Time Pressure Read online

  “Maybe—as fiction. Who’d believe a guy who’s written science fiction? I’m not sure I’d believe this myself—if I hadn’t seen you appear in blue fire.”

  “I’m sorry about your tree.”

  “That’s okay. I’m surprised materializing where another mass already existed didn’t kill you—or worse.”

  “So am I.” I held a blink, and then stared. “That was a very bad mistake—somehow that clearing is closer to the path than the records indicate.”

  “Maybe I see your problem, if your fix was based on the path. The land slopes to the west just there. I wouldn’t be surprised if over the next fifty years or so that section of trail just naturally migrates a few meters downhill.”

  “That could account for it.” She shivered. “Perhaps I should not have come. That was a very dangerous error.” She paused, acquired a strange expression. “I ask your pardon for having endangered you by my recklessness.” She seemed to wait warily for my answer.

  “Hell, that’s okay. How were you to know?”

  She relaxed. “Precisely my error. Thank you for pardoning it. How long was I unconscious?”

  I calculated. “Maybe fourteen hours. You don’t snore.”

  “I don’t know the term.”

  Oh. “You sleep beautifully. And soundly.”

  “Thank you. I haven’t had much practice.”

  Oh. “That must be nice.”

  “I have nothing to compare it to, but I suppose it is. Do you want me to put on clothes?”

  “If you wish. There is nudity taboo in this place and time, but I heed it only when others do or the weather insists. If I’d known when you were going to wake up, I’d have stripped myself to put you at ease: it’s warm enough right here by the fire.”

  “Does it not cause you tension to be in the presence of a naked woman?” There was something odd about her voice. The subtext don’t you find me attractive? was in there—but I sensed she had no ego involvement in the answer, was simply curious. That implied to me a cultural advantage at least as startling as time travel.

  “Yes it does! And the day I stop enjoying such tension will be the day they plant me. Don’t dress on my account.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But if any neighbors drop by, you’d better scamper upstairs. Oh, the nudity wouldn’t cause too much talk, indoors, but women bald to the eyelashes are fairly scarce on the Mountain these days. Mind your head if you do; the wall sort of leans out at you at the top of the stairs. I think the upstairs was built by a dwarf who leaned to the left at a forty-five degree angle. You’ll find clothes in the bedroom to the right. Some may fit you—and of course a robe fits any size.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Thank you.” They were the most emotionally charged words she had spoken so far. “Yes. But…but first, can you get my ROM back? I’m uncomfortable without it: a lot of what I know about this here/now is in it.”

  “I can start getting it back at once; it’ll arrive after breakfast. Can you walk?”

  She could walk. We went to the kitchen. I warned her to expect a loud noise, stepped outside and let off a round of birdshot. Then I whipped up a scratch brunch. She said she could eat anything I could. The coffee and porridge were hot; eggs, bacon, orange juice and toast took perhaps ten minutes. I had to show her how to use a knife and fork. That was excellent bacon, I’d fed Tricky and Dicky real well; the toast was fresh whole wheat, with fresh-churned butter from Mona Bent’s cow; my coffee is famous throughout the North Mountain; the eggs were so fresh the shells still had crumbs of chicken shit clinging to them. She demolished everything, slowly. Oddly, she ate it all impassively, displaying neither relish nor distaste. She used no salt, no pepper, no tamari, no cream, no sugar. Toward the end she did think to say, “This is delicious,” but I noticed she said it while she was eating a burnt piece of crust. I wondered how I would have behaved if suddenly dropped into, say, a medieval banquet. I also wondered how—and what—they ate where she came from.

  I had made enough for Snaker; I expected him to arrive before the food was ready to eat, and I knew he had not broken his fast. But he didn’t get there until we were done eating—and she had not left anything unconsumed. “Goddamn transmission,” he muttered as he came through the door, and then stopped short. He stared at her for a long moment, then became extremely polite. “Beautiful lady, good morning to you,” he said, in a much deeper voice than usual, bowing deeply. Basic North Mountain Hippie bow, palms together before chest, not the punch-yourself-in-the-belly kind. She watched it, paused for an instant and then imitated it superbly, sitting down. It looked a lot better on her than it had on him. Snaker turned to me. “Oh sweet Double-Hipness,” he said, quoting Lord Buckley, “straighten me…’cause I’m ready.”

  “Groovy,” I agreed. “Snaker O’Malley, I would like you—”

  —and I skidded to a halt, feeling like a jerk, and waited—

  —and waited—

  —growing more embarrassed by the second. I hate that, starting to introduce two people whose names you should know and realizing too late that you’re shy one name, and it seems to happen to me about every other time I have to make introductions. Okay, I hadn’t thought to ask her name, which probably wasn’t very polite—but I’d been busy, and anyway I hadn’t needed a name for her, there was only the one of her—and dammit, she had demonstrated repeatedly that she was clever and quick, she had learned how to bow and extrapolated it to a sitting position at a single glance, why the hell wasn’t she letting me off the hook?

  After five seconds, beginning to blush and just hating it, I had to say, “I’m sorry; I didn’t ask your name.”

  She should then have understood why I was blushing, realized she’d been leaving me hanging, and been a little embarrassed herself. When I’m in a strange place with strange customs and realize that I’ve embarrassed my host, I become embarrassed. What she said, in that cool Lady Spock voice, was, “That’s all right.” And then she stopped talking.

  Snaker’s bushy eyebrows lifted, and he gave me a glance which seemed to say, and we thought she might be a telepath.

  So I played straight man. “What is your name?”

  “Rachel.”

  “Snaker, this is Rachel; Rachel, Snaker; consider yourselves married in the eyes of God.” It’s a gag line I probably use too often, but the reaction this time was novel. She got up, went to the Snaker, wrapped him up in those big muscular arms and purely kissed the hell out of him.

  I expected him to hesitate momentarily, then talk himself into it and cooperate. I guess he trusted my friendship; he skipped the preamble. Enthusiasm was displayed by both halves of the kiss. Gusto. Joie de vivre. For something to do I rolled a joint. When it ended, the Snaker had the grace to shoot me a quick apologetic glance before saying, “Rachel, your husband will be one hell of a lucky gent—but I’m afraid my pal was joking. I am already engaged to be married, and…” He glanced down at what was flattening the fur on his coat. “…and much as I might regret it, I don’t regret it. If you follow me. But thank you from the bottom of my—thank you very much.”

  “You’re welcome, Snaker. Thank you.”

  “Welcome to our little corner of space-time. I hope you’ll like it here.”

  “Thank you again. I hope so too.”

  Dammit, I’d done all the work, and he was getting all the good lines.

  She turned to me. “I don’t know your name.”

  “Sam. Sam Meade.”

  “Sam, in several of the things you said earlier I found ambiguity which I took to be whimsy. May I ask you to refrain from that? I understand that you mean to put me at ease, but it will confuse rather than amuse me.”

  Jesus.

  “In particular, reversed or multiple meanings will badly disorient me—”

  Snaker and I exchanged a glance. Half the fun of being his friend is that we can both volley puns back and forth all night, an exercise which both sharpens
, and displays, the wits.

  Suddenly I remembered the time I had unthinkingly dropped a pun in conversation with old Lester Sabean, my nearest neighbor (perhaps a mile to the west). “’Scuse me, Sam,” he’d said mildly, chewing on his ratty pipe. “Was that one o’ them plays on words there?” When I allowed that it had been, he looked me in the eye and arranged his leathery wrinkles into a forgiving smile. “Might just as well save them around me, I guess,” he said. I’ve never punned in Lester’s presence since. Flashing on that now, I lost a little of my irritation with Rachel. That kiss had been my own dumb fault—

  —except that she kept on chattering. And she was starting to gesture, to take little steps, to glance around at things. Until now she had projected the kind of Buddhist serenity that every freak on the North Mountain was trying for. All of a sudden she was hyper, giving off sparks, spilling energy like city people when they first get here. “—inherent in the nature of humour, even though one would think the matrix itself was intrinsically—”

  Well, I knew how to deal with that. I lit the joint.

  She trailed off and stared at it. “This,” I said from the back of my throat, holding the smoke in, “is marijuana, or reefer. Its active ingredient is delta-niner tetrahydrocannabinol. It is made of dried flowers. I grew it myself, and it will not do you any harm.”

  She looked dubious. “Thank you, Sam. I know that I ought to partake of all your native refreshments—”

  I exhaled. “It is nonnarcotic, nonaddictive, habituating with prolonged use. It contains much more tar than processed tobacco. It is just barely illegal. It cures nausea, cramps, anxiety and sobriety. You are under no slightest obligation to accept it, and if the waste smoke bothers you we’ll open the stove door and let the draft take it.”

  “—Thank you Sam I would prefer that please you see I am responsible to many people and drugs which cure anxiety dull alertness and that’s—”

  “They don’t have coffee when you come from, do they?” Snaker asked.

  “Beg pardon?”

  Oh, hell. Of course. The half a pot she’d accepted from me had probably been the first coffee she’d ever had. I wasn’t so sure I would like the future if it didn’t have coffee in it…

  “I’m not trying to change your mind,” he said. He came over by the stove and took the joint, had a toke. “But you’ve already ingested a mild psychedelic, and this might help counteract it. The hot black drink in your cup over here contains a stimulant called caffeine. It’s legal and very common, but quite strong and fiendishly addictive. It makes you hyper, speedy—do you know those words?”

  She looked dismayed. “I think I understand them.”

  “If you’re not used to it, especially, it can make you paranoid. Anxious and uneasy. It revs you up too fast. This—” He took another hit. “—cools you out.” He was trying to avoid speaking Hippie, but of course it’s difficult to discuss subjective biochemical states in any other language.

  “That sounds like what I am experiencing. Dammit, it’s hard to stay stable in this environment. Cold I was prepared to deal with, but for vegetable poisons I expected more warning. And it seems so sensible to be this afraid. You’re right, I must correct it. But I would rather do it myself, thank you.” She looked at him and waited expectantly.

  Snaker and I exchanged the joint and a glance.

  “I’ll need my ROM,” she told him.

  He sprayed smoke, thunderstruck. “They have Krishna in the future?”

  Now she was baffled.

  I lost my own toke laughing. “Spelled R-O-M, Snake.”

  “Read-Only-Memory—oh. Oh. I see.” His eyes widened. “Wow.” He frowned suddenly, glanced at me. “Yes, Sam?”

  “Go ahead, man.” I sucked more smoke in, feeling the buzz come on. I grow good reefer if I say so myself.

  He shucked his coat, produced the crown/headband from a capacious inside pocket. He held it in his hands and gazed at it a minute. “Fucking fantastic. Smaller than that Altair is supposed to be, no moving parts, direct brain interface, no visible power source—how many bytes?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “How much data can it hold?”

  “I can’t say until I access it. May I, please?” She looked like a cat that’s heard the can opener working, as though she were fighting the impulse to take the crown by force.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said, and handed it to her at once.

  “Thank you, Snaker O’Malley!”

  I watched the way she put it on. The rear locking pin snapped in first, then she pulled out the other two, settled the golden ellipse down over her forehead, moved it slightly to seat the pins and let them slide home. Almost at once her face began to visibly change, in a way I found oddly difficult to grasp.

  CHAPTER 6

  I HAD ANOTHER toke, and passed the bone to Snaker, and the light had changed and it was cooler in the room, even by the stove. “Well,” I said, “as you can see, reefer not only makes you babble aimlessly, you get irresponsible: I’ve let my fires run down. You were wise to refuse it.” I began to get up.

  Snaker was already on his feet. “Sit, man. I’ll get the wood, I did most of the talking.” He refilled the kitchen firebox with small sticks, went out back for big wood for the Ashley.

  “What were we talking about, again?”

  “Whether or not I can stay here,” she said seriously.

  “Oh, hell yeah, sure you can,” I said. “You don’t even have to fuck me. That was a joke,” I added hastily.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. She was much more calm and serene again, now that she had her headband on.

  I frowned. “Can I be completely honest with you?”

  “I don’t know.” From another woman it might have been sarcasm, or irony. She meant that she didn’t know.

  “Well, I’ll try, and I do better with honesty when I say it fast so pay attention: unlike Snaker I am not engaged to anybody and I would love to have sex with you at least once in the near future and maybe more but I am not in the market for any kind of romantic or even long-term sexual relationship but I am tremendously excited at the prospect of talking with a time traveler but you don’t seem to want to tell me anything which is frustrating and furthermore I have some reservations about you as a roommate which are not particularly your fault but I’m a very ornery guy to live with, you have to be pretty tantric around me and unfortunately because of your cultural displacement and so forth you’re not exactly the most tantric person in the world, but you wouldn’t be in the way of anything and there’s been a lot of cabin fever going around this winter, so for a while, hell, for as long as you want, you can stay, yeah, sure.”

  “Tantric? Which aspect of the Vedas—oh, you mean the sexual yogas?”

  “Sorry. Hippie slang. Means, like…” I floundered. “Uh, intuitive. Sensitive. A tantric person can walk in and out of your bedroom without waking you up, can coexist with an angry drunk, becomes seamless with his own environment. Easy to get along with. Aware of the fine nuances of others’ feelings. Perceptive of small clues. Also called telepathic.” Her face changed subtly. “No offense, your manners are excellent, but you lack too much cultural context to notice subtleties the way an ideal roommate ought to. For all I know, I’ve got more in common with a Micmac. But I like you, and even though I’m kind of a hermit I’m willing to endure the aggravation of having you around for a while in exchange for the pleasure of your company. Besides, I don’t know where the hell else you’d go.”

  “You’re right. Your help will enormously simplify my work. Thank you for your hospitality, Sam.” Her eyes were dreamy, slightly bloodshot.

  “Tell me something: what the hell did you expect to happen?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You materialize naked in the night on a cold hillside. Then what was the plan? What if I hadn’t come along? How were you going to line up a place to live, a plausible identity, a set of long johns for that matter?”

  “I intende
d to improvise.”

  I whistled. “You’ve got plenty of balls.”

  She blinked. “Just the one I came in.”

  “Sorry again. A sexist slang expression, meaning, ‘you have audacity.’”

  The word “sexist” puzzled her too, but she let it pass. “More like necessity. I had to come through naked if I was to come at all.”

  That was odd. If all she could bring back was herself, not even clothes, not even hair, how come the headband dingus had come along? Did that imply that it was—

  —I forgot the matter. She was still talking: “That limited my options. I hoped to conceal myself in the woods and reconnoiter until I could plausibly construct an identity.”

  “Like I said, you’ve got balls. Courage.”

  Snaker came in with an armload, shedding bark and snow and breathing steam. I’d heard him filling up the woodbox out in the back hall while I talked with Rachel. “There’s oil spilled over your kitchen wood stash out here, so I swapped it for fresh. Did you know the west roof of your woodshed’s gone?” he asked cheerfully.

  I rolled my eyes. “Jesus T. Murphy and His traveling flea circus. I think I’ll just go back to sleep and try this day over again tomorrow.” Rachel giggled—which I thought was rather out of character for her. I’d thought I was supposed to avoid whimsy.

  “Bullshit,” Snaker said. “We’ve got to build Rachel a cover story. Relax—I threw a tarp over the wood on that side. Besides, the wind hardly ever comes west this time of year. Except when it does. Make more coffee and let’s get to work.”

  “Are you in a hurry, Snaker?” she asked drowsily.

  “Eh? No. I live in a commune, none of us is ever in a hurry. Why?”

  “I’d like your help in building a good persona, but first Sam and I want to have sex.”

  There was a silence.

  “Have I been untantric again? You did say the near future, Sam?”

  “I’ll just leave you two alone and go feed the other stove for a while,” Snaker said carefully.

  “If you wish,” she said, just as carefully. Her almond eyes were wide.