Millennium

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, gri

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 I

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 Joh

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.