“We’re being hauled in by some kind of tractor beam. I can’t understand what’s coming in on the radio.”
“You wouldn’t expect to, would you? After so long?”
“You could hope. But I’m just broadcasting a few phrases over and over in fifteen languages. See what they—”
“Hello, there,” the speakers said. The husky voice could have been either male or female; it had a slight Australian twang. “Please don’t be upset that we have taken control of your vehicle. All traffic near the city is regulated by the city.”
“I used to do that myself,” La said.
“From how far in the past did you come?”
“Twenty-four thousand years,” La said. “Do you get many time travelers?”
“Not really. The last one was several centuries ago. Does your machine involve an inexplicable anomaly having to do with gravitons, lots of them, in another dimension? ”
“It does, in fact. Can you help us explain it?”
“We can’t, actually. We don’t currently have working time machines.”
“Damn,” Matt said. “Another jump.”
“Maybe not,” La said. “We may hold the key for them to produce one.”
There was a flat area ahead, blinking yellow. They settled into it, in front of rows of streamlined vehicles of various shapes and sizes.
The ramp eased down and let in cold air. Their suits warmed as they walked down it.
Just before La stepped off, someone appeared. Nude, with small female breasts and small male genitals. “You still have gender,” it, or she, or he, said. “Except for you. You’re like me.”
“In some ways, I suppose,” La said. “You’re a projection? ”
“Yes. No one alive speaks anything like your language. People, physical people, are also cautious about coming into contact with you. There has been no disease in about twenty thousand years, except for an outbreak of influenza brought by a time traveler.”
“From the past, or the future?” Matt asked.
“Always from the past. If people have come from the future, they’ve kept it secret.” He looked closely at Matt. “You’re not from the future?”
“No, I’m from the 2050s.”
“As I told you,” La said, with a trace of asperity.
“Well, you looklike you could be from the future. Dressed like that. And the way your ship is armed.”
“It helps,” Matt said, “when you run into huge flying reptiles with teeth.”
“Oh . . . you were up there, what you’d call Indonesia. That was not a great success.”
“Bioengineering?” La said.
“In a way. Sort of an amusement park, which turned out too dangerous to be really amusing.
“We’ve been more successful, working with species that already exist. In Africa, we have elephants and apes and such with augmented intelligence; they’re delightful. Starting from scratch, as we did with the dinosaurs and Martians . . . you’d think they’d be easierto control, but they aren’t; they tend to go their own way.”
“You’ve made Martians on Earth?” Matt said.
He squinted, an unreadable expression. “Why would you want to do that? On Mars, of course. Big puffballs that bounce around and keep to themselves. They stopped talking to us centuries ago, millennia. And their language now, if it is still a language, is incomprehensible.”
After an uncomfortable silence, La said, “Can you take us to someone in authority?”
“No. You can’t come into the city’s biosphere. And no one’s coming out here. Some were in favor of destroying you, to make sure you couldn’t infect us. But more wanted to investigate you.”
“That’s good. Shall we begin the investigation?”
“It’s over. You may go.” He tilted his head, as if listening to something. “I think you’d better go, now. Where did you come from, in the past?”
“Los Angeles.”
“Go there. You’ll find it amusing.”
“Will the people there be expecting us?”
“There are no people there. Nowhere but down here. Go now.” He disappeared.
“We should take him at his word,” La said. “I suspect we’re in more danger here than we were from the dinosaurs. ”
They hurried up the ramp and strapped in.
“This could be a little bumpy,” La said. “We’re going suborbital.” Three bells rang, and then the machine roared. Matthew and Martha were pushed back into the cushions by several gees.
La looked back at them, unaffected. “This will only take a couple of minutes,” she shouted. “Then we’ll coast.”
“What’s going on?” Martha screamed.
“It’s just a different kind of flying,” Matt shouted. “A lot faster. When it ends, we’ll be weightless for a while.”
“How can you be weightless?”
“You’ll enjoy it,” he said hopefully. He knew people who really didn’t. He’d done it once, and barely kept his lunch down.
The ship was suddenly silent, and they were floating free.
“You can undo your straps and move around,” La said. “Just be strapped in before reentry, about forty minutes.”
Martha unclicked and drifted free. “Oh my,” she said. “It’s like being on a swing!”
“Yeah, exactly,” Matt said, choking back gastric juices. He was glad he hadn’t eaten in hours.
She closed her eyes and shuddered all over, smiling, hugging herself. Was she having an orgasm? Her first?
She grabbed her knees and rotated slowly. “Oh . . . this is glorious. Matt?”
“It’s . . . it’s really fine.” He needed a drink of water in the worst way. Would the faucets work? “La? I need—”
“Bottled water in the fridge.”
He clambered over the acceleration couch and pushed himself in that direction, which unfortunately caused him to rotate backward. After two and a half turns, he was able to snag the galley door, then drift toward the fridge.
“Bring me one?” Martha called.
“Sure.” He got the top off one and stopped spinning by grabbing on to the fridge handle. He drank greedily from it and snorted some out his nose, which caused some dignified sneezing, coughing, and retching. A small universe, globules of water, saliva, and snot, radiated away from him. But the nausea passed, and he kicked himself gently back into the control room, a bottle of water in each hand.
Martha squeezed the bottle experimentally, and a string of globes floated free, flexing in and out of globular symmetry. “Have you ever seen anything like that?” He had, but it from was somebody else’s missed barf bag.
“Don’t do too much of that,” La said. “It all winds up on the floor.”
“Oh—of course it will.” She chased after a bubble and bit it.
Matt discreetly crawled back into the seat and belted himself in while Martha cavorted. He drank the whole bottle of water and hoped there would be gravity again before he had to urinate.
After what seemed to Matt like more than forty minutes, La told Martha to strap herself back in.
“We have to use atmospheric braking.” They slammed into the atmosphere, and the machine shook violently, making disturbing noises, while the view of Earth dissolved into orange glow.
They were flying over what seemed to be unbroken forest. “This was deep in the middle of LA when it was me,” La said. They slowed, losing altitude and banking.
Abrupt cliffs fell into the sea. “You would expect ruins, at least,” she said.
“I don’t know,” Matt said. “Even the Pyramids were wearing down after a few thousand years. After twenty-four thousand, they probably wouldn’t even be bumps.”
“There’s someone. Or something.” She banked toward a clearing where several small figures were running for the woods. Their approach would be pretty dramatic, screaming in out of an empty sky.
They eased down onto a soft meadow. “Defense,” she said, and with an oiled-metal sound, the gun barrels and lasers and pressors slid out.