by Heather Lindsley
Heather Lindsley began writing short fiction in 2005. Since then, her stories have appeared in F&SF, Strange Horizons, and Year’s Best Science Fiction #12. Her new tale is her first story for Asimov’s. After growing up in Southern California and spending many years in Seattle, Heather is a little surprised to find herself living in London. She tends to lose track of time, and hopes that someday it will turn up in Transport for London’s Lost Property Office.
“I’m gonna kill you.” Chambers stalked up to Martin and dropped a crusty sock on his console. “Maybe a little death will keep you from leaving your stuff all over the ship.”
“We have a salvage run today,” Martin told her.
She flopped into the shabby seat next to him. “Tomorrow, then. I’ll kill you tomorrow.”
“Okey doke.”
“So when are we launching?”
Martin pushed the sock aside. “15:05,” he said, but his answer was drowned out by the sudden noisy declaration that girls just wanted to have fuh-un.
“What the hell is that?”
“The new commtone,” Martin said. “I pulled it from the music archives in honor of today’s run. What do you think?”
“I think you should answer the comm and delete that tone,” Chambers said, adding too late, “Wait, who is it?”
“It’s Gnor.”
Gnor’s malignant, toad-like smile dominated the monitors in the cabin. “Chambers! Martin!” Gnor leaned forward, swirling pale yellow eddies in his atmosphere. “How are my two favorite scum-scraping subcontractors?”
“Blushing from all the flattery, Gnor,” Chambers said.
“I thought you were just drinking on the job again.”
“Bite me, you frog-faced fu—”
“What can we do for you?” Martin interrupted.
“Ah, getting down to business, then.” Gnor blinked all six of his eyes in turn. “You owe me time.”
“No way,” Chambers said. “We paid three months in advance.”
“That was four months ago. Now you’re overdue for dock rental, power, atmosphere hookup, and nine Rail trips. Plus interest. You owe me five hundred hours.”
“That’s robbery and you know it,” said Chambers. “Any other Railer park would charge half that.”
“So take that scrap heap you call a ship somewhere else ... after you pay up.” He casually flicked his scaly tail at the screen. “And you might want to have a deposit ready for your new host.”
“You know we don’t have the time for that, you bloated bag of—”
“We’ll get it,” Martin said.
“You’ve got two days. I want five hundred hours by Friday, or I turn off the chlorine.”
“We breathe oxygen,” Martin said. Chambers stared at him in disbelief.
“Fine,” Gnor said. “Five hundred hours by Friday, or I turn on the chlorine.”
* * * *
At 14:45 Martin disconnected the ship from its power and atmosphere chargers. Chambers maneuvered the ship away from the dock and joined a short queue of vessels that ran perpendicular to the Rail, a hundred miles of dull metal I-beam surrounded by a thousand miles of empty space. A speedy little green sport Railster cut her off and pulled into the line.
Chambers smacked the comm button. “Hey, that’s our spot.”
“It’s Gnor’s nephew,” Martin said to her. “You know there’s no point in scrapping with him.”
A leering face appeared in the monitors. “It’s our spot now, Snippers. We’ve got a party to crash.” Another face pushed its way into the field and waggled various tongues, digits, and fundaments at them.
“Power up weapons,” Chambers said.
“We don’t have any weapons.”
“Then give me something to throw.”
Martin offered her the crusty sock. Chambers sighed, wadded it into a ball, and threw it at the laughing faces in the monitor. “I hate those guys.”
“I know,” Martin said, turning off the comm.
Martin checked over the salvage logs while Chambers plotted impractical revenge scenarios. She watched the little green ship take its place on the Rail, then accelerate and hurl itself off the end, only to vanish a few hundred miles out. Seconds later the ship reappeared, banged up and covered in obscene alien graffiti. Chambers hit the comm.
“Rough trip, boys?”
Gnor’s nephew glared at her through a half dozen bruised eyes and stuck out his folded tongue. Chambers raised her hand and cheerfully offered her culture’s equivalent before dropping the connection.
“Hee.”
Martin shook his head. “You really should cut back on the Schadenfreude.”
“But it’s my favorite Freude.”
Martin answered the trilling comm, and the Rail operator appeared in the monitor. “Alrighty, C & M Time Salvage, you’re next. Where you headed?”
“Earth,” Martin said. “36.754444 North, 119.774167 West.”
“And when?”
“1983 107.75606796,” Martin rattled off.
“Okay,” the operator said. “That’d be a parking lot for an apartment complex in Fresno, California, 11:08:46 am local time on April 17, 1983. Confirm?”
“Confirmed,” Martin said.
“And your offset is still .28?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, just give us a minute to set that up.”
“Don’t worry,” Martin said. “We’ve got time.”
The operator made a polite heh-heh noise, which in Chambers’ opinion was more than Martin deserved.
“Do you have to make that joke every trip?”
* * * *
“April 17, 1983.28,” Martin announced. “The local time is eleven o’clock and change here in beautiful downtown Fresno. Or almost beautiful downtown Fresno,” he added, looking out the window at a shapeless gray vista. “You ready?”
“Sure.” Chambers slung a half-full canvas duffel bag over her shoulder and handed Martin a scuffed black leather briefcase. “Let’s go collect our pittance.”
“That’s the spirit,” Martin said. He adjusted the ship’s door for the .28 offset so it opened on a sunny spring day in 1983.00. He looked out at a yellow Datsun parked right in front of the door.
“Oh, hell,” Chambers said.
“Do you want to wait until they drive away?”
“No, let’s just climb over. You see anybody out there?”
“Nope.”
Chambers peered through the rear window of the car as she brushed off her overalls. “What baby on board? I don’t see any baby on board.”
“Maybe it’s in the trunk.” Martin used the ship’s remote to close the door and render the ship invisible. “Remember when we parked,” he said as they walked away from the ship.
“Again: joke, every trip, necessary?”
Martin pointed to the sign in front of the apartment complex’s mass of ugly, boxy, two-story buildings. The Versailles, it claimed.
“Do you think they’ve ever actually been there?” he asked.
* * * *
“First stop, Larry Platt, #108.” Martin set a Pauser in front of the door just before 11:30. Chambers slid a slim robotic key into the lock, then pushed the door open for Martin.
They entered the apartment, taking the Pauser with them. A time-frozen Larry Platt was bathed in the glow of Donkey Kong. Chambers checked the handheld log for legal salvageable time. “There’s a usable chunk up through 15:47:05 local.”
“So range start, 11:24:37, range stop, 15:47:05,” Martin said, entering the stop data into the Pauser. “Cued for one second increments, and ... here we go.”
All the moments in the range appeared simultaneously in the apartment. The man on the couch became a fleshy millipede that looped from the couch to the kitchen and back.
“Ten second increments,” Martin said, making adjustments to the Pauser. “Twenty, thirty...”
Some of the Larry segments shrank until they formed thin, luminous strings. Others remained, a parade of clones connected by shining cords. On the television, the playing field was a mass of pink, blue, and orange, the digital scores layered in a perpetual 088888.
“One minute increments, two, three...”
Larry on the couch was a multi-armed god, simultaneously holding a joystick, reaching for chips, and picking his nose.
“Ten minute ... twenty...” Now there were only a few Larrys, all connected by glowing threads of time.
Chambers opened the scuffed briefcase. She and Martin each put on a pair of heavy gloves and pulled shears from the duffel bag. They started clipping strings, dropping them one by one into the briefcase until they’d salvaged most of Larry’s wasted time.
Martin calibrated the Pauser to read the range stop time only. “15:47:05,” he said.
Martin closed the briefcase; Chambers gathered the equipment. Back in the hall Martin released the Pauser and said, “So, who’s next?”
* * * *
“Here we are,” Chambers said. “Apartment 310. Janine Costa.”
Martin flicked the Pauser. “Start 22:16:53.”
“What a dump,” Chambers said as they entered the apartment. She stepped over a pile of dirty socks. “Are you sure we’re not back on the ship?”
“Ha ha.” Martin edged around a stack of pizza boxes, careful not to jostle them. He found a clear spot for the Pauser.
“How much time do we have?”
Martin checked the briefcase. “Looks like ten hours.”
“So only four hundred ninety to go.” Chambers glared at the small young woman on the couch and the crashing waves of her gelled hair. “We’re gonna be in this stupid year forever.”
Martin checked the log. “This one’s not bad—looks like she’s gonna be up wasting time until four o’clock in the morning.”
“Ooh, six hours.”
“If you’re done whining I’m ready to collect some time here.”
“Fine, let’s do it.”
“So range start, 22:16:53. Range stop 04—”
“What the hell are you doing in my apartment?” Janine said.
“Shit!” Martin jumped.
“What did you do?” Chambers said as she dashed to the equipment bag.
Janine backed up toward the wall, stumbling on a stack of neglected textbooks. “How did you get in here?”
“Nothing,” Martin told Chambers. “It just went dead.”
“Hit it again.” Chambers dug around in the bag, pushing frantically through masses of wire tangled in the legs of collapsible tripods.
“It’s not working,” Martin said. “We need the backup Pauser!” He noticed Janine edging toward the door, and yelled “Hey, stop!” Janine threw a bottle of fluorescent orange nail polish at his head. “Ow, watch it!”
Chambers grabbed the first thing she found in the bag and held it like a gun.
“Freeze!” She pointed an odd-looking wrench at Janine.
Janine stopped and put her hands out in front of her.
Martin rubbed his head. “That wasn’t very nice.”
“What’re you doing in my apartment?”
“Look, we’re not gonna hurt you,” Chambers said, flustered. “This is a simple salvage job. Just stay calm and we’ll be out of your way soon.”
“Salvage? What do you mean, salvage?”
“Time salvage,” Martin said.
Janine stared at him. “You’re nuts.”
“Yep, he’s nuts, I’m nuts, and we’ll be out of here in just a minute. Why don’t you have a seat while you’re waiting?”
Janine walked slowly to the couch and sat down. “What’s that stuff in the briefcase?”
“Time.”
“Martin...”
“You’re stealing my time?”
“Not stealing, recycling. You were wasting it.”
“Less talk, Martin.”
“How do you know what I do with my time?”
“It’s a matter of public record,” he said, looking down at the log. 22:03:29 to 22:14:12, paints toenails. 22:14:13 to—”
“This is your idea of less talk?”
“—22:20:07, stares into space. There’s been a lot of this kind of thing since you dropped out of dental school. 22:20:08, encounters C & M Time Salvage.” He looked up at Chambers. “Oh, crap. We’re in her timeline.”
Chambers went pale. “This is bad.”
“Very bad.”
“We’re gonna have to fix this,” Chambers said.
Martin didn’t seem to hear her. “So very bad...”
Chambers snapped her fingers under Martin’s nose. “Hey. Hey. We’re problem solving now.”
“Right, problem solving. What do we do?”
Janine piped up, nervous. “Look, I won’t tell anyone you were here. Really.”
“The Godfather,” Chambers said.
“Isn’t that a little drastic?” Martin said.
“He can get someone to clean up this mess. We’ve got to ask him for a favor.”
“Don’t kill me!”
“What?” Chambers and Martin both looked at Janine.
“Don’t kill me, I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”
“Kill you?” Chambers said. “We’re not gonna kill you. That would only make it worse.”
Martin turned to Chambers. “What are we gonna do with her?”
“Well, we can’t just leave her running around in an altered timeline, can we?”
* * * *
“This is your, uh, time machine?” Janine asked.
“Yeah,” Chambers said, brandishing the wrench. “What’s your point?”
“Nothing, it’s nice.”
“Thanks. Have a seat.” Chambers gestured to a ratty plaid couch equipped with seatbelts. Janine picked up the balled sock and held it tentatively until Chambers grabbed it from her and tossed it to the back of the ship. “Stay put,” she said before joining Martin at the consoles. “Are we set?”
“Just about.” Martin gave Chambers a small piece of bright pink paper. She put it in her mouth and Martin did the same with his own tab. He brought another piece over to Janine. “Here, put this on your tongue.”
Janine crossed her arms. “Oh, no way. I am not dropping acid with you people. This situation is weird enough as it is.”
“You know about zeta-aminobutyric acid?”
“See—already totally weird.”
“So you don’t know about it ... and I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
Chambers walked over to the couch. “Mentioned what?”
“ZABA.”
“Oh, no, that’s perfectly fine—of course you shouldn’t have! Just give her the damn tab.”
“She doesn’t want to take it.”
Chambers looked down at Janine. “Does she want her hypothalamus to explode?”
“Oh, come on—you don’t have to scare her.” Martin sat down on the couch next to Janine. “It doesn’t explode. It just swells up a little. And then it shrivels. So you really ought to take the tab.”
“Tell me what it does.”
Chambers sighed. “Okay. Have you ever had jet lag?” Janine nodded. “Then you know how it messes with your body clock. Time travel is worse. It turns your body clock into a smoking pile of gears and springs and really worrying boing sounds. And since your body clock also controls digestion and body temperature and hormones and a bunch of other things your time is still only guessing at—”
“So the chemicals in the tab protect the body clock?”
“Usually.”
“Chambers.”
“Always,” she said. “Really. Take it and you’ll be fine.”
Janine took the tab from Martin. She gave it a dubious look before putting it on her tongue.
“It actually tastes pretty good.”
“That’s the glutamate,” Martin said.
“Are you sure? It tastes more like fairy dust. And I think I’m detecting a hint of magic bean.”
“Nope,” Martin said, “just glutamate.” He went to his seat at the ship’s console and called back to Janine, “You might want to buckle up ... this can be a little bumpy.”
* * * *
Chambers stood next to Janine in the ship’s tiny bathroom, impatient but doing her best to sound otherwise. “Feeling better?”
“A little. Did we really just jump around in time?”
“If I say ‘yes,’ are you going to throw up again?”
“Probably not.”
“Then yes.”
“You know I’d really like to go home now.”
“I know,” Chambers said. “We’re working on that.”
Martin joined them, gesturing toward the front of the ship with a small wet/dry vac. “I think we’re just about back to normal up there.”
“Sorry about your couch,” Janine said.
“Eh,” Martin stowed the vac. “It’s seen worse.”
Chambers handed him the wrench. “Can you take care of the hookups? We should recharge and I want to start looking for the Godfather.”
“Okay,” he said, and turned to Janine. “You should probably come with me. A little walk will do you good.”
Martin led the way to the back of the ship while Janine fished a large pack of bubble gum out of her pocket. She popped two pieces into her mouth and offered him the pack.
“Bananaberry Punch,” he said. “And you think we ingest weird chemicals.”
Janine grabbed her gum back. “They were out of Wacky Watermelon,” she said, “and anyway it’s better than Time Travel Barf.”
“If you say so.” Martin opened the dock panel and plugged in atmosphere and power, then tightened the fittings with the wrench.
“Hey,” Janine said, “that’s not a gun.”
“Yes it is.”
“No it isn’t. It’s a wrench.”
“In the future all appliances are combined,” he said as he programmed the atmosphere. “This is a wrench/gun/spatula.” He closed the dock panel.
Janine snapped her gum. “Bullsh—” She stopped suddenly and wrinkled her nose. “Is it supposed to smell like matches in here?”
“Oh, not again,” Chambers hollered from the main cabin.
“Sorry sorry sorry...” Martin called out to her.
“One of these days you’ll kill us all,” Chambers shouted.
Martin opened the dock panel and changed his atmosphere selection from SO2 to O2. “In my defense,” he said to Janine, “the oxides are awfully close together.”
* * * *
“C & M Time Salvage, you’re next. Where and when?”
“Earth,” Martin said. “37.8501 North, 15.283—”
Gnor appeared in the monitor and pushed the operator out of the way at the same time Chambers pushed Janine out of comm view. She held her back with one hand and signaled unnecessarily for quiet—Janine was too busy staring at Gnor to make a peep.
“And when do you think you’re going?”
“We have time to collect, Gnor,” Chambers said. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind letting that nice operator back into his chair so we can get going.”
“Yeah, about that. I don’t trust you deadbeat Snippers to come up with the time yourselves, so I’ve got an assignment for you.”
“We don’t need an assignment, we’ve got—”
“Those pathetic public domain logs? You get, what, maybe twelve consecutive hours, tops?”
“That’s enough.”
“Not when you owe me, it isn’t.”
“We’re not collecting illegal time.”
“This isn’t illegal. The client’s Russian. I’ve arranged for him to buy back his own wasted time. Minus 30 percent, of course. Twenty-five for me, five for you.”
“Oh, no way,” Chambers said.
“You got my five hundred hours?”
“No.”
“Then you’re going to Moscow. 1847. I’m sending you the details now. Collect all the waste until the client leaves town in 1849, then snap up to 1868 and deliver his cut. He’ll be expecting you.”
“Gnor—”
“You got any extra Splicers on board?”
“Yeah, a couple,” Martin said.
“Good. He’s gonna need one. And you’re gonna have to show him how to use it.”
“Sounds like a lot of trouble for 5 percent,” Chambers said.
“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?” Gnor reached over the operator and hit the launch button. “Do svedanya, losers.”
* * * *
“February 5, 1847.28,” Martin said. “3:40 pm. local time. Adjusting the offset to zero and ... here we are.”
He opened the door, revealing a swirling gray landscape.
“I thought you adjusted the offset,” Chambers said.
“I did.”
“Then what’s with the gray void?”
Janine peered out. “Isn’t that a courtyard?”
The muffled sound of a carriage on cobblestones drifted through the fog.
“Hello, Moscow,” Martin said as they left the ship.
“Don’t touch anything,” Chambers warned Janine.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t have left her in the ship?” Martin said as he set up the Pauser at the doorway.
“You want her touching stuff in there?”
“Good point.”
* * * *
Chambers entered the drawing room and found a frozen young man, clean-shaven and with short hair revealing nearly perpendicular ears.
Martin shook his head. “He’s trying so hard to be dashing.”
“And failing miserably,” Chambers said.
Janine snapped her gum. “So who is this guy?”
“Leo Tolstoy,” Martin said.
“The guy who wrote all those big fat books?”
“The guy who will write all those big fat books,” Chambers said. “For the next few years all he’ll do is gamble and screw. And he’s only good at one of ‘em.”
Janine raised an eyebrow. “Should I ask?”
Chambers calibrated the line and pointed at the mass of tangled limbs in the bedroom.
“Wow,” Janine said.
“September 22, 1868.28,” Martin announced. “7:51 am local time.”
They stepped out into the courtyard and Martin tapped on the door. A man in a peasant shirt opened it, his dark beard not yet parted in the middle but beginning to show signs of gray.
“Growing his hair long enough to hide his ears was a good move,” Janine said.
“Thank you. My wife suggested it,” Tolstoy said in lightly accented English.
Janine blushed. “Uh, sorry, I didn’t know you spoke English.”
“I speak many languages.” Tolstoy opened the door wider. “Please, come in. I’ve been expecting you.”
They followed Tolstoy to his study and Chambers put the briefcase on his desk. She popped the case open. Tolstoy stood entranced over the bright mass of threads.
“That is my dissolute youth?” He only glanced up to catch Martin’s nod, quickly returning his gaze to his luminous time.
“It’s more beautiful than I remembered.” He moved his hand toward the glow, then drew back. “Can I touch it?”
“Not without these.” Martin took a pair of gloves and a small black box from the duffel bag and gave the gloves to Tolstoy. “And not just any gloves—these. Otherwise the time will dissipate.” He held up the box. “This is a Splicer. When you want to use the time, put it in here. Close the box, press in the latch. Anyone within twenty feet will experience the extra time. When you pop the latch open, or when you run out of spare time, you’ll be kicked back into your usual timeline at the point you left.”
Martin demonstrated, then watched while Tolstoy did it himself.
“You’ve got it?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Martin reached back into the bag and brought out a dull silver canister. “Keep the time sealed in here.” He started moving time from the briefcase to the canister. When 70 percent of it was in the canister, he screwed on the lid and handed it to Tolstoy, who looked wistfully at the briefcase as Chambers closed it.
“Enjoy your time,” she said, heading for the door.
Tolstoy nodded and shifted his attention to the canister.
“It’s a shame,” Martin said as he and Janine followed Chambers. “He’d do more with it than Gnor would. Gnor’s just gonna sell it to Barbara Cartland.”
“It’s a shame we’re only getting 5 percent,” Chambers said, stopping short when she found a large, scarred, dark-suited man and two of his associates standing in front of their ship.
“You delivered Tolstoy’s time?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Lev should have his time. And you kept some for yourselves?”
Janine whispered to Martin, “That’s not a wrench in his hand, is it?”
“No,” he said, “that’s not a wrench.”
“The cut is for the bastard who sent us,” Chambers said.
“Ah. You are flunkies.”
Chambers sighed. “Flunkies, yes.”
“Then I won’t kill you.” He held his hand out for the briefcase. Chambers gave it to him.
“Tell your bastard the Russians are ours,” he said. His associates stepped aside and waited, hands on their weapons, until Chambers, Martin, and Janine were on the ship.
* * * *
Chambers punched the comm button. Martin winced.
“You’re back,” Gnor said. “Where’s my time?”
“With a gigantic scarred-up blaster-toting Russian.”
“Orkhan’s Tartar. Nice guy, if you don’t piss him off. I’m surprised you didn’t piss him off.”
Chambers fumed. “You knew this guy had a lid on Moscow and you sent us there to collect anyway?”
“I didn’t think he’d bother with the nineteenth century, what with all the salvage in the twentieth.”
“You son of a—”
“You still owe me time.”
“No, you owe us for the Splicer we left with Tolstoy.”
“We’ll call it interest on your debt. But I do feel bad about this little misunderstanding, so I’m gonna extend your credit for another Rail run. You can pick the destination, but you’re leaving today. Don’t come back without my hours.”
* * * *
“Here we are,” Martin said. “June 24, 1892.00, 3:17 pm local time. Taormina, Sicily.” He followed Chambers and Janine out of the ship and down a steep path that overlooked the ruins of an ancient amphitheatre. “When the Godfather said he was moving back to the Old Country, he really meant it.”
* * * *
The old man known as the Godfather Paradox settled himself in his leather desk chair with a sigh. The band was still playing a tarantella, the wedding guests still dancing and laughing outside. “Tom,” he said, turning to his assistant, “is it just me, or does this day keep getting longer?”
“It’s a long day, Godfather.”
“Who’s next?”
“A couple of low-level salvagers need a reset in 1983.”
“And you’re moving them to the front of the line because...?”
“Janine Costa is with them.”
“Ah. Send them in.”
Chambers and Martin entered the dark-paneled room, Janine hesitating behind them.
“You have a problem,” the Godfather said.
“Yes, sir,” Chambers said.
“And so you come to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No one ever comes just to say ‘Hi.’”
“Well, sir, we’d be happy to drop in—”
“Not you,” the Godfather Paradox rumbled. “You annoy me. Salvagers who don’t check their equipment annoy me.”
Chambers’ attempt at apology was silenced by the look in the Godfather’s eyes. “Nevertheless,” he said, “the timeline must be preserved. This I will do for you.”
“Thank you, Godfather.”
The old man peered at Janine. “Janine Costa,” he said. “I know you. You’re a clever girl.”
“Her?” Chambers said, immediately regretting it.
“Don’t be fooled by the legwarmers,” the Godfather said. “And don’t interrupt.” He waved Janine forward, and she reluctantly stepped out from behind Chambers and Martin. “So,” he said, “you didn’t like dental school.”
“How did you know—”
“You quit. You must not have liked it. An old man doesn’t have to be a personified abstraction of chronological deviance to figure that out.” The Godfather leaned back in his chair. “So, no teeth. That’s fine. It takes someone special to spend all day every day looking at teeth. You’re not that kind of special. So be it. The question before us, then, is: what kind of special are you?”
“I don’t know...”
“A girl your age, so much life ahead of you ... there must be something you want to do.”
Janine was so nervous she couldn’t even stammer.
The Godfather smiled, just a little. “Those science courses you’ve already taken don’t have to add up to teeth, you know. There are more interesting body parts. Knees ... lungs ... brains...”
“I don’t understand...”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Eh, you’ll have time to figure it out.”
The Godfather turned his attention to Martin and Chambers. “Go back to the day. Ten minutes before you made your mess. Take this girl home and everything will be as it should be.”
“Thank you, Godfather,” Chambers said.
“Someday, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me. That day may never come, but it will probably be May 15, 2367. Or possibly October 3, 1491. We’ll be in touch.”
“Yes, Godfather,” Chambers said.
“Thank you, Godfather,” Martin said.
“Go,” the Godfather said. “And remember to check your equipment.”
* * * *
“What was all that stuff about teeth?” Chambers whispered to Martin as one of the Godfather’s attendants led them off the estate, past the long line of people waiting to ask favors of the Godfather. Janine walked ahead in a daze. “Do you think being a paradox has finally melted his brain?”
“He wasn’t talking about teeth. He was talking about destiny,” Martin said.
“It sounded like teeth.”
“You weren’t paying attention.”
“I was too intimidated to pay attention.”
“Let’s hope Janine wasn’t.”
The attendant left them outside the last gate.
“People are spending a lot of time waiting in line,” Janine said. “Why doesn’t anyone salvage it?”
“Nobody’d be crazy enough to take time from the Godfather,” Martin said.
“But you wouldn’t be taking it from him.”
“We were searched every time we went through a gate,” Chambers told her. “We couldn’t get a Pauser inside.”
Janine pointed to a queue that extended well beyond the last gate. “Looks like you wouldn’t have to.”
Martin turned to Chambers. “It’s a terrible idea,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said.
“I mean, really, just ... terrible.”
“Dangerous.”
“Foolhardy.”
“Crazy.”
“Yes, crazy,” Martin said. “Completely crazy.”
“Absolutely,” Chambers said. “Let’s get the equipment.”
* * * *
Back on the ship Chambers gazed into a briefcase even scruffier than the one they lost in Russia. She’d never seen so many glowing threads of time packed so tightly in one place. “There’s gotta be at least a hundred thousand hours in here.”
“All that time...” Martin said. “Years and years...”
“It’s beautiful,” Janine said, her face lit with time. “I mean, I knew it was beautiful, I saw Tolstoy’s, but so much of it, all together like this. It’s beautiful.”
Chambers snapped the case shut. “All right, next stop April 17, 1983.”
“We’ve got about twenty minutes to kill before the launch slot,” Martin said as he handed out ZABA tabs from a box on the console. “I might as well go hook us up to some fresh air and a little juice.”
“I, uh, need to go to the bathroom,” Janine said when Martin reappeared. She headed toward the back of the ship.
“Do you want a burrito?” Martin asked Chambers. “I’m going to zap a frozen burrito.”
“I thought those things were expired.”
Martin checked the date. “Not until next week.”
“Which means that counting salvage runs they’ve been around at least a year longer.”
“Eight months, tops.”
“Fine, it’s your gastrointestinal system.”
Martin sat down on the couch with his steaming burrito. “Hey, how many frozen burritos do you think we could buy with all that time?”
“We’re not using that time to buy frozen burritos.”
“I know, but as a thought experiment—”
“It’s not a thought experiment. It’s just math.”
“So how many?”
Chambers sighed. “Seven hundred thirty-three thousand eight hundred twenty-four.”
“That’s a lot of burritos.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
* * * *
“We good to go?” Chambers asked Martin when he returned from releasing the atmosphere hookups.
“Let ‘er rip.”
Chambers piloted the ship to the Rail queue. Martin sat down next to her. “Janine’s been in the bathroom a long time,” he said.
“Must have had one of those burritos.”
“Stop mocking the burritos.” He rattled off their destination coordinates to the Rail operator. “Now that,” Martin said, glancing over at her, “is the smile of a woman who just salvaged her way to freedom.”
“You look pretty happy yourself,” Chambers giggled.
“You giggled,” Martin said, then confirmed their standard offset.
“I’m happy. This is my ‘time beyond my wildest dreams’ giggle.” She maneuvered the ship to the Rail.
“Funny,” Martin said. “It sounds just like your nitrous oxide giggle.”
“I have a nitrous oxide giggle?”
“In all the years we’ve been working together the only time I’ve ever heard you giggle was when I accidentally hooked nitrous into the atmosphere.” He gave the Rail operator the go-ahead to launch the ship. “I remember, because you usually yell about that kind of mistake. Face it, you are not a natural giggler.”
“No,” Chambers said. “I’m not.”
Martin adjusted the offset. “Here we are. April 17, 1983.00, 22:06:53.” He swiveled the chair around. “You know, I’m feeling a little dizzy...”
Chambers stood up, then fell back in her chair. “Janine,” she said.
* * * *
“She’s not here,” Martin said after he and Chambers let themselves into Janine’s apartment.
“Of course not.”
“She took the textbooks.”
“And left the pizza boxes.” Chambers held up the top one. Janine had written “SORRY” and “THANKS” on it in large letters.
“We could go back—”
“Are you kidding?” Chambers said. “And mess with the timeline again? The Godfather would not be happy.”
“Or forward. She’s got to be in the logs somewhere.”
Chambers sat down on Janine’s couch and sighed. “There’s no point. You were right. The Godfather was talking about destiny. He knew this would happen. This is ‘everything as it should be.’”
Martin sat next to Chambers.”It was Janine’s idea, salvaging from the line.”
“And she did leave us half.”
“Half of a hell of a lot is still a lot.”
Chambers smiled over her post-nitrous headache. “Three hundred sixty-six thousand nine hundred twelve burritos,” she said.
* * * *
The Chair of Chronobiology at the University of California, Berkeley, pushed her gray hair out of her eyes and spoke to the single thread of time looped around itself at the bottom of a dull silver canister.
“I didn’t waste you,” she said. She put the lid on the canister, and the canister in a desk drawer that also contained a pair of gloves, a small black box, three tiny pieces of faded pink paper, a Nobel prize medal, and a pack of watermelon flavored bubble gum. She took out the gum—a guilty pleasure that made her feel young again—then closed the drawer and locked it.
Physics had gotten weirder in her lifetime, but not weird enough for practical time travel. No alien species had introduced themselves to humanity, and Janine never caught anyone else recycling time. Her life, in the end, was surprisingly mundane.
Still, she’d used her time well. Her research led to new treatments for jet lag and more serious circadian rhythm disorders at the root of a dozen mental and physical illnesses. Her colleagues in chronobiology discovered more applications every year.
She leaned back in her chair, put her feet up on her desk, and snapped her gum.
Physics would catch up, and physiology would be ready.