Time Travel Omnibus Volume 1 Page 21

  Tiffany gaped. “What, you mean I’m trapped here forever? What about this chronological fix-it team you’re talking about? Or better yet, why can’t you just send me back where I came from?”

  Whatever she was a doctor of, Ngawa had no bedside manner. “They will do what they can to assess the chronological damage. But they are unlikely to find a simple, inexpensive patch. I did tell you that you are an unwelcome guest. We can feed you, house you, and find ways to keep you busy, but we do not have infinite resources for addressing your situation, even if it is addressable. That, unfortunately, is the reality you stepped into when you interfered with our retrieval operation.

  “Your confinement isn’t a punishment. It is for everyone’s protection, including your own. If you were to step Outside, the warp would release itself as chronological sideslip. Minor sideslip is no great concern. In my quarters is a photo taken of me when I first came here. In it, that mole,” she touched her left cheek, “was over here.” She shifted her finger a couple of inches higher, toward the corner of her eye. “I have no memory of it ever being anywhere other than where you now see it. The change must have occurred as a result of an imperfect temporal patch before I took my first sabbatical.

  “Such things aren’t serious, even if they are disconcerting. You, however, are a different matter. While you were unconscious, Dannette ran a temporal scan on you—one of the few intelligent things she did in this whole mess—and found that you are truly loaded with chro-warp. Nobody knows why, because she then ran an archive search on you and found no indication that you would have been important. Frankly, you’re very scary. If you stepped Outside without us having patched the warp, one of two things would happen. Possibly, you’d release all of that strain in our era. That would involve a lot more than the rearrangement of a few moles. More likely, you would simply vanish, the victim of your own chro-warp. Either way, we can’t risk it unless the investigative team finds an easy, complete patch, and that’s not likely. And frankly, we don’t have any need for you on the Outside.”

  Something chimed. Ngawa extended a finger toward the table and a section of its surface faded to a transparent framework for an array of tiny images. At another finger-point from Ngawa one of these blossomed to three-dimensional life. From Tiffany’s side of the table, the image was meaningless—the back of someone’s head and flashes of what appeared to be featureless walls, possibly from another domed yurt-room but more likely from something smaller. Perhaps an office.

  Ngawa was apparently privileged to a voice message that skillful acoustics prevented Tiffany from overhearing. The older woman nodded twice, said “yes” once, and “about time” on another occasion. Then, at a quick gesture from her, the image collapsed into itself, and the table was again a table.

  For a long moment, she gave Tiffany an appraising look, but said nothing. Tiffany, having nothing to say, matched the doctor’s silence. One advantage of living by herself for many years was that it had taught her how to be alone with her thoughts, and silence was not a habit Ngawa’s presence encouraged her to break.

  Apparently, Tiffany’s reaction was acceptable. “I think I have a job for you,” Ngawa said. “It won’t help you get out of the Bubble, but it will give you something useful to do.”

  Ngawa rose from her chair, and without any obvious signal, it and the table melted back into the wall. “Come,” she said, and Tiffany rose too, watching her own seat fold itself out of sight. The twenty-fourth century certainly had some interesting materials.

  The Bubble proved to be much larger than the yurt-dome that had been all that Tiffany had seen so far. “We use the domes for arrivals,” Ngawa said to Tiffany’s question. “We don’t have to—the transporters can go wherever we want, but the domes make good targets and have certain . . . useful equipment.”

  They continued through a maze of corridors with the complexity of a research hospital, but Tiffany sensed that even this was only a fraction of the entire establishment. At least her prison would be large enough to provide room to wander—presuming, of course, that she wouldn’t simply be locked down in a small segment of it. There were no windows. Perhaps the facility was underground, but Tiffany suspected the design was intended to keep people’s minds from straying to an Outside that was off limits to those not blessed with furloughs.

  The corridors were alive with people, mostly but not entirely women. Tiffany wondered just how many men were being imported. She asked, but Ngawa ignored the question, so she occupied herself by studying the other people in the corridors. Most were of the same Afro-Eurasian race as Ngawa and Dannette, and many were nearly as outlandishly dressed as Ngawa, although without the supervisor’s in-your-face aggressiveness. A few, always female, were wearing attire that would have at least vaguely passed muster in Tiffany’s era. Presumably, these were the actual time travelers. At the sight of them, Tiffany realized for the first time that Brenda and everyone else she knew was long dead. But the realization was purely intellectual. Whatever her mind told her, it felt as though Brenda was still waiting in the coffee shop, as alive as ever. You’re in denial, she thought, and wondered when the reality would sink in.

  Meanwhile, Tiffany was beginning to realize that Ngawa was far more than a supervisor. Everyone they met deferred to her, and a few called her “director” rather than “doctor.”

  “What are you director of?” Tiffany ventured the third time she heard the honorific.

  That question Ngawa was more than willing to answer. “Twenty-first century operations,” she replied. “Which for the moment are largely confined to three decades, beginning about ten years before you . . . met . . . Dannette. That’s a small fraction of the Bubble’s total staff, but most of the rest is research, maintenance, administration—that kind of thing. I also oversee our subcontractors, most of whom are historians who lease space from us. There aren’t many of them. Patches and Bubble time are expensive, and historians have a habit of sticking their noses into situations that provoke a lot of warp. If they ever want to go back Outside afterward, they need to be well funded. Most can’t afford us.”

  “So it’s just the historians and the, uh, mate importers?”

  “Mostly. We also lease space to artifact-retrieval specialists seeking lost works of art. Those folks have money but they need a lot of supervision.”

  I bet, Tiffany thought, but Ngawa had arrived at their destination.

  “In here,” she said, and a door irised in front of them. Ngawa stepped aside and motioned Tiffany to precede her.

  Inside, she found something that looked much like a twenty-first century conference room. Like the yurt-dome, it was sparsely furnished, with nothing but a hospital-style bed and another table-chair combo, all made of the same featureless white substance. More furnishings undoubtedly resided in the walls, for those with the know-how to summon them forth.

  On the bed lay the chiropractic student Tiffany had followed into the parking lot, either three centuries or a few hours before, depending on how you looked at it. Two other people were with him: Dannette and a woman Tiffany initially took to be a technician but who proved to be a medic.

  “He was coming out of it when I paged you,” Dannette greeted them. She’d changed from her sundress into a baggy jumpsuit. “But he seems to have relapsed.” No apology, no indignation. Whatever was going on here was apparently not her fault, and she knew it. “Trish has no idea what that means.”

  Trish nodded and Tiffany was intrigued by how automatically the medic deferred to Dannette. Was that a clue to the real conflict between Dannette and Ngawa? Two dominant personalities vying for space? If so, staying in fly-on-the-wall mode wasn’t a good idea: Tiffany might wind up spending the rest of her days as yes-girl to both of them.

  “So, why is he unconscious in the first place?” she asked, forcing Dannette to acknowledge her existence. I am not apologizing to you, she thought with an intensity she hoped Dannette would notice. Whatever you may think of me, I did nothing wrong. But her voice remain
ed as level as she could manage. “I mean, he’s unconscious. I was unconscious. But you’ve obviously been awake for a long time.”

  The medic started to speak but Dannette silenced her with a glance. Ngawa was tight-lipped, observing—safe, in her role as director, to assume whatever mode she wanted. Dannette switched her glare back to Tiffany, and for a moment, it was a battle of wills—Dannette angry, challenging; Tiffany striving for bland expressionlessness. Show them there’s iron in the Good Girl, but don’t overplay it.

  Dannette was the first to relent. “Shit,” she said. “Okay. That’s a fair question.” Ngawa remained aloof. Yes, they were both dominant personalities, but there were differences. Dannette clearly felt, and Tiffany much preferred that to the director’s calculating detachment.

  “It’s a safety protocol,” Dannette said. The ‘sporters can be set to stun the quarry for about fifteen minutes, so we have time to move him to a recovery room before he wakes up. It reduces the chance he’ll injure himself, or us, by trying to run or fight the moment he arrives. The person using the ‘sporter isn’t in the path of the stun beam.

  “As for why he’s still unconscious, nobody knows. You really snarfed up the controls when you clobbered me that way. That’s why we moved him here, to the med unit. He should have awakened hours ago.”

  Some of the anger returned to her voice. “You, I was happy to leave on the floor of the homing dome, and I hope you have the cramps to show for it.” Dannette stretched her arms behind her back, then massaged a shoulder. “You knocked me completely off my feet before the ‘sporter fired. I bet I’m black-and-blue for a week.”

  Dannette returned her attention to Ngawa. “So now what do we do?” Both women turned to Trish, and there ensued a discussion over whether it would be wiser just to wait for his brain to reorganize itself after the atypical stun or to jump-start it with some kind of electrical stimulator. As the technical talk ebbed and flowed, Tiffany watched the chiropractor. Was he breathing faster than before? She tried to remember what it had felt like to lie on the floor, paralyzed. Headache, confusion, uncertainty—those had been foremost. Fear would also be logical. Accelerated breathing might signal any of these.

  “You know,” Tiffany interrupted, and all eyes swiveled to her. “He can probably hear you.” She drew a deep breath, then surrendered both it and her secret—the small, probably irrelevant advantage she’d been attempting to hoard. “I could.”

  She felt like a bug under a microscope. In for a penny—“Yeah, I know all about ‘hunters’ and ‘snatches’ and ‘prospects.’ ” She singled out Dannette and again practiced her poker stare, although her heart pounded wildly. “And I know you think I’m a bitch.”

  Amazingly, Dannette laughed. It was merely a short bark, but briefly there was a hint of an almost-smile. “Touché.”

  Tiffany moved to the chiropractic student’s bed and took his hand, though she wasn’t sure he could sense the touch, even if he could hear. “Whatever you feel like right now,” she told him with more assurance than she felt, “it’s temporary. The same thing happened to me, and I’m fine.” Well, that was debatable, but her problems had nothing to do with being stunned. “It just takes time.”

  The student’s eyes remained closed, although Tiffany thought she detected the faintest flicker in the lids. Or was that an effect of the stun? She squeezed his hand and attempted to persuade herself that she felt a feeble pressure in return.

  Then Ngawa interrupted. “That’s your new job,” she said. “Think of yourself as the welcoming committee for problem cases.”

  The chiropractor must have been coming back to consciousness because this time his hand did indeed spasm.

  “Shhhh,” Tiffany soothed, looking daggers at Ngawa. “You’re not a problem case and they’re not going to hit you with that brain-defibrillator thing. I won’t let them.”

  Weeks passed, and Tiffany ministered to an endless string of new arrivals. The chiropractic student had been one of the easiest because his main problem was the stun. When he finally came out of it, Tiffany asked Trish to do something for his headache, then insisted it take the form of a good, old-fashioned pill rather than a zap from the nerve stimulator, which Trish insisted would be quicker, perfectly safe for that purpose, and more effective. As a rule, chiropractors aren’t big fans of pills, but having an unknown device tamper with your brain is even worse, and when Trish grudgingly conjured up what looked much like a pair of aspirin, the student gratefully accepted.

  “I know you,” he said a few minutes later. He was still lying in the bed, but it was obvious that he’d soon be on his feet. “You were in the coffee shop on 102nd Avenue, with that tall brunette.”

  Poor Brenda, Tiffany thought again, and wondered how she would find time to grieve her own losses while trying to help everyone else. Probably the way she was not-handling it right now, by ruthlessly shoving it aside. “What else do your remember?” she asked, then spent the next several minutes assisting him in piecing together the memories that would help him make sense of what had occurred.

  Other cases were more difficult, and sometimes “problem” ones came in such rapid sequence that Tiffany only had a few minutes apiece for them. She would never forget a man who’d viciously attacked not only his hunter but two technicians, a medic, and any breakable-looking object in reach. He was in restraints when Tiffany arrived, but he’d still managed to spit in her face, and Tiffany—whose sympathies were usually strongly with the men—pitied the indoctrination team that would have to work with him.

  Often, she worked double shifts, and by the time she stumbled to her sleep quarters, she was dead on her feet. Eventually someone, probably Dannette, intervened and she was assigned to only the neediest cases. It was still intense, but the hours were more reasonable and she had more time to be of true help to those who most needed her—a sort of twenty-first century ambassador doing what she could to ease their transition into the future: a future in which they, at least, would find themselves welcome.

  Dannette’s intervention didn’t completely come by surprise. Part of her punishment had been to serve as Tiffany’s orientation guide during what were supposed to be Dannette’s off-duty hours. It wasn’t a punishment designed to alleviate the hunter’s hostility, but she had attacked the new duty with the same intensity she brought to everything else, and gradually the two built a grudging respect.

  “I can’t get over the scale of this operation,” Tiffany said one day, when Dannette joined her for lunch.

  Another part of Dannette’s punishment had been to be put on patch duty. She’d described it, succinctly, as “boring as hell,” but beneath that comment Tiffany read a realization that for the moment at least, the older dominant personality had secured a victory. That morning, Dannette had spent two weeks’ subjective time in 2019, hacking databases—most patches, she had previously said, involved little more than data manipulation—and living alone in a safe house. The solitude had made her talkative. “Last year, we did about 100,000 snatches,” she said. “The year before, we took only half that many.” Unlike Ngawa, Dannette never resorted to euphemisms. She was a hunter, not a retrieval specialist, the men were prey or quarry, and the transportations were snatches or even snatch-and-grabs. At first Tiffany thought Dannette was trying to shock her, but even so, her directness was better than Ngawa’s verbal tiptoeing. Now, even Tiffany was using Dannette’s terminology.

  “Ten years ago,” Dannette added, “there was no Bubble, and snatches were essentially unregulated. Nobody knows how many there were, but probably only a few hundred. But there’s an outfit twenty years in the future that appears to be taking about fifteen million per year, mostly from a few years ahead of you. We clashed with them a couple of times in the field, then sort of divided the decades up between us. Ngawa’s afraid they’re a competitor who’s going to horn in on our business, but I think they’re us, as we’re going to become.” She speared a forkful of salad. “Hopefully, without Ngawa. That woman’s a menace.�
� She chewed a tomato slice. “Damn, this tastes good. That stupid safe house was stocked only with canned goods and pasta, and Ngawa would have had my hide if I’d hacked a bank and gone to the market for some real food. How the hell could you people eat that way?”

  “Most of us didn’t,” Tiffany said.

  Still, she was unimpressed by twenty-fourth century cuisine. Healthful and nutritious, no doubt, but a little lacking in flair. Maybe the female-dominated Bubble had given the nutrition police unchallenged sway. So far everything she’d seen had looked like health food. She had nothing against salads, but these people seemed never to have heard of salad dressing.

  With time, the lunches became routine, and sometimes Tiffany and Dannette sought each other out simply to socialize. One thing the nutrition police hadn’t managed to preempt was alcohol, so one evening Tiffany let Dannette introduce her to twenty-fourth century beers.

  In Tiffany’s era, the name of the game had been microbrews, and every pub seemed to have its own house brews. In Tiffany’s circle, it was a standing joke that anything that appeared in more than two pubs couldn’t truly call itself a microbrew. Milli-, perhaps, but not micro-.

  Dannette lived in the world of brew-to-order. You described what you wanted, waited five minutes, and presto, the wall extruded it. “It’s better on the Outside,” she said, “but the Bubble does okay by us. Though you do have to get used to the fact that the Bubble has no waiters.”

  “Yeah,” Tiffany replied as she sampled her first beverage, which Dannette had ordered for her as rich, dark, aged, and oaken, with a hint of maizel—whatever that was. “Gene-modified something,” was the best explanation she could offer, followed by: “Trust me; I’ve spent time in a few of your pubs. It’ll taste like a better-grade stout.” Which proved to be correct.