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“The marauder might have seen one of these?”
“It’s possible. They appear from time to time, without warning.”
“Would that frighten him?”
“It might have. They’re impressive creatures. And not always benign.”
“Come again?”
“They almost always ignore people. But occasionally they’ll take one.” Archer blinked. “Take one?”
“Abduct one? Eat one? The process is mysterious but quite complete. No body is left behind. In any case, it’s very rare. I’ve seen these creatures and I’ve never felt threatened by them. But the marauder may have been told about this, maybe even witnessed it—I don’t know. I’m only guessing.”
Archer said, “This is very bizarre, Ben.”
“Yes,” Ben said. “I think so too.”
Archer tried to collect his thoughts. “The last question—”
“Is about Tom.”
Archer nodded.
“He discovered the tu
“Is he still alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“One of these ghost things might have eaten him?”
Ben frowned. “I want to emphasize how unlikely that is. ‘Ghost’ is a good analogy. We call them that: time ghosts. They’re seldom seen, even more seldom dangerous. No, the more present danger is from the marauder.”
“Tom could be dead,” Archer interpreted.
“He might be.”
“Or in danger?”
“Very likely.”
“And he doesn’t know that—doesn’t know anything about it.”
“No,” Ben said, “he doesn’t.”
This talk worried Catherine deeply.
She had accepted Ben Collier as a visitor from the future; as an explanation it worked as well as any other. But the future was supposed to be a sensible place—a simplified place, decorated in tasteful white; she had seen this on television. But the future Ben had described was vast, confusing, endless in its hierarchies of mutation. Nothing was certain and nothing lasted forever. It was scary, the idea of this chasm of impermanence yawning in front of her.
She was worried about Doug Archer, too.
He had crawled into her bed last night with the bashful eagerness of a puppy dog. Catherine accepted this as a gesture of friendship but worried about the consequences. She had not slept with very many men because she tended to care too much about them. She lacked the aptitude for casual sex. This was no doubt an advantage in the age of AIDS, but too often it forced her to choose between frustration and a commitment she didn’t want or need. For instance, Archer: who was this man, really?
She stole a glance at him as he sat beside her, Levi’s and messy hair and a strange little grin on his face, listening to Ben, the porcelain-white one-legged time traveler: Douglas Archer, somehow loving all this. Loving the weirdness of it.
She wanted to warn him. She wanted to say, Listen to all these frightening words. A renegade soldier from the twenty-first century, a tu
But Doug was sitting here like a kid listening to some Rudyard Kipling story.
She looked at Ben Collier—at this man who had been dead for ten years and endured it with the equanimity of a CEO late for a meeting of his finance committee—and frowned.
He wants something from us, Catherine thought.
He won’t demand anything. (She understood this.) He won’t threaten us. He won’t beg. He’ll let us say no. He’ll let us walk away. He’ll thank us for all we’ve done, and he’ll really mean it.
But Doug won’t say no. Doug won’t walk away.
She knew him that well, at least. Cared that much about him.
Doug was saying, “Maybe we should break for lunch.” He looked at Ben speculatively. “How about you? We could fix up some of those steaks. Unless you prefer to eat ’em raw?”
“Thank you,” Ben said, “but I don’t take food in the customary fashion.” He indicated his throat, his chest. “Still undergoing repairs.”
“The steaks aren’t for you?”
“Oh, they’re for me. And thank you. But the cybernetics have to digest them first.”
“Ick,” Catherine said. “I’m sorry if this is disturbing.”
It was, but she shrugged. “They fed my aunt Lacey through a tube for two years before she died. This isn’t any worse, I guess. But I’m sorry for you.”
“Strictly temporary. And I’m not in any pain. You two have lunch if you like. I’m quite happy here.”
“Okay,” Catherine said. Meekly: “But I have a couple of questions of my own.”
“Surely,” Ben said.
“You told us you were a sort of custodian. A caretaker. You said you were recruited.’ But I don’t know what that means. Somebody knocked at your door and asked you to join up?”
“I was a professional historian, Catherine. A good one. I was approached by another caretaker, from my own near future, also a historian. Think of us as a guild. We recruit our own.”
“That puts a lot of power in your hands.” Custodian was a modest word, Catherine thought; maybe too modest.
“It has to be that way,” Ben said. “The tu
“I see. You agreed to this?”
“When it was explained to me.”
“Just like that?”
“Not without some soul-searching.”
“But you must have had a life of your own. It must have meant giving something up.”
“Not as much as you might think. I was old, Catherine. An old man. And longevity is something of an art in my time; I was more than a century old. And failing. And quite alone.”
He said this with a wistfulness that made Catherine believe him. “They made you young again?”
“Passably young,” Ben said. “Young enough to begin another life when I leave here.”
“Are you allowed to do that?”
“I’m an employee, not a slave.”
“So what you want,” Catherine surmised, “is to fix up all this damage. Make the tu
“Yes.”
“Is that possible? Can you fix it?”
“The cybernetics are repairing as much of the physical damage as they can. Then we can close the co
“And until then,” Catherine interpreted, “the problem is Tom Winter.”
“He may be perfectly safe. He may not. The cybernetics tried to warn him, but they were working across a tremendous information barrier—I’m afraid they weren’t very specific. He may have alerted the marauder, which puts us at risk; or he may do so if he hasn’t yet.”
Catherine bit her lip. Here was the crux of it. “You want us to bring him back.”
Ben looked very solemn. “That may not be possible at this stage. The cybernetics can help, and they might provide some defense against the marauder, but the danger is obvious. I won’t ask you to go—either of you.”
You don’t have to ask, Catherine thought sadly. She looked at Doug Archer and knew.
Archer gri
“Tom is a likable sonofabitch,” he said. “I expect I can drag his ass back here.”
Doug went to the kitchen, leaving Catherine alone with Ben.
She hesitated in the doorway, u
“I’ll do everything I can to minimize the risk. Some risk remains. The world won’t end if Tom Winter stays in Manhattan … but there might be other consequences I can’t calculate.” He paused. “Catherine, Doug knows the doorway is open. Do you think he’d stay away from it if I told him to?”