Millennium

The bar had tinted-glass windows, so I didn't know what a glorious day it was until we got out on the field and looked around. It was one of those days that make my fingers itch to hold onto the stick of my Stearman and head up into the old wild blue yonder. The air was crisp and clear with hardly any wind at all. There were sailboats out in the Bay even this early in the morning. Even the big, ugly old Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge looked good against the blue sky, and beyond it was the prettiest city in America. In the other direction I could see the Berkeley and Oakland hills.

We used Tom's car and headed out across the field. The hangar wasn't hard to find. Just follow the stream of trucks with piles of Hefty bags in the back.

The rest of the team was there before us, except Eli Seibel who had gone to examine the DC-10's left engine, which had come down about five miles from the main wreckage. When we got inside I was amazed at the amount of wreckage they'd already hauled away from the Livermore site.

"United's in a big hurry to get it cleaned up," Jerry told me. "It was all we could do to keep them from carting away the biggest pieces before we had a chance to document their positions: He showed me a rough sketch map he'd made, meticulously noting the location of everything bigger than a suitcase.

I understood how the folks at United must feel. The Livermore site was damn public. No airline likes to have hordes of rubberneckers hanging around looking at their failures. They'd got a crew of hundreds of scavengers together and by now the site was just about picked clean.

The inside of the hangar was a mess. All the big pieces were stacked at one side, and then there were tons and tons of plastic trash bags full of the smaller stuff, most of it coated with mud. Now parts of the 747 were starting to arrive as well, and room had to be made for them.

It all had to be sorted.

It wasn't my job, but it gave me a headache anyway, just looking at it. I began to feel that two double scotches at seven in the morning wasn't the brightest idea I ever had. There were some headache pills in the pocket of my coat. I looked around for a water fountain, then saw a girl carrying a tray full of cups of coffee. She looked a little lost, walking slowly by the mounds of trash bags. She kept looking at her watch, like she had to be somewhere soon.

"I could use some of that coffee," I said.

She turned around and smiled. Or at least, she started to smile. She got about halfway there and the expression froze on her face.

It was a weird moment. It couldn't have lasted more than half a second, yet it felt like an hour. So many emotions played over her face in that little bit of time that at first I thought I must be imagining it. Later, I wasn't so sure.

She was a beautiful woman. She'd looked younger from behind. When she turned and I saw her eyes, for a moment I thought she was a hundred years old. But that was ridiculous.

Thirty, maybe; no more than that. She had the kind of striking, hurting beauty that makes it hard to breathe if you've fifteen or sixteen and never been kissed. I was a hell of a lot older than that, but I felt it just the game.

Then she turned and started to walk away.

"Hey," I yelled after her. "What about that coffee?"

She just walked faster. By the time she reached the hangar doors she was ru

"You always have that effect on women?"

I turned, and saw it was Tom.

"Did you see that?"

"Yeah. What's your secret? Oil of polecat? h your fly open?"

He was laughing, so I did, too, but I didn't feel anything was fu

It went beyond any feelings of rejection; I honestly wasn't bothered by that. Her reaction was so overdrawn, so ludicrous. l mean, l ain't Robert Redford but I don't have a face to frighten little girls, and I don't smell any worse than anybody else who'd been tramping through the mud all night.

What bothered me was the feeling that, far from being lost, she was looking for something lost.

And she'd found it.

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.