Compared to the last time, the suit was amazingly easy to find and only slightly worse a fit than it had been. It was, however, only Ismet’s compliancy and drug-weakened will that allowed her to come this far. The trip point was reached while she was actually in the suit, but before it could be activated. For quite some time she sat there, confused and frightened, but then something inside her fought, reached out and adjusted the numbers she could not quite understand, then pushed a button.
The date and location were basically random, but with reality blanking out around her the process of assimilating all of the personalities into her went on. Again the will was not a strong one, and a synthesis occurred, although the new personality was, in fact, less decisive and more prone to fright than the first one had been.
She came out in the water. It was an eerie sensation, literally standing atop an unmoving ocean, but soon she began to sink into it. She realized immediately what “random” meant, and struggled with the controls as she sank, hoping to reactivate before the pressure crushed the suit.
The next time, thanks to a bit of luck, she struck land, and knew that this new body, while young and attractive, also would not do, for it was addicted to opium.
In 1741, in India, she was a prostitute serving the British soldiers.
In 1854 she was a prostitute, this time serving seamen of all nations in Honolulu, in the Kingdom of Hawaii. But one was a navigator who knew quite a bit about latitude and longitude.
In 1905 she was a prostitute on the Barbary Coast of San Francisco.
She had by now realized that time had found a convenient outlet for her and was not going to let her go. She realized, too, that her power in the suit was waning, and her reserve air supply was so thin there was a question of whether it would reach. By this point she was three trip points beyond the first, and someone else entirely. Someone, in fact, who did not regard the life time was imposing on her, that of a barren whore, as something to be ashamed of.
Still, she decided to go for the abandoned time belt. There was more chance at a future there than in a past time in the oldest profession, and there seemed no reason not to take a chance on it.
She didn’t want to risk assimilation in Moosic’s present, if only because it would signal to the inevitable watchers that someone was there. The locator on the suit was not, however, designed to go down more than seconds, so where she arrived was not precisely where she wanted to be. It was, however, only two miles north of the plant.
The air gauge said it was empty, and had said so for some time. Not that she could move in that suit, anyway, but that left her with an hour or two, no more, before assimilation would take over. She abandoned the suit with no thought of hiding it. It was useless at this stage. Two miles was two miles, and her current body was quite young—seventeen, in fact—but also not in the best condition for walking or running. The men had liked large breasts, and the penalty for them in her case was to be large in other places as well. She would probably not make the distance in time, and it was too close now to take the chance.
There was a small communal housing development nearby, however, and she checked the outside and found a number of possibilities. Cars were out, since, even if she could find one, in this regulated society it wouldn’t mean anything. The machines would not run while she was out of phase.
She looked around the rear of the complex, which seemed some kind of cheap family housing, and eventually spotted a child’s bicycle sitting in one of the yards. It was a bit small for her, but it would certainly do. She feared it might be locked, but found to her relief that it was not. There was, apparently, one advantage to living in a rigidly policed state.
It was kind of fun, riding a bike stark naked down a major road, but it still took her some time to reach her destination, and the ups and downs of the road in this seemingly flat country were not easy to overcome.
The Calvert Cliffs, known as one of the east’s richest fossil beds, were just below the nuclear plant and its secret time project. She turned into the small parking lot for the cliffs and nearly jumped off the bike, running down the small trail a bit to where she, as Moosic, had left the belt, all the while praying it was still there.
It was, and it appeared to be functioning normally. She began to feel a bit dizzy, and worried that phasing might catch up with her before she could activate the belt. She had tripped as Ismet while actually in the suit, and only Ismet’s fear of returning and being discovered as having left without permission caused her to activate at all.
It had been, in a sense, lifetimes since she’d used one of the belts, and for a moment she was struck with confusion as to how it worked. Finally, though, she remembered the “Home” button, found it, and pressed it as nausea started to overtake her.
The feeling was replaced almost instantly by one of falling slowly, and she relaxed. The journey, which might have taken many hours in the old suit had it had the power, would not take long with this device.
Feeling a bit shaky, she appeared in the lounge area of the Outworlder base. Sitting there were Herb, looking much as he had so many lifetimes before, “Doc” Kahwalini, beautiful as ever, and a small, weasel-like man she barely recalled as Nikita.
Doc looked over at her and smiled. “Right on schedule,” she said approvingly.
THE WORM OUROBOROS
“Do you ever feel rotten about being in this business?” Kahwalini asked Chung Lind as she studied the results of her diagnostic computer’s run on the newcomer.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Never really knowing, I mean. Never really being sure what’s wrong and what’s right, whether all this means a great deal or nothing, and whether it’s our right to do it to the ignorant and unknowing?”
Lind shrugged. “Not particularly. Conscience getting to you again, huh? This little operation’s a bit smelly, and we’re coming up to the rough part, so you want a way out.”
“That may be it. But I don’t want out. There’s no place to go, anyway, and certainly no place as interesting as here. No, I just dislike doing this to other people.”
“It’s not the first time,” he pointed out. “And when we mount a major operation it can affect millions, not just one.”
“But you don’t see those millions, or feel them. Still, I suppose you’re right. Setting fire to the orphanage is worse than setting fire to one orphan.”
“You’re just down in the dumps, as usual, when this sort of thing comes up. We’re soldiers, or cops, or whatever you want to call it. What’s right and wrong isn’t our choice. All I know is that we’ve saved more lives than we’ve taken, and that’s all that counts with me.”
She sighed and nodded. “I guess that has to be enough. O.K., I’m ready for her. Don’t worry—I’m a pro.”
“I know you are and I’m not worried. Anything?”
“Some minor bugs and internal stuff, the product of 1905 or whenever it was. There’s a progressive astigmatism that’s going to get worse.”
“She’ll survive.”
“I know, I know. O.K., to work.”
She left Lind in the lab and proceeded back to the medical examining area. The patient was about five foot four, twenty years old, with medium-length black straight hair and large brown eyes. She had a pudgy face that was somewhat cute, but she was not really pretty in any sense of the word, a fact made worse by the forty extra pounds she carried. Her low contralto had a throaty, rasping quality that sounded either cute or sexy.