Having heard, he stopped the tape and stood for several minutes. It was as if his apartment had withdrawn from New York to a space of its own. At length he shrugged, grinned ruefully, but nodded to himself. The remaining messages had no urgency that he couldn’t handle with a bit of time hopping. Nor did Wanda’s, actually. However—
He went to the little bar across the room. The floor felt bare, merely carpeted. He’d removed his polar bear rug. Too many visitors had been reproaching him for it. He couldn’t explain to them that it was from tenth-century Greenland, when, far from polar bears being an endangered species, things were oftenest the other way around. And truth to tell, it had gotten rather scruffy. The helmet and crossed spears remained on their wall; nobody could see they were not replicas of Bronze Age work.
He prepared a stiffish Scotch and soda, charged and lighted his pipe, retired to his study. The armchair received him as an old shoe would. He didn’t let many contemporary people in here. When it happened, they were apt to tell him how much better off he’d be with their brand of personal computer. He’d say, “I’ll look into it,” and change the subject. Most of what they saw on his desk was dummy.
“Give me the file to present date on Specialist Wanda May Tamberly,” he ordered, adding sufficient information to identify. When he had studied what appeared before him, he pondered, then started a search through related matters. Presently he thought he was on the right track, and called up details. Dusk stole in to surround him. He realized, startled, that he’d been busy for hours and was hungry. Hadn’t even unpacked from his latest trip.
Too restless to go out, he thawed some hamburger in the microwave, fried it, constructed a large sandwich, cracked a beer for accompaniment, and never noticed how anything tasted. A creative synthesizer could have whipped up a Cordon Bleu meal, but if you based yourself in a milieu before the technology to overleap space-time was developed, you didn’t keep any future stuff around that you didn’t absolutely require, and you kept it hidden or well disguised. When he had finished, the time in California was the third of the hours she had named. He went back to the living room and picked up the phone. Ridiculous, how his heartbeat speeded.
A woman answered. He recognized her tones. “Mrs. Tamberly? Good evening. This is Manson Everard. Could I speak to Wanda, please?” He should have remembered her parents’ number. It was no large span on his own time line since he’d last called there—though events had been tumultuous. Good kid, comes back to her folks whenever she gets a chance, happy family, not too damn many like that these days. The Midwest of his boyhood, before he went off to war in 1942, was like a dream, a world forever lost, already one with Troy and Carthage and the innocence of the Inuit. He had learned better than to return.
“Hello!” exclaimed the breathless young voice. “Oh, I’m so glad, this is so kind of you.”
“Quite all right,” Everard said. “I’ve got a notion of what you have in mind, and yes, it does need talking about. Can you meet me tomorrow afternoon?”
“Anytime, anywhere. I’m taking leave.” She stopped. Others might overhear. “Vacation, I mean. Whatever’s convenient for you, sir.”
“The bookshop, then. Let’s say three o’clock.” While her parents weren’t necessarily aware that he was not in the Bay Area at this moment, best was not to rush matters as perceived by them. “Can you save the evening for me too?” Everard blurted.
“Why, why, of course.” Both abruptly shy, they exchanged only a few more words before hanging up.
He did need a night’s sleep, and there was in fact considerable accumulated business to handle. Another twilight had fallen, cold and dun around hectic lights, when he entered city headquarters. In the secret room beneath, he checked out a hopper, mounted the saddle, set his destination, touched the controls. The cellar garage that blinked into existence for him was smaller. He went out the camouflaged door and upstairs. Daylight poured through windows.
This front was a high-class used bookstore. He saw her looking at a volume; she had arrived early. Her hair was sun-bright amidst the freighted shelves, and a dress the color of her eyes fitted close. He approached. “Hello,” he said.
Almost, she gasped. “Oh! How d-do you do, Agent … Everard.” Strain vibrated through the sounds.
“Sh,” he cautioned. “Come on back where we can talk.” Two or three customers watched them go down the aisle, but simply with a bit of envy; they were male. “Howdy, Nick,” Everard said as he came to the proprietor. “Okay?” The little man smiled and nodded, though solemnity stared through thick lenses. Everard had sent a message in advance, commandeering his office.
It too held nothing overtly unusual. Along the walls, filing cabinets squeezed in between more bookcases. Boxes cluttered the floor, papers and tomes the table that acted as a desk. Nick was a genuine bibliophile; perhaps his main reason for serving the Patrol in this small but vital capacity was the ability he gained to go questing in other milieus. Some recent acquisitions, Victorian to judge by their appearance, lay next to the ostensible computer. Everard glanced over the titles. He made no pretense of being an intellectual, but he liked books. The Origin of Tree Worship, British Birds, Catullus, The Holy War—no doubt stuff that some collector would snap up, if the proprietor didn’t decide to keep them for himself.
“Sit down,” he invited, and pulled out a chair for Tamberly.
“Thank you.” When she smiled she seemed all at once easier, more herself. Not that anybody ever is, ever again, We can dance around in time all we want, but we don’t escape duration. “You still have your old-fashioned manners, I see.”
“Country boy. I’m trying to unlearn. Ladies these days have snapped my head off for being condescending, when I thought I was just being polite.” Everard went around the table and seated himself opposite her.
“Yes,” she sighed, “I suppose it can be harder to keep track of your birth century than to learn your way around in a whole past civilization. I’m finding that out, a little.”
“How’ve you been? Do you enjoy your work?”
Enthusiasm flashed. “Mostly super. Terrific. Splendiferous. No, language doesn’t reach to it.” A shadow fell. She looked away from him. “The drawbacks, well, you understand. I was getting toughened to them. Until now, this thing.”
He delayed coming to the point. First let him work the worst tension out of her, if he could. “It’s been a spell. I last saw you shortly after your graduation.”—from the Academy; on her personal time line. They’d gone to dinner in Paris, 1925, and afterward wandered along the Seine and around in the Rive Gauche, through a spring evening, and when they stopped for a drink at the Deux Magots a couple of her literary idols were at the same sidewalk café, two tables over, and when he bade her goodnight and goodbye at her parents’ door, 1988, she kissed him. “Nigh on three years since then, for you, hasn’t it been?”
She nodded. “Busy years for us both, I guess.”
“Well, the time for me wasn’t that long. I’ve had only two missions worth mentioning.”