Norton looked at Travis, wondering. He looked at Diana, wondering something else.
They drank, and Norton’s cola was the best he’d ever tasted. He’d waited three centuries for this. They ate.
Norton had no idea what the food was, and he didn’t want to know. Every dish looked odd, some of them very odd. By now, this was no surprise. Brendan’s cuisine had been less than appetising, but these strange new aromas were so tempting. He watched the other two, then followed their example as they helped themselves from the various different bowls.
“Tell us about Lost Vegas,” said Diana.
“Las Vegas,” said Norton. “Not Lost.”
“It’s lost now.”
“But you had heard of Vegas? Before I said I’d lived there?”
“Yes.”
“How? From old movies? That seems to be the way those mad professors learned their history.”
“By ‘movies’ you mean fictional drama recorded on celluloid for two-dimensional reproduction, a few fragments of which are available in the history faculty archives?”
“Er… yeah,” said Norton. “You got it. Fictional. There were also documentaries, films of real events, but most of it was just made up.”
“Like most of the professors’ history,” said Travis.
“But you thought you needed them to corroborate my story?”
“That was one reason for using them. Their rate for abduction was very cheap. The university has funding problems, like everyone. Often a job is better done by outsiders. They’re anonymous, unknown, they can’t be traced back to you. And because they’re not family, you don’t care if something unfortunate happens to them.”
“Like me being a psycho,” said Norton.
“A psycho?” said Travis. “You mean a menace to society who was sentenced to cryonic imprisonment?”
“Is that what happened to criminals?”
“Who knows?” said Diana.
Travis exchanged glances with her, knowing glances.
“Because history was erased on Day Zero,” she added.
“Recorded history,” said Travis. “All the information can still be found, from various different sources, but it’s never been collated. Like a shattered ancient sculpture waiting to be pieced back together. After Day Zero, everyone was too busy with the present to care about the past.”
“Even Day Zero isn’t history,” said Diana. “Memories are short, and most of the population doesn’t know it happened.”
“Vegas must have been quite a place,” said Travis.
Norton shrugged. Had he worked on an assembly line in Chicago or as a pen-pusher in Washington, he’d probably have thought Las Vegas was wonderful. Everyone believed the grass was greener elsewhere, and he’d always wanted to see the sea—even though there was no grass at all.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess Vegas had almost everything. Except the sea.”
“It should have been located by the sea, you think?” said Travis.
“Er… yeah,” Norton agreed, although moving the city to the Californian coast wasn’t something he’d previously considered. “Vegas by the sea.” He nodded, liking the idea. “Sea and sand as well the sunshine. Casinos on the beach, with all the croupiers in bikinis.”
“What’s a croupier?” asked Travis.
“The person who runs a gambling table.”
“What’s a bikini?” asked Diana.
Norton looked at her elaborate metallic outfit, and he wondered how to describe a bikini.
“A two-piece swimming costume,” he said, “made of very little’material. Just enough to cover the essentials.”
“What essentials?” Diana asked.
“You know. Across here.” Norton drew his hand in front of his chest. “And…” He gestured down to his crotch.
“The penis?” said Diana.
“No!”
“The testicles?” said Diana.
“No!” Norton shook his head. He could feel himself starting to blush. “Bikinis are only for girls. Women. Females. Not men.”
“So what would the male croupiers wear?” asked Diana.
“When?”
“In the beach casinos.”
“Forget it.” Norton shook his head. “It wouldn’t work. You can’t have casinos out of doors. The sun goes down. The sky gets dark. People think it’s time for bed. In Las Vegas, it’s all inside, where there’s no day, no night. There are no clocks, and no one notices how much time passes by.”
From his vantage point, high in the sky on top of a golden glass pyramid, Norton looked around and thought about how much time had passed by. He wondered, if it wasn’t for the clouds below, whether he’d be able to see the ocean for the first time—and, if he could, which ocean it might be.
Almost everything he’d seen had been strange; but the strangest of all was how quickly he had grown used to his new circumstances. He gazed around the restaurant, at the weird people in their crazy clothes, and it almost seemed normal.
At first, the most noticeable thing about Diana was that she was bald. By now, Norton hardly noticed at all. What he was most aware of was how attractive she was.
“The largest city in the country,” she said, “it must have had something special.”
“This is the largest city?” said Norton. He didn’t doubt it. “What country?”
“Your country. Your century. Lost Vegas was the largest city in Yuessay.”
“The largest city!” Norton laughed. “You’ve got that wrong.” Like most of history, he thought.
“No,” said Travis. “Lost Las Vegas was the largest city in your country, although that must have been after your era.”
“It must have been,” said Norton doubtfully.
“Is it true the city expanded so fast because it was a refuge for criminals?” asked Diana.
“A refuge? You think everyone in Vegas was a gangster, that it was some kind of hideout? That they’d rob a bank in Arizona, then head to Vegas where they’d be safe because the cops couldn’t cross the State line?”
“Did they?” she asked.
“No,” said Norton.
“Prohibition,” said Travis.
“Before my time,” said Norton.
“That was when selling alcohol was illegal in your country, yes?”
“People who wanted to drink alcohol had to buy it from an illegal source, yes?”
“Yeah. But it was only illegal for a short while.”
“Fourteen years,” said Travis. “Gambling was illegal in your country, yes?”
“Yeah. Mostly. Except at racetracks. And in Nevada.”
“Prostitution, yes?”
“Yeah. You’re right. Except in Nevada.”
“The majority of narcotics, yes?”
“Drugs? Yeah, drugs are illegal. Were illegal. Of course they were.”
“Even in Nevada?”
“Yeah. In my time, anyway.”
“You couldn’t buy drugs at a drugstore?”
“You could buy legal drugs, medical drugs.”
“If we’ve got this right,” said Diana, “during Prohibition, alcohol was only sold by criminal organisations. They made a fortune doing this, and the money was invested in businesses such as property development and health care.”
“Health care?”
“Certainly,” she said. “But we have a simple question: If people from your era wanted to drink alcohol, to gamble on games of chance and sporting events, to pay for various sexual activities, to enjoy narcotic relaxation, why were these things illegal?”
Norton tried to think of an answer. He knew there must have been one—mustn’t there?
“How do you know all this?” he asked. “Fourteen years of Prohibition. Organised crime. Gambling. Las Vegas. I thought most history had been lost and forgotten.”
“Not by us,” said Travis, glancing at Diana.
“Police records, you mean?” said Norton.
“Something like that,” said Diana, glancing at Travis.
“How’s your meal?” asked Travis.