But this was the day on which Selene intersected our lives.
I had emptied my glass. I looked up to signal the waiter, and at that moment a slender, dark-haired girl, alone, entered the Celestial Room. She was tall, graceful, glorious. She was expensively clad in a clinging monomolecular wrap that shuttled through a complex program of wavelength shifts, including a microsecond sweep of total transparency that dazzled the eye while still maintaining a degree of modesty. Her features were a match for her garment: wide-set glossy eyes, delicate nose, firm lips lightly outlined in green. Her skin was extraordinarily pale. I could see no jewelry on her (why gild refined gold, why paint the lily?) but on her lovely left cheekbone I observed a small decorative band of ultraviolet paint, obviously chosen for visibility in the high-spectrum lighting of this unique room.
She conquered me. There was a mingling of traits in her that I found instantly irresistible: she seemed both shy and steel-strong, passionate and vulnerable, confident and ill at ease. She scanned the room, evidently looking for someone, not finding him. Her eyes met mine and lingered.
Somewhere in my cerebrum (now – n) said shrilly, as I had said on Monday, “I don’t read you, (now + n). I don’t read you!”
I paid no heed. I rose. I smiled to the girl, and beckoned her toward the empty chair at my table. I swept my Herald Tribune to the floor. At certain times there are more important things than compounding one’s capital at five percent per week. She glowed gratefully at me, nodding, accepting my invitation.
When she was about twenty feet from me, I lost all contact with (now – n) and (now + n).
I don’t mean simply that there was an interruption in the transmission of words and data among us. I mean that I lost all sense of the presence of my earlier and later selves. That warm, wordless companionship, that ourselvesness, that harmony that I had known constantly since we had established our linkage five years ago, vanished as if switched off. On Monday, when contact with (now + n) broke, I still had had (now – n). Now I had no one.
I was terrifyingly alone, even as ordinary men are alone, but more alone than that, for I had known a fellowship beyond the reach of other mortals. The shock of separation was intense.
Then Selene was sitting beside me, and the nearness of her made me forget my new solitude entirely.
She said, “I don’t know where he is and I don’t care. He’s been late once too often. Finito for him. Hello, you. I’m Selene Hughes.”
“Aram Kevorkian. What do you drink?”
“Chartreuse on the rocks. Green. I knew you were Armenian from halfway across the room.”
I am Bulgarian, thirteen generations. It suits me to wear an Armenian name. I did not correct her. The waiter hurried over; I ordered chartreuse for her, a sake martini for self. I trembled like an adolescent. Her beauty was disturbing, overwhelming, astonishing. As we raised glasses I reached out experimentally for (now – n) or (now + n). Silence. Silence. But there was Selene.
I said, “You’re not from London.”
“I travel a lot. I stay here a while, there a while. Originally Dallas. You must be able to hear the Texas in my voice. Most recent port of call, Lima. For the July skiing. Now London.”
“And the next stop?”
“Who knows? What do you do, Aram?”
“I invest.”
“For a living?”
“So to speak. I struggle along. Free for dinner?”
“Of course. Shall we eat in the hotel?”
“There’s the beastly fog outside,” I said.
“Exactly.”
Simpatico. Perfectly. I guessed her for twenty-four, twenty-five at most. Perhaps a brief marriage three or four years in the past. A private income, not colossal but nice. An experienced woman of the world, and yet also somehow still retaining a core of innocence, a magical softness of the soul. I loved her instantly. She did not care for a second cocktail. “I’ll make dinner reservations,” I said, as she went off to the powder room. I watched her walk away. A supple walk, flawless posture, supreme shoulderblades. When she was about twenty feet from me I felt my other selves suddenly return. “What’s happening?” (now – n) demanded furiously. “Where did you go? Why aren’t you sending?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Where the hell are the Tuesday prices on last week’s carryover stocks?”
“Later,” I told him.
“Now. Before you blank out again.”
“The prices can wait,” I said, and shut him off. To (now + n) I said, “All right. What do you know that I ought to know?”
Myself of forty-eight hours hence said, “We have fallen in love.”
“I’m aware of that. But what blanked us out?”
“She’s psi-suppressant. She absorbs all the transmission energy we put out.”
“Impossible! I’ve never heard of any such thing.”
“No?” said (now + n). “Brother, this past hour has been the first chance I’ve had to get through to you since Wednesday, when we got into this mess. It’s no coincidence that I’ve been with her just about one hundred percent of the time since Wednesday evening, except for a few two-minute breaks, and then I couldn’t reach you because you must have been with her in your time sequence. And so—”
“How can this be?” I cried. “What’ll happen to us if? No. No, you bastard, you’re rolling me over. I don’t believe you. There’s no way that she could be causing it.”
“I think I know how she does it,” said (now + n). “There’s a—”
At that moment Selene returned, looking even more radiantly beautiful, and silence descended once more.
We dined well. Chilled Mombasa oysters, salade niçoise, filet of Kobe beef rare, washed down by Richebourg ‘77. Occasionally I tried to reach myselves. Nothing. I worried a little about how I was going to get the Tuesday prices to (now – n) on the carryover stuff, and decided to forget about it. Obviously I hadn’t managed to get them to him, since I hadn’t received any printout on sales out of that portfolio this evening, and if I hadn’t reached him, there was no sense in fretting about reaching him. The wonderful thing about this telepathy across time is the sense of stability it gives you: whatever has been, must be, and so forth.
After dinner we went down one level to the casino for our brandies and a bit of gamblerage. “Two thousand pounds’ worth,” I said to the robot cashier, and put my thumb to his charge plate, and the chips came skittering out of the slot in his chest. I gave half the stake to Selene. She played high-grav-low-grav, and I played roulette; we shifted from one table to the other according to whim and the run of our luck. In two hours she tripled her stake and I lost all of mine. I never was good at games of chance. I even used to get hurt in the market before the market ceased being a game of chance for me. Naturally, I let her thumb her winnings into her own account, and when she offered to return the original stake I just laughed.
Where next? Too early for bed.
“The swimming pool?” she suggested.
“Fine idea,” I said. But the hotel had two, as usual. “Nude pool or suit pool?”
“Who owns a suit?” she asked, and we laughed and took the dropshaft to the pool.
There were separate dressing rooms, M and W. No one frets about showing flesh, but shedding clothes still has lingering taboos. I peeled fast and waited for her by the pool. During this interval I felt the familiar presence of another self impinge on me: (now – n). He wasn’t transmitting, but I knew he was there. I couldn’t feel (now + n) at all. Grudgingly I began to admit that Selene must be responsible for my communications problem. Whenever she went more than twenty feet away, I could get through to myselves. How did she do it, though? And could it be stopped? Mao help me, would I have to choose between my livelihood and my new beloved?