she would find another lover on the Fortie teams. They would be gone for at least eight years by ship’s reckoning, far too long for any modern to be chaste. Probably the fellow she had been whispering to in that dancing doctor film. The thought made his blood boil. No wonder she was encouraging him to stray! “This damned slack immoral age,” he burst out. “Faithfulness means nothing to you people any more!”

It was like putting tinder to a spark. “But I don’t want your faithfulness!” she exploded. “I’ve told you over and over that — “

“Shell!” Nat’s deep voice cut under hers. “Mag ‘n’ I are taking Miranda out to look for fireflies. When we come back, you two have it out of your systems.” He stood up, taking Miranda by the hand.

Mag swept Miranda’s crumbs onto a plate. “Why the dickens you can’t two go a day without wrangling, I’ll never know. All right, hon, let’s go.”

Titus got to his feet and kept his gaze fixed on the view outside the kitchen window as the Longtrees left. Now that they were at liberty to row, he could think of nothing to say. His pipe was out, and he relit it. The silence stretched on uncomfortably. What a filthy embarrassing situation, and she was always getting him into them! Why was it so difficult? These precipitous ups and downs defied comprehension. Surely all unions were not like this, constantly at loggerheads. There was something fundamentally wrong, undermining their peace.

She said something, a small noise, and he turned. “Damn it. Shell, please don’t cry!”

“I can’t help it, so don’t waste your breath telling me not to.” She blew her nose into a napkin and wiped her eyes. “I only want you to be happy, Titus.”

He sat down again, his heart aching, and set the pipe down on the table so that he could hold her tear-wet hands in both his. “And I swear all I want is your happiness.”

She stared down at their joined hands in her lap. “So why can’t we achieve it? Why did I get into this?”

He had never considered that before. Now the question shimmered with significance. Why exactly had she taken him on? The time available for an affair was absurdly short; she had set this time aside for her family; and above all, she was so self-sufficient and strong — she didn’t need him. A mercy fuck? The thought made him writhe. But suddenly his mind was racing like a lorry on autopilot, even worse ideas barreling into his head with a speed that frightened him. “Oh God,” he whispered. “Oh my God.”

She looked up. “What is it, dear?”

He could feel the tingling retreat of the blood from cheeks and lips as he turned pale. Slowly he pulled his hands free from hers. “Shell. Was it — for practise?”

The fevered thoughts drove him to his feet. “You’ve been training to communicate with aliens. With the oddest, most unimaginably strange beings you can lay hands on. And who could be stranger and more alien than a traveller from 1912?”

She began to speak, to protest, but his words tumbled out faster and faster, cutting hers off. “At the very beginning, I remember it. It was Sabrina’s job to put me together again, and your job to talk to me about it. And in the park. You said I was downright alien. You’ve had a secret agenda all this while. You’ve had me on a piece of string, observing me, figuring out what makes me tick — a long-term project, longer than a dance troupe could offer. And why else would an alien-contact expert waste so many hours, so close to the time of her departure? All part of the job, you said so.”

“No, Titus! This is crazy!”

“Oh God and, and…“ He hardly heard her, the visions rushing into his head were so terrible. “…in bed.” His agonized indrawn breath could have been torn from a man on the rack. “You …it was an experiment, wasn’t it? A test of the system, one that Sabrina Trask couldn’t handle with her meters and machines. It’s all of a piece, all of it consistent with everything else, with keeping an eye on me while I sleep. Do the little machines record all the clinical details?”

She had leaped to her feet as well, and now she grabbed him by both arms, tears pouring unchecked down her cheeks. “Titus, please! Listen to me, listen to yourself! You’re all wrong — “

He shook her off, pulling away in nausea as if an unclean thing was clutching him, no sweet Polly but the Queen of Air and Darkness. “I will not listen,” he panted hoarsely. “My God, I was right all the time, from the very beginning — you’re all whores. Cut from the same cloth as Mrs. Zonderman. Is there no turpitude beneath you people? What will you do on Tau Ceti? Meet these poor damned gullible Forties and fling yourself at them, seduce them off to bed and — “

Her hand came hard around in a roundhouse slap. His ears rang so that he couldn’t hear her weeping words. The sweat poured cold down his body. His shirt was clammy and dark with it. He knew he was going to be sick. He twisted away from her grasping hand and ran, stumbling out the kitchen door into the garage.

The big door at the far end was open. He ricocheted painfully off the parked truck and took to his heels, down the graveled driveway to the hot dusty road. The sun was a malevolent red oval low in the west. The Longtrees were at the far end of the yard with Miranda, but he dared not stay. He ran hellbent for leather, the demons baying behind him, as fast and as far as his legs could go, for miles perhaps through the hot August evening. Then he fell to his hands and knees on the gravel verge and vomited his heart out.

And still he could not rest or stop. Shuddering, he shuffled blindly onwards. The one thought pounding through his mind was to get away, to never have to see her again. It was the horror of gangrene, a cherished part of one’s very self metamorphosing by some vile magic and revealed as corrupt and liquid with decay. They could not find him under cover of night even with the truck. But he had to make as many miles as possible by daylight.

The road was vaguely familiar, and after some time Titus recognized it as the road to the staging point and pasture. Suddenly he knew he was thirsty. He had spent enough time shepherding tourists to know all the admonitions about keeping hydrated and taking on enough water in hot weather. He’d already lost a lot of fluid, shooting the cat. Now he thought with dizzy longing of the big water-filter jugs in the wagon. Nat would have filled them, ready for the tour tomorrow.

He came to the gate and hoisted himself over its smooth pipes. The sheds were locked, and he had to make several attempts at the combination in the twilight before he could work the padlock. He did not dare to turn on the light, but made his way by touch to the wagon and the big jugs at the back. He turned the little spigot on the jug, and held his mouth under the tepid flow. Strength seemed to seep back into his body with the water. He drank and drank again, and then splashed his dusty face and neck. Then he slumped down and sat in the dark with his back to the wagon wheel.

Still it was impossible to think coherently. It was as if roiling emotion had drained all the blood out of his head, so that his brain couldn’t act. He forced himself to think. I have to get away, he told himself. Go back. Retrace the route quickly, find the store depot before we starve and freeze…No, that was in the Antarctic. In Wyoming, how to go back? To the airport, perhaps. Ladybird, fly away home.

A distant sense of the right way to do things drove him to climb up into the wagon and get his bag. A man has to have baggage. The same conscientiousness guided him to relock the padlock on his way out. In the yard the curious horses came up to investigate their late visitor. Cloud recognized him and snuffled at his sleeve. Titus leaned against the horse for a moment, running his hand along the warm curve of its neck. The thought of all he had lost made him want to weep. But if he broke down now he might never stop.

It was fully night now. Walking to the airport took more than an hour, but he didn’t notice the passage of time. He only came to himself when he arrived at the long low concrete-block building. It had not occurred to him to consider when the planes left and arrived. Perhaps it was too late at night? But the windows were brightly lit. He tramped up to the main door and found it unlocked.

A lone clerk, a young man, was clicking at the perpetual little machine behind the counter. Titus leaned on it. “I have to leave.”

“I’m sorry, sir, our last flight this evening has gone.”

“Tomorrow then.”

“You have a reservation?”

He didn’t, and had no notion how to get one. Belatedly it came to him that he had no money to pay his fare. He was more helpless than Miranda, no more able to handle his own affairs than the dog. The frustration must have showed in his face, because the clerk shrank back. With an effort Titus schooled his face into immobility. “Just a moment.”

Lash had given him something for this eventuality, he remembered. It had looked like a calling card of metal and plastic, and Titus had promised not to lose it. So it must be here — and sure enough, he found it in the side pocket of the bag, just where he had stuck it in July. “Could you do something with this?”

“This is a drone card, sir.”

“Then use it, damn it!” Titus clawed for control of himself. “I beg your pardon. I’m in trouble.”

This must have been obvious. The young man said, “If you’ll trust me to use it, I can — “

“Please.”

Titus tried to breathe evenly and slowly as the clerk did things with the card and several machines. Suddenly, astonishingly, a voice rang out. It was Lash: “Titus? Is that you? Where are you?”

“Yes.” Titus steeled himself for argument. “I’m in Grizzly, at the airport. Lash, I need to come back.”

“A good idea,” Lash said, unexpectedly. “Is there someone there at the airport?”

The clerk spoke up. “I’m manning the desk, sir.”

“Good! Titus, this chap and I can handle it. You just calm down and relax.”

Titus was only too glad to obey. He hadn’t the strength now to inquire about how easy it had been. He collapsed onto one of the seats with his head in his hands, absolutely done. He could not bear to cope any more. He was scuppered, ready to crawl into a hole and die. One could only soldier on so far.

Time passed. Finally the clerk said, “Sir?”

“Yes?”

“You’re booked on the first flight out, tomorrow morning at seven. But I’m afraid you can’t spend the night in this building, sir. I have to lock up. You can come back tomorrow.”

“All right.” He stood up, reeling.

“Do you, uh, have any place to go?”

“No. It doesn’t matter.”

The clerk said, all in a rush, “It’s not very comfortable, but…you could crash out back by the picnic table. There’s no rain in the forecast. And the weather’s warm enough to sleep out.”

“Yes, I know.” Titus closed his eyes for a moment against another wave of pain.

“And…” It took Titus a moment to realize that the fellow was returning the card to him. “You should keep this carefully, sir,” he said with some reproach. “You’ve got Dr. Lash’s entire electronic identity here. It’s an important trust.”

Titus had no idea what he was talking about, and could not bother his head about it now. He took the card and, since the clerk seemed to expect it, put it safely away in his bag. He dreaded now lying awake, thinking, staring up at stars that he could not fall up into. But he had walked and run so far that as soon as he lay down in the short grass by the picnic table blessed sleep overtook him.

Titus could hardly believe his eyes when he arrived at the Denver airport. There at the gate was Dr. Lash, pale and dapper as ever. “It’s a miracle! How do you come to be here?”

“The overnight flight from New York, old man. Titus, I’ve been talking to Shell, and — “

“You’ve been what?”

“Talking to Shell, Titus. This whole situation has — “

Titus stared. What a blistering fool he had been! He had always known that Shell was in constant communication with everyone in the Project. How could he have failed to see that the first thing she must have done when he stormed out of the house was to contact Lash?

And only a thick could have not seen till now that Lash was part of the entire damnable plan, in it to the thundering hilt. Aiding and abetting Shell in her experiments on the exciting new alien arrival! Probably she sent him detailed reports. Had Lash known even before Titus himself did that Shell was going to take him to bed? Titus would have bet a level dollar on it. Gossips and tabbies, the seething lot of them!

All this time Lash had been talking steadily, and now Titus interrupted. “Lash, I am not listening to a word you say. I suggest you keep it corked until we’re back in New York.”

“But Titus!”

“Do you intend to air out all the linen for our fellow jetwing passengers?”

Lash opened his mouth and shut it again. “Quite so,” he said wanly. “Our gate is this way — suppose you come along.”

On the flight back Titus cast his mind back. So many of the things Lash had told him now hummed with meaning. Lash too had often said that the task of helping Titus was just a job. Here again Titus had entirely been misled by his reflexes, this time catastrophically. He had hailed employees and spies as friends. He had classified Lash as a friend almost in the moment of meeting — he writhed inwardly at the memory. He had embraced all of these people, trusting they had his best interests at heart. And they had been interested merely in their own agenda, stripping him naked physically and emotionally for their own greater knowledge. Those Doomsters had not been the foe. The enemy was here.

And to discuss any of this with Lash was impossible. In this modern world false coinage was legal currency. Shell had spurned his true coin, knowing it to be worthless. Lash would find it equally impossible to understand what Titus had offered. He thought with unutterable longing of home. He would go back like a shot if it were possible: yes, even into the blizzard 26 miles short of One Ton Depot. The inner journey was unbearable; better the outer one.

Titus sat in silent misery all the way back to the TTD building, too cut up even to eat. He retreated to his old room like a wounded animal. Lash was blatting on at him again, the facile modern clatter pouring out. Titus shut the door in his face. And still he wasn’t alone! The cameras or monitors or whatever they were, hidden somewhere in the room, surely kept silent watch over his solitude.

At last to defeat the nosey-parkers he went to bed. But a day spent sitting on aeroplanes hadn’t knackered him enough to ensure sound sleep. His dreams were haunted. Once again he clasped her creamy-smooth body, its surprising strength cunningly hidden behind plump sweetness, and felt her mouth (God, her mouth!) on his skin. He fought desperately, pushing her away, knowing that with climax would come the terrifying fall into the black spaces between the stars. Yet he couldn’t prevent himself, couldn’t hold back, struggle though he might. He woke with a strangled groan, his heart jumping with terror. The sheets were sticky with nocturnal emission. And if he turned on the light they’d rush in to demand what was wrong! He sat on the edge of the bed in the dark, quivering with desire and shame and pain, and wished he were dead.

Chapter 17

Titus’s bathroom was a Victorian haven, fitted with mahogany topped with marble and a huge old-fashioned tub. In the morning when he lay with his eyes closed and the warm water up to his chin, sponge and bath-brush all to hand, he could almost be in his own wood-paneled bath at Gestingthorpe.

Damp and clean and girded with a towel, he stepped back into the bedroom and unstrapped his case. “Blister it!” He ran his hands through the few items of clothing. His sponge bag was still in the Longtrees’ guest bathroom.

But at the bottom of the bag his fingers touched something long and hard: the Marlin. Carefully Titus kept his face impassive. They were watching. He’d been alone in the wagon when he packed the piece into his bag. It was entirely possible that nobody in Wyoming knew it was missing. As long as the rifle lay hidden under the clothes it might continue overlooked. He had no plans that involved firepower yet. But it was the merest prudence to keep his options open. With a casual air he shoved the case under the bed with one foot.

Still he was left with the problem of shaving. This infuriating helplessness! No matter how he laboured to overcome it, it never ended. How long could a man battle, without surcease or hope of victory? His temper snapped, and throwing open the door he stormed down the hallway. “Lash! Damn it, you’ve got work to do! Get on the stick!”

Startled TTD denizens bolted for the cover of their offices and bleated into their machines. Wherever he was, Lash would surely be bombarded with SOS’s. And sure enough the elevator doors slid aside and Lash tumbled out. “Titus, calm down! It’s all right!”

“How is a man supposed to perishing well shave, without a putrid razor?”

“We can fix that, Titus, if you’ll just cool down. And would you care for a bathrobe, old man? You’re giving the secretaries quite a show.”

Titus realized with a shock that he was clad in nothing but a very inadequate bath towel. He clutched it, gulping. “You mean a dressing gown? Very good of you, Lash.”

From a closet Lash produced a terrycloth dressing gown in a typically too-bright blue. “Let’s sit down and discuss modern grooming techniques, eh?”

Titus allowed himself to be herded down to the kitchen and settled at a table. Coffee and breakfast appeared, soothing and hot. At least if a man was going to be kept like a pet they had to maintain him. Lash came bustling up with a box full of grooming equipment. “Make a good meal, Titus. Take your time.”

It was impossible to meet such cordiality with ire. Titus reminded himself that some compromises were inevitable. To quarrel with one’s bread and butter was madness. As PTICA’s representative Lash deserved at a minimum common courtesy. Now that Titus knew what the baseline was, as long as he was careful it should be safe. “Coffee, Lash? There’s plenty here in the pot.”

“Thank you, perhaps half a cup.”

Titus could see, by the way Lash clutched his spoon, that he was going to ask questions. He fixed the other man with a masterful eye. “So Lash, how’s the weather been here in New York?”

“Oh! Ah, damnably hot, actually. And a high pollution index. You were well out of it.”

“Pollution? Another new word. What’s that?” By judicious prompting Titus was able to fix the conversation on the weather, and eat in peace.

Then it was on to shaving. The teaching format suited Lash ideally. “Probably you’ll be happiest with a shaver, Titus. Far safer than a straight razor, no lathering necessary, and fast. Here, try it out on your arm.”

He turned the little black machine on and put it into Titus’s hand. It buzzed repellently in his palm like an oversized cicada. “Try what out? There’s no blade.”

“There’s a cutting laser, not a steel edge. Like this.” Lash picked up the thing and demonstrated, running it slowly along Titus’s arm.

Weren’t lasers for reading chips embedded in wrists? How did they come to be in shavers? With an effort Titus held still under the device’s ministrations. “I don’t like little machines.”

“You’ve got to break the ice somewhere, Titus. Why not with something everyday and simple? Look at that, clean as a whistle.”

“Are you sure that thing is working correctly? It might almost be giving off an electric shock. And what is that smell?”

“Hairs being burnt off short. The electric sensation is a feature, not a bug. I mean to say, we’re told the slight static charge stands each hair up straight to be seared off close.”

“It sounds peculiarly painful. And dangerous. Suppose my hand slips — will I burn my head off?”

“Can’t be done, old man. Try it. Even if you make a deliberate effort to dig in, it won’t burn past the top layer of skin cells. You could inflict a more serious injury with a spoon.”

Lash had brought a mirror, and Titus leaned over it and ran the shaver experimentally over one cheek. It was fantastically strange, very different from his dear old cut-throat razor. The absence of lather was disconcerting, as was sitting here shaving at a table — but no basin or water was necessary, so why not? He fell back on an unanswerable criticism: “Mag won’t like this. It’s not period.”

“You can still use the straight razor,” Lash assured him. “She can mail your kit back to you. But it would be convenient, would it not? to have a more up-to-date alternative.”

“I daresay. How is it I don’t need an electrical source?”

“Batteries, dear fellow. Solar-charged, so that you never run out of juice.”

“You folk have an answer for everything…It doesn’t give nearly so smooth a shave.”

“I think you’ll find the convenience far outweighs the slight drawbacks.”

“You’ll excuse me then, while I go pull myself together.” Hanging about in a dressing gown, even in a semi-private place, was slack and declassé. The only acceptable excuse might be severe illness.

“Ah, Titus…” Lash visibly took the bull by the horns. “I’ve had some calls from Shell. She’s very anxious about you, and — “

A curious electric sensation buzzed in Titus’s chest, as if that new-fangled shaver was shaving his heart. He glared at Lash. They might have parted brass rags, but damned if he would discuss it! “I’m only going to say this once, Lash. Never mention her name to me again.”

“But, Titus!”

Titus turned on his heel and strode down the hall to his room, boiling. Dear God, if he had only had the sense of a tomtit, he would never have got into this. He was a soldier, and knew perfectly well never to be drawn into battle on two fronts. Was it not going to be difficult enough to sodding well learn to live in the poxy 21st century, without becoming entangled with an accursed female, and then becoming a bastard public spectacle? There was no length he would not go to avoid looking like a fool, and here he was, a sight for all to behold!

He flung on some clothing and a pair of shoes, all of the wrong sort. His comfortable penny-plain work clothes were in Mag’s laundry pile in Wyoming. Only the nasty modern outfits were available, unwrinkling, vulgarly-coloured and galling to the soul. He pushed through the door to the stairwell, ignoring Lash’s cry. To be indoors, to sit and do nothing in his frowsty little room, was impossible. Outside he could at least walk, allow the wise old body to take over and drum some sense into heart and head. He clattered down the dozens of flights and emerged in the lobby downstairs. To his annoyance Lash was waiting there — the lazy blighter had obviously taken the elevator. “Titus, where are you going?”

“Out.”

“I’ll come with you!”

“You’re welcome to try,” Titus said, “but frankly, Lash, I would far rather be alone. I shall walk round and round the park.”

“But it’s going to rain! May I at least cross the street with you?”

This Titus grudgingly allowed, but in fact it wasn’t necessary. Whether dodging across ten lanes of high-speed automated traffic was the cure, or merely from learning to drive out West, he was no longer overwhelmed and dizzied by the surge and thrum of gaudy traffic. It was merely an annoyance that had to be got through, waiting for a gap in the glittering motors and then nipping smartly across. And a fat lot of joy he got out of the achievement. One tiny barrier surmounted, perhaps another hundred million to go.

After the clean uncluttered vistas of the Wilderness Reserve, Central Park was like an ancient pocket-handkerchief unearthed from a jacket pocket, too small, too thin, and grubby. Titus walked with a swift long stride that quickly left the unfortunate Lash behind. The paths were not busy. He could turn his mind from the motion of legs and body, and think. If only he had his pipe! But he had left it on Mag’s kitchen table.

Titus had intended to use the rare solitude to chew over his current overwhelming difficulties. But oddly, of themselves his thoughts were drawn to the past, to concerns that had as much or more reality. His eyes looked at the tired green lawns and battered, jackknife-scarred trunks of a humid New York park, sodden under a steady light drizzle. But his inner vision was of sparkling snowfields razored by the wind into a thousand curves, and an enormous sky the colour of blue pearl, and a triple halo of ice-crystals round the sun. Perhaps the act of walking triggered memory. He had walked more than a thousand miles, three months or 133 years ago, when walking, being able to walk, meant life. When a man could walk no more, he lay down in the snow to die.

So he walked, going over the long tale of that time and gathering it together like a ball of string in his hand. It was absurd on the face of it, but he missed Antarctica. In spite of everything, the Polar Expedition had been glorious — the adventure of a lifetime. One did not often meet men of that stamp, Scott and Wilson and Bowers. They had set out to do a job, even if it killed them. There were none of that breed left in the world. Lash’s dusty history books had been right. The Expedition had been the flowering of an entire age, the epitome of human achievement. He was grateful that he had been a part of it. The experience would shape his life.

And he had a life to be shaped. The only survivor! Why had fate selected him alone to cheat the worms? It was only the most perishing bad luck that this pack of moderns had pitched upon him. “I would never have chosen it this way,” he said aloud to the dead.

A horde of might-have-beens assailed him like gnats, all the possibilities hashed out in the books and more. If only Scott had listened to him, and placed One-Ton Depot further south. If only they had departed earlier. If only Cherry had come further south to meet the Polar party. If only they had started with more coal, more oil, more money. If only Titus had had the sense to insist on choosing the ponies himself, rather than relying upon some gormless incompetent to buy the animals upon which so much had depended!

And this spun him off onto a more fearful byway of speculation. He had sacrificed his life to save the other three — a sacrifice that had been in vain. What if he had not delayed so long? If he had had the grit to walk out into the storm a week earlier, they would have been able to make better time. Death had been written on his body, with the purplish streaks of gangrene creeping up from ankle to knee, bleeding from the gums, and the thigh wound opening up again. He had refused to concede defeat, a stubbornness foolishly hailed as heroism. But now from outside that perspective he saw that early or late defeat was inevitable, and he had merely been too mulish to admit it. For Scott and the others, an extra day or two would have made the difference between life and death. They had been so close, within a hair’s breadth of victory! The tiniest change in the situation would have sufficed. God, the books had been right — he was to blame.

History was a kaleidoscope — different meanings could be wrung out of the same set of events. Now it was as if under the unbearable burden of culpability the entire sky flipped inside out so that he fell up instead of down, because suddenly Titus knew exactly who was to blame: Captain Robert Scott. By Heaven, the leader of an expedition bore the final responsibility! Clear as day now he remembered all the Owner’s spectacular misjudgments, bungling errors, and bloody damn mutton-headed stupidities. Titus had known and declared often that skimping on transport would mean defeat, and Scott had ignored him. And what had trapped them in their tent at the last? Scott — and his frozen foot! “By Heaven, it takes the Army to lead! I showed the way, Scott. Why the blazes didn’t you do the right thing, and march out of that tent into the blizz?”

At this point Titus’s common sense reasserted itself. Shouting at a man a century dead! He drew a deep shuddering breath. Perfect timing and balance was plain for all to see when a man dodged across ten lanes of high-speed traffic, but in this situation it could never be certain. His convolutions were overwrought nonsense. It had never been in his power to revise the mindset of an entire expedition. It was over, poor devils. Yet he had never had a chance to face his loss squarely. Now the lump rose in his throat at the thought of the brave lives poured out onto the sastrugi. No wonder Britain had gone to rack and ruin, with all the best dead!

With a piercing clarity now their images rose before him: Uncle Bill bent over his water-colours, or sketching a penguin in fits and starts, thawing his hands in his bosom until they could be made to take up the pencil again. And poor Birdie, patiently striking match after match of an evening in the tent in the attempt to find one dry enough to light. And the Owner, Scott himself, unutterably alone. Fully aware of the flaws in the man, Titus was suddenly able to forgive. It was all in the game. Scott had taken the last ounce out of them, but he had treated himself no less sternly. He had truly been of the bulldog breed, a hero staggering under a responsibility that would have crushed a brigade, perpetually scratching away in his journal as if the counsel with himself would make up for the lack of other advice.

Suddenly Titus could hardly see, for the tears pouring down his weather-beaten face. Thank God there was no one to notice in this quiet corner of the park, and there were no spies with cameras! He sat down under the low boughs of a large pine where the mattress of brown crisp needles was still dry, and surrendered to grief.

It was painful to weep, throbbing in his head and throat — Heaven knew what women got out of it. And like a turncoat sneaking back into the garrison under cover of darkness, the other trouble rose up too. How had he slipped so far? If only he had been able to bring the hard high purity of the Pole into this new era! Shame and misery had their way with him, but it was almost a relief. Afterwards, worn out, he lay back on the pine needles and drifted into a light doze, blissfully dreamless. The park was deserted, now that the rain had settled into steady drip out of a leaden sky. Titus ignored it. He had slept wetter and colder before.

He must have dozed more deeply than he knew, because the next thing he knew was the hand on his arm. He struck out with a gasp. The lights were blinding. “Titus, it’s me. Thank God we’ve found you!”

“Lash? What the devil are you doing here?”

“What do you expect? Looking for you! You’ve been gone all day, Titus. It’s getting dark, and it’s pouring rain, and you didn’t come back. So we searched you out. Are you all right? Are you injured?”

Titus sat up, muzzy with sleep. Lash crouched beside him holding an umbrella and the ever-present black machine. Behind him stood others, policemen perhaps, in yellow mackintoshes and carrying torches. It was dark not so much with night as from the storm. He was chilled from lying on the ground, but not really wet except about the legs, which had extended beyond the friendly shelter of the pine boughs. He staggered to his feet, snarling. Was he never to be shot of this officious treatment?

“Easy, Titus,” Lash said, steadying him. “How do you feel? Do you need an ambulance?”

“Ambulance, my foot. I got tired, sat down, and bloody well dozed off!”

“A cab then, and we’ll have Dr. Trask look you over the moment we get back.”

There was nothing ailing him that a stiff hot toddy wouldn’t cure. Titus knew he wasn’t going to get one. Squelching through the downpour, he followed Lash along the path and up a short stone stair to an unfamiliar street. “How did you find me, with bloodhounds? The park is enormous.”

Lash gave a short embarrassed cough. “Through the chip in your wrist, old man. Remember, we can track people by Global Positioning Satellite. It took a little while to pin down exactly where you were on the city grid…”

This perfidy deprived Titus of speech. Such power was beyond anything he had imagined. They could track him anywhere in the world? So that was why no one had come searching when he’d scarpered that last evening in Wyoming. And probably they could see him too! He remembered from that film at the museum that satellites were machines in the sky, some kind of all-seeing eye. No wonder they’d been willing to send him to Wyoming or Iowa or Antarctica. There was no way he could slip the leash.

And as he climbed dripping into the taxi an even more vile thought came to mind. That sweet night outdoors in the grass with Shell — had they been watched? Filmed, even? Everything he knew of the modern world said yes. She must have known, too. She had suggested it, and drunk with flattery and lust he had consented, pussy-struck fool that he was. Salt murderous rage almost choked him, but he sat silent while Lash chattered unheard and the taxi rumbled down the rain-slick avenues.

Though it was after business hours the lobby of the TTD building was bustling. The entire search and rescue operation had evidently been centred here. Dr. Trask came forward to meet them with a cry of joy, a shiny tool ready in one hand.

Titus stared at her and his fury rose. This Sabrina, Shell’s crony, was surely in on all of it. She had probably watched the films with interest, assessing how well he had recovered from the trip through time. Shell had certainly kept her up to date daily. And he had actually thanked this creature for healing him, never thinking that it was all for her own ends. The impulse to wring her neck was almost overpowering. His voice shook as he said, “This is the bally limit. I have never struck a woman before. But I promise you, doctor: approach me, interfere with me in any way, and I shall break that rule!”

He strode past her to the elevator, ignoring her wail of protest: “But — I don’t understand! What have I done? I haven’t even seen him since July!”

Titus’s first furious impulse was to deal with this accursed chip. He had no pocket knife, but he could make shift with the razor. Skin-deep, Shell had said — it should take only a steady hand and a couple moments to cut it out, and luckily it was in his left wrist, since he was right-handed. He’d have to be careful not to nick any of the tendons. Preoccupied with bloodthirsty plans, Titus got up to his room and into the bathroom before he remembered that his straight razor was still in Wyoming. This damned laser device wouldn’t cut butter!

A scissors, then. There should be a pair in one of the offices, or over in the kitchen. He went down the hall to the eating area and pulled out a drawer at random, surveying the knives without favour. Not a decent edge among them. But delay gave Titus’s temper a chance to cool, and second thoughts quickly rose. Once the chip was cut out of his wrist, the die would be cast. He would have made an irrevocable break with the entire Fortie project — too big a job to just leap into without some strategy. If there was anything he had brought back from the Antarctic, it was the certainty that preparation was golden, the foundation of all success.

He had learned to manage modern kitchen programs in the Longtree household. Now he made the refrigerator pour a glass of milk. Sipping, he stood at the window and thought this over. His own helplessness was still an insuperable obstacle. Without money or papers he could go nowhere by modern transport, and it was pointless to simply hook it. He could look out across the twinkling lights of Manhattan all the way to where they slid over the horizon. To walk there would take days, and to do it without being laid by the heels was impossible. The place to vanish had been Wyoming, where there was empty space to hide in and plenty of rural tasks he could turn a hand to. Distracted by Shell, he had lost that golden chance, damn it.

But another opportunity would come, and he could plan to seize it. Lay in supplies, hoard money — he wasn’t even sure whether they used banknotes and coin these days. He would have to find out. Scrappy information could kill. He would have to learn as much as possible about the world he was proposing to enter. And there was the rub. It always came down to that, scaling this tremendous mountain of adjustment and acclimatization. His soul rebelled at the brute labour this would involve. Manhauling sledges across sastrugi was a fleabite in comparison.

For some time he had been distantly aware of bustling and small sounds behind him. He noticed now that Lash and the others were hovering in the doorway, nudging each other and debating in whispers whether to come in and offer food, or leave him be. It touched his conscience rather, as he realized that his bloody-minded behavior had put the wind up these gentle people. But damned if he was going to apologise tonight! He turned wearily. “I’m just off to bed,” he said. “Good night.”

Chapter 18

The next day Titus had to stand the gaff for indulging his temper. Lash came in at breakfast. “Some therapists on your schedule today, Titus.”

After his nap in the park Titus had slept poorly again, and was in no mood for novelty. “Therapists?”

“Doctors, people with training in psychiatry, who’ll talk to you about your problems.”

“Nonsense, Lash,” Titus said uneasily. “I admit I was a little off my feed yesterday, but today I’m right as ninepence. I have no problems.”

“Titus, you’re insulting my intelligence. It’s obvious to the most casual observer that you’re bitterly unhappy. No, no,” he added quickly, holding up a hand. “I know you don’t want to talk about it to me. But there are professional people whose job it is to deal with this kind of thing, and — “

Titus stared in horror. “You mean, lie on a leather sofa while some little foreigner in a comic-opera beard quizzes me about my dreams?”

Lash’s smile was a little forced. “So you’ve heard of Sigmund Freud and his work. I’m delighted!”

“The man’s a pervert,” Titus declared, pouring himself more coffee. “Only Jews and Krauts would ever muck with that sort of tommyrot.”

“You don’t have to lie on a sofa,” Lash pleaded. “And I promise nobody will ask about your dreams. That’s entirely out of date now anyway. Titus, I’m going to have to insist. Please understand that we’re trying to help you.”

“No!”

To his dismay a very tall, thin man with a bald head came in and sat down across from him. The fellow even came with his own cup of coffee. “This is Dr. Rollo Mason,” Lash said. “Doctor, this is Captain Titus Oates.”

“I have an especial dislike of doctors,” Titus growled.

“And why is that, Captain?” Dr. Mason asked, without the least sign of offence.

A number of rancorous replies came to mind, but Titus was constrained by politeness from voicing them. Instead he rose to his feet. “I refuse to participate in this activity, Lash. You’ll excuse me.”

“Titus, what harm can it do to listen for five minutes? You don’t have to do or say anything you don’t want to.”

Something in Lash’s tone carried a warning. He was going to insist, it said. How could this insistence be enforced? Titus decided not to find out today. Reluctantly he sat again. If only he had his pipe, so that he could look busy! It would hardly be the done thing to clamp his hands over his ears, but surely no one could complain if he not-listened in his old way. The miles he had sledged in the Antarctic, musing on how to refit his yacht! He had got out of the trick with Shell, but the skill had not fled. He wondered how the last tour was getting on. It had been damned rude to leave without saying a word to the Longtrees, who had treated him with nothing but kindness. Would it be possible to write Mag a letter? Lash must be in contact with them, if he was going to get her to post him his toilet kit. He wondered if Americans posted letters with stamps. Perhaps they had applied their modern wizardry to the postal service in some unimaginable way that completely bypassed letters. Nat was a Trojan, and he valued Mag’s good opinion. He would need it, if he wanted to go next year to help with the tours. And Shell would not be there to distract him…

It had been a mistake to cogitate upon Wyoming. That line of thought was too closely bound up with Shell. Titus breathed slow and deep through his nose until the pain ebbed a little. The wound would scab over someday. There was nothing to be done in the meantime but to stop prodding at the injury.

But he couldn’t help it. What a damned, doomed affair, a complete cock-up! There was no possibility of happiness, come what might. She had been culpable too, but he had been a blind fool to allow her to begin. And if men really were more intelligent than women the responsibility for self-control certainly lay with him. This modern slackness had infected him terribly. He never would have fallen into a hopeless love affair in 1912, secure in his bachelor state. Of course he had always meant to marry one day, but Shell would have been a fantastically foolish choice…

Suddenly he knew he was still horribly vulnerable. If by some magic all the obstacles fell — if the Forties blew away and PTICA and its plans collapsed into shards — he would throw reason to the winds once more. He would plunge into the thrall of the Queen of Air and Darkness again, forgetting the price of escape. He’d be a colossal damned fool all over again, and neither past experience nor foreknowledge of future misery would save him. His ingrained folly filled him with self-contempt. “I’m beginning to think that I’m not quite all here,” he growled. “It’s not that I don’t know my mind. It’s that my heart’s pulling a different direction, and I’m in the middle.”

“That’s very cogent, Titus,” Dr. Mason said with enthusiasm. “For a while there I wasn’t sure I was getting through.”

“I’m afraid you haven’t, doctor,” Titus said, rising. “I believe that was five minutes. I won’t take up any more of your time.” He brushed past Lash loitering anxiously in the hallway, and went to ground in his own room.

“Titus, do you enjoy theater?”

“Somewhat,” Titus said noncommittally. He had lurked in his room until he was sure the therapist had given up and gone away. “Not that Wilde villain or Shaw, though. Music halls are more my line. Went to see The Devil’s Disciple, and walked out in the interval. And I saw The Tempest once.”

“Oh, this is nothing so intellectual. It’s perfect for you — The Hound of the Baskervilles. Piotr’s wife works at the Arts Center, which is how we got tickets.”

Everything in this era seemed to be done by knowing somebody, Titus mused. It was why he was finding life here so difficult — he had no connections in their closely-twined net of personal links. “Very kind of her,” he said.

After supper they took a cab to some part of the city that Titus didn’t recognize, a sector of less grandeur in which the buildings soared only twenty or thirty storeys high instead of eighty. The arts center was on the ground level of a tall block. Piotr met them in the lobby, looking strange now he wasn’t wearing scientist garb. Was the well-dressed man of this era obliged to wear a neck shawl?

“Titus, I’m so glad you were able to come!” Piotr shook his hand in both his own.

Edging back to a proper distance, Titus met this warmth with frigid reserve. He was sure that Lash had tapped Piotr for this gesture, probably coaching him in friendliness. But it was not possible to be cold when Piotr presented his wife Paola. In spite of her foreign name she was the least bizarre-looking female he had seen yet, with auburn curls and a long skirt. “How do you do,” he said in his plummiest tone. “I believe I have you to thank for a very kind offer of a beach house — where was it, Lash? Somewhere far.”

“Georgia,” Piotr said.

“Fancy you remembering that!” Lash said.

“I’m not an idiot, Lash,” Titus said mildly, hiding his pleasure. He could do some things right, after all.

Paola said, “It was nothing, Captain — the least I could do when Piotr told me about it.”

Her accent was immediately off-putting, some strongly American twang that he could not name but only distinguish from Shell’s brisk New York tone or Lash’s book-learnt British or Nat’s rumbling Western. But it was time to go sit down. He followed the others down an aisle and into a row of folding chairs. The theatre was small and spare, with none of the opulence and polish Titus associated with the London stage. Not a professional venue, he concluded.

The play itself was absurd yet familiar. Titus had read some Sherlock Holmes stories, but The Hound of the Baskervilles was new to him. The evil heir to the estate, the foolish baronet, the slinky blonde entrapping him, the great detective and his bumbling assistant — all these stock figures reeled merrily across the stage. No one made even a pretense at English accents, the costumes were too brightly coloured and laughably incorrect for both class and time, and Baskerville Hall might as well have been the castle of Otranto — no member of the gentry would tolerate life in such a pile for an instant. But the effects amazed him — real fog rolling across the stage! He was able to forget his quibbles and enjoy the show, gleefully shivering at the howl of the ghastly Hound.

Afterwards they walked round the corner to a nearby bar for a beer. “A marvelously civilized evening,” Titus said. “Something about theatre takes you right out of yourself.”

“That’s what it’s for,” Paola said. “It’s in Aristotle. The whatchamacallit, the catharsis.”

Titus leaned back in the booth, sipping beer. It was amusing to hear such long words falling from a woman’s lips. He was developing a taste for bluestockings. Paola was a damned pretty creature — he was quite getting accustomed to her accent. But Shell had been astonishingly lovely, and in fact those girls over at the bar were steppers too. Perhaps he really was susceptible the moment he forgot himself, just as Shell had suggested. As the President had said: a romantic!

The thought was so lowering that he sat staring silently into the last of his beer. Too late he realized that the others were watching. With clumsy tact Lash rose. “Paola, let’s fetch another round, shall we?” Titus shot an embittered glare at his retreating back before turning to face Piotr again.

To be in the dirt tub with the boss could hold no fears for anyone who’d got the rough side of Scott’s tongue. Titus was annoyed to see only sympathy and concern in Piotr’s broad pink face. “You were doing so wonderfully there for a while, Titus. Where did it go off track?”

Truncheon and thumbscrew would not get Titus to say Shell’s name. He said repressively, “It’s all been rather a lot to take in.”

“What can we do that would help?”

“Nothing comes to mind.”

Piotr tipped his mug to shift the foam around in the bottom. “You’re not a word-meister, Titus. You attack everything hands-on. An action man. We need to find you something to do.”

Titus had never thought of it that way, but clearly this was a useful way to classify people. Lash, for instance, was a word man if ever there was one, with his books and papers and machines. Whereas Titus himself solved every problem, did all his thinking even, in motion whenever possible. Thirty-three years old, and he had to travel to the far future to learn such an elementary fact about himself!

Once the moderns’ perspicuity would have struck him as admirable. Now Titus could not help thinking of Wilson and his emperor penguins. A lifelong bird naturalist, Uncle Bill had observed the emperors for years, trekked across the ice to gather their eggs, sketched them continually. In a real sense Wilson had genuinely loved them. But he had not hesitated to kill penguins for dissection, eat their meat, or burn their fat for fuel.

That the moderns didn’t cut Titus open wasn’t due to clemency. Having adjusted his vision, tinkered with his skeleton, reseated his teeth and regrown his toes, they knew all there was to know of his body. Instead they were studying his behaviour now as closely as ever Wilson had his birds, and not for his benefit but with a scientific and clinical interest. Watching for what buttons to push helped them to manage him, keep him on the leash. And this reflection was immediately borne out, as Piotr went on, “There’s a matter where we could use some help. From you.”

Titus wanted to snort. There could not be another berth in the world like Mag and Nat’s wagon train tours, where he could be actually useful. This would be some sort of make-work, jury-rigged to buck him up. But knowing that they were pushing his buttons didn’t diminish the button’s effectiveness. A dreadful ache to be of use seized him, the same drive that had made him volunteer for the Polar expedition. Above all things he abhorred idleness. Reluctantly he asked, “And what might that be?”

“Rick mentioned it, last time you spoke. This National Geographic film about Scott and Shackleton and Amundsen.”

“I can’t imagine I’d be any use.”

“Don’t you believe it, Titus. Interest in exploration has never been higher. They’ve been putting together this enormous twenty-part series about explorers of the past. And there’s always been a feeling that the Polar expeditions were the forerunner of space exploration. Did you know that one of the unmanned Mars explorers at the turn of the century had probes named after Amundsen and Scott?”

Titus stared. “Mars? You mean, the planet Mars? Good Lord! What happened to them?”

“Well, they crashed,” Piotr admitted. “Primitive equipment, you know. The site’s marked with a plaque. Oh yes, there’s human settlements now on Mars.”

“I’d very much like to go there!” Quite a compliment — how pleased the Owner would have been!

“To Mars? We might manage it someday. But this one’s a natural for you, Titus. You’ve been to Antarctica, know the terrain, the history. It’s all familiar and safe…”

Unwillingly, Titus remembered his unreasoning distaste for the whole idea the first time it had been mooted. Good God, could it be that his reluctance was due to fear? The mere idea was enough to make him grit his teeth. One could not show the white feather, in thought or word or deed. “It might be amusing to go back,” he said carelessly.

Piotr glowed with enthusiasm. “I think it’s just the thing to keep you usefully occupied. Rick will be delighted! I’ll let him know right now.”

Out came the little black machine. Titus saw this was going to be like the elevators — once aboard no second thoughts were possible. Lash set a brimming tankard down and said, “I’m so glad you feel ready to do this, Titus! This is just the first opportunity for you — there are lots more. And I confess I’ve been looking forward to a trip south.”

Titus hid his dismay. On the road Lash was fussy as an old woman. For only one second nostalgia for Shell’s serene competence rose in his heart, before he mastered himself. Perhaps Lash’s ailments would save the day as they had before? “I don’t suppose they still use horses or mules for transport in the South.”

“No, it’s all motorized now. And it’s a very healthy climate, though inclined to be cold — you said so yourself.” Titus recognized his own words, written in 1910 in a letter home and grubbed up now to be flung back into his own teeth, and swore with silent venom.

“Now, you’re sure about this, Titus,” Piotr looked up from his machine to say. “Once Rick makes the commitment with the NGS people, the machinery will start moving.”

Paola slid another mug of beer across to him. “You are so brave, Captain,” she said. “I’d never have the nerve to go back, after such awful adventures.”

“It’ll be perfectly safe,” Lash assured her. “Titus has nothing to worry about.”

Titus yearned to explode, to shout that safety was not what he wanted at all! But he had learned the cost of opening his heart. He gave a curt nod, and Piotr told his machine, “Okay.”

They would depart the very next evening. In his day August had been too early to travel safely to the southern continent — evidently the moderns had it all in hand. But the long intervening empty hours of Saturday stretched before Titus like a desert. Few Paticalars came in over the weekend. He paced the echoing TTD halls, storey after storey of them all alike, exploring aimlessly, restless as a pea in a colander. Other people were making the travel arrangements, seeing to the Polar clothing and equipment, planning the work to be done. Piotr had rightly described him as a man of action. Now, mired in helplessness, a competent man condemned to incompetence, he was going mad here, the only one without a job to do. He could do anything he set his will to. But there was nothing. The temptation to be randomly destructive was severe. It would be some small relief to kick over wastebaskets or smash desks.

But that would only make things worse. He was no Miranda, a child with a devastating ailment, but a grown man. And Miranda was supported by people who loved her, whereas he was surrounded by self-servers and spies intent on grinding their own axe. Shell had let slip that they worried about his sanity. Up until this point their ordinary cheese-paring ways had kept his supervision minimal. His liberty now depended on a copper-bottomed air of normality and contentment. Titus was sure those perishing therapists were only the spearhead of the resources at Lash’s command. Any behaviour that seemed unstable and he’d be in Queer Street, never to leave New York again. They’d resort to drugs, restraints, horrors Titus could not even imagine, let alone fight. If it came to that, Titus vowed silently to blow his brains out first. Topping oneself was difficult with a long gun, but it could be done. He was certain it would be impossible to take the Marlin to Antarctica. By touch in the dark after turning out the light last night he had hidden the piece between his mattress and the box spring. With luck when he returned it would be waiting for him.

He had roamed floor number 50. Nothing but darkened offices, desks with incomprehensible papers and machines, and coffee dispensers. What did they do here? What PTICA work was accomplished? He had no clue. Onwards, to floor 51. Titus pushed the elevator call button, cocking an ear to catch the almost imperceptible murmur of machinery. With steam one got a sense of work being done, engines clanking and vapour hissing out of valves, and the presence of danger — something could explode or break or fail. The moderns had smoothed everything out to be hatefully safe and silent.

The doors parted. “Good gosh, Titus, what are you doing here?”

It was Piotr. Disconcerted, Titus said, “How do you do, Piotr. Lash is making travel arrangements, so I’m at loose ends. I was exploring.”

“Of course, of course! Why am I surprised — that’s your career, after all. Well, come on in. The boss never gets a day off, as you can see. Would you maybe like a little tour of my area?”

Titus stepped into the elevator and stood with his hands clasped behind his back. “You mean, the time-travel section?”

“Yes, we have most of the upper floors.”

“I would enjoy that very much, thank you.” With great care Titus kept his voice politely cool. A tremendous new idea seized him. How could he have not perceived the incredible importance of time travel? Another one of those things one had to know to know about! This might be the solution to all his problems.

But it was imperative now to observe nonchalantly, ask casual questions, and in general present a harmless and amiable front. Hastily he concentrated on what Piotr was saying: “ …a fan of Sherlock Holmes?”

“Er, no, can’t say I’ve read more than a few of the stories. In the Strand Magazine. Nothing very much out of the way, I thought.”

“Really! I had the impression that everyone in England loved Holmes. And Shakespeare too.”

“Can’t stand Shakespeare,” Titus confessed. “My people dragged me to The Tempest once in London. Too many quotations.”

Piotr laughed, though he had not meant this as a joke. The elevator doors opened. The space beyond was machinery, the tall silent machines modern people liked. Rank upon rank of them, the soldiers in this army of knowledge waited upon the command of their master. Piotr patted the nearest one fondly. “You can thank the hypercomputers for your safe arrival, Titus.”

“Indeed?”

“You know that the earth turns?”

Was Piotr pulling his leg? “Is that important?”

“Oh yes. Because the earth turns, and orbits around the sun, which is also in motion along with the entire spiral arm of our galaxy, which shoots along at some very brisk rate away from every other galaxy as the universe expands. So it was a plus-quadrillion floating-point operation per second stunt, to fix on the point in space you were at on March 17, 1912. And this is where we crunched the numbers.”

“It was the first thing Lash said to me,” Titus recalled. “That I had moved in both time and space.”

“I wish you could have seen our excitement,” Piotr recalled happily. “No, the Imax doesn’t give a tenth of it. To pull a man through from the past to the present — it was the final proof, you understand me? The demonstration we had to have, to show that everything was on the right track. That they’d translated the transmissions properly, that the Forties were on the up and up, that their space-time technology was going to work — that we were really going to go to the stars. This is the major watershed of the human race, Titus, and you were the cusp of it. They began assembling the FTL drive the very week after you arrived. It was like all our dreams coming true.”

The other man’s excitement was, as ever, contagious. Generating it seemed to be Piotr’s job, and he was bloody good at it. Titus nearly said that he wished he’d been there too. But he had been there, just not in the condition to appreciate anything. All this excitement and discovery and achievement, and he was entirely outside of it, then and now. The taste of exclusion was bitter in his mouth. “How is it you didn’t just build a starship, to test the drive? Time travel seems…irrelevant.”

“It’s astronomically expensive to build and fly the Amity Star, Titus. Five hundred billion dollars all told — you should hear the detractors rant about it. Whereas to fish you out of the blizzard was a bargain.”

“A bargain.” Titus made an effort not to sound offended.

“Comparatively speaking. Only a billion dollars or so.”

He couldn’t calculate what the equivalent in pounds and shillings would be, but the sum was so patently astounding that Titus decided no one could be offended. From watching Mag adjust the weekly food order through the kitchen program, he knew that an American dollar would buy a loaf of rather nasty soft white bread. In theory then it should be possible to feed a family on less than $10 a day. He found however that he had no idea how many pounds it took to support a humble family in 1912. He had never even purchased a loaf of bread — one had servants to do that. “I’m barbarously ignorant,” he confessed. “But isn’t that a goodish outlay? How long could a man live on a billion dollars in 2045?”

“Oh, for the rest of my life, you betcha! In the lap of luxury too, and enough extra to keep Paola and the kids in plush.”

“Then — that’s a fortune!” Suddenly the economizers seemed like eminently sensible people, the only persons in this era with a scrap of intelligence! The abrupt shift in viewpoint made Titus stutter. “You, you Paticalars are madder than a March hare. A billion dollars to obtain my miserable carcase? It’s throwing your money away.”

Piotr had none of Lash’s irritating tact. “Bull, Titus. Advancement of knowledge! It’s no different from your South Pole trip. Where’d the funding for that come from — the government?”

“Hardly at all,” Titus said. “Scott had to scrape and beg for every threepenny bit.” They had meandered over to the inevitable coffee dispenser in the corner of the room. Titus accepted the cup that Piotr poured him. “It was shameful,” he reminisced. “A brute of a job, too. All the cant he had to spout, about the Destiny of Man and the last unknown continent and the honour of the British race: it would make a jackal gag. They never got me in on it — I would’ve spoilt everything by laughing.”

“So you didn’t buy in on the company line. Why the hell did you go, then?”

Titus stared down at the oily black surface of his coffee. “I…needed to do something difficult. Never intended it to go quite so far.”

“Well, there you go. Exactly what we’re doing: something difficult.”

“And your lot — the teams — don’t look for it to go bad either. Any more than we did.”

“Oh, not that again. Titus, everything will be fine. Don’t worry about it.”

The idiots! But there was no point in rehashing this debate. Titus had washed his hands of it. Instead he added milk and sugar to his cup. “And what new difficult thing are you going to undertake next, with all these machines? You’ve done a fine job locating me in time and space.”

“Well, the history people are scouring the books looking for someone like you. Someone or something that it’d be absolutely guaranteed safe to steal out of the time stream and bring to the present. Nobody whose absence would affect a molecule. Right now they’re considering Krakatoa or Pompeii. Snatching out something that’s about to be vaporized by lava will call for pinpoint timing.”

“I quite see that.” Titus looked round the huge clean room. “A very slight error and the mess would be tremendous.”

“Oh, we don’t do it here, in the admin and computer section. The actual time travel machinery is at the CERN laboratories in Switzerland.”

“I arrived in Switzerland?”

Piotr seemed to think this very funny. “Yes. They stabilized you, amputated all the bad hunks, and then shuffled you onto a medical flight for New York. So it’s not as if you had a chance to see the sights.”

One of the little machines on a desk buzzed imperiously for attention. While Piotr attended to it Titus wandered down the aisles and rows. The hypercomputers, all alike, stood side by side, a little shorter than he but wider. Some display panels and a square empty screen interrupted each blank blue facade. It was like looking at the walls of Egyptian temples, carven from floor to high above one’s head with hieroglyphics. Knowledge and power, treasures incalculable, were recorded there, utterly inaccessible to the ignorant. All Titus could do was trail his fingers along the mysterious surfaces, and brood upon the one treasure that he planned to steal.

He sipped coffee, and thought about time travel. Young Brabazon had worried that a return was impossible. Titus decided now not to believe it. Having purchased him for a billion dollars — incredible sum! — the moderns would surely stick at returning him to 1912. But Titus could compel them. He gazed across the huge room at Piotr’s pink balding head and soft plump back. This was not the sort of man who could stand up under the threat of a loaded rifle. Men have become sheep, he mused. But I’m still a tiger.

Even to get to Switzerland would not be an insuperable obstacle. Some natural allies were ready to hand. Suppose he went to the Doomster pitch over in the kook plaza and announced, “I quite agree. Time travel is the devil.” Would Mrs. Zonderman not be happy to apply her formidable horsepower to help him go back?

And then! through the glowing door again and back home, at long last! From that very first outing with Shell, to a greater or lesser degree, Titus had disciplined his thoughts, avoiding the past and focusing on the 21st century. He had not realized until this moment that it had been building up, a pressure behind his eyeballs like an oncoming headache. Now he relaxed and let longing sweep over him. To sit on wooden furniture, eat proper meals, drink a decent cup of tea again! Never again to misunderstand, or quell a comment, or behold a little machine! He would go home to Gestingthorpe, just as he had after they invalided him out of the Boer War, and the estate servants would turn out to cheer him, the young squire returned at last. Mother would stuff him on roast beef and potatoes, and Bryan, Lilian and Violet would sit round the dining table and listen to his stories of —

Of what? His happy daydream faltered as Titus contemplated what exactly he would say. He would be another Tam Lin, returned from realms ineffable. What account of his survival could he offer that would be even distantly believable? Everyone in the final support party had seen him trudge south across the Polar plateau with Scott on January 4, 1912. How would a man explain his journey from Antarctica to the front door of Gestingthorpe Hall without transport, ships, or indeed anybody noticing?

And I’m supposed to be dead, he remembered — a hero’s end, plaques, statues, and all. He could presumably skulk in the house for the rest of his days — the family would hide his existence — but no one could call this the manly thing to do. It would be horribly dull, a hermit’s life, no better than being mewed up in a New York skyscraper. He’d miss out on all the show of two World Wars! And Mother would certainly no longer waste time every day going down to polish the plaque, so how would it be available to be photographed, shiny and bright, for the parish leaflet in the 21st century?

Obviously the difficulties of clandestine time travel were not going to be small. Piotr was still in heated communion with his machines. Titus set down his empty cup, gave Piotr a farewell wave, and went down the elevator to the 39th floor. Lash was there, twittering and fussing: “Is your bag ready, Titus? What about the books — is there any volume you’d like to bring?”

“I’d be far more interested in looking over our Polar gear.”

“It’s all waiting in New Zealand for us, old man. We won’t need it until then. But I’ve got an inventory here for you to look over as we go.”

A taxi and the airport again, and then the long flight to Los Angeles. Titus glanced at the equipment inventory with a sinking heart. What was thermofleece, and was a windblok lining and ripstop paneling a good thing? Polar work was going to be no better than the Army. There was not a single aspect of his life that had not had the slats kicked out from under. It was as if the Queen of Air and Darkness had laid her faery geas on him, so that all his gold turned to dry leaves and ash. But now he was in with a chance. What if he could go back?

Going back to 1912 would change the past. There had been no recluse at Gestingthorpe during the 20th century. And if he became that recluse, what would they do with his corpse when he chucked his hand in? There could be no grave for him across the lane in the peaceful churchyard of St. Mary the Virgin. Bury him in the back garden under a sundial, perhaps? He could imagine Bryan waxing quite witty with this. But perhaps it wouldn’t be such a lark in old age. To what age had his younger brother lived? Titus gulped, realizing that he would have to guard his tongue more than ever. One could not tell people that they would live until 1960, or whenever it had been.

Even if he returned and assumed a summer name, an alias, there would still be a new man where there had been none before. The world would be changed. Well, so be it. All this worry about upsetting the flow of time — surely it was a cocked hat, entirely of a piece with the timidity of modern thinking. A bold man could chance his arm, seize the world and remake it better. It was that old haunting feeling of unreality multiplied tenfold: nothing in this future time was genuinely real. Only the past was solid and firm.

In this state of mind, the airport at Los Angeles could have been the Faerie realms. Titus followed Lash through the teeming garish terminal, remote, uninvolved, uninterested. How much less stressful it was, to lay aside the struggle to understand! Until abruptly his way was blocked by a short wide man clad in what appeared to be yellow and sky-blue racing silks. “Yo, Titus!” this vision blared. “Nice to have a face to face!”

Titus recoiled. “Do I know you?”

“Titus, this is Rick,” Lash said. “I was telling him all about you, Rick, but I’m afraid Titus has been a little woolly-headed today. Modern travel doesn’t come easy for him, you know.”

“Well, snap out of it,” Rick advised. “I have some script for you to look over on the flight down.”

“Script?”

“For this film! Here, have a look.” He thrust a black machine forward.

Titus jammed his hands into his pockets. “Sorry, but your machines are entirely beyond me.”

“Just read it — I’m not asking you to program the thing!”

“Impossible.”

“Rick, I did warn you,” Lash said. “Once we’re on the plane you could get it printed out for him.”

“You know what you’re doing, Lash? You’re enabling. If he doesn’t get it together…”

Titus stopped listening. They had joined a long line of passengers slowly shuffling down a tube onto a flight. Nothing of interest was going to happen for hours. It was night, so he couldn’t even look out a window. Better to lay plans for the future — or would it be the past?

There, the possibilities before him were literally endless. Perhaps he should go back to 1900 and alter the course of the Boer War. Although that had been such a hash, it was hard to think of a point where meddling with events would produce any worthwhile result. Or no! With a thrill of pure excitement Titus realized he could go back in time and put a spoke through Amundsen’s wheel. England could be first at the Pole after all!

But new difficulties bristled up like blackberries in July. How would he do this? Sabotage the sleds, shoot the sled dogs? Impossible to lurk with the Marlin at the edge of the Norwegian encampment in the Bay of Whales, picking off huskies — the Norskies would hear the crack of gunfire and intervene. Besides, Amundsen had brought a hundred and twenty dogs. The only sure solution was to cripple the man himself — a bullet through the leg would do. Titus had forgotten how many Norwegians were in Amundsen’s party, but there were more than a few. And he had never seen Amundsen in person, only in photographs. To pick off a man one has never met, from among a group blatting in Norwegian and all bundled up alike against the cold in furs, finnesko, balaclavas and mitts, seemed beyond the realm of practicality.

And would this not be the rankest of cheats? Amundsen had been better prepared and had his head screwed on right: the best man won. No gentleman could open fire on unarmed, unsuspecting men busy at their own affairs. What would the papers say? They’d blame a yellow-bellied unsportsmanlike British gunman who couldn’t bear the idea of losing — and they’d be right!

Hastily Titus sheered off onto a different tack. Certainly it should be possible to rescue the Polar party. Turning up at Scott’s tent on March 20th, 1912 with an armload of provender and a gallon tin of paraffin oil would do it. They’d be astonished that he’d caught up with them through the trackless waste three days after his supposed death, baffled at his restored feet and fingers, mystified by the supplies. Titus had no morsel of doubt that with his help the three sick and weakened men could be got back to base. Thanks to Dr. Trask’s repair work, and after weeks of sun, food, and tittupping round the prairie wrangling tourists, he was fit enough if need be to do a hundred and twenty miles of manhauling single-handed. He’d cache all the wretched geological specimens at One Ton Depot — what a pack of mugs they’d been, hauling thirty-six pounds of rock along! — and load the frostbitten Scott onto the lightened sledge. A pity it would probably not be possible to bring a pony back through time as well. He knew exactly which of Nat’s string would do best at the work.

For a moment Titus amused himself assembling a shopping list. Above all, fresh foods for the scurvy: milk and cheese, oranges and apples, chickens and roast beef. And his favourite caramel creams for Birdie, brandy, and cigars if any could be obtained in this benighted era. No, they wouldn’t argue with that! At least, not right away…

Titus tried to picture himself, the savior of the Polar party, returned to the hut at Cape Evans and telling his tale to the entire Expedition gathered round the big oilcloth-covered afterguard table. There seemed no simple way to begin: “I went to the far future and brought you back some meat and veg…”

“These people, our descendants, rescued me, but I escaped and…”

“There was this woman, and she…” It came to him that if Scott or Wilson knew the whole story they would instantly recognize his return as a retreat. Unable to cut the mustard in the future, he’d had come haring back to 1912, his tail between his legs and no mistake.

And if they lived, what then? Two widows the less! Scott would raise his son Peter and perhaps sire more children; Wilson could return to his wife Oriana; Birdie Bowers would find himself a nice girl — with the benefit of experience, Titus would drop a word of wisdom about women into young Birdie’s ear. All those ugly monuments, ham-handed statues, mawkish memorial funds and washy poems would vanish into limbo, and good riddance.

But dimly now Titus could see what Piotr had meant. He knew nothing of molecules, but he knew people. If Kathleen Scott was no longer a widow, she would never remarry. Titus couldn’t recall from the books the name of her second husband, but that Lord Whatsit would be left lamenting at the altar. The children she had borne this worthy also would never be, replaced by different children fathered by Scott. Lord Whatsit would surely choose some other female, and the husband this woman would have married would wed someone else, and so on down the line ad infinitum. Titus envisioned the entire marriageable population of Great Britain shifting over one spouse, like the congregation sliding down in an overcrowded church pew.

Wilson and Bowers would also carry on with their married lives, with a similar falling-domino effect. Determined and sterling character that he was, Birdie would surely woo and win some female or other. Perhaps a dozen children would come into existence that never existed in this timeline, and these children would doubtless breed grandchildren. The population of 2045 would be larger by perhaps several hundred more people, with who knew what impact? Titus’s head spun when he considered the ramifications.

Perhaps it would be easier to keep it simple. A shorter jump to the fairly recent past would not be so fraught with tortured history. Would it be possible to go back perhaps twelve years, and cut poor old Nat out? Become Shell’s first and, it went without saying, only husband? She would never be able to do him in the eye if he caught her early. And while he was at it he could weigh in on the Fortie debate much earlier, ensuring that the teams went to visit the stars with a more wary and soldierly attitude. The only real change would be that Miranda, who resembled Nat so closely, would never be born. Would it be wrong to blot a handicapped child out of existence? Shell would never know Miranda had existed — indeed, Miranda never would have existed at all. But Titus would remember. He remembered now, kneeling in the doorway of her tent racked with an unfamiliar pity. Could he think of her as another Buck, a wounded creature put out of its pain — or would he feel like the child’s murderer?

But twelve years ago Shell had already been obsessed with space travel. It would have to be earlier yet, when she was in her teens perhaps, so that Titus could influence her towards a more domestic career. He tried to imagine her at sixteen. She would be slimmer, still blonde and freckled. Could a man of 33 appear out of nowhere without history, antecedents, or resources, to woo a schoolgirl half his age? Any right-thinking parent would show him the door. If a suitor of that stripe had come to Gestingthorpe to court Lilian or Violet, as a good brother and the man of the family Titus would have taken a horsewhip to the fellow. And the idea of so nubile a girl was unappealing. One could not make love to a female barely out of childhood. He wanted someone up to his weight, a grown woman who could hold her own in bed and out. Anyway, a sixteen-year-old miss would probably give an older suitor the mitten. “First I’m too young, and then I’m too old,” he grumbled, incautiously. “And sod it, I don’t want to marry her anyway.”

Luckily everyone round him in the huge dim cabin was asleep, leaning back in their seats and huddled under blankets. His words rang false even in his own ears. He had the sense now that he was approaching the heart of the labyrinth at last. After days of pondering, passing through distractions and delays, the true difficulty was coming clear. The problem lay not so much in Shell’s behaviour, as in his instinctive outrage. Perhaps he was wrong, the way it was incorrect to use terms like ‘nigger.’ Perhaps everyone in 2045 behaved like that, happily having sex with whomever it would be convenient to create a tie to — part and parcel of their favourite ‘I know somebody who can help’ way of working. Time and again he had seen how the rules had changed right under his feet. This might well be another of the crucial fundamental assumptions that no one had to speak about, because everybody knew.

Having formulated this theory, Titus immediately saw that proof was a different proposition. He frowned at Lash snoring softly beside him, and Rick slouched in the seat beyond. Asking anyone at PTICA would be impossible. They’d make notes about this fresh instance of his adjustment process. For a weak moment he thought about how amusing Shell’s discourse would be — he might even get an insight on whether sexism came into it. Whatever else you could say about the woman, life was never dull in her presence. But, curse it! Even if he could sort this out he would never be able to face her again.

In the end Titus dozed too, from boredom more than anything else. Nor did it help that it was evening again when they arrived in Wellington. He had no sense of having got anywhere. Morose and exhausted, Titus followed the other two in a blurry cold motor journey to some place of beds and quiet. All three of them went straight to bed.

Chapter 19

Titus’s slumbers continued haunted. If he could only stop dreaming about her, he would be in a fair way to recovery! And with their greater experience of modern travel his companions adjusted rapidly to the time change, rising before him and ordering in food. He growled at the injustice of it, and burrowed his head into the pillows.

Still he could hear the clink of silverware, and gossip — there had never been such folk for gossip! “… creeps me out, Kev. I thought Shell was being melodramatic, but she hit the nail on the head.”

“You have to make allowances,” Lash said. “On top of the other thing, there’s the time change, and the stress of travel. And he’s been deprived of tobacco, too.”

“Disgusting habit,” Rick grunted. “Shell should never have let him start up.”

“There’s a limit to how much you can steer a masterful man.”

“She doesn’t seem to have problems, the little ball-breaker…We spent fifteen hours in transit yesterday, and he didn’t say a single word!”

“Well, but he was famous for being laconic. His contemporaries were always remarking on it.”

“There’s silent, Kev, and then there’s sick. We should’ve raked in counselors and therapists weeks ago, to hell with the expense. Look, I got an idea…”

Titus jammed a pillow over his ears. It doesn’t matter, he told himself grimly. They can flout the decencies, blat on about my affairs — it’s nothing to do with me any more. When he got back to 1912 everything would be as it ought. Although, now he came to think of it, some things would have to change.

For instance, it was idle to think of resuming his bachelor glory after so many slices off the loaf. The joyous hungry entity awakened inside himself could not be fobbed off with carnal dreams for long. He would need a wife. But his ideal of female perfection was vitiated now, thoroughly at odds with the standard of his time. The typical gas-and-giggle Edwardian maiden, idle and foolish, would bore him cross-eyed. (And was it faulty memory, or did Lilian and Violet do nothing useful with their days but purchase hats and gowns? When he got back he would look into it, perhaps encourage his sisters to take up careers.) He’d have to scour the purlieus of Bohemia and Soho to find a woman who blended intelligence with activity and sensuality. Another Isadora Duncan! The image made him grimace into the sheltering darkness of the covers.

Suddenly a familiar voice penetrated, as startling as being stuck with a pin. “I don’t see him.”

“I’m turning up the room lights,” Rick said. “Open that curtain, Kev. I’m adjusting the pickup. Tell me when the reception’s better.”

“It’s two in the morning here, and we have a tour tomorrow. I’ll hand you your liver in a bucket if this is one of your PR stunts, Rick.”

“A stunt, me? C’mon, Shell. Okay Titus, rise ‘n’ shine — you have a caller.”

White with rage at this outrageous cheek, Titus flung the covers back and leaped to his feet. Sunshine poured in through the curtains Lash was drawing. The floor was littered with clothing and baggage, and his bare foot caught on a boot. He snatched it up and threw it hard and straight at the square glowing screen on the wall. The shattering crash of glass and plastic was grimly satisfying, and Shell’s peering face vanished like smoke.

“Hey!” Rick yelped. “That thing cost money!”

Titus seized the smaller man by the fronts of his scarlet dressing gown, slamming him back against the wall. “You creeping josser. Keep your fuckwit Yankee paws out of my affairs, or I’ll pound your head till it swells like a pumpkin!”

Rick squirmed. “At least you woke up! You’re not going to be able to drift, Titus. Your participation here means you have to be coherent and together. If you can’t do that then we should bail, now!”

How stupid he had been, to be stampeded and flattered into this trip! But having passed his word, Titus had to play the game. And Rick was right. Better than anyone, Titus knew that slacking off in the South was dangerous. He had been winding himself into a private cocoon of unproductive phantasy, slipping over the border into Faerie. If he wanted to master his own fate, he was going to have to pull up his socks and focus.

Of course he wasn’t going to admit this. He kept his face set and his glare hot, glowering down at Rick. “Don’t try that again, knuckle-glazer. Mind your own sodding business if you can!”

“You are our business, Titus. And damned if you aren’t a royal pain in the ass.”

The truth of this was undeniable. And Titus was further galled by seeing from the corner of his eye Lash tiptoeing mouse-like into the bathroom, his machine under one arm. On the other side of the world in Wyoming, Shell was demanding explanations. There was no way to hide — he was in it up to the neck, enmeshed in their nets, the chatter and gossip that trapped him wherever he went. Thank God, when she left for Tau Ceti he’d be free of her! Snarling, he let go of Rick. “You truncheon-oiling seat-sniffer — don’t you even have the sense to be nervous?”

Rick resettled the crumpled scarlet dressing gown about his tubby form. “You got a good bark, Titus. But no bite. You’d never punch out a smaller and older man. It wasn’t done on the playing fields of Eton. Now, you better eat. We have one hour to pack up and catch our flight to Christchurch. Kev, hurry up in the bathroom!”

And there it was again, the crippling disparity between his knowledge and theirs. Knowing all about him, they could manipulate him like a child. Sod it! Titus poured all his silent frustration into a hard punch at the wall where Rick’s head had been. A proper plaster wall would have meant a broken knuckle, but modern buildings were all fluff and plastic. The skin of the wall smashed in with a crunch, and when he jerked his fist free the hollow interior could be seen through the hole. Something shattered in the bathroom on the other side, and Lash yelped in dismay.

Rick only grinned at the destruction. “See, Kev,” he called cheerfully. “I warned you to hurry!”

The New Zealand Titus remembered, that green and rural nation of shepherds and farmers, was gone. The flight to Christchurch was brief, and from the air it could be seen that the town had grown into a metropolis, not as megalomanic as New York but perhaps big as Paris. They rode in a taxi through a typical city of the 21st century, and he recognized not one person or place or thing. And how was it the Union Jack no longer flew at the airfield? Had the sun actually set on the British Empire?

This was the first place Titus had set foot in that was a return. He was dumbly grateful now that they had shipped him to an unfamiliar place like New York City for treatment. If they had revived him in London he might have lost his moorings entirely. In vain he repeated to himself Lash’s wisdom, that this was not the Christchurch he knew, but another city. The dissonance between memory and reality was so overwhelming that he felt giddy and dry-mouthed, as bad as that first day crossing the street to Central Park. Would it never end? No man had ever suffered from this chronal displacement business before or would again, so the course of the ailment was unknown. This reflection only added loneliness to the mix, making it worse. He would just have to endure. He noticed his hands were trembling, and squeezed them into fists to hide it.

Their vehicle halted in a city square, near the Avon River but hemmed in by buildings, and they got out. Just visible through the tender new greenery was a eerily familiar white stone statue. Titus went closer to look.

Yes, sure enough — a statue of Scott! Sculpted by Kathleen Scott no less, according to the inscription. The mitts, ski stick, and windproof were all correctly modeled, but the face was a exalted and idealized image that would not have been out of place in a stained-glass window. The Owner hadn’t looked like a martyr — he had looked like a human being! Still, Titus felt better. The insolent seagulls perched on the marble balaclava brought a sardonic grin to his lips. The statue had been recently cleaned, but fresh droppings streaked it anew. A brass plaque in a quiet village church was not the worst after all. Real fame was a ledge of birdshit on one’s shoulders!

“What do you think, Captain? Is it a good likeness?”

“Passable.” Recognizing the black machines pointing his way, he added with hasty diplomacy, “Mrs. Scott was a notable sculptor.”

“These are the National Geographic folks, Titus.” Rick introduced the two dozen people with an all-encompassing wave.

“Indeed.” It occurred to Titus, and a fine time to think of it too! that since parading his affairs was always odious, pandering to the moderns’ interest in him would merely increase aggravation. They had spent a mint of money on him, so some excitement was going to be inevitable. Any man — anything at all — worth a billion dollars was a sight worth seeing. But he was going to be spending the rest of his life doing this, was he not? Chattering to people about the past and his experiences there? The very idea was like a barrowload of wet concrete, sad and grey and cold.

People were getting excited, gathering too closely round. How disappointing for them to see nothing but an old soldier with his hands in his pockets. Someone who came naturally to it, a Mag or an Annie Oakley, would feel the urge to meet expectation — to give something to the waiting audience. Bereft of the showman’s instincts, Titus felt only distaste combined with a desire to hide.

But a man couldn’t do that. He faced them squarely, as he would face a firing squad, acutely conscious of his wooden demeanor and antiquated reserve but unable to do anything about it. “Well?”

“Don’t bark like that, Titus,” Lash begged. “They’re just taking pictures of you now, with the statue. Talking will come later.”

Titus almost swore with relief. Still it was obvious he was going to have to stand here until enough film was shot. He glowered at the black machines, which visibly fluttered the cinematographers. “Can’t you just look at Scott some more?” Rick demanded. “You look like you’re dead and stuffed.”

“I’ve never photographed well. Couldn’t we get on?”

It seemed impossible to move events along, however. The nobs shook his hand and murmured inanities, and the black machines ogled. Once again it was borne in on Titus that he was a lion, or — that crass modern word — a celebrity. He endured their questions stoically, replying in monosyllables to the compliments about his health or the delight at meeting him.

At last they got back into the motors and progressed to an anonymous building off a commercial avenue. The black machines trailed along, but Titus forgot them in the excitement of the task at hand: choosing Polar clothing. How strange and odd everything appeared! Huge overstuffed bunny boots, thick padded jackets, strange slick materials — but the fascinating superiority of these novelties rapidly became clear. The elderly but knowledgeable female in charge of the wardrobes assembled a huge pile of garments for him to try on. The process softened him like rattan in water. “So they no longer use Jaeger underwear and Burberry windproofs!”

“Now didn’t you find that woolen underwear got damp, Captain?”

“Wringing wet — a recipe for misery.” Barely in time Titus realized a female ought not to be regaled with details of what ice-encrusted underwear did to the wedding tackle. “It was a constant battle to keep one’s gear dry. When we froze stiff it was like armor plate.”

“I don’t doubt it, you poor thing! Whereas these long-johns wick — they draw the moisture away from the skin. And hoods are more efficient at retaining heat than caps.”

“Scott said hoods and furs were effete, rather. Silly bugger always fretted too much about how things looked.”

“Who cares about effete, if it keeps the draft from blowing down your neck?”

Titus nodded at this wisdom. “That’s what I say. Give me efficiency any day.” From there with very little prompting he was led on to describe the entire kit of a polar explorer in his day, from the furry finnesko on up to the knitted balaclava, comparing and contrasting it with the new kit. “Colours! Coloured clothing’s a rattling smart thing in the South — gives the eye something to look at, is what Griff always used to say. Can’t think why our outfit was gray and brown. And if one ever got lost in a blizz, it’d be easier for searchers to spot an orange parka.”

Too late Titus noticed that the National Geographic people with their black machines had been lurking in an inconspicuous corner, quietly filming the entire outfitting business. But all this could be overlooked, in the pleasure of standing up properly clothed in the latest Polar gear.

They admired each other: wadded up like hibernating bears in overstuffed orange parkas with furry hoods over woolen balaclavas, their feet encased in blue bunny boots six inches thick, and woolen gloves under goose-down padded mitts, warmer by far than dogskin ones, that turned the hands into clumsy orange paddles. Titus felt he had the height to carry the bulk. Shorter and wider, the other two waddled like circus clowns with their arms sticking out — they’d jam in the doorway if they tried to exit together! The garments were so warm in this temperate clime, one immediately had to shuck them again or perish of heatstroke. There were big canvas holdalls marked with their names, to cram all the loot into for transport.

“And when do we leave?”

“We’re waiting for a hole in the weather at McMurdo,” Lash said. “In the meantime, the National Geographic people is having the entire crew to dinner to meet you…”

All the dashing about at high speeds had thrown off Titus’s inner clock. It didn’t feel like dinnertime at all. Nevertheless when he went outdoors it was a chilly blue spring evening, manifestly time to dine. A huge gaggle of them went to a restaurant for a colossal and unending banquet of strange bastardized dishes, proper British recipes altered by time and fashion until he hardly recognized the meat on his plate. When I get back to my own era, I’ll be properly appreciative of decent food, he silently vowed. Beefsteak and potatoes, none of these folderols!

But once back, and knowing what he knew now, would he be able to let Shackleton or Mawson hare off on their Antarctic expeditions without speaking up? Surely it would be only decent to pass on to other explorers the vital knowledge he’d gained today. He could not hope to duplicate the zippers and modern fibres, but it ought to be possible to adopt furred hoods, for instance. But he would have to explain where he’d got this information. To just run a bald edict up the flagpole and expect others to salute was too much to ask for. He’d have to offer evidence, and what evidence could he cite except his journey to the future? Yet revealing that was patently dangerous, manifestly unbelievable. He’d wind up in Bedlam — a tragic case, Polar explorer gone round the twist due to hardship. How furious Mother would be, and Lilian would surely blame herself, jingling his brains in youth by cracking him on the noggin with that cricket bat…

Quickly he caught at his thinking. He wasn’t going to fall into this pit again, sod it! With an effort of will he looked up from his plate, which he had been mechanically clearing, and smiled at the other side of the long table. By unlucky chance those seats were occupied by a coterie of women, who instantly and as one blushed and giggled. Shell had warned him he was a fine figure of a man — must she always be right? But it had been the same on the Scott expedition — Polar explorers drove the ladies wild. He scowled at his plate again, hoping these females would lose interest.

Rick had been in almost constant communion with his little machine during the meal — poor manners, in Titus’s opinion — and he suddenly announced, “McMurdo’s reporting a window in the weather!”

“We’ll have to miss dessert and coffee,” Lash apologized to their hosts.

A general bustle, as everyone got up. Relieved enough to be perverse, Titus said, “But we haven’t come to the after-dinner speeches yet. What is this window business?”

It served him right when the National Geographic fellow eagerly responded, “When you come back we’ll do it again, and look forward to hearing your remarks!”

Lash said, “It’s so early in the season, the weather’s iffy. But they’ve been watching for a lull, so we can time our departure to arrive at the best time.”

“Who is watching?”

“Meteorologists, by satellite,” Rick said impatiently. “Come on, we’ve got to move.”

“Oh, Captain Oates!” It was the coterie of females, brandishing photographs — of himself! “Do you give autographs?”

The mere word made him flinch. He swallowed adjectival comments — one could not swear in front of strange women. “Where did you get these?”

Lash said, “We’ve been handing them out for a couple years now, Titus. The SPRI, the Scott Polar Research Institute, gave us permission to distribute Ponting’s old photo. Rick has more current ones.”

The devil he does! But Titus remembered this photo from the history books, so it was obviously public property. One of these days he’d have a sharp word with the SPRI. In the meantime he quickly signed his name in its usual form, L.E.G. Oates, ignoring the fluttering eyelashes and blushes of the clustering onlookers. Then, thank God! the car arrived and he was able to escape with Lash and Rick. He was going to have to be bloody careful, or he’d be saddled with the reputation of a ladies’ man, a square-pusher even. In this era of gossips and tabbies the word would fly in a heartbeat back to Shell in Wyoming, and susceptible would not be the half of what she would call him —

Again he had to rein himself in. The world had come to be full of sharp ice-edges and dangerous crevasses. Was there any place left to him now in space or time where he could lay aside the armour? Surely there had been such a place once. Once he had possessed the secret of joy — he could recall it clearly. Then, remembering, he flushed as red as any of those females.

Mysteriously, all their luggage had made its own way to the airport. Quickly they scrambled into their protective clothing. The aeroplane was a Lockheed Albatross, a small sturdy cargo carrier equipped with skis as well as wheels — not tourist transport like the plane in Wyoming, but a working vehicle. The gloomy space within was tightly crammed with cargo, but there were some webbing-and-canvas seats at the front. Immediately they were aboard the door was shut and the plane began to roll — it was after midnight, but waiting for daylight did not seem to be a consideration. “Once we’re off, tie your baggage down,” the female pilot called from the cockpit. “We don’t want it rattling around if the landing is rough.” She was a tiny brown creature, perhaps Indian or Caribbean, her eyes invisible behind a yellow-lensed visor.

“I hope she’s just saying that to frighten us,” Lash said.

“I feel sure she’s absolutely serious.” Unruffled, Titus fastened his seatbelt. No air journey could possibly be as uncomfortable and perilous as his voyage to Antarctica on the Terra Nova.

“If it’s too rough to land I’m going to be seriously annoyed,” Rick said.

Titus suppressed a comment that was very far from gay. Why was he so off balance? There was something wrong with this journey, on a more fundamental level that the trappings. That Lash was a far less congenial companion than Shell; that Rick’s concerns were an irritation where the Longtrees’ had been amusing; that expounding on Antarctica was miserably egotistical in a way that potted lectures about guns were not; that in Wyoming he’d been immured in a delightful affair while here his only release was in dreams — all this was irrelevant. He refused to believe that his character was so shallow, so paltry, that the mere loss of a woman would cast a pall over everything. The affair had lasted a mere two months, not long enough to overset the habits of years. There must be some deeper problem that would account for the increasing sense of wrongness.

The flight to McMurdo Base would take at least eight hours, so there was plenty of time to consider the matter. Conversation was precluded by the throb of the engines, which were so loud that waxy plastic earplugs were distributed. The other two slept, their puffy blue boots stretched out across the aisle, but with his internal clock gone adrift Titus couldn’t even doze. Instead he stared out the little window into the fathomless dark. One would think that having to adjust to a hundred and thirty years’ worth of change would be enough of a task for a man. But no, he told himself bitterly. He had to get mired in a romantic muddle and then off onto an endless detour down South.

He seized on this last word as the clue to the puzzle. Why was it a detour? Returning to Antarctica ought to be an unalloyed pleasure. When had the place moved away from the main lines of his life, become so alien to him? The idea of fear Titus dismissed. Could it be that it was going back, not forwards? A return, rehashing old achievements, battening upon former glories. And he never liked going back, he reflected. It wasn’t his nature. He was an explorer, always going on to new places. Tam Lin was not for him: returning from Faerie to mundane life in some backwater four-by-three village. He wanted to be Buck Rogers and go on to the water world of Mongo, or Mars, or yes, Tau Ceti.

With dismay Titus realized that if this proposition was true, absconding to the past would be a prelude to unending misery. To the end of his days it would haunt him, that he’d turned tail and retreated back to the safe and familiar. He’d be declining the adventure of a lifetime — more than a lifetime, if Piotr was right, a journey that might never be repeated by anyone ever. The dream of an explorer! Scott would have jumped at the chance; Amundsen would have pawned his soul to be here now. Was the lauded Captain Oates going to be hen-hearted after all?

But if he stayed, many pieces of his proposed future had just dropped out of the jig-saw. To make a living like this, passively leeching off his past, was impossible. And nurse-maiding tourists across the prairie could never be more than a diversion. All Shell’s careful planning, gone with the wind! How would Lash ever fob off that colossal list of people panting to meet him? And worst of all, the first and central question continued pillar-like, mocking and unanswered: what was he to do with the rest of his life?

To have no goal, no plan for his life, galled his soul like a fetter. Since he was in short coats, playing with popguns and wooden horses, he had always known he would be a soldier. Now in this strange new world this destiny was gone. In vain he reminded himself of the titanic task he had undertaken, of how far he’d come already on an inner journey harder than any Polar trek. He could do anything he set his will to. But his sour mood cast its spell over everything, bleaching away any sense of achievement. In this state of mind it seemed to him that he’d spent the past weeks in little but acquiring parlour tricks: driving motors, managing coffee flasks, pleasuring women. Diverting activities to be sure, but in no way useful unless he looked for a career as a cabdriver or a gigolo.

Titus had gnawed on this problem for so many months, he turned from it now with loathing. He didn’t have to decide today. There was nothing to be done while he was trapped on this current Polar jaunt. He’d lie doggo for the next month or so, maintaining a bland and cautious front, revealing nothing of his plans. Shell would depart, possibly never to return, so her hold on him would be gone. When he got back to New York he’d think of something. Ride each fence as it comes, and never get ahead of the horse!

And in the meantime he was in yet another aeroplane, piloted by a lone female. If one was always assumed to be a gay dog, surely something useful could be derived from the reputation. He slipped out of his seat belts and stepped over the sprawled limbs of his sleeping companions to the dimly-lit cockpit. Good God, a cordially inquiring smile seemed to have a notable effect! The pilot pointed at the other seat and nodded. He hastened to sit down, buckle himself in, and begin studying the lighted panels on the dashboard. How hard could flying be? Surely not much different from a motor…

Chapter 20

At this season of the year the southern continent was briefly blessed with a true night and day. The cruel six-month-long winter night was over, but the twenty-four-hour day of the austral summer had not yet begun its reign. The upper regions of the air were full of ice-crystal and fume, so that the sun didn’t actually rise. Only the gradual dilution of darkness showed that day was come. The ocean below was featureless and iron-grey from this height, visible only through rifts in the cloud-cover.

Was not the flight nearly over? The chronometer on the dashboard had marked the passage of nearly eight hours. From his hours of observation Titus had picked out the fuel gauge from among the many dials and meters on the dash. It was damned low. He strained his eyes, peering to get the first glimpse of land. There! Suddenly it was visible in the grey ravelings of haze — the cone of Mt. Erebus, with its plume of vapour. To a British polar man that sight would always lift the heart: the sign that one was nearly home and dry, within reach of the Cape Evans hut at the foot of the mountain.

But the clouds clamped down almost instantly closer than ever, so that the windscreen was blank and white. Now they were descending, the wind became a sudden and dangerous presence. Gigantic invisible boxers seemed to punch and jab at the little craft, imparting a lively sense of favours to come. How could the pilot see to land, and in all this wind too? They must have some way to manage it. He leaned back in the seat, prepared to enjoy another demonstration of modern cleverness.

Only then did he think to look across at the pilot. The yellow visor masked all expression. But one gloved hand flicked tensely from one mysterious control to another, while the other clenched the stick tightly. She spoke rapidly into a spriggy bit of machine close to her mouth, but the noise of engine and wind kept him from hearing the words. Something was wrong. Exerting all his self-control, Titus said nothing and sat still. He yearned for information, to know what was happening and why. But to jog a professional’s elbow at a crucial moment would be unforgivable and dangerous.

For what seemed like hours they both stared intently out into the blank whiteness beyond the glass. The emptiness had the whiteness of virgin paper, or an expanse of well-laundered sheet, light but without form. Distance and proportion, even up and down, was lost in its void, without any horizon or reference point. Titus swallowed and fought a sense of vertigo. The plane leaped and twisted like a flea as it reached down and down for the earth, further confusing the senses. Only the seat belts kept him from flying across the cabin. He clutched the arms of his seat and reminded himself, this is not like PTICA’s film. This is real. Only once did the pilot flick him a glance. “God, I hate whiteouts,” she said, shouting to carry over the noise.

A whiteout, when airborne snow and vapour erased the horizon line and the distinction between earth and sky, was perilous enough when one was afoot. Men had got lost and frozen to death in such conditions, within arm’s reach of safety, unable to see three inches before them. In the air a whiteout must be deadly. The moderns had shrunk and tamed the world to fit their needs. Titus found it grimly satisfying now to come to a place where that writ did not run. One could always count on Antarctica for that rough male taste of reality. The pilot must know what she was doing, impossible though the task seemed. All had gone well so far —

The pilot cried out wordlessly. Just a flicker of grey shadow, the tiniest flaw in the dreadful purity of the whiteness, but it was enough to make the world blink back into shape and form. And it was too close. The wind was a live thing, ravening and tearing at the craft. They were slammed downwards like beetles in a matchbox.

The pilot fought to keep the plane level, but the wind was too much. They hit the ice at an angle sufficient to scrape the port wing. The scream of tearing metal made Titus wince. Everything whirled past the glass as the plane pivoted and nosed down into the ice. Perhaps the Doomsters were right — one couldn’t cheat fate. Being crushed by an overturned aeroplane was as good as freezing to death in an Antarctic blizz. They’d probably throw a party in the kook plaza to celebrate.

But when everything was quiet and still again Titus was shakily pleased to still be alive. The cockpit and dashboard lights had gone dark. The windscreen was cracked inwards but still in place. Snow pressed tightly against it, obscuring any view. The seat belts held him into his seat even though the plane was canted to port at a fairly steep angle. His hands were trembling, and he had to swear like a bargee before they obeyed. When he was able to unfasten the buckles he slid helplessly downhill onto the pilot, who lay slumped in her chair. Her visor was smeared with blood. He lifted it to survey her face for injuries — her head must have hit the dash. He could see no further wounds beyond a nasty cut on the forehead, but wadded up in protective clothing as she was even a broken limb might not be visible. “A fine how-d’ye-do,” he muttered.

Titus levered himself out of the cockpit and clambered back to the doorway that connected to the main part of the plane. To his horror he saw that the cargo had ripped loose from its tie-downs. All the passenger seats backed onto the bulkheads, facing inwards. An avalanche of crates and boxes had buried poor Lash on the downhill side completely. From underneath his voice called faintly: “Rick? Titus? Help!”

One might have a down on one’s companions, but in a crisis pulling together came naturally. Titus did not even pause to consider the issue. “Just a tick, Lash — the cavalry’s coming.” In his seat on the starboard side of the cabin, Rick dangled limply from his belts with his eyes closed, like a marionette in a closet. He clutched his little machine and mumbled what might have been prayers into it. Without ceremony Titus scrambled up the sloping deck, balancing on the tumbled cargo, and hit the buckle releases. Rick fell forward out of his seat, but Titus broke his fall and eased him down. “Buck up, man!” he barked into his face. “Are you hurt?”

“Jesus Christ Almighty,” was Rick’s only reply. “I am never going to do this again.”

“You aren’t hurt,” Titus concluded. “Then let’s get cracking. We’ve got to shift this load and get Lash out. And the pilot is injured too.”

Reeling, Rick clung to his machine. “Forget about it. I’ve yelled for help. How long can it take them to find us?”

Titus resisted the impulse to curse him. Jolly the tourists along, that was the way. A tight rein and an air of confidence! “Rick, when you or Lash or the other Paticalars know how to manage, I attend, do I not? Now it’s my turn. I assure you, I know what I’m about. This is Antarctica. We can’t wait for help. We’ve got to get the wounded out, and either get to shelter or contrive one, here and now. Or we’ll ruddy well freeze to death.”

“Oh!”

Titus eyed him narrowly. God alone knew what these Yanks were good for in the crunch. How he wished Shell were here! But all he said was, “Set your machine in a safe place and take off those mitts — you’re going to need your fingers free. The undergloves will be enough for the moment. Let’s shift that big box first…”

Their own baggage was mainly clothing and had been at the front. With any luck it had been first to rip free, to cushion the heavier objects. Five minutes of hauling and stacking in the semidarkness, and Lash’s head was visible. “How are you, old chap?” Titus asked in resolutely cheerful tones.

“I think my palmtop is history,” Lash said weakly. “Are you linked, Rick?”

Titus wanted to laugh. “That’s the least of our problems.”

Rick said, “They said they’re coming. Let’s get you outa there first.”

It was backbreaking work shoving the boxes back and wedging them so they wouldn’t cascade down again. Titus sweated in his heavy garments, though the dim cabin was so cold he could see his breath. “Rick, keep an eye on the labels. I’m looking for a stove or fuel. Some way to keep warm. Surely you folk have something magical in here.”

Rick heaved a box over and glanced at the printing on the side. “Canned tomatoes. But surely to God they won’t take long?”

“One never knows. Righto, Lash, here you are. What’s the damage? Can you stand?”

Lash unbuckled his seatbelts and levered himself upright before sinking back again. “I think my ankle’s broken. Or sprained.”

His face was shiny white with pain. Titus replied with a confidence he did not feel. “Nothing better for it than a thick bunny boot then, to keep it immobilized until help comes. I saw a medical kit up front. And I’m going to haul the pilot out of her seat and in here with us, before she freezes.”

The woman was such a tiny creature that Titus could heft her under one arm like a parcel and carry the first-aid kit with the other. He laid her against some boxes next to Lash’s seat. The first-aid kit held no little tools like Shell’s. Rick helped him to dress the cut on the pilot’s head with a sticky plaster instead. Her eyes opened, and she moaned. Titus pondered the right terminology. The pilot of an aeroplane might properly addressed as ‘captain,’ but one could not call a female ‘sir.’ Would ‘madam’ be the equivalent, or would ‘miss’ be better? Before he could figure it out Rick broke in. “Where are we? What happened? I can’t see anything out the windows. Did you get through to McMurdo?”

“We can’t be far,” she said in weak tones. “Only overshot the runway.”

“Good,” Titus said. “Be a snap then, to go for help. We should have you both in safe harbour soon. Let’s open that cabin door, Rick.”

“What, you’re going to walk?”

Titus shot him an exasperated look through the dimness. “Rick. Think about it: who am I? Besides, we have to have a peep. A damned womanish — I mean, a silly pack of gudgeons we’d look, waiting for help if shelter is just outside the door.”

The plane was tipped steeply enough that it was difficult for a single man to reach the door high on the starboard flank. Rick had to brace Titus by the legs while he wrestled with the unfamiliar latch above his head. The cold of the metal bit right through his thick woolen undergloves.

The door stuck. If the frame had twisted, the door was jammed forever, and they’d be tinned like beef. Titus looked back at the three frightened faces in the dimness below, and kept the thought in his breast. “Just ballocked from the cold.” He put his shoulder to it, unable to put his full weight behind the shove with Rick holding his legs and wavering below. Suddenly the door gave outwards. In that instant the wind hammered him, a stunning blow in the face. It must be blowing thirty knots and gusty with it. The entire aeroplane fuselage rang like the bell of a trumpet. He overbalanced, his gloved hands slipping impotently over the icy metal, and tumbled ass over tip fifteen feet down to knock his breath out on the ice.

The daylight was gone as if it had never been. The air was thick with flying snow, the wind ululating like savages on the attack. He could not see six inches before him. The shock of noise and cold seemed to freeze him in an endless limbo. The rough ice against his cheek sucked the warmth out of him, and the fine driving snow clogged eyes and nose.

It was as if his complicated plots had magically grown from seed to cankered fruit in a heartbeat. Emboldened by his recent flirtations, the past turned now and gripped him by the throat, drawing him down into the howling dark. He struggled to hands and knees. Already his cheeks and nose were growing numb and dead. The sweat dropped from his brow onto his woolen gloves and instantly froze. He flexed his fingers and felt the rime crackle, telling himself in vain that they were whole and well, a normal size, not frostbitten and rotting away. His legs would not bear him, but it was not because the gangrene had got them. His heart thudded up in his throat with a warm strength fueled by many recent and plenteous meals. Starvation and scurvy were nowhere near.

Automatically he zipped the hood flaps over his mouth and nose, and thrust his hands into the huge padded over-mitts that were clipped to his parka sleeves. Preparing for his last trek? It came to him, this is fear. I knew coming back was a thundering bad idea, and this is why! But it was absolutely not done, to show the white feather. One had to turn and confront the enemy.

Who was the Queen of Air and Darkness? The past, once a secure support at his back, was wiling him, seducing and leading him astray. Comforting and tempting, but a trap: a deathly one, for this was the moment of truth, do or die. If he lost focus now, if he staggered out into the storm, he would die as dead as he ever would have 26 miles short of One Ton Depot. This is not 1912. This is the year of our Lord 2045. He ground his teeth, firmly re-rooted in their sockets by the magic of modern dentistry, and said it aloud, casting his defiance into the storm’s face: “I don’t know where I’ll go or what I’ll do. But I am going forward, not back.”

Through the ravening wind he hear thin cries from above: “Titus, you lunatic!”

“Can you see the base? Maybe he’s started walking already.”

“Come back! Rick, why didn’t you grab his feet?”

“We have to shut the door, for God’s sake!”

Titus dragged himself upright. The door in the fuselage was invisible in the whirling darkness. Fifteen feet up, it was as beyond his reach as the Earthly Paradise. To scale the ice-rimed outward curve of metal was impossible. His only hope would indeed to be to turn and walk, to fight the storm and hope to stumble blindly through to salvation.

No, damn it! Snarling, he pulled off the over-mitts and banged both gloved fists on the curving metal flank of the aeroplane — to signal his presence to the others, and more vitally to remind himself that it was not tent canvas. He scourged himself into motion with the old sense of duty and honour. Once again there were three others in the shelter behind him in need of help. There was work to be done, lives to be saved, and none but he to do it. What did he have to do to defeat the past, rip off the parka? Moon the storm?

A thudding pop from above, and something large and yellow unrolled from the doorway and rippled in the gale. Plastic, all of it — some kind of emergency equipment that was unimaginable in 1912. Whatever it was, it was broken, limp and saggy like thick shiny rope instead of taking shape. The storm would tear it away before one could say knife. Before this could happen Titus swarmed up the length of it. The plastic was frigid and slick with snow, and his bunny boots gave him no traction. But clutching hands grasped his, warm frantic ones, palpably modern and American, hauling him up and over into the belly of the plane.

Shivering, Titus slid down into the relative calm and warmth. The typical yammer and debate of his companions rolled like a wave over his head and slowly penetrated. “Now the door, shut the goddamn door!”

“What do you mean the slide didn’t inflate? It’s guaranteed!”

“He’s injured! The door must have hit his head.”

“Kev, hold me up so I can pull it. Jeez, there’s a ton of snow blown in!”

“McMurdo, cancel that — he’s back, but may be injured.”

Titus forced himself to sit up and dominate the uproar before they all went berserk. “Do you know what I miss most about Englishmen? It’s the way we suffer in silence!” This ungrateful but heartfelt outburst quieted them for a moment, so that he could get hold of himself and take the reins again. “Lash, step back and get your weight off that leg. Here, Rick — if you insist on managing the door, I’ll boost you. Wear your gloves, you muggins, or the metal will blister your palms.”

Rick clambered awkwardly up and struggled with the door while Titus braced him, all the while muttering, “This is like a horror vid: trapped in Antarctica with Titus Oates!”

Lash lowered himself wincing to the deck. “Are you hurt, Titus?”

“In the pink, thank you. Just overbalanced and took a spill — nothing to fret about.” The echo of terror twitched and muttered along his nerves, but he took a deep breath and carried on. The pilot was sitting up now, so he decided to gamble that ‘miss’ was the right locution. “You were a genius, miss, to get us down in one piece. My name is Oates, by the way. This chap up here is Rick Foss, and Dr. Kevin Lash. And you?”

The pilot’s white teeth showed in a smile. “Sala Kosler.”

“Miss Kosler, I’m sorry to report that conditions outside are not good. It’s blowing a blizz. Should you care to assume command of our little party?”

Rick slid down to the slanted deck. Now the door was shut the wind no longer made the compartment echo, and they could speak normally. “What happened to democracy?”

Yanks truly were obsessed! Half a chance and they’d form a committee to discuss the problem while they froze to death. But all Titus said was, “Any ideas you have, by all means throw them into the pot.”

The pilot said rather thickly, “What an odd fish you are. I have a splitting headache, and your pals seem to have elected you chairman, so why don’t you just keep at it. What do you propose to do?”

Titus had to grin into the dark. Piotr had the right of it, describing him as a man of action. Grappling with the problem at hand steadied the nerves and forced fear to retreat. “How kind of you to enquire. We have so many options at hand, it dazzles me. Everything from holing up here for months until we’re rescued, to hammering the fuselage into a sledge and manhauling across the ice to safety, to killing and eating each other.”

Lash gave a little hiccup of horror. “Holy Christ!” Rick gulped. ”Surely to God it won’t come to that. They know where we are, and they’re organizing to get to us.”

“Can they?” Titus realized he knew nothing of modern capabilities on the ice.

“It’s only taking a while because of the storm,” Rick assured him. “McMurdo has all the amenities of civilization. They even have vending machines for condoms.”

This tidbit deprived Titus of speech for a moment — things had indeed changed at Cape Evans! “I think a holding action is the ticket for now, although I confess my heart inclines terribly towards sledging. Tell me, miss, is there a torch anywhere about on your aeroplane? Or an emergency kit?”

She directed him to a small emergency box fixed to the wall of the cockpit, and more importantly to the plastic tank of drinking water and the bucket used for a latrine. The emergency box held little more than an electric torch, another first-aid kit, and a thermal blanket. Rick distributed painkillers. Titus had Lash sit beside the pilot against the bulkhead so that they could share the blanket, and tucked the water jug in at their feet so that it should not freeze hard. “Shouldn’t we all huddle underneath?” Rick demanded.

“You and I, my good fellow, are going to keep warm more actively. Let’s start by picking through these crates. You can explain the labels to me as we go. We’re looking for anything to eat, keep warm with, or heat this place.”

“Like hell we are!”

“Surely that isn’t called for,” Lash protested. “We’re sure to be rescued in an hour or two.”

“I would agree — except that we have no idea how long the storm’s going to last. It’s absolutely essential to prepare for the worst. Blizzards usually last a couple days in these parts.”

“How do you know that?” the pilot asked, from under the blanket.

Titus laughed out loud. She had no idea who he was! Suddenly he felt wonderful, ready to wrestle tigers — the way one always did after peril. “I’ve no fancy for waiting for rescue until we’re too hungry and cold to move. Seize the day, eh? Come along, Rick.”

Rick groaned, but passed his little machine over to Lash. There was so little floor space, they were forced to handle each crate many times. Titus chose the sturdiest crates and laid them to form a berm around the invalids and keep the heat in. When this threatened to overtop them, he hauled the two up to rest on top of the crates and filled in the well where they had been with more crates. It would be warmer higher up anyway.

By this time the torch cast only a feeble halo of light. They turned it off to let the battery rest, and huddled on their island of crates in the dark while Rick broke open a cardboard carton labeled ‘Cookies.’ “God, how I hate peanut butter crunch.”

“They taste jolly odd,” Titus agreed, chewing.

“I’m freezing,” Lash said. “How cold is it, do you think?”

It was sufficiently cold that the snow blown in had not softened in the least. “Perhaps twenty degrees of frost,” Titus said.

“We’re dead meat then,” Rick said, his voice laden with sullen despair. “Without any source of heat.”

“Not at all. Our thermals will keep the body warmth in for a long time, days perhaps.”

Rick champed cookies aggressively. “You gotta be joking.”

Titus wanted to laugh. “This is a gloriously luxurious expedition, Rick. You don’t appreciate when you’re well off. A roomy and windproof aeroplane chassis for shelter, tons of stores to pick and choose from, full bellies, new clothing, stout boots, and nothing to do but wait for rescue from a base that’s only a biscuit toss away — it’s a pleasure trip. I know tourists who would pay a pretty penny for the experience.”

Rick fumbled for his machine. “Help, McMurdo, I’m trapped in this wreck with a maniac.”

“Very amusing. It’s more important now to get an idea of what the people at base can do. You’ve been talking with them. What equipment do they have? Can they reach us through a blizzard?”

“The Sno-Cats are rolling out,” Lash reported, “and the big tractor. It only took time to set up the pingers.”

“Ah, I remember those. Useful in emergencies. Let’s hope they don’t get lost in the storm.”

“They won’t,” the pilot said. Her voice was full of curiosity. “Who are you, Mr. Oates? How do you know all this stuff?”

“Merely been in the soup a few times,” Titus temporized. It had just crossed his mind that the entire disaster was another attempt on his life by the fearsome Mrs. Zonderman, but obviously this could not be so if the pilot knew nothing of him. He crammed two cookies at once into his mouth as an excuse for silence. Reminiscence was dangerous, and anyway he despised talking about himself.

And thank Heaven, just at that moment something rapped on the outer skin of their craft. “They’re here!”

“Hurray, no cannibalism!” Rick said. “As the chubbiest member of the party, I was getting worried.”

“Let’s get at that door again.” The rearranged crates made far steadier footing. With Rick’s help Titus wrestled the door open, holding the frame this time. Again the frigid blast of ice-laden wind buffeted out of the gloom. But then a powerful beam of light stabbed through the storm, so bright that it almost seemed to slap him in the chest. Titus shielded his eyes and waved. Under the bellow of the storm he could hear a more purposeful note, the snarl of powerful engines. Rescue was indeed at hand.

Even with the lights it was impossible to see much through the whirling snow. They heard thumping, metallic clanks, and got the occasional ghostly glimpse of vehicles crawling about below, yellow or red. The intense cold was creeping into Titus’s garments when something solid began to materialize just below. It was a ladder rising on some kind of mechanical hoist. Clinging to the top was a figure in bulky orange thermals very like their own.

“Ahoy!” Titus hailed. He tugged off his huge padded outer mitt and reached across.

Curse it, it was the wrong reaction again. The other fellow stared, then belatedly pulled off his own mitt for a gloved handshake. “Anyone hurt?”

“Minor injuries only,” Titus replied. “We’ll get the wounded off first, shall we?”

The fellow stared up at him, recognition dawning in the tiny bit of face visible between hood and face-shield. “Good God! Are you — “

“Yes, damn it. I’m Oates. And if you say ‘welcome back’ I shall scream.”

“You better climb down right away!”

“The lady should be first.” But it was no earthly use. Lash and Rick urged him on from behind, the pilot asked questions, and their rescuer climbed in past him and seemed ready to push him bodily out. Reluctantly Titus turned and began to clamber down. It wasn’t a proper ladder, but something like a metal maypole, with a central support and outsized footholds to accommodate their enormous boots. What fuss-budgets Yanks could be — it must be a national trait!

At that moment in a sudden katabatic gust the wind redoubled its fury. Loose snow slashed into the air, blotting out the searchlights, smothering vision and hearing. The cold sliced through his eight inches of thermal clothing as if it were muslin. Unsecured at the top, the ridiculous modern ladder slipped sideways. His blue bunny boots suddenly touched nothing. Titus clung like a blind monkey to the top of the ladder as it swung downwards through a short arc.

With a squeal of cold-tortured metal the ladder snapped to an abrupt halt, forced to the limit of its extension mechanism. Titus was flicked off like a bug on the end of a riding crop. Blinded by wind-drift and deafened by the blast, he fell. But there was nothing to worry about. Bundled as he was in this wad of clothing, he’d already demonstrated once today that the drop was safe as houses.

Still the impact knocked the breath right out of him once more. He lay helpless on the rock-hard ice, staring. The yellow Sno-Cat bearing down on him with its engine howling was only a yard away. All around the powerful lights glowed like demented eyes full of swirling snow, impaling Titus in their confusing glare. Small and round behind the windscreen, the face of the driver was split in a yell of surprised terror. Titus wanted to demand what the devil he had to be afraid of. The collision hardly hurt at all.

Chapter 21

Titus came to himself in familiar circumstances: the snowy hospital gown and sheets, the glare and shiny instruments and blinking lights and supernal cleanliness, so unlike hospitals in 1912. Even the white-clad angel in attendance was familiar — not Shell, disappointingly, but Dr. Trask. “Fallen angel,” he said dreamily. “Thought I told you to go to hell.”

“It’s a bad habit, swearing at your rescuers,” she said. “I should’ve told you the same, after they evacuated you back to Kiwi Land. But I did such a fine job of attaching your previous hand, and we did have a spare clone in storage, and you’re obviously a loon anyway. So the TTD got down on its corporate knees and begged me to fly down with the spare for an encore. And here I am. But you are going to apologize, Titus. Or I’m outa here, and you can swap the new hand for a hook. I packed my wetsuit, and surf’s up at Karekare Beach.”

Titus hadn’t an earthly what she was on about. She had raised the bed to a partly-upright position and was fussing with something, a large rectangular fish tank perhaps, close beside the left side of the bed. The tank held gallons of water, bubbling and swishing, and a long pink fish. Or was it a squid, with tentacles? She lifted the lid of the tank, and with mild interest Titus saw it was his own left hand and arm, pink and clean and hairless, lying in the tank. His elbow was clamped in a padded gasket to keep the water in, and the entire structure was at the right height and close enough so that the limb could extend at ease into the tank. It ought to have worried him, but didn’t. He must be under the sway of some powerful drug. “What happened?”

One foot in a brace, Dr. Lash hovered on the other side of the bed like a hen with a single chick. “We evacuated you back to New Zealand, Titus. For medical help.”

“I think there’s enough capillary action going so he won’t need the oxygen bath any more,” Dr. Trask said to the waiting nurses. “Nice and pink. Pop him out of the tank and into a cast.”

“The treads went right over your hand,” Lash said, shuddering. “It looked like hamburger. Sabrina amputated and stuck on the spare. But you must promise to stop doing this, Titus! There was only the one extra left hand and arm in storage.”

Perhaps it was too much to expect, to dodge hazardous traffic three times running! Through rosy mental clouds Titus recalled his ironclad resolution never again to underestimate a female. “That was kind of you,” he said to Dr. Trask. “You’re quite right. I was unjust, and I apologise.” He knew he was smiling like a fool.

She grinned back at him, tired but happy. “I wonder if it really counts when you’re doped up to the eyes. Maybe you should repeat it for the newsies.”

“Don’t get cocky…What newsies?”

“Only a photographer, I promise,” Lash said. “Your return to Antarctica has made quite a splash. You don’t have to say anything, Titus. Just sit there.”

This seemed well within his power. Titus sat and watched as the nurses drained the fish tank. They dried his arm with blasts of warm air before encasing it in a strange plastic cast and suspending it from a traction harness. The seam where the new bit joined the old halfway up his left forearm was unmistakable, marked with neat black sutures. Also the new hand was pale, while the rest of his arm was tanned. It didn’t hurt, however — nothing did.

People came in and out, taking pictures, nattering. He didn’t pay them any mind. He stared calmly at his the back of his right hand, lying on the counterpane. Those puffy inch-long blisters distorting the fingers and knuckles were frostbite. He’d had worse. He remembered now — he had taken off his right mitt to shake hands with his rescuer, an antiquated gesture that, along with his British accent, explained how he had been recognized. In all the excitement of the more serious injury to his left they must have neglected to cover the exposed right for a minute or two. He wondered how long he’d actually spent in Antarctica this time round. As much as a day, perhaps? And to arrive after storm and peril, only to bung himself up descending from the plane — what a farce. When the arm was shipshape they lowered the mattress again, and he fell comfortably asleep.

Titus woke again in time for supper. The drugs must have worn off, and it was astonishing the difference they had made. The left hand in its cast itched and tingled and twinged, and the traction harness made him feel like a forgotten marionette. The blisters on his right hand were swollen bigger than garden slugs, throbbing with an all too familiar agony. A number of aches, pangs, and dints made their presence shrilly known, many of them adorned with itchy sticking-plaster. He was starving — a double handful of peanut butter cookies was not enough to sustain life — but eating the evening meal with only the frostbitten right hand was awkward and slow. Lash had to cut up his meat for him. The frustration made Titus snarl.

“Let it be a lesson to you, never to dispute the right of way with a Sno-Cat again,” Lash said. “You don’t need to confront the 21st century head-on. Butter on your bread?”

“Please.” A new thought came to Titus as he scooped up a forkful of roast New Zealand lamb. “What about the chip? Does this new wrist of mine have one implanted?”

“Oh no, it’s too soon for that. Until the reattached limb is totally joined up, they don’t want even the tiniest risk of infection.”

“Very sensible.” So he was free for the moment! Everything was falling into place. The surge of secret excitement reminded Titus of the evening, kneeling beside his bed in the TTD building, that he found the forgotten Marlin in his bag. Opportunity to be seized: but for what? Well, if he should be able to contrive an escape through time, they wouldn’t be able to follow him. That would be the last giddy straw, if after he got away they could haul him back yet once more through time and space! But at a billion dollars a shot surely they wouldn’t waste the money. The Doomsters would brangle about it, and there’d be rioting in the streets.

But he was getting off course again. Better to prime Lash to talk, and perhaps let slip another interesting tidbit. “Am I remembering correctly, that they wanted my picture? What for?”

“I know the masterful heroism is instinctive, Titus,” Lash said earnestly. “It comes naturally. But people don’t expect it nowadays. So you will excuse our excitement, all right? It’s all over the newsies, but I’ve printed out a paper for you. Unless you’d like to take this opportunity to learn to download news articles?”

“No machines! I should enjoy seeing the papers, though.”

When he was done eating Titus spread out the paper one-handed. He shook his head at the overheated and inaccurate headlines: ‘Time Traveler Slain in Antarctic Rescue,’ indeed! He would have sworn it was impossible to take a decent photograph in the middle of a howling blizz. But damn their cleverness, here it was — a snow-blurred image of himself bundled up in orange shaking hands with the man on the ladder. Nor was it very comfortable to read the melodramatic praise of his bravery and courage. It was too much to expect for Rick not to pontificate about how competent a companion Titus was if one had to be marooned for even two hours in Antarctica. But how lowering, that an apparently estimable female like Miss Kosler would fuss so! By no stretch of the imagination could applying a sticky plaster to her head be construed as saving her life. And Lord, the picture of himself drugged to the teeth in this very bed made him look like a dribbling idiot!

It was only marginally more soothing to read an earlier story about the dinner with the National Geographic people. The sentimentality of the accompanying photograph was particularly vexing, with its flowery background and himself in noble profile. He resolved never to stand gazing up at a statue of Scott ever again.

And here was an interview with Dr. Sabrina Trask, about the difficulties of cloning new limbs. This was the most interesting of all. Cloning was one of those areas which he had pushed over the side, but no use being dogmatic about it. The reporter had asked all the questions Titus would not have thought of until too late. How clever of Sabrina to make extras and squirrel them away in case of need! He was astonished to read she was the best clonal surgeon in the world, such a topper that it had been worth setting him up in New York City where she could supervise his treatment. Absently he flexed his throbbing fingers, suspended in their cast. It had been a good thing after all to thank her. A hook would have been inconvenient for managing reins — not to mention, my God, in bed! The thought of how sulphurous Shell’s comment would be made him snuffle with laughter.

Suddenly he missed Shell dreadfully. Memory skipped over grievances and wrongs, and traitorously paraded only the good moments: bathing in the shallow creek at dawn, the way she would sniff his hair and neck for the smell of tobacco, the mouthwatering softness of her sleeping solid body, the generosity of her laugh, her mouth, her embrace. Bodily aches and pains receded into unimportance compared to the pang of loss. Mole that he had been, throwing that boot at the screen!

And, as if he was going to have to retrace his entire path in this era before he left it forever, it came to him clear as a bell who to consult: that priest, that padre in Saint Whatever-it-was’s Church in New York, the very first walk he took with her. Titus held no brook for dog-collars, but the fellow had looked right, sounded right, and every word he had spoken had been solid. Best of all, he had no connection whatever with the Fortie project. Weren’t clergy supposed to keep secrets, seal of the confessional and all that? A padre would know whether Shell’s hold on him was for good or for ill — whether she was the Queen of the Fay or sweet Polly.

“I have to get out of this hospital,” he said aloud, a new discovery. “Ahoy, Lash! Are you there? When do we go back to New York? How long do I have to stay in hospital?”

Lash came hobbling in from the other room. “Till next week probably, Titus. Sabrina wants to get you out of traction and into a sling. Then we can go back.”

“Find her, please. She can do it today.”

Lash leaned both hands on the rail at the foot of the high hospital bed. “Can’t be done, old man. Damn it, Titus, I know you just read that microsurgery article. She traveled night and day to get the cloned limb here in time. Then she was in surgery for twenty hours straight, sewing together your capillaries, hooking up your nervous system, pinning your skeleton together. And then she’s hung around another day, to be sure that the limb transplant is going to take. Don’t you think it’s a little unreasonable to demand more?”

The sudden trembling outrage in Lash’s tone made Titus blink. He tried to pass it off with irony. “Has the worm turned at last, then?”

“Damn it!” Lash pounded a fist on the bed-rail. “Who do you think you are? I know it’s difficult, I knew it would be. I have done my level best with you, Titus — supported you at every turn, answered every question and more, anticipated your needs with all the forethought and research at my command. And in return you have given me nothing, absolutely nothing to work with! Be ironic if you like, pull into the armour and don’t listen, but don’t dare to sneer at me!”

“Lash, I…” Titus’s conscience smote him. He had not been an easy associate, had made no effort to make this run smoothly. The role of invalid and dependent had fostered a sarky and selfish attitude, until his egotism was revolting to behold. It was wrong to endlessly impose on Lash’s kindly nature. “You’re entirely right. I know it’s just a job, Lash, but you’ve done miracles. I have no right to make it difficult for you, and I’ve been tetchy as a cat with a wet tail. I apologise, and promise to try and buck up.” He silently cursed the cables and pulleys that kept him pinioned. He would have liked to offer Lash his hand.

Lash sat down limply in the chair, out of reach. He was quivering like a rabbit in a trap. “It ought to have worked out. We ought to be able to connect. I’m exactly the same age as you, and I’ve spent years reading up on the period. It’s unfair that Shell can just waltz in and manage brilliantly. That famous simpatico of hers, I suppose.”

She was willing to canoodle with her research subject, which vastly improves communication! But Titus carefully didn’t say that. “You have a different style of giving information, and I’d be the first to admit that it’s not one I’m used to. But I shall make an effort, Lash. You have my best interests at heart, I know.” Or what you assume are my best interests — but he brushed the sardonic thought away. “Your attention to detail never fails to amaze me — the bathroom fixtures, the razor, the handkerchiefs. Only a swine would fail to appreciate that.”

“Oh no!” Lash interjected. “Titus, I apologize! You told me never to mention her, and now I have.”

His face had a look of real dismay, even fear, which made Titus more ashamed of his behaviour than ever. “Never mind it. Curse this contraption — this is why I hate hospitals! Lash, you have to come over and shake my hand, because I can’t get loose from this Torquemada engine. Shell told me once that I was a perfect gentleman as long as I got my own way. Hurt like hell at the time, because it was true. I’ve been monstrously self-centred.”

“She was always plain-spoken.” Shyly Lash accepted his outstretched hand, carefully avoiding the blisters. “I shouldn’t have snapped, Titus. You can’t be very comfortable right now. Sabrina’s left you some tablets to take.”

“No, I’m very glad you did.” To sacrifice a little pride was the proper thing now. Admitting to discomfort and pain was something Titus did only when he was up against it in a colossal way — when jagged splinters of his shattered thigh bone protruded through the skin, or when the rotting flesh of his toes sloughed off in his socks. But he knew now that an opportunity to be helpful would soothe Lash tremendously. “I’d accept those tablets. This arm is giving me jip. I hope that’s not a bad sign.”

“It’s actually good, I’m told — the nerves connecting up and getting to work.” Lash fetched the dose, two innocuous blue tablets in a saucer.

Titus eyed them with suspicion. But if one was going to make a grand gesture, it was bad form to scamp on it. He knocked them back, with a gulp of water for a chaser. It was like dropping the curtain on The Hound of the Baskervilles. Everything vanished, and he was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

Chapter 22

Another reason Titus loathed hospitals was that once they got their hooks in, they never let go. His sojourns in South African and Indian hospitals had been so wretched he’d vowed never to be caught in one again. And now Dr. Trask insisted that he stay abed. “Classic high-testosterone personality,” she remarked. “Too bad it’d be unethical to artificially tone down your hormone level. But if you won’t stay in bed, we can make you.”

He passed over the medical jargon to the meat of the matter: a slip of a woman, imprisoning him! He glared up at her, locking eyes. “How?”

She beamed like a seraph. “Hide your clothes. Chain your ankle to the bed. Sedation. Oh, there are lots of possibilities! I have a scalpel, and I know how to use it. Don’t let’s get confrontational, Titus. I don’t fight for the fun of it, like Shell. I like peace and harmony.”

The bright-blue gaze was merry but implacable. Titus could not doubt that she would happily and with supreme competence drug him stupid. “Very well then,” he said, lying back with a sigh. Time to lie doggo — he seemed to spend all his time in this era allowing women to have their way with him! But this was not a reflection he could voice to anyone, except perhaps Shell.

Some glint of ironic humour must have shown in his eye though, because Dr. Trask unexpectedly patted his good arm. “They were right about you, in those books.”

“You read the books?”

“Oh yeah. I liked it where they said you were a master at the art of losing with grace.”

Titus remembered reading that book himself, that first day. In fact those words had been written about Scott: the true master of transmuting defeat into victory. “Eyewash,” he grumbled, more pleased than not. The nurses had unhitched his arm and popped open the weird light plastic cast. The new bit looked more than ever like a mismatched part from a different set. “You had better not have mixed me up with some other one of your victims, doctor.”

“Titus, do you know about immune systems and transplant rejection? No, don’t answer that. Here — lay your right hand near the left. See? A perfect match.”

He had to admit that the new left hand had the exact turn of the right: fingernails, knuckles, everything. He peered at the good arm, but what with the summer tan and his arm hairs he couldn’t spot the join. “Where’d you attach it on this side? And my legs?”

“Oh, you won’t be able to see. A little plastic surgery took care of the scar. It was right about there, below the deltoid. Better safe than sorry — the gangrene was horrible, the worst on record. You were rotting away on your feet. And we snipped your left leg off at the hip socket. The old bullet wound would’ve closed back up, but I didn’t like how the left femur was shorter than the right. Might as well tidy everything while we’re at it, you know?”

“Well I’m buggered.” She had disassembled him and put him together again like a toy. “Where did you learn to do this, doctor?”

“Medical school.”

“No, I mean society — all of you. How many frostbitten and gangrened explorers turn up in this era needing repair?”

“Oh, you mean the pioneering research! That was propelled mostly by the Pittsburgh disaster. A jetwing pancaked into a shopping mall on Christmas Eve, forty years ago. You won’t have heard of it, but it was the event that shaped my parents’ generation. The technology was powered through to help the casualties. Even after the development phase, it took years to clone and reattach all the limbs. So these days when you want good cloning work, you come to the U.S. And,” she added as an afterthought, “that’s why I became a doctor.”

She had finished whatever it was needed doing to his arm, and bustled off. After that aeroplane crash, Titus had no difficulty imagining the carnage a jetwing accident would entail. While the nurses reassembled the cast and strung him up again he thought about it. To develop such medical arts must have called for tremendous resolution, not to mention a fortune in money — when he looked down at his own limbs he could guess where some of that billion dollars had gone. Why instead had not some enterprising person gone back in time, and steered the jetwing to one side? Wouldn’t that be simpler and less agonising for everybody involved?

Lash came stumping in, pushing a trolley. “All the medical business done? Perhaps you’d like some breakfast then.”

“Lash, I’m glad to see you. How’s the ankle? And yes, I could eat a bear, with butter and salt.”

Lash goggled. “Where’d you pick that phrase up?”

“From Mag. Damn, you’ll have to take that lid off for me. Have a cup. I have a question, Lash.”

Lash looked up from the teapot. “By all means!”

Titus frowned. “I have a dim memory of that first evening in New York, when you were saying something about changing the time-stream. I think I’m ready to listen now. Say it again, slowly.”

“You know, Titus, I can see now that it was foolish of me to expound all the theory at that early moment. It was a waste of breath — you admit you weren’t able to listen.”

“Well now I am, so carry on.” Titus curbed his impatience. He had promised to stop being a grizzle-guts. Here in New Zealand one got proper British breakfasts, tea and sausage and fried bread topped with coddled eggs, which he could manage with one hand. He took a large bite and gave Lash an expectant look.

“May I ask, Titus, what brings on this sudden interest? I only ask,” Lash added hastily, “because I want to shape my answers to meet your need.”

“If you persist in being so supportive, Lash, I’ll become an overweening tyrant…Dr. Trask was just telling me about what inspired her to become a doctor. Some major jetwing disaster.”

“Yes, in 2033. A tragic thing.”

“But you people can travel through time,” Titus said, carefully casual. “I wondered, why not just go back and repair the jetwing? Or steer it clear.”

“Oh, that’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because of the nature of time.”

“Rein in some more,” Titus advised, “and tell me about the nature of time.”

“Well…Think about where we came from, Titus. How is it that you or I are as we are? You are you, because your parents happened to meet and marry. And your father was himself, because your grandparents did likewise. And so on, ad infinitum, all the way through our primate ancestors to where the bacteria took shape in the primordial ooze — “

“Stop there, Lash.” Titus speared another sausage, feeling he was going to need it. “What is this primate ancestor?”

“Oh. Ah. Titus, you might know who Charles Darwin was. He died in 1882, the most famous scientist of your time.”

“None of this intellectual stuff for me,” Titus said uncompromisingly. “I’m not a scientist — I’m a gentleman.”

“How can you know of Freud but not Darwin?” Lash rubbed his forehead with thumb and forefinger. “Maybe we should postpone the evolution of life and the descent of man till another day.”

“Jack it in, by all means.” Titus was all for skipping the difficult bits. He wanted to hear about time travel. “Suppose you back up and take another run at the fence. Try it with the you being you part.”

“Let’s think about it another way. You’ve heard this proverb:

For want of a nail, a shoe was lost

For want of a shoe, a horse was lost

For want of a horse, a rider was lost

For want of a rider, a message was lost

For want of a message, a battle was lost

For want of a battle, a kingdom was lost

All for want of a nail.”

“It’s new to me,” Titus admitted. “Very sound advice though — it’s false economy to skimp on horseshoeing. Bad farrier work can ruin the best horse ever foaled.”

“Well, at least that resonated with you. The point of the proverb isn’t horseshoes. It’s that a small detail can lead to very large unintended consequences. And you don’t know which detail is crucial.”

“Mostly, they aren’t,” Titus said. “Horseshoes aren’t clinched on by a single nail unless the blacksmith is a slacker. Pure bad luck, that the loss of one meant the loss of the shoe. And if the loss of only one horse turned the tide of battle, it was a razor-edge proposition anyway. Ripping proverb, but not realistic.”

“Let’s forget the horseshoes,” Lash begged. “The point, Titus, is that there is no way to know for sure what detail is important. And chaos theory tells us there’s no detail that one can say is certainly too small to count. It’s been theorized that even the death of an insect might have repercussions that carry down through the centuries. This is the core of the Doomsters’ case against time travel.”

Titus remembered how minute details — the leather washers in the fuel tins! — had been enough to doom Scott. “I’m willing to concede they might have some sort of a point. When are we getting to the time travel part?”

“Well, that was one of the things we had to think about when we began experimenting with time. What could we steal from the past, that wouldn’t set up ripples of change that might alter the present?”

“There must be hundreds of things. I’ve known junior subalterns who weren’t worth a toss.”

“You’d be surprised, Titus. Everything alive is part of a cycle. Things live, and when they die they become food for other things. Taking an insect out of the cycle means that the bird who was going to eat that insect next week won’t get its meal. Even the humblest animal could nourish an oak tree when it’s dead. Where is it safe to pull something out of the loop?”

“Ah! This is how the Doomster business got its legs. You’re saying it’s like knitting — you can’t cut just the one stitch out of a sock, without the whole thing falling to rags.”

“Exactly. So we had to find something that wasn’t part of the fabric. And that was where you came in.”

“Me.” All of a sudden Titus didn’t feel like eating any more.

“Yes, you. You were unique. You were standing in a spot where there wasn’t a single thing alive, on the Antarctic icepack — so they didn’t have to worry about accidentally scooping up an insect or a plant seed. You were precisely placed in space and time, on the 80th parallel 26 miles south of One Ton Depot, on March 17h, 1912. Your body was never found, unlike Scott and the others. And best of all, all four of you were already out of the biosphere loop. The bodies of Scott and Wilson and Bowers still are. The glaciologists calculate that in another couple hundred years or so the Beardmore Glacier will carry them out to their final resting place in the Ross Sea. So there’s no question of some plant or algae being deprived of the nourishment of your component atoms…”

A vivid picture forced itself up in Titus’s memory, of a gaunt windburnt face, black as a boot, split by a skeletal red grin: the countenance of a dying man. As in the South the past plucked at his sleeve, quaked at the bottom of his belly, the Queen of Air and Darkness with her smile like a razor. Would the memory of that gangrene stench, the throat-closing reek of his own body in rampant rebellion against itself, ever fade? He swallowed. “Lash. Hold up for a minute.”

Lash jumped up, to the imminent peril of his teacup. ”Titus, you’ve gone ashen!”

“Don’t you dare call Sabrina, Lash. I’m fine, truly! Just a, a touch of indijaggers.”

His furious glare seemed to shove Lash back down into his chair. But Titus could see the other man was not fooled. And there he was again, glancing at his little machine for a translation! “Well, if you’re quite sure, Titus,” Lash said at last. “It’s astonishing how much you can eat, so fast. Maybe if you slowed down?”

The unspoken mutual acknowledgment was that neither of them was being precisely truthful. His weakness embarrassed Titus — a soldier should be hardened to talk of corpses and death, even his own. But he was glad to push the rolling table away. “All right, so it’s easy to make changes. So why not change the present? There are things that are wrong, that could be set right.”

“Well, firstly, because no one can determine what the consequences might be. And also — Well, suppose we took an example you’re familiar with. Suppose we rescued Scott and his party, as well as you.”

Titus kept a resolutely calm countenance. “Interesting idea.”

“Well then, what about the Hindenburg disaster, or the jetwing crash, or the umpteen thousand automobile accidents that take place every year? The people who died in those incidents have every good a right to live. When do you stop and say no, once you begin?”

“I never thought of it like that.”

Lash drank the last of his tea, and rose. “I know you don’t do well with lectures, so let’s leave it at that for now, eh? Suppose you have a rest, and I’ll drop by at lunchtime to see if you need help with the meal.”

Titus saw that Lash too had made good resolutions: not to hover, perhaps. He was glad of the chance to chew things over. It came to him that the modern era might well be more polite, more mature even, than his own. The civilizing, prodding questions that were forever on a mother or nanny’s lips, “What would happen if everyone did that?” and “How would you feel if it happened to you?” were the foundation stones of life here. One did not sully nature, or kill the animals, or revise the world with impulsive time-travel, because it spoiled things for other people. Epithets and insulting names were avoided like plague, for no reason but because they were hurtful. Decisions were not decreed from above, but generated by mutual agreement. Gentle and soft and even weak the moderns might be, but they were courteous on a deeper level than he. Even Shell, firecracker that she was, lived by the rule — and had forced him to toe the line too.

His hazy and disorganized time-travel plots now seemed all anyhow: boyish as the Buck Rogers comic strips, the childish fits and starts of a thwarted tot. An interlocking series of irrelevancies that distracted him from the main job. One did not inconvenience and overthrow the lives of millions of other people — all those wives and husbands swapped! — simply to accommodate one’s own whims. Unhappiness and loss had to be lived with, not cheated away. Confronting cruel necessities and learning to live with them were part of being an adult. By God, had she been right all along? Was he really too young for her?

Now and forever, he forswore the past. He would carry it with him always, even consult it like a watch (if only he had a watch), but it would never be his master again. The past had shaped him, but his destiny was his own. Onwards, to the future! Unfortunately at this moment he was trapped in a deucedly galling present. He scowled up at his arm in the harness, tempted to rip it free like a rat in a trap. Why was immobility a worse torment than pain? He remembered now how he had spent eighteen months under treatment before Dr. Trask let him achieve consciousness. That had not been impertinence, he realized, but simple kindness. A year and a half with all four limbs immobilized, soaking perhaps in bubbly fishtanks, would have driven him as insane as they had feared.

And if he had to lie here idle now, he would go no less mad. It was absolutely necessary to divert his thoughts elsewhere! In desperation he seized yesterday’s newspaper from the bedside table. There had been more happening yesterday than his foolish accident. Perhaps by sheer willpower he could now understand what the rest of the world was up to.

He noticed now that the New York Times was an odd newspaper indeed. There were no advertisements, and all the stories about his accident and evacuation were on the front page. Items he would have thought were of more note to the general public — an earthquake in Mexico, the ordination of some religious panjandrum in Israel (a new country?), the announcement of a cure for some disease — got short shrift on the inner pages. The leaders were jumbled in among news stories, rather than being together on their own editorial page. Most mysterious was the neat line in a modest fount at the top of the front page: “Printed for Kevin Lash.” How on earth did Lash rate a personal privately printed edition of the Times? The King of England could not dream of such a privilege! Perhaps this accounted for the selection of news items. Naturally Lash’s own edition would contain items that particularly interested him — although how he had got a New York paper here in New Zealand was another puzzle.

Titus turned to a section devoted to items about the Fortie project, his blistered fingers clumsy with the pages. The first headline gave him a jolt: “Preparing to Depart! Teams Move to Florida for Final Run-Up.” He looked for the date. Yesterday had been September 2nd — Shell must have left Wyoming. He set his teeth and moved on to another piece, selecting it at random and forcing himself to pay close attention to every word.

“Good Money After Bad”

by Rinde McPhee

I’ve always been behind the wave, OK? Didn’t become a Rizzoli fan until after Lee van Lee became a Zaa. So it’s late, but I have to ask — why the heck are we going to Tau Ceti?

The Forties have already handed us the store. They gave us the Drive, and it works! Now we can have plenty of fun right here in the neighborhood solar system. We don’t have to go 11.9 light years away.

The idea of course is that the Forties have more goodies in their bag. Aren’t we the greedy ones — we want more! What are the chances that there is more? Is it worth spending $100 billion on the chance?

Our entire culture has been telling us for a century, that we have the go: the movies, the books. The high foreheads tell us it’s important. But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s a waste of money!

“Rubbish!” She must be a Doomster! And he had considered calling on this ragtag and bobtail as allies? He must have been mad. Only a fool would have contemplated for one blistering second the idea of running to his murderers for help. In a towering fury Titus flung the newspaper to the floor, only then realizing that he couldn’t get out of bed to fetch it back. The thought did nothing to soothe him. “The most arrant humbuggery I ever saw!”

“Titus, are you all right?” Lash came hobbling in. “What’s wrong?”

“Are all your news writers sperm-brained? Did you see this? Hand that paper back up here. Is the bitch a Doomster, or what?”

“Oh, that! No, she’s just a detractor. This is a free society, Titus. People can say what they like, even the idiots, as long as it’s not actually untrue.”

“There’s truth, and then there’s truth.” Titus tried to articulate it. “Lash, you can take it from me when I say that you people have achieved a Christ-almighty quantity of stupendous things. This is a dazzling society, rich in body and heart. How the hell can anyone begrudge the money for space travel? It would be shameful, unbearable, to just let the opportunity pass by. God only knows I’d go to Tau Ceti if I could. It drives me mad, to read these pudding-hearted poor-mouthed chair-warmers, safe in their little homes, ballocking about deploring the work of exploration. You must go! How can there be any debate about it?”

Lash sat unmoving, staring at him. With a inward qualm Titus ran over what he had just said. He couldn’t spot anything notably incorrect, but perhaps news writers were sensitive, and calling them pudding-hearted would wound them? “I may very well be wrong about it,” he added in a meeker tone.

“Oh no, Titus, not at all. In fact — would you be willing to say all that over again? For Rick?”

“Isn’t he still at McMurdo?”

“He came back with us, and then went on to Florida to set up for the launch. And you know he’s always on the lookout for bits to fling onto the other side of the scales. You would be wonderful!”

“I still cannot see why anyone is interested in my opinion. And would this involve filming me?”

“We might be able to get you out of here earlier. A hospital room wouldn’t make a particularly good background.”

“Indeed?” This offer was far too good to pass up. “Then by all means, count me in!”

Immediately things began to move. With his little machine Lash tracked Rick down in Florida. Lunch came, and Titus took the opportunity to devour it — with any luck he wouldn’t have time later. Dr. Trask was brought back and argued into disassembling Titus’s traction. Titus smothered his grin of triumph — taunt a female and she might go the limit. “And may I peel off this sticking plaster? It itches terribly.”

“It doesn’t peel,” Dr. Trask corrected him. “You relax it off. Like this.” She waved one of her shiny tools at the one on his elbow, and the plaster obediently went limp and fell off. Titus goggled at the graze underneath, already nicely scabbed over. He was well pleased to climb into clothing and boots again. Dr. Trask set his arm into a sling and for good measure bound it to his body. “And don’t slouch like that. I wish you’d make some effort to keep my handiwork nice. You ought to be more careful!”

“These are my limbs, and I’ll risk them if I like.”

“Seems to me I have a stake in them too.”

Titus successfully choked back an irritable demand whether she had a part-share in the rest of him as well. He watched her adjusting the bindings. Dr. Trask probably talked to Shell every day. Lash, too. All he had to do was ask, and they’d pour out the entire budget of her doings in Florida for him. They were surely still gossiping with her about him. It was a close-knit fabric, and all he had to do was join in. The thought made him glower. Impossible! If a man had any proper pride —

Dr. Trask suddenly gave him a galvanic shock by hugging him round the shoulders. “You’ve done so much, I forget you’re nothing but an overgrown boy. No, don’t cringe away like that. I know who you want the snuggles from. G’wan with you, go knock ‘em dead. I’ll be back in the States next week to inspect the damage.”

He was still grousing when Lash got him down to the street and into a taxi. “ — as if I’m a prize spaniel. Cringe, indeed! I — wait, Lash. What is this city? Where are we?”

“You were in Memorial Hospital, Titus. In Auckland, New Zealand. Microsurgery calls for specialized equipment and a dedicated operating room that they couldn’t possibly provide at McMurdo. This was the nearest top-rank clonal surgery facility. We’re on our way to the airport now — the luggage is in back.”

Titus slumped in his seat. It was high time to start taking the reins of his life. There was no point in worrying about Auckland now they were leaving. Perhaps he could get a map of New York City and start learning his way round. And there was always the question of money. He wondered if they’d tidied his room at the TTD and found the Marlin.

As a token of his repentance Titus made an effort to use the flight back to America usefully. The jetwing was not crowded, and this gave him the opportunity to roam about. He had forgotten though about the recent ballyhooly about his accident. The stewardesses recognized him from the newsies and begged for his autograph. Displaying the frostbite blisters, now at their ripest and most ugly, got him out of it. The sight excited so much sympathy, they plied him with extra snacks.

It struck Titus how the craft was cram-jammed with conveniences and entertainments and communication devices — sockets to which little machines could be connected, screens on which diversions, newsies, or games spun endlessly by, tiny earphones for music. And Lash’s first concern, after being unearthed from behind the shifted cargo, was for his link to the rest of the world. Moderns could not endure to be separated from each other for even the shortest time. If he was going to survive here, Titus would have to make up his mind to connect too: to need them the way they needed each other. Else he’d wind up like Miranda, a spirit frozen in the cloven pine — not even imprisoned by defective neurology, but a self-inflicted cripple, wadded up in insulative layers of deliberate solitude.

They arrived back in New York by noon the following day. A marvel, to travel so fast! The speed reinforced that queer notion of his that the Earth had actually shrunk. The adventurous broad globe of his day was now a timid vest-pocket sphere only a couple miles in diameter. There was no room in the world any more! And Lash had backslid too, hovering again. “Would you like a rest before we go to the media center?”

“Let’s get on. I’ve been resting far too long already.

“Rick suggested that you just say your piece into the camera.”

This was wildly unsuccessful. By no stretch of the definition had Titus ever been talkative. Hung with wires like a Christmas tree and confronted by the unfriendly glass eyes of the little black machines, he forgot what he had to say and froze up, solid as an iceberg. “This isn’t going to work,” Rick’s voice said from the speaker. “Why does he always look dead and stuffed?”

“If I had you here, I’d show you stuffed,” Titus muttered.

“Can we find an interviewer?” Lash said. “Someone reliable?”

“Yeah, someone to talk at might help. Too bad Shell isn’t available, but I know her schedule’s full down here.”

Lash glanced nervously at Titus, who charitably ignored the jab. “Well, there’s always me. And I know who’d be good — how about Piotr?”

“Good idea, if he’s around.”

When Piotr appeared he immediately said, “Don’t talk about the Fortie Project, Titus. Tell about Scott and his fundraising.”

“What, in the nature of a warm-up?”

“No, because funding’s our problem too.”

This was so patently true — and the little machines were not yet on the job — that Titus said, “Scott’s whole process was outstandingly inefficient. I’m sorry to say that seems to be a national habit, and one of these days it’ll buy old Blighty a peck of trouble.”

“Didn’t the British government chip in?”

“Not a farthing until nearly the end. But they were happy to hop on the hurrah train then, grab the glory, spout codswallop and wave the flag. Chair-warmers!” The assistants had herded them back into the recording room, and Titus allowed them to clip wires to him again. “Scott had to tour the country and beg for money, at a time when he should have been devoting his energies to preparing for the expedition. Schoolchildren were chipping in sixpences to buy ponies. I’m told even my own sleeping-bag was funded, to the tune of two pounds from a school in Winchester. A shameful exhibition from the most powerful country in the world! Scant funding is the falsest of economies. If we’d had enough financial support, the Expedition might have turned out very different.” Whatever Scott’s bungling, Titus would never let down the side by discussing it. A solid front was the only ticket for public consumption, and it behooved him to be charitable — he was the one alive, was he not?

Piotr’s pink brow furrowed in his habitual thoughtful frown. “On the other hand, you could argue that Scott’s forte was fundraising. He did scrounge up the cash, after all. If children across the nation gave their milk money, the project had a broad base of popular support. The Doomsters are the tag end of a movement that had some moral legitimacy. In a sense getting government funding is too easy for us. Like getting something for free, without cost. You can argue that going to Tau Ceti is a goal imposed on the people from above, not a project with grassroots. Just one of those stupid egghead ideas.”

“What?” This idea was so wrongheaded, it made Titus gape — the American willingness to debate and discuss carried to a ridiculous length. And from a team member, too!

“Whereas people chip in for things that they really care about,” Piotr went on. “What will people really pay for? There are only three motivators: economic return, egotism, and military ends. According to you, Scott only had egotism, raw nationalism, to appeal to. Talk about tough sledding!”

Immediately Titus set out to point out the errors in Piotr’s reasoning. They went at it, ding-dong, fueled by some beer which Lash brought out in mugs. Titus forgot all about the little machines. It was like the cags round the table at Cape Evans, whiling away the long Antarctic evenings with energetic debate. Piotr put his feet up, waving his mug every now and then to emphasize a point, and quoted American politicians. Titus retorted with military metaphors and examples from the life of Napoleon.

Finally the disembodied voice of Rick boomed out over their heads. “Hey guys, enough already. Quitting time!”

“What time is it?” Titus asked, startled.

“Four-thirty. You’ve been yakking for three hours. That’s plenty of vid to play with.”

“Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?” Piotr said, grinning.

“And you think you have something, Rick?” Dr. Lash asked, unclipping himself. “Something useable?”

“You betcha, Kev. It was dynamite. Have a look!”

The nearest screen blossomed with light — Titus still could not fathom how Rick controlled it from so far away. There were the two of them yarning away, with Lash perched on one side and occasionally chipping in. “Fix the audio, Rick,” Piotr grumbled, fiddling with the controls.

But Titus didn’t need to hear — after all he’d just been saying the words. Instead he stared at the two manikins gesticulating silently on the screen. Piotr was expansive, American down to the broad movements of his big pink hands. Titus looked stiff and inflexible still, tall and aristocratically spare beside the plumper pinker man, the sling very white against his blue shirt. He looked what he was, a regimental officer, British to the backbone. But, whether from the distraction of Piotr’s arguments, or the ease of speaking of subjects he actually knew about, or merely the grueling months of adaptation to the 21st century, he came across as almost tolerable. “Not so dusty,” he grudgingly pronounced.

“Dusty … “ Piotr consulted his machine. “You really don’t see it. Man, this is going to be boffo. People will listen to you for hours. You have a personality the size of the Chrysler Building!”

Titus didn’t know or much care what the Chrysler Building was. But he dimly grasped now what these voluminous channels of communication might really be good for. Constantly reiterating his reality and humanity on the screen could not but have a good effect. People would believe what they could see. The unspeakable Mrs. Zonderman would be cut off at the knees, as she richly deserved. Titus would sooner be flogged than admit it, but perhaps Rick had the right sow by the ear after all, harrying him onto screens. The problem could be solved, and if he could learn to use it this was the tool.

Rick gave over trying to make the screen behave. “You can see it on the newsies. Rave idea, Kev. Thanks for the tip, and when you get down here, I owe you a drink. And Titus too,” he added as an afterthought.

“Hey, I’ll buy you a drink now,” Piotr said. “Let’s go to the watering hole.”

Lash clapped Titus on the shoulder as he limped along. “Thanks so much, old man. Every little bit helps, you know.”

“And wasn’t that good advice,” Piotr enthused to Lash as they made for the elevator. “To give him intelligent opposition and a beer — “

“Feathers, that’s the name of the bar,” Lash hastily interrupted. “Perhaps you’d call it our local, Titus.”

The devil! Who on earth could possibly know him so well, and predict how to prime his pump? Immediately Titus realized what the answer must be. With a glint of beer-mellowed humour he reflected that once again he had let a persuasive leader coax him right over a ruddy cliff. He had spoken not his own doubts about the Fortie Project, but with Shell’s optimistic enthusiasm. If he had voiced his own pessimism, the project might have been crippled, even scotched entirely, resolving all his problems. But no — he had to go and cut his own throat again! The wry realization precluded all anger. “You have local pubs still? Then there’s hope for humanity yet. Lead on, Pete.”

Chapter 23

This time Titus read the signboard carefully. Saint Margaret’s Episcopal Church, Rev. T. Belling, rector; Rev. M. Pollard, associate rector. Sunday services at 10, weekday services at 12:30. It had been gone two o’clock when he left the TTD -— when the hell was he going to get his watch back? — so the midday service should be well over.

He slouched in past the Romanesque portico and through the tall doors. The sanctuary was empty, the unpleasant electric lights dimmed. He prowled up the aisle, wondering why the windows had struck him as ugly before. It was a small church, with the forlorn cleanliness of a place not much used. Titus shook his head. Religion was like inoculations, for weaklings and women. But traditional institutions should be carried on, not allowed to wither on the vine.

There must be an office. Yes, through the side door and down the hall past the bogs. The place was silent as the grave, and his modern shoe soles made no noise on the hall carpet. He came round a corner and nearly cannoned into a woman. Startled, he ripped loose some choice language. All in one breath she said, “The money’s been deposited already!”

“Money?” She thought he was a thief, after the collection plate! “Sorry, I’m afraid I gave you a start. I’m here on business, looking for the Rector.”

She looked him over, and he did his best to look harmless — the sling surely helped. A female shouldn’t be hanging about here alone anyway. “You’ve found her,” she said.

Thank God for all his previous practice! He was able to swallow his first comment: Impossible, women can’t be priests! There was however a rather ponderous pause before he was able to get anything else out. “I, I believe I was hoping to see the older gentleman.”

She assessed him, an outrageously young thing in, yes, a dog-collar! “Matt,” she called. “You still on the phone?”

To Titus’s intense relief the older priest put his balding head out a door further down the passageway. “Yes, I am. Could you come in and wait a moment?”

Rev. Pollard’s office was small and bare, with a radiator under the window and dark dingy wainscoting. He was talking to his little machine about church supplies on order. Titus took the only chair. Disconcertingly, the female slid in after him and perched on the cold radiator. Titus fidgeted, suppressing the outdated impulse for a long moment. The chivalry was bred in the bone, damn it. But Shell had said harmless mannerisms, unlikely to wound anyone, were allowable. He made an abrupt decision to not change his ways in this one respect — a man would alter out of all recognition if wholesale renovations were implemented. One had to decide what items were essential to one’s nature. He rose to his feet. “Would you care to sit, miss?”

She stared, the reaction of every modern woman when he did this. “Actually, the title is Reverend. But you had better call me Thomasina. And I’m perfectly okay. I sit on this radiator all the time in the warmer weather.”

Discomfited, he had no choice but to sit down again. Rev. Pollard rang off and leaned back in his chair to look at him. “I remember you. You’re the time traveler. You were here with Dr. Gedeon.”

“Yes, I’m Oates.”

“That’s where I saw you,” the female rector exclaimed. “On the vid!”

“It’s already out?” The incredible speed with which knowledge flew in this era never failed to amaze Titus. He had hoped to be ahead of the upsurge in his notoriety that Rick’s vids would cause. This was not going to be a success, especially with this woman here. He was tempted to just get up and leave. He could offer to rob the collection box to account for his being here.

But no, sod it! He had never run away from a battle before, and today was not going to be the first occasion. It was time to translate some of his physical courage into the bravery to fight on the emotional fronts where he had done sweet bugger all. The female priest was still speaking: “You were talking only yesterday about how important it was to fund the Fortie Project. Wow! It was so exciting, I put ten dollars in an envelope and left it at the TTD’s front desk, in case someone else needs a sleeping bag.”

He broke in before he could lose courage: “I have a specific question, that I couldn’t ask anyone at the Fortie project. It’s this accursed hop through time. I don’t know the rules any more. I need an outside party to tell me the truth.”

Rev. Pollard considered this, rubbing his chin. Thomasina said, “Maybe you want this to be a private conference, huh?”

Titus scowled. But never underestimate a female! “I would infinitely prefer it. But I have a nasty sinking feeling that the female viewpoint will be essential. Because my difficulties revolve round this damned woman. Probably three quarters of mankind’s problems are similarly based.”

“A misogynist, are you — or is it just sour grapes?”

Titus was caught on the hop. Of course! He’d been like the fox in the fable, stupidly disparaging what Edwardian social strictures, or circumstance, or (yes, damn it) his own pride denied him. The little dose of self-knowledge made him growl. He had not noticed till now how very shrewd the old buffer’s glance was — he’d holed it in one, by God!

Unruffled, Rev. Pollard went on, “But perhaps you should sit in, Tommy, if you don’t mind.”

“I really ought to let him stew,” she said. “But I admit I’m curious.”

“I trust you to be discreet,” Titus said gloomily. The whole episode seemed sordid and shameful and unbearably foolish. Getting the words out was like pressing on the frostbite blisters. He leaned his brow on his better hand, almost speaking at the floor, telling as tersely as he could the tale of the brief affair and its collapse. When he had stumbled through to the end he sat dejected, more pulled down than he would have thought possible.

There was a long pause, finally broken by Thomasina. “Now let me get this right. You were rescued after this horrible trauma, trekking in Antarctica until you almost dropped dead. And they didn’t offer you any counseling or therapy.”

“Therapy? What for?”

His blank incredulity seemed to take her aback, but she went on, “This doctor was the first person you set eyes on when you woke up in 2045. And she knew perfectly well you were in a vulnerable state. And that she only had a short time to give you. You’re completely dependent on the Time Travel people, can’t survive without PTICA support. And she lures you into bed? It’s emotional abuse. You should sue.”

“What is ‘sue’?” Titus demanded suspiciously. He had heard the word before, but couldn’t remember where.

“She means you could seek legal redress of some kind,” Rev. Pollard explained. “Although I’m not sure what you could hope to gain.”

“They’ve been exploiting him terribly,” Thomasina said.

He drew himself up in his chair. “I, a victim?” That anyone would suggest this was patently ridiculous.

Even Thomasina seemed to perceive this, and Rev. Pollard said, “There isn’t a court in the land that would swallow that, Tommy. He just doesn’t look the part — heroes rarely do.”

“And it’s not true, not a syllable of it!” Titus could have been on an elevator, being carried willy-nilly to a floor he had not intended. “I wouldn’t touch a therapist with a barge pole — throttling is too good for them, in my opinion. And I assure you, Miss — Reverend — “

“Thomasina,” she corrected him.

“I am not going to call a female minister out of her title,” Titus snapped, harassed. “One must have some standards, damn it. And it’s all my left — “ In the nick of time he caught back the word ‘knacker,’ which would have been appallingly incorrect for the ears of a female or a member of clergy, never mind the both combined! “It’s all the most fearful rot. There was nothing of abuse in it, not an atom. It was hare-brained to begin, but once in I…it was glorious. I loved her dearly, I…still do.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“If I have to talk at cross purposes with a woman much more, I shall scream. Why the bloody hell can’t any of you understand?”

Rev. Pollard frowned at him. “You had a question, a specific question you wanted to ask.”

It was intensely painful to discuss the central heartbreak, but Titus forced himself to it. “She…wasn’t in it for the same reasons as I. Not for love. It wasn’t even a — “ And curse it, one couldn’t say ‘mercy fuck’ either. “For her it was an experiment — practise in communicating with an alien. I cut up rough, but then I thought … perhaps it’s the modern way. The way women can vote.” He shot a glance at Thomasina, defying her to comment. “We would never do that in my time. But now? I don’t know. Perhaps all this pain is wasted on nothing, and you will call it nonsense. And I couldn’t ask them. So I thought of you. Give me a plain answer, for God’s sake. I’m driving myself mad.”

“And you shall have one,” Rev. Pollard said. “No. The human race and the human heart hasn’t changed nearly as much as you think. No decent woman will sleep with a man for professional advancement.”

Somehow Titus felt no better for hearing this. He slumped in his chair and stared at the floor. How fortunate he still had the Marlin! But it would be better to wait until after the Amity Star left before blowing his brains out. No reason for her to travel to Tau Ceti with that knowledge.

“You know though, Captain,” Rev. Pollard continued. “I question your first premise. You say that she went into it for practice. Do you really think that’s so?”

Thomasina jumped off the radiator and stood too close. “You’re an idiot, Captain! It’s as plain as paint why she got into it. I think she’s crazy about you.”

This was so preposterous a volte-face, exactly like a woman! that Titus roused himself to retort, “What of the abuse I was to take legal action over?”

“Abuse, pooh. What did she say? You didn’t just nurse the grievance in silence. You accused her, and what did she reply?”

“She denied it, of course. What else could she say?”

“And you’ve caught her fudging the truth before.”

“No…In fact she’s a byword for plain speaking, the least mealy-mouthed person I’ve ever known.”

Rev. Pollard leaned forward, rolling a silver pencil thoughtfully between his palms. “Captain, have you ever heard it said that you need to know things, before you can learn? For you, life here must be like climbing a mountain with your bare hands — all the things you have to learn, before you can begin to understand.”

Titus had to agree. “I’ve been deliberately dropping chunks of it over the side, to consider some other time. No little machines! And as much of the medical tripe as I can dodge.”

“And in the areas remaining, you’ve had to draw patterns and derive meaning where you can. Make analogies to things you used to know.”

“Fitting things into slots, yes.” A host of instances surged into Titus’s mind: the misleading rush of fellow feeling when Lash had mentioned his descent from the Beardsley woman, or how comforting it had been to be able to classify Mag. Or how, given half a chance, he’d have organized the aeroplane party to sledge across the ice. He had even tried to force Shell into a cubbyhole, naturally with no success whatever.

“Could it be possible that you’ve left out important numbers, and added it up wrong?”

Titus sighed. “I didn’t want to believe it. But the hateful idea made so much sense, accounted for so many things. I never knew how important privacy was to me, until I came here and lost it. The way everyone knows my name, my history, my business! And this was all of a piece with it.”

“But you are a historical personage,” Rev. Pollard pointed out.

“I know, curse it. Figures of history have no privacy. I wasn’t, before. I was obscure, a nobody.”

“If you’d got back from the South Pole, you would’ve been somebody,” Thomasina said.

“It wouldn’t have been like this — like being exhibited starkers at a zoo. I know there’s nothing to be done about it, the biographies, the vids. Just as there’s no help for the medical intrusions — I was well clear of those doctors until this perishing accident at McMurdo. And it’s getting better. I don’t need a minder at my elbow every moment any more, helping me to open doors and cross streets. But with Shell…”

He couldn’t go on for a moment, but Pollard said, “It was the first time you were able to choose intimacy.”

“Quite so,” Titus said, much struck.

“And that’s why the idea of her betraying your privacy is so hurtful.”

Titus would have stood up and paced, except the room was too small. “I never should have dropped my guard. I should have played it safe. It was a stupid risk to take.” Even as they emerged the words choked him: craven and unreal, more grossly alien to his character than anything he had seen or done in this era! No agony of gangrene or bullet-wound had driven him to such frightfully wet declarations. He disowned them with his next breath. “No, I don’t mean that, damn it. God, I wish I knew what I did mean.”

“You say it was all of a piece. Well, was it?” Rev. Pollard stared mildly across the desk at him. “I think you should consider the possibility that you’ve jumped to a wrong conclusion. You found an explanation that seemed to make sense. Is it the only possible one?” Titus knew he must be staring like a fool, because the priest went on, “Or think of your Polar expedition, of Amundsen. It was the same continent, the same weather, the same goal. And yet your journeys were very different. It’s vital to distinguish the important things from the items that are just happenstance.”

“Let’s be practical,” Thomasina said. “It’s a month now until they leave. You might want to try and talk to her before then. Otherwise who knows when you’ll get another chance?”

Rev. Pollard nodded slowly. “I agree. You should resolve the issue now, one way or the other, before it’s too late.”

He had asked for counsel, and here it was. Still Titus hesitated at that final leap. Every instinct rebelled at the idea of giving in. But the older man seemed to recognize his difficulty. “Throw it in, lad. One good tug, and the tooth is out.”

What is courage for? The answer was obvious. He had known it on the morning of March 17th, 1912. One needs supreme courage to surrender. There is a time to fight, and a time to give in. The sense of reversal was as sudden as falling upwards into the sky. It came to Titus like a blow in the gut, that he was doing exactly what he had sworn never to do any more. He was wasting time. Four weeks left! He leaped to his feet. “If there’s even the thinnest chance…If you’re right, then I’ve truly come a mucker. An owl-eyed, pig-headed chump! You must excuse me. I have a journey to make. Thank you — “ It came naturally to wring Pollard’s hand, to the imminent danger of his blisters, and the impetus allowed him to shake Thomasina’s too.

“Well, you could just phone her,” Thomasina called after him.

Already out the door and striding down the hall, Titus didn’t reply. It was of primal importance to look Shell in the face, to read her eye, to touch her. He had to get to wherever it was in Florida as fast as possible. And to do this he needed Lash and the resources of the TTD.

Titus dashed outside and across the street. A bus blasted its horn, missing him by a hair, but he hardly regarded it. The only route he knew from here back to the TTD building was by foot, meandering through the park — too slow! “Taxi!” he shouted. A cab halted just as it ought. Luckily it was a city cab with a real driver, since he had no chip. He dove in, calling out the address. With a touch he fastened the seat belt. “Can’t you drive any faster?”

At the TTD building he caused pandemonium by leaping out of the cab and leaving the porter to pay the driver. The great charm of elevators was that once in and on the way, nobody could catch you up. He was gone to ground, safe in his room, before anyone on this floor even noticed he was back.

Titus had little in the way of clothing, so everything fit into the old sausage case. Sponge bag, notebook, socks — the Marlin could stay here, hidden in the bed…Then he remembered the unseen watchers. Suddenly the humour of the entire situation struck him — how could he have missed it? — and cried out for further exploitation. What was he going to do with a gun in New York City anyway? He wasn’t going to shoot anything. And what a grand opportunity for a leg-pull! It would be a certain way to get Lash moving fast, too. Biting back a grin, he knelt and fished the gun out from between the mattresses. He whistled through his teeth as the coarse ticking rubbed his blistered knuckles. Then he set about reassembling the piece, fitting stock onto barrel a little awkwardly with only one hand.

He still had no watch, but he kept a steady count of the seconds in his head. Sure enough, at a hundred and fourteen, not even two minutes! Here came the hurrying feet down the corridor, the stride only slightly uneven now. Dr. Lash burst through the door and scrabbled to a halt, blanching to the hue of buttermilk at the sight of the Marlin casually leveled at his belly-button.

“Titus! Please! Don’t do anything desperate! Can we just, just talk? Please?”

“My goodness, Lash,” he said mildly. “What’s the pother? It’s not loaded. I found the piece in my bag — must’ve forgotten I packed it in Wyoming. Don’t let me neglect to return it to Nat. It belongs to him. Will he be down in Florida, do you think? I want to go there immediately.”

“Florida? What’s in Florida?”

“We aren’t exactly sharp as a box of monkeys today,” Titus reproved. “They’re launching the Amity Star in four weeks. I must be there.”

Poor Lash floundered. “Well, I — we only just got back from New Zealand! If you would let me take that gun — “

Titus pretended to think about this. Lash had so little sense of humour, a joke could be milked shamelessly. Somehow after the dust-up in the New Zealand hospital the footing of their relationship had changed. “You probably have more room in your baggage. Very thoughtful of you, Lash. Better let me break it down for transport though — unless you’d rather?”

“Ah, why don’t you, there’s a good fellow, and I’ll take it away.”

“And we leave, when?”

“Tomorrow?” Lash offered weakly.

“Today.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“The rifle will be ready when you get back,” Titus promised graciously.

Lash visibly steeled himself, as a white mouse might turn in the last ditch. “I would far rather take it now, Titus. It would be irresponsible of me to do otherwise.” Titus contrived to look blank and astonished, forcing him to continue, “I swore the Hippocratic oath, after all.”

A new thought made Titus glance sharply at him. “Lash, I meant to ask at the very beginning — what sort of doctor are you?”

The other man flushed. “As a matter of fact, I have an M.D. in psychiatry.”

“Hell!” Titus began to laugh. “Lash, you’ve done me in the eye perfectly. You were a therapist, all this time!”

Chapter 24

There was no possibility that things could move speedily enough now. Only stepping through a door through time and space would have sufficed. Titus drew on his stoicism and endured the trip to Florida without a single growl. Lash had done well on such short notice, booking them onto a complex series of flights that zigzagged maddeningly across the Eastern seaboard. By travelling all night they could arrive in Florida at dawn. It was faster than anyone could have managed in 1912, by ship or motor or train, and so Titus repeated to himself that he had no cause for complaint.

He sat in the driverless airport car and admired the scarlet ball of the sun heaving itself up above the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast. After storm and tempest Titus had found his balance, winning through to a kind of peace. He had laid down his arms and surrendered himself, waltzing away in the embrace of the unknown. The things that had seemed cruelly important before now assumed their true value. “What do those satellites of yours do, Lash? Can they observe individual people?”

Beside him Lash yawned. “You mean spy satellites? That’s entirely a different thing from the Global Positioning System. I suppose it’s theoretically possible to view one person, but I’ve never heard of such a thing. It would be more trouble than it’s worth. Those things are expensive to build and orbit, you know. It’s more profitable to search for minerals, or do weather and military observations, than pick on individuals. The GPS charges for every position they track, which is why it’s only for emergencies. Why do you ask?”

“It was in Buck Rogers, and I wondered if it was fact or fiction.” As simple as that!

Lash took the bit between his teeth. “Titus, I don’t want to upset you. But it’s important for you to know that — well, Shell hasn’t heard we’re coming. She’s in the middle of the run-up to takeoff, and may not be able to afford the distraction of, of — “

“Of emotional slosh? No, Lash, I won’t subject her to that. I’d just like to talk.”

“You could’ve done that from New York,” Lash muttered wearily.

Titus forgot his reply. The road was arching up over an inlet, and from the greater height the low marshy scrubland of central Florida could be seen all around. White egrets waded through the reeds or flew, their necks arrogantly curved, across the sunrise. And there on the horizon was an impossibility in this subtropical clime — a glacier. White and glimmering in the first hazy light of day, the jagged cliff of ice must have been hundreds of feet high, and would have been a notable feature on the southern continent. “Lash, is that ice?”

“Not at all. It’s the space shuttle and its launch gantry.”

“Is it indeed!” Titus stared hard. Yes! Though it was hard to believe that was a manmade structure. He could just make out now the girders and bits of connecting metal glinting in the sunshine. The white was sheathing or plating, the outer hull of a tall spearlike craft which looked exactly like something Buck Rogers would ride. Now that was the way to travel! “And this thing is flying all the way to a star!”

“No, no. It’s just a shuttle, to carry the teams up into space. The technology’s more than sixty years old — they don’t even bother to name them any more. The Amity Star was assembled up at the Space Station. You’ve seen the pictures, a model even. It’s far bigger this shuttle.”

Titus could recall nothing of it. Presumably this had been at the museum when he had been concentrating on other things. “And the Fortie drive, that carries them through space and time?”

“Also assembled in deep space — it had to be done in zero gee. The Europeans were point on that bit, with the research done at CERN. The US built the space station and handled the bulk of the crew training, and the Asians put in most of the work on the Amity Star.”

Titus leaned back in his seat. How jingoistic, parochial even, Scott’s fundraising rhetoric sounded in comparison to the scope of this work! The Fortie Project was the task not of any one country, but of the entire human race. Even the social attitudes, the endless discussion and deliberate kindliness that were the mode, fostered the unity that allowed this project to be. What coordinated, driving, ambitious, downright abominably smart people these were: worthy heirs of Columbus and Magellan and Scott! He was humbly proud to have done his bit to further the work.

And he thought now about Shell, part of the spearhead of this foray into the unknown. It was quite proper that she had stood buff against his puerile and mutton-headed blandishments. To turn back from a task like this would have been a scandal and a shame. His own mother, grieved though she had been, had not stood in the way of his departure for the South. Personal feelings had to give way for the greater good. The thought was deeply familiar and very welcome, an old pattern that still held true in this strange new world.

They were pulling into the driveway of a long building shaded by an anaemic tree or two. And there by the gravel verge were familiar figures — Nat and Miranda. Titus fumbled for the unfamiliar window controls. “Hallo, Miranda!”

The child stared past him in her usual way. Nat’s broad bronze face creased into a grin, and he took off his cowboy hat and waved it. “Hey, Cap! Where y’been?”

The vehicle automatically whisked past to halt at the main door, but Titus leaped out and ran back. His blisters precluded the hearty handshake he would have liked, but they clapped each other on the shoulder. “My word, it’s good to see you! How did the last tour go? I have your rifle here, or I should say Lash does. I forgot it entirely until I got to New York. Have you been riding Taffy, Miranda? Is Mag here? Did she by any chance think to bring my razor and my pipe? I apologise about running off like that. I would have liked to say thank-you for all your kindness — “

Nat laughed. “Gimme a chance to get a word in sideways, Cap! Mag’s still home taking care of the stock, but she can bring your kit when she arrives next week.”

“And — Shell?”

“Comin’ down to join us for breakfast. You come on too. Howdy, Kev. How was your trip?”

“Exhausting, Nat. Will it be all right? Will Shell mind?”

Nat gave Titus an unreadable glance. “She’s been wanting to catch up with this hombre for a while now.”

This was unnerving. Somehow Titus had not given much consideration to what Shell might be thinking of his doings. Perhaps that was why it had been so easy to believe they were all plotting against him — as if he had been determined on some level to place himself as the polestar of the heavens. Truly he stood revealed as a self-centred villain! But damned if he was going to try make up for it now. Speculation was a waste of energy when the woman herself was just ahead, only a door or two away.

Nat guided them through the main door, up a stair, and down a hall. Titus wanted to burst past the others and confront her. But to surprise her would be wrong. With an effort of will he hung back, letting Nat and Lash go ahead into what looked like a living area, with a table laden with the breakfast doings. The truest courtesy would be to give her the opportunity to think it over, and slam the door on him if she liked —

“Titus?”

The word was almost a whisper. He turned and there she was, just coming out of another room, so real that his heart stuttered in his chest. He could not hold back from flying to her, any more than the magnet can hold back from steel. Her arms were around him, and her blonde head was on his shoulder, and he could feel her sob, her heartbeat, as he held her with his one good arm. When he kissed her he could taste the tears. She murmured into the fabric of the sling across his chest, “Titus, you stupid…you dreadful — oh God, I can’t think of anything bad enough to say. You think of something, from that big vocabulary of yours.”

“I’ve missed the rows with you so much. How about ‘fuck an old rat.’ Would that suffice?”

She giggled through her tears. “Oh, that’s glorioso. I should be furious with you. I was furious.”

“Be furious again if you like.” He kissed her deeply, giving her no opportunity to avail herself of the invitation. But she saw through that immediately, and pushed him away so she could look him in the eye.

“Titus, you underhanded, bad-tempered, difficult devil! You had me terrified. You had all of us scared rigid. And you wouldn’t talk to anybody, and I couldn’t even come back east and sock you one, for fear you’d go right over the edge.”

He had no idea what she was on about. “Edge of what?”

“Sanity, you skunk. Oh God, when you vanished in the park, and they found you lying under a bush — “

“Bugger it!” It wasn’t entirely nonsense of course — poor old Lash, how neatly he had gammoned him! — but now that Titus had a truer perspective he wasn’t going to admit to weak thoughts of suicide. “Of all the womanish melodramas, this is the flaming limit. If a man can’t take shelter from the rain under a tree…And I’ve called you womanish again. Do I find out what a bart is now?”

“Not today. You smell so good.”

“And you…” He knew what starvation was like, to be gnawingly obsessed with what one needed desperately, and didn’t have, and struggled nightmarishly, endlessly, through the snow towards, but never got enough of, because the depots were under-stocked, and companions were owed a fair share. He had been starving for her all this time. Now, ravenous, he touched her hair and her face, drank deep at her mouth. He could never have enough. “I’ve wasted so much,” he said hoarsely.

“Time, you mean? There’s time, now.”

He knew what she meant. There were moments when one stepped out of mundane reckoning into an eternal present. Time and space dropped away. He kissed her, and he was nearly able to get there. Only his left arm was in the way, awkward in its sling between them. Disobediently he wrestled it free. “Ah, that’s better.”

“Don’t do that, it’s bad for you! The bone isn’t set yet, after only four days!”

“Complain to Sabrina then.” The arm in its cast was unable to do much hugging, but he could press her deliciously closer now.

“You are such a troublemaker. It’s why I love you.”

“Is that really the reason then?”

“Oh! So we’re picking up where we left off?”

It was perilous, but he had to go on. No more hanging back! “It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t smart. So tell me why you began.”

She glared at him, and pulled his handkerchief out of his sleeve to blow her nose. “I guess…it was the stiff upper lip.”

“The what?”

“That tremendous control and reserve. When you let it crack, it’s like thunder and lightning…That night out on the prairie, remember? I thought you would burst into flame in my arms.”

“But — “ Of course they had not been spied on — how could he have believed it for a moment? Hastily he said, “Even in this era, I’m certain that outdoor sex is not at all the thing. A sad loss of self-control on my part.”

“Dummy! It’s because you lost it. For me.”

He came within an ace of remarking that for the merely physical gratifications any woman would do for a man, mostly — the words would surely have enraged her and thrust him straight into the dirt tub again. But then he saw what she really meant, and his heart knocked until he could hardly speak. The gesture that she valued was the one that cost him everything he possessed: opening the armour, enacting trust with body and heart.

“I knew then,” she said softly. “That it wasn’t going to be like I thought. It wasn’t going to be cheap, and it wasn’t going to be easy. And I didn’t care.”

“So you held on. I knew you were an angel, the Polly in the story!”

“I don’t think there is a reason, dear. Why do fools fall in love?”

“The eternal question.” He kissed her again. Without false modesty Titus knew he was damned good at skating on the edge. But he took only physical risks: wars, crevasses, aeroplanes crashing in a polar whiteout. In the emotional matters where deeper pain was possible he had been a shrinking violet, safe and sheltered in the lee of a powerful mother and a loving family. Shell had more courage than that in her little finger. She had dared to trust, to stake her heart. He wanted to salute her.

“And you,” she said. “Shall I tell you why you fell in love?”

As ever she had turned the question neatly on him. “Susceptible,” he suggested.

“To the first female you laid eyes on.”

“You’re quite mistaken. I remember clearly, that particular palm goes to Sabrina. She fussed with my hospital gown, I swore at her, and you started and dropped your instrument. Alas, poor Shell, you were only the second female I laid eyes on.” From this happier perspective, he saw there were more answers to her question, every one of them true. It had been to his advantage to begin an affair. He had acquired not only the obvious carnal benefits, but a connection, links in the closely-interrelated fabric of modern life. And the ease of learning things in the context of an intimate union was proverbial — according to the officers’ mess the best dictionary for Hindi was a dictionary in skirts. Yet he had never for an instant considered Shell in this crass and practical light. And so he could believe now that neither had she. One could marshal sagacious arguments for and against, on both his behalf and hers, till doomsday. Wiser and yet more foolish, the heart followed its own reasoning. Why do fools fall in love?

Loud and slightly uneven footsteps ostentatiously thudded in the room across the way. Titus reluctantly let her go. Lash appeared in the doorway and leaned on the jamb. “Nat and I have swapped our life stories,” he said, in a martyred tone. “We’ve eaten breakfast as slowly as we could, and covered the dishes so the food will stay hot. We’ve stuffed Miranda until she won’t eat another bite. We don’t have anything to say anymore, and I’m dropping from want of sleep. Can we please come through the hallway now? Surely you have to be somewhere, Shell.”

“Oh my God!” She looked at her machine. “I was supposed to be at Building 46 half an hour ago. And Kev, fix that sling!”

Without more ado she was gone, down the stairs and away. Nat appeared, saying, “They might run late tonight, but she’ll be back sooner or later. Suppose you grab a bite, Cap. Lash and I will get your bags.”

“You shouldn’t do things like that, Titus,” Lash scolded. “Until the bone knits you have to treat it gently!” He loaded the arm back into the sling with anxious but inexpert care.

Titus hardly heard him. He felt as if he had downed two stiff brandies in quick succession. In a joyous silent haze he allowed them to steer him to the dining table. He ate hugely without tasting a bite, and then sat staring at his clean plate, grinning.

Nat returned to report, “We found you and Kev a room, Cap. Suppose you go sleep it off.”

Titus shook his head. The state he was in, he would just lie awake. “I’d ride, though. Ride for miles.”

“Cloud didn’t fit into my suitcase,” Nat said gravely. “How ‘bout a walk instead? Miranda likes to look for ‘gators.”

Outdoors was sticky humid air and summer heat, though it was September. Insects buzzed and hummed, a shrill chorus of joy in the tall marsh grass. The road was narrow, sandy and straight, edged by weedy ditches. Titus couldn’t be bothered about where they were going. “It’s as if I was mad and now am sane. Or the reverse, I suppose. I don’t much care which it is, either.”

It was as if some barrier had burst inside him. The words poured out now that the armour of silence could be safely put off. The generous way she instantly forgave him with hardly a word of reproach; her tenacity, holding onto him as he had changed into a monster before her very eyes; her courage in sticking to her guns! He realized he had finally achieved true courtesy. A gentleman was supposed to put others first, not himself. He had long ago mastered the art of seeming to do this, the courteous façade that masked the inner self-centredness. Everyone around him had done the same, hiding and pretending and ignoring. Even the Polar journals showed it, men on the lookout for number one while mouthing the platitudes that pride, the public, the swank demanded. No wonder the affair had been a battlefield, before! Now for the first time the cheap putty idol of self at the core of him was pushed off the pedestal, as a true god took its rightful place. He no longer had to maintain a façade. He could run bare of armour and truly be what he ought to be, loving another better than himself.

They tramped for miles before Titus finally ran dry. Another good quarter-mile passed in silence before Nat said, “You poor devil, Cap. How in hell are you going to survive if they don’t come back?”

Titus had almost forgotten that. “I can survive.”

“You sound real sure.”

“That’s the trick of it: the trade secret of the Polar explorer. Take all the punishment you have to, but know when to give in. It’s the same with hunting. One can’t falter, or stiff the horse by clutching the reins. Be a thruster, and ride at the fence hard and fast. And if you take a toss, it’s all in the game.”

To his surprise Miranda bobbed up beside him, not holding his hand — she never did that of her own volition — but at his elbow, listening closely as she did to all talk of horses. Either he had been forgiven for being a shocking fret-kidney, or she had forgotten his offense. “Want to jump,” she announced.

“I shall teach you,” he said, and when she nodded he realized that counted as a promise.

Nat said, “It’s a damned shame. You two’re perfect for each other — exactly alike.”

“Riding for a fall, you mean? Nat, how can they trust those blistering aliens to…” Between one word and the next he fell silent. Suddenly the jig-saw puzzle pieces clicked into place, and all her chatter about baselines and how the teams intended to meet the Forties made sense. He had done it both ways himself now, with trust and without, and finally he understood. The basic premise one went in with coloured everything that followed for good or ill. He had conclusively demonstrated in his own person now, that hate and mistrust led to misery. And most fatal of all, it meant incomprehension, an endless detour into an interlocking series of irrelevancies. Analyzing imaginary plots and taking up cudgels against nonexistent foes devoured all one’s time and energy, and the world closed in, into the narrow compass of the cloven pine. One would finish like the old lunatic in the PTICA plaza, handing out leaflets and preaching cowardice — as divorced from the real world as Tam Lin. Far more effective to have the courage to go forward to meet the unknown with an open heart — fling aside the windproof and dance with the storm!

Nat didn’t notice his sudden quiet. “No, not that. You’re both pioneers. Explorers, yeah. I know, ‘cause I sure wasn’t. And they’ve worked it all out, about those Forties. It’s a risk all right. But that’s the name of the game.”

Titus couldn’t deny it. “Keep your balance…” Suddenly exhaustion overtook him and he could have slept on his feet, the way one did while sledging.

Nat glanced at him and then squinted at the sun. “It’s nearly noon. We should head back, before it gets too hot.”

“Very well.” He had kept no track of their route, but Nat had apparently guided them in a wide circle, because the low concrete building was not too far. Titus went to his assigned room, where Lash was snoring in one bed. He fell into the other fully clothed, not even drawing off his boots.

Chapter 25

Titus poured it all out onto the altar those last weeks, holding nothing back — the grandest of gestures. The essence of good sportsmanship is to lose with grace. When Shell had leisure he was with her, but he never distracted her from Miranda. When she had to go meet people, or train, or undergo medical checkups, he let no shadow of reproach enter, not the least hint that she might be giving the time to him. He made fiery love to her when he could, but was careful to not deprive her of sleep. He focused completely on her and it was a delight, calling for no effort at all. He had vowed he wanted only her happiness, and by some grace now his thoughtless promise came true. Even a month ago, this would have seemed a titanic, impossibly difficult task, but not any more. It was as if he could glide to the South Pole in a jetwing, sailing effortlessly high over the wretched earthbound bastards manhauling their sledges across the sastrugi below. Here in the perfect balance, on the correct footing, defeat transmuted into joyous victory.

Now that the launch was at hand, people flocked in to be at the finish. Lash was constantly introducing Titus to people that he had never seen before and with luck would never meet again. Only Mag’s arrival gave Titus pleasure. He would have shaken her hand, but she leaned in like a stooping stork and gave him a hearty buss on the cheek. “Cap, you been to the wars again! Lookit you, they must’ve winged you good.”

“I’m afraid I’m crocked up for at least another month. The sling would look very period on the trail, though.”

She beamed at that. “We missed you, Cap. The way you always jump in to work, that’s a mighty endearing trait.”

Titus raised an eyebrow at Nat. “Been skiving off, have we?”

Nat gave a short laugh. “I spent hours letting Shell bend my ear about you. I should send Dr. Piotr a bill.”

Mag considered him, her eyes very kind behind the shiny steel glasses. “Is it all settled now? Have you worked it out?”

“We’re a burden to one and all, billing and cooing and making fools of ourselves.”

“But you tell ‘em to jump in the creek? Good! Now, before it slips my mind, I brought your shaving kit, and your tobacco pouch, and some clothes.”

“Ah, my pipe! Bless you.” He was delighted to see his trail clothing too. Mag had considerately patched the knees of his favourite jeans, so they looked more period than ever. Rough old clothing was always more comfortable than any other sort, and nobody bothered a man dressed like an oaf.

Titus deliberately wore them when Lash took him to call on Rick, whose Florida lair was a teeming office in one of the main buildings. There was a never-failing secret pleasure in confounding expectation. Rick stared aghast at Titus, who sat down and crossed an ankle over one patched knee the better to display his scarred and down-at-heel brogans. “You look like a bum!”

Ever the courteous American! Titus took the pipe from his lips, replied, “Quite,” and put the pipe back again.

A voice squeaked imperiously from a nearby machine, and Rick replied. Then he said, “What happened? You looked like a hero in New Zealand! Lash, he’s no good for vid like this. You gotta clean him up.”

“Actually it’s a healthy and positive sign,” Lash said. “You have to be familiar with cultural expectations before you can defy them. Titus couldn’t have done this three months ago.”

“Healthy and positive, my ass. If the newsies catch him like this they’ll start blabbering about how funding is so tight we keep him in rags.”

Titus let them wrangle. Lash well knew that meddling would merely make him stubborn, and therefore feebly defended his charge. A more voluble combatant, Rick’s victory would have been a foregone conclusion, except that he was continually interrupted by his rank upon rank of little machines and rarely got more than a sentence or two out. When the debate had gone the full fifteen rounds Titus drawled, “A word with you, Rick. May we step away from your desk a moment?”

“I’m expecting an important call, Titus.” But he grudgingly went with Titus over to the coffee dispenser.

Titus poured coffee, manipulating the flask with unthinking ease. “I assume everyone in PTICA is aware that Dr. Gedeon, Shell, has spent a great deal of time with me.”

“You’re an item again — that’s old news.”

There had never been such folk for gossip! “If I see it mentioned by the newsies, I will be seriously displeased. I have an old-fashioned regard for a lady’s reputation.”

Rick sighed. “Then I take it you don’t follow newsies.”

“Never.” Titus tore a packet of sugar over his cup.

“Well! It’s so romantic, the star-crossed relationship across time and space. Two explorers, the old and the new! Shell’s always been popular, with the dancing doc thing, and she can talk a good game. And there’s a ton of interest in you. You’re fairly personable, when you’re clean, and you’re a magnet for trouble, which gives the copy pep. And you remember last time, when you told about Scott starving to death after running out of money?”

“I never said that!” Titus exclaimed, aghast. “It’s a lie — a sodding distortion of the truth!”

“He didn’t have enough money,” Rick reasoned, “and then he starved to death. Looks like cause and effect to me. Anyway, you sounded so good, people actually began sending us money. Cash! We’ve never had donations before.”

“Maybe you should start passing the plate.” Vaguely Titus remembered the female priest recounting something of the sort. “Don’t distract me, Rick. You’re trying to convey that the news is already out.”

“You and Shell? All over the place, Titus. The day you arrived here.”

Blast their impudence! Titus scowled, knowing who was responsible. “It was too good a morsel not to share.”

“You’re getting all bent out of shape for nothing, Titus. Do you see Shell bitching about it?”

Such terms could not be used about a lady! Titus fixed him with the steely eye he used on subalterns. “Language, Rick.”

Rick blinked in confusion. “What language?”

Titus recognized a conversational cul de sac when he hit one. He backed out and took another run at it. “I don’t want her name bandied about in this context. I know you have peculiar gifts, Rick. You can make the public interest grow, or die.”

Rick smiled modestly over his coffee. “Just my job, huh?”

“See to it then, that this ballyhooly is finished. No one shall care about it any more. A liaison has no intrinsic scandal attached to it nowadays. The story should die a natural death once you stop fanning the flame.”

“Can’t do, Titus. You’re news, do you understand what that means? And it’s useful to have some nice human-interest bits in with the tech. That was what was so great about getting you back to Antarctica — the picture of you climbing out of the wrecked plane was worth the all the headaches right there. And you and Shell make a really romantic couple. Fact, what we could use is some shots of you together. If you’d kiss her for the camera — “

“No! Never!” Titus bit down on his pipe stem, holding back further explosive comment. He knew Rick was right — this was the only way to defeat those Doomsters. But no gentleman would let a woman get drawn into these dirty battles. Time to run out the big guns. “If you don’t damp it down, I shall have to start wearing my other boots.”

Rick stood in unaccustomed silence for a moment. Then, as if unable to resist, he said, “What boots?”

“The Fryes — the ones I wear to muck out.”

“He’s talking about shoveling horse manure,” Lash supplied helpfully.

“Agh. You wouldn’t, Titus.”

“I shall.”

“Even to the farewell ceremony on Oct. 11th?”

“I wasn’t planning to attend.”

Lash said, “Nat and Mag can’t go. Miranda could never stand the stress of a big gathering. So if you don’t show the flag, Titus, Shell will be alone.”

“We can’t have that,” Titus conceded. “I and my boots will be there. I shall give up showering and shaving immediately.”

Rick’s mouth dropped open in what Titus trusted was dread. “And Shell will put up with this?”

“Oh yes. Keeps the other girls away, you see.” It was more of a challenge to twist Rick’s tail. But Titus kept his face absolutely straight as he told this shameful whisker, and the vaunted stiff upper lip carried the day.

“The ladies, God bless ‘em,” said the credulous Lash.

“I went four months without bathing or changing clothes on the Expedition.” Titus took a reminiscent puff on his pipe. “The pong made your eyes water. And there was the time when they had to boil my canvas trousers. I’d been wearing them so long, the grease made them stiff as stove-pipe.”

“What have I done to deserve this?” Rick slammed his coffee cup down on the counter. “All right, all right! No more touching star-crossed lovers. But in return, you turn up at events dressed like a human being.”

“At this one event,” Titus corrected him.

“And lay off the pipe smoking. I don’t want a picture circulating of you with that thing.”

“It’s period. But no one’s going to photograph me today.”

Lash cleared his throat nervously. “As a matter of fact, Titus, I brought you here today because we have a surprise for you.”

Titus instantly bristled. “I detest surprises.”

“You’ll like this one, I promise.”

Rick began to chuckle, an ominous sign. Before he could extract more detail Titus was herded next door into a soundproofed room filled with familiar lights and machines, and thrust into an armchair. “Stay sitting and the patches won’t show,” Rick said. “You think you could mention again that we need money?”

The usual horde of assistants swarmed in to hang wires and fidget with lights. Rick deftly snatched the pipe out of Titus’s fingers. “Break it and your goddamned neck is next!”

But he was constrained from further billingsgate by the presence of an elderly woman in another chair. Nobody bothered to introduce her, until suddenly all the assistants evaporated, the lights were very bright, and Rick casually opened the proceedings: “Okay …Captain, this is Dr. Melanie Winstone. And you know Captain Oates, Doctor. You want to tell him your errand?”

Oates eyed her: an English grandmother, he would have said, very county with her white hair in a bun and the jumper and pearls. She didn’t look like a doctor, but he had been fooled so often that he only asked, “What sort of doctor are you?” If she was a therapist he promised himself he was going to be rude, chivalry or no.

“I used to do high-energy physics at Cambridge,” she said in well-bred Cantab tones. “But now I’m on the Fortie project’s long-range planning team.”

Dear God, a physicist! But Titus cleared the fence without putting a foot wrong. “Then you’re a Paticalar — pleased to meet you.”

She smiled at that. “Yes, I’m here along with everybody else in the world to see the launch. And since I was coming this way, the Polar Research Institute people asked me to bring this to you.” From her large handbag she took a square case and passed it over.

Titus examined it warily — a plain black jeweler’s box. Hell’s bells, had the brass finally come through with the Victoria Cross they had talked about awarding him for valour in 1901? He would be too embarrassed to accept it, 144 years after the fair! But surely a civilian would not be tapped to present a military honour. In the box was a black velveteen bag. And in the bag — “My watch!”

“Remember, you asked for its return,” Lash said.

“Yes, there’s a note here from the Institute.” Dr. Winstone consulted her machine. “Everyone was amazed that it was still running when it arrived from Geneva. They took it apart for tests. When you asked for it back, they took all the pieces up to London to Garrards the Court jeweler, where you bought it for 53 guineas in 1906 before you went to Egypt. And Garrards reassembled it and furbished it up.”

“Let’s see it,” Rick prompted.

Titus forgot to be infuriated at this cheeky examination of his purchases in 1906. The watch fitted cosily into his palm, a gold hunter, unengraved and entirely unremarkable, with the hard-wearing Spartan simplicity he always preferred. Its heavy Albert chain had the usual snap hook and T bar but was innocent of seals or fob. During the polar journey the case had accumulated a number of dints and scuffs. The jewelers had put all these right, set the cut-steel hands to Florida time, and wound it so that it ticked fatly, good as new. “Every day at the end of the march Scott would ask me, ‘How’s the enemy?’” Titus recalled. “And I’d pull this very watch out and tell him the time. It was best timekeeper in the party, after Birdie’s went blah and lost twenty-six minutes in one day.”

“A valuable historical timepiece,” Lash said with reverence. “You should keep it carefully.”

“Stuff and nonsense. I’ll keep it in my pocket.”

“Agh, don’t stand up,” Rick muttered.

Ignoring this, Titus rose to cram the watch into his jeans pocket. Then he leaned across to shake Dr. Winstone’s hand. “So kind of you, to bringing this safely over to me.”

“It was a privilege, Captain,” she replied. “Perhaps when you come to Cambridge we could have you to tea? I have grandchildren who begged me to invite you.”

Titus had no wish to be lionized, but a pack of children was tame enough. “I would enjoy that. I’d been rather dreading the return to England. But now it will be a pleasure.”

She smiled and held out her little machine. “I’ll hold you to it, Captain. Let me download my addresses for you.”

Of course he had no little machine to talk to hers. “Is this where your drone card comes in, Lash?”

“Quite a different thing, Titus,” Lash said hastily. “But I can capture Dr. Winstone’s addresses for you.”

Rick stared incredulously, not at Titus but at Lash. “You gave him your drone card? Of all the bozo things to do!”

“He handled it perfectly well,” Lash defended him.

Titus stared. “Why? Was it unwise?”

Dr. Winstone handed her machine to Lash. “It was a little risky, perhaps. But I can see Dr. Lash is devoted to his work with you. If one knows the way of it, one can use a drone card to steal another person’s life — credit accounts, email, virtual identities, everything. But between gentlemen that’s not a grave danger.”

Titus knew enough about the modern world now to recognize the magnitude of the gift. He turned to Lash, exclaiming, “Lash, you’re a brick after all!” Unfortunately he turned in a fatally wrong direction. Wires tautened, stands teetered, and something went pop! in a nasty electrical sort of way.

“Don’t move, Titus!” Rick yelped. “Oh hell, that’s enough anyway. We don’t need all this social stuff.”

Titus stood obediently to be unmoored. How naturally and easily that connection had come! Lash was right — he had come a long way since June. Only three months! He had rejoiced too soon before. But now he had got his eye in and found his balance, neither fearing defeat nor anticipating victory. It could be done. The war would last his life long. It was as if he had clawed his way inch by inch up a glacier, tiny incremental victories offset by the occasional heart-stopping plunge into a crevasse, to the plateau at the top. There was a long hard way to go, but a cruelly difficult passage had been made.

So sweet was the present, Titus felt no need to think of the future. They only spoke of it once. “I don’t want you to be unhappy, dear,” Shell said. “I only keep on nagging about it for selfish reasons. When I think about you, I want to think about you being happy, not miserable.”

They were lying in her bed, talking in the dark before dawn — the intimacy of idle, peaceable chat fed the heart almost better than passion. Under his hands her skin felt buttery soft. “That isn’t a selfish reason. It’s only common sense. You need to have your mind settled about things at home, so that you can concentrate on the job ahead.”

“My God,” she said in wonder. “You understand. You really do!”

“How not?…You know what Scott’s last words were? ‘For God’s sake, look after our people.’ Middle class, you know — no financial stamina. He supported the whole boiling on his Navy pay: the elderly mother, his unmarried sister, Mrs. Scott, the infant son. It preyed on his mind that the baby would starve if he didn’t return.”

“How awful! And did he? The baby, I mean.”

“No, it’s in the books. Mrs. Scott remarried, and little Peter grew up to be a fine chap … So you mustn’t worry. I’ll rub along well enough.”

She sat up, carefully wriggling from under his bad arm and putting on the light to look at him. “Titus, I wasn’t kidding about the pretty student. There’s no future for us. So I want you to promise me to find someone else and be happy with her. Get married, settle down, have kids: make a life for yourself.”

“Suppose I promise to look. Would that do? One must have some standards. You wouldn’t want me to fling myself into the arms of any passing harpy.”

“I swear I’m going to leave instructions, detailed written instructions! with Sabrina. And Mag.”

He smiled up at her, unoffended. How he would have raged once! “I promise to try and be happy. Will you make me a promise in return?”

She was wary, clever creature. “What kind of promise?”

“When you come back, perhaps you would honour me with your hand. Riveted permanent,” he added, when she continued to stare.

“Titus, you — oh, you stubborn mule-headed skunk! Didn’t I just say we have no future? It would be wrong, don’t you see it? to make a commitment. You promised you would shop around!”

“And I will. But if I don’t have any luck, we could talk — when you come back. If I should be available, will you say yes?”

“Titus, you can’t be understanding how this is going to work. Even if we come back next year, I won’t be the same person. I will have traveled through time as well as space. I could be ten, even twenty years older than you. You’re 33 now. Look me in the eye, and tell me how you’d like a wife pushing sixty.”

There was no possible answer to that. He could dismiss the widening crevasse of age, but not the years lost. Her life would flow on, ten or twenty years of adventure and exploration and other men, and if ever they met again he would be a ghost from her past, a former flame. Indeed and truly, they were star-crossed.

She saw the bleak knowledge in his face. “Oh Titus, I am so sorry! We never should have begun.”

Only laughter or tears were possible. He drawled in his posh Etonian tone, “The white feather, from you? Don’t let me hear such cowardly language again, young lady. It’s not how the game is played. In the most select explorer circles we fight it out to the last biscuit, fair and square, before striking the colours.”

She laughed. “I can’t resist when you go all British on me.”

He had learned well this past year how to cut his coat to the cloth, to revise and revise again in the face of harsh necessity. With intelligence in addition to courage every smatch could be wrung from disaster, balancing defeat and victory. “I did say ‘if,’ Shell. I’ve undertaken to look about me, after all. Women these days are so intelligent, that if I’m such a desirable property as you say I’ll be snapped up pretty quick. We’re both of us people who go forward, not back. Life is uncertain. I may change, and you may too. But surely there’s a possibility of a future together.”

She stared down into his face, holding it in both hands as if she were reading him like a book. “Well …if. If we come back, and if it’s mutually convenient…then I’ll think about it.”

From her narrow glance she seemed to be expecting him to explode. Instead he began to laugh. “In the situation you’re currently in, madam, coyness does not become you!”

She laughed too. “Bare-ass naked, you mean? Where’s my clock? Half an hour, oh, there’s plenty of time!”

There was not. Fast as New York freeway traffic the mileposts flicked past, the last family meal, their final night together, the last walk. It was going to be a slow severing, not a sudden shattering cleavage. On October 8th the final preparations would be well under way, and Shell would move into the departure wing. A last public farewell ceremony on October 10th, and then the takeoff on the 12th, but still she would not be utterly gone. Until the Amity Star departed from the space station, brief unprivate telephone conversations would still be possible. Only the jump to FTL would finally sever all communication. What an overwhelming deprivation this would be for a crew of moderns, accustomed from infancy to instantaneous connection with all the world! Titus knew enough now of this era to shiver at their bravery.

On the morning of October 8th he waited alone in his room for Shell. Miranda, and Nat and Mag, deserved their privacy with her as well. Titus sat on the edge of the narrow neatly-made bed and stared out the window at the marsh. With a vague wonder he remembered that early on he had been told at least twice that Shell was leaving. This overwhelmingly important fact, more vital than heart’s blood, crashing across the world like some terrifying colossus, and he had scarcely looked round the first few times it had been laid before him. Truly one had to know, before true knowledge could be had. Seventy percent, was it?

There was a state of nullity one could resort to, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, when current conditions were unbearable. He knew the refuge well, had spent many hours there. But he could not pull into the armour today. Later, perhaps — but not one instant must be dulled or wasted today. Even the painful ones were worth too much. Naked, he faced the storm.

“Titus, dear.” She came in and sat beside him, taking his strong weathered hand, no longer blistered, in her smaller one. “I wanted to thank you for these past weeks. You’ve been such a rock. It could’ve been so difficult, but your gallantry and thoughtfulness…” She wiped a tear off on his shoulder.

“Not like in Wyoming, eh? If you hadn’t forgiven me for that I would have cut my throat.”

“Don’t say that, or I’ll have Mag take the razor away again.”

“And I…Shell, don’t cry. I don’t have to say how important you have been to me. I want you to know that it has been only good. Don’t ever look back and wish it were otherwise, at least not on my account. There have been no bad aspects to this time together. For me it’s all gold, not a moment to regret. If I had it all to do again, I would change nothing.”

“Sabrina always said you were a loon. So you don’t think it was a mistake to begin. I’m so glad!”

“It was risky, of course. But what point would there be, if it were safe and sure?”

She smiled at that. “We don’t need to talk about risk, not you and I. And I’m not going to cry.” She kissed him, light but firm, to prove it.

Helpless in the face of fate, he threw off helplessness. For the first time he was able to seize the scheme of things, to shake the baseline into the shape it had to take, speaking not with persuasion or pleading but as a flat statement of fact. “What is it the Frogs say? Not goodbye, but au revoir: to meet again. This is not over.”

“Oh, you stubborn, persuasive son of a gun.” Her voice trembled, and she lurched to her feet before, he realized, the tears came. “No, it’s not over. We’ll meet again.” He rose with her, holding onto her hand, hardly daring to believe his ears. “Oh, and Titus? A word to the wise — don’t call natives of France Frogs, okay?”

He had to laugh at that, and she was gone.

And still it was not ended. Titus loathed dockside farewells. He had even prevailed upon his mother to not see him off when he sailed for Antarctica. But as Rick explained, this last event was for neither the teams nor their families. It was codswallop, for public consumption.

There were flags and bunting, a large striped tent set up on the tarmac, a brass band, balloons and flowers. Thank the Lord, the fashion for hours of pompous speeches full of patriotic rodomontade had passed. Instead there was something even more despicable, what Rick called spot interviews, in which hapless family members were waylaid by newsies and their little black machines. Vultures!

Titus successfully eluded attention for some time, slouching round the verge of the gathering. He looked like a dog’s breakfast in the vivid new clothing Lash had provided for the occasion. His arm in the cast itched abominably in the heat. Knowing that newsies and publicity were important did not help him like them any better. And where was Shell? They were going to parade the teams one more time. If it were not for the chance of glimpsing her he would slope off, and Rick could bugger himself.

He passed the pear-shaped young man in the crush before looking over his shoulder in surprise. Surely not even the Napoleonic Mrs. Zonderman would have the brass-balled nerve to attempt another stroke here? He reversed course to follow the plump young back through the crowd.

Titus caught up with the youth as he turned away from the refreshments table with a beverage. He blocked the way and drawled in his most well-bred tones. “Hallo, young Brabazon. Your mother here? I’d like a word with her.”

The young man turned white and then pink, the contents of his cup slopping over his hand. “It’s you!”

“I trust that you’re not planning to indulge in violence today. Not only would it startle the ladies and upset the brass, it would probably do your cause no good.”

He blushed again. “I apologize about that airport business. It was all Ma’s idea — I couldn’t stop her. She’s not here, she’s in Greece.”

“Glad to hear it,” Titus said frankly. “You tried to warn me — I shan’t forget it.”

“You know, it was like…Did you ever get involved in a cranky idea that just kept going onwards, further and further into the distance, but you knew it’d never work out?”

“God, yes.” Titus took a cup to hide his startlement. It had not occurred to him until now, that the Doomsters too had failed to distinguish the essentials. The beverage was slushy with ice-chips, undrinkably American.

“She got involved with the Fortie opposition years ago. Everyone agreed, hundreds of billions was an absurd sum of money to spend on the nonsense, when there were more important things to do.”

Titus reined in his instinctive outrage. His tact paid off handsomely as young Brabazon hesitantly continued, “It made sense, and they fought it for years and years, all the usual political ups and downs, you know? But now it’s over. The ship is built and all the money’s spent. There’s no point in fighting about it any more.”

“Precisely so,” Titus agreed. “At some point one has to stop flogging the dead horse, re-fighting the same old battles, and move on to fresh endeavors.”

“You got it. The political people, the money folks, they’re not dumb. They’ve long since moved on. But Mom and her gang didn’t see it. It was a dead end, so the whole thing got weirder and weirder. And that’s how you got sucked into it.”

Titus took a cautious mouthful of ice and beverage. Once again, he was not in the centre at all. The Doomsters were indeed a remnant, clinging to the last flotsam of an elaborate structure that had long since sunk. Titus happened to be the only remaining target within range. In this era it always boiled down to money! “In my experience there’s no arguing with a woman’s obsessions. All the wise man can do is jump ship —- which I presume seeing you here that you’ve done.”

“Actually, I’m here as a guest — my aunt is a newsie. It’s strange, to see the inside after being out for so long.”

“Indeed.” Titus considered weighing in with more Dutch-uncle prosing, about how much more manly and amusing it would be to further the work of exploration. Better than kicking one’s heels on the sidelines grousing!

But before he could begin gassing, Brabazon hailed a passing news team. “Look, Aunt Marie!” the young villain called. “I’m talking to Captain Oates!”

Instantly they circled in, the black machines ogling. “Captain Lawrence Oates, explorer and time traveler,” Aunt Marie reminded her audience in chirpy tones. She was glinting fluffy pink all over, hair and shoes and exiguous garments, the least aunt-like person conceivable. “His renowned last words in 1912, ‘I am just going outside and may be some time,’ were wonderfully prophetic. Captain, how do you feel about the departure? Are you grieved to see Shell go?”

With silent venom Titus cursed his thoughtless wit. Those slathering ‘last words’ were going to hang round his neck like a sodding albatross for the rest of his life. Behind the news team Rick was wincing, and Lash closed his eyes as if in prayer. He clung to conventional politeness: “Of course, but they’ll all be back next year.”

“Then you aren’t worried about the welcome they’re going to get from the Forties?”

Titus hesitated. The Project’s basic assumptions were drawn up in what he admitted now was the only way possible. But that did not mean all would be well. He knew it was going to end in grief: that brave explorers die short of their goal, that the sweet seductive invitation of the aliens was a duck call in the hunter’s hand and no benign thing. But he could not say this. On this question he had been too late the moment he arrived in this era. “I feel sure they will have a hospitable reception,” he lied. “Tea and raspberry jam, perhaps.”

“Oh, very British!” She was visibly disappointed, but Titus was too wide-awake now to let slip any tidbits. She made one more attempt, smiling at the machines so that her back teeth showed. “Perhaps you’ll go out on the second expedition, to rescue her!”

“God!” He stared like a stuck pig. Had not Lash told him long ago, that if nothing was ever heard of from the first Expedition, a second would be mounted on very different principles? They would be looking for experienced and seasoned explorers, people who knew not so much how to fight, but when. And that elderly physicist, Dr. Winstone, was working on precisely that! He would go to England as soon as possible, take her up on that invitation to tea, and get in on the ground floor. Decisions made now would shape the entire expedition to come.

Aunt Marie had despaired of getting anything amusing out of him and moved on, towing her nephew in her fluffy pink wake. Rick gave him a thumbs-up. At his elbow Lash was saying, “Titus, I’m proud of you — you’re learning so fast! I could see you were furious, but…”

Titus hardly heard, thinking hard. Could he win a berth on that second expedition? Managing it in three months had been impossible. But surely they’d give the first expedition a few years before mounting a rescue. And with a few years to work in he should be able to prepare. He could learn what he did not yet know, develop necessary skills — become a professional explorer and not the talented amateur who had nearly died in the Antarctic. This time, he could do it right.

And the skills called for would be more congruent with his talents. This second trip would not involve dancing! The things that had disqualified him this time round would be assets, next time. Why, he would be the only living man who had experience in coping with an alien culture. What a Buck Rogers ring it all had — yet the idea didn’t have the slippery unreality of his totty-headed backward-looking time-travel plots. Not the past, nor the present, but the future — that was where he was going. Suddenly the world was wide again, the horizons endless, alluring with excitements. He was in with a chance! The sensation of implacable will applied to pliable object was delightful — like possessing a sharp new axe and coming across a tree. “All it calls for is a little resolution,” he said aloud, grinning.

But there would be time to cogitate on this later. Now there was a bustle at the far end of the tent, a glimpse of bright blue coveralls — why did moderns never wear proper uniforms? The teams were coming. Yes, and there she was, smiling and bright-eyed, waving at him! He waved back. Much milling and excitement, as the team members dispersed through the crowd to be gnawed at by newsies. He held his ground at the back as time dragged slowly by. As the magnet to the steel, he knew she would come.

Yes. And damn them all to the sultry side of hell, the newsies were coming too, chattering and filming and flinging questions. In a moment he would have to say something before all these people, something high-hearted for her to carry in memory through space and time on the journey to Tau Ceti. And more — this was his best chance to put paid to those Doomsters once and for all. These words, this image, would fly around the world through billions of little machines, asserting his reality, his fellowship with all the people of this era. Here and now, it was time to connect.

For an instant, faced with those dozens of glassy eyes, his courage faltered. All he could do was to take the bit in his teeth and gallop at the fence, do or die. Surely he had learned and changed so much, felt and done so many amazing new things, that this was not impossible.

Suddenly an avenue cleared in the rainbow-hued crowd, and she was there. And in her presence, so near, the mysterious grace descended again and it was easy. All one had to do was crack the armour — the surest way to a modern’s heart. Embrace it, and waltz away!

Well familiar with his Edwardian manners, Shell kept to a proper distance and held out a plump hand. “Goodbye, Titus. Be happy, all right?”

He took her hand in his good one and bowed over it with the debonair grace of a cavalry officer. He had never kissed a woman in public before, and he wasn’t going to start now — one had to uphold some minimal standards. But how easy and right it was now, to draw her near and clasp her to him! It hurt like hell to think how long it would be before she was this close again, but he bore the pain without flinching. “God bless you, my dear,” he said quietly into her hair, “and keep you well till we meet again.” The newsies were watching, dabbing at their eyes or wiping their noses. So he carefully he didn’t add, sooner than you think.

Part 3

Chapter 26

To Titus’s slightly unbalanced perception, his first four months in 2045 had taken as long as the 33 previous years of his life. Heaven knew he had packed in a lifetime’s experience! In contrast however he scarcely noticed the eight years that followed the Amity’s departure flicking past. It was as if engaging the will shifted the vehicle into autopilot, so that he could fly along the weeks and days at a hundred miles an hour.

Titus spent those years, it seemed to him, talking: to little machines and big, to large audiences from behind podiums and small seminars while sitting at tables, and endlessly, eternally, with Piotr. An unnatural career for a habitually taciturn man, but Titus had spoken eloquently to groups in the past. Piotr termed it the Laurel and Hardy show. Titus deliberately never inquired who these gentry were — it had something to do with his being the taller and more silent while Piotr was plump and loquacious — lest the facts irritate him. They made a wickedly persuasive combination, Piotr’s butterfly gift of generating excitement counterbalanced with Titus’s weight of experience. Titus knew all about puncturing pretension and exposing cant, a trait that made people uncomfortable in 1912 but that moderns unaccountably admired. Piotr cunningly played to his sardonic sense of humour and elicited heroic statements to capture the audience imagination. And capturing the imagination led inevitably to the opening of wallets. The practicalities had developed far beyond dropping coppers into alms-basins, and the sums they harvested made Titus stare.

Scott’s problems supplied endless fuel for argument. From there it was an easy hop to the difficulties of funding exploration in general, and the importance of science and exploration. This was a point Titus hammered home time and again, especially when the Amity didn’t return. Were those damned Forties to be allowed to get away with kidnapping or murder? But confronting malevolent aliens did not resonate well with the pathetically pacific modern audience. More effective was a cry not to let lost explorers die alone in the trackless waste, not knowing if their fate would ever be learned. The idea had lost none of its horror for Titus, and his true emotion always had a notable effect. Piotr employed recitals of famous explorer rescue stories — Scott’s first expedition, the Franklin, Shackleton. Titus tolerated this looking back only because the future was propelled by the past.

For he saw the way of it now. Scott had been the public face of the Polar expedition. Titus could become this new expedition’s public face by applying a blizzard of chatter, constantly linking himself with the project, reorienting its the entire image. His presence on the Sun would become inevitable, a given in the public mind. The seventy-percent rule applied here too. If 70% of the project was visibly him, he would be the baseline, the cornerstone of the project. Furthermore, it was as true in 1912 as it was today, that money — either having it or being able to generate it — meant respect.

Although how it worked still occasionally mystified him. Why did his words have weight, where others did not? It could not be the posh accent as Shell had claimed, else total world conquest would long since have been achieved by drawling Englishmen. Besides, the accents he had brought from Edwardian England had irretrievably eroded over the years. One Christmas, helping with the sleigh rides, he even laid the question before Mag. “Aw c’mon, Cap,” she replied. “You mean you don’t know? I gotta get Kev a ride on the clue train.”

“Lash is moving on in the new year to a better-paying post. Would I dashed well ask, if I did know? Assume I’m fresh off the time machine at the TTD, and explain. What’s the attraction?”

“Cap, people can see it when they look at you. You’re a genuine deluxe by-cracky hero, the last one left in the box — passionate, masterful, and fiery as a stallion on grain.”

Titus scowled at her across the keg of cider he was about to heft into the back of the truck. “I wish you will be serious.”

“You remember when you arrived in Grizzly, that first day? You stepped off the plane like you owned the place.”

“Impossible. I had scarcely a rag to my back!”

“That made it even better,” she insisted. “Anybody could see you’d got chewed up doing something dangerous. The only question now’s whether the brass should keep you in the show ring, like we do out here, or take you on the trail to show your paces.” He must have looked utterly incredulous, because she laughed until she slapped her knee.

But these were not questions Titus often taxed himself with — he had never been the contemplative sort. At the speed he was traveling, analysis and thought were unneeded. Just buckle down, put the back into it, and haul! It was only when it came down to brass tacks, when he interviewed for a berth on the ship, that the enormity of the task seemed to slow time to its normal speed again. Nansen had told Scott, and Scott had assured Titus and the others, that preparing for an expedition was far the worst part of the whole business. Now, approaching the final and highest fence, Titus discovered this was true.

He stared down through the thick viewport glass of the space station at the spinning Earth beneath, and the old wonder surged over him in a rush. He had come a stupendous distance indeed, through time and space to low-earth orbit. Poor Scott would have been dyspeptic with envy. Sailing the Terra Nova from England to New Zealand to McMurdo Sound had taken months. The distance could be occluded now by the palm of his hand, and he could span the entire glorious blue and white hemisphere in a glance. He remembered when such a sight merely on film had made him giddy. Now he kept his comment understated: “Nice view.”

“Much better than seeing it on webcam,” the young spaceman agreed. He ricocheted like a ball off the bulkhead and arrowed through a ceiling portal. Titus followed, using the handholds and keeping in mind his zero-G lessons. Better to be slow than to fall into disaster. It was going to be vitally important not to put his foot into it today, and maneuvering in weightlessness could not be learnt from books or sites. Not like the layout of this space station, which he had mugged up from a website. He mentally ticked off the byways as the younger man rattled through his helpful spiel: “The exercise wheel’s up that way…Kitchen over there. You can just get a glimpse of the hydro bay. And here you are, Admin.”

“Thank you.” Without allowing himself to hesitate he floated inside. Captain Agadja had surely been warned of his arrival.

The small office module was crowded but tidy. Loose items were held with colored magnets to instrument panels or the edges of screens. A couple of crewmen were dissecting a console, and a tiny black woman hung sideways in space, her head and shoulders stuck into a privacy bubble. He nodded curtly at the crewmen when they looked round, hoping they’d keep aloof. But inevitably one nudged the other, and they came bobbing over. “You must be Titus Oates!”

“I am.” Eight years of practice had got him not precisely comfortable with his fame, but able to get past it. “And you are?”

“Nobody special.”

“Just wanted to say hi, you know?”

They grinned at him shyly. But the Captain had finished her conversation. She jerked a thumb at them, and they nodded and kick-sailed promptly out the doorway. “Where’s Sabrina?” she asked.

“Tied up in surgery. Rick said he’d buzz you — I expect he forgot. All she wanted was to introduce us. I’m Oates.”

She shook his hand, her tiny dark fingers strong as ebony. Another tough jane! Her chief beauty was her voice, lyrical as birdsong but mellow as an oboe. How such tones resonated from such a petite torso was a mystery — surely she was not hiding extra lung capacity in those shallow breasts. “And you know I’m Captain Helene Agadja.”

“Call me Titus. Everyone does.” They had known of each other for years, she the designated captain of the Defiance Sun and he PTICA’s poster boy, success story and self-appointed cash cow. But they had moved in circles that had scarcely overlapped until today. Or would orbits be the modern term?

“Let’s have some coffee, and you can tell me: why should I let you onto my ship?”

He accepted the pillowy packet of fluid she passed him and sipped carefully from the valve. “It’s what I was born to do,” he said. “Explore, go to new places. Did the best I could with it in 1912. I couldn’t possibly give the job up now.”

He had picked up the knack of communicating on two levels now, with the words and with the meaning: the way they did. His words were true, but underneath he was conveying another, cruder truth — that they owed him this. Dragged from past to future, any destiny he dared to grasp in the 21st century he ought to get a shot at. If one adopted a foxhound, it was the merest decency to let it hunt. Secretly he still deplored the softness, the bizarrely high-flown morality of the modern age, but it was a weakness he would exploit without scruple for this one end. To say it baldly, or arrogantly assume, would be unsympathetic, but an oblique reference was quite the thing.

He watched the effect of this line of argument now on Captain Agadja with cautious satisfaction. Her dark eyes glinted — one born explorer recognizing another. “I have to admit you’re well-traveled.”

“And consider, that I’m the only human being in existence who’s had proven success in an alien culture.” The familiar headings fell neatly into place on his tongue. He had inserted himself onto the long list of crew candidates in just this way. This argument had been a bit above his weight on occasion — one had to have a sense of humour to appreciate being referred to as alien. But if Captain Agadja didn’t have some scrap of humanity the voyage would be hellish anyway. And all was well. She laughed at the idea, a sound like a fall of notes from a clarinet, and he grinned in return.

“I thought for sure you’d make the tough-guy argument,” she said. “That you can take punishment longer, and carry it further, than any other person alive.”

“That would be boasting.” She laughed again at his ironic tone. More seriously he went on, “I trust it wouldn’t be necessary. When affairs get to that desperate a pass it’s proof of inefficiency. But if I had to, I could. Resolution is the only item of value I brought with me from 1912 to 2045, that and a gold pocket watch. You must decide whether it’s a weapon you want in the Sun’s armoury.”

“They copied me your file,” she said, nodding at a screen. Titus had seen her curriculum vitae too — she had spent the past two years mastering the Fortie Drive and the workings of the new starship, and before that she had helped run the colony on Mars. “And Sabrina — you know we were in college together — she’s been a mine of information. A lot of us didn’t think it could be done, successfully transplanting a man from past to future. I would’ve bet any money you were going to wind up a drone, or in an institution.”

She sounded almost disappointed. He didn’t mention he’d had a near squeak of it more than once early on. “Perhaps you underestimate the human spirit,” he suggested, instinctively resorting to self-deprecation.

“You’ve actually become a functional and contributing member of the team. Not only the fundraising. All those public appearances and interviews — they’ve measurably changed how people think about the project.”

That was an achievement he was proud of, though it had been mere prudence to thoroughly crush the Doomsters and their ilk. He wondered if the man on the street would even remember them, so thoroughly had the movement been obliterated from the modern awareness: Mrs. Zonderman now running a resort on Crete, and young Brabazon working for the newsies. There was still vociferous debate about how much money to put into the Fortie Project and for what purpose, but nobody now doubted that it ought to be done.

He was waiting for the sting in and amongst all this honey, and here it came. “But that doesn’t earn you a berth,” she continued. “You don’t have anything that a dozen other people can’t offer, and better. People who don’t have to fight it uphill every inch of the way, persons who aren’t a transplanted Edwardian gentleman.”

Of course he had known this. It was easy to create expectations in those who didn’t have to deal with the consequences. Living and working with an incompetent wished upon one from outside — a man who had bought or talked his way on board — was no light thing to undertake on an expedition. That Captain Agadja had seen this showed she was wiser, or less graveled for funding, than Scott. Titus had bought his way onto the Antarctic expedition for a thousand pounds cash. “Is that quite accurate?” he said, to gain time. “By my lights, I’ve left the behavior of a gentleman behind me.”

“Yeah?” The curve of her mouth conveyed a complete skepticism. Apparently gentlemanliness exuded helplessly from his pores, like sweat.

“But being Edwardian — no, I don’t think that’s a problem, Captain. It’s a priceless asset. Because my birthright is the different eye. I won’t see things the way you moderns do. Anyone’s basic suppositions can lead you into disaster. Sure as gun’s iron, that’s what led the Amity Star into grief. You need me. Shall I prove it?”

She hooked her thumbs through her belt loops, floating easily. “Shoot.”

“When I was a boy visiting Africa, I knew a girl named Agadja. The name’s Congolese, isn’t it? “

“I never thought about it,” the Captain said in mild surprise. “I have no idea. I was born in Venezuela.”

A cause of wonder in and of itself, but Titus focused on his main point. “The Agadja I knew was about fourteen. She was the assistant to the laundress, in the house my people had taken that season.”

“And are you saying that that’s what you see when you look at me — the laundry maid?”

The snap in her dark glance was so quick, his spine quite prickled. It occurred to Titus that all this skating on the edge of social disaster was going to land him in the soup one day. But it was too late to get the wind up now. Hastily he pressed on. “Not at all. It’s the distance we’ve come, don’t you see? You’re no menial, could never be one. Your race, your gender has traveled so far, in less than a century and a half. Further than I, only you couldn’t know it. I must be the only man in the world who can see the wonder and the glory of it.”

She stared into his eyes for one tingling second and then laughed, a sound he decided he could quite enjoy. “You are a son of a bitch,” she said in admiring tones. “I should warn you I’m hooked up on the chat circuit too — been reading about you for years. And they were right. You are a troublemaker!”

“You’re probably also aware that I’ve always despised my notoriety.”

“Sucks to be you, then,” she said with cheery callousness. “Come on, let’s go over to the training pod.”

Apparently he had passed some sort of test. Without apparent effort she reversed orientation, eeled around a bump-out, and darted off through a portal. More clumsily Titus followed, reflecting that the Captain was the final flowering of the trend away from physical strength. Her tiny frame and short stature were actually an advantage in the close confines of a space-faring vessel. Being six feet tall and muscular was only an asset if the job was leading a cavalry charge across the veldt.

The training pod was out in a different wing of the space station, a relatively long distance away. “I can tell you’ve taken the zero G course,” Capt. Agadja remarked.

“I envy your grace. I feel like a whale.”

“Having some bulk supposedly helps you tolerate coldsleep better. Like bears, you know.”

He noticed her watching as she said that, for any sign of nerviness. Artificial hibernation had been perfected for humans only a few years ago, and there were plenty of people who got the fantods at the mere idea. “That was another argument I had on tap,” he said. “I’m the survivor of an amateur low-tech coldsleep attempt.”

She was still laughing when they swam out of the long corridor into the training pod. The Sun’s crew was there, the nine or ten people already decided upon of the nineteen total. The faces were familiar, from his years rattling round PTICA. It was going to be one of those puzzling modern decisions, he could tell. Capt. Agadja had given a provisional approval, but the group as a whole would have the final say. It was not at all the way they would have done it in the British army.

However, no use fretting. Autres temps, autres moeurs — the proverb should be engraved upon his forehead by now. Some zero-gee exercise regimen had just been concluded, and people were bobbing and darting around with water packets and snack bars. He drifted discreetly around the perimeter, occasionally greeting people he knew: “Hallo, Freddy. How are you, Lau? You got here from Florida nearly as quick as me, Lin.”

But the viewport inexorably drew him. He ended where he knew he must, clinging to a stanchion that let him look not upon earth but outwards, to deep space. And there, suspended against the heavens at the end of a long Space Station corridor, was the Defiant Sun, nearly complete. Her foreparts had something of the look of a wood screw executed in gleaming steel, the living space helically turning round a thick central core. The floors were canted at an angle that would make them more or less ‘down’ under acceleration when the entire vessel spun on its axis to simulate gravity. Long sprigs, angles, and plates sprouted at the end, the accoutrements of the famous Fortie Drive. Titus had seen the vessel a thousand times before on vid, but this was as close as he’d ever come in the flesh. So this was the future, the goal he’d been working towards all these years! All sense of size was lost against the spangled black canopy of stars. She looked like an elaborate trout fly or a mechanical toy, the best birthday present a boy could wish for. With all his heart he yearned to reach out and pluck it from its suspending thread.

From over by the console Capt. Agadja signaled for quiet. “You know about the PTICA budget hearings they’re having in Brussels this week.”

“Closed budget hearings,” somebody on the other side noted.

The Captain’s lilac-blossom lips curved in a humourless smile. “I have a spy. Senator Daniken’s oldest daughter was my son’s swimming instructor. So the Senator has very kindly zapped me the early word. And the news is…not good.”

A murmur of dismay. “Bastards,” Titus growled. Though the ship was built, the composition of mission and crew still hung undecided, even at this eleventh hour three months before departure. The Amity Sun’s mission to talk to Forties was a model of clarity and simplicity in contrast. Should the Sun fight the Forties, negotiate with them, repair the crippled Amity, or all three? He and Piotr had spent three sodding months in Brussels last fall, testifying and briefing and exerting bonhomie, trying to ensure that the expedition would be given as much free rein, in the form of funding, as possible. The knout would have been preferable!

“Weren’t even able to hold the line,” the Captain went on. “PTICA got trimmed again hard. And … they’ve renamed the ship.”

“But she’s all set up to be christened the Defiant Sun!”

The captain sighed. “A hydroponics consortium in Scotland offered to kick in a big sum for the naming rights. PTICA said yes. So the ship is going to be named — “ She consulted her palmtop. “ — the Clowderman Sun.”

“Aaah! That’s horrible!”

“It sounds like a cheap tabloid newspaper!”

“We can always call her the Cloudy Sun,” Joan suggested.

Titus ground his teeth in impotent fury. The naming of ships, equipment, and even swathes of landscape after donors had been nothing new even in his day. But at least in 1912 they had been tasteful about it. The crassness of putting the name up to unabashed auction would have crisped Scott’s hair. And the shame of it, that a British concern should be responsible!

But that was not all. The captain waved for silence and went on, “And I’m afraid that this means the no-weapons people have won by default. If there’s no money, there’s no money.”

A fresh babble of furious complaint filled the room. “So we’re going to fight the Forties with spoons!”

“What’s the point of sending us without any tools?”

Under his breath Titus consigned the entire world government comprehensively and individually to fiery eternal damnation, the blistering Edwardian profanity rising to his lips without his needing to think about it. All their work, years of lobbying and arguing and groveling for money, for nothing!

It was always like this, from Odysseus onwards — explorers were scamped and skimped! And a portion of the blame must be laid on the Amity, which in its effort to secure funding had ballyhooed the friendliness of the Forties and how meeting with them would be one sweet song. The voters had happily believed — how could they not, when even the name of the ship proclaimed softmindedness? — and forked over the cash. But now, when the Amity needed rescue and armaments were necessary, their heads were bung-full of images of kindly ETs and intergalactic pals. Rescuing the Amity and its crew was crippled at the outset by a wrong baseline, a damn-fool idea that had got fixed in the public mind.

But this was vapouring. Titus knew the real blame lay with him. He had taken on the job of winning the extra funding that would bend the entire mission in a more warlike direction. And he’d muffed it badly. Better to face the music straight off. “All my doing, I’m afraid,” he spoke up firmly. “Gave it my best shot, and they’ve foxed me in the end — bugger their cold-blooded penny-pinching ways.”

“Uh?” Freddy stared at him.

“I don’t think so, pal,” Lau said.

The captain glanced at her machine. “One of your handlers noted it seven years ago, Titus — that you have an attractive but dangerous tendency to shoulder the blame for things that aren’t anybody’s fault. Get over it, will you?”

“The government budget process is run by gnomes,” Dio said. “Nobody knows why they do what they do.”

“And we all lobbied like mad, too,” Lau pointed out. “I got all my aunts and uncles and cousins to write their representatives — a hundred folks right there.” She sighed. “We might as well have pissed down a hole, for all the good it did.”

Titus had to admit that they had a point. But this was merely a setback — he wasn’t ditched yet. “There’s ways round this, damn them.”

Captain Agadja frowned at him. “Compared to the four hundred billion they’ve sunk into the ship itself, crew and materiel costs are just a drop in the bucket. This isn’t driven by economizing. It’s a policy statement, that we’re going the nonviolent route again.”

“We’re sacrificial victims, that’s what.” Lau bobbed slowly sideways as she let go of her handhold to demonstrate the depth of her feelings. “The hell with it. El, I quit. Suicide missions are not for me!”

“Nobody knows what those Forties are like,” the captain maintained. ”The Amity’s problems may have nothing to do with them. Weapons may be a complete waste of space.”

Titus did not exclaim this was nonsense, as he would have once. He had to curb once again the impulse to take the blame. Constantly blatting about the Forties’ possible belligerence inevitably made crew members nervy. And these were core people, the engineers and Fortie Drive experts, that the Sun had to bring and could ill afford to lose. Since the fate of the Amity was unknown, speculation was useless. Better now to move from pointless debate to positive action. “For what it’s worth, I’m going,” he declared. Too late he recalled that he hadn’t been officially signed on the crew yet, and hurriedly continued, “No one has to be a lamb going to slaughter. What the brass doesn’t know won’t hurt them. I’m planning to bring a weapon in my personal kit: a revolver.”

The captain’s dark eyes widened in horror. “You’re going to shoot a Fortie?”

Awestruck gazes and raised eyebrows all round — there was nothing to be done but to shove hard at the fence. “If those Forties are energy creatures, or silica constructs, or whatever the latest theory is, then of course lead shot won’t do them much harm. But we don’t know — so why not take the chance?”

“You know,” someone remarked, “the personal kit is supposed to be for stuff like discs. Entertainment and morale.”

He had to grin. “My own morale is vastly enhanced by a gun — I even have a license for it. And we’ll be in coldsleep most of the way. I solemnly assure you, that one can get by with much less in the way of reading matter than you’d believe possible.”

Lau’s voice was flat with astonishment. “Your personal equipment will be nothing but a gun.”

“And ammunition.” He decided not to mention his pipe and tobacco at this juncture, or the flask of brandy that there might possibly be space for. Never get ahead of the horse at the jump!

“I change my mind,” Lau announced, glancing at the captain. “This I have to see.”

The captain said, “Surely to God everyone can’t bring firearms.”

“Definitely not,” Titus said. “I’d suggest as wide a range of armament as possible, so that we’d have a chance of having one effective weapon.”

Freddy floated in midair. “I’m with El,” he said. “Ten to one the Forties had nothing to do with the Amity’s problems. She might not even have arrived there, don’t forget. I have better things to put in my kit than waste weight on guns.”

Titus successfully choked down a sardonic retort. Dio began to laugh, saying, “Freddy, didn’t they tell you that your collection of pictures can be uploaded? They don’t call it a hard drive for nothing.”

Everybody laughed at this, while Captain Agadja eyed him with an unreadable expression. “This is one of those things, isn’t it — something you’ve done before, back in 1912.”

“Actually, it was 1910, when we were hauling ponies to the Antarctic. I paid for some extra tons of horse fodder out of my own pocket, and smuggled them on board.”

She closed her eyes in horror. “I don’t even want to ask how you smuggle tons of anything onto a ship.”

“Sailing ships were less well organized.” He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t plan to throw a spanner in the works?”

“Well, the personal kits are personal,” she said with a grin. “If we don’t want to go unarmed, and if they won’t spring to arm us, I guess that’s the only logical solution. They warned me you were a troublemaker.”

“The Sun is going out to look for trouble.” He looked her in the eye. “And — am I in?”

Already he had learned to recognize when the Captain was going to administer another test. Something about the tilt of her woolly head meant a hazard ahead. “One last question,” she said in mellifluous tones. “Titus, tell me why you’re pushing so hard. Lobbying for the rescue mission, angling for a berth — are we all doing this just so that you can go out and see Dr. Gedeon again? Sounds like a quintessential gentleman to me.”

He was acutely aware of the others, listening for his reply. He had kept himself carefully in hand all this while, but now her name caught him on the hop and brought the blood up scorching into his face. “It’s a vilely self-serving idea,” he declared. “It would be wrong, don’t you see it? To subvert exploration to some soppy romantic end. No gentleman would stoop so low. The newsies will keep on blatting about it, about rescuing Shell. I never said that, and I never will. We were only together for three months! I had a major row once with Elizabeth, for letting them bait her into speculation.”

The moderns had the oddest admiration for frankness and emotional truth. He had never quite grasped how it was done. Somehow they always knew when one had stripped down to the bedrock, to the true self. Now his impassioned avowal seemed to strike precisely the right note. Captain Agadja nodded, several other people looked round in approval, and Lau said, “Aren’t you the gallant one, though.” And he knew he was in.

Chapter 27

Titus knew it was shameful, but fatherhood had passed over him without touching any deep chord. Possibly this was due to his ex-wife Elizabeth’s overwhelmingly powerful maternal instincts. There was no room for him when she took firm and complete charge of every aspect of childrearing. It did not help either, that the children had been conceived in a test tube and birthed six months apart by a couple of well-compensated surrogate mothers. At the time he had been inexpressibly shocked. Reproduction these days had very little in common with how the function had been performed in the nineteenth century.

In the presence of little Violet Caroline and William Edward he could almost feel himself ossifying, reverting back to the Victorian paterfamilias his own father had been: remote, kindly, dutiful, uninvolved. Almost three years old and nearly three-and-a-half, Vi and Willie were not interested in walking hand in hand with an adult. Disney World was far too enthralling. They ran, screaming in glee, to the Dumbo ride for the tenth time today. Lash said, “Good heavens, what energy. A pity you can’t plug them into the grid. You’d save a mint on the electric bill.”

“Don’t give the PTICA brass ideas, for God’s love. They’d sell their own mothers.” It was a wintry January afternoon for Florida, raining on and off so that the crowds were thin. Otherwise Titus would never have consented to visit so putrescent a tourist trap, especially on his day off. Crew training these days did not have to be as elaborate as Shell’s had been. The Amity personnel had to live and work together for a decade. In coldsleep the crew of the Sun would not need to endure such prolonged togetherness. Titus watched his offspring clamber into a plastic elephant. “How’s your job these days, Lash? Do you truly enjoy working here?”

“Surreal, isn’t it? But not any more surreal than squiring a time traveler around. Tourism analysis is steadier work than the space-time program. Disney is endless and immortal.”

Titus heaved an aggrieved sigh and unclipped his palmtop from its place on the back of his belt. All in a moment one day in 2051 he had shed the silly prejudice and acquired a palmtop like everyone else. But he still adamantly refused to walk about with it in hand every moment of the day. “‘Surreal,’” he told it.

Lash smiled. “Just like old times!”

Titus scowled at the screen. “An art term, of all the airy-fairy silliness.” He dismissed the word immediately as unlikely to be of use on the Cloudy Sun.

Lash sighed. “Titus, I worry that we haven’t done well by you.”

Titus looked up from folding away the palmtop. “By me? Don’t talk so bloody wet, man. You must feel the want of things to worry about here in Never Land. Not that I’m ungrateful for all your assistance in the past. But you did your job perfectly. Have I not adapted very finely to modern life? I get on all right with all your machines, learned all your customs. Most important of all, I’m going to continue with the exploration.”

“Is that the most important thing?”

“Absolutely,” Titus said. “What else?”

Lash leaned pensively on the rail, and then jumped away as the raindrops soaked into his sleeve. “It’s a pity that you and Elizabeth aren’t more in harmony.”

What does that have to do with it? Titus wanted to demand. But to the more emotionally fluent moderns, happy relationships appeared to be the primary goal of life. “We’re on the best of terms. The amount of time we spend together, one would never know we were divorced at all…My God, quick! The ride’s stopped. Grab them, before they get round to the head of the line again.”

“No more, kids,” Lash called with no effect. “It’s time to go and meet your mother at the gate!”

More authoritatively Titus grabbed each child by the slack of its blouse. They struggled noisily but impersonally, as if against the hand of fate. “I’ve never caught the knack of managing them,” he said over their howls. “Dogs and horses are easier.”

“I’m told it’s better when they can be reasoned with,” Lash said, standing well clear of the pinwheeling arms and frog-kicking legs. Titus was able to hoist the sniveling Vi, the lighter child, over one shoulder. Younger and heavier, Willie had to be swung down onto his chubby legs and induced to walk. Fortunately Lash was clever enough to capture Willie’s hand, and Titus bent under his sister’s weight to take the other. In this uncomfortable and undignified configuration they hustled down Main Street to the gate.

“Titus, old man,” Lash inquired plaintively. “Is your hand unbearably…sticky?”

“Afraid so, Lash — changing over will do no good. I warned you at the time, that the chocolate bar was a mistaken gesture.”

The entry gates reminded Titus of cattle chutes, but the exit portal was broad and accommodating. Punctual as always, Elizabeth was standing at the kerb beside the car and tapping her foot. Tall, tanned, and possessed of a magnificent figure and rippling raven curls, his ex looked like Bodaceia surveying the horizon for invading Roman chariotry. She caught sight of them and immediately leaped to intervene.

“Don’t carry her like that, Titus. It might be bad for her abdomen! And where is Willie’s jacket? We’ve got to get a move on. It’s almost time for their dinner.”

Titus caught Lash’s eye, willing him to not mention the chocolate bar. Lash said, “I’ve got the little fellow’s jacket right here — along with all these souvenirs and toys.”

“They already have a set of stuffed toy lions!” Grumbling at their extravagance, Elizabeth hoisted Vi up into the safety shell in the back seat, expertly keeping the shield up with one elbow while she clicked the buckles home.

Titus scrubbed his palms on the front of his trousers. “I daresay it’ll be a while till we can do this again, Lash. They invited you to the chill-down?”

“Yes — I saw you defrosted, so they thought I’d like to see you refrozen again.”

“Not frozen,” Titus corrected him quickly.

“No, quite right — the gel won’t freeze.”

“But in any case, I won’t be conscious. So we’d better say goodbye now.” He held out a hand and Lash took it, stickiness meeting stickiness in a truly revolting way.

“You amaze me, Titus. You don’t feel nervous?”

“Not in the least. It’s quite safe. And I’ve done far more dangerous things.”

“True enough.”

“I shall tell you all about Tau Ceti when I get back.”

“It’ll be good to have this Fortie question resolved, eh?”

Titus could rely upon Lash to respect his reserve. Courage was maintained and fueled by self-control, not gush. He still held no brief for the modern trend towards counseling and blather. Still it was difficult to say goodbye to Lash, genuinely his oldest modern friend. He had not noticed till now how shiny the other man was getting on top. Temperamentally ill-suited, wished upon each other by PTICA cheese-parers, still they had contrived to build good will. He gave Lash a curt nod, both of them involuntarily wiping their chocolate-grimed hands on their garments. Elizabeth settled herself beside the children and said, “Do you want to ride up front, Titus?”

“Very well, dear.” Courteously he shut the door for her and ducked into the front seat. “Au revoir, Lash.”

“Happy trails, Titus!” The driverless car pulled away, and when Titus looked back the slight figure had already turned away.

It was not until he shucked all his clothing that Titus began to get the wind up. One could not go clothed into coldsleep, lest the limbs become constricted or tangled to the detriment of circulation. A mouthguard to save the tooth enamel, some eye shields for protecting the corneas, and a few bits of medical plumbing — that was the complete coldsleep attire. I have done this before, he told himself. Climbed into some slathering uncomfortable and unlikely garments on my way to the unknown. Dogskin mitts on lampwick lanyards, for instance. The changing room had a window, and he leaned his forehead on the glass, staring out at some undistinguished scrubby Florida greenery. Why had he never appreciated sunshine and blue sky properly?

“I think we’re ready for you now, Mr. Oates,” the doctor came in to say.

Angels, Titus told himself palely. These are angels of travel, not of death. And this is the only way to travel! But it was too much like some hell-and-tommy death scene in a history book. They handed him a cup, and he drained it before slipping the plastic mouthguard in over his lower teeth. His purged and empty belly seemed to clench over the cold brew. He laid himself down on a dais spread with thick white plastic draperies. Who was it they killed this way — Socrates? Plato? One of those classical johnnies, someone wearing voluminous thick white draperies, not lying on them. A nurse laid a plastic mask over his nose and mouth, as the doctor said, “Bon voyage, Mr. Oates. Best of luck, and give our regards to the Forties!”

Thank God, the gob-stopping mouthguard prevented anyone from expecting any witty and deathless last word. Almost without noticing it he slid into sleep, an artificially-maintained hibernation that would last a year and a half. They would zip the plastic up around him into a shroud, pack it with nutrient high-oxygen cryonic jelly, and carefully chill the entire unit to just below freezing. Along with almost all the rest of the crew, he would be ferried up to the Space Station, loaded into the Sun, and sleep, alive, even stirring a little in his slumber, until she neared her destination.

To sleep, perchance to dream. Of course! Cold and clemmed, swathed deep in whiteness — he must be 26 miles short of One Ton Depot on his 32ndth, 1912. Buried deep in blizzard-drift, he could catch the sound of Scott and Uncle Bill breaking camp, fumbling with frostbitten fingers to fold the storm-worn tent canvas while Birdie bundled up the poles. The squeal and creak of their different treads on the ice was entirely distinguishable, Wilson limping and Birdie with his shorter stride. He could even hear when Birdie took his customary final leak before stepping into the manhauling harness — the crackle of piss turning instantly to ice as it streamed into the frigid Antarctic air was entirely familiar. Birdie, I’m here, he wanted to call. Stuff your peter back into your trousers, get that shovel off the sledge, and unwrap the birthday present! birthday, March 17

But they were off. The ten or fifteen desperate backbreaking pulls necessary to break the icy runners free made Titus’s belly twinge in sympathy. The sledge groaned and scraped agonizingly on the ice, more and more distant. He could hear them for a long time — the three survivors were slow, ill and grief-stricken, and sound carries a long way over the ice. At last silence reigned again. He had to remember he was — no, not dead, bugger it. Just snatched away through time and space. How pleased Scott would have been, to know he’d escaped! Soldier, dead lucky as always…

Alone in his chilly coffin, Titus’s cold-clogged memory inconveniently kicked up an article he’d read about bodies trapped in glaciers. Locked in ice, human flesh took on the properties of its prison, deforming, stretching, shattering. And then there was the way long-frozen meat converted into adipocere, a waxy, stinking substance. No longer human, no longer even flesh, a man became nothing but a smear of corruption sandwiched fathoms deep in the ice: the final fate of Scott and Wilson and Bowers.

This would never do. Dimly he was aware of the true state of affairs. He was going to be in coldsleep for eighteen months. To spend that much time in a slow-motion nightmare about adipocere would be deucedly unpleasant. He didn’t even know how to pronounce it! Turn over, and think of something pleasant…What was the pleasantest aspect of life in the 21st century? Hot shower baths, speedy cheap transport, perhaps the instantaneous worldwide communication network?

No — without question, it was women. It amazed him now that he had contrived to live past his thirtieth year without female companionship. An endlessly fascinating subject to beguile the chilly months away: irresistible, infuriating, delightful women! Oh, to his mind there could be no debate about it. Life was far less frustrating here, out from under the crushing Edwardian sexual conventions.

He had plenty of women now to dream about. Titus allowed his mind to roam back. Freed of self-deception in this dream-state, he could admit that perhaps Elizabeth had not been the wisest choice. He had made that one guided by reason. What could be better than a dazzling woman of the right nationality and class, yacht and fortune and Caribbean estate and fertile womb all complete? And a bruising rider to hounds, too — impossible to imagine spending any serious amount of time with a woman who couldn’t keep her heels down and take a fence cleanly. Damn it, even Mother would have thoroughly approved.

With everything a man could ever want, how was it that it wasn’t enough? He had used reason, and reason had never been a good weapon for him. Perhaps she had done the same? Selecting a far-famed mate who wasn’t going to hang round being a crashing bore. She hadn’t wanted money or status, but good breeding stock. A fine match they’d made of it between them, with as much feeling as putting the bull to the cow…

But then Elizabeth had been a reaction, a rebound from the three or four…um, six or eight wild oats he had sown. Being let loose in the modern world had gone to his head rather. Well, perhaps not precisely his head. That year or two had had nothing to do with reason whatsoever. Experimentation was more the word, or the indiscriminate greed of one rescued from months of starvation, heaping the plate high at a buffet. Jauntering around the planet, flogging PTICA into gearing up the new expedition and raising money for same, there was no denying that he had also seized the chance for a rather rapid life. He tried to fix on a number and failed, detouring briefly from eroticism into the labyrinthine byways of arithmetic. But even if the total was as high as twelve, that only worked out to crumpet every other month. The most strait-laced Puritan could not call that immoderate, and casual shagging was acceptable now. Still, it was about then that poor Lash had begun to go bald on top. A pity Titus had not thought to apologise before departure, for the dance he had led him.

And the ten or twelve bits of margarine had been a reaction in their turn, to the loss of Shell. Ah, Shell. She had been in no way a reasonable choice, but a quite different thing. Some primal reflex, far down in the back core of his skull where the brain met the spine, had snapped into play. He had made a deliberate effort to put the entire meteoric episode out of mind — reminiscing about past passions ill behooved a married man, after all. But divorce absolved him from marriage vows. In his current situation it could do no harm. He drifted deeper into artificial slumber, riding across an endless dream prairie beside Shell in the perpetual sunshine, where it was warm, warm at last…

Chapter 28

Something hot and rough and stinking swiped across his face. For a moment he was a child again, being kissed by the dogs. But he was choking, blind and strangling, his mouth stopped with taffy. He spat out the mouthful and dragged in a double lungful of razor-like air, air that was both scalding and frosty at the same time and freighted with the stench of chemicals and bad meat.

He pawed at his obstructed eyes, and something seemed to fall away. A tiny dark face swam blurrily into view. “How do you feel, Titus?” Captain Agadja demanded in cheerful carillon tones.

“Dam’ fuckin’ horrible.” His tongue felt thick and wide as a boot sole. But once loosened, the billingsgate seemed to flow more easily. He swore steadily, without heat and without thought, as the room teetered around him.

“That’s right, up like this while I take the tube out,” Gin said. The tall doctor looked just like he remembered her, plain Jane and no nonsense with her long chestnut braids. Her large strong hands in their surgical gloves probed him intimately. “What’s he saying, El? I can’t recognize half the words.”

Captain Agadja supported his lolling head with one gloved hand and her black machine with the other. “Wasn’t I forethoughty, to have Dr. Lash’s old vocabulary list loaded on? They aren’t over and above profane, just old. Have a look.”

“Holy gee!” Gin glanced from the screen to his face, rolling her eyes with not entirely mock respect. “I’m warning you, pal. That had better be nothing cognitive, but just the initial loosening of inhibitions. Now up we go…”

They hoisted him painfully up, the two women staggering and slipping under his greater weight. The squelching and squishing as his legs worked loose was like a water buffalo wallowing out of a mudhole. And Christ alive, he was stark naked. He only had to reel a step or two, and then they lowered him onto a seat in a small space. “Drink this.” Gin pushed a straw between his cracked lips. The rush of sweet fluid into his throat was like the surge of some drug into his veins. The world steadied and focused palpably.

Then a hard jet of hot water hit him on the crown of the head. It was like red-hot talons digging into his scalp. He sputtered and cursed, too weak to fight them off as they scrubbed him down all over with bath mitts and loofah, and then hosed him off like a puppy under the pump. But he forgot his ire when Gin gave him another sip of drink. “Jesus bleeding Christ,” he slurred, “you needn’t be so stingy!”

“Yes I do, unless I want you to puke. You just let your Aunt Ginny manage everything. Now, can you stand?”

He could, with support on either side. They tied a towel around his middle and sat him at a familiar table, the galley table in the Cloudy Sun. Then he had made it — survived the months of coldsleep and the inconceivable journey faster than light to Tau Ceti. He could have shouted for joy, except that he was so abominably hungry and thirsty. The sight of Captain Agadja taking a steaming bowl out of the microwave made him grin so broadly the skin on his cheeks cracked and flaked.

“A good appetite is a healthy sign at this stage,” Gin said. “And while El works you through the feeding timetable I’ll take care of this.”

She hoisted his left foot up into her trousered lap and began to trim the nails, which were more than an inch long and probably accounted for some of his difficulty in walking. Titus had no time to be uncomfortable with these attentions, because the Captain thrust a spoonful of grey pap into his mouth. It was the nectar of the gods. Strength and will seemed to flow into his body. He swallowed it down and looked for more. To his dismay she set the bowl aside. “Okay, let’s run through some of the cognitive tests.”

“The devil you say! On nothing but a single scrappy spoonful of nourishment?”

“Don’t you remember your training?” Gin said. “Revving your system up too fast will make you sick.”

Titus dimly recalled that bit. There was a timetable for nourishment. But surely such petty rules were a concession to weakness, and ought not to apply to him. The Captain put a little machine before him and demanded, “Who’s this?”

Titus curbed his raging appetite and reluctantly focused on the antique black-and-white photograph on the screen. “My sister Lilian, of course. Damn silly hat.”

“And this?”

“Mag and Miranda. She’s got that costumed historical photography look down a fair treat, wouldn’t you say? It looks just as old as Lilian’s. I could do with another drink.”

“In another minute. Oh, here’s a pretty one — what a glorious animal!”

“Diablo, my trail horse. Ripping brute, huge deep chest and any amount of leg bone — goes all day. I chose him myself, but Nat boards him in the winters.”

The Captain passed over the drink packet, and gave the doctor a nod. “He’s going to do great, Gin, you think?”

“A perfect recovery,” Gin agreed. “Have a look at yourself, Titus. You want me to take a stab at cutting your hair and beard, or do we stand pat?”

She nodded at the highly-polished metal door of the food storage module on the other side of the table. Titus stared at his reflection with revulsion. He was blanched like an almond and peeling like a sycamore, large flakes of dead skin curling and crackling all over his scarecrow body. He must have lost a stone in weight, and his dark hair and beard hung wet and lank, so long that the threads of grey at temples and chin were distressingly noticeable. “Christ! Carry on straight away.”

Gin obligingly produced a shaver and a hand vac. “I got in plenty of VR practice with haircuts during the trip.” The Captain’s machine peeped a reminder, and she spooned another gob of the ambrosial gruel into his mouth.

“‘m I the first?”

“The first revenant? You sure are,” the captain said. “You were the marginally the riskiest coldsleep candidate, with all that cloning work. We wanted to know the worst right away.”

“Angels!” Again the rush of food entering the system was narcotic. He beamed at the two women. Beautiful creatures, both of them, nosegays of every virtue. Supremely competent explorers too, since the two of them had lived through every day of the eighteen-month FTL voyage so far without fuss. Scott and Amundsen could do no better. Resurrection always made him even more bloody susceptible than usual. If only El wasn’t so close-fisted with that bowl!

Gin was clipping near the nape of his neck, filling the air with the burnt smell of lasered hair and the whoosh of the little vac that picked up the shorn bits. The captain was scrolling her machine to the next item in the revival programme with one hand, and using the other to unseal another drink packet. No one would baulk him. Titus had always had a fine boarding-house reach. In one lightning lunge he hooked the bowl and wolfed down three spoonfuls. Gin yelped, “Hey!”

“Titus, stop that!” The captain snatched the spoon away. “You idiot, you’re going to give yourself a bellyache!”

Titus didn’t care, but it would not do to say so to one’s commanding officer. Instead he grinned idiotically down at his bare limbs. The difference between the cloned replacements and the standard-issue equipment was quite visible. His hands and forearms peeled up in swatches the size of playing cards, while his shoulders and chest merely flaked like snow. He worried free a piece of abused epidermis from the back of one wrist and held it up to the light. It was nearly transparent and when released drifted amusingly on the draft from the ventilation grille.

Gin crossly inhaled it into the nozzle of her vac. “We had better get him into a bunk. In ten minutes he won’t be able to walk, from cramps.”

“What a damn stupid thing to do,” the Captain growled. “You were warned about this!”

“Dashed if I can recall, after all these months,” Titus said jauntily, as they jockeyed him to his feet. The bunk area had been a storeroom during the voyage, the narrow bunks folded up into the wall. The Captain kicked one free and it sighed downwards into place, all made up and ready for him.

“In you go, sweetie.” Gin lifted his feet up.

The Captain dragged the covers up to his chin. “Tomorrow you can harness some of that effervescence, and help us uncork the others.”

Titus considered demanding a goodnight kiss. Then a dull knife seemed to twist in his middle. “Christ on a crutch,” he groaned.

Gin had a heat pack ready. She broke it open, remarking, “I know it seems crazy to wake up from coldsleep and then go right back to bed again, but you’ll feel miles better afterwards. Now drink this.”

If only it was brandy! But it was just more sugary fluid. He couldn’t remember whether he’d brought a flask. Surely if one could learn anything from the debacle in Antarctica, it was to always carry brandy! He’d look into it tomorrow…

Life for Titus had fallen into a regular if rather fraught rhythm. It began when he selected a difficult and dangerous task and had at it — fighting Boers, or sledging to the South Pole, or learning the ropes in the 21st century. Sooner or later the danger ratcheted to a point where disaster struck. Physical calamity never failed to ensue, but cost what it might he always won through. And once through the agony of recovery, it was blissful sailing, the world alive with light. Until the next project hove into view, of course.

He had now come to this happy stage of the process. After eleven refreshing hours of sleep, he rose as hungry as wolves. Another packet of juice waited for him on the little shelf beside the bunk. Draining this gave him the strength to stagger down the hallway into the common room. Horrified, Captain Agadja set her cup of coffee down. “You aren’t supposed to be up!”

“Can’t sleep — I’m starving. Am I still on this sodding revenant diet, or may I have bacon and eggs?”

“Start in on this, and I’ll ask Gin when she wakes up.”

It was a different gruel this time, chunkier and studded with bits of fruit. He scraped the entirely inadequate bowl clean and demanded tea. “And toast. And marmalade. That’s an invalid diet!”

“The food constituter doesn’t have marmalade in its program. Give it half an hour, Titus, please? Let your body adapt. If you have so much vim, go start your physical regimen, and walk down the corridor.”

This pathetic activity seemed hardly worthy of the name, but Titus found that his unused limbs could scarcely bear him that far. The corridor wound helically round the inside skin of the cylindrical ship, canted at an angle so that it always felt ‘down.’ As a result the end of the corridor seemed to retreat tantalizingly around the curve. Titus set his teeth and slogged on, forcing his shaky legs to drive forwards against the artificial gravity induced by the ship’s spin. It was perhaps two hundred yards to the control room at the far end. He collapsed into one of the console chairs with voiceless relief, turning away from the incomprehensible controls of the FTL drive and the weird black blankness outside the viewports. Of their own accord his eyelids drooped. He was brought forcibly out of his exhausted doze by the sputter of the speaker: “Titus! Are you there? Are you all right?”

This bit of tech he knew. He hit the button. “Yes, right as a trivet. I’m just resting before hiking back.”

“You weren’t supposed to go so far! Don’t move — Gin’s on the way.”

Carefully he released the button before snarling, “Nursemaids!” But when Gin appeared with more food and drink he did not disdain it. “When is this bit over? I despise being an invalid.”

Gin held a medical sensor to his wrist. “That’s obvious, the way you push yourself. But your metabolism’s doing great. You can start in on regular food, and just progress at your own breakneck pace. Not that you weren’t going to anyway.”

“Thank you.” Dropping the sardonic tone, he added, “Your medical science is so dazzling, one begins to expect continual miracles.”

“It’s no miracle any more. The odds of an uneventful coldsleep revival are better than a hundred to one. You think you’d be up for helping to unzip another crewmate this afternoon?”

“Delighted to. I’m anxious to pull my weight.”

“So am I. El is a bit too short to be any good at hauling wet bodies over to the shower.”

The prospect of useful labour was so attractive that Titus surged to his feet. “When do we start?”

His strength returned with every meal and every step. Titus felt nearly himself again when they crowded into the narrow coldsleep bay. This space was an alcove off the common room, not much wider than a big bathtub. The coldsleep pods were cycled out one by one, extruding from the chilly dark like crusted old tawny rising on a dumbwaiter from the wine cellar. “Who’s next?”

“Lin, then Dio, then Freddy.” Gin consulted her machine. “And here he comes. How’s the readout looking, El?”

The captain frowned at the display panel. “Thought you initiated the revival sequence.”

“I did — you were watching me. Why? What do the numbers say?”

“They haven’t budged.”

“Funny…Well, his metabolism should be coming back up. Once we unzip him we can run the diagnostic program.”

The hydraulics hummed as the pod rose up and slid out. Titus had seen this process before on the training videos. It struck him now how clever the moderns were, calling them pods. To call the clear plastic trays coffins would never do, nor the thick plastic bag within a shroud. In the film the bag had been clear too, the sleeper within dimly visible inside the matrix of gel. This one was darker, nearly black —

“Oh my God, no!” Gin cried, at the same moment that the captain said, “Quick, get him out of there!”

Gin stared in horror at the control panel. “Wait, El, until I — “

But the captain’s small dark hands were too quick, darting to the zipper fastening. The bag split open like a baked potato, and greenish-black slurry gushed out over the table, the floor, and their feet. A thick hot miasma of liquefying meat steamed up into their faces. As the rotting gel slumped away, a bloated pallid hand was revealed, lying limply on top of a grotesquely distorted torso.

The women screamed. Titus jumped back swearing, his stomach turning right over with a flop in his belly. They all three clapped their hands over nose and mouth against the stench, and with one accord retreated to the far end of the room by the holo wall. “What the hell, what the hell went wrong?”

Gin pushed her braids behind her ears and wiped tears and sweat from her face, without result since she continued weeping. “Oh Jesus. Poor Lin. Oh Jesus.”

Captain Agadja shuddered like an overdriven engine, with rage more than horror. “Was it the coldsleep unit? Could they have put him under wrong? Why the hell didn’t the system warn us something was going sour? Heads are going to roll for this! Gin, you’re the medical officer! You should have been able to prevent this!”

Titus curled up in the corner around his nausea and swallowed convulsively. Jesus, he had known Lin! He had got into the condescending habit of assuming that exploration in this era was safe. Certainly nothing had been easier than traveling this far, dreaming snugly in his plastic sleeping bag. Now the journey was revealed to be as perilous as any sledge trek across the sea ice. The past came back to him in a rush: their close windowless quarters the sole haven from peril, the inescapable intimacy with one’s fellows, even to some extent the fuggy atmosphere.

Yes, even the sound of quarreling! The catfight Gin and the captain were now embroiled in was exactly the sort of pointless and unproductive brangle that sprang up between people immured together for years on end. And, good God! Suppose the entire hibernation apparatus was on the fritz, and he was the only survivor of coldsleep? He had made the transition from the all-male expeditions of his day to mixed groups, but to spend half a decade or so alone with two women would be impossible from every point of view. Time to intervene — tuppence worth from a third party frequently spun a timeworn quarrel into a more useful direction. “Captain,” he cut in. “What about the other sleepers?”

“Dear god.” Captain Agadja’s eyes grew wide.

“The readout says they’re fine,” Gin said.

“The readout has lied like Ananias,” Titus pointed out.

“We have to check,” the captain agreed. “But first…”

There was no need to discuss it. The grotesque remains of poor Lin had to be tidied up, the rotting gel scraped up and the entire revival apparatus scrubbed down before any other crew member could be thawed. Gin issued gloves and masks, the captain turned the air circulators on full blast, and they set to it. The grisly work took the rest of the day. Titus told himself that he’d seen worse in war, but was unable to persuade himself. If he’d survived Antarctica to go with his regiment into the trenches of the First World War, perhaps it might be so. Strange to have left at least two certain deaths in his past! He had caught up on the history books, and knew that, in common with almost the entire British officer corps of the time, once in the Great War, former explorer Major L.E.G. Oates would have been gassed or blown to glory by 1918.

When cleanup was done, the three of them agreed that no more tragedy could be faced today. “One more day won’t make any difference now,” Captain Agadja said. “We’re all exhausted emotionally and physically. And Titus has got to eat something.”

His gorge rose at the idea, but Titus knew she was right. And it would do the other two good too — women found comfort in feeding people. “Let’s get out of this fug and picnic in the control room,” he suggested. They gathered up some meals and decamped. Hardly any miasma of decay had penetrated down the long corridor. There were three pilot chairs, but they were bolted in front of each console, and it was cozier to sit in a corner on the floor. Somehow it was important to be close, knee to trousered knee, within reach of each other — Titus found the military flavour of their standard-issue trousers, blue with a white side stripe, particularly soothing. Appetites were poor, but everyone pretended to eat.

“Talk to us, Titus, for God’s sake,” the captain said. “Gin and I have said everything there is to say to one another. We’ve been dying for a fresh face.”

An unlucky choice of words — Titus forced from mind the image of poor Lin’s leaden face. “I can’t converse,” he said in dismay. “Give me something to talk about.”

“I found your personal kit,” Gin said. “Here.” She passed him the box.

Both women watched with unabashed curiosity as he opened it. “Ah, my pipe!”

“You’re not going to smoke that thing?”

“Why not? The cabin circulation is going full blast. Not only shall I smoke, I’ll teach you ladies. Nothing like tobacco smoke to kill odour, you know.”

“And you did bring a gun! I didn’t really believe you’d do it.”

“The others had better have as well, or we’ll be damned short of firepower. And my watch.” He put the revolver back and slid the timepiece out of its velveteen bag. Of course it was silent, having gone unwound for eighteen months, but when he set it to ship’s time and wound it the fat comfortable tick commenced again.

Gin touched the gold chain with a reverent finger. “This is the watch. You have your nerve, not leaving it in a museum.”

The captain weighed the timepiece in her hand. “It’s downright eerie. I’m holding a watch that Scott held. What would he think if he could see it now!”

For an eyeblink Titus saw the entire tableau as Scott would have viewed it — two indecent females roistering with the sadly-degenerate captain of a smart cavalry regiment in a steel and black glass room! The picture made him laugh. “Well, if you care to be pedantic, I don’t believe Scott ever touched the thing — it’s mine, after all. I’ve traveled so far with the watch that leaving it behind seemed a pity. It’s the only item I brought for pure sentiment. Look now, smoking works like this.” It was his favorite briar, the London one with the amber mouthpiece, and he had taken care to bring a good supply of pipe tobacco and matches. He packed tobacco into the bowl and struck a match one-handed. “You can’t think, the queer places I’ve smoked.”

“This has to be one of the oddest.” Captain Agadja sniffed the large plastic-wrapped packet of tobacco. “What a bale you’ve brought.”

He drew on the pipe, pressing the ball of his heat-calloused thumb down into the bowl until the tobacco should be well lit. “I calculate I have five years’ worth, at one pipeful a day. All right Ginny, it’s caught nicely. Your turn.”

Gin took the pipe reluctantly. “Won’t it make me sick, like Huck Finn? I already barfed twice today.” She took too deep a puff and began to cough.

“Then you shall have some brandy. I’ll wager there’s none in your medical supplies, so I brought my own.”

“Is that the bottle? What a demon of corruption you are, Titus. Absolutely dissolute.” With the tips of her fingers the captain balanced the pipe between her lips and drew in a fastidious sip of smoke.

“What PTICA doesn’t know will never hurt it.” He felt like a schoolboy at Eton again, experimenting with cigarettes and booze out behind the boathouse.

Gin waved the pipe away. “That’s really too antique. And so unhealthy! You should see Shell’s reports.”

“May I indeed?”

He had never glimpsed those records, the accounts of his thawing and rehabilitation, and today was not going to be the day. “That’s the only way we can keep the upper hand on you,” Gin said, grinning. “Like the way she tipped us off about your danger word.”

“A danger word — I? I’m meek as a mouse and gentle as a dove. What is it?”

Both women hooted at the idea. “It’s your word,” the captain said. “You figure it out. Smoking’s not for me either. I’m more interested in that flask. How much brandy did you bring?”

“Nowhere near enough, I’m certain. Find some cups, and we’ll see how it survived the trip.” Damn it, another unfortunate turn of phrase. In another moment he’d be talking of adipocere! He took the bull by the horns. “We can drink a toast to poor Lin.”

The captain stared sadly into her drink when he passed it over. “Lin was going to be First Officer,” she sighed.

Gin said, “I’ve been thinking about that. If it was just him — if Lin had a heart attack or something — the rest of the crew should come up smiling. After all we have Titus here, to prove that the coldsleep systems are go.”

“A comforting thought. To Lin then, and no heeltaps.”

Gin whispered across to the captain, “What’s a heeltap?”

“Beats me!”

“Watch, then.” The plastic cups were a little bigger than shot glasses. Titus knocked his back in one gulp.

“To Lin, poor dear.”

“Yes, to Lin.”

“You’ll make cavalry officers yet.” The warmth of the spirit spread pleasantly through his middle and threaded its heat into each vein. How inconceivable it would have been in 1912, for a gentleman to teach a pair of respectable women to drink and smoke!

He leaned back pipe in hand, watching the brandy make its impact. The deep parentheses round the captain’s lilac-blossom mouth eased a little, while Gin’s fresh complexion flushed even pinker. Surely she was not going to become maudlin on two fingers of brandy. She was saying, “ — he was marginally a risk. Childhood episode of asthma. If only we could get the cadaver to the coldsleep research center in Beijing! I’d feel so much less guilty if I knew what caused it.”

The captain said, “He’s in the deep freeze now, and eventually we’ll get him home and they’ll deal with it. Remember, Gin, it’s still one out of a hundred that doesn’t revive. Do you remember his wife? Poor woman. She was at the Christmas party. She had the cutest shoes…”

Girl talk! Titus topped off everyone’s cup. A pity to sink the entire flask in one evening, but he had never held with half measures. And he liked the way the tension and grief was easing. An argument for stocking every starship with potable spirits…

“I want to know!” Gin was saying. One of her thick chestnut-brown braids was undoing itself, and her colour was deepening from pink to scarlet. “Cycle one pod up, just to look. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the color of Lin’s bag.”

“I’d sleep better myself, knowing,” the captain admitted. “Well, why not? We don’t have to initiate the revival sequence until tomorrow. Come on, Titus. Bring your pipe, and we’ll find out about that odor-killing idea too.”

“Isn’t it a little late to — “ But the two of them were off, back down the helical corridor. Dutch courage! He scrambled to his feet and followed. At least he was well-seasoned enough to be steady on his pins — wasn’t he? The floor seemed oddly uneven, as if the mechanisms that kept it exactly perpendicular to the thrust of gravity were askew. “You two are a little squiffy for meddling with coldsleepers!”

“We’re just going to look,” Gin repeated. “I won’t be able to sleep unless we do.”

“With the brandy you’ve drunk, you’ll sleep like a top,” Titus argued, to no avail. He was a little well-sprung himself, dash it!

The common room still stank horribly of mortality. He had half-expected it to be dark, because it was night. But of course in this starship perpetual day reigned, and night came only if one turned out the lights. All the lights here blazed like noon. Flushed but only a little unsteady, Gin fussed with the control panel. Captain Agadja blinked muzzily at Titus. “Is your pipe still lit?”

“Here. I’ve corrupted you.”

She drew on it. “We won’t tell, if you won’t. Here it comes. Who you got, Gin?”

“My good buddy Dio. Oh God, I hope he’s all right. That everyone’s all right. We can only look for a moment.”

The hydraulics murmured, and the pod slid out onto the table. It had not gone through the warming and reviving cycle, so a biting cold radiated from box and bag. The color of the bag contents was blessedly pale, not dark. And there, pressed upwards against the milky clear plastic, was a grayish-pink bulge. “His arse,” Titus exclaimed with relief, before he could catch the vulgarity back.

“Yow!” The captain jumped with joy — had the gravity allowed she would certainly have turned a somersault.

“Oh, thank heaven!” Gin hit the controls, and the pod slid back into the cool dark until tomorrow. She burst into noisy tears. “It’s all right. They’re all going to be all right.”

“I couldn’t have borne it, being alone with you two,” Titus admitted magnanimously. His handkerchief was back in the kit, so he offered Gin his sleeve. Without ceremony she hugged him instead, so hard that his ribs creaked. She topped him by three inches, which allowed her to blot her nose on his head and envelop him in the cloud of her falling hair. Captain Agadja startled him stupid by leaping on him from the other side, and shinning up his body like a cat. Firmly she seized his chin and kissed him full on the mouth. It seemed only reasonable to take some of her weight with his arm.

And there he was, three sheets in the wind and clasping a tipsy female snugly in each arm. So inconceivably far from civilization, there was nothing to bind or hold him. Lurid and fiery paths seemed to open out before his feet: passion, seduction, even rape. Who could tell with modern women? They might applaud the idea, perhaps even propose a threesome, so luscious were they, so different, so — the only word was fuckable! Though the mind had slept months away, the body knew well that it had gone years without food — or sex. Desire made his breath short and drew a dark blood-coloured veil over his vision.

He released both women, sliding the captain to the ground and allowing the taller Gin to collapse cross-legged onto the floor. “Bloody hell, it’s impossible,” he growled. If there was anything he’d learned, it was that a man carried his self with him, history and past and culture and yes, standards, through time and space. Some things were bred in the bone. Iron self-control was as natural to him as breathing.

Besides, these were not casual acquaintances, but companions, fellow explorers, and the captain was his superior officer to boot. A dash up the Channel was simply not on. Women were a perpetual cause of trouble! “It’s all this sodding equality nonsense to blame. We never had these problems on the Polar Expedition.” Gin blinked at him, and he noticed he was sitting on the floor beside her. He added hastily, “We froze to death fair and square in the traditional manner on glaciers, instead of in coldsleep.”

Gin began to giggle immoderately. “How much brandy have you had, Titus?”

He was fairly confident Gin had swallowed the whisker, but Captain Agadja was cursedly observant. “Maybe it’s time to call it a night,” she said. “A lot to do, tomorrow.”

Her voice sounded like woodwinds, or harps, or whatever those musical instruments were — jolly attractive. “Sleeping it off is just the ticket. Do we have to help you to your bunk, Ginny?”

“Yup,” she said cheerily.

“It’s not done, to loose your moorings on a mere two glasses of brandy.” But when he tried to help haul her upright Titus reeled himself. That coldsleep completely thrashed one’s tolerance for brandy was possibly an entirely new discovery, to be noted in the annals of science. In the end they all three tottered down the corridor arm in arm. Gin was half-cut and well into the rubbery-limbed stage now, and was easily crammed into her bunk where she rolled over and began to snore.

This left him alone with his commanding officer. He was dimly horrified to hear himself asking, “Are there regulations these days, about fraternization?”

She frowned. “Huh? I left my palmtop in the other room. Could you explain?”

The devil was in it, that he absolutely could not — that is, if he had the right word and fraternization really did refer to inter-crew sex. He was sufficiently hot-blooded, and yet also sufficiently defective at reading the modern woman’s availability, that all females not decidedly unavailable hovered in an ill-defined and shifting cloud of possibility. How much easier it had been when all a man had to do was look for the wedding ring! Modern life was a continuous haze of sexual confusion — he had married Elizabeth to get out of it. And he had never learnt the elaborate ins and outs of pursuit. From Shell onwards, the role of the pursued had fully met his needs — masterful, indeed! Where did they find this codswallop? In fact in this uninhibited era, more often than not he’d been forced to carve his way through a thundering horde of women flinging themselves at his head.

This was as close as he had ever come to asking — brandy applied to a constitution undermined by coldsleep was obviously to blame. Instantly he sheered off, sputtering. “Monogamy, that’s the ticket. Not going to lay a finger on any of you. Those knights of the Round Table, you know — love one only, and jolly well cleave to her.”

She laughed. “You have plenty of reasons to keep your screen clear right now. But a girl can dream.”

Good god, she had seen how nearly he’d slipped off the leash! Before he could think of anything to say to ameliorate the horrible situation they had arrived at his bunk. She bundled him into it with expert strength, evidently expecting no reply. On the whole it seemed easier not to try and make any. He sighed and closed his eyes. While an Edwardian purity had inevitable frustrations attendant upon it, at least it did not pitchfork one into horrendous social dilemmas. And it was certainly a comfort, to know that that every bit of his body had survived coldsleep and was ready for service…

Chapter 29

Titus woke the next day with a hangover, something he hadn’t had since he was a green subaltern. It was small consolation at breakfast, glaring out of bloodshot eyes and nursing a dull headache, to see that Gin was little better off. The doctor was greenish pale, chestnut head bowed over her untasted cup of coffee. Without prompting she passed him the pot and some headache tablets. Captain Agadja, unjustly unaffected, regarded them with amused contempt. “No more partying,” she said on a bell-like note that seemed to stab right through his skull. “We’ve lost an entire day over poor Lin. We want to have everybody on line and up to speed in ten days, by Ship Day 562.”

“I’ve already initiated Dio’s revival procedure,” Gin said wanly.

Titus gulped half a mug of coffee in one swallow. ”What’s my job?”

“Scrubbing and lifting.”

Titus tried not to groan at the prospect. If he bent over to lift anyone right now his forehead would crack at the temples and fall off.

But he got quite good at it. Sixteen revivals in a row could not but get one’s hand in. Levering a weak and swearing crew member out of the smelly matrix of slippery gel, hauling him or her over buck naked to the shower corner and scrubbing the gel and loose skin off — it was like grooming muddy horses, or helping a foxhound bitch to whelp puppies. By the time he was done he’d have run his hands over every square inch of nearly everyone on board. Nothing could be better calculated to promote self-discipline and quash romantic interest! He had picked up some crude barbering skills on the Terra Nova, and took over that task as well for the men. Most of the women preferred Gin to cut their hair.

It helped too, that he’d already gone through the revival process. “Aha, none of that,” he said to Dio the first day. The smaller man had just tried to hook the bowl, but Titus easily swatted his hand down. “They’re not gearing your system up slowly just for fun. I gave myself a deuce of a bellyache, my first day.”

“And when was that?” With the wet black hair hanging over his pleasantly ugly face Dio resembled an Italian organ-grinder’s monkey. Titus was careful never to draw the likeness — the things one could not say in 2055 were not the things one could not say in 1912, but the social disapprobation was exactly the same.

“Day before yesterday, so you see it doesn’t take long to get back up to speed. This time tomorrow you’ll be eating like a horse.”

And then there was driving the crew back up to the proper pitch of physical health. He was anxious to get his own limbs back to normal, and laid out a schedule. “We’ll start with a walk down the corridor and back, and work up to running,” he said. “Resistance training in shifts, since there’s only the one machine.” Being the first revenant put him into the role of the oldest brother, the most experienced of the sleepers. It was fun, and he was good at it. After all these years of square-pushing the return to bachelor purity saved tremendous energy and aggravation. It was like the old days at Cape Evans, a merry band of explorers heading out for adventure, or like organizing wagon train trekkers across the prairie.

And though in years lived he was in the middle range — Freddy could easily give him six years, while in her mid-twenties little Joan was practically in short coats — he had more experience in exploring than all of them put together. Over the mess table and in the coldsleep bay he tried to share not practicalities which were uselessly out of date, but the philosophy, with some difficulty since philosophizing was not his métier. But to keep the knowledge to himself would have been as spiteful as failing to tell Shackleton about furred hoods. “It all boils down to viewpoint,” he said. “The mental game is the one to get down solid. Think about the problem the correct way, and once you draw the baseline, all the rest follows.” Conveying his expertise had been impossible for him back on the Antarctic expedition — Scott should never have been permitted to delegate the pony selection! But now, after years herding tourists in Wyoming and playing Laurel to Piotr’s Hardy for the newsies, Titus was no longer beaten to the wide. He could connect with his audience.

So it should have been no surprise the day Captain Agadja called him over to her corner of the control room. ”I’m thinking about proposing you for First Officer, Titus. Of course you’d have to be voted in by the crew.”

“Bloody hell!” He eyed her, disbelieving. “Kicking me upstairs? Thought I was going to be the weak sister, the transplanted Edwardian gentleman.”

“Oh, you still remember that? I’m becoming a convert to the other school of belief — that they don’t make men like you any more, so we should grab the last one. I need somebody now that Lin is gone, and I like the way you sink your teeth into a job. And you sure know what the work will entail. So how do you feel about that?”

“Surely you don’t expect me to say anything but yes.” Not quite the right reply: when a modern asked ‘how do you feel’ it wasn’t a conversational place-holder or a health query, but a request to poke the thermometer into the heart and take a reading. Why did they always long for a peep into the armour? He stammered, reaching down into his chest for the truth, aware that he was flushing red. “It — I should be honoured and delighted. It’s the job I was born to do.”

She smiled. “Then let’s put it to the vote.”

He had no doubt of the outcome, whether from confidence that he was well-liked, or masterful personality, or merely the cool knowledge that he was the best man for the job. The queerest trait of the moderns was the way they decided things. Everyone had to agree — and in this case they did.

To get onto the crew in the first place, one had to sign on to the mission goals. Since Titus had nagged and campaigned for years to shape those goals, he had no quarrel with them. The mission of the Sun was to find the Amity Star and her crew, and if possible to bring her back. Everyone had formally agreed to this, and it was Captain Agadja’s primary responsibility.

The secondary goal depended upon the first: to find out if the Forties were hostile. If, as Titus rather suspected, the Forties had nobbled the Amity, this question would be thoroughly resolved. It then would merely be necessary to thrash the Forties to rescue ship and crew. And this goal was the First Officer’s baby.

Titus looked forward to it with confident glee. He had been fairly certain of getting dirtside anyway — if he had credentials for anything it was trekking across hostile landscapes in adverse conditions — but now it was a dead cert. To tread a new planet! Though he had been sadly scamped on armaments and would have to take on the Forties with a force composed of engineers and FTL drive specialists. But he had come so far, and contrived so often on pure grit and inspiration, that this did not worry him.

Nothing more could be done now, until first contact with the Forties. And that was going to be soon. H-day was at hand, the day the Sun dropped out of FTL into normal space. The blank blackness outside the viewport glass became comfortably sprinkled with stars again. The artificial gravity vanished as Captain Agadja accelerated the vessel towards Tau Ceti, the Sun following the path of the Amity.

All the astonishing senses of the ship were now directed towards listening and looking ahead, for any sign of the Amity. It was frustrating that Titus could do so little to help with this essential task. But it was impossible for him to excel people who had been trained apparently since birth to surf the frequencies and analyze signals for content. Not every job is my job, he told himself. As First Officer he had now a considerable task of his own — the preparations to land on the planet, confront the Forties, and find the Amity’s crew.

Day after day passed with no sign or signal, but he hardly felt the anxiety that possessed the others, delving into the inventory of ship’s stores and sorting them. A host of scenarios had to be prepared for, and organized to be dropped down to the planet surface by either balloon bouncer or lander. Poor little Birdie Bowers had had the analogous job with Scott, and a colossal task it had been. Titus well remembered Birdie burning the midnight oil to sort biscuit tins by hand, and shove paraffin tins back and forth, and calculate the pony and dog loads with pencil and paper. Now Titus could arrange his own materiel on the palmtop, making lists and refining them at ease with his feet up. Modern technology effortlessly compensated for the scrappy arithmetic skills that had made Scott despair of him. Preliminary organizing had been done long ago by teams back on Earth, but he went through it all again himself. Preparation was everything, when one’s own neck was on the block. The old adage they’d taught in the Inniskillings came back to him — that amateurs debated tactics, but professionals focused on logistics.

It was only during the odd idle moments that horrible possibilities rose up like spectres. He had been able to brush them under the rug all these years, but now, so close, it was as if his hold on his imagination was crumbling. And, damn it, the mental game was vital, the most important component of courage. He could not afford to waste energy pondering whether the bloody experimental drive had brought the Amity safely here at all. Of course their own faithful Sun had come through with all flags flying, but she was the second generation of the technology. Some laughably simple error on the Amity, a screw not seated properly, a program bollocked with a one instead of a zero, would have sent her hurtling forever lost in space and time.

And then there were all the perils attendant upon entering a strange solar system. Meteor collisions, nasty radiation, searing solar flares — the universe seemed brimful of danger. And this was all before the Amity could have arrived at the Forties, wherever and whatever they were, unknown and malevolent. And there was a dead man’s handle, he remembered. Ship and crew could have suicided.

Never had a moment’s anxiety for myself, he mused. Why fear now, for others? It might be this devilish space-time business that was so uncanny. The Amity had left in 2045; the Sun eight years later. But both ships would slice through time as well as space. The Amity had arrived at Tau Ceti after a journey of two and a half years. With her newer design the Sun would spend eighteen months en route and arrive less than a year after her consort, ready to lend assistance or rescue as needed. To avoid paradoxes, the earliest they could return home was late in 2055. However long the trip took, whatever travails they endured, in the end it would take scarcely any time at all. Perhaps that was the terror of it. And what with the time travel and coldsleep Titus found it beyond his power to calculate how old he was going to be when he got back. Dash it, he would pick a likely sounding age and stick to it. In the meantime, to work!

There was another reason why Dio had been revived promptly — the homely little fellow was the signals engineer. Through his volleys of talk about frequencies and transmissions Titus grasped the essential tactic, unchanged since the days of Polar exploration: leaving messages for those to come. Of course the modern methods would have made Amundsen or Borchgrevink stare. “The mission protocol was that the Amity would drop a signal lander on an outer rocky planet,” Dio said. “Either the seventh, ninth, or eleventh. If these were gas giants, they’d choose the largest rocky moon, again circling the seventh, ninth, or eleventh planet. We buzz them all, listen hard, and hope to catch the peep. And here we are, rolling on up to Planet Eleven, which looks rocky enough.”

“It looks like a baked potato,” Lau reported. “Not a true planet — captured asteroid, more like. This system’s Pluto. So then question then becomes, did the Amity count this one as a planet or not?”

Titus stared at her screen. Planet Eleven slid very slowly across, a grayish and battered ovoid. It seemed anticlimactic that one’s first new planet should indeed resemble a burnt spud. Where was the awe and grandeur, the spine-tingling majesty of the unknown? But then a faint shrill pinging filled the room. Everyone shouted and hooted with joy and excitement, but for a moment Titus felt too shaken to speak. It was the signal, the first hint of the Amity Star in a decade!

And trust the chatty moderns to have progressed well beyond notes penciled on cigarette packets and folded into biscuit tins. Dio happily tickled his console and fidgeted with the equipment. Captain Agadja called, “My bit’s all loaded on. We should get a picture, and then it’s good to go.”

“Right,” Dio said. “We’re downloading five hundred megabits a second, so there’s time.”

“Titus, rake everybody together into the common room, will you?” Titus hastened to obey. With her full crew revived, the Sun’s common room was just barely large enough for everyone. As it was they had to eat and sleep in shifts. All nineteen of them crowded at and behind the long dining table. Freddy wandered around capturing everyone’s picture and then passed the tiny camera to Gin so that he could be included too. The Sun’s images and records would be downloaded and added to the signal lander’s memory, for the benefit of future expeditions.

And they received new moving pictures in return. Looking at them, Titus peered seven years into the past. Shell looked exactly the same, except her blonde hair hung in longer curls. The faces bobbed past on the screen, everyone waving and grinning. “Don’t they look good, thirty months out,” Captain Agadja noted. “You’d never know they did it the old-fashioned way, without coldsleep.”

“Not a one missing,” Gin said with wistful envy. “Was it worth a life, just so that we could pack more equipment?”

“My dear,” Titus drawled, “if you take your troubles out for a good brood every day, you’ll rub them raw.”

She was tall enough to glare down into his face. “And that case-hardened attitude of yours is getting to be a real pain in the tush!”

“Gin, leave it,” the captain commanded. “You know how he is. And you, Titus, take Lau with you and check the balloon bouncer housings.”

Grumbling, Titus obeyed. What had he said wrong? If Lash had been on hand he could have asked him. It did not help when Lau pointed up his lack, asking, “But wasn’t it tremendous seeing them again, even if it was just vid?”

“Not particularly,” he replied, and she stared. What reaction were they expecting? He had come a long way into the 21st century, but these details were too subtle for him. It was no use — he might have to resign himself to tone-deafness the remainder of his days.

Almost 40 years ago the Forties’ original signal had indicated that the fifth planet was the ultimate destination. Now the Sun followed the Amity in towards the sun. This was the worst part, in Titus’s opinion — the bit where one could do nothing but wait. He had not the training to navigate the ship, could not help to watch for dangers or seek out signs of the Amity. Helplessness and idleness, the two most loathsome things in the universe! He found himself mentally sketching out battle plans to combat imaginary Forties. When he realized he was visualizing them as natives clad in leaf aprons and armed with clamshell axes he gave over in disgust.

Along with everyone else, he carefully read the downloaded log of the Amity’s journey — damned dull stuff, written in the usual modern style by common consent. For internal convenience — presumably the Forties had their own nomenclature — they had named the planets. The eleventh planet had been dubbed Gandhi. Freddy explained to him that Mahatma Gandhi had been a proponent of nonviolence and pacifism in the last century. “Never heard of him,” Titus said in disgust. “A typical bit of ideological grandstanding!” But no better than the other planets, which laboured under designations like Mandela and Kwannon and Shalom. One could only hope the Forties would fail to comprehend the meanings.

Their destination, the fifth planet, had foolishly been named Aloha. It was a little smaller than Earth and appealingly familiar, thickly veiled with blinding white clouds. Even when they were days away, Dio could deduce that the Amity was safely in orbit around it. “The change in its albedo,” he explained.

Titus wanted to demand, then why don’t they respond to our signal? But of course this was the obvious question on everybody’s mind. Innocent explanations abounded, and explanations not so innocent. “We’re not just going to bound aboard flinging posies, are we?” he said to the captain after they matched orbits and maneuvered close. “We’re going to take precautions.”

“Of course. You’re not the only pessimist, you know. But look at that — I don’t think we’re going to be waylaid.” She gazed thoughtfully at the screen. Zoomed all the way in, the image clearly showed that the ship’s main hatch was ajar.

Titus would have given an arm to be of the boarding party. But if the Amity had suffered some mechanical mishap the three ship engineers of the party were obviously a more sensible choice. They all watched on the screen as Snapper, Freddy and Joan drifted slowly across. “Well, here’s your problem, right at the door,” Freddy said cheerfully. “Look at this seal.” They could see his gloved fingers rubbing at the plastic edge of the door frame. Crumbs floated glittering like snow into the sunshine. “That’s not airtight, nowhere near. Something sure degraded the BBs.”

Titus consulted his palmtop — BB was short for buckyball, which meant exactly nothing to him. One of the new smart plastics, he gathered. “Get on, get on,” Gin muttered. “Where’s the crew?”

It was poor form to second-guess the exploratory team, so the captain didn’t pass this on. But Titus silently agreed. They watched and waited, curbing impatience, while the three engineers wandered off into a technical discussion of the effect of prolonged vacuum exposure on plastic-carbon door seals, and agreed that this could be repaired. “And in we go,” Freddy said at last. “You getting a nice view of this, El?”

“Damn, and the inner door seal’s had the meat too,” Joan said. “Do we detect a theme here? In an economy measure, did the Amity Star get fitted out with cheap seals?”

“Yum. The old, old story. We could go back home and make some politicos’ heads roll.”

“Keep your eye on the prize, people,” Captain Agadja said. “We want the records, and we want the crew. Is anybody home?”

“Doesn’t sound like it.” The picture bobbed sickeningly as Freddy slowly floated through the ship. Their sister vessel looked horribly wrong, because it was dark. These ships were made for perpetual light and power. This one was dead.

One of the suited figures made off into the pitch black interior, flashlight in hand. “I’ll poke around back in the corridors…”

“All this floating stuff — food wrappers, a playing card, and what’s this? A knitting pattern for a sock! Aha, the main console. Pull out all the dice, Joanie, to look at later…”

Boring images, of Joan’s small clever gauntleted hands fiddling with the control panels and extracting shiny data cubes which Freddy loaded carefully into his pack. “Hey boss,” Snapper called from some other room. “Bad news. Get the camera back here.”

“El, you copy? On the way, Snap. Here, take the pack, Joan. Okay now, which way?”

A lot of fumbling and bumbling in the dark as Freddy groped his flashlit way to where Snapper was. The Captain had a three-D image of the ship’s layout on her screen, and was able to say, “Looks like you’re heading for the galley, Freddy.”

“There’s a thought — see if there’s anything left to eat on board…What is this, Snapper — storage bay?”

“It was ajar. And…” The light flickered over a ghastly face, gray and wrinkled and grimacing. There was no suit, no helmet.

“Oh jeez. Oh shit. Freeze-dried, El. Months ago, looks like. Couldn’t be explosive decompression…“

The captain said sharply, “Who is he? Is there a name patch on the shirt?”

Fumbling, the bobbing of the light. Titus took a slow deliberate breath. Snapper reported, “Mal. It’s Mal Ocire. God damn it. He was a good man. I wonder what happened.”

“It better be on the cubes.” Freddy appealed to authority. “El. Do we bring the poor bastard?”

“Leave him for now. We’ll get a body bag over next trip.”

“Fine with me,” Freddy said with relief. “Jeez, this is creepy.”

“Let’s get out,” Snapper agreed. “C’mon, Joanie, meet us at the door.”

It seemed to be a tradition among moderns, that any confrontation with mortality had to be met with volleys of chatter. Titus floated silently at one side of the common room while Freddy and Snapper described their feelings and reminisced about the dead man. Everyone else chipped in with recollections and anecdotes. Titus had met the dead man once, in the huggermugger just before the Amity’s departure, and felt no need whatever to discuss that fleeting acquaintance. Perhaps this took the place of a proper funeral service? It had been the same with Lin.

The data cubes proved to be only a partial record of the expedition. As such they were annoyingly incomplete. It was particularly trying that nobody had bothered to explain what the Forties actually were, although contact seemed to have been made. “It’s got to be somewhere, but I’ve skimmed for fifteen hours straight and can’t find it,” Captain Agadja said, her voice modulating upwards like a bird’s in frustration. “All this stuff should be there — analysis of the life forms, discussion of evolution, and most important, the meeting with the Forties. And it’s not!”

“A mystery. Accident, or deliberate loss? But at least we’ve come to the right place.”

“This stuff must be just an early backup set of data. Somewhere, someplace else, they’ve got the complete records. But the important specifics are there. The Forties were on the up and up about the climate, the gravity, and the oxygen levels. And there’s notes here about what kind of protection and gear we’ll need dirtside. The seals on the Amity were trashed by some virulent local mildew. They were going back and forth in the lander, and it carried a spore up to the Amity. It got the lander as well, so they’ve been stranded dirtside ever since.”

“God! And what about the Sun, and our seals?”

“The spores can’t live in vacuum. We owe our lives and our ship to Mal. When he realized what was happening, instead of dragging out his own life as long as possible, he vented the ship to vacuum, to be sure of killing them all.”

And, inevitably, himself. If he had a hat, Titus would have taken it off to the man. “A damn good egg then,” he said. “And he recorded it all first, so we’d know. Gallant fellow!”

“So you know what’s next.”

“Certainly. I go down, and find them.”

“It’s frightening when you grin like that,” the captain remarked. “It’s not going to be a pleasure trip, you know.”

“How dull, if it were.”

In spite of the warning Titus did enjoy himself thoroughly with the preparations. In addition to himself the party of four would comprise Gin, for her medical expertise, Dio, to help with the tracking and signalling, and Joan, who would run the treader. Sorting and packing everything they needed to bring absorbed everyone for several days. Captain Agadja read the Amity’s accounts of the buckyball mildews and shook her head. “Full iso suits, and you strip them off before stepping back on board.”

Titus hoped he wasn’t blushing. The first time he’d heard the suits referred to as body condoms — these brassy moderns! — he had entirely lost countenance. “Quite right — the safety of the ship above all. And speaking of which, what about the Amity? Anything we can salvage from her?”

“Once your team is off, Freddy’s going to make an assessment. There’s a chance that we could refit her and bring her home.”

“Truly? The PTICA brass will give you a medal!”

“Well, it is one of our primary goals. If I bring home a vessel worth four hundred billion dollars, they should sing hosannas. But you keep in mind the other part of the job, Titus — personnel. Yes, we want to find the Amity’s crew. But we want to keep your asses safe too. Don’t you dare lose yourselves down there.”

This time he grasped the subtext perfectly. She was placing her bet on a dark horse. He must not fail to bring home the roses. “There’s a balance one must keep, between keeping the ass safe, and getting the job done. Trust me to walk the line.”

He was startled to recognize the look in her dark eye — envy, by Jove! “If only real life was like the vids, when the captain of the spaceship could beam down too.”

“Or like it was in my day, eh?”

And at last his former bugbear the wrist chips were going to prove their worth. The captain had inserted the Sun into a high orbit, circling around Aloha once every two hours and raking it with the silent signals that would trigger the chips’ pinger functions. As long as the crew of the Amity was not sunk full fathom five, or subsumed in the caldera of a live volcano, their implanted chips could be spotted sooner or later. Alive or dead, kidnapped or held prisoner, or merely unable to communicate, they could be found. And once the landing party was closer, the other functions of the wrist chips could be drawn upon — identifications and health records for instance.

With the ship’s complement fully revived they had to eat and sleep in shifts. Living in close quarters was nothing new to Titus, and the privacy bubbles allowed one to sleep in quiet. But cohabiting on such intimate terms with women — women that one could not lay a finger on — made him restless, especially when he fastened himself into a bed still warm from the previous occupant. He had got the landing preparations to the point of finicking perfection, and yet he still started awake at night: the medical kit, what was Gin bringing in her medical kit? A welding torch, would they need a welding torch — was there even one on board? He made a note to consult Joan.

Failing to consider tiny details had doomed Scott; the harsh lesson should not be wasted on him. The inventories were correct, but suppose the actual goods were not as advertised? Villainous quartermasters, months ago back on Earth, could have diddled PTICA finely. The Franklin expedition had been destroyed by dishonest meat packers who had put rats into the beef cans. The thought drove Titus to rise early — in any case it was impossible to sleep soundly in a bed that smelled so faintly but firmly of someone else.

He arrowed down to the supply bay to open crates and personally finger the iso suits and food bars. But everything seemed to be perfectly shipshape — in addition to all their other talents the moderns had got quality control by the throat. Absorbed in these considerations, he floated slowly out of the supply room, his eyes on his palmtop and his knees flexed to absorb the contact with the bulkhead. Even Birdie Bowers could not hold a candle to him when he was armed with a calculator function! Four food bars per man per day meant that the five thousand bars on a pallet came to —

“Gangway, Titus!”

“Comin’ through!”

Freddy and Dio dove past him, ricocheting him right back at the supply room. “Blast your clumsy eyes,” he exclaimed without heat. Arrowing in their wake, young Joan dodged under his thrashing legs and called back over her shoulder, “Titus, they’ve caught a peep! We’ve found them!” He hung there in midair, his heart unaccountably knocking in his chest. Quickly he composed himself and kicked off to follow them to the control room.

The big viewports were filled with Aloha’s swirled-white orb. In the occasional rifts in the cloud cover the land forms beneath could be glimpsed, brown and pink — not a trace of green. The planet seemed to spin past beneath them very slowly — Titus reminded himself that they were completing an orbit every two hours, which was actually a very brisk rate of travel. Everyone who was awake was here, bobbing with excitement. “Look at that,” Lau said, gesturing at the big screen with pride. “See? All seventeen of them, grouped real nice, near the western edge of the main continent.”

Captain Agadja leaned in to look at the little red dots until her nose nearly brushed the plastic. “Is that grouping just an artifact of your program, or is it real? It looks like there’s two of them over to one side.”

“It could just be poor resolution,” Lau admitted. “But at least we’ll only need one landing party.”

“Count on it,” Titus said sturdily. The distance between the two groupings was scarcely the width of his finger.

”But there’s no there there.” Dio looked from the viewports to the screen, his swarthy face screwed up with disappointment. “Where are the Forties? They promised us Forties!”

“Maybe not every starfaring civilization is visible from low orbit,” Gin suggested.

“I was hoping there’d be a city or communication routes or something to be seen, especially at night,” the captain said. “We’re going to move up into a geostationary orbit, so if there’s anything to be seen we’ll see it. The latitude should just be doable. In the meantime, somebody go wake — what are you doing here, Titus? Isn’t this your sleep shift?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said briefly. “It’s deucedly fishy that so little is visible. Could they be hiding? Under the surface, perhaps — a race of troglodytes.”

“Say what?”

He had long ago progressed past the point where those around him had to carry Edwardian vocabulary words loaded onto their palmtops. “I take it cave men aren’t the fashion these days. But suppose those uplands are riddled with holes and caves? Or — “ He fumbled for dim memories of boyhood reading, works by Marryat or Henty or Haggard. “Under that sea, perhaps. It ought to be possible to hide an entire civilization.”

“But what for?” Freddy demanded. “Why go to all that trouble?”

“You’re a trusting lot,” Titus said. “The Forties have posted a general invitation for the entire universe to come visit. I can’t imagine why, but certainly a bit of caution isn’t out of place. In fact — “

The ingrained pessimism sprang from the same root as his misogyny, a superstitious sop thrown at fortune. But this thought was perhaps over the line. He would have dropped it except that Captain Agadja prompted, “What?”

“It isn’t hard to remove a wrist chip. Mine’s been transplanted once already. If I were hoping to set a trap for rescuers, that’s how I’d do it — bait it with signals from the first party.”

“That’s awful!” Gin proclaimed. “You have a warped imagination, you know that?”

Before Titus could retort the captain said calmly, “No. He has a different eye. You use it, Titus. Be very, very careful.”

“I’ve given up taking uncalculated risks.” Titus nodded at the screen in anticipation. “All the risks I run will be deliberate.”

Chapter 30

Their only landing shuttle was too valuable to use for drops. “The only touchdown will be for the final pickup,” the captain decreed, “when everybody and everything is ready.” Getting personnel and materiel dirtside would be quicker and more efficient with balloon bouncers. Titus had to silently remind himself that this technology was time-tested. Otherwise he would have scoffed at the idea of being shoved out of the shuttle cargo bay to land where the wind took him. But here he was, dressed in an iso-suit, climbing into a reinforced seat and strapping himself in. Foam modules inflated themselves around his head and limbs and torso, to cushion him from impact. Beside and above him, at odd angles, were his three companions, similarly secured. The tetrahedral vessel would bounce and land on one of its faces, and one or the other of them would be right-side up and in a position to help the others. All the farewells and final admonitions had been made. At the last Freddy said, “Give my regards to the hula girls and the surfer chicks, Titus. Surf’s up!”

Titus had to grin. “Very amusing. You know bloody well it’ll be hours till I can get at the dictionary.”

Freddy laughed and bolted the hatch down. Over the sigh of the internal air supply kicking in Joan said, “They were references to Hawaii. ‘Aloha’ is a Hawaiian term.”

With his entire body immobilized Titus could not glimpse any of his companions, but he said, “Thank you. A damned silly name for a planet.” Although a better nomenclature did not easily come to mind. The tradition in his day, of naming new places after reigning monarchs, was at least as foolish. One felt such an idiot, trudging across King Edward IV Land.

Weightless as they were, the shift and bump of the capsule as it was eased into the shuttle was palpable but in no way disturbing. It was going to be hours before anything interesting would happen. In that time Freddy would uncouple the shuttle from the Sun, and take it into a lower orbit around Aloha. At the precisely correct moment, he would jettison their bouncer, and the second one which held the treader and their survival gear. And then the fun would start!

Titus had spent the past eighteen hours on the final preparations. Immobilized in close confines after such a long day, a little nap came natural and easy. About some things he had no nerves whatsoever. It was only when he woke several hours later to the envious complaints of the other three that he realized they had not slept at all. “If you had slept through the bounce-down I really would never have forgiven you,” Gin declared.

“Why not? It’ll be safe enough. El assured me it’s done all the time.”

Dio sighed. “It doesn’t worry you, that we’ll be hitting the dirt without any brakes? Relying on the balloons to cushion the impact?”

“Can’t think how I forgot to mention it. But one of the most important tricks of the trade is to control the imagination. Viewpoint is everything. If you fret about that kind of thing, live on your nerves, you’ll be worth nothing. We can’t do anything about it, can’t steer or inflate or even see out. So why worry? Live or die, it’s out of our hands.”

The others unanimously agreed that he was loathsome and depressing, and that a change of subject was called for. Dio brought up the favorite topic. “What are the Forties like? Where are they?”

“Not a sign of civilization to be seen, and how often have we orbited Aloha?”

“You would think that a culture who developed meta-Einstienian physics would at least build some highways.”

“Well my idea is, they’re small. Your average Fortie is only one inch high, a genuine Little Green Man. So from orbit we can’t see their highways, and their cities look like termite mounds or small hills.”

“But no transmissions? No electromagnetic? How can it even be a civilization?”

“And how did they ever manipulate that pulsar, to signal to us?”

This was the sort of beating the air that moderns adored. Were they not on the way to find out? So why speculate? But Titus listened now with tolerance. Leadership involved not only managing externals, but fostering morale.

It was dark and overly warm in their capsule, no situation for a claustrophobe. The sound of the shuttle engines could scarcely be heard through their layers of insulation and shielding. But now came a new clack of metal on metal, and a shifting, shaking motion. “Ejection in two minutes,” Dio said softly. “Listen and you’ll hear the supply bouncer go.”

Titus could not pick out the noise of the other bouncer preceding them, but in a moment it was their turn. A jar, a half turn, and a sudden severe bump, and an indefinable change took place. They were no longer being carried, but were falling, skimming nearly as fast as the vehicle they had left, arcing down into the atmosphere like a shooting star. Titus stared into the dimness. If the balloons failed they would never know it. They would perish in a sudden smear of plastic and metal across the brown prairies of Aloha’s single continent.

Even through the shielding now they could hear it, the scream of tortured air as their capsule sliced through the thickening atmosphere. The fans and coolers laboured valiantly in the unequal battle with friction, and the temperature rose steadily. Outside, the capsule’s white-hot outer shielding was burning away, and the thrusters were slowing the vessel’s plunge. If they had eyes to see, the Forties were getting a fine show.

The seconds and minutes ticked away. No conversation was really possible now over the noise, though Titus did catch Dio calling out something about listening for the bang. In his opinion a modicum of ignorance actually made for tranquility in these situations —-

The explosions shook the entire capsule and seemed to fling them around like a toy. The parachutes were deploying. Evidently they were not going to perish because the ‘chutes failed to appear. But there was still plenty of opportunity for disaster. If they had deployed too soon they would be burned up in the descent.

This was the moment when the passengers had to take action, the only thing they could do. Very deliberately and systematically Titus relaxed. Every muscle, loose and limp as string. No amount of bracing oneself could save a broken limb, and with luck relaxed muscles would avert sprains and aches. They had rehearsed this, up in orbit. Titus wished they had not awakened him from his nap. A deep slumber would be just the ticket right now.

Their vessel were tumbling now, spinning through the air like a flung toy. For an instant Titus was afraid he’d shoot the cat and utterly disgrace himself. But then came another series of explosions as the balloons inflated. A tense moment or two, and then a tremendous impact pressed him sideways into the foam padding. And another buffet, from another angle, and another. They could have been a toy, batted by a giant. The world teetered and spun and jerked, and the fierce deceleration pulled the blood this way and that in his veins. He could not help clenching his teeth and glaring into the dimness. One could not meet death with closed eyes. If a balloon had failed to inflate one of their bounces would instead be a nasty and very final impact.

But suddenly it was over. They subsided with one more overbalancing bounce and stopped, rocking. Someone was retching miserably, and the reinforcing frame of his chair seemed to have bent. Hanging upside down like a bat, Titus took a deep grateful breath. “Well, that was a clipper. Everyone in one piece?”

Raggedly his companions chimed in, allowing that they were unhurt, exclaiming at the rough landing. Titus could just reach the switch that collapsed the foam modules. With reluctant sighs they shrank. “I think you had better be first, Gin — you’re right-side up. Don’t hurry yourself, now.”

“I’m not an idiot, sweetie. Oh jeez, am I dizzy! Now I know how a slushie in the blender feels.” She unbuckled herself and reeled upright, narrowly missing Titus’s dangling head with her own. Clumsily she helped Joan out, and they united to help Titus slither down out of his seat and swing right-way round. Only their disparate heights kept the three of them from knocking heads at the apex of the cramped space, and there was no room for Dio, lying on his back down at their knee level, to get up at all.

Titus pulled the hood of his suit up over head and face, and sealed it. For want of room they had to take turns, but he watched sharply as Joan and Gin did the same, and he peered down into the dimness between their legs to make sure Dio was sealing up as well. When everyone was ready he gave Joan the nod. She crouched and clambered past the foam modules and the seat supports, to the hatch. The grate of bolts, a sigh of equilibrating air pressures, and they had arrived.

Titus crawled after Joan. His first new planet! But there was no time to enjoy it. His first act, the moment he stepped out of the portal, was to hit the comm button on his belt. “Hallo, Cloudy Sun — do you copy? We’ve arrived.”

Lau’s warm voice crackled in his earphone. “Audio and visual coming through fine. We were watching you bounce.”

“A wild ride,” Titus agreed. “I don’t think I’d care to repeat it.”

Captain Agadja spoke, mellifluous as birdsong. “Step on out, and give us a view.”

Titus obliged. The hatchway folded out and down to form a cleated ramp down to ground level. The big grey balloons clustered closely around and below the entire capsule, so that no vista could be seen. He strode down to the ground, an earth that was rust-coloured and sloppy with standing water, and ducked between the tough unyielding skins of the balloons.

The first image that came to mind was prairie, the preserved wildlands of the American West. Broad undulating land, pink and tan and russet, spread all around to a mist-veiled horizon. The sky was misty too, not the white cloud-capped palaces of an earthly sky but low fumes and ravellings of delicately saffron-coloured vapour. “Very nice!” He turned slowly so that the camera woven into his shirt pocket would get a good view.

“Nice? It’s gorgeous!” Dio bounded down the ramp and skipped with joy. Encased in shiny clear plastic from head to toe, he looked like an animated plastic toy, an escapee from Disney World. “Can you feel it? Just a little bit less gravity than earth normal!”

“And a high oxygen level.” Gin came down the ramp and took a long deep breath that sucked in all the slack of her body condom and created an effect with her tee shirt that made Titus blink. “You can hardly notice, just standing here, but when we start to walk the gravity and oxygen will be a bonus.”

“And how far will that be? Where’s the other bouncer, Sun? And our destination?”

“You can’t see it,” Lau said, “but the other bouncer is just to your west, maybe a mile or two. It seems to have landed fine. The pinger clusters — well, your landing could’ve been better. You’ve got yourselves a hike, at least three or four days.”

“What!”

“That first bounce was a doozy,” Captain Agadja cut in to explain. “It was weird. We were watching, and that first impact — I don’t know how to describe it. It was as if you’d hit a patch of rubber. Or as if there was a localized earthquake, right around the impact site.”

“Of all the chuckleheaded stunts,” Titus growled. And after Freddy’s boasting about pinpoint drops, too!

“Better to land where it’s nice and flat like this,” Dio said soothingly. “You could hardly ask for a more suitable bouncer landing site, all flat and no rocks.”

This was true enough, so Titus gave over grousing and set about helping to unload the capsule. The bulk of their supplies was in the other bouncer, but iron rations and a shelter were packed here, in case of accident. There were also extra garments to wear over the body condoms, which they immediately unpacked and put on. The air was thick with a haze or dust that on Earth would accompany tropical heat. But here it was damp and chilly, reminiscent of a wine cellar. “You realize what that is,” Dio said. “This crap in the air, it’s not dust. It’s microorganisms. The Amity said that the planet was teeming with tiny life — microorganisms either separate or in little slimy biofilm communities.”

“Not only the air,” Joan said, scuffing her condomed feet. “Look at this.” The puddle around the balloons was slowly reforming as the water seeped back. Multicolored scum floated on the surface and hazed the mud. There seemed to be no true plant life here, none of the grass one would expect, but only biofilm slicks and webby sheets of brown moss-like growth.

Poor footing for a long hike, but Titus had slogged through worse. Armed with his tracking equipment, Dio was in charge of navigation. He set off confidently. Following, Titus was startled when the other man suddenly lost two feet in height. ”A pothole!”

The hole was entirely invisible under the layer of multicolored scum. They hauled him out, dripping. “The condoms are supposed to be waterproof,” Joan said helpfully.

“They are,” Dio said, wiggling his feet inside the heavy plastic. “And I like the way the slime slides off. Let’s hope I don’t spring a leak.”

“They’re designed to filter out micros and let in air,” Gin said. “But they’re not waders.”

“I knew there must be a reason, why the Amity only used the headpieces,” Titus said gloomily. “Well, we’ll carry on with the full body protection as long as we can.”

It became obvious that marching across the plain was going to be far more complex than it seemed. The capsule was designed to be used only once. Would it be better to take the time to cannibalize it for probes and plastic now? Or was it more essential to be reunited with their supplies at the other bouncer? “We can take the other one apart, just as well as this one,” Titus decided. “We must just go carefully for this bit.”

Testing each step was such chancy work, it became necessary to take it in turns to lead the way. Titus took the first turn, slipped and plunged in nearly to the waist. Through the condom he could feel the coolness of the water, but not its wetness — a bloody odd sensation.

“It’ll be easier when we get the treader on line,” Joan panted.

Titus could not be optimistic about this — the terrain was hardly suited for vehicular traffic. But it was not actually very long before they could see the other balloon bouncer looming up through the low ground haze. Infinitely alien it looked, the globes of its balloons sharp-edged and sleekly grey. This was a world where no verge was sharply defined, and everything was parti-coloured. As they approached, Titus had the Sun send the signal that popped open the hatch. It was a heartening sight to see the ramp drop down and the silver and black treader slide gently down to the ground like a colossal caterpillar emerging from its egg case.

Joan squelched up to the vehicle and immediately began patting it down and checking it over. Titus took her pack and his own, slinging them up onto the rack above the last set of high wheels. Gin passed him hers as well. “Madam, your carriage awaits.”

She giggled, stamping her feet and slapping her gloved hands together to knock off the slippery biofilms. “Won’t it be great to get out of these condoms!”

“Horrible garments,” Titus agreed. “We’ll tidy up out here — you pop in and put the kettle on.” He handed her up with antique courtesy, and she scrambled over the metal treads to the long crew compartment. This was the magical part, always fascinating to watch. The portals were marked as vertical red lines on the clear plastic walls, each about a meter long and at belly level. Gin toed up to one, centering herself at the line, and snapped to attention. The body condom above her Junoesque bosom touched the line and adhered, peeling back and opening up. Suddenly the condom was no longer a garment on her body, but merely a person-shaped bay of the main compartment. She pushed the edges aside and ducked her head through the opening that now ran from neck to crotch, stepping out of the lower part of her suit into the room. Titus had heard the explanation of the trick more than once, and the technical details had gone in one ear and out the other — something about membrane theory, smart plastics, and analogies to how soap bubbles could interconnect. But it was a cracking good stunt, a perfect way to keep the inside utterly separate from the outside.

However, before he could play the trick himself there was work to be done. “How does she look?”

“Survived the drop like a trouper, Cap,” Joan said. “She’s a good baby.” Her adoring smile might have been that of a girl contemplating her true love. “You want to try and make some distance today? We have a couple hours before sunset.”

“That would be prudent. But the moment visibility drops, we stop for the night. We don’t want to fall into a pothole or anything.”

“It’d take a monster pothole to slow her down,” Joan said with pride. “This is going to be a snap. On this kind of terrain we can make the distance in two days.”

“Superb. Let’s be off as soon as we have some spars and plastic on board.”

Dio had already started work cutting some of the bouncer’s balloons apart. Long pieces of metal or plastic that they could use to probe the swamp at need were pried from the interior of the capsule. Wasted labour if the treader could carry them in style all the way, but it was as well to be prepared. One could not prepare for every contingency, but Titus was resolved to lay plans for every one he could.

The chilly humidity and wet conditions continued to take their toll, and they were well pleased after an hour’s work to clamber up onto the treader and pop through into the crew compartment. There was no time to put one’s feet up and rest, however. “Let’s get rolling before nightfall,” Titus said.

Joan slid into the driver’s seat and began flicking switches and pushing buttons. The engines rumbled confidently into life. She slid into low gear and they were off, trundling slowly and splashily across the mire. After checking with Dio to be sure of their direction, Titus dared to relax. “This is the way to explore,” he said, accepting a steaming mug from Gin. “Carried high above all the unpleasantness by machinery!”

“We seem to have hit on a pretty messy bit of terrain,” she agreed. “It has to get better. I bet the Amity folks had the sense to settle in a drier spot.”

The treader lent them the height to get a fine prospect of the flat countryside. The sun was westering modestly behind a thick veil of haze that glowed buttery and gold and topaz. The wet landscape shone softly too, in pastels like a child’s chalk box — yellow and pink and orange and blue. Not a speck of green, however, and Titus noticed that skins of mold and moss could not upholster and soften the land the way grasses and trees would. It would be a difficult land to live in, with nothing to eat, nothing to build with, and no solid footing. How had the Amity’s crew survived? Quickly he took imagination in hand. The chips, he reminded himself. The pinger functions are still at work; essential at this stage to believe that all is well.

The treader’s three sections each had their own engines and treads, so that the potholes were merely an annoyance. For more than an hour they lurched steadily along over mud and water as a russet nightfall, heavy as a woolen blanket and cold as the grave, descended. At this latitude the twilight was short. Joan would have been happy to press on, but Titus called a halt. “You’re overdue to eat and rest,” he told her. He realized they were the same words that Scott had said to him, in the days when Titus was a hot-headed sledger and a younger member of the Polar party. He was nearly as old now as Scott had been then!

There was leisure now to check in with the Clowderman Sun again. The channel between them had been open and recording all this time, but standard operating procedure was that constant conversation tended to distract the ground team — it was this ongoing set of records that was lost from the Amity. Titus listened to the desultory chatter, the talk for talk’s sake, and reflected how very typically modern this expedition was. They clung to each other like leeches.

He would have preferred to set a watch in case of dangerous animals or other life forms. But Captain Agadja pointed out that the treader’s own motion sensors were better than any human eyes. More importantly to his mind, they had traversed miles of mud plain without seeing so much as an insect. At least in this region the planet did not seem to support any life form more complex than lichen.

Chapter 31

Passing a peaceful night in the seats that folded flat for sleeping did not allay Titus’s pessimism. “There was a dreadful error in translation, back in 2033,” he proposed over breakfast the following morning. “Both ships have bobbled it, and landed on the wrong planet. Look at the place — there’s nothing here for the Forties to eat, drink or build FTL drives from.”

“But the Amity’s records said they found Forties.”

“Mistake,” Titus said airily.

“Where do you get these horrible ideas?” The captain’s groan came through oboe-like on the speaker. “Finding the Forties and talking to them isn’t our job, thank God! If we find the Amity’s crew and bring them home, that’s all I ask for.”

“And if you’re right, boss, it should be a breeze,” Dio said to Titus. “They’ll be squatting on the mud waiting for us, only a little bit bored, having spent the time practicing dance communication theory on the mildews.”

Titus had to grin at the idea of Shell dancing in all this mire. By Jove, if she only was alive and able to dance at all he’d —

“All right, who’s the slob?” Gina pointed indignantly. “Who spilled a drink pouch in their condom?”

To his dismay Titus saw she was pointing at his own suit. Sure enough, a large greenish-grey stain spilled down the back and one leg. He began to sputter a protest, but it died unspoken as Dio said, “Oh man, look at that — they’re all like that. What happened? Did we spring a leak?”

It immediately became plain that all the contamination still remained outside. The inside surface of the suits was clean, even dry, thanks to the strong air pressure inside cabin which forced air out of the micropores. But microorganism films were growing briskly on every outside surface, including the suits. The temperature had dropped overnight, bringing a frigid heavy dew down to bead on every surface, and every droplet of water teemed with invisible life that now burgeoned in the muggy golden daylight. Titus found that he could look through the plastic walls at a given drop of water slowly turning from clear to grey to brown. “They grow like Topsy,” Joan marveled. “And what is happening to the treader’s filtration system?”

Nothing would do but that she suit up and go out to inspect the vehicle before breakfast. “Dio, go with her,” Titus said — nobody was to go out alone. Dio occupied himself writing with one finger on the dripping walls, and scrubbing futilely at the suits. The films slid off easily, but would surely grow back. “Is this what put paid to the seals up on the Amity?” Titus demanded.

“Something similar, I’d bet,” Gin said. “The microbiologists could spend a thousand years here, cataloging and classifying these things. Maybe it was just bad luck that one of them had a taste for BB seals. You can see they can’t get a real foothold on us or our equipment. We’re too alien for them.”

“At the moment.”

“Well, yeah,” she admitted. “These organisms must mutate and adapt fast.”

“And they’re getting to know us better every day.” Anxiety seemed to rise up like fumes around him. “Dio, stop the funning and scout around the bases of the walls. How does the join between the plastic and the metal look?”

“Fine, boss,” Dio reported, stooping and scraping. “Like the day it came from the factory. This stuff is just a nuisance — doesn’t seem to be doing any harm.”

“Easy for you to say,” Joan chimed in, from somewhere out of sight at the front of the vehicle. “Boss, in my opinion we should get her rolling. I’ve scraped the filters clean, but they’re not going to stay that way. Let’s get some miles onto the odometer while the going’s good.”

“Good idea.”

For an hour or two they trundled along in what Titus thought of as the luxurious modern style of exploration, riding like a duck and dry as a biscuit. They took turns driving and eating breakfast. The pingers were located in higher country, and it was good to see that the land was trending uphill and they were on the right track. Muddy slime gave way to what might almost have been moss, except that it had no roots or stems — no structural integrity. The treader still lurched into soft spots and muddy places, but these grew fewer as the ground got higher. Perhaps the Amity’s crew had indeed sensibly settled down in a dry spot!

Before long however Joan called a halt. “The middle engine’s overheating,” she said. “It must be the filters again.”

This time Titus went out with her to survey the trouble. It was astonishing how messy the outdoors was. They wallowed to the middle engine and sank knee deep into slimy cold mud. The filters were so clogged with clammy growing things they seemed to have sprouted hair. “This could become thunderingly dull,” he said. “And it can’t be good for the vehicle. What could we do, to get a more permanent fix?”

Joan scraped a filter off on her boot sole, exchanging mold for mud, while Titus wielded one of the salvaged scraps of plastic. “There’s tons of things that repel mold and mildew,” she said. “We just don’t have any of them here.”

Titus had a thought. “Gin,” he called. “What do you have in your medical supplies?”

“Uh — rubbing alcohol? Actually that’d probably work, except that I only have a couple ounces of it. We’d need gallons, right? Maybe I could mix different things together. Let me think about it.”

By the time he went inside again, Gin was steaming with ideas. “The next bouncer will have salt,” she said. “And rubbing alcohol. And the real brainwave — a microwave oven. Heating the filters should kill everything beautifully.”

“But what about now?” Titus demanded. “El is not going to waste one of her last balloon bouncers on pest control. It’s allocated for sending down gear for the Amity crew.”

“Well, I had a really good thought about that, Titus sweetie. You still have your smoking equipment with you, right?”

“You aren’t going to requisition my tobacco!”

“Never. You’re going to donate it to the cause. You wouldn’t want to get too dissipated. You can’t smoke down here anyway. And even up on the Cloudy Sun you didn’t smoke anywhere near once a day. What about the brandy, did that come too?”

“By no means! The flask was too heavy, and you and El sank nearly all of it between you.”

“You helped. You didn’t by any chance bring down your entire tobacco supply? Oh, too bad. But we can use what you did pack. Steep it in water overnight…”

Titus jacked it in. Argument was futile when women got that look in their eye. Further resistance would probably lead to an embarrassing discussion of his alleged dissipations. And there was no denying it was a rattling good idea. He unzipped his personal bag and tossed the plastic tobacco pouch over. “I’ve deloused ponies in my day with tobacco and water.”

“I bet it worked fine,” Dio said with his monkey grin. “Nicotine is an insecticide. I’m more interested in hearing about the brandy party.”

“The devil you shall!” But before he lost his temper Titus saw the line to take. “If you must know,” he confided, “it was more of a wake. Poor old Lin — the failed revival was a fearful shock to her.” At the moment Gin did not make a convincingly grief-stricken medico, humming to herself as she rooted through her personal kit for cosmetics to be sacrificed, but Titus kept his tone absolutely serious with fine success. Naturally a sensitive and considerate modern could no longer pursue the subject!

The next time the filters clogged Gin went out into the drizzle with Joan to try out a selection of rinses, puddling each one in a section of balloon plastic. Rubbing alcohol was not particularly effective, but a witch’s brew of mouthwash, shampoo and strong coffee got the filters shining-clean. “I foresee a time very shortly when we shall have no toiletries nor anything decent to drink,” Titus observed with profound but synthetic gloom.

Captain Agadja’s voice crackled sweetly from the speaker. “Anyone would think listening to you that you were a hothouse plant.”

Titus had to grin. “I expressly deny permission for any tobacco to come down in the next bouncer, do you hear?”

In this way the treader worked its way slowly up the pathless countryside. The cold flat mud-plains became muddy rolling downs that filled the western horizon. From high above the planet surface the Sun navigated for them, directing them through valleys that actually went somewhere instead of ending blind. It was all wonderfully efficient. There seemed to be every hope that they would reach the larger concatenation of pingers sometime tomorrow.

Towards the end of the afternoon it began to rain, not the drizzly mist that seemed to be standard procedure but a true downpour. “What a vile brand of weather they keep in these parts,” Titus marveled. It was very satisfactory to sit here warm and dry as the deluge drummed on the plastic walls. “If this keeps up, we’ll call a halt for the night, Joan. Perhaps at the top of this slope.”

“Sure,” she said. “How about up where that rock is?”

“What rock?” Titus demanded sharply, peering. In all their time on Aloha they had never yet seen anything more solid than muck. But by heaven, there did seem to be a scarp up there. And it was moving! It was coming this way —

With a roar like low surf the mud slid down the hill, taking the treader with it. There were no trees or grass to hold the earth, Titus realized. “Strap yourselves in!” he yelled. Gin obeyed, but Dio leaped to help Joan with the treader’s controls. Titus swore, realizing that he should have thought of that. He jumped to hit first Joan’s belt controls and then Dio’s. They could not spare a hand, fighting to keep the vehicle pointing uphill.

Against such a flood it was impossible to get any traction. Helplessly the treader slewed sideways and wallowed over onto its starboard flank. Too late to get back to his seat, Titus clung to the back of Dio’s chair and prayed that their double weight wouldn’t rip it from its moorings. The treader slithered downhill on its side, jolting and scraping. Loose cabin items smashed against his body and head. The interior lights flickered and died, alarms squealed or clanged, and over everything came Freddy’s worried American twang: “Guys? Yo, Titus, what’s happening? Your heart rates are going through the roof. Gin, are you fighting him for his pipe tobacco?”

With a final sickening jolt the treader came to rest. Mud and rain poured down around it. Nursing his bruises, Titus crouched on the bulkhead in the dark. “God damn and blast it to hell and back,” he rasped. “Sound off, everyone. Are you all right?”

A whimper from close beside him must be Joan. Dio said, “Jesus H!”

Gin moaned, “My medical kit. Just let me find the kit, and I’ll be right with you.”

“Dio,” Titus snapped. “Is there a way to get the lights back?”

“There’s a flashlight right about — ah!” A fierce light blossomed in his hand. Dio shone it on Gin, white as a ghost in the colorless light and just staggering to her feet. It flickered over to Joan, who clutched a bleeding lip, and darted blindingly past Titus before settling on the control panel. “Give me a minute, boss.”

“Right. Gin, sit tight — no use breaking an ankle in the dark. Here, child.” He drew from his sleeve his very last handkerchief, the lone survivor of the ones that Lash had bought him nine years ago, and passed it over to Joan. “Hallo, Freddy. Tell the captain we have a problem.”

“I’m here, Titus,” Captain Agadja’s beautiful voice cut in. “Talk!”

“Landslide. We’ve flipped onto our side, and slid God knows how far downhill. Lost power, and — “ He scowled. An ominous dripping noise was coming from the rear of the compartment. “We may have sprung a leak.”

Some of the lights flickered weakly into life, so that it became possible to assess the damage. Joan wiped thick blood from her nose and spat a corner of tooth out into the handkerchief. Gin leaped to her aid, while Dio began to shove the litter of fallen items aside and tidy up. Everyone had a task, and Titus grimly shouldered his own: to decide what the devil to do next.

It might be possible to right the treader, but surely not at night and in a thundering downpour. That decision would have to be postponed until morning. If the treader could be put right and was still operational, they could carry on as before. But this was jolly unlikely — Christ, that scraping and jolting must have played merry hell! And they had no tools or parts for repair.

But they weren’t ditched yet. They were quite close now to the pingers, within a single day’s walk. It should be possible to trek there, camping for the night if necessary. A breach in the treader was not utter calamity on a planet with a passable atmosphere like Aloha. To wear the body condoms day and night might be a trial, but it could be done for a few days. And he had not forgotten the Amity’s original data, showing that only breath filters were really necessary. Plenty of wiggle room there!

“Hold still for a second, Titus,” Gin said.

“Sod it, what now?”

“Looks like you hit your chin on Dio’s chair, and picked up a nice scalp ding. But I’ll patch it right up, don’t you worry.”

He had not even noticed the cuts, or the sticky blood on his ear and clothing. Although the injuries hurt a good deal, the moment she stopped fussing he forgot again. Everything hinged upon how damaged the treader was. Power was essential to filter water, to run the lights and heat. Without power they might as well pack it in and go home. But with some minimal resources, and a bit of grit and resolution, at least part of the mission could be salvaged.

Having come to this conclusion was only the first step, of course. His opinion had weight, but was not the clincher. In the wearisome modern way, everyone had to throw in their tuppence worth — the three others here, Captain Agadja, even the rest of the crew up in the Sun. The consensus — that after coming so far it was impossible to retreat at the first setback — was inevitable but exhausting to reach. How much quicker it would be, to just bark orders and have people leap to obey! But one could not cram a modern crew. Only the lightest of hands on the bridle would do, and plenty of rein on the way up. This was better than Scott’s method of making bad decisions in a vacuum. With so many sharp minds picking over the details, the chances of spotting a misjudgment were vastly improved.

It was just as well that he’d played it according to Hoyle, since it proved impossible to right the treader. In the daylight they could see that the downflowing mire had swept around the vehicle, partially burying the rear half. Excavation would call for heavy equipment, or days of backbreaking pick-and-shovel work. However, the power system seemed to be holding its own, and Joan swore that it would be possible to check it over even with the vehicle on its side. In view of this, and the ugly black bruise on her head and jaw, it was agreed that Joan should stay with the treader while the rest of the team trekked into the hinterlands. Dio was needed to track the pingers, and as the doctor Gin was vital. And Titus so obviously intended to brook no argument about his participation that nobody even suggested he might stay behind.

“Right,” Titus said. “Let’s be off then. With luck we can arrive tonight.”

The body condoms were cunningly designed to be expandable, so that the wearer could essentially live a self-contained life all day. One loaded up the pockets, slipped on a pack and then stepped into the condom, and likewise with the tent, which was filled with all their necessary kit and then pushed through the membrane-wall. In theory the trek should be a picnic, far simpler, shorter, safer and more efficient than the kind of expedition he was used to.

Titus in fact had no such expectation, and for once his pessimism was fully justified. They set out into a light mizzle, heavily laden, their equipment swathed in plastic, and armed with laths of salvaged plastic for probing potholes. Joan waved at them as they picked their way delicately across the mudslip. Titus hoped to come to an area past the slide where the footing would be better, but there seemed to be no such place. The ground continued soggy and jellylike and wet. In the end, rather than being driven from their line, they had to slog uphill through the frigid muck.

Immediately it became plain that iso suits had never been designed for long hikes uphill in slippery conditions. One slid back a step for every three. “Cleats or crampons,” Titus demanded. “And rope. Are there any in stores? Can you send them down with the bouncer?”

“Of course not, Titus,” Captain Agadja said. “You might as well ask for white tie and tails. Why would a starship bring rope?”

Titus snarled wordlessly. If the modern explorer was utterly spoilt, as he liked to think, then how was it elementary necessities like crampons were unavailable? And all the disadvantages of the condoms returned in full force. The filtering plastic ‘breathed’, but not quickly enough to vent perspiration. Their inner clothing soon became sodden. Their outer clothing was made to shed water, but not mud, so that everything became heavier and more unwieldy. Gray-green films crawled almost visibly up every surface, clogging the condom pores just as the treader’s filters had been clogged. Was it fancy, or was it getting harder and harder to breathe? At least the solution to this was at hand. “You brought your brew,” he panted to Gin.

She nodded. “We have to set up the tent, to scrub the suits down.”

It was a loss of time, but there was no help for it. Three hours slugging up the long slope of the ridge was enough to tire the other two out. Titus knew he was good for hours, perhaps days yet, and that the others had nowhere near plumbed the depths of exhaustion. Tenderfeet! But there was no use mentioning this yet. They set up the tent for lunch, and popped through the membrane into the interior with unspeakable relief. Expressed as usual in chatter, now that there was air for it!

“I’m pumping the air all the way up,” Dio said. “Get the ambient pressure higher in here, and it’ll force some of those pores clear.”

““Titus, take off your socks and let your feet air out,” Gin commanded. “You too, Dio. Do either of you have any blisters? I have the damnedest one, on my heel.”

No modern could suffer in silence, and even Titus had slipped sadly. He crouched in the tiny dome-shaped space and said, “It’s more than just a blister, Gin. Can you twist round and look at it?”

The place was on the outer side of her heel, and by contorting herself like an eel she was able to see. “Aah! Something’s growing there!” She scrubbed frantically at it with one fingernail, and the green-grey speck rubbed off. “Hand me that bottle, quick!”

“It was only a matter of time,” Titus said gloomily. “Slogging through all this muck — a body condom can’t cut it. You must have torn a hole in the foot of your suit. Proper airtight space suits would have been more sensible. Except that then we couldn’t have walked any distance at all, of course.”

“Must you be such a wet blanket?” Gin swabbed her feet and hands very carefully with tobacco water.

Now that the integrity of the suits was breached even by ever so little, the crucial question was whether it was better to continue wearing them or not. Titus decreed that this discussion could be better held while hiking, so they wolfed their lunch bars and packed up again. “Of course El is all hot to keep us pure as snow,” Dio said, leading the way uphill from one firmer spot to another. “But once there’s one hole, there’ll be two. Probably by the end of the trip these things will look like lace.”

“And maybe it’ll be more comfortable, to just wear the head sacks,” Titus said. He was getting to actively loathe the condoms. “Lord knows the traction would be easier with just our boots.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Gin said. “Breathing easier, I mean. You’ll be losing a lot of filtration area. And we’ll have to keep the head sacks clean as a whistle. It’s the eye-ear-nose-throat area that really gives an opening for invasion.”

Titus grimaced at the unpleasant picture. “I can imagine that if the stuff likes your feet so well, it would adore your eye.”

Even now it was getting hard to breathe again. Titus watched the green film creep up his suit as each leg swung forward. It was enough to make a man dream of fresh air. Luckily he had plenty of good memories: the keen salty breezes of the English Channel, sniffed from the deck of his yacht; the autumn mist hanging over the Essex fields as unmoving as damask curtains when he led his horse out of the stable at Gestingthorpe at dawn; and ah, best of all, the diamond-bright winds of Antarctica. A lungful of that razor-sharp air was absolutely pure. No living thing had touched it in thousands, perhaps millions of years. Quite unlike this stuff he was struggling for now, thick with his own odours and probably freighted with putrid Aloha life forms…

“Wait up, Titus!” Gin’s cry, coming from the speaker button on the back of his collar, made him jump. Why had she not just given him a shout? But when he looked back he saw what had happened. She and Dio had fallen far behind.

“We’ve passed it somehow,” Dio transmitted, gesticulating. “I think we have to go that way.”

Quickly Titus turned and scrambled back to them. “Sorry,” he panted. “Damn stupid of me.”

“You are crazy,” Gin said with conviction. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

Titus was not going to get drawn into a discussion of his foibles. “What’s to do?” he demanded of Dio.

The other man pointed north. “It can’t be far, maybe a hump or two over.”

“Then let’s get on,” Titus nearly said, but he listened to the short breaths of the other two and thought better of it. “We’ll take a breather.” During his abstraction they had scaled the infuriating slippery slope. The uplands — instinctively he applied the British term ‘downs’ — were drier, spongy and peaty rather than squashy, somewhat better footing. He could see the long rippling ridge of higher country curving away to the northeast and southwest. Below, between the veils and blobs of mist, the flatlands showed surprisingly colourful, red brown, rust, amber and black. “How I long for someplace to sit down.”

“It’s unfair,” Dio agreed, panting. “Uplands ought to have rocks.”

Gin sat down heedlessly on a relatively dry hump, and wriggled her arm free from the sleeve into the body of her suit so that she could reach into a pocket for a food bar. “Don’t change the subject, Titus,” she said. “I want to know how it’s done. Just zoning out like that at will is a useful stunt.”

He lowered himself cautiously onto another chilly hummock and eyed her, half uncertain whether she wasn’t being sarcastic —either Gin had become rather binding lately, or his nerves wanted bucking up. “It’s a jolly bad habit. Crawling into one’s own skull, one’s own past, as if it were armour. And then pulling the visor down. You don’t feel anything.”

Dio had sat down too, to slide his feet up and into the body of his suit. “Wish I could do it too. It’d be great to be able to trek miles without noticing.”

“It’s dangerous,” Titus said. “I try to save it for the final extremity.”

“And we’re not that desperate yet.”

“Nowhere near, I solemnly assure you.” Desperation necessarily entails gangrene, he was going to say, but luckily he kept the comment to himself.

Dio rubbed his feet. “Gin! I’ve got spots too!”

With a glance she consulted Titus, who said, “Damnation. Well, it had to be tried. Head bags only tomorrow.”

“We’ll have found the others by then,” Gin said. “They’ll know how to cope.”

Titus did not reply to this optimism. A growing internal certainty oppressed him that all was not well. They were so close! And yet no transmissions, no sounds, not even anything visible when one looked to the north. “Let’s get it over,” he said, rising to his aching feet.

They were close enough now so that Dio’s tracking devices in their plastic wrappings were actually useful. Up to this point it had been more effective to be directed from space. Now they followed Dio north and east along the spine of the downs. The ripples made for much less aggravating footing. The ground was drier, the slopes were gentler, and there was even a breeze which swept the clammy mists along, although they never quite blew away.

Titus was careful now to stay on top of the situation. Dio seemed entirely confident in the guidance of his devices, and although Gin was limping a little she seemed to have got her second wind. Although in his experience it was these big husky explorers who tended to fail in the final crunch. Himself Titus felt good for miles yet, particularly if he could get shed of this unpleasant body condom. He knew it was a foolish attitude, not to be voiced, but it was impossible to believe that these tiny life-forms could pose any danger to a strong man.

Up and over one ridge. At the top of the second Dio said, “We’ve got to be close. El?”

From the Sun the captain said, “Our telemetry says you’re right on top of them.”

This was bad. Very carefully Titus surveyed the surroundings in a complete circle, with eye and field glasses. Brown and tan and russet and red, with no rhyme or reason to the colours. The lowlands were dimly visible, veiled in mizzle to the east and south. Sweeps of intermittent chilly rain added the final touch of gloom. No Forties, no crew — this modern tech was my aunt Fanny! “A little farther, shall we?”

There seemed to be nothing else to do. They went on, down into the dip and up the next ridge. “No,” Dio said, consulting his machines. “We’ve passed it.”

“But they’re not here,” Gin said in frustration. “There’s nothing here!”

“We’ll circle the area,” Titus said. “We must put paid to this. Dio, get us truly and undeniably right on top of those signals.”

They made a loop bearing to the right. The alien landscape was supremely indifferent to them. Love and duty, joy and sorrow, none of this made the slightest difference. It never did. What a bugger of a business exploration is, Titus told himself. Should’ve stayed in the Army!

“Wait,” Gin said sharply. “Look there.”

It was the first hard edge they had seen yet — a spar or rod, sticking up out of the soft earth. “Hey, a piece of plastic!” Dio reported to the ship. They ran, panting. “We’re here!”

With her longer legs Gin got there first. She pulled the stick out of the ground. ”Definitely manmade. One of ours! But what does it mean?”

Titus took a slow deep breath, cold all over. “Gin. Put it back.”

“Why?”

“Because … I’m afraid it’s a grave marker.”

The spar fell from her condomed hand. Dio knelt in the mire, holding his plastic-wrapped devices low over the surface. “You’re right, there’s one down there. How do you know these things, Titus?”

To say that he had seen makeshift grave markers before would be unhelpful. Anyway, Gin cut him off by exclaiming, “There were fifteen blips!”

Somberly Dio said, “They’re here. Give me a minute, and I’ll get the ID readouts.”

With fumbling fingers Titus hit the comm button. “It’s bad,” he reported precisely, focusing on each word. “The graves are mostly unmarked.”

Dio rose shakily to his feet. “This one is Lara Riordan, boss. And this one …”

It was the most exquisite torture as Dio quartered the area, zeroing in on pingers and then teasing out the ID. They marked each spot as it was found, with their own plastic poles and then when these were too few with the tent pack, Dio’s extra instrument case, and then at the last with scuff marks in the soft soil. There were so many! Titus had never known fifteen was such a large number.

Halfway through Gin suddenly said, “All we know for sure is that these are the chips. Titus, you said so yourself — it’s easy to separate a person from his chip. A couple seconds with a scalpel would do it.”

More harshly than he meant Titus rasped, “If we have to open a grave in this muck with no tools but our bare hands, I shall be sick.”

Gin glared at him and burst into tears. From above Captain Agadja interposed, “No exhumation. I’m making an executive decision for you. The chips alone are proof enough of death.”

“Thank you.” He paused to listen to Dio read out another name. Was he not the leader of this expedition? He had better get the others hard by the head before they all ran mad. “Ginny, you can’t cry in a body condom. The mildew will run rampant. We can’t go any further today. Set up the tent — “ Hastily he pointed at a spot well away from the burial site. “Over there. Then we can — “ Break down? Go barmy? God, with so many bloody words in the bastard English language, why were there no good ones to hand? He picked up the tent pack from a gravesite and thrust it into her arms, nodding fiercely for her to get on with it. Then quickly, before he should lose track of the spot now that the marker was gone, he dug a heel into the spongy earth to make a crude X.

Beneath the head sack Dio’s olive skin looked chalky. “This is dreadful. What happened? Did the Forties kill them?”

“It wouldn’t astound me.” In justice Titus had to add, “Although we haven’t seen a hair of one. And this foul climate would undermine the strongest constitution. How many is this?”

“Thirteen. Tim Amherst, El.”

“Oh no,” Captain Agadja exclaimed thinly. “We were cadets together.”

“Jesus, this is vile.” What a thrice-damned unlucky ship the Amity Star had been! Dead, all dead — in this vale of sorrow it was hard to believe that the two outlying signals would not be unmarked graves as well. With a supreme effort of will Titus waited unmoving as Dio tracked down another pinger, and then one more. “Run down the final list then, lad,” he said at last. “El, double-check him.”

“Good,” she said. “We can’t afford any mistakes.”

Referring to his palmtop in its condom, Dio read aloud the fifteen names. Titus listened carefully, his head bowed. No, he had not misheard. Shell was not here. Very slowly he allowed himself to relax a little. “We’re going to call it a day, El,” he said. Exhaustion washed over him and made him reel on his feet.

Dio took a moment to scrape the last X on the fifteenth grave. The ones that Titus had dug were already filling with tea-coloured water. Titus stumbled to the tent and pushed through the membrane. The heater had not yet begun to warm and dry the little space, and the air was clammy cold. Gin had begun cleanup, shedding her damp inner clothing. She sat on the floorcloth with her forehead on her knees, the bottle of tobacco solution forgotten. Her tear-streaked face bore the bewildered grief of a child. Instinctively Titus dropped to one knee beside her. She hugged him hard, sobbing into his shoulder. Thank God he was too tired and grieved and, yes, smelly, for the old Adam to run away with him even when assailed by partially clothed Amazons. He was able to pat her chestnut hair and bare back, and murmur comforting nonsense, until Dio came pushing in.

Chapter 32

The journey back to the treader was chiefly notable for the demise of the iso suits. It was plain that the much-tried condoms had given up the ghost. Dio’s split open at the knee, and Gin developed leaks in both feet, while a hole appeared in the toe of Titus’s footpiece that he could put a finger through. “Isolation got our best shot,” he reported to Captain Agadja. “We’re switching to just the head sacks.”

Reluctantly she endorsed this. “But they’ll quarantine us, when we get back.”

“They’d do that anyway, the chair-warmers.”

At first stripping off the condoms was a great relief. Well rinsed in tobacco water, the head sacks repelled clogging growths. It was good to actually feel the cool damp air swishing past bare hands, and to squelch downhill confidently without a treacherous layer of plastic beneath one’s boot soles. Aloha suddenly became palpable and thus much more real — the odd sponginess of the cold wet earth, neither clayey nor sandy; the frail stringy resistance of the webby brown biofilms before he plucked them off his trouser legs or jacket sleeves. It came home to him that this was truly the unknown, an alien place. Delightful!

After some hours however the head sacks became burdensome. Aloha’s microscopic life could not destroy the plastic, but the micropores inevitably clogged. And with less surface area, every pore in the head sacks counted. The old nightmarish sensation of slow strangulation began to prey on them again. Titus yearned to rip the sack off and really breathe.

Their poor overturned treader was visible three-fourths of the way down the long slope. They seemed to struggle towards it for hours making no progress, slipping in the damp slimy soil. It was a relief to see Joan’s girlish figure perched on top of the tread housing, waving a towel in welcome. They had been in radio contact, and of course the Sun would have noted anything wrong at all, but seeing is believing.

Titus sloshed up through the shallow puddle that had formed where the treader had subsided into the spongy ground. “How is it without the condom?” Joan hailed. “Can I take mine off too?”

“I daresay, but it’s much less amusing than you might think. Is the treader still leaking?”

“Only when it rains.”

“So isolation is breached anyway.” With old-fashioned courtesy he handed Gin up.

They washed feet and hands off carefully with another of Gin’s witch brews before going inside. Titus dragged off the head sack with a gasp of relief. Immediately he could smell it. Joan had thoughtfully adjusted the air to run very warm and dry. Titus could almost feel the alien bugs dehydrating and flicking off his hide. “Lau said that hot showers, strong soap, and shampoo was the way to go,” Joan said. “But on our side like this, this was the best I could rig.”

“Bless you!” Titus’s mouth watered at the sight of the bathtub that she had rigged out of salvaged balloon plastic. But ladies first — while Gin washed up he went over the list of Joan’s accomplishments while they had been away. In addition to the cunningly contrived bath, she had diverted power no longer needed for traction to water production. There was plenty of water now to wash in and to mix into Gin’s anti-mildew brews. Joan had also directed much of the heat generated by all this into a storage locker. This now effectively became a low-heat oven, ideally suited for baking the tar out of Alohan hitchhikers on their boots and garments. It occurred to Titus that he had a treasure here. And the first thing to do with a treasure is maintain it. He eyed her sharply. “How’s the tooth? And the nose?”

She rubbed it. “My nose is fine — it just looks blue. And the tooth only hurts when I bite down on it.”

Since their food bars called for heavy-duty gnawing, Titus could not feel the child was in happy case. But he was the last man to deplore stoicism and endurance. “Don’t skimp on the painkillers if you need them. Gin has the complete pharmacopoeia. And it’s vital to the mission that you keep in good condition.”

She blushed at this praise, the pink coming up under the freckles. With her soft brown hair and eyes and her obliging manner, Joan was the only member of the crew that he could even imagine in proper garb — which was to say, corsets, long full skirts, high-piled hair, and a birdbath hat to top it all off. Dash it, surely it was pure male egotism to see lures everywhere! More repressively he said, “If you crock up, it’ll be a damned nuisance. See to it that you get a full night’s sleep tonight. Tomorrow’s a full day.”

Over the evening meal they discussed the next step. Since he knew the inevitable decision Titus was careful to remain noncommittal, allowing the other three to chew the problem to death in the modern style. The two remaining signals were more than a day’s march away, again up into the downs but on a more westerly tack. It was doable, and they had no lack of supplies. There were no reasons against the trip except its exhausting and depressing nature. Dio gave voice to this: “I don’t want to track down any more unmarked graves.”

“It’s the last thing we can do for Shell and Ticker,” Gin said. “And their families.” By process of elimination it was plain that the two remaining pingers were those of Shell Gedeon and Ticker Calazar.

“To prove their deaths,” Joan agreed. “It’s our job to know, not to guess. If you and Dio are too tired, I could go with Titus.”

Titus refrained from twitching with alarm, even when Gin added, “Well of course Titus is going to go.”

“But if we all four went, it would actually be less work and less time,” Dio reasoned. “We get there, we settle it, and then El sends the lander to pick us up. No trekking two days back.”

“I suppose the treader’s a loss,” Joan said wistfully. “I hate to leave it.”

It was dark as Egypt outside, but the mildewy growths were visible in the cabin lights, gray and brown fibers slowly creeping up the plastic walls. “No way El will let it back into her clean cargo bay,” Dio assured her. “We’ll be lucky if she lets us back.”

“But then we’d have to carry everything with us,” Gin said. “All the medical supplies, both tents, as much food and power as we can stagger under — because we won’t know what we’ll need, and we won’t be coming back.”

The prospect was daunting. Titus decided to make his push. “As a matter of fact, finding two more graves would be intensely significant,” he said in the most reasonable and level of tones. “Worth almost any trouble. Don’t forget, we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of a Fortie. Those others, the fifteen — we assume they were interred by humans. If the other two are buried as well, then who buried them?”

The prospect of resolving the vexing Fortie question was, as he expected, enough to revive enthusiasm. He said nothing of bodies sinking into the bog, or the possibility of stumbling across skeletons bleaching in the moss. It was inexpressibly comforting to think not of vicious hordes of Forties armed with clamshell axes on the warpath, but of puzzled but kindly natives performing a final service for their alien visitors. In a trice the unanimous decision was made, to pack up and be off at first light.

By this point trekking across Aloha had lost all the charm of novelty for Titus. How a planet could be free of any firm solid surface even on hills was beyond him. And the insinuating slimy growths were simply disgusting. The entire planetary surface could do with a good scrubdown with carbolic and hot water. Whatever the disadvantages of sledging in the Antarctic, at least the place had been clean!

The Sun guided them as before, and they broke for the night in the secure knowledge that next day should see it through. Titus looked forward to a good rest after the day’s work. Two tents meant that there was plenty of room for everybody.

Perhaps Dio’s snoring wound its way through his slumber, however, recalling other nights in small tents with exhausted and snoring men. For the first time in months he dreamed of the Polar expedition. He was in a tent sewn of green canvas, not a pop-up moulded of smart plastic. The inner peak was white with feathery crystals of rime, and festooned with socks and mitts hung to dry. Uncle Bill gave the hoosh on the cylindrical Nansen cooker a final stir. “Birdie, where’s your mug? Con, hoosh is up.”

It was February 18, 1912, and there were only the four of them — Evans had died last night and was buried outside under a thin scuffle of snow. The others bore all the scars of the long Polar trek, frostbite, windburn, pustules, and two inches of beard. Clean-shaven, whole and transfixed with acute embarrassment, Titus crossed his arms to hide his supremely modern exploration gear: the standard PTICA issue light loose trousers, their overly-bright blue fibres engineered to grow more or less insulative in response to his body temperature, and the grey long-sleeved wicking Henley shirt with a decorative programmable pixel panel on the front and the Sun’s camera woven into the breast pocket — the audio pickup was built into the button nearest his chin. At the moment the decorative panel displayed a photograph taken by Mag of a cavorting pinto pony, but another thousand-odd images could be substituted with a click of the palmtop on his belt. The garments also continually transmitted basic biological information like his heart rate to the Sun, and would buzz them if he suffered major blood loss, had an apoplectic fit, or got off the top of his form in any physiological way. Thank Heaven, his embarrassment was wasted. With the mysterious logic of dreams the others didn’t even glance at any of these wonders.

Possibly due to the smart fibres, the bone-aching chill even within the tent had no impact on him. The only familiar sensation was that of hunger. He was starving, trembling with inanition, so ravenous that the lamplight swam before his eyes. They were all of them running the engines on nothing but the smell of an oily rag. Weeks of three-quarter or even half rations, pulling like draft horses for seventeen hours out of the twenty-four through twenty and thirty degrees of frost, had devoured all their resources and more — far more. Titus had retained more than just his modern kit. From Lash’s history books he knew what they did not know, could never have known, in 1912. They were living on not fat but muscle, getting inexorably weaker by the day, wracked by vitamin deficiency and dehydration as well as exhaustion, cold, and short commons. As Wilson scraped the hoosh into the mugs, dividing the last brown dribbles with scrupulous fairness, the bones were clearly visible in his gaunt cheeks. Birdie fumbled painfully to grasp his mug, scarcely able to see for snowblindness, his fingers distorted with frostbite. Scott took his own and gazed into it without eating, still sadly cut up by Evans’ demise.

With a muttered word of thanks Titus took the tin mug that Wilson passed him. He knew what he had to do now. He had to throw off the trammeling mores of this era, and shed as well the alien sentimentality of the 21st century. They were dying on their feet, and none but he to save them. Needs must when the devil drives. Evans had been a big muscular man. The corpse was frozen hard as rock by now. Butchering it would be grisly, but not unendurably ghastly. Cannibalism — but the alluring smell of the thin porridge of biscuit, pemmican and milk powder made him giddy, and he lifted the mug to his lips. Eat first, and then…

Before he could taste the food Titus started awake. He turned over with an oath and sat up, sweating with horror. Beside him Dio stirred. “What’s happenin’, boss?”

“Nothing, lad. Go back to sleep.” Trustingly the younger man did so, burrowing into his thin modern sleeping bag. Titus pushed a shaking hand into his head sack to wipe his wet face. Just a dream, a sodding nightmare! He had never lost control of appetite to that extent. High principle and will had continued unbroken to the uttermost end, the way it ought. Nobody had suggested cannibalizing poor Evans, had entertained the thought for a moment. It had been inconceivable for gentlemen in 1912. Only a man plucked out of that time could entertain the notion.

And he was not hungry! He hadn’t missed a meal in years if one didn’t count coldsleep, and in these latter years had actually been eating moderately lest he become fleshy in middle age. The night light glowed softly, gleaming on the wrappers of food bars that could feed them all for a month with a completeness of vitamins and nutrition that would have been Scott’s salvation. And at his word the Cloudy Sun would drop a bouncer full of yet more supplies. What could he be starving for? He lacked nothing!

Still shivering with the grues, he rolled himself back in his bag. When the past breathed on his neck like that it was a warning, the Queen of Air and Darkness crooking her seductive finger. He’d be exhausted if he didn’t sleep now. He lay quite still so as not to wake Dio, thinking resolutely of nothing, as if forcing anxieties into namelessness would keep them at bay.

But once on the way his vapours receded. They had scaled the hills once again and returned to the drier upland terrain. For the first time the clouds thinned above, giving intermittent glimpses of an apricot-gold sky. It didn’t rain all morning. The slick mosses became thicker, nearly as substantial as cloth if not carpet. Aloha might almost be earthlike, Titus reflected sardonically, especially if viewed after a skinful of beer.

He had privately vowed not to ask Dio how much further it was, not even once. This resolve did not bite hard at all since Joan and Gin kept on pestering him about his readings and appealing to the Sun for confirmation. By midday the necessarily less-accurate reading from space had them right on the spot. “We’re close,” Dio said.

“You can’t think how wearying it is to hear that again,” Titus said. The humid haze had cleared enough so that he could survey the terrain ahead with field glasses. “We’re also close to the top — the watershed, if one can use the term in so waterlogged a country. We should be able to see the ocean soon.”

“You’ll get to name it,” Joan suggested.

“Not I. El can do it.”

“What’s that bump over there, Joan?” Gin pointed it out. “Our first rock maybe?”

“We should get a sample.”

“Let me see,” Dio said, reaching for the glasses. “… That’s not rock. It’s metal.”

Quicker off the mark than he, the women were immediately off at a run, scurrying along the ridge. Titus knew it would be impossible to run a quarter-mile in these conditions flat out, and held himself to a fast walk. He caught up with them and they all slithered splashily down the shallow mossy slope. At the bottom of the dip the stubby rusty cylinder was partly buried in the side of the slope, its portals yawning empty and black. “Part of a lander fuselage,” Dio panted behind him.

Struggling against the clogged micropores of his head sack, Titus was too breathless to reply. Suddenly there was a movement inside, and she was there, ducking her head out of the low doorway.

He noticed every detail as if the moment were a snapshot: how Shell was gaunt, white even beyond the usual spaceman’s pallor, her blonde curls long now and tied back; how she reeled against the doorway, clinging to the metal edge; how the wide generous mouth dropped open in silent astonishment.

The only emotion he was aware of was irritation. “You needn’t gawp like that,” he snapped. “Surely you knew I’d come for you.” To his complete horror her knees slowly buckled and she collapsed. “Oh God, I’ve killed her!”

“You romantic devil,” Dio said joyfully.

Joan said, “No, Dio, it’s sweet.”

Like a sprinter from the starting blocks Gin leaped past them, shucking her pack. “El, we found them! Joan, open the medical kit for me. Dio, get inside and see if Ticker’s there!”

Titus found himself sitting on the wet moss gasping, his head in his hands. It was as if a thunderclap had struck and stripped him naked, revealing him to every beholder as a sentimental and romantic fool. He had known, had conclusively proven, that he could accomplish any task he set his mind to. In his hand resolution was an invincible weapon. But the setting of that goal, the selection of an object to be resolved upon, had been utterly beyond his management and even his knowledge. Once again he had missed the crucial information.

He had focused every scrap of his power, his entire being and life, upon reaching this spot, upon finding Shell. And to achieve this goal he had disciplined himself remorselessly to forget her, because one could not manipulate a trillion-dollar expedition for purely personal ends. He had buried his motives deep, drawn the baseline to exclude them, and only now could he see them clear, the fiery sword that had compelled him. Could he not have taken warning from his heritage? He was the son of a mother who had burnished his memory every day of her life.

His disorganization, the lack of proper thought and direction and intelligence, filled him now with disgust. His heart had its reasons, of which he himself knew nothing! He had always avoided and despised self-knowledge as the sort of slosh that moderns pursued and chattered about. Now it occurred to him that he had achieved the goal that he had set himself, long ago in a church aisle in New York City. He had become a modern, all the way through to the core. He had willingly and deliberately come to need them as they needed each other. Why the surprise then, when the hunger for one woman was more ferocious than the drunkard’s for his gin or the opium eater’s for his drug? Violent revolutions in his assumptions had got to be a habit with him, but it was damned unpleasant every time. Looking his heart in the face now and again might save him from being blindsided by it. He swore to amend his ways, and never let this happen again!

He hit the comm button. “El,” he said harshly.

“Here, Titus. I have you on a private channel. What’s up?”

“I owe you a confession. That first day? I lied. All of this, every action of mine for the past eight years, was for one purpose: to find her again.” He paused, wondering what honour demanded, what amends he could make.

The captain’s voice was serene in its beauty. “Don’t worry about it, Titus.”

“Don’t worry? I should resign my commission, or whatever the modern equivalent is.”

“You can’t do that now,” she pointed out. “Titus, I don’t want to add to your stress, but this is yesterday’s news.”

“The devil you say!”

“We all of us knew what was going on. It was nice that you were trying to be unbiased and disciplined, but nobody believed it for one tiny second.”

These damned moderns were so emotionally sensitive, they could skate rings round him. The emperor had never had a slathering stitch of clothing. Titus swore foully. He would have given an arm to be able to fill his lungs and wipe his sweaty brow. “And you didn’t bloody well tell me?”

“You didn’t tell us. Look, Titus. You’re a man of tremendous passion, and self-control to match. Why putz with your coping mechanisms for no good reason? Now, can we save the discussion for later? Ticker is in a bad way, and Gin is yelling for both tents to be set up.”

Passionate was the last word he would have used for himself. Swearing monotonously, Titus hauled himself to his feet and set to work on the tents. It was always stabilizing to work. Well! Although his scruples were wasted, if they were indeed unimportant then he had not won this berth by manipulation and unspoken blackmail. He’d got here on his merits, a comforting reflection!

When the tents were up Gin had him carry Ticker over to one. Titus ducked his head into the fuselage. The cylindrical section was partly sunk into the earth and too low to stand upright in. Every surface inside and out was mottled with mildewy growths, and stringy fungal strands furred the inside curve of the roof. The only light was from Gin’s emergency lamp on the floor. He got only a glimpse of Shell, lying on the floor with the other two women crowded round, before Dio waved him over to the other side. Titus could barely make out a long lean form clad in rags. God, how long had they hung on like this? “Right,” he said with synthetic cheer. “We’ll have you out of this in two shakes.”

Ticker did not seem to hear him, continuing to talk in a hoarse rapid gabble. “ — must’ve covered most of the planet. Even now, approaching tertiary devolution, it’s huge, easily visible from orbit.”

“Get it in gear, will you?” Dio whispered, and Titus realized that Ticker was addressing not either of them but the Sun, through their button mikes and shirt cameras. The sick man weighed no more than a big dog in his arms. The heat of his fever scorched right through Titus’s shirt, and yet he shivered in the raw chill.

“What have they been living on?”

“One-quarter of a food bar daily,” Dio said. “And water that the Fortie helped them filter.”

“The Fortie.” Titus ducked low to ease his burden into the tent, through the standard zipper portal now that the condoms were defunct. Its blessed warmth and dryness enfolded them like a mother’s arms.

Dio followed and unfolded a sleeping bag. Together they lowered the sick man into it. “Only one, apparently. And it’s breaking up into pieces. From what he’s been saying it’s possible we may have never yet touched the surface of Aloha. All this time, we’ve been wading over disintegrating and outlying segments of Fortie.”

Titus grimaced in disgust. ”Faugh!”

“Don’t say that,” Ticker said pettishly, rousing from feverish torpor. “It’s like trying to judge a man by a toenail clipping and some dandruff. Now shut up and let me download. Before he died Kim doped out a communication mechanism — “

In the light the sick man looked appalling. Nothing but a bundle of rotting rags and bone! His joints, knee and ankle and wrist and elbow, were swollen and red, unable to bear his weight. Gin had popped a head sack on him first thing, but through the plastic the mildewy growths were visible in Ticker’s lank gray hair, in his ears, and most horribly, gumming his eyelids. Titus vowed never to complain of his own head sack ever again.

Without discussion they opened flasks of Gin’s mixture. Titus dug a washcloth out of his pack and Dio found a plastic bag to use as a basin. “Gin will come by in a minute and do her doctor thing,” Dio said. “We’ll just get a jump on cleaning you up, huh?”

“Not as bad as it looks,” Ticker muttered. “The spores’re too alien to make you sick. You can just wipe ‘em off.” When the remains of his clothing were stripped away the sores were visible, round black ones each rimmed with growing things.

“And we will,” Titus said, setting his teeth and swabbing.

Ticker coughed, a dreadful gluey sound that went on and on. “It’s the immune system reactions that get you. Something like histoplasmosis — hits you like the flu. Your own body exposed to this stuff and then going nuts.”

“Gin will fix you up,” Dio said.

“It told us you were coming, you know. Felt you hit, in your bouncer or lander or whatever it was. Don’t underestimate that Fortie.” Titus exchanged a glance with Dio. So that was what that mystifying little earthquake was, when they landed — the Fortie, starting at the pinprick! Ticker sighed, exhausted. With his haggard face scrubbed pink and shiny clean he looked much more human. “You have the data cubes, right? And I’ve told Agadjla all the important stuff. I can die in peace.”

This was the final straw. Titus flung the washcloth down with a splash. “The hell you will! It cost four hundred billion dollars to mount this rescue expedition, far more than it cost to rescue me. And we had to crawl for every buggering cent. If you have the barefaced brass to die on us now after all our trouble, I’ll — I’ll track you down, to your rock in hell or your cloud in Heaven, and thrash you soundly!”

Even as they burst out the words sounded comic. Today must be his day for making a blithering ass out of himself! Ticker only stared up open-mouthed. Now that the clotting growths were washed away it could be seen that his eyes still didn’t track. The man was nearly blind. “I recognize your voice. You’re what’s-his-name, the time traveler. What the hell did they drag you along for?”

“Yes, yes, I’m Oates,” Titus said impatiently. “Trekking, scrubbing epidermis and a ha’pennyworth of common sense my specialty.”

At this moment Gin came in, lugging her medical bag. “Out,” she said tersely.

“Ah — do you need help to carry Shell?”

“Already done — she’s asleep. Ticker, we haven’t met, but I’m Dr. Ginevra Aguilar of the Clowderman Sun …”

Titus and Dio made haste to clear out. Only fools would get between Gin and her patient. Outside, Dio nudged him. “Boss. You busy?”

Titus was. There was a final check of the supplies to be sent down on the balloon bouncer in a few hours, and uploading the recovered data to the Sun, and ten thousand other tasks which plucked at Titus’s shirttail like whiny children. Instead of attacking any of them he raised an eyebrow at Dio, who went on, “Let’s go see the Fortie.”

He pointed. Plain to be seen on the soft earth was the most commonplace and ordinary sight imaginable, a path worn by human feet — Shell’s feet, Titus realized. In desperate straits, starving and cold and ill, she had stuck to her duty. And it might be his duty too, to see this alien being for himself, giving the Sun the opportunity to capture images and sound. He scowled down at the shorter man. “I daresay if I said that we were going to unpack baggage, you’d sneak off alone.”

“You’re always right, boss,” Dio agreed, the sunny smile white in his swarthy little face. “It’d be saving me from myself, really.”

Titus knew well that lust for adventure, a desire entirely distinguishable from though no less insistent than carnal ones. Now he felt like an indulgent father or a kindly ship captain as he said, “Right — let’s be off then.”

It gave one a queer sensation about the boot soles, to think of the soft wet earth underfoot as living flesh. But the idea accounted for a number of oddities, like the way the water stood even on hilltops instead of flowing properly downhill. And here was solid confirmation of the notion as the path climbed uphill and threaded between two buttresses. On the left was a curve of spongy earth streaming with moisture. On the right was a rocky face, the first natural hard edge or surface they had seen here. It was impossible not to pause and touch the little cliff, and feel the good gritty jaggedness of the sandstone bite into their palms. The stone was wet but solid, sticking up out of the spongy soil like a tooth from its gum. “If Wilson or Scott was here they’d take samples,” Titus said.

“We’d need tools,” Dio said. “And maybe the Fortie wouldn’t like it?”

“Good thought. Let’s wait and find out if Shell’s already collected some.” They went on, downhill now. The stony cleft had been the highest point. Abruptly the land dropped away, and they could see for miles. Ahead of them the horizon was scarlet with sunset. Wings of purple and gold fanned out from the orb hidden behind its clouds. Molten-copper light poured down and made a path as bright as polished pennies across a shallow ocean that extended from north to south and up to the wide marshy shore below them. And it was true land, a genuine shoreline, with surf and craggy lichened rocks and seaweedy mudflats all complete. Peculiar, to trek a planet for a fortnight and only now feel certain of arrival! Titus looked with pleasure from the decent crags on his right to the brown squashy peat on his left — “Holy Christ!”

Beside him Dio was already staring, transfixed. “Ticker was saying,” he gulped, “that the nearest terrestrial analog was slime molds.”

At Eton, British boys had learnt the classical Greek motto: man is the measure of all things. Not for the first time it occurred to Titus that Protagoras deserved a clout over the earhole. This creature could not be measured or even described in a man’s terms. It lay like a forest across the range of hills to the south, many-hued and textured and extending for miles. In fact it was possible the thing was the range — who knew how thick it was? The downland ripples were curiously reminiscent of vertebrae. There were things like pools of water fringed with moss, only nearly vertical in the cliff — either they were jelly or the water was held in place by a membrane or lens. There were broad forests of golden lichen as thick as hair alternating with smooth slick black places glistening with damp. There were regions of reddish mossy tendrils, and acres of quivery soft earth. It was like the terrain they had so painfully traversed, only different — organized. All the different bits, fallen awry and out of place, were useless. Only here, marshaled under an organizing entity, were the true possibilities of the life here made manifest. This was no mere life form. A nasty uncanny feeling came over Titus, that here was the planet’s god.

And it was dying. Pieces were blowing away, flaking off in the wind to become the annoying molds that they had learned to hate. Patches of colourful growth sagged and changed hue and flowed helpessly downhill. Order was being steadily overwhelmed by disorder. Even as they watched one of the fringed limpid pools wavered and leaked away.

Titus leaned against the friendly genuine rocks. “El. Are you seeing this?”

“Yeah. Oh my God. It’s worth the trip.”

There was a flat sandstone ledge to the right, just before the slope dropped more steeply away to the sea. Stacked there, sealed carefully in triple layers of thick plastic, was equipment: monitors, solar arrays, battery banks, keyboards, cables. “The translation gear,” Dio said. “Joan’s sending all the data up, El. So we’ll know in a little while how far they got in talking to it.”

“If you ask me, I’d say the thing’s beyond talk.” And snap went the final thread of his mission. Titus bade a rueful mental farewell to the imaginary battles against hordes of clamshell-wielding natives. This pathetic dying creature couldn’t attack anyone. Sickness alone was responsible for the human casualties.

Dio wandered around tracing the run of cables, while Titus sat down in a convenient stony angle and put his feet up. Too convenient, come to think of it. This seat had been made by Shell, the footrest rock placed for her shorter legs, everything conveniently to hand for research. He mused upon the blank quiet screens. The hours and days she must have spent here! Damned stubborn woman, he was certain she would have cheerfully died in the traces — pluck to the backbone.

Suddenly one screen and then another flickered into life. Titus sat up, alarmed. “Dio, what the devil are you at?”

“It’s not me!” They stared at the screen as a single word trembled into existence: Hello.

Titus swore feebly. This was Shell’s job! The other screen offered, helpfully, a definition: “Indicates readiness for conversation.”

Dio’s monkey face was blank with astonishment. “Ticker was saying the Fortie knows how to manipulate acid levels in its secretions. To use that to ‘talk’…”

Perhaps it would be rude to ignore the overture? Titus had been wrong about the thing being moribund. The cut direct might send it into a rage. “If Shell did it, we can do it,” Titus decided. “Key in something cordial, like ‘how d’ye do.’”

“Maybe ‘hello’ would be safer,” Dio suggested. “God knows how much vocabulary they’ve been able to build.”

“Good — try it.”

Dio pecked the word in. Titus watched the vast being beside him. Though he had no idea what to look for, or indeed where on the enormous expanse of protoplasm were features of expression. It might be like his confusion about female clothing when he first arrived, when he’d been unable to distinguish a whore from a respectable female. In retrospect now that had been easy. Now there was not a twitch of a tendril: only the endless sad shredding away of the Fortie’s substance. The sun dipped down below the clouds and shot its long level rays to glaze the scarps with gold. Only the most frantically trite statements came to mind, to stoke the conversation: Pretty planet you have here. Shall we be seeing a little rain this evening? A bit nippy for the time of year, I find.

Before he could get Dio to enter in any of these inanities a fresh word materialized on the screen: New?

“Yes, we’re the new intake,” Titus said. Dio kept it to a simple ‘yes.’ Certainly they fit the definition on the other screen — not known or seen before.

Then the significance of that query hit him. The Fortie had noticed their presence and identified them as novel entities somehow, through Heaven knew what unearthly sense organs. When they looked, it was looking back! To think of this carpet of protoplasm as intelligent, perceptive — it was more eerie than anything Titus could have conceived.

The final red fingernail edge of the sun vanished under the horizon. They both had flashlamps, but it would be imprudent to linger. The others would worry, and there was always the chance of stumbling over the cliff edge in the dark. “Good night,” Dio entered in. They loitered a moment to see if there would be a reply. See you tomorrow, the screen suddenly read.

Chapter 33

Duty done, the lost found, the unknown faced, and all this on top of a day’s hard work — Titus expected to sleep like a top that night. But no. There was not room to toss and turn in the tent, crowded now with three men. Instead he lay in the dim glow of the night light with his hands clasped behind his head, and looked back over his life. He was no longer going to hide his head in the sand, but face things head-on.

In 1912 he had been unhappy. He could recognize that now. The rigid strictures of Edwardian society ensured that a passionate man (if he really was passionate) would be immured in frustration. There were permissible outlets, of course — sport and war and exploration — and in pursuit of these he had nearly put paid to his existence more than once. He had hungered for danger and excitement — something difficult, as he had said on his way to the Antarctic — and here was the reason why.

Rescued and set loose in the 21st century, he had perforce learnt modern ways. People now pursued happiness and understanding. They liked seeing clearly and communicating feelings. Self-control and doing one’s duty, the primary Edwardian virtues, took a distant second place. In many ways this made life was more pleasant. (Mmm, women. El must be right after all, damn her perceptive eyes.)

But the disjoint between his old mental habits and the modern expectations was difficult to ameliorate. No longer forbidden, the fruit was still colossally distracting. It had been far simpler to hew to celibacy during the voyage. Perhaps for passionate persons it was always all or nothing. Self-discipline came more naturally to him. One did not need women to live a good life. He had always deplored this modern interest in romantic tosh. An interlocking series of irrelevancies to the real business of life! But then to be revealed as a sentimental fool after all was intolerable. And to be hailed as sweet by little Joan — no, the only thing to do was resort to self-control again and hope to recover some scrap of dignity. By Heaven, he would master heart as well as body, for anything less than mastery was intolerable.

This fine resolution collapsed without a shot being fired next morning, when Gin poked her head into the men’s tent at breakfast. “I dosed her,” she announced, “but she wants to see you before the drugs hit.”

With profound irritation Titus noticed that everyone’s gaze turned to him. He must look as sick as a parrot. He jumped up from his seat on his folded sleeping bag, nearly kicking over his drink packet. A fine stoical figure he was cutting! Without replying he pulled down his head sack and went.

The women’s tent was already indefinably different from the other. It couldn’t be perfume, since the head sacks filtered every breath he inhaled, or any item of the standard equipment. It must be the mere female presence that did it. Joan seized her spongebag and fled without a word. He glowered at the tact written in every line of her retreating back. Perhaps that was why they’d signed him on — the opportunity to foster a soppy reunion was irresistible.

“Titus,” Shell murmured. Her voice was a thread of its former self. “Nice crew you have.”

He noticed she was blonder — not from sun, but from the greater admixture of silver hairs among the gold. She was lying very flat in her sleeping bag, the once plump hands folded on her breast. Their stillness and weakness were so unlike Shell that fear constricted his heart. And, good God, was she giving young Joan her approval? It must have looked bloody suggestive, to come waltzing up with a handsome female crewmate on each arm! He burst out, “There is no more provoking, pointless, troublemaking, all-round damnable modern practice than mixed staffing! The amount of unadulterated misery saved in single-sex crews would far outweigh any of your philosophical airiness about gender equality.”

She laughed, a breath of sound caught in her head sack, and then coughed. “Titus, you sound guilty. Have you been cutting a swathe? Sit and tell me all about it.”

He sat down cross-legged on the groundcloth, bitterly aware that protestations would only make it worse but unable to help himself. “I haven’t laid a finger on them. Any of them!” Immediately he faltered. “Curse it, I’ve been pure as driven snow, this voyage anyway.”

Then the penny dropped. Of course — she wasn’t up to conversation, with this damned alien stuff clogging her lungs. It was his duty to carry both ends of the talk. He began to blather at random, almost babbling, his accent sliding helplessly over into posh. “I did exactly as you told me, married and started a family. And it didn’t answer at all! Happiness is sadly over-rated, and I’m sure that the American pursuit of it is a waste of time. Picture, yes, here’s a picture of them, Willie and Violet. I’m told that two is the most difficult age. The problem with all this haring back and forth through time, I probably shan’t skip as many of the tedious bits as one would like. Elizabeth insisted on a divorce — I still don’t quite understand that. No picture of her, but I’m told you know her grandmother, Dr. Winstone at Cambridge. I do have a snap of my horse. Nat and I went to a stock show in Durango in ‘50, and Diabolo’s breeder had just put him on the market. Magnificent conformation, light and lively action, sixteen hands high, mustang-warmblood sire out of an Arabian mare, but dark bay isn’t a fashionable colour, so he was a bargain… Shell?”

Her eyes were closed, her breath hoarse and shallow. He held his fingers close to the hectic flush of her cheek. She was so fevered it was like approaching a blacksmith’s forge, the freckles on her nose standing out stark. Carefully he didn’t touch her. Christ, what ugly changes time and life wrought! It would be quite like her generosity, to make a gesture to an old lover — a ghost from the past. It had been eight years for him since they had last met; for Shell it was at least four. Their lives had diverged mightily since that meteoric affair. It had lasted less than three months! Was there anything left of that fire, or was it all devoured by illness and stolen by time? His accursed foolish heart had led him willy-nilly on a wild-goose chase, pursuing what could never be again.

He rose and tiptoed out of the tent. It was entirely possible that he had utterly flung away the last eight years of his life. Well, one couldn’t repine — the past could become a trap. Onwards, to the future! But the prospect was damned bleak. She might live or die, might have lost interest in him or not, and there was nothing he could do but await the event in patience, for years if necessary. His vaunted self-control would be more vital than ever. For a moment the size of the task made him heartsick, and he stood with his head bowed and his hands jammed into his damp trouser pockets.

“Titus!” It was Gin, shouting at him. He became abruptly aware that she had been standing in front of him and trying to get his attention for some moments. “Titus, she’ll be fine, I promise. When the balloon bouncer brings me some more antifungals — “

Titus ducked away from her before she could see the truth in his face. It was a petty satisfaction that a modern had misread his feelings. But she was assuming he was a far better person. The truth was revolting: that his thoughts revolved solely around his own miseries. Shell was ill, perhaps dying, and he was wound up completely in himself, a monster of self-centredness, chattering about his personal life and his horse. He had not even thought to give her news of Miranda, which anyone with a rag of decency and consideration would have done.

Scourging himself with self-disgust, he went to ground in the other tent, where Ticker immediately hailed him. “Titus can do it,” he said to Dio.

“He would. But it’s a bad idea.”

“The Fortie,” Ticker said to Titus, and began to cough. It was some moments before he could continue, “You’re the strong one. Carry me down to the site.”

Dio appealed to Titus too. “Gin told him to stay in bed!”

“Who’s the boss, you or her?” The shortsighted gaze focused on Titus’s knees. “Shell’s been going back and forth, transmitting questions and bringing back the answers. Couldn’t ask her to do more. But now you’re here.”

“Yes, certainly.” Here at least he could do some good. Every small happiness possible should be salvaged, Crusoe-fashion, from the wreck of despair. “Dio, break out the spare rain gear.”

Dio rolled his eyes in disbelief, but lent a hand with bundling the sick man up against the damp cold. They both had to ease Ticker through the low tent portal. Once outside Titus hoisted the lean body in his arms.

There had been a further ghastly deterioration in the Fortie overnight. A large chunk of its substance had turned brown and oozed down, clogging the little entrance cleft with what they once would have called mud. It was nearly knee deep, and Dio had to help steer Titus, who could not see where to put his feet. “Poor devil,” Titus grunted. “Dying like this.”

“It’s not dying,” Ticker corrected him. “A natural process — devolution, we’ve called it.”

Dio raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You mean it does this often?”

“Every half-century or so, it tells us. It’s not strange or painful, to a slime-mold creature. Just part of its life cycle. It devolves into smaller and smaller bits, until it’s nothing but spores and cells in the ocean out there. And then it reorganizes, amalgamates into complex structures that join together until it covers a third of the planet. We arrived just after its second phase. I want to ask it when the third devolution is due. Because that’s when the intelligence will go.”

With a final effort Titus waded damply up to the sandstone shelf. “It must be like the torments of the damned.”

“Don’t be so parochial. No more than taking a night’s sleep is torment, for us.” Ticker sighed and relaxed as Titus lowered him down to a sitting position. “In fact we never really have been able to explain sleep. The Fortie never sleeps and has never met anything that does. It understands that we’re diurnal, but not why.”

They watched Ticker fumble at the keyboard and peer at the screen. But already words were appearing: Hello, Ticker.

“How does it recognize you?”

Ticker clicked at the keys through their plastic. “I’m not sure how its senses work. More research, more talk…Dio, do you see a red cable back there? Could you check its plastic?”

As the other two became absorbed in the work Titus looked out to sea. In the morning light it was obvious the green and gold water was very shallow. It would be a grand thing to explore the coast while it was still there. At any point, if Ticker was right, the Fortie would flow or ooze or creep on down to the shore, smothering it for miles. Even with the aid of field glasses it was not possible to pick out where the Fortie ended and plain ordinary land began. The creature extended as far as he could see. And this was only a portion of it!

As he watched the landscape moved. Acres of Fortie rippled like a carpet animated by magic. He let the field glasses fall, startled. A huge limb or extension, yellowish and jellylike, was extruding towards them. “Ticker, it’s moving,” Dio said in alarm.

“Wants to meet you,” Ticker said. “Nothing to sweat about. Shake hands, Titus.”

Impossible to turn tail. Titus swore silently as the extension squeezed slowly forward, about the size of a large auto or small lorry. “Go on,” Ticker urged. “S’okay.”

If a Yank could stand buff, an Englishman could do no less. Titus steeled himself and put his palm on the surface. It was damp and cold and alive, like a frog fresh from the pond — flowing like water, welling up between his fingers. He had the sense that it was solid all the way down, like a jellied consommé. If one cut through there would be no bones, no ligaments or organs or membranes. It was completely unearthly.

“Dio, you want to give it a whirl?”

“I guess.” Dio reluctantly came forward.

Titus stepped back to give him room. In the presence of this huge creature his vapourings fell into their true importance, and he was able to play the mental game properly. They had accomplished no small thing. Nearly every mission objective was not only done but well done. It was worth going on expeditions, merely to kick himself out of his narrowness. Even if he had lost her, it had been worthwhile.

Such peace of mind was so rare, Titus was not in the least surprised when it was broken in on. His comm buzzed. “Titus,” Freddy said. “I’m coming in with your bouncer.”

“Christ on a crutch! Ticker, tell the Fortie not to be startled at the noise. And beg it, for all love, not to twitch at the impact! And you, Freddy, don’t drop it downhill or in the ocean.”

“I’ll dribble it right to your front door.”

“You damn well better.” He ran back up to the tents calling for Joan and Gin. Already the scream of the lander could be heard as it swooped down through the upper air. It astonished him to see how small the balloon bouncer looked as it separated from the lander, and how swiftly it plummeted. They must have been mad as hares to ride in the thing! The parachutes bloomed, and then the balloons inflated too quickly to see. The bouncer suddenly looked not like a metal tetrahedron but a tight cluster of gray grapes. It plunged to earth and bounced like a toy. Titus braced himself for an earthquake or tremor, but Ticker must have got through to the Fortie. The bouncer rebounded once, twice, three times, rolling down the slope to halt in the next little valley.

“Yippee!” Gin yelled. “Medications!”

There was also clothing, another tent big enough for the six of them to meet in, gallons of truly effective cleaning fluids, and a microwave oven plucked bodily from the Sun’s kitchen. The rest of the day was not long enough to unload everything.

Titus had not realized how his old Antarctic experience had warped him. He felt far happier now with plenty of supplies and power under his hand. And it was good to see Shell and Ticker in clean ship’s clothing. With proper drugs, lung fumigant sprays, anti-inflammatories and antihistamines, their ailments could be treated. Shell especially improved marvelously, breathing properly, sitting up and taking notice, and shoveling food down like a trooper.

In the big tent they could shed the head sacks briefly and relax. When they all sat on the floorcloth to eat, Shell talked the way Ticker had done — or as Titus himself had bibble-babbled once, in a tent at the top of the Beardmore glacier, pouring out the memories of an overburdened heart. “We could have done better,” she said. “We should have! But I couldn’t save them. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. When Amy died, and Tim — “

The pain in her voice made Titus bite his lip. All exploration is a voyage into self, and on hers she had found grief and despair. “You couldn’t possibly have saved them,” Captain Agadja said from the speaker.

Shell’s shoulders slumped. “We failed. Oh God…“ Abruptly she was crying, weeping into her hands. On one side Joan hugged her, while on the other Gin, ever the watering-pot, sniveled as well. Titus sat white and still, his head almost bowed to his knees, saying nothing, unable to reach her. The last time Shell had wept like that was in his arms. If only he could comfort her, revive that indomitable hope! Remembering her optimism, the almost visible penumbra of it as she leaned on the horn of her saddle to laugh at him in Wyoming, was like a twisting knife.

Practical Dio passed over a towel. Ticker was still in shocking condition, chesty and unable to sit up. He lay in a sleeping bag to one side of the tent, and stopped coughing long enough to say, “It was worst for her, because she was the doc. Somewhere in all that data is the medical reports. The death certificates.”

“I should have done something,” Shell sobbed. “There must have been something.”

Titus felt something nudge his knee. Beside him Dio held out his palmtop. On the screen was a message from Captain Agadja up in the Sun. ‘Titus, say something!’ it read.

He gave Dio a curt nod, and rose to his feet. This tent was sufficiently large that a person could actually stand upright if he positioned himself at the centre. “Shell. Listen to me. And you too, Ticker — all of you. One does all that one can. And then that’s enough, and it’s time to stop. There’s a balance that has to be maintained, between pumping it all out, and then stopping when the well is dry. Dipping from a dry well wastes energy. We take risks — we know we take them. When things come out against us, none of us have cause for complaint. You did all that you could do, Shell. That anyone could have done.”

She blew her nose on Dio’s towel. “How can you know that, Titus?”

Suddenly he was white not with distress, but fury — fury at the vast cruelty of things. That supreme effort and good will and fiery courage were not enough was wrong, bitterly evil. By God, if he only had indeed the power to revise the world, this was where the repair should be made! The rage whittled his voice down to a hoarse whisper and clenched his hands into fists, but tears blurred his vision. “Do you think I can’t recognize it, when someone’s poured it all out on the altar? That I don’t goddamn well know?”

The tent seemed to be full of goggling eyes and open mouths. In any other place and time he would have turned and flung out into the night. But on a cold rainy night on Aloha all that would get him was exhausted and muddy to the eyes. Instead he sat down again and bowed his face into his hands, breathing as if he’d run the hundred yard dash.

Ticker coughed. “Lucky you came when you did. Once the Fortie devolved, we’d have been toast.”

“And when’s that going to be?” Joan asked, valiantly fueling the conversation. “Can the Fortie say?”

“They don’t think of time like us. But it’s gotta be soon. Now Gin’s rinsed my eyes out, I can tell you the deterioration’s been tremendous this past month.”

Again the nudge against his knee. Titus glanced at Dio’s screen. ‘Good!!!’ it read. He shook his head, denying it, the taste of ashes in his mouth. He had helped a little — she had stopped crying — but nothing had actually changed. Shell did not need him so much as she needed the group, the connection that was life’s blood to every modern. He realized how much he had learned since arriving in the future. He would never have had such tact in 1912. He sat, knowing that he was too silent, avoiding the curious or worried glances from the others, hearing El’s concern in the silences of her transmissions. There is a time to fight and a time to give in. It could be it was time for the latter. One could not allow romantic delusions to overset life. Perhaps he was finally coming back round to his bachelor purity of purpose. Then as now in the final analysis women were a distraction from one’s proper work. And yes, the grapes were jolly sour today.

At least there was work to be done. The debate now was what the next step should be. Up in the Sun, Captain Agadja was clear. “We can be down and scoop you tomorrow.”

“But then we’ll miss the next stage of devolution!” Shell exclaimed.

“Haven’t you seen enough of that Fortie?”

“This is an event that won’t recur for fifty years,” Ticker said feebly. “Besides, we could get a specimen.”

“There’s enough pieces of protoplasm flying around here to fill a cargo bay,” Gin said. “You need more?”

“This would be different.” For a moment Shell spoke with quite her old excitement. “When the Fortie devolves, it breaks into equal parts. The first devolution was into three parts. Then those three split into three more.”

“So what we see here is one-ninth of the original being.”

“Yes — but the next stage is a big jump, from one-ninth into a hundred bits. Each piece is theoretically equivalent to the entire Fortie, but small — too small to be a rational being any more. The Fortie said we could take one with us. How could you possibly pass on a chance like that!”

Dio unwrapped his third food bar. “You mean take a devolute home? Wouldn’t that be like…kidnapping a child?”

“More like giving the doctor a blood sample,” Ticker said, coughing. “There’ll be nine hundred of ‘em, all heading for the sea, so one won’t be much of a loss. Once in the sea, they divide again, until the pieces are just spores. And then, in two years or so, they’ll re-evolve — start to join up. Take three years to pull itself completely together again.”

“It sounds awful inefficient,” Gin said skeptically. “How does the creature get anything done?”

“Oh, once the Fortie re-evolves it remembers everything,” Shell assured her. “The signal to us was done many cycles ago. This level, one-ninth, is at least as smart as you or me. What the full evolute is like — oh, I wish I could be there to see it!”

“You won’t,” Gin said. “It’s a miracle Ticker is still alive. We have to get you home as soon as possible.” The sick man glared shortsightedly at her.

“I may have a solution,” Captain Agadja interposed from space. “We haven’t been exactly lazy up here, you know.”

“You mean the Amity Star?”

“She’s refitted and repaired. Freddy is taking her for a test run tomorrow. If she’s good to go, then we have some cards to play with.”

“Divide our forces,” Shell said, with growing excitement.

“Suppose the Sun went home with Ticker, and all the samples you’ve collected, and a copy of all the data. Some of us could stay a little longer, to see the Fortie’s next devolution, and then come on home in the Amity.”

Suddenly Titus’s heart was knocking in his throat. He said nothing as Shell asked, “And who’s going in this latter party? Me, I hope.”

“Well sure, since you’re the main talker-to-Fortie. But then I get Gin, because you won’t need two medics. I guess we might strong-arm Titus into captaining the Amity home. Freddy could do the driving, and some of you guys could crew.”

Joan and Dio immediately chimed in with comment and suggestions, but Shell looked across at Titus and grinned. “You’re blushing, dear.”

“So would you, if — “ If the future was falling into your lap, he would have said. “It’s a ripping scheme, El.”

“I thought you might like it, Titus. But you must get the ship home safe. That’ll become your primary goal.”

“I have a thought about that.” Suddenly he was able to grin back at Shell. Too well he knew the agony of failure and the grief of loss. But from fumbling experimentation and experience he had discovered the anodyne: to leap forward into the unknown, to change the world. And he could help her do it! “I already had a primary mission, remember? To find out if the Fortie was friend or foe.”

“That’s over,” Ticker said wanly. “You can’t still be flogging that notion.”

The man had quite gone native! But it would be incorrect to say that. “You’ve talked to a creature at one-ninth capacity. How do you know what the entire entity really was at? This one couldn’t discourse on the Fortie Drive to you, am I right?”

“That’s true enough,” Shell admitted. “How a slime mold figured out meta-Einsteinian physics and bending space-time is the tough part.”

Titus folded his arms and frowned at the crinkly heap of food bar wrappers in the middle of the floorcloth. “This is not satisfactory. A question of vital importance is left dangling. The answer will be the foundation of humanity’s dealings with the Fortie. And all it calls for on our part to get that answer is a little resolution.”

“Oh my God, El.” Gin clapped her hands to her cheeks in mock horror. “Fasten your seat belts. He said it!”

Titus ignored her. “These ships traverse time as well as space. When we leave, suppose we take a turn through time. Hop five years into the future and come back to Aloha and visit the Fortie again. By then it will have evolved itself up to the top of its form. Shell can talk to it — you say it will remember her. And then we’ll get to the bottom of this once and for all.”

“That’s a wonderful idea!” Shell bounced up, still a little shaky, so that it was quite natural to rise and steady her. Momentum carried her forward into his arms, the magnet to the steel, and he sat down hard.

“Dio, you idle devil, move over and give the lady some room.” His voice was shaking. With elaborate and ghastly tact the others debated his proposal energetically with the space contingent, eyes front, Joan leading the charge. It was possible to edge back slightly within the confines of the tent and pretend they had some privacy to talk quietly. Not that anything but a jumble seemed to fall from his tongue. It was like bellying up to the membrane and stepping out of the body condom, shedding the armour. “That’s the solution to failure, you know — revise, because victory is so close to it. Oh God, I’ve missed you so damnably.”

“Nobody would ever know, with that stiff upper lip of yours. And you got married?”

“As per your instructions, may I point out. Christ, you’re nothing but rag and bone. I couldn’t think about you. If I had thought about it, about the blasted monstrous risks you were taking, I should have run stark staring mad — so I couldn’t. Don’t let me hurt you.” He was grasping her, gripping her like a drowning man clasping an oar as her hands touched his face and hair.

“No, hugs are so good. You’ve always been a hider — it’ll give you ulcers someday. Look how pale you are, a real spaceman’s pallor. Oh, and your bandaids! All those bruises! Be very careful about any break in the skin, okay? These micros will move in on any opening. And why don’t you have a handkerchief in your sleeve any more, now that I need one? There just hasn’t been time, and I’ve been chattering about my own stuff.”

“Not at all — you needed to, badly. And it’s important for the mission. I feel like the bloody spirit in the by-jingoed cloven pine, let out at last. I shall be quite content to stand on the sidelines and hold your handbag while you natter with aliens. Being your slave, what shall I do but tend upon the hours and times of your desire?”

“Oh yeah, right. You’re the bossiest troublemaker on this planet.”

Plain as paint, this was an invitation to kiss her. He hastened to close on the offer. Her mouth tasted achingly familiar and yet strange, of tears and vanilla and very distantly of Gin’s medications, and after the months of hardship her skin had lost the creamy richness of old. An exploratory overture, but so tingling that the tent seemed to teeter around him. He had been starving for her, and all the substitutes he had tried to stay the tigerish hunger with had been woefully insufficient. He broke off gasping. “Shell. How old are you now?”

“Huh? I don’t know. Over forty, at least — it depends on how you calculate the time-travel.”

“I’ve totted it up that I’m about 42, if you count in the coldsleep. Proof positive, that I’ve moved Heaven and earth to ameliorate our differences. So: will you marry me?”

It was glorious to hear her laugh, to feel it bubbling under his hands as he held her close. “Titus, you loon. Do you always propose at group meals?”

He had to laugh too. “I’ve been to so much trouble finding you, I want you riveted permanent.”

“You sweet-talking skunk! You aren’t telling me you came all the way out to Aloha just to gallop to the rescue. You were angling to get into space from day one, almost.”

“You were part of it too. Oh hell, do moderns always analyze motive? I’m a straightforward man. I love you. When we’re apart nothing else but you will do, and I can’t rest. Please, marry me.”

Opening the heart always opened hers. He could see the tears in her eyes, before she leaned on his chest. “Rest, huh. You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

“I ought to — look.” He took his palmtop out, sealed in plastic, to show her.

“Now you really fit into the 21st century. And I guess if I said no Rick would be on my case. Spoiling the big romantic scenario.”

“This is the first proposal on Aloha, don’t forget. Don’t disappoint him, dear. Explorers must mark off these little milestones when they can.”

She laughed so heartily she coughed. “An irresistible PR opportunity. All right, it’s a deal. When we get a chance, we’ll tie the knot. Back on Earth.” She belied the businesslike tone by kissing him. No overture now, but the main event. He forgot everything, past and future drowned in the shimmering present, the root still green and strong after the endless brutal winter. They could have been utterly alone on an empty prairie, exploring only one another. Sitting on the floorcloth as she was between his knees she could surely feel the surge of his response. And everything of her seemed to open like a flower at his touch, arms, lips, thighs. It was like the crackle of thunder before the storm, and very soon the lightning would strike.

“I’m timing you two,” Gin remarked, glancing at her machine. “One more minute of tongue hockey, and then into the head sacks again. We’re going for an absolute minimum of exposure to these airbornes.”

Riven between passion and embarrassment, Titus flushed scarlet. He would have retorted hotly, but Shell laughed and pulled his head sack down for him. “That’s right. All those histoplasmosis drugs are mine, all mine, and I won’t share them except with Ticker.”

Too late now to study the fraternization rules! Anyway it was impossible now to do more than hold hands. Titus reluctantly dismissed the idea of coaxing her out to the privacy of one of the other tents. She was just risen from a sickbed. The aggressive microorganisms and the stench of Gin’s potions would dampen any lothario’s ardour, and a quick knee-wobbler would be insufficient, unworthy of her. Furthermore, everyone within light years, including the lot up in the Sun and possibly the Fortie as well, would know what they were at — and brazenly discuss it!

But the time would come. Right now merely sitting side by side was sufficient. She was going to marry him! He held her smaller hand in both his larger ones, saying nothing and not even looking at her as joy poured through him. It took a distinct effort of will to focus on what was going forward. Captain Agadja was saying, “I only hope PTICA will approve. It does seem like the only way to get answers. And it surely is our mission.”

“Of course it is,” Shell said warmly. “A glorioso idea. And we can cut through time on our way back to Earth as well. We could arrive only a little later than you do. Nobody will notice our detour through time and space.”

It sounded like they were talking themselves round. Since his was far the most sensible course of action Titus put no more worry into it. When a man achieves everything he could ever want, ought he not rest on his laurels? Except that new ideas blossomed in his head which had to be considered…

Chapter 34

Titus could only imagine how the Sun’s crew was working like navvies, splitting supplies and equipment with the Amity and shuttling materiel back and forth between ships. His own work involved vetting supply lists and arguing about allocations with Captain Agadja. The greater length and complexity of the Amity’s new mission had to be balanced against the Sun’s inventory needs, and he was determined not to be caught short.

A tiresome duty, but it was all worth while when the lander descended on its tripartite flame. Joan had marked out the driest and firmest bit of ground, and since Freddy was on the stick the landing was perfect. The only surprise was when Captain Agadja herself came bounding down the gangway in a full body condom. “To come all this way and not set foot on Aloha was impossible,” she said. “Besides, I wanted to hand Titus the car keys.”

“El! You are the very person I yearned to see.” He gave her tiny brown hand in its heavy plastic condom a hearty clasp.

She glanced at Shell, uneasiness plain to be heard in the expressive voice. “Dr. Gedeon, I believe we met once, more than ten years ago my time.”

“It’s great to see you, captain,” Shell said politely. “I remember you just fine.”

It was borne in on Titus that there were too many women in his life. Well, he had a plan to deal with that. He hauled Captain Agadja off down the hill, ostensibly to view the Fortie. But before he could bring up his own concerns she got in the first shot. “Do I have to tell you, Titus, that I want to see the Amity again?”

“I didn’t mislay anyone this time round. I think you may rely upon me in future.”

She eyed him mistrustfully. “I feel like a mother handing her son the car for the first time. The ships are time machines. For you to sneak twenty or thirty years out of the middle for some side trips would be easy.”

Where had he acquired this reputation as a fire-eater? “This is fustian. If you really feared I’d run wild you’d never give me the job.” But he added soothingly, “I shan’t go capering off looking for adventure, El. You’re sending a good crew with me, to advise me on every point. And it’s common knowledge that Shell has me hitched to her apron strings.”

“You know how you’re always saying it only calls for resolution? I want you to set your resolution on coming home.”

Perhaps he had better stop using that term! “If it can be done at all, I shall.” She gave him a nod of what he saw was relief. Of course his word was her only hold on him now. But a gentleman’s word was his bond.

They had long since come to the ocean overlook. Racked with renewed fever, Ticker was unable to haunt his perch — the sooner he was boosted out of this pesthole the better. The Fortie was too far gone to initiate conversation now, and Titus did not feel confident enough to begin one himself. Captain Agadja was content to survey the alien through field glasses. “Wonderful,” she said. “Seeing it in the flesh is overwhelming! I can’t wait to tell them about it on Earth.”

“I rely upon you to keep a tight rein on the newsies. Keep on repeating we know nothing of the climax Fortie’s true nature.”

“Trust me for that. We have fifteen casualties. Everyone’s going to know that this is dangerous work.”

“Exploration has always been damned dangerous. But there’s more, El.” He nodded at the Fortie. “What is that thing’s baseline? I can tell you what ours is. Above all else we value each other. Alone, we freeze and die. We’ll go to any length, light-years if necessary, to find those we love.”

“That could be just you,” she pointed out, grinning. “The flaming romantic.”

“My flaming arse.” Please God it was the modern sentimentality which he had been marinating in all these years that had infected him, rather than an inborn trait. But he refused to be diverted from his point. “Think, El. What does the Fortie value?”

They watched as a dangling section of moss perhaps half an acre in breadth frayed and drooped downhill under its own weight. The yellow drying fronds flaked off, spinning away in the breeze. “Being alive,” the captain said at last. “Spreading the bits of itself around, so it can continue being alive.”

“Or put it another way — there’s nothing alive on this mudball but it. The Fortie’s done a prime job of being alive here on Aloha. But after that? If you were a slime mold the size of a nation, how would you colonise another planet?”

Captain Agadja’s dark eyes glinted. “Not by building a space ship. But if you could get a space-faring race to come and visit you…”

“You could lure them in, like flowers luring bees, by flaunting something attractive to all comers. Something like a Fortie Drive. Then you could infect them, and send them back home — with bits of yourself to seed the new world.”

He could see that her thoughts had run the same way as his own. “Shell. Ticker.”

“I’m living proof that modern doctors are bloody clever Dicks,” Titus said. “For Christ’s sake, El — don’t let them fail in cleverness this time. I want an Earth to come back to, not a vile mudball.”

“They’ve been drinking the water here,” she recalled. “They could be permeated.”

“The Fortie filtered water for them,” Titus said darkly, “and Christ knows what that means. D’you remember the story of Persephone? My governess drummed it into me. The girl was bound to the Underworld for all time, after she ate and drank.”

The captain’s brow was creased with thought. “They’ll go into quarantine. In orbit, probably. But how could the doctors ever be sure they were clean? This is going to take years. Oh god, Titus…I thought this was going to be a happy ending for you in spite of everything. But it’s going to be a tragedy after all.”

This slosh made his temper flare. “Why the hell must you moderns put an emotional and personal slant on everything? It’s not a tragedy, nowhere bloody near. Not yet.”

“Not yet,” she agreed. “The medics will get cracking on Ticker as soon as we get home. If he dies en route, God forbid, they’ll have his body. We’ll save her yet.”

“Save us all, El. Because at least we four shall be in the same boat.” She recoiled as he held out his bare hand. The molds were doing their best to get a foothold on his fingernails, edging each crescent with livid gray. They brushed off easily against his shirt sleeve. But God alone knew what was taking root in belly or bloodstream or lungs. The head sack was a frail barrier to rely upon. He could guess that the captain was within a breath of prohibiting all personal contact with Shell and Ticker. It would be difficult but possible for the two survivors to spend the entire voyage home in iso suits. But there was no way El could enforce this command upon him once the ships parted company. Did she grasp that commands he would defy from the outset were better left unvoiced?

He met her eye, and saw that she did. She sighed and made a what’s-the-use gesture. “If there’s anything infectious, I suppose you’ve all got it already — you’ve been in too much contact. I wish Gin had been smarter last night.”

“‘Tongue hockey.’” Determined to keep bathos at bay, he could hear his accent becoming plummy. “I never heard such shocking vulgar language. If I’m such a hot-blooded bloke, you couldn’t expect me to keep my hands off a woman the entire voyage.”

“You have before.” They were climbing back up the slope, but she abruptly turned in the narrow way and blocked his passage, a little above him so they could be eye to eye. “It’s frightening, that monumental self-control of yours. I kind of wish you’d let it crack a bit.”

He gulped in horror. Dear Heaven, was she propositioning him? But with a shiver of relief he realized that it could be nothing of the sort. She was zipped up head to toe in a body condom, and had just been on the verge of lowering the boom on all sexual contact between the exposed and the un. An indication of interest, postponed until it was utterly impossible to take the least action about it, need not ever be explored, but only saluted in passing. ”In other circumstances, in another time,” he stuttered. “Weren’t you just wishing that my leash were shorter?”

It was the right response. She laughed, and turned to continue on up the path. “I’m going to tell Shell to teach you how to flirt. You turned quite pale there.”

He felt he had brushed through damned well — Lord knows the feat would have been impossible for him, ten years ago! He grinned at her, emboldened. “In fact that was what I wanted to bring up with you. Shell and I are engaged, as of last night.”

“You sneaky devil! Was that what you were whispering about? Congratulations!”

“As the ship’s captain, would you marry us?”

The white showed all round her dark eyes as they widened in shock, and her voice went up half an octave. “Titus, do starship captains even have that power? I’m sure it isn’t in PTICA regulations.”

“The devil with the regulations. It’s the law of the sea from time immemorial. You’re the senior officer on this planet. And once you take off, it shall be impossible — when I’m captain of the Amity I can’t very well conduct a ceremony on myself.”

They had walked back up the hill by now, and the captain immediately seized the opportunity to consult others — modern to the core! “Shell!” she called. “What is this? Were you really planning to get married today?”

Titus resigned himself to a public debate. He crossed over to the half-loaded lander, where Dio was helping Freddy swab the BB seals down with some pungent fluid. “Dio, take your palmtop and find me a wedding service, will you?”

“A what?”

“A prayer book must be somewhere, up on all those data cubes up in the Sun. With a form of words, to join two people in matrimony. It’d take me hours to search it out, but I daresay you could lay hands on it in a twinkling.”

Dio rubbed his forehead futilely through the head sack. “You want to get married? Now?”

Freddy glared at them. “There isn’t time for weddings,” he said. “We have to boost back out of here before the seals get contaminated. And now look at the hen party over there, chattering instead of loading!”

“The ceremony won’t take a jiffy,” Titus promised. “And we’ll load first. As long as El will tie the knot. And,” he added with a sudden qualm, “if the bride doesn’t jib.”

For Shell was descending on him with a look in her eye that he recognized from of old. “Titus! Where do you get these ideas? I thought we agreed to do it when we get home! Wouldn’t it be better to have Miranda there, and Nat and Mag? What about your family, the two little ones?”

Quarantine, he thought. They might never see those loved ones again, not in the flesh. But he could not say this, and nor could he mention El’s possible prohibitions. “Seize the day, eh?” he suggested feebly. “You did say ‘when we get the chance,’ and here is a chance.” Getting ahead of his horse again — when would he learn to give her enough rein on the way up?

“If you must argue, load while you do it,” Freddy pleaded. “Grab that box, Joan. Give me that bag.”

“There’s no rational reason for you to refuse the fence,” Titus said. “And it would be more efficient. You can’t expect me to cohabit with you all the way back to Earth. Ship captains have to be respectable.”

Unaccountably this made both Gin and the captain shout with laughter. Shell scowled at him. “You haven’t changed an atom, Titus. You’re still the perfect gentleman — as long as you get your own way!”

“We are boosting in one hour, folks,” Freddy warned.

“I can’t find any wedding service,” Dio said, looking up from his screen. “Give me some words to search on, boss. Can you remember anything of how it goes?”

Harassed, Titus racked his memory for the one or two regimental weddings he had attended. His marriage to Elizabeth had been a civil ceremony enacted by a clerk in Antigua, as memorable as filing one’s taxes. “‘For better or for worse,’”“‘For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.’” he recalled.

Suddenly grave, Shell stared palely at him through the head sack. “Not cheap,” she breathed. “And not easy.”

Gin shook her head. “Serious business. It must be how they did it in 1912.”

“I think it’s the most romantic thing I ever heard of,” Joan said softly.

This infuriating sentimentality drove Titus to cast caution to the winds. “It’s the merest common sense. And I’ve had a bellyful of your modern ways of mating. Shell, if we could just get over this fence and settle the matrimonial question now and forever, something could actually get accomplished before we die. The amount of time and energy you moderns waste on irrelevancies is shameful. And I swore when I came here, that I would waste no more time.”

Dio looked up. “Right, boss, here it is.”

Shell sat slowly down on a bundle. “Marriage is just a prelude to the main business of life, in your mind.”

“Yes! And you feel the same, Shell. And so do you all. Else you’d be safe back on Earth, warming a chair by day and a bed by night. Settling our minds about this will help us concentrate on the mission. I was prepared to wait till we got back — there’s a padre on the Upper West Side who’d tie the knot. But now, with El dropped in like a gift from Heaven, let’s seize the moment!”

“Pardon the commentary from the sidelines,” Gin said with evil relish, “but efficiency? Rationality? Getting it over with so as to move on to other work? Titus sweetie, those are not arguments to melt a girl’s heart. And I’m dying to find out what that main business he’s looking forward to is. The man is a bundle of secret agendas, Shell. I wouldn’t hurry into anything with him if I was you.”

This made everyone laugh. Titus could have cheerfully strangled her. Before he could say anything Captain Agadja took the palmtop out of Dio’s hand. “Shell, suppose you read this. It’d be dumb to take vows without knowing what they are. Everybody else, let’s load this sucker. When we’re done loading, then I’ll decide whether I’m even empowered to marry folks.”

For some time everyone hustled as fast as possible. Everything they had brought down had to be packed and crammed into the lander. Only a minimum was left for the final party’s sustenance. This final group would be himself, Shell, and Dio — an even more ludicrous honeymoon than a wagon train tour, Titus had to admit, and sharing a three-man tent, too. For someone who had spit in death’s eye so often, it was astonishing how mortality oppressed him now: not his, but hers. Thievish Time was armed with spears of daylight, his winged chariot rumbling close behind, and driven through his door a man could lose an entire world, everything he loved, in a flash of white weird light. The only hope was to seize joy and run. The thought drove Titus like a demon — how could he have missed a point of such importance?

The cargo bay was loaded so rapidly even Freddy had to approve. “And when we get back we’ll microwave everything,” he said. “C’mon, Dio, let’s get going with the wipes.”

“I want to attend the boss’s wedding,” Dio said. “With cake and champagne.”

The captain shook her head. “No cake or champagne. But I did take the liberty of bringing down Titus’s personal kit. You have an inch of brandy left in the flask, Captain Oates, and if I preside over your wedding I expect it to be shared fair.”

The title gave Titus a little start — a long time since he’d properly been addressed as captain! Shell rolled her grey eyes with a horror that he could only trust was not serious. “Brandy? You let him bring liquor? You must have been out of your minds.”

“We need you to run him, hon,” Gin said. “He’s got beyond El and me, for sure. Make him tell you about the tobacco and the gun.”

“Oh my God. Titus!”

“I should’ve brought a horsewhip,” Titus growled, but he was not really offended. As long as he was light on the bridle she would not call time on him now. Mysteriously, half an hour’s worth of backbreaking labour seemed to have solidified group opinion in his favour. He took her hand and bowed over it. “It would be a kindness to your fellow woman, Shell. Have pity on young Joan here, or Lau up in orbit. In me celibacy always leads to misogyny. Being safely married is the only sure way to keep me from becoming another Captain Bligh.”

That made her laugh. “You could get married in orbit,” Freddy grumbled. “If El’d hang on in the Sun for a couple days.”

This was not on and everybody knew it, though no one would say it out loud — the sooner Ticker was got home the better. Shell sighed so deeply her head sack fluttered. “I wanted to consult one person back on Earth before making the commitment.”

Suddenly uneasy, Titus skimmed hastily back in memory through their circle of acquaintance. Nat, Mag, Piotr? “If you really wish to talk to Sabrina Trask — “

“It was Elizabeth Winstone Oates,” Shell said thoughtfully. “I haven’t met her, of course. But I bet she’s a lovely woman — her grandmother’s so sweet. It’d be awfully informative, to find out exactly when she got proposed to.”

The picture of his former wife and his future one sitting down over a beer to swap war stories made Titus wooden with dismay. He saw the twinkle in her eye only just in time to swallow profanity. Instead with tolerable insouciance he gulped, “It will be a pleasure to present you, the moment we get back.”

She laughed. “It’s too much fun to tease you, dear. Come on, let’s do it. Are we all going to fit into the tent?”

It was only possible to cram eight people into the tent with the greatest care, and only after this was done did Titus remember he had no ring — jewelry for men was vulgar, and one could hardly slide a watch and chain onto a bride’s finger. Joan lent him a college signet that he promised to return. And then they had to pass Dio’s palmtop back and forth to read the responses. But rough and ready trappings would not invalidate the rite. When the captain pronounced them man and wife, he stood like a stock, almost unable to believe it. Then Shell tugged him down by a lapel and kissed him quickly.

“Brandy, and then let’s boost,” the captain said. At a bottle-capful per person, everyone got a mere taste, and it was only possible to drink a toast in series.

“It gives you a headache,” Gin told Joan.

Then Ticker was carried up and strapped carefully into his seat. A final flurry of congratulations, handshakes, and embraces, and everyone was gone. Suddenly they were alone together, Dio having tactfully hurried away to check on the Fortie. “This is everything I’ve always longed for,” Titus said, as the lander arced upwards with a thunderous roar into the milky gold sky. “Alone, nearly, on a strange planet with my wife.”

She tucked his arm around her waist, and hooked her thumb into the back of his belt. “We could get bored with each other, on the Amity for years without coldsleep. Fight like cat and dog. About women’s suffrage, how about.”

“Never. After all, we have subjects of mutual interest now. You should see how Miranda’s grown. She’s eighteen now, quite the young lady, nearly as tall as I. Rides like an Amazon, and will have her high-school equivalency degree by the time we get back.”

“Really! Wow, I’m so proud I could bust! And Nat, and Mag?”

“Nat has arthritis in his hip, so Miranda’s doing most of the tourist-wrangling. And Mag is spinning wool on a spinning wheel. And perhaps I should mention that I can shoot a can out of the air now a fair treat.”

“Did you bring pictures?”

“Pictures and vid and letters — half the capacity of my palmtop is taken up by your mail.” The usual repository for these large files was on the big data cubes up on the ship, but he had taken care to copy them over. “You shall see them whenever you like.”

“Oh Titus, you sweet man!” She leaned her head on his shoulder, and they began to stroll down the hill. “You never doubted for a minute, did you. You brought the letters, because you knew.”

“That we’d meet again?” Since his entire being had been focused on that goal for years it was certainly true in one sense. But defeat lay so close beside victory, separated by no more than a razor’s edge, that he could not boast. “I believe I’ve mentioned before, that I’ve always had the luck of a pox doctor.”

Dio waved as they came into view. “I was going to buzz you. Looks like our alien friend is about to pop.”

Shell slipped out of his arm and ran — fleetingly Titus noticed that she still ran like a rocking-horse. He slithered down to glance at Dio’s plastic-swathed screen. Streams of random letters and numbers flowed past on it. He stared up at the creature on the hill. It looked to be boiling, huge bubbles forming and breaking open to release clouds of powdery spores. Every liquid window was brown and dry, the fringing mosses flaking away. Fissures gaped and spread inexorably across the quivery surface. Some threshold had been crossed. It was no longer one entity, but many — the organic dust fuming up into the air, and acres of protoplasm turning brown and dead, while smaller pale things, dozens of them, were spawned from the disintegrating main mass. These paler things were not much bulkier than a large man and nearly as mobile, rolling or oozing past them briskly down the cliff.

“Quick!” Shell grabbed one by a boneless extremity. It slid effortlessly out of her grasp. “Catch us a devolute, before they all get away!”

“If my friends could see me now,” Dio said. He tackled the nearest devolute game as a pebble, falling on it full length. It wabbled like jelly and struggled in his grasp. “Ow, it burns!” Dio jumped back, scrubbing at his head sack with one sleeve. The plastic was cloudy where the devolute had touched it, and when Dio wiped his bare hands on his trousers the skin showed angry and red.

In a moment they would all bounce over the scarp and be gone. Titus tried to snare one in a length of leftover balloon plastic. It squirmed and oozed mindlessly, seeking gaps between the plastic and the ground, and he herded it with his feet. “Did the Fortie give you any hints on how to corral one?”

From her belt pouch Shell unfolded a large reinforced plastic bag. “Sorry, fellas — I just assumed we could stuff it into a bag.”

“We have to kill it. How?” Dio padded his hands with another piece of plastic and tried to push the creature uphill. It flowed stubbornly over the top.

Titus sighed. “I was certain this would come in handy. How delighted Lau will be, when she hears I actually did shoot a Fortie.” From his own belt pouch he drew out the revolver, and thumbed some bullets into the chambers. “Care to guess where a devolute’s vital spot might be?”

“I thought Gin was joking when she mentioned the gun.” Shell winced as he shot the devolute carefully in the centre. The bullet had absolutely no effect. But when Titus plugged it twice more it stopped trying to escape. Unpleasant tea-coloured juices leaked out, and suddenly the thing was deflating, sagging and shrinking like a leaky drink packet. When it was about the size of a Labrador they were able to manipulate it into Shell’s bag. Their hands tingled and stung at any contact.

“Acid,” Shell said, tying the opening up tight. “You know that the Fortie lives by dissolving stone with acid, and processing sunlight. And now we’ve got to get this specimen into the freezer they left us, ASAP.”

“Poor Freddy, he’ll have to come straight back and get us. Dio, you had better start packing equipment. We’ll haul the devolute up to the freezer, and then come back to help carry.”

Shell’s strength was still not up to speed, but Titus retained enough Edwardian chivalry to automatically shoulder any burden. The devolute was heavy and squashy, sagging down before and behind, threatening to burst damply through its bag. He was grateful when Shell steadied the back end. “How I admire a female who can bear a hand!”

“You didn’t always, you know. You may have got everything you’ve longed for. But you also learned to like what you got. You learned how to be happy.”

“What an odious prig I was.” He shot a smile back over his free shoulder at her. It was true enough — he had learned to trim his sail to the wind and like it. The world he had revised had been his own. “Shall I tell you my plan?”

“Oh my God. You really do have a secret agenda!”

“Not secret at all. I just haven’t confided it to anyone yet. Christ, is this thing leaking down my back?”

“No, just ground moisture. I hope.”

“I was thinking about when we get home. They’ll want to quarantine us, probably in orbit, and it’ll be cursedly dull.” He drew a deep breath, struggling against the head sack, his back aching under the weight.

“I think it’ll just be me, Titus.” From her quiet tone he could tell the idea was not new — of course it wouldn’t be, to a doctor. “We usually think about it as a life-or-death kind of thing. Like with Scott, or the others on the Amity. But exploration can cost you your health. It might’ve been really selfish of me, to marry you.”

“Don’t dare say that!” The suffering of a loved one is worse than suffering oneself. There was nothing to be done about this pain and uncertainty but endure. The health issue was not to be resolved by a quick tweak of the baseline. It was going to be another sodding long grind up the glacier. Not an hour ago he had vowed to stick by her in sickness and in health, and cost what it might he was going to do it. Deliberately he forced his voice to be cheery again. At least he could offer solid comfort and distraction. “I’m willing to wager we’ll all of us be in the dirt tub. And damned if I’ll kick my heels for years, waiting for the medics to finish gnawing on us. Let’s do something in the interval instead.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” she said. “Like what?”

“We’ll have two fine starships to hand,” he panted. “So we re-supply one. And then we go somewhere. Spend the quarantine period very divertingly. I promised El we’d come home right and tight. But I didn’t promise we’d stay.”

“Titus.” She was alarmingly short of breath. “Set this thing down and take five — I’m exhausted just watching you. And tell me you’re not serious.”

They were through the little pass now and on the downhill lap, nearly home and dry. He was glad to roll the bagged devolute to the chilly earth and sit splashily down beside it — his clothing was sufficiently sodden and contaminated now that there was no point in trying to conserve it. Coughing, Shell squatted beside him to save her newer trousers from the mire. When the paroxysm passed she said, “You think they’ll just hand over the funding like that?”

“Certainly, if properly managed. You haven’t heard that Piotr and I have got to be quite the dab hand at opening handbags and tapping e-money accounts. Moderns are totty-headed about guilt. In my time we never bothered about such things — when someone fell into the soup they were left to fate. But you people always want to help. So we shall let them. My wife the dancing doctor, coughing for the newsies, will induce them to come down handsomely. And I — “ He shifted to his upper-class British drawl again — “shall confide my Buck Rogers ambitions.”

This never-failing charm had its usual effect. Shell took his grubby hand and began to laugh. “Titus, you troublemaker. Buck Rogers, I remember! What a bunch of morons we were, to show that book to you. The minute we get up to the ship I’m going to delete Sun Tzu and Machiavelli off the library cubes.”

“You sentimentalists had me terrified I’d be slogging through slush forever. But marriage has settled my mind. I was certain I wasn’t a romantic, but quite the practical fellow.” He leaned on the plastic-wrapped hump of the devolute and gazed up at the saffron overcast. “Do you know, I’m nearly as old as Scott was? All the places I’ve explored so far — I’ve always been the second to arrive. Intolerable! Not when there’s a big universe out there. All it will take is a little resolution.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Would you care to accompany me?”

“Now that you’ve said your magic word, I’m not sure I’m getting a choice. And gosh! Won’t we make a convincing team.”

“A splendid one. I shall find you aliens, and you can talk to them.”

She laughed. “There’s no one like you, for making something crazy sound like fun.”

When she smiled down at him like that it was impossible not to be hopeful. The thing to do was to walk away from the tent and not look back, to dance with the unknown. The stupendous inner journey was accomplished. He had congratulated himself on it too often before, but now he had truly arrived in the 21st century. It had taken him months to settle the past’s hash, years to set the present in order. At last everything was on a sound footing for the assault on the future. Titus put its worries to one side: her health and his, their dealings with climax Fortie, the voyages through time and space. Poised in perfect balance, he would cope with them all in time. After all, he had come this far already. He made a mental note to get Dio to copy over Machiavelli and — was it Sun Tzu? — before Shell remembered to carry out her threat. If the books were dangerous, obviously he had to read them.

Author’s notes

Writing fiction about a historical personage plays tricks with your mind. I can distinguish between a real person and a fictional construct, and I trust readers can too. I only wish I could be sure about Captain Oates himself. Encumbered as I am with a firm belief in personal immortality, I worry now about the next life. I imagine the real Antarctic hero, dead a century ago, waiting for me at the Pearly Gates, in no very charitable mood and possibly with a riding crop in hand. After all this research I feel I know him reasonably well, and can say with confidence that this novel would repel and disgust any strait-laced Edwardian gentleman.

However, the emotional motives that I have wished on him in this book are not unlikely. After years in their all-male expeditions, the explorers of the heroic era were notoriously susceptible. In her wonderful book TERRA INCOGNITA (Random House, 1996), Sara Wheeler reminds us, “In the early days of Antarctic travel, many men got married as soon as they reached home. Both Scott and Byrd noted a stampede to the altar.”

There is no lack of books about the Scott expedition to Antarctica, of every flavor (as Titus justly complains) from adulatory to debunking. Only one biography of Oates is readily available: CAPTAIN OATES by Sue Limb and Patrick Cordingley (Leo Cooper, revised edition 1995). The general reader may prefer the more widely distributed novel THE BIRTHDAY BOYS by Beryl Bainbridge (Carroll & Graf, 1994), from which I have lifted Birdie Bowers’ mournful comment on page 245. Living on the wrong side of the Atlantic as I do, I haven’t been able to find the original citation. But I am certain one exists, Bainbridge’s research is so good, and so I have not scrupled to use the line.

A full bibliography is up on my web page.

The soundtrack to the movie on page 52 is number 103, the Drumroll Symphony, by Josef Haydn.

Amy Sheldon and her brother Cliff have given me much kindly advice about rifles. Cliff is directly responsible for the appearance of Annie Oakley and her Wild West Show in Titus’s childhood.

Elizabeth Moon has been generous with her time discussing autism and its treatment, and is a fount of knowledge of all things equestrian. Wendy Carson graciously consented to be energetically pumped about duck calls in the Green Room at Conestoga 2000 in Tulsa, OK.

Catherine Asaro and Charles Sheffield held my hand while I wrestled with the physics.

Michael Grant, Tish Wells, and Paul F. Austin helped with language, and Laura Underwood scoured libraries to find ancient magazine articles. Claire Cecilia Molloy supplied an amazing number of period obscenities and naughty words.

Copyright © 2008 Brenda W. Clough