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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 running.

"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 funny.

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.

I had to assume I'd know it when I saw it.

"Listen up, motherfucker."

"Yeah, I hear you. Right on time. I'll give it to you on the click, of course."

"Of course," I said. "What time would that be, precisely?"

"Two or three minutes."

I'm sure the BC gave me that "precise" answer just to annoy me. So with all the annoyances in my life, l need a machine thumbing its nose at me? Apparently so. I tried having it kowtow and hated it even worse.

I'm just not a big fan of machinery.

The brick was sitting there across the room, on a transparent table. It looked like I could just walk over and grab it, but I knew better. I'd have been immobilized three times before I got within twenty meters, and killed if I got within five. When the BC says on the click it means precisely that.

There were a few other people in the Post Office with me. Some of them were people I knew. Keeping me company, I guess. And there was Hildy Johnstown, the "newsman," with his felt hat and his worn press pass sticking out of the hat brim. He puts out a paper with a circulation of around a thousand -- actually pastes it up and prints it with ink on paper. The last gasp of a once-proud profession. Today, who gives a shit? News is, by definition, bad news.

I wondered if he'd get a story. Sometimes the message say it's okay to tell others.

Sometimes it says keep this under your hat. Sometimes it doesn't say anything, and you have to decide for yourself. Time would tell.

On the click, the BC caused the brick to be opened. It made some noise. I confess to a slight case of nerves as I crossed the room and pulled up a chair. I picked up the tablet and looked at the message.

It was in my handwriting. I had expected that; they almost always are.

It said: There are good restaurants in Jack London Square. Go north on the freeway and follow the signs.

The Council will give in if you do not push them too hard.

Tell them the mission is vital. I don't know if it is, lest tell them anyway.

Don't fuck him unless you want to.

Tell him about the kid. She's only a wimp.

It was written in 20th Amerenglish. l read it through four times to be sure I had it all, and my jaw got tighter with each second I had to look at it. Finally, I stood up and backed away.

"Blow it to hell," I said.