Millennium

4 The Time Machine

Testimony of Louise Baltimore

I had been putting off going to the Post Office to take a look at my time capsule, but I knew if I waited much longer the BC was going to remind me. So I finished the pack of Luckier and took the tube to the "Federal Building."

The Fed is the oldest building in the city. It's a relic of the forty-fifth century, and has stood up to more nuclear explosions than the Honduras Canal. Civilizations rise and fall, wars swirl around its ugly perimeters and choke the air above it, and the Fed just sits there, massive and dour. It's shaped like a pyramid, pretty much like the one Cheops built, but you could have used the Pharaoh's tomb as one brick if you were building the Fed.

Not that anybody could, these days. It's made out of something nobody know how to fabricate anymore. We're not even sure it's a human artifact.

We use the Fed to house the vault somebody nicknamed the. "Post Office" many years ago, no doubt because the vault is clogged with packages that are not delivered for years or centuries.

The Post Office is one of those weird side-effects of time travel. It proves once more that paradoxes ale possible, though only strictly limited ones. A woman had died today because it was necessary to avert most types of paradoxes, but the ones the universe permits are literally handed to us.

On the day I was born, my mother knew there were three messages waiting for me in the Post Office. It must have been a comfort to her: she knew I'd live to open them. At least I hope it helped. She died bringing me into the world.

I know it was a comfort to me. The date on the first one was better than a life-insurance policy I would live long enough to open that one, and the second one as well. They were all found about three hundred years ago, quite close together.

A time capsule is a block of very rough metal about the size of a brick. If you shake it, it rattles. That's because there's another piece of metal in a hollow inside the brick. The second piece is thin and flat. On the outside of the brick is a name and a date: "For -. Do not open until -."

We find these capsules from time to time. Usually they are dredged up from the ocean depths. Dating techniques establish just how long they've been there -- usually around a hundred thousand years. When we find them, we store them away in the vault at the Fed, under safeguards as stringent as the BC can devise. Under no circumstances has one ever been opened before its time. I don't know precisely what would happen if we did, and I don't want to find out. Time travel is so dangerous it makes H-bombs seem like perfectly safe gifts for children and imbeciles. I mean, what's the worst that can happen with a nuclear weapon? A few million people die: trivial. With time travel we can destroy the whole universe, or so the theory goes. No one has been anxious to test it.

When the time capsule is opened a message is discovered. It is often a very queer message. My first capsule bore today's date, to the hour, minute, and second. The second one was dated not too long after the first. The third ...

Having three messages waiting for me had made me something of a celebrity. Nobody had ever received three before. However, I wouldn't recommend it if you're the nervous type.

My third time capsule had been alarming people for three centuries. It alarmed me, too. It was the only one ever discovered without a specific date.

On the outside it said: FOR LOUISE BALTIMORE, DO NOT OPEN UNTIL THE LAST DAY.

What the hell is the Last Day? It was both pretty definite and achingly cryptic.

I had to assume I'd know it when I saw it.

"Listen up, motherfucker."

"Yeah, I hear you. Right on time. I'll give it to you on the click, of course."

"Of course," I said. "What time would that be, precisely?"

"Two or three minutes."

I'm sure the BC gave me that "precise" answer just to annoy me. So with all the annoyances in my life, l need a machine thumbing its nose at me? Apparently so. I tried having it kowtow and hated it even worse.

I'm just not a big fan of machinery.

The brick was sitting there across the room, on a transparent table. It looked like I could just walk over and grab it, but I knew better. I'd have been immobilized three times before I got within twenty meters, and killed if I got within five. When the BC says on the click it means precisely that.

There were a few other people in the Post Office with me. Some of them were people I knew. Keeping me company, I guess. And there was Hildy Johnstown, the "newsman," with his felt hat and his worn press pass sticking out of the hat brim. He puts out a paper with a circulation of around a thousand -- actually pastes it up and prints it with ink on paper. The last gasp of a once-proud profession. Today, who gives a shit? News is, by definition, bad news.

I wondered if he'd get a story. Sometimes the message say it's okay to tell others.

Sometimes it says keep this under your hat. Sometimes it doesn't say anything, and you have to decide for yourself. Time would tell.

On the click, the BC caused the brick to be opened. It made some noise. I confess to a slight case of nerves as I crossed the room and pulled up a chair. I picked up the tablet and looked at the message.

It was in my handwriting. I had expected that; they almost always are.

It said: There are good restaurants in Jack London Square. Go north on the freeway and follow the signs.

The Council will give in if you do not push them too hard.

Tell them the mission is vital. I don't know if it is, lest tell them anyway.

Don't fuck him unless you want to.

Tell him about the kid. She's only a wimp.

It was written in 20th Amerenglish. l read it through four times to be sure I had it all, and my jaw got tighter with each second I had to look at it. Finally, I stood up and backed away.

"Blow it to hell," I said.

"You got it," said the BC. The metal glowed white, whiter, whitest, and began to evaporate. I turned before the process was complete and strode from the room. I felt eyetracks all over me, but nobody said anything, not even Hildy.

I held on all the way back across town and right up until my apartment door slammed behind me. Then I fell down on the floor. I don't know what happened then. Whatever it was, it got my face wet and left me exhausted. Sherman carried me m bed and stroked me gently for a while, then left me alone. That fucking machine is the best friend I ever had.

I was not telling anybody about the kid. If the universe had to be destroyed because of that, so be it.

Sherman coaxed me out of it.

He's the only machine I've ever had any use for. At one time I scorned robots like Sherman. I thought they were only good for jaded femmedrones looking for a thrill. I used the pronoun "it" when referring to them, called them walking vibrators or humanoid dildos.

I stopped doing that after I got Sherman. He is definitely a male robot. One glance between his legs could leave no possible doubt of that.

He let me ... weep. That's the word I was looking for. I have cried before, but it usually comes from fury and I remain rigidly in control as the tears drip down my cheeks. I had never been helpless like this. Not even on the day she died.

If Sherman was surprised, he never let on. He stroked me, let me curl up in his arms. He could never make up for the mothering I missed and we both knew that, but goddam it, he was the next best thing. I could no longer handle the idea of a real human man., I hadn't been with one for years.

Sherman's attentions grew more meaningful. I didn't think I wanted to fuck, but he would know that better than I. His fingertips are lie detectors. He can read my feelings as though they were punched on my skin in Braille. Presently he pushed me onto my back and entered me.

I fell into a dream state. He fucked me for three hours, from late morning to early afternoon. (Made love? Don't make me laugh. I know when the merely ludicrous turns into the psychotic. I am well aware that, technically, what I did that afternoon was masturbate with the world's smartest solid-state life-size inflatable rubber novelty.) I had very little to do with it. That's my custom with Sherman, the Lord of Latex; I just lie there and he ravishes me.

What the hell else should I do? He can't feel a thing. He's an extremely complex series of programmed responses. He feeds off my responses and always does the right thing at the right time. He's a machine. I might as well worry about satisfying a pop-up toaster.

Sherman has no face.

He's a competent therapist, and he told me directly what that means in psychological terms. It is a very common female fantasy to be roundly and thoroughly fucked by a faceless stranger. At first glance, it looks like a rape fantasy. It most emphatically is not. Rape is not sex for a woman, and it has very little to do with sex for a man.

Sherman does not ask me what I want. He doesn't ask me when I want to screw; he knows. He simply takes me.

And I am so totally in control of the experience that I don't even have to tell him what to do. Each step he takes is perfectly in tune with what my body is telling him I want.

He is a reasonable facsimile of the perfect lover.

When I first got him he had a face. I couldn't stand it. I choose when and where to tell myself lies, and the lie his face told -- I am a real man, with real emotions -- was not one I wanted to hear. So I had him rebuilt with a head round and smooth as an egg. Like all the rest of his skin, it feels just like the real thing. As does my own "skin."

Sometimes he pastes pictures of faces over the front of his head and we pretend he's performing as some famous figure from the past would have. I've fucked my way through several history books.

Bizarre? All right. But it depends on what neighborhood you live in. I won't say it was as good as making love with a real man. I won't say it was worse, either. There was no emotional component. Sometimes I missed that; then I would think of Lawrence, and take Sherman to bed and practically wear him out. Sherman was a lot safer.

My reasons for this preference were complex and incompletely understood. Part of it was simple. There were plenty of opportunities to get hurt without going out searching for love.

Another part of it was deep down, and Sherman-the-therapist had to dig it out in many sessions. I was terrified of a real penis. It could make me pregnant and if I was pregnant I'd have another kid and be hurt again.

Part of it was lies. The ones I told myself, and the ones others told me.

It is impossible in my neck of the woods to tell if the fellow you're bedding down with has real equipment or a clever imitation. Harsh, but true. The chances were excellent that his cock was no more real than Sherman's. Then again, he might still have the genitals he was born with.

The whole idea of skinsuits is that you can't tell. And you certainly can't ask.

And I had to know.

Don't misunderstand. I didn't want the real thing. I wanted a prosthesis. Safer. So if I'm looking for a man who actually remains male only on the genetic level why not settle for Sherman?

Cold, cold.

I know it's cold. But I never promised this would be pretty. Nobody ever told me my life would be anything but nasty, brutish, and very short, and I never expected anything else.

You take what you get, and you run with it.

Like this: When Sherman had brought me to the place he calculated it was best for me to be that afternoon, he stopped fucking me. He prepared a light lunch and brought it to me in bed. I got out of my skinsuit and he massaged me while I ate.

We talked of this and that. As he massaged, he was examining me for new medical developments. About every second week he finds one. That day he didn't.

Maybe I've given the impression that the real me looks like something dredged out of a sewage canal after a three-month swim.

It's not that bad. Really. I don't have any unpleasant smells. My skin is deathly white but it's intact. My genitals are my own. I suppose the kindest adjective for my face would be emaciated, but I couldn't use it to crack mirrors. The false leg is not the result of disease; it was an accident. I don't miss it. The prosthetic works better, and feels the same.

The hands are my worst feature. Those, and my remaining foot. It's called para-leprosy.

It's not contagious. It's passed down mother-to-child, locked in the genes. One day soon those hands will have to go.

I had lost all my hair when I was nine. I hardly remembered it.

The critical problems were all inside. Various organs were in advanced states of disrepair.

Many were gone, replaced by artificial ones. It was a toss-up which would be the next to go.

Some we can replace with self-contained, lice-sized imitations. Some require a roomful of machinery if they go rotten.

And what's it to you, bug-fucker? For a twenty-seven-year-old woman in my place and time, I was the picture of robust health.

You don't think we were running these snatches because we liked the exercise, do you? You must have grasped by now that they were the desperate solution to a terminal problem. If you saw me without my skinsuit, you'd understand the problem instantly.

But no one but Sherman ever will.

When he was through massaging me I redressed my grievances. I should insert a grateful little plug here for those wonderful folks who brought us the skinsuit. Cut it: it bleeds. Stroke it: it responds just like the skin you used to have or takes the place of the skin it's covering.

You're never aware you're wearing it. You can't feel it; you feel with it. It's semi-alive itself, and it works on some kind of symbiotic relationship with whatever's left of one's body.

A handy thing about it is that it's a great deal more malleable than real skin. It can be reset to new features if the need arises. In the snatch teams, it often does.

I put some clothes over the skinsuit and stepped out of the apartment.

I live on about the eightieth or ninetieth floor of a residence complex. I never actually counted; the lift tubes worry about where to take me. The building is about half full.

I paused at the balcony and looked down at the masses of drones milling about on the atrium floor.

Oh, my people. So lovely and so useless.

Call me Morlock.

At about the turn of the twentieth century a man named Herbert George Wells wrote a book. He knew nothing about time travel, had never heard of the Gate; his book was largely social commentary.

But his hero traveled into the future. There he found two societies: the Eloi and the Morlocks.

We call them drones and ... what? Those of us who worked called each other zombies, or hardasses, or morons. Morlocks was good enough for me. In Wells" book the Eloi were lovely and useless, but they had a lot of fun. The Morlocks were brutish and worked down in the crankcase of society.

You can't have everything; this metaphor has run out of steam. In our case, both the drones and the workers were lovely on the outside and rotten at the core. But we zombies worked and the drones didn't.

I have never really blamed them. Honest.

There are several possible responses to a hopeless situation: Despair and lethargy.

Eat-drink-and-be-merry.

Suicide.

And mine, which was to grasp at the last straw of hope time travel offered. About one citizen in a thousand chose to emulate me.

Suicide was popular. In the springtime you didn't dare walk the streets for fear of being squashed by a falling body. They jumped singly, in pairs, in great giggling parties. The Skydivers at the End of Time.

But the favourite anodyne was to live it up. I can't think of any cogent reason why that choice was not the best. For them, that is. If I could do it, I'd have been a grease spot on the pavement along time ago.

The trouble is that grease spot would not be doing anything to change the world that had killed my child. f could not prove that my work was any more effective, but at least there was a chance of it.

Nobody forces anyone to work. If they don't want to, we wouldn't have them anyhow. I can't imagine stepping through the Gate toward some long-ago catastrophe with a draftee at my side.

There are some fringe benefits of working. Extra drug and nutrient rations, personal robot servants, black market tobacco ... I guess that about sums it up. Oh, yeah. As a worker, I can kill anybody I want to if they get in my way while I'm working on a Gate project. The BC protects the civil rights of drones only where it concerns other drones. I can snuff them with impunity, can go amok, if I want to, and lay waste to thousands and the BC will never upbraid me for it.

I usually don't. Though sometimes in the mornings, on the sidewalks ...

If I kill another worker I'd better have a damn good reason. But I can do it if I think I can talk my way out of it.

That may be the biggest difference between my world and the thousands of years of human civilization that have preceded it. We don't have a government to speak of. The BC takes care of running things. We are the Anarchy at the End of Time. An odd thing for somebody with the title of Chief of Snatch Team Operations to say, maybe. But I simply took the job when it became vacant. If anybody wanted it bad enough I'd give it to them.

One day nobody will want it, and we can shut down the Gate.

There was another snatch scheduled for that afternoon. It had been on the agenda for three days. In that time the Operations gnomes had been setting up the details, choosing the teams, plotting the strategy. We don't usually have that much time; I've been on snatches that got off in twenty minutes, total.

But on this one I'd be leading personally. Again, I didn't pick myself. The BC did that, based on the fact that I was the closest body match to a stewardess who would be alone in her hotel room from the night before the ill-fated flight until shortly before she boarded the plane.

That can be a handy way to start an operation. We call it a joker run, and I was to be the joker.

The name of this stewardess (flight attendant, actually, since the snatch was not going to 1955 but to the liberated '80s) was Mary Sondergard. She worked for Pan American World Airways.

It meant I'd be spending a night in New York, all by myself. I didn't mind. New York in the '80s is not a bad place. If you can't make it there, you can't make it anywhere.

There was a large team assembled for the snatch. This was to be a mid-air collision. Two large jets were going to tangle in the air and our job, as usual, was to get the passengers off before they hit the ground.

I assembled everyone in the ready-room and examined their disguises. Each was made up to look like a flight attendant on one of the planes, so they fell into two groups according to company uniform. There was Lilly Rangoon and her sister Adelaide, Mandy Djakarta, Ralph Boston, Charity Capetown, William Paris-Frankfurt, and Cristabel Parkersburg, plus several others I didn't know well. It looked like a good team to me.

And it felt good not to be rushing. Cristabel pointed out to me after I briefed them that my speech was rather jumbled and full of words that were antique in 1980 America. That can happen. Among ourselves we talk a polyglot with elements as varied as thirteenth-century Chinese and fortieth-century Gab. Before a snatch we try to limit ourselves to the target language, but it can get messy. I have the fragments of a thousand tongues in my head.

Sometimes the cross-chatter is awful.

So I took a booster shot of 20th Amerenglish and hoped for the best. In no time, my head was buzzing with vocabulary and idiom. It doesn't always go smoothly. Once I caught an alliteration bug from a defective language pill and spent weeks babbling my Babylonian and scattering silly syllables in my Swedish until people could hardly live with me.

I ... stepped through the Gate and saw instantly there had been a mistake.

We'd tried to catch Ms Sondergard in the bathroom, preferably in the tub. You're never more helpless than when you're naked, prone, and up to your neck in water. She was in there, all right, but instead of stepping inside with her I had materialized stepping out of the bathroom.

I'm sure the BC would have a long, technical explanation for it; for my money, the silly son of an abacus must have reversed a sign.

But it was a pretty problem. I couldn't go in after Sondergard, even though I could see her there in the tub, because I'd simply step back through the Gate and into the future. However, the Gate has only one side (one of the least odd things about it). From where she sat she could not see the Gate, though she was looking right through it. This was as it should be, since from her side the Gate was not there. If she stepped through she'd only travel into the bedroom.

So I caught her eye, wiggled my fingers at her, grinned, and stepped aside. She could no longer see me. I waited.

It sounded like she churned most of the water out of the tub. She had seen something ... or at least she thought she had seen ...

"What the hell?" Her voice was not pleasant when she was scared. "Who the hell ... is somebody ... Hey!" I was taking mental notes. The voice is the trickiest thing to get right, and I'd have to imitate it for a while. Now if only she wasn't a screamer.

I figured she'd have to come out and see what was going on, scared or not. I was right.

She hurried out of the bathroom, passing right through the Gate as if it wasn't there -- which it wasn't, from her side. She had a towel wrapped around her.

"Jesus Christ! What are you doing in my-"Words fail you at a time like that. She knew she ought to say something, but it would sound so silly. How about, Excuse me, haven't I seen you in the mirror? I put on my best Pan American smile and held out my hand.

"Pardon the intrusion. I can explain everything. You see, I'm -- ", I hit her on the side of the head and she staggered and went down hard. Her towel fell to the floor.

" -- working my way through college." She started to get up, so I caught her under the chin with my knee.

I knelt and checked her pulse, and rubbed my knuckles on the carpet. Heads are surprisingly hard. You can hurt yourself hitting them. She'd be okay, but I had loosened some front teeth with my knee.

I was supposed to shove her through the Gate, but I had to pause. Lord, to look like that with no skinsuit, no prosthetics. She nearly broke my heart.

I grabbed her under the knees and wrestled her to the Gate. She was a sack of limp noodles. Somebody reached through, grabbed her wet feet, and pulled. So long, love! How'd you like to go on a long voyage? Then there was not much to do. I sat on the edge of her bed for a while, letting the excitement die away, then kicked off my shoes and took her purse from the table beside the bed. I poked through it. There was an open pack of Virginia Slims and one still in cellophane.

I lit four of them, took a deep drag, and leaned back on the bed.

It's rare to have free time on a snatch. Here it was only eight o'clock in the evening.

Sondergard's flight didn't leave until tomorrow evening. I was suddenly struck with very un-

Chief-like thoughts. Just outside my room was the Big Apple, and I was in the mood to make applesauce.

I pulled the drapes and looked out. I estimated I was on the third and top floor of one of those long, new (in the '80s) airport motels, the kind whose signs seem to blur together: the Thunderhilton Regency Inn. I couldn't spot the airport itself, wasn't really sure if I was near La Guardia or Idlewild (sorry; JFK). Some sort of shopping center was spread out below me.

The parking lot was crowded with Christmas shoppers. Across the way was a disco.

I watched the couples coming and going and tried to fight off the blues. It would have been nice to go over there and dance the goddam night away. Hell, I'd have settled for pushing a cart through the aisles of the big barn of an A&P.

As a younger woman I would have done it. As Chief of Snatch Team Operations it was out of the question. There were strict security regulations against that sort of thing. Risks had to be minimized, and a one-legged para-leper be-bopping to the Bee Gees just didn't qualify as a risk that needed to be taken. What if I got hit by a car while crossing the parking lot? What if I was driven mad by the muzak Christmas carols in the A&P? Whether I lived, died, or stayed sane was not ultimately important to the Gate Project, but letting some doctor from the '80s get a look at my bionic leg was.

So I pulled the curtain.

I picked up the phone and ordered a big meal from room service, then discovered Sondergard had almost no cash She had lots of plastic, but signing her name on the check was not something I was prepared to do. So I went to my own purse and dug out the wad I'd brought with me. I checked the dates on a couple of bills -- ultra-cautious, I guess, but it never hurts to be sure-and even went so far as to rub one with my thumb to be sure the ink was dry.

They'd fool the Treasury Department, no doubt of that.

I sat on the bed and read the Gideon Bible until the food came. That Gideon sure had a weird sense of humor. Try "The Book of Genesis."

The book was bogging down in a lot of begats when the bellhop arrived. Along with a rare steak I'd asked for a six-pack of Budweiser and a carton of Camels. I lit a couple of cigarettes, turned on the television set, and ate the steak. The meat was bland, as twentieth-

century food always is. I looked through the closet, but mothballs were no longer a common item in hotels, so I wolfed it down as it was.

Then I took a warm bath and stretched out on the bed, wiggling my bare toes in front of the TV screen.

Who needs disco? I was having a wonderful time, I realized. It was nice to be completely alone. I watched the news and the Johnny Carson show. The late movie was The Candidate, with Robert Redford. I could eat that guy alive. I'd been in love with him since they showed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on one of the flights I was snatching.

All I can say is he better watch what planes he gets on. If I ever get my hands on him, Sherman goes on the junk heap.

I slept late. I can't remember how long it had been since I'd done that.

The television kept me company through the afternoon, until it was time to dress, call a taxi, and get to the airport. It was a beautiful day. The freeway was blanketed in a thick fog of hydrocarbons. The air was so rich I smoked the Camels one at a tune.

I was aware that I was surely the only person in New York that day who was enjoying the air, but that made it even better. Suffer, you healthy bastards!

I deliberately arrived as late as I safely could. When I got there, the other flight attendants were boarding. I was able to keep the chatter to a minimum; since some of the others knew Sondergard I had to be careful. I pleaded a hangover, and that went over well. Apparently it wasn't out of character.

For the early part of the flight I kept away from the others by working my tail off, keeping too busy tending to passengers to spend time jawing with the rest of the crew. That got me some odd looks -- I was realizing Sondergard had not exactly been the Pride of Pan Am -- but it didn't matter. As the flight went on I replaced the stews one by one as the Gate appeared and then vanished in the mid-ship lavatories.

That's an easy trick. There's an indicator on my wristwatch. It senses the presence of the Gate. When my wrist tingled I'd simply go to the lavatory, open the door, and call for one of the flight attendants.

"Look at this," I'd say, with a disgusted expression. They were invariably eager to see what new atrocity the passengers had worked on their domain. (Flight attendants are almost as contemptuous of the goats as I am.) When she was in position I'd plant my boot on her fanny and she'd be through before she could draw a breath. Her replacement would arrive almost as quickly.

We started the old thinning gambit when the dinner trays had been cleared.

There are many ways to go about a snatch. Thinning them first is something we do when we can. The in-flight movies often help with that. While the cabin is darkened people don't notice as much as they would otherwise. We could take this one or that one and, in most cases, they never would be missed. From the moment the last stew was replaced there was a team member stationed at all times in the lavatory corridor in the center of the 747. When circumstances permitted we'd see to it that a passenger who got up to piss didn't actually get to do it for fifty thousand years.

Each snatch is unique, each presents different problems.

On this one we were clearing two jumbo jets simultaneously. That's good -- numbers usually are -- and bad, since the Gate can appear at only one location during any moment of time. That meant it had to be shuttled back and forth between the two planes.

Both these flights were transcontinental. That sounds like an advantage, but it usually isn't. We can't take the people out during the first hour and let the plane fly empty across the country, hoping the pilot never leaves the cockpit.

In this case, the 747 was going to remain marginally airworthy after the collision. That meant the real pilot had to stay with it to the end. It was just too dicey to take him and replace him with one of our people -- even a kamikaze. There was too much chance the plane would come down in a place history had already shown us it would not come down.

With the DC-10 we had a lot more leeway. If it came to it, we could take the cockpit crew and simply follow instructions from Air Traffic Control, since that's what was going to cause this crash.

The thinning was going well. We still had two hours to fly, and we'd taken forty or fifty out of the 747. The plane had departed with almost every seat full. One would think people would begin to notice empty seats, but the fact is it takes them a long time to realize what's happening. Part of that is because we pick the candidates for thinning very carefully. We would not take a child without its mother, for instance. Mommy would come looking. But taking a mother and her crying infant is perfect. The other passengers may notice on some level that the crying has stopped, but they never try to find out why. That's the sort of good fortune you just don't question.

In the same way, we were alert for people most dissatisfied with the sardine-can seating arrangements, such as anybody sitting next to a tall person, or three unrelated men sitting in a row, especially if they were trying to work. If that middle fellow got up to get a drink or visit the rest room he was unlikely to come back. I'd never heard anybody complain about that, either.

But the biggest thing we had working in our favor was the unimaginable nature of what we were doing. I'd see someone looking troubled, walking the aisles. Maybe he'd noticed all the seats were filled when we took off, and now there were all these gaps. What gives? But logic is on our side. The guy knows nobody has stepped outside for a smoke. Thus, logic proves everyone is still aboard; ergo, they must be in some other part of the plane. Nobody ever gets farther than that, not even if we take half the passengers.

I concluded things were going smoothly and decided to take a look at the other plane, the DC-10. So the next time the Gate appeared I ... stepped through into the future, changed into a United uniform while Operations shifted its focus to the other plane, and ... stepped onto United Flight 35.

Another advantage to jumbo jets: nobody notices a new flight attendant.

Since the hazard was less on this flight, the team was being even more aggressive. They were summoning passengers to the rear o f the plane on one pretext or another, never to return I surveyed the situation with approval, and signalled to Ralph Boston. He followed me into the galley.

"How's it going?" I asked him.

"Easy. We plan to start the final operation in another couple minutes."

"What's the local time?"

"There's twenty minutes left."

That can be disconcerting. When I'd left the 747 it still had three hours to o, which meant it was somewhere over the midwest. This pane was already in California, two and a half hours later. It's enough to give you a headache.

But why not work it that way? Why, for instance, should the people uptime wait twenty-

four hours while I watch the Carson show in a New York motel room? They had not, of course. As soon as the Gate vanished in my motel room Operations had reset it for the lavatory of the 747 the next day. What had happened, from Lawrence's viewpoint, is that I'd stepped through, Sondergard had come out, the Gate had flickered, and out came the first flight attendant I pushed into the lavatory the next day.

It takes some getting used to.

"Something wrong?" Ralph asked. I glanced at him. Ralph was not impersonating a male flight attendant this trip. His skinsuit made him a perfect copy of a very black, very female person whose name he probably did not even know. Ralph is small, and has been with my teams a long time. Over a year.

"No. We might as well get going. Should I stay here, or Bo back to the other plane?"

"Lilly's alone in first-class. You could help her out up there."

So I did. Technically, of course, I'm in command, but Ralph was the DC- 10 leader, and Cristabel was in charge on the 747. On a snatch like this one I find it best to let my team leaders lead.

The first-class operation went smoothly. We used the standard "coffee-tea-or-milk" gambit, relying on our speed and their inertia. I leaned over the first two seats on the left, smiling big.

"Are you enjoying your flight?"

Pop, pop. Two squeezes on the trigger, close to the head and out of sight of the rest of the goats.

Next row.

"Hi, folks. I'm Louise. Fly me."

Pop, pop.

We were close to the rear of the cabin before anybody tumbled to anything. Finally, a few people were standing up and looking at us curiously. I glanced at Lilly, she nodded, and we plugged the rest of them rapid-fire. All of the first-class cabin was now peacefully asleep, which meant none of them could help us pull sleepers through the Gate. It's completely unfair, but there's no solution for it. Another benefit of your first-class ticket, air travelers!

We hurried back to tourist, which is always a bigger problem. They hadn't started putting people to bed yet. Ralph was still working the thinning con, and as I watched, he leaned over a man in an aisle seat and asked if the man would please come with her (him) for a moment.

The guy stood up and Ralph's back exploded. Something hit me hard in the right shoulder. I spun around on my heel, starting into a crouch.

I noticed a fine film of red on my hands and arms.

I thought: hijacker, the guy's a hijacker.

And: But why did he wait so long? And: Hijackers were rare in the 1980s.

And: Was that a bullet that hit my shoulder? Is Ralph dead? And: The goddam motherfucker is a hijacker!

It seemed I had all the time in the world.

What actually happened was the bullet hit my shoulder and I turned with it and brought my left arm up and thumbed the selector switch to OBLITERATE

and crouched as I came around and took careful aim and blew him apart.

His upper torso and head lifted away from the rest of his body. It leaped into the air and landed six rows back, in the aisle. His left arm landed in somebody's lap, and his right, still holding his gun, just dropped. His legs and groin fell over backwards.

Okay. I could have stunned him.

Better for him that I didn't. If I'd taken him through the Gate with me alive, I'd have fried his balls for breakfast.

There's little point in describing the pandemonium that followed. I'd have a hard time doing it, even if it was worth describing; I was sitting in the aisle during most of it, looking at blood.

The crew had to stun just about everybody. The only bright spot was the number we'd managed to shuffle through during the thinning phase. The rest would have to go through on our backs.

When Lilly finally knelt beside me she thought I was hurt more than I actually was. She acted as if I might break if she touched me.

"Most of this is Ralph's blood," I told her, hoping it was so. "I guess it's a good thing I stopped the bullet. It could have punctured the fuselage."

"That's one way of looking at it, I guess. We had to take the cockpit crew, Louise. They heard the ruckus."

"That's okay. We're still in business. Let's get them through."

I started to get up. On the count of three: one, and a two, and ...

Not that time.

"We can't move them yet," Lilly said. l didn't care for the alarmed expression on her face when I had tried to rise. Well, I'd show her. "We're stacking them by the lavatory," she went on. "But the Gate is with the 747 right now."

"Where's Ralph?"

"Dead."

"Don't leave him here. Take him back with us."

"Of course. I'd have to anyway; he's mostly prosthetics."

I managed to get to my feet and that felt a little better. This didn't have to be a disaster, I kept telling myself. One dead, one wounded; we were still all right. But I was beginning to appreciate the drawbacks in snatching two planes at once. I like to have the Gate there, ready to use, all during the operation.

We couldn't. The most limiting factor about the Gate is the Temporal Law that states it can only appear once in any specific time. Once, and once only.

If we send the Gate back to -- for instance -- December 7, 1941, from six to nine in the morning on the island of Oahu, we can snatch most of the crew of the Battleship Arizona, but then those three hours are closed to us forever. If something interesting is happening during those same hours in China, or in Amsterdam, or even on Mars, it's just too damn bad. We can't even see the events of those hours in the time scanners.

This results in another paradox. The timestream is littered with these blank areas. Most of them were the result of snatches we'd done, or time-traveling done by people who came before us. But some were the result of trips yet to be taken. In other words, in a few years or a few days somebody would decide it was worth our effort to go to those times, at a location we didn't know yet. Because we would take that trip, that stretch of time was closed to scanning.

The phenomenon was known as Temporal Censorship. We couldn't look back and see ourselves and thus find out what we would do. We could know a blank area existed and that nobody had yet visited that time, but we couldn't know why somebody would decide to go there.

If you think all this makes sense to me, you're giving me too much credit. I simply take the rules as they are handed to me and do the best I can.

My right arm was useless. I can't say it hurt much by then. It simply wasn't there. So I ignored it and pulled the goats by winding the fingers of my left hand into their hair -- a trick known in the trade as Excedrin Headache number one million B.C.

Finally the Gate appeared and we practically shoveled them through. It took three minutes, tops. As soon as that was done the Gate vanished again. It came back on almost instantly and the wimps started to pour through.

No more than five percent of these had faces. Flight 35 was going to hit so goddam hard there was little point in expending our best work on them. A lot of them came through in sacks, just bundles of burnt body parts which we scattered through the plane.

I guess I passed out. All I know for sure is somebody pushed me through the Gate and, for once, I didn't recall the trip. I sat there on the floor and the medical teams started to lift me onto a stretcher, but I waved them away. Something was bothering me. I saw Lilly step through.

"Who got Ralph's stunner?" I yelled.

Lilly looked at me oddly, then turned around. But she didn't get anywhere; the rest of the team came tumbling out behind her and she was sent sprawling on the floor not far from me.

"I thought you got it," she said.

"I didn't get it," I said.

"Get what?"

"Ralph? Did somebody say Ralph? He's dead."

"Where's his stunner?"

I was already up and running for the Gate. I had no idea how much time there was on the other side before the crash, but it didn't matter. Even if it was seconds I had to go back.

A warning horn sounded. I glanced up, thought I could see Lawrence frantically waving his hands behind the glassed-in Operations section overhead. I turned back and screamed some thing, but Lilly was already through.

Or at least she was half through.

An odd thing happened to her. Leaning forward, she was into the Gate with her head and shoulders, almost to the waist.

And the Gate shut down.

We had discussed what might happen in a case like that, but we didn't know because nobody had tried it. The theory was undear. It seemed certain that a body half-way through the Gate would not simply be cut in half. The process was much mote complex than that: When passing through the Gate one is never actually in two pieces. The integrity of the body is preserved through a dimension we can't sense.

Lilly did not get cut in half. She just vanished. As she did, the building shook as if from an explosion. Alarms began sounding.

I was picked up and put on a stretcher. I cold see frantic activity in Operations. Then I passed out.

I was brought up to date as the doctors fixed my shoulder.

The explosion I heard had resulted from Lilly's body overloading the power system that supplied the Gate with the awesome amount of energy it consumes. It would be inoperative for two days while repairs were made.

What happened to Lilly? I don't even like to think about it. When we pass through the Gate we enter a region that is in many ways beyond the reach of human senses, yet in other ways impinges on our minds unpredictably. Some people emerge from a trip through the Gate as screaming animals, and they never get better. We lose five percent of the goats that way, and a fair number of snatch team novices.

Whatever that region was, Lilly was in it, and she'd never get out.