Conrad Starguard - Conrad's Time Machine Part 17

The breakfast waitress, who had not been with me last night, had taken to wearing nothing but high heeled shoes and a small ap.r.o.n. I never did meet a man who could get a woman to wear what he wanted, so I didn't mention it to her. Anyway, there was a part of me that liked it.

She asked me what I wanted.

I said, "Surprise me," and sat back, wondering what she'd do.

What she did was bring me a spinach and cheese omelet with some kind of white sauce. It wasn't bad.

When I complimented the food, and the waitress on her choice, she told me that all of the vegetables consumed in the palaces were grown in the gardens surrounding them, and were picked within minutes of being set on the table. Hereabouts, they took the idea of freshness about as far as it could go.

Ian was working on his usual stack of pancakes. That at least hadn't changed. I was trying to figure out how to broach the subject of how his mind might have been fiddled with, but he sort of signaled that he didn't want to talk, so I let it be.

After breakfast, he suggested that we take a swim, just the two of us, so we headed for the beach in front of my place.

"What would you say to another wager?" he asked.

"You are a glutton for punishment, my young friend. In Sunday School, didn't they teach you about the virtues of moderation?"

"Yes, Tom, and long ago I vowed to strive towards those virtues as the n.o.blest of ideals. Yet perforce, I must do my striving in extreme moderation, in order to keep thewhole business within the logical bounds of internal consistency. Thus, alas, one moderate deed per week is the best I dare attain. Mainly, at the present, I want my Harley, my Corvette, and my books back." We reached the beach and started stripping down. Ian seemed to be wearing an extra doodad around his neck along with his usual religious medal, but I didn't say anything about it.

"Well, certes I would agree with your wager in principle, but do you own anything to put up against your previous foolish losses?" I said as we waded naked into the warm salt water.

"In truth, Tom, not much, but I am minded to bet it all on one figurative toss of the dice."

"A n.o.ble action, my young friend, though again a silly one. Yet faced with such knightly panache, how could I say thee nay?" We were both stroking out into deep water.

"Did you have any particular method in mind with which to attain your final impoverishment?"

"I do. I propose that whichever one of us s.e.xually penetrated and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed into the largest number of attractive young ladies last night shall be the owner of all my previous property."

"Done, my sad young friend, and our present salty wetness is most appropriate, as the ocean waves shall disguise your own salt tears, for you loose. In the early hours before I slept, I may have set a world record with over eighteen of our loveliest maidens being fully pleasured, and that is not counting the two eager bath girls I enjoyed this very morning. I wouldn't feel too badly about it, though. I mean, sew a black patch on the back of each of your hands if you really must, but I wouldn't even consider suicide."

"Only eighteen? Did you know that there was an Ancient Roman general who forcibly took twenty-five virgin captives on the eve of battle, just to get his fighting spirits up for the coming conflict?"

"Did he win the battle?"

"He would have, except that he fell asleep during a counterattack."

"I feel my leg being pulled," I said.

"It's probably just a shark. This isn't a protected beach. Anyway, we are probably far enough out. One of the things that I have observed about the technology of our hosts..."

"And hostesses."

"Well, as the lawyers say, the male embraces the female. But as I was saying before your despicably rude interruption, their technology is exactly the same as ours, except for time travel and its various offshoots. No microphone in the modern world could possibly pick up our voices out here, what with the distance and the background noise, so I think it's safe to talk."

"It's as safe as anywhere imaginable, but I wouldn't call it one hundred percent secure.

Their medical technology is way ahead of anything we've got, and these new bodies of ours could very well be bugged."

"It's not their medical technology. That doctor wasn't one of the Smoothies. He was one of the Killers, like the military types around here. The Killers aren't running the show. They are strictly hirelings, mercenaries, if you will.""Makes sense, except that if they're hiring medical and military help, why not espionage agents as well?"

"Okay, you're right, Tom, but I still think it's still our best shot."

"Agreed. I gather that you want to compare notes." I said as we swam slowly farther out to sea.

"True. Tell me what you've learned."

"First let me tell you what I'm worried about. It's you. Ever since you got the Zongor- the-Hunk body, you have been acting very strangely. No way would the old Ian have taken the lead at a party, for example."

"That's because the old Ian was too afraid of getting accidentally stepped on. You can't imagine how intimidating it is to be half the size of the rest of the world. I tell you that it is very difficult to a.s.sert your individuality when you only come up to other people's armpits. You spend all of your time worrying about getting a stray elbow in your eye."

"You were about as tall as Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte and Genghis Khan.

They all made out okay."

"Maybe so. But can you call any one of those guys socially adjusted?"

"Point taken. However, there was also the fact that all of a sudden, you were drinking.

Totally out of character. I figure they messed with your brain."

"Not to the extent that I've noticed anything. But about the drinking, that was their doing. I've never objected to drinking, you know. In fact, I like the taste of many drinks.

What I objected to was getting drunk. I don't want chemicals in control of my mind or body, and I especially don't want to look like you do when you've drunk yourself into a stupor and lie snoring in the corner of the kitchen. Anyway, I asked the doctor if he could do something to my metabolism so that I wouldn't be affected by the stuff and he said it was no sweat. I was just testing a new ability last night, that's all."

"That's some relief, even if I don't snore. Okay. Back to the strange people we find around us."

I filled him in on what I'd learned, mostly about the many odd ways these people used time travel to replace everything from plumbing to radios. That there were two separate groups of people here from quite separate cultures, and that the Smoothies, at least, considered this a very dangerous place to be.

"Interesting. I'd picked up most of that myself, but it's good that you confirm my findings. Did you know that all the Smoothies here are college graduates, mostly from American universities? That they all went to our high schools, too, but not to our grade schools? That about half of them have advanced degrees? That they all have two to ten years experience in industry, business, government, or some such?"

"No, I guess I missed all that." I rolled over and swam a while on my back.

"It's nothing to be embarra.s.sed about, Tom. It's just that you're properly ashamed of your lack of a decent, formal education, so you would feel awkward asking about that sort of thing. Another point. Have you noticed that it isn't actually necessary to do anything to cause a change to be made in the past? That it is sufficient to merely intend to do something?""I have, and it bothers me. What if you meant to do something, so what you meant to happen actually does, and then you never get around to doing it? What happens to causality?"

"I don't know, and what's more, I'm convinced that they don't know either! These people absolutely never violate causality. I swear that they would murder their own grandmothers before they even thought about doing it."

"The mind boggles. What if you can't do what you meant to do? What if you got killed?"

"Beats me, Tom. Maybe these Smoothies don't get killed. I suspect that they live lives that are so organized and preordained that accidents simply don't happen. Compared to what they are used to, our world would seem dangerous indeed to them."

A wave ducked me and I went from swimming on my back to a side stroke. I didn't like what I saw over Ian's shoulder.

"Speaking of which, can you tell a shark's fin from a porpoise's? Like that one over there, for instance?"

"No, but I think that a quick trip to sh.o.r.e is in order!" He started stroking for the distant sh.o.r.e at full speed.

"Be it so moved!" I yelled, but I don't think he heard me.

"Ah! Something just rubbed me and took off a bit of skin!"

"That sounds like a shark! Porpoises have smooth skins. Move, boy!"

"No, wait."

Ian pulled a pencil sized bra.s.s cylinder from the chain around his neck. In the process, he broke the chain and lost his scapular medal.

"A flare," he said needlessly, as a bright red star flashed upwards.

I ducked under water to see what was happening. At first, all I could see were some dark shapes, fuzzy as things always are when you're under water without goggles. Then suddenly, everything came into focus. My eyes had abilities they never had before, but what I saw left me no time to be thrilled about it. There were dozens of sharks down there!

"Ian, we're in big trouble! There's . . ."

"Don't worry! The cavalry, in the nick of time! ARRG!"

Ian was jerked under water, only to surface again thirty feet away. The water around him darkened with his blood.

Three choppers were converging on us.

I stroked hard toward Ian, but I never got to him.

An F-105 jet streaked by the choppers and strafed the water not twenty-five feet from us. The sound of those 20mm slugs was unbelievably loud. Half of a huge blue shark was blown out of the water right in front of me, while the impact of the sh.e.l.ls. .h.i.tting the water knocked the wind out of my lungs.

I was half stunned by the blast, the smoke, and the noise, but when a rope b.u.mped my head, I grabbed for it.

I got my hand in a loop of rope and was yanked swiftly upwards. I saw Ian danglingfrom another rope above me, with blood pouring off of him. Half of his right foot was gone. Again.

The chopper's crewmen got us promptly aboard and attended to Ian. They had a tourniquet and a needle of pain killer all ready, of course.

Ian looked at his foot and shook his head. "d.a.m.n. Twice! You know, Tom, I don't think I want to go swimming back there any more."

Behind us, four jets were shooting up the sharks in the water that we'd just left.

Vengeance, pest control, or maybe just target practice.

"Be it so moved. As to your foot, well, they fixed it before, so they can do it again, but it sure looks like somebody is trying to tell you something."

"Maybe, but I can't imagine what He's trying to say. Maybe it's just that I shouldn't have left my sword on the beach. Can you beat that, Tom? We wore those d.a.m.n swords for two years without ever really needing them, then the one time when we really do, we both left them behind! Talk about terminal stupidity!"

"No, fortunately, it was only near terminal. Good idea about the flare, though. What ever prompted you to bring it along?"

"Ming Po gave it to me, and insisted that I wear it. She said I might need it."

"Figures. By the way, who won our bet?"

"I did, Tom. Thirty-eight. Do you want verification?"

"No, I trust you. Do you want another bet?"

"No, thanks. I've learned my lesson."

"This is good, my son. Wisdom becomes you."

The chopper set us down on top of the hospital, where a crew was waiting to whisk Ian downstairs. I stopped to thank the men in the chopper for saving our lives and to shake their hands.

"Just doing our jobs, sir."

"Doing them d.a.m.n well, Captain LeFarge!" I said, reading the name tag on his uniform. "Is there anything that I can do for you guys?"

"Can't imagine what, sir, except, well, that sure is a fine sailboat you have in the harbor," the chopper pilot said.

"It's yours any time you want it. In fact, all three of them are there for you and all of your guests, and that goes double for whoever was flying that F-105."

"That was Captain Stepanski."

I would have talked with them longer but I spotted Barb coming across the helicopter pad toward us. She had my clothes with her. Would you believe that I had been standing there naked and hadn't even noticed the fact? I suddenly realized that everybody else around me had clothes on, and immediately I felt very strange. I even stepped back into the chopper to dress.

They were the same clothes I'd left on the beach, sword, calculator and all, except for the belt buckle. It was like the old one, only it had a red b.u.t.ton in the middle of it, on the inside.

"It's something that I should have given you when you first arrived, Tom, but I didn'tknow how you'd react to it. There's a transmitter in the buckle. We all carry one, in one form or another. If you press the red b.u.t.ton, a distress signal is sent and help arrives immediately. Today's problem wouldn't have happened if you had had one on you."

She looked like she was feeling guilty about it all.

"Not your fault, little one. Anyway, I probably would have left it on the beach along with my sword. I just wasn't thinking."

"Then you must learn to think, Tom."

"Yes, mother. Let's go find Ian."

Ian was well, dressed, and waiting for us.

"Tom, I'm having some special gold medals struck in honor of our rescuers, and forming up a special order for them, the Order of the Two Right Feet. But for now, let's go scuba diving, only this time let's take our swords with us."

"Climbing right back on the horse that threw you, eh? Good! Let's do it!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Playboys in the Sun

The next three weeks went by like that, only without further bloodshed. Hasenpfeffer kept on conferring with bureaucrats, and Ian and I kept on pretending that we were wealthy tourists. We went skydiving and hang gliding, steeplechasing and auto racing, surfing and skin diving. We took flying lessons, at first on ultralights, but in a week we talked the Air Force into letting us fly a pair of their jet fighters, although they wouldn't let us do it solo. I even got to be fairly good at piloting a helicopter.

Our evenings were full, too. There was no end of good entertainment available at Morrow. They had a full symphony orchestra and a world-cla.s.s ballet company. There were Olympic-grade ice skaters, and gymnasts who were the best I'd ever seen anywhere.