So I was pregnant when Theodore returned, which suited me just fine... as I was sure from past experience that he would greet me more heartily and with less restraint if he knew that it was certain that copulation with me would be solely for love - and sweet pleasure - and sheer, sweaty fun. Not for progeny.
And so it was. But at a party that started out with Theodore fainting dead away. Hilda Mae, the head of the task force that rescued me, had rigged a surprise party for Theodore, in which she had presented me to him, dressed in a costume of high symbology to him - heeled slippers, long sheer hose, green garters - at a time when he thought that I was still in Albuquerque mo millennia earlier and still in need of rescue.
Hilda did not intend to shock Theodore so sharply that he fainted - she loves him, and later she married Theodore and all of us, along with her husband and family - Hilda does not have a mean bone in her little elfin body. She caught Theodore as he fainted, or tried to. He wasn't hurt and the party developed into one of the best since Rome burned. Hilda Mae has many other talents, in and out of bed, but she is the best party arranger in the world.
A couple of years later Hilda was Director-General of the biggest party ever held anywhere, bigger than the Field of the Cloth of Gold: the First Centennial Convention of the Interuniversal Society for Eschatological Pantheistic Multiple-Ego Solipsism, with guests from dozens of universes. It was a wonderful party and the few people killed in the games went straight to Valhalla - I saw them go. From that party our family gained several more husbands and wives - eventually, not all in one day - especially Hazel Stone a.k.a. Gwen Novak who is as dear to me as Tamara, and Dr Jubal Harshaw, the one of my husbands to whom I turn when I truly need advice.
It was to Jubal that I turned many years later when I found that despite all the wonders of Boondock and Tertius, all the loving happiness of being a cherished member of the Long Family, despite the satisfaction of studying the truly advanced therapy of Tertius and Secundus, and at last being apprenticed to the best profession of all - rejuvenator - something was missing.
I had never stopped thinking about my father, missing him always, with an ache in my heart.
Consider these facts;
1) Lib had been raised from the dead, a frozen corpse, and reincarnated as a woman.
2) I had been rescued from certain death, across the centuries. (When an eighteen-wheeler runs over a person my size, they pick up the remains with blotting paper.)
3) Colonel Richard Campbell had twice been rescued from certain death and had had history changed simply to calm his soul, because his services were needed to save the computer that led the Lunar revolution on time line three.
4) Theodore himself had been missing in action, chopped half in two by machine-gun fine... yet he had been rescued and restored without even a scar.
S) My father was ‘missing in action', too. The AFS didn't even get round to reporting him as missing until long after the fact and there were no details.
6) In the thought experiment called ‘Schrõdinger's Cat' the scientists(?), or philosophers, or metaphysicians, who devised it, maintain that the cat is neither dead nor alive but simply a fog of probabilities, until somebody opens the box.
I don't believe it. I don't think Pixel would believe it.
But - Is my father alive? or dead? away back there in the twentieth century?
So I spoke to Jubal about it.
He said, ‘I can't tell you, Mama Maureen. How badly do you want your father to be alive?'
‘More than anything in the world!'
‘Enough to risk everything on it? Your life? Still worse, the chance of disappointment? Of knowing that all hope is gone?'
I sighed deeply. ‘Yes. All of that'
‘Then join the Time Corps and learn how such things are done. In a few years - ten to twenty years, I would guess you will be able to form an intelligent opinion.'
‘Ten to twenty years!'
It could take longer. But the great beauty about time manipulations is that there is always plenty of time, never any hurry.'
When I told Ishtar that I wanted to take an indefinite leave of absence, she did not ask me why. She simply said, ‘Mama, I have known for some time that you were not happy in this work; I have been waiting for you to discover it.'
She kissed me. ‘Perhaps next century you will find a true vocation for this work. There is no hurry. Meanwhile, be happy.'
So for about twenty years of my personal time tine and almost seven years of Boondock time I went where I was told to go and reported on what I was told to investigate. Never as a fighter. Not like Gretchen whose first baby is descended both from me (Colonel Ames is my grandson through Lazarus) and from my co-wife Hazel/Gwen (Gretchen is Hazel's great-granddaughter) - Major Gretchen is a big, strong, strapping Valkyrie, reputed to be sudden death with or without weapons.
Fighting is not for Maureen. But de Time Corps needs all sorts. My talent for languages and my love of history makes me suitable to be sent to ‘scout the Land of Canaan' - or Nippon in the 1930s - or whatever country or planet needs scouting. My only other talent is sometimes useful, too.
So with twenty years of practice and some preliminary research in history of time line two, second phase of the Permanent War, I signed off for a weekend and bought a ticket on a Burroughs-Carter time-space bus, one with a scheduled stop in New Liverpool, 1950, intending to scout the history of the 1939-1945 War a little closer up. Hilda had developed a thriving black-market trade through the universes; one of her companies supplied scheduled services to the explored time lines and planets for a bracket of dates - exact date of choice available if you pay for it.
The bus driver had just announced ‘New Liverpool Earth Prime 1950 time line two next stop! Don't leave any personal possessions aboard' - when there was a loud noise, the bus lurched, a trip attendant said, ‘Emergency exit - this way, please' - and somebody handed me a baby, there was much smoke, and I saw a man with a bloody stump where his hand should have been.
I guess I passed out, as I don't remember what happened next.
I woke up in bed with Pixel and a corpse.
Chapter 26 - Pixel to the Rescue
After that Mad Tea Party in which I woke up in bed with a cat and a corpse in Grand Hotel Augustus, Pixel and I wound up in the office of Dr Eric Ridpath, house physician, where we met his office nurse, Dagmar Dobbs - a gal who was at once awarded Pixel's stamp of approval. Dagmar was giving me a GYN examination, when she told me that tonight was La Fiesta de Santa Carolita.
It is a good thing that just before she put me on the table she had required me to pee in a cup, or I might have peed in her face.
As I have explained in excessive detail, ‘Santa Carolita' is my daughter Carol, born in Gregorian 1902 at Kansas City on Tellus Prime, time line two, code Leslie LeCroix.
Lazarus Long had initiated ‘Carol's Day' on 26 June 1918 Gregorian, as a rite of passage for Carol, marking her transition from childhood to womanhood. Lazarus toasted Carol in champagne, telling her what a wonderful thing it was to be a woman, naming for her both the privileges and the responsibilities of her new and exalted status, and declaring that 26 June shall now and forever be known as ‘Carol's Day'.
the notion of calling it ‘Carol's Day' had suggested itself to Lazarus from something he remembered from a thousand years in the future - or in the past, depending on your time frame. On the frontier planet New Beginnings he and his wife Dora had declared ‘Helen's Day' to celebrate puberty in their oldest child, Helen. That was their stated purpose. Their unstated purpose was to attempt to place some control over the sexual behaviour of their growing sons and daughters, in order to head off the sort of tragedy I ran into with Priscilla and Donald.