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Archive name: boots.txt (FF, sci-fi)
Authors name: Marcia R. Hooper (marciar26@aol.com)
Story title : Bootstrapped

--------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2003. As the author, I claim all rights under 
international copyright laws. This work is not intended 
for sale, but please feel free to post this story to 
other archives or newsgroups, keeping the header and 
text intact. Any commercial use of this work is 
expressly forbidden without the written permission of 
the author.
--------------------------------------------------------

Bootstrapped (FF, sci-fi)
by Marcia R. Hooper (marciar26@aol.com)

***

See how frustrated you'd get after 30,000 years without 
sex. Trish falls through a doorway into the future and 
that's only the beginning of her troubles. Join her in 
this 24 page misadventure in time. 

***

This is a work of fiction and is not meant to portray 
any person living or dead, nor any known situation. It 
is meant for adults only and is not to be read by 
person's under the age of 18, or the legal age in the 
county/state/country in which the reader resides.

If you would like a Microsoft Word version of this 
story (a much easier read), please contact me at 
MarciaR26@aol.com. You can also visit my website at 
http://hometown.aol.com/marciar26/ to read the rest of 
my stories. If that doesn't work, which it doesn't half 
the time, try

http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/marciar26/myhomepage/

Note: This story is adapted from the short story, "BY 
HIS BOOTSTRAPS" by Anson Macdonald (Robert A. 
Heinlein). It was originally published in October1941 
in a science fiction magazine. About a year ago, my 
husband handed me a book of short stories called: 
Before the Golden Age, by Isaac Asimov and dared me to 
try and make any of them modern enough to read. 

I laughed, thinking who would ever want to read 
something written 70 years ago, and science fiction to 
boot. I was wrong. Two of the stories I really liked: 
"The Accursed Galaxy" by Edmond Hamilton, and "He Who 
Shrank" by Henry Hasse. I rewrote both as "Big Bang 
Theory" and "The Girl Who Came Shrink Wrapped.

A couple of months later I found another old anthology 
from back in the forties called Great Science Fiction 
Stories, Adventures in Time and Space that had "He Who 
Shrank" in it and I rewrote the following story. It is 
about a college student who gets sucked up into the 
mind-twisting world of time-travel. Although I disliked 
the ending of the story, I more or less stuck with it. 
The character in the original story was male but mine 
is female. Also, this story has almost no sex, but I 
hope you'll enjoy it anyway.
 

See how frustrated you'd get after 30,000 years without 
sex. Trish falls through a doorway into the future and 
that's only the beginning of her troubles. Join her in 
this 24 page misadventure in time. 



BOOTSTRAPPED
by 
Marcia R. Hooper
(marciar26@aol.com)




Based on the Short Story:
BY HIS BOOTSTRAPS
by Anson Macdonald (Robert A. Heinlein)

First Published in Astounding Science Fiction,
October 1941



CHAPTER ONE:

The Mystery of the Locked Room

Wednesday, April 19, 2006, 2:12 PM



I did not see the circle appear.

Nor, for that matter, did I see the woman who stepped 
out of the circle and stood staring at the back of by 
head--staring and fidgeting badly as though laboring 
under some strong and unusual emotion.

I had locked myself in the room for the express purpose 
of completing my thesis in one sustained drive. 
Tomorrow was the last day for submission and three and 
a half packs of Winston Lights, eight bottles of 
Starbucks French Vanilla Latte and thirteen hours of 
continuous work had added seven thousand words to the 
body. The title was: "An Investigation into Certain 
Mathematical Aspects of a Rigor of Metaphysics," and 
very nearly, I no longer understood a single word of 
its meaning.

I glanced up and let my eyes rest on the mini-fridge 
door. Behind it were half a dozen more of the sweet 
white Starbuck's confections, and no, I admonished 
myself, one more bottle and you'll detonate like a 
bomb. My hands shook and suspicious sounds gave voice 
from inside my body. The room smelled of . . .well, the 
room just smelled.

The woman behind me said nothing.

I resumed typing with numb fingertips on the keyboard 
pads. "--nor is it valid to assume that a conceivable 
proposition is necessarily a possible proposition, even 
when it is possible to formulate mathematics which 
describes the proposition with exactness. A case in 
point is the concept of "Time Travel." Time travel may 
be imagined and its necessities may be formulated under 
any and all theories of time, formulae which resolve 
the paradoxes of each theory. Nevertheless, we know 
certain things about the empirical nature of time which 
preclude the possibility of the conceivable 
proposition. Duration is an attribute of consciousness 
and not of the plenum. It has no--"

"Damn it!" I exploded, wanting to pound on the 
keyboard. "I don't even know what I'm writing, 
anymore!"

"Don't bother with it then," a voice from behind me 
said. "It's a lot of nonsense anyway."

I shrieked and spun around; I almost tipped over the 
chair. When I saw it was a woman and not a man (of 
course it's not a man, my cerebrum informed me just a 
millisecond too late) I let out a sigh. Only it wasn't 
a sigh at all, but a backwards gasp.

"You scared me!" I said accusingly. My hands were 
clutched tightly to my chest and I sat half-on and 
half-off of the chair. I saw myself in a moment of 
comical insight as a twenties-era damsel in distress. I 
might have peed my pants. "What are you doing here?"

Not waiting for an answer, I got up and strode over to 
the door. It was still locked, and bolted on the 
inside. All the windows were shut and we were four 
stories above the busy quad.

"How did you get in?" I demanded.

"Through that," the woman answered, indicating the 
circle. I noticed it for the first time. I blinked my 
eyes and looked again. It was easy to miss. A pencil-
thin line drawn on the very air, it hung between the 
woman and the wall, a thin circle like the hoop of a 
circus lion-trainer.

"What is that?" I said, shaking my head vigorously. The 
circle remained but my head exploded. I advanced slowly 
toward it, putting out a hand to touch.

"Don't!" the woman barked.

I yanked back my hand. "Why not?"

"I'll explain that later. But first, let's have some of 
that latte." She walked directly to the mini-fridge, 
opened it, reached in and took out two bottles.

"Wait a minute!" I objected. "What are you doing here? 
And that's my latte!"

"Your latte," the woman repeated. She looked from me to 
the bottles, then around the room. "Sorry. You don't 
mind if I have one, do you?"

"Of course I mind," I snapped. "But please, just help 
yourself."

Come on, Trish, I thought, looking at her hurt 
expression. Relax. She's just an old lady. Only she 
wasn't old at all, I suddenly realized, just old-
looking and tired. And close to tears.

"All right," I grumbled. "But I don't have any clean 
glasses. You'll have to drink it out of the bottle or 
wash a glass yourself."

"That's fine," the woman said. She smiled bleakly, 
suddenly becoming younger than even my second estimate 
had been. Shocked, I realized we were actually very 
close in age.

"Who are you?" I demanded quietly.

"You don't know?"

What I saw was a woman about the same size as myself, 
with much the same coloring and color of hair. She had 
a slim figure, I thought, even hidden beneath the warm-
up suit she wore. What was disturbing me very much more 
however, was the woman's black eye and a freshly cut 
and badly swollen lower lip. I decided I didn't like 
the woman's face at all. Still, there was something 
very familiar about it. 

Twisting the caps off both bottles, the woman went to 
the utilitarian little kitchenette sink, washed and 
rinsed the two glasses sitting alone in the basin, then 
filled them both with cream-colored liquid. "Still 
don't know?" she asked.

"No!" I said with perfect finality. "I don't."

Only that wasn't true.

Trying to get a grip on myself, I said, "At least tell 
me your name." 

The woman hesitated. "Uh . . . you can call me Cloe."

I set down my glass. "Okay, Cloe-whoever-you-are, I 
want an explanation right now or you can make your way 
right out that door." I pointed, in case Cloe-whoever-
she-was didn't know the way.

"Okay," Cloe said mildly. "That thing I came through--" 
indicating the circle "--that's a Time Gate."

"A what?"

"A Time Gate. Time flows along either side of the Gate, 
only some thousands of years apart. Just how many 
thousands I haven't been able to determine yet. But for 
the next couple of hours, that Gate is open. You can 
walk into the future just by stepping through it." 

I tapped my foot.

"You don't believe me, I know, but I'm going to show 
you." 

The woman got up, went to my cluttered and unmade bed--
I was suddenly very embarrassed at the dorm room's 
look--picked up my prized Terrapin's ball-cap, and 
sailed it Frisbee-like toward the improbable disk.

"Hey!" I objected. "That's my--"

The hat struck the circle dead center . . . and winked 
out of existence.

"What the. . ."

I got up, walked carefully around the circle, and 
examined the floor. A dread, something akin to finding 
myself confronted by Martians, tickled its way down my 
back. "That's a nice trick," I said numbly. "Now how do 
I get it back?"

The stranger shook her head. "You don't. Unless you 
pass through yourself."

I stared at the woman as though she were a Martian. 
"What?"

"Listen . . ." Briefly the woman repeated her 
explanation about the Time Gate. She insisted I had an 
opportunity that comes only once in a lifetime--a 
hundred lifetimes. I had only to step through the gate 
and find out.

"You're nuts," I said flatly.

"I know," the woman sighed. "I said that too."

"Huh?"

The woman sighed again. "I can't explain it to you 
right now. But it's very important for you to go 
through that Gate."

I repeated that the woman was nuts. 

The woman looked resigned. Resigned and yet somehow 
committed. "Please," she said. "Just do it, okay?"

Despite my mounting disquiet, I was nonetheless 
intrigued. "Why?" I said. "Not that I'll go."

Cloe became exasperated. "Dammit, if you'd just go 
through, you'd know already!" 

"I'm not going through."

"Come on, Trish. There's somebody there that needs 
you."

"Who?" I insisted. 

"I can't explain who. I can only say that once we go 
through, the two of us and this third person are set 
for life! We could even rule the country," she said, 
awe and wonder in her voice, "if we wanted to. You want 
to slave away your whole life teaching school in some 
drinkwater college in Nebraska? Do you? Of course not! 
This is your chance!" She laughed, almost bitterly. 
"Believe me, Trish, you want to take it!"

Incredibly, I had to admit to myself that the idea had 
a strange attraction. If not an attraction, at least 
interest. Getting myself a Ph.D. and an appointment as 
an instructor in some lay-away college was not my ideal 
of existence. Still, it beat whoring for a living. Or 
zipping out of existence through some lion trainer's 
hoop.

"No," I said finally. "I don't believe you. I don't 
believe you and I don't believe that thing over there 
even exists. Now would you please finish your latte and 
get out of here so I can go to bed!"

I moved toward the bed.

Cloe grabbed my arm. "You can't do that," she said.

"Leave me alone!"

"Leave her alone!"

We both swung toward this unexpected third voice and 
found facing us, standing directly in front of the 
circle, another woman. I stared at the newcomer, looked 
back at Cloe, blinked my eyes in confusion and then let 
out a sigh. "Not again," I complained.

The woman and Cloe looked a good deal alike, enough 
alike to be sisters, I thought, or maybe even twins.

Or maybe I was seeing double.

"And who are you?" I asked patiently.

The newcomer looked at Cloe. "She knows me," she said 
meaningfully.

Cloe studied the woman solemnly. "Yes," she said, "I 
suppose I do. But why are you here? Are we throwing the 
plan? Are you--"

The woman shook her head. "No time for long-winded 
explanations. I know more about it than you do--you'll 
probably concede that--and my judgment is maybe just a 
little better than yours. She doesn't go through the 
Gate."

"I don't concede anything of the sort," Cloe said.

The telephone rang. 

"Answer it!" snapped the newcomer.

I was about to protest her peremptory tone, but decided 
not to bother. I lacked the temperament necessary to 
ignore a ringing telephone. 

"Hello?"

"Trish? Is this Trish Wilson?"

"Yes. Who is this?"

"Never mind," the girl's voice said. "I just wanted to 
be sure you were there. You've got quite an afternoon 
ahead of you, girl. Keep a stiff upper lip, okay?"

I heard a soft, almost melancholy sounding chuckle, 
then the click of disconnection. "Hello," I said. 
"Hello!" I jiggled the tongue a couple of times, then 
hung up.

"Who was it?" Cloe asked.

"I don't know! Some kid with a misplaced sense of 
humor!" 

The telephone rang again and I snatched it up. "Look, 
you butterfly-brain! I'm busy and this is not funny. 
Someone needs to take you over their knee and spanked 
the--"

"Trish?" came a startled male voice.

"Gregory? God, I'm so sorry. I--"

"Well, I should think you would be! Paddle my behind?"

I blushed brightly. "You don't understand. A woman has 
been pestering me over the phone and I thought it was 
you. Her. I don't know!"

Gregory gave a pause. "Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not all right!" I ranted. Then I breathed 
deeply and got myself under control. "Sorry. I'm just 
stressed and I've had way too much caffeine today." I 
stared at the watching pair.

"It's okay," Gregory said. "After this afternoon--" his 
voice gave what I always thought of as a sex-crinkle 
mid-sentence, "--you can say whatever you like."

"Huh?"  

Gregory laughed.

"Greg--"

Gregory laughed again.

Blushing uncontrollably, I hunched my shoulders, turned 
my back on the pair and whispered into the phone, "Stop 
that! You're embarrassing me."

"Whatever," he said. "Anyway, I wanted to tell you left 
your hat."

"My hat?"

"Your hat. The hat you always smack me with over the 
head. That hat?"

"I left my hat?" Totally flustered. 

"I noticed it a few minutes after you'd gone and 
thought I'd better let you know where it is. I should 
have just trashed it. Or buried it out back. Then I 
thought no, it'll get her back over here again."

I was over there today? I didn't say. I looked at the 
twins. They looked expectantly back. 

"Okay," I said mechanically. "I'm a little mixed up 
right now. I have been all day, and I'm more so right 
now. So look, I'll stop by later on and bring you your 
hat and you can take me out to a bar and get me good 
and fucking drunk." And something else as well, maybe, 
like naked in bed. "How's that?"

"Your hat, silly!"

"Whatever! I'll see you tonight." I hurriedly hung up.

My, God! Am I loosing my mind? Is he? 

"Okay, you two! Out! Vamoose! Blow the popkins!"

"No!" Cloe exclaimed. "You can't. I mean, you have to!"

"She does not!" the new woman shouted. "And she won't!"

"I won't do anything at all!" I yelled. "Except call 
the cops!" Then I exclaimed--and I couldn't believe I 
was hearing this at all: "Or maybe I will!"

"Great!" said Cloe, in a relieved voice. "Just step 
through. That's all there is to it."

"Oh, no, you don't!" It was the second arriver. She 
stepped between me and the Gate. I faced her. 

"Listen, you bimbo! You can't come barging in here like 
you you own the place and tell me what to do! If you 
don't like it, go jump!"

I tried to push around the stranger and was suddenly 
ensnarled in her arms. I screamed, "Get offa me!" and 
began to struggle with her, clumsily and feeling 
absurdly embarrassed, both by my clumsiness and by my 
actions. This only increased my anger. Then Cloe was 
into the fight, ostensibly on my side, but a solid 
impact to her already swollen mouth sent her recoiling 
back, sucking in breath and grimacing in pain. 

Setting loose a punch I feared was laughably girlish, I 
connected glancingly off the second woman's right 
shoulder, only enough to surprise her. The woman glared 
at me savagely, then struck back with a punch nowhere 
near as girlish and with a good deal more upon it. It 
caught me right on the mouth, making me cry out and 
sending me staggering backwards. I stood holding my 
mouth. The woman held her own mouth, horror in her 
eyes. 

"You hit me!" I said.

"I know," the woman muttered. "I didn't mean--"

Then Cloe closed in and the two women began trading 
punches in a free-for-all, and I somehow got sucked in. 
I wanted nothing but to get myself free but ended up 
punching Cloe, theoretically my ally, in the head. 

"What are you doing!" Cloe hissed indignantly. She had 
the second woman in a comical-looking headlock, with 
the second woman's nails digging into her neck and 
right cheek. 

I stammered: "I . . . I . . ." and then was struck hard 
in the chest as the struggling duo staggered sideways 
into me. Tangled in my own feet, windmilling as the 
fingers of the third woman clutched at my shirt, I fell 
backward. Then there were shooting stars and an 
explosion of pain in my head . . . and then only 
darkness. 




CHAPTER TWO:

Trish in Arcadia

Friday, June 2, 32109, 9:20 PM


"Are you all right?"

I came slowly to an awareness of my surroundings. I was 
seated on a floor which seemed a little unsteady. 
Someone was bending over me. 

"Are you okay?" the figure inquired again.

"I guess so," I answered thickly. My mouth ached. When 
I put my fingers to it and brought them away, they came 
away bloody. "My head hurts," I said.

"I'm not surprised," the woman replied. "You came 
through head first. I think you hit it when you 
landed."

My thoughts were coming back into a confused focus. 
Came through? I looked more closely at my surroundings, 
then at the woman above me. She was middle-aged, with 
gray-shot black hair, short and neatly trimmed. She was 
dressed in what I took to be purple lounge-wear. But 
the room in which I found myself bothered me even more. 
It was circular and the ceiling was lit so subtly that 
it was difficult to say how high it was. A steady 
glareless light filled the room from no apparent 
source. There was no furniture save for a high dais or 
pulpit-shaped object against the wall. 

"Came through? Came through what?"

"The Gate, of course," the woman said, bemused. There 
was something odd about her accent. I could not place 
it, save for a feeling that English was not the 
language she was accustomed to speaking. She  stared 
intently at something behind me. 

It was the Gate. This made my head ache even more. "Oh 
God," I said, "now I really am nuts." I shook her head 
to clear it . . . what a mistake. The circle stayed 
where it was, a simple locus hanging in the air,  but 
my head nearly came off.

"I come through that?" I moaned.

"Yes."

"Where am I?"

The woman smiled. "In the Hall of the Gate in the High 
Palace of Norkaal," she recited, as though the 
pomposity of the words embarrassed her. "But what's 
more important is when you are. You've stepped forward 
a little more than thirty thousand years."

"Now I know I'm crazy," I said. I got up unsteadily and 
moved toward the Gate.

The woman put a hand on my shoulder. "Easy, Trish. 
Where are you going?"

"Back!"

"You can't go back. At least not yet. But you will, I 
promise you that. Let me dress your wounds first, and 
get you something the eat. And you should rest. Some 
explanation is due you, of course and there is an 
errand you can do for me when you get back--to our 
mutual advantage, Trish." She paused and the smile 
strengthened. She said, almost whimsically, "There's a 
great future in store for the two of us, Trish. A great 
future."

I paused uncertainly. The elder woman's assertion was 
disquieting, to say the least--she seemed so normal, 
otherwise. "I don't like this," I said, slowly. "What 
do you mean?" 

The woman eyed me narrowly. "Later, my dear. In the 
meantime, would you like a drink?"

Trish most assuredly would. At the moment a stiff drink 
seemed the most desirable thing in the whole  wide 
world. "Water would be nice," I said. 

"Come with me," the older woman said, leading me around 
the structure near the wall and through a door into a 
passageway. She walked briskly; I hurried to keep up.

"By the way," I asked, as we continued down the long 
passage, "what's your name?"

"My name? Call me Leda--everyone else does."

"Leda. Okay. How do you know my name? Did Cloe tell 
you?"

"Cloe?" The older woman stopped. "I know no one named 
Cloe."

"You don't? She seemed to know you. Maybe you aren't 
the person I was supposed to see." I looked around, 
hesitantly. 

"But I am. I have been expecting you for a long time, 
Trish." She tapped her lips lightly with the tip of a 
finger. "Cloe . . . Cloe--Oh! Cloe, of course! It had 
slipped my mind completely. She told you to call her 
that, didn't she?"

"Isn't that her name?"

Leda smiled. "It's as good a name as any, I suppose. 
Here we are." She ushered me into a small, but 
cheerfully bright room. It contained no furniture of 
any sort, but the floor was as soft and warm as human 
flesh. It made me want to enter on tiptoe--or back 
away. "Sit down. I'll be back in a moment."

I looked around for something to sit on, then turned to 
ask Leda for a chair. But Leda was gone. The door 
through which we had entered was gone. More worried now 
than ever, I was about to start groping the wall for a 
hidden entrance when suddenly a portion of the wall's 
surface directly before me dilated like a camera 
shutter opening; Leda reentered, carrying a carafe of 
pleasantly bubbling clear liquid, and a cup. She filled 
the cup and handed it over.

"Aren't you drinking?" I asked, suspiciously.

"Presently. I want to attend your wounds first."

"Okay," I said, although it wasn't okay at all. Nothing 
here was okay. Putting the glass to my lips, I sipped 
at the bubbling liquid and then held the glass away. It 
tasted good. It tasted almost indecently good. "What is 
this?" I asked, sniffing cautiously at the surface. 
"Wine?"

"No dear, it's water."

I frowned. "Not any water that I've ever tasted," I 
said, sniffing again. "What is it, really?"

 Leda laughed. "I assure you, Trish, no ill will befall 
you drinking that liquid. Now go ahead."

I drank, but slowly. The liquid felt almost solid in 
its texture, like fine silk gliding across the tongue. 
I found it quite refreshing. "May I have another?" I 
asked, holding out the glass.

"Help yourself."

While I did, Leda worked deftly with a salve that 
smarted at first, then soothed gently. "Thank you," I 
said as the woman applied the salve to my throbbing 
lips. "You don't know how good that feels."

Leda never got to answer because, suddenly bone-weary, 
yawning deeply, I tried to set the glass on the floor. 
It slipped from my relaxing fingers and fell the final 
two inches to the surface, spilling liquid over the 
top. The woman held me by the shoulders as I fell 
sideways, helping me to the floor. I smiled at her as 
the mist swallowed her up. "Nite, nite," a voice said 
from very far off.

"Sweet dreams, my dear. You have such a day ahead of 
you." 

Darkness came and wrapped me in its blanket of sleep. 

*

I was in my dorm room. It was late afternoon and there 
was cheerful music drifting in through the open window 
from the quad below, some 70's blue-eyed soul tune I 
recognized but couldn't put a name to. I was stretched 
back in my swivel chair, legs flung far apart and one 
heel defiantly up on the corner of the desk. There was 
a bottle of Starbucks French Vanilla Latte in my right 
hand. I relaxed, eyes closed, letting the happiness 
snuggle deep into my body. This was such a fine end to 
the day. I had finished my damned thesis. Gregory was 
coming over to pick me up. There was the promise of 
good food and maybe good sex in my immediate future, 
and--

I sat bolt upright. The sight of the strange room 
brought me back into reality if not into self-
possession. I had time to look around and time for 
panic to constrict my throat to the size of a pencil 
shaft when the door shuttered open and Leda stepped 
through. "Feeling better?" she asked.

I coughed in my confusion. "Yes, but what is this?" I 
demanded.

"We'll get to that. How about a little breakfast 
first?"

On Trish Wilson's scale of requirements that morning, 
breakfast rated just above being run over by a Mack 
truck. "Fuck food! I want to know what's going on!"

Leda graced me with a tolerant smile, folded her hands 
before her and stepped without speaking through the 
open door. Grumbling, I followed. We walked a short 
distance down the passageway to another room, half the 
size, but possessing a balcony hanging high over a 
green countryside. A soft, warm, summer breeze wafted 
through. There was a peculiar, octagonal table with 
five chairs clustered loosely around it near the 
balcony door. Each side of the table was a different 
length, and each chair was made in a different style 
and upholstered in a uniquely different pattern. We sat 
down and immediately maidservants entered to serve the 
meal. I tried not to stare. 

"Thank you dear," Leda said as the first girl stopped 
beside her, genuflected to one knee and removed a great 
tray of fruit from atop her head. The fruit was 
gorgeous and so was the girl. In fact, she was possibly 
the most beautiful young girl I had ever seen. 

Leda took a bite from an apple and observed my wide-
eyed amazement with some humor. She waved the girl 
away, then bade me to eat. 

"This complex, the country now know as Arcadia, 
possibly the entire Earth," she said, "was the domain--
the empire--of the High Ones. It is not certain where 
the High Ones came from nor where they went when they 
left. I am inclined to think they went away into time 
somewhere. In any case they ruled more than twenty 
thousand years and completely obliterated human culture 
as you know it. What is more important to you--and to 
me--is the effect they had on the human race. Are you 
listening?"

I started. My eyes were glued to an even more lovely 
maidservant that had just come in through the open 
door. Blue-eyed, with lustrous, golden hair in a series 
of complicated braids down her back, the girl was 
perhaps sixteen years old and blessed with a complexion 
that neither myself nor any friend I had ever had could 
have claimed at sixteen. She wore a simple crimson 
tunic that swept the floor as she walked and with 
sleeves that hid her long-fingered, flawless hands when 
she stood erect. 

Realizing that my mouth stood open, I snapped it shut 
and blushed deeply. "I'm sorry," I said in a low croak.  
"I'm just not used to seeing women of such startling 
beauty."

Leda smiled benevolently at me. "She's not 
exceptionally beautiful as women around here go, 
Trish."

"That's hard to believe. I feel like I've dropped into 
in ancient Rome, in the time of the Ceasar's."

"She's yours if you'd like her."

"Excuse me?"

"She's a slave. They are all slaves by nature. If you 
like her, I'll make you a present of her."

I blushed even harder. "Uh, no. I'm not . . . that's 
all right, thank you."

Leda spoke to the girl in a soft, sing-song language. 
"Her name is Arma," she said as the girl giggled shyly. 
Lowering her head in deference, the girl moved in 
short, quick steps to where I sat, dropped on both 
knees to the floor beside me and lowered her face into 
her cupped hands. She waited.

"Touch her forehead," Leda instructed.

I did so. Arma arose and stood waiting diffidently by 
my side, her face a bright red, chest rising and 
falling with labored breaths. When it became clear that 
I had no idea what to do next, Leda spoke to the girl, 
then dismissed her with a flick of the wrist. The girl 
looked puzzled, but moved out of the room. 

"I told her that, notwithstanding her new status, you 
wished her to continue serving breakfast."

"Thank you," I said, eying the doorway peripherally.

Leda resumed her explanations while the service of the 
meal continued. "It is necessary that you go back 
through the Time Gate at once. Your first task is to 
find and bring back a particular woman to me. Once your 
second task is complete, we'll be sitting pretty. After 
that, it is share and share alike for you and I. And 
there is plenty to share, Trish, believe me."

I fingered my swollen eye thoughtfully. "All right," I 
said. "When do we start?" 

I had made up my mind some time ago--just shortly after 
Arma had become my "slave," in fact--that I would agree 
to anything to get back to my own time and out of this 
nightmare. If co-operation with this woman was the only 
means to that end, so be it. Besides, if all Leda 
wanted was for me to go back to some earlier time and 
persuade another woman to step through the Gate, I'd 
whack the silly bitch over the head if necessary. What 
could I lose?

Leda stood up. "Let's do it then," she said 
enthusiastically, "before you change your mind. Follow 
me." She set off at a brisk pace with me again hurrying 
to keep up.

"All you have to do," Leda said as we reached the Hall 
of the Gate, "is to step through the portal. You will 
find yourself back in your own time. Persuade the woman 
you find there to go through the Gate. We have need of 
her. Then come back yourself."

I was dumbstruck. Back to my own time? Was the woman 
mad? Struggling to keep the shock off my face, I said, 
"No problem," in an even tone. "Consider it done." I 
started to step through the Gate but Leda took my arm.

"I have to set the controls first," she said. She 
stepped behind the raised dais. Her head appeared above 
the side a moment later. "Be careful," she cautioned. 
"You are not used to time travel. You are going to get 
a bit of a shock when you step through. This other 
woman--well, you'll recognize her, Trish."

"Who is she?" I asked, eying the pencil-thin circle 
floating before me like like it was the Pearly Gates. 

"I won't tell you because you wouldn't understand. But 
you will when you see her. Just remember this-- There 
are some very strange paradoxes connected with time 
travel. Don't let anything you see there throw you. 
Just do what I tell you to and you'll be fine."

"Paradoxes don't worry me," I said confidently. "Is 
that all? I'm ready."

Leda nodded and I stepped through the locus known as 
the Time Gate.



CHAPTER THREE:

Trish Returns to 2006 as Cloe

Wednesday, April 19, 2006, 2:12 PM


There was no sensation at all connected with the 
transition. It was exactly like stepping through a lion 
trainer's hoop; the only change was one of location.

I paused for a moment on the other side and let my eyes 
adjust to the dimmer light. I was, I saw, inside a room 
very much like my own. Before me sat a young woman at a 
tiny, cluttered desk, concentrating on the screen of a 
too-small computer monitor. The fingers of her left 
hand played distractedly with a spray of hair that had 
escaped from behind her left ear; a half-burnt 
cigarette was between the fingers of her right hand. 
She recited words in a low, dull voice that I could not 
quite make out. As the woman hunched forward over the 
keyboard and began typing, I stepped silently forward.

Leda was right: the woman did look vaguely familiar. 
Should I speak to her, cause her to turn around? I felt 
reluctant to do that until I knew who it was. I 
remembered my own fright at hearing Cloe's voice behind 
me. And being here now, I wondered just how in the hell 
I could persuade this woman to go through the Time 
Gate, even had I wanted too.

The woman at the desk continued typing, not pausing as 
she snuffed out the cigarette in a glass ash tray 
already populated by butts, then lighting another with 
a cheerily-yellow Bic lighter. 

I knew that gesture well. I also knew that lighter. 

Fear prickled down my back. I looked around the room. 
The room was mine. The posters on the walls, the frumpy 
and clothes-strewn furniture, the pyramid of empty 
Starbuck's French Vanilla Latte bottles stacked beside 
the sink. I felt the blood beating in my neck and in my 
temples. Sitting there with her back to me was myself, 
Trish Wilson!

I felt that I was going to faint. I closed my eyes and 
steadied myself on a chair back. "I knew it," I 
thought, "I'm crazy. I know I'm crazy. Some sort of 
split personality disorder. I shouldn't have worked so 
hard."

The sound of typing continued.

I pulled myself together, and reconsidered the matter. 
Leda had warned me that I was due for a shock, a shock 
that could not be explained ahead of time, because it 
could not be believed. "All right--suppose I'm not 
crazy. If time travel can happen at all, there's no 
reason why I can't come back and see myself doing 
something I did in the past. If I'm sane, that is 
exactly what I'm doing now. And if I am crazy, it 
doesn't make a damn bit of difference what I do because 
I'm nuts anyway!"

I crept forward softly and peered over the shoulder of 
my double. "Time travel may be imagined and its 
necessities may be formulated under any and all 
theories of time," I read, "formulae which resolve the 
paradoxes of each theory."

"Right back where I started," I thought, "watching 
myself write my thesis." 

The typing continued. Suddenly the other Trish yanked 
her hands away from the keyboard and cried disgustedly: 
"Damn it. I don't even know what I'm writing, anymore!"

"Don't bother with it then," I said on sudden impulse. 
"It's a lot of nonsense anyway."

The other Trish Wilson shrieked and spun around. Her 
expression of fright gave way to one of immense relief. 
"You scared me!" she exploded. Then: "What are you 
doing here?" 

Without waiting for an answer she got up, went quickly 
to the door and examined the lock. "How did you get 
in?"

This, I thought, is going to be difficult. "Through 
that," I answered, pointing to the Time Gate. My double 
looked where I had pointed, did a double take, then 
advanced cautiously and started to touch it.

"Don't!" I yelled.

The other yanked her hand back. "Why not?" she 
demanded.

Just why she must not touch the Gate was not clear to 
me, but I had an unmistakable feeling of disaster 
looming when I saw it about to happen. I temporized by 
saying, "I'll explain that later. But first, let's have 
some of that latte." 

What I wanted was a drink of something a whole lot 
stronger than Starbuck's latte, but that could wait 
until later. Right now I needed a clear head.  

"Wait a minute!" protested the other Trish. "What are 
you doing here? And that's my latte!"

"Your latte," I repeated. I looked around the room. The 
hell with that! It was my latte. No, it wasn't; it was 
. . . ours. Oh, hell! It was much too mixed up to try 
to explain. "Sorry. You don't mind if I have one, do 
you?"

"Of course I mind," my double said indolently. "But 
please, just help yourself." 

I felt a sudden wave of helplessness wash over me. 
Being sarcastic was second nature to me--especially as 
of late, when stress kept me awake half the night and 
made a battlefield of my stomach--but being on the 
receiving end of my own sarcasm made me want to cry. 

Seeing my sudden discomfort, the other Trish relented. 
"All right," she grumbled in a dour tone. "But I don't 
have any clean glasses. You'll have to drink it out of 
the bottle or wash a glass yourself."

"That's fine," I assented. I wondered if my sudden 
bleakness showed in my smile. It felt like fractured 
glass. It was going to be much, much too difficult to 
explain this. As it was, I couldn't explain it fully to 
myself.

"Who are you?" the other Trish quietly demanded.

"You don't know?"

My other scrutinized me with confused and almost 
insupportable emotions. Couldn't she recognize her own 
face when she saw it in front of her? If she couldn't 
see what the situation was, how in the world was I ever 
going to make it clear to her?

It had slipped my mind that my face was barely 
recognizable in any case, being decidedly battered and 
puffy. Even more important, I failed to take into 
account the fact that a person does not look at her own 
face, even in mirrors, in the same frame of mind with 
which she regards the face of another. No sane person  
expects to see her own face being worn by a stranger.

Removing the caps from both bottles, I went to the 
kitchenette sink, removed the two lone glasses sitting 
in the basin, washed and rinsed them, the asked, "Still 
don't know?" as I filled them with latte.

"No!" the other Trish said petulantly. "I don't." Then, 
with less hardness in her voice she said: "At least 
tell me your name."  

It was at this point that I realized that I was, in 
fact, "Cloe," the same Cloe I had encountered once 
before. That I had landed back in my room at the very 
time at which I had ceased working on my thesis I 
already perceived, but I had not had time to think the 
matter through. I was now slapped in the face with the 
realization that this was not simply a similar scene, 
but the same scene being repeated--save that I was 
living through it from a different viewpoint. Only that 
meant . . .

"No, no, no," I almost said aloud. The woman in my room 
had given her name as Cloe, but was I now going to 
repeat it based on that earlier event? If so, then you 
could forget about free will. It would be effect 
preceding cause, direction without choice . . . fate in 
other words, a concept I detested. There had to be 
another answer. I thought hard. 

My aunt Sheila had been a science fiction nut. Once, 
when I was very sick and confined to bed with an 
outbreak of measles, she had lent me an anthology of 
old science fiction stories, written in the thirties 
and forties. Although I had thought science fiction 
strictly for the birds (or for boys, who were strictly 
for the birds, at least to ten year old Trish Wilson), 
I had read that book cover to cover, most of the time 
in the grip of a high fever. I had cherished the book 
ever since, or at least until the death of Aunt Sheila 
just the year before, when I had asked mom to let the 
book be buried with Sheila in her casket. I remembered 
my favorite story in the book was about time travel. 
The time-traveller's name had been Cloe.

"Uh . . . you can call me Cloe," I said.

Trish set down her glass down with a bang. "Okay, Cloe-
whoever-you-are, I want an explanation right now or you 
can make your way right out that door." She pointed, as 
though I might not know where the door was.

I sighed. How did you go about telling another person 
that the two of you were a trifle closer than identical 
twins? I couldn't remember exactly what "Cloe" had 
said, not to the letter, but I was certain of things 
"Cloe" had not said. Like "Mary had a little lamb," for 
example, or "I'll be back," in a guttural, Austrian 
accent. All I had to do was speak such a thing to get 
off this fate-powered, repetitious damned treadmill. 
But under the unfriendly, suspicious eye of the woman 
opposite me, I found my mental processes stuck on dead 
center. I capitulated.

"Okay." I pointed at the gate. "That thing I came 
through . . . that's a Time Gate."

"A what?'

"A Time Gate. Time flows along either side of the Gate, 
only some thousands of years apart. Just how many 
thousands I haven't been able to determine yet. But for 
the next couple of hours, that Gate is open." I felt 
sweat breaking out on my forehead; I felt reasonably 
sure that I was explaining in exactly the same words in 
which the explanation had first been offered to me. I 
wiped my forehead and finished, "You can walk into the 
future just by stepping through it."

The other Trish tapped her foot.

I wondered suddenly if the other woman could be myself. 
The woman's stupid arrogant dogmatism infuriated me. 
Fine! I thought. I'll show her, then. I strode 
purposefully over to the unmade bed, snatched up her 
hat--my hat, Dammit!--and pitched it through the Gate.

"Hey! That's my--" The hat sailed right through the 
circle and was gone. "What the. . ."

The other Trish went around the backside of the Gate, 
walking with slow, careful steps. She looked like a 
woman who is a little bit drunk, but determined not to 
show it. "A neat trick," she applauded, after 
satisfying herself that the hat was gone, "now how do I 
get it back?"

I shook my head. "You don't. Unless you pass through 
yourself." I was pondering the problem of how many hats 
there were on the other side of the Gate.

"What?"

I did my best to explain persuasively what it was I 
wanted her to do. Or rather to cajole. Explanations 
were out of the question, in any honest sense of the 
word. I would have preferred attempting to explain 
calculus to an Australian aborigine, even though I 
didn't understand that esoteric mathematics myself.

"You're nuts," my younger self declared.

"I know. I said that too."

"Huh?"

I sighed. "I can't explain it to you right now. But 
it's very important for you to go through there."

Trish reassured me I was nuts.

"Please? Just do it, okay?"

"Why? Not that I'll go."

I practically hollered, "Dammit, if you'd just go 
through, you'd know already!" 

The other's face hardened. "I'm not going through."

"Come on, Trish. There's somebody there that needs 
you."

"Who?" she insisted. 

"I can't explain who. I can only say that once we go 
through, the two of us and this third person are set 
for life!" I continued with a synopsis of Leda's 
proposition, realizing with irritation how exceedingly 
sketchy Leda had been with her explanations. I was 
forced to hit only the high spots in the logical parts 
of my argument, and bear down on the emotional appeal. 
I was on safe ground there--no one knew better than I 
did how fed up the earlier Trish Wilson had been with 
the petty drudgery and stuffy atmosphere of an academic 
career. "This is your chance!" I concluded. "Believe 
me, Trish, you want to take it!"

I watched her  narrowly and thought I detected a 
favorable response. She definitely seemed interested. 
But she set her glass down carefully, stared out the 
window a moment, and at last replied: "No. I don't 
believe you. I don't believe you and I don't believe 
that thing over there even exists. Now would you please 
finish your latte and get out of here so I can go to 
bed!"

I grabbed her arm. I was losing my temper. "You can't 
do that," I growled.

The other Trish tried to wrest away. "Leave me alone!" 
she hollered.

"Leave her alone!"

I swung around, saw a third woman standing in front of 
the Gate--recognized her with a sudden sick amazement. 
I should have anticipated the arrival of a third party 
all along. But my memory had not prepared me for who 
the third party would be. The third woman was a carbon 
copy of myself.

I stood silent a moment, eyes closed, trying to 
assimilate this new fact and force it into some 
reasonable integration.This was just a little too much. 
I wanted to have a few hard words with my darling Leda 
. . . and the sooner the better.

"And who are you?" 

I opened my eyes to find that my other self, the 
younger one, was addressing the latest edition. The 
newcomer turned away from her interrogator and looked 
sharply at me.

"She knows me."

I took my time in replying. This thing was getting out 
of hand. "Yes," I admitted, "I suppose I do. But why 
are you here? Are we throwing the plan? Are you--"

My facsimile cut me short.  "No time for long-winded 
explanations," she said. "I know more about it than you 
do--you'll probably concede that--and my judgment is 
maybe just a little better than yours. She doesn't go 
through the Gate."

The offhand arrogance of Trish Number Three antagonized 
me badly. "I don't concede anything of the sort--" I 
began, and then the telephone rang.

"Answer it!" snapped Number Three.

Trish Number One looked belligerent but picked up the 
handset. "Hello. . . . Yes. Who is this? . . . Hello
. . . Hello!" She tapped the the tongue a couple of 
times, then slammed the receiver back into its cradle.

"Who was it?" I asked, somewhat annoyed that I had not 
had a chance to answer it myself.

"I don't know! Some kid with a misplaced sense of 
humor!" At that instant the telephone rang again and 
before I could grab it, the original Trish snatched it 
up. "Look, you butterfly-brain! I'm busy and this is 
not funny. Someone needs to take you over their knee 
and spanked the--" Her mouth formed a large, comical 
"O" and her face reddened. "Gregory? God, I'm so sorry. 
I--" Her hand went up to her forehead, forming an 
awning over her eyes. "You don't understand. A woman 
has been pestering me over the phone and I thought it 
was you. Her. I don't know!"

The person on the other end was, of course, Gregory 
Dane. I remembered with embarrassment that fractured, 
lopsided conversation and knowing that Trish Number 
Three understood it as well it made me want to squirm. 
Embarrassed by yourself? How gauche!

Trish Number One concluded her conversation and hung up 
the phone with a bang . She was rattled and confused. 
Throwing her hand theatrically away from her forehead, 
she exclaimed in a shrill, high voice: "Okay, you two! 
Out! Vamoose! Blow the popkins!"

"No!" I exclaimed, stepping forward. "You can't. I 
mean, you have to!" Blast it, did I even know what I 
meant?

"She does not!" the new arrival shouted. "And she 
won't!"

"I won't do anything at all!" Trish yelled 
belligerently. "Except call the cops!" Then she said--
and her expression said she couldn't believe this at 
all: "Or maybe I will!"

"Great!" I said with undisguised relief. "Just step 
through. That's all there is to it."

"Oh, no, you don't!" growled Trish Number Three. She 
stepped between the original Trish and the Gate.

Trish Number One faced her. "Listen, you bimbo! You 
can't come barging in here like you you own the place 
and tell me what to do! If you don't like it, go jump!" 
Then she charged the newcomer with a sudden, graceless 
fury and the two began to struggle. The late arrival 
looked at me with a desperate Help me! look, and 
punches began to fly. 

I stepped in warily, looking for an opening that would 
enable me to assist Number One without getting myself 
hurt. A wild swing glanced off my already damaged 
features and caused me to jump back in pain. My lower 
lip, cut, puffy, and tender from our original 
encounter, became an area of pure agony. I stayed out 
of the fray, knowing what would happen next.. 

"You hit me!" Trish Number One cried. She stood looking 
at her right hand, at the blood on the tips of her 
fingers. Her lower lip was bleeding profusely.

The third Trish, looking aghast at her own right hand--
still fisted and cut on two of the knuckles--muttered, 
"I know. I didn't mean--" She got no more out because 
right then I charged her. 

We struggled fiercely, me gaining something of an upper 
hand after Trish Number One suddenly  and unexpectedly 
joined in. I got my adversary into a headlock and was 
about to yell at Trish Number One to jump through the 
gate when my ally butted me with an elbow. "What are 
you doing!" I yelled. 

Trish the Original backed away, blinking in surprise. 
She was right before the Gate. She stammered, "I --" 
and then Trish Number Three sent us staggering sideways 
and the three of us collided. The last thing I saw 
before I impacted the floor with my head was a pair of 
feet disappearing through the Gate.

*

Eventually, I pushed myself off the floor and rubbed my 
throbbing temple. Number Three was standing by the 
Gate. "Now you've done it!" she said bitterly, nursing 
the knuckles of her right hand.

The obviously unfair allegation reached me at just the 
wrong moment. My head felt like an experiment in 
sadism. "Me?" I said angrily. "You knocked her through. 
We were doing just fine until you shoved us sideways!"

"Yes, but it's your fault. If you hadn't interfered, it 
wouldn't have happened."

"Me interfere? Why, you dumb little hypocrite bimbo--
you butted in and tried to stop the whole thing from 
happening. What would have happened if she hadn't gone 
through, huh? Which reminds me--you owe me some 
explanations here. What's the idea of--"

"Stow it," she said with a glower. "It's too late now. 
She's gone on through."

"Too late for what?"

"Too late to put a stop to this chain of events."

"Why should we? I mean if it's already going on--"

Number Three said bitterly, "Leda has played me--I mean 
us--for a fool, for a couple of fools. She told you she 
was going to set you up for life over there"--she 
indicated the Gate--"didn't she?"

"Yes," I admitted.

"Well, that's a lot of crap. All she means to do is to 
get us so incredibly tangled up in this Time Gate thing 
that we'll never get straightened out again."

I felt the same sense of dread as when when my earlier 
self had tried to touch the Gate. It could be true. 
Certainly, there had not been much sense to what had 
happened so far. After all, why should Leda want my 
help, want it so badly as to offer a split right down 
the middle, what was so obviously a great deal? "How do 
you know?" I demanded.

"I don't want to go into it," the other answered 
wearily. "Just take my word for it, okay?"

"Why should I?"

My companion fixed me with a look of complete 
exasperation. "If you can't take my word, Trish, whose 
word can you take?"

Rather than mollifying me, the inescapable logic of the 
question made me annoyed. I resented this interloper, 
this third carbon-copy of myself; to be asked to follow 
her lead blindly irked me to no end. "I'm from 
Missouri," I said bitterly. "I'll see for myself." I 
moved toward the Gate.

"Where are you going?"

"Through! I'm going to hunt down Leda and have a little 
talk her her." With my fists, if I have to, I thought.

"Don't!" the other said. "Maybe we can break this chain 
right now." 

I gave her a defiant look. 

"Go ahead," she surrendered. "Have it your way. I wash 
my hands of the whole thing."

I paused as I was about to step through the Gate. "My 
funeral, huh? Just remember something, Little Miss 
Pontius Pilot, if it's my funeral, then it's your 
funeral too."

The other woman looked blank, then an expression of 
apprehension raced across her face. That was the last I 
saw of her as I stepped through the Gate. 



CHAPTER FOUR:

Cloe in Arcadia 

Sunday, June 4, 32109, 9:16 AM


The Hall of the Gate was empty of other occupants. I 
looked around for my hat, but did not see it anywhere 
it. Stepping around back of the raised platform, 
seeking the exit I remembered was there, I nearly 
bumped into Leda.

"Ah, there you are!" the older woman greeted. "Perfect! 
Just perfect, my dear! Now there is just one more thing 
to take care of, and we'll be all squared away. I must 
say, I am pleased with you, Trish, very pleased 
indeed."

I faced her truculently. "You are, huh? It's too bad I 
can't say the same about you, Leda. I'm not a bit 
pleased with you! How could you send me back into that 
. . . that daisy chain without warning me first? I 
could just kill you!"

"Easy," the older woman said, "don't get excited. Tell 
me the truth now--if I had told you that you were going 
back to meet yourself face to face, would you have 
believed me?"

I admitted that I would not.

"Well, then," Leda continued with a shrug, "there was 
no point in my telling you then, was there? Is it not 
better to be in ignorance than to believe falsely?"

I grumped, "I suppose so, but--"

"Better for you to learn the truth with your own eyes. 
Otherwise--"

"Wait a minute!" I cut in. "You're getting me all 
tangled up here. Why did you send me back at all?"

"That should be obvious, dear," Leda said patiently. "I 
did it in order that you might come through the Gate in 
the first place."

"But I had already come through the Gate." 

Leda shook her head. "Think about it a moment. When you 
got back into your own time you found your earlier self 
there, didn't you?"

"Well, yes."

"She--your earlier self--had not yet been through the 
Gate yet, had she?"

"Well, no. I--"

"How could you have been through the Gate, unless you 
persuaded her to go through first?"

My head was beginning to spin. I was beginning to 
wonder who had done what to whom.  It all kept coming 
back to effect preceding cause, direction without 
choice. "You're telling me that I did something because 
I was predestined to do it?"

"Well, you did, didn't you? You were there."

"No, I didn't--no . . . well, maybe I did, but it 
didn't feel like it."

"Why should you expect it to? It was something totally 
new to your experience."

"Yes . . . but . . ." I took a deep breath and got 
control of myself. Then I reached back into my academic 
philosophical concepts and produced the notion I had 
been struggling to express. "It denies all reasonable 
theories of causation. You'd have me believe that 
causation can be completely circular. I went through 
because I came back from going through to persuade 
myself to go through. That's silly."

"Well, didn't you?"

I was too brain-bound to answer. Leda continued with, 
"Don't let it trouble you too much, Trish. Causation as 
you have been accustomed to it is valid enough in its 
own frame of reference, but it is simply a special case 
under the general rule. Like quantum effects, causation 
is often counter-intuitive. Causation in a plenum need 
not be and is not limited by a person's perception of 
duration."

I wanted to bury my head in a bucket of sand. It 
sounded nice, but there was something evasive about it. 
"I'd like to hear what the mathematicians have to say 
about that," I said. "Someone like Stephen Hawking."

"Oh, for Heaven's sake," Leda protested, 
"Mathematicians once proved that airplanes--and 
bumblebees--couldn't fly." She turned and started out 
the door. "Now come on. There's work to be done." 

I hurried after her. "Dammit, you still haven't 
answered my questions. And what happened to the other 
two?"

"The other two what?"

"The other two of me!" I cried. "Where are they? How am 
I ever going to get unsnarled?"

"You aren't snarled now. You feel like more than one 
person, do you?"

"No, but--"

"Then don't worry about it."

"I've got to worry about it! What happened to Trish 
Number One?"

"You don't remember? It wasn't all that long ago, 
dear." Leda stopped halfway down the passageway and 
dilated a door. "Take a look inside," she directed.

I did so. I found myself looking into a small, 
windowless, unfurnished room, a room that I certainly 
recognized. Sitting alone in  the middle of the room, 
looking somehow lost and forlorn, were the carafe and 
the glass from which I had drank. "Oh, for God's 
sakes," I muttered. 

"When you first came through the Gate," said Leda at my 
elbow, "I brought you in here, attended to your wounds, 
and gave you a drink. The drink contained a soporific 
which caused you to sleep about thirty-six hours, sleep 
that you badly needed. When you woke up, I gave you 
breakfast and explained to you what needed to be done."

My head started to ache again. "Don't do that," I 
pleaded. "Don't refer to her as if she were me. This is 
me, standing here, now."

"Whatever you wish," said Leda. "That is the woman you 
were. You remember the things that are about to happen 
to her, don't you?"

"Of course I do, but it makes me dizzy. Close the door, 
please."

"Fine," Leda said, and constricted the door. "We've got 
to hurry, anyhow. Once a sequence like this is 
established there is no time to waste. Come on." She 
led the way back to the Hall of the Gate.

"I want you to return to the twentieth century and 
obtain certain things for us, things that can't be 
obtained on this side but which will be very useful to 
us in, ah, developing--yes, that is the word--
developing this timeframe."

"What sort of things?"

"Quite a number of items. I've prepared a list for you-
-certain reference books, certain items of commerce. 
Excuse me, please. I must adjust the controls of the 
Gate." She mounted the raised platform from the rear. I 
followed her and found that the structure was boxlike, 
open at the top, and had a raised metal floor. The Gate 
could be seen by looking over the high sides.

The controls were unique.

Four colored globes the size of grapefruits were 
mounted upon crystalline rods arranged with respect to 
one another as the four major axis of a tetrahedron. 
The three globes which bounded the base of the 
tetrahedron were red, green, and blue; the fourth at 
the apex was white. 

"Three spatial controls, one time control," explained 
Leda. "It's very simple. Using this, our present 
timeframe as zero-reference, displacing the controls 
away from the center moves the other end of the Gate 
forward or back, right or left, up or down, farther or 
closer to the here-and-now--they are all controlled by 
moving the proper sphere in or out on its rod."

I studied the system. "Yes," I said, "but how do you 
tell where the other end of the Gate is? Or when? I 
don't see any graduations or readouts."

"You don't need them. You can see where you are. Look." 
She touched a point under the control framework on the 
side toward the Gate. A panel rolled back and I saw 
there was a small image of the Gate itself. I found 
that I could see through the image.

I was gazing into my own room, as if through the wrong 
end of a telescope. I could make out two figures, but 
the scale was too small for me to see clearly what they 
were doing, nor could I tell which editions of myself 
were there--if they were in truth myself. I found it 
quite upsetting. "Shut it off," I said.

Leda did so and said, "I must not forget to give you 
your list." She fumbled in her sleeve and produced a 
slip of paper which she handed over. "Here--take it."

I accepted it mechanically and stuffed it into my 
pocket. "Look," I began, "everywhere I go I keep 
running into myself. I don't like it at all. It's 
disconcerting. I feel like a whole batch of guinea pigs 
in a cage. I don't understand what this is all about 
and now you want me to rush off through the Gate again 
with a bunch of half-baked excuses for reasons. Tell me 
what it's all about--Please!"

Leda showed temper in her face for the first time. 
"I've told you all that you are capable of 
understanding at the present time. This is a period in 
history entirely beyond your comprehension. It would 
take weeks before you could even begin to understand 
it. In the meantime, I'm offering you half a world in 
return for a few hours co-operation and you stand there 
arguing about it. Time is growing short, Trish. Now--
where shall we set you down?" She reached for the 
controls.

"I'm not going anywhere!" I rapped out. I was getting 
the glimmering of an idea. "Who are you, anyhow?"

"Me? I'm Leda."

"That's not what I mean and you know it! How did you 
learn English?"

She did not answer. Her face became expressionless.

"Come on," I persisted. "You didn't learn it here. 
These people have less in common with us then 
aborigines do. You're from the twentieth century, 
aren't you? The twenty-first, I mean."

Leda smiled sourly. "You're just figuring that out?"

I scowled. "I may not be exceedingly bright, but I'm 
not as stupid as you think I am. Tell me the rest of 
the story."

Leda shook her head. "It's immaterial. Besides, we're 
wasting time."

I laughed. "You've tried that excuse once too often. 
How can we waste time when we have that?" I pointed to 
the tetrahedron and to the Gate beyond it. "Unless you 
lied to me, we can use any slice of time we want to, at 
any time.You know what I think? I think you want me out 
of here to get me out of the picture. Either that, or 
there's something horribly dangerous about the job you 
want me to do. Either way, I know how to settle it--
you're going with me!"

"You don't know what you're saying," Leda answered 
slowly. "That's impossible. I've got to stay here and 
manage the controls."

"That's just what you aren't going to do." I advanced 
on her. "You could send me through and lose me anywhere 
in time. Ancient Rome for all I know. Or the middle of 
the fourteenth century. I prefer to keep you in sight."

"I'm sorry," answered Leda. "You'll just have to trust 
me." She bent over the controls again.

"I'm warning you," I growled. "I've had about as much 
of you as I can take. See this?" I pointed to my lumpy, 
swollen face. "These came from my own fists and you 
don't want me turning them on you."

Under my menacing glare, Leda withdrew from the control 
pulpit entirely. 

"There," I said. "That's better." The idea which had 
been forming in my mind took full shape. The controls, 
I knew, were still set on my own dorm room back in the 
twenty-first century. From what I had seen through the 
tiny viewscreen, the time control was set to take me 
right back to the day in 2006 from which I had started. 

"Stand there," I commanded her, "I want to see 
something."

I walked over to the Gate as if to inspect it. Instead 
of stopping when I reached it, I stepped on through.



CHAPTER FIVE:

Trish Confronts Them Both

Wednesday, April 19, 2006, 2:22 PM


I was better prepared for what I found on the other 
side than I had been on my two earlier occasions of 
"time travel." Nevertheless, it's never too easy on the 
nerves to encounter oneself face-to-face. Or oneselves.

They were very much preoccupied with each other; I had 
a few seconds in which to get them straightened out in 
my mind. "Trish Number Two" had a beautiful black eye 
and a badly battered mouth. That tagged her as having 
been through the Gate. The other Trish, though somewhat 
worse for wear to begin with, showed no signs of a fist 
fight.

They were arguing. One of them headed purposefully 
toward the bed. The other grabbed her by the arm. ''You 
can't do that," she said.

"Leave me alone!"

"Leave her alone!" I snapped.

The other two swung around and stared at me. I watched 
the more experienced of the pair size me up, saw her 
expression of amazement change to startled recognition, 
then dismay. The other, the earliest Trish, seemed to 
have trouble accepting me at all.

"This is going to be a job," I thought. "The chick is 
absolutely wired." I wondered why anyone would be 
foolish enough to drink bottle after bottle of coffee 
on an empty stomach.

I wondered if they had left a bottle for me.

"And who are you?" demanded my caffiene-maxed double.

I turned to Cloe. "She knows me," I said.

Cloe studied me. "Yes," she conceded, "I suppose I do. 
But why are you here? Are we throwing the plan? Are 
you--"

I interrupted her. "No time for long-winded 
explanations. I know more about it than you do--you'll 
probably concede that--and my judgment is maybe just a 
little better than yours. She doesn't go through the 
Gate."

"I don't concede anything of the sort--"

The ringing of the telephone halted the argument. I 
greeted the interruption with relief, realizing I had 
started out on the wrong tack. Was it possible that I 
was really as dense myself as this woman appeared to 
be? Did I look that way to other people? But the time 
was too short for self-doubts and soul-searching. 
"Answer it!" I commanded to the original Trish.

Our put-upon first edition looked at me belligerently, 
but acceded when she saw that Cloe was about to beat 
her to the phone.

"Hello. . . . Yes. Who is this? . . . Hello. . . . 
Hello!"

"Who was that?" demanded Cloe.

"I don't know! Some kid with a misplaced sense of 
humor!" The telephone rang again and Trish Number One 
grabbed the receiver before the Cloe could reach it. 
"Look, you butterfly-brain!" 

I paid little attention to the telephone conversation--
I had heard it twice before, and I had too much on my 
mind. My earliest persona was much too stressed-out to 
be reasonable; I must concentrate on some argument that 
would appeal to Cloe--otherwise I was outnumbered. 

 "So look, I'll stop by later on and bring you your hat 
and you can take me out to a bar and get me good and 
fucking drunk. How's that?" Trish Number One asked. 
"Whatever! I'll see you tonight." She slammed down the 
receiver. 

Now was the time, I thought, before pea-brain could 
open her mouth. But the pea-brain beat me too it. 

"Okay, you two! Out! Vamoose! Blow the popkins!"

"No!" Cloe protested. "You can't. I mean, you have to!"

"She does not!" I contradicted. "And she won't!"

"I won't do anything at all!" Fried-Trish shouted back. 
"Except call the cops!" Then, with a comical popping-
open of the eyes, she added: "Or maybe I will!"

This was getting out of hand. I'd have to make them 
realize what was going on, and quickly. But I got no 
chance to do so. As I stepped in front of the Gate to 
head Trish off, she charged me. We struggled for a 
moment, her yelling to be let go, and then she swung on 
me; my temper snapped. I knew with sudden fierce 
exultation that I had been wanting to take a punch at 
someone for some time. Who the hell did they think they 
were anyway, screwing around with my future?

Fried-Trish was clumsy and inexperienced; I stepped 
under her guard, took a glancing blow on the shoulder 
and hit her hard on the right cheek, just below the 
eye. It was a solid enough punch to have convinced 
another woman that I meant business; Trish just shook 
her head and came back for more. I looked at Cloe for 
support, but Cloe closed in on the side of my opponent. 
I decided that I would have to put Trish  away in a 
hurry, and give my attention to Cloe--by far the more 
dangerous of the two.

A slight mix-up between the two allies gave me my 
chance. I landed a blow on Cloe's already battered face 
and the woman staggered away, clenching her mouth in 
pain. I then aimed carefully and landed a long jab with 
my right fist, one of the hardest blows I had ever 
struck in my life. It snapped back Trish's head and 
nearly took her off her feet. She staggered backward 
and then stopped; almost cross-eyed, she looked at her 
bloody hand. 

"You hit me!" Already, the area around her right eye 
and the corner of her mouth were beginning to swell. 
Tears welled in  her eyes.

The realization of what I'd done hit me like a ton of 
bricks. "I know," I whispered in disbelief. "I didn't 
mean--" 

I got no more out because Cloe picked that moment to 
charge me. I knew with bitter certainty that I had once 
again played through the scene to its inescapable 
climax; even as my opponent got me into that ridiculous 
head-lock, all I had to do was acquiesce to keep Trish 
Number One from tumbling through the Gate. But the 
absurdity of the situation fired my temper again and, 
ignoring the voice of reason clamoring inside my head, 
I took aim at the infuriating pea-brained edition of 
myself and threw her upon the altar of destiny.

*

My first impulse was the illogical but quite human and 
very common feeling of look-what-you-made-me-do. "Now 
you've done it!" I said angrily, rubbing at my right 
hand. The knuckles were bruised and bleeding freely. 
What a day.

"Me?" Cloe protested. "You knocked her through. We were 
just fine until you shoved us sideways!"

"Yes," I was forced to admit. "But it's your fault. If 
you hadn't interfered, it wouldn't have happened."

"Me interfere? Why, you dumb little hypocrite bimbo--
you butted in and tried to stop the whole thing from 
happening. What would have happened if she hadn't gone 
through, huh? Which reminds me--you owe me some 
explanations here. What's the idea of--"

"Stow it." I hated being wrong and I hated still more 
to have to admit that I was wrong. It had been hopeless 
from the start; I felt bowed by the utter futility of 
it all. "It's too late now. She's gone on through."

"Too late for what?"

I was aware now that it always had been too late, 
regardless of what time it was, what year it was, or 
how many times I came back and tried to stop it. Events 
would have to work out their own weary way. 

"Too late to put a stop to this chain of events." 

"Why should we? I mean if it's already going on . . . "

It was not worth while to explain, but I felt the need 
for self-justification. "Leda has played me--I mean us-
-for a fool, for a couple of fools. She told you she 
was going to set you up for life over there, didn't 
she?"

"Yes," came a hesitant reply. 

"Well, that's a lot of crap. All she means to do is to 
get us so incredibly tangled up in this Time Gate thing 
that we'll never get straightened out again."

Cloe looked at me anxiously. "How do you know?"

Since it was largely hunch, I felt pressed for a 
reasonable explanation. "I don't want to go into it," I 
said. "Just take my word for it, okay?"

"Why should I?"

Why should you? Why, you stupid little shit, can't you 
see? I'm yourself, older and more experienced--you have 
to believe me! Aloud I answered, "If you can't take my 
word, Trish, whose word can you take?"

Cloe grunted. "I'm from Missouri," she said. "I'll see 
for myself."

I was suddenly aware that Cloe was about to step 
through the Gate. "Where are you going?" I asked 
stupidly.

"Through! I'm going to hunt down Leda and have a little 
talk her."

"Don't." I pleaded. "Maybe we can break this chain 
right now." But the stubborn, sour look on her face 
made me realize how futile it was. We were still 
enmeshed in inevitability; it had to happen. "Go 
ahead," I shrugged. "Have it your way. I wash my hands 
of the whole thing."

Cloe paused at the Gate. "My funeral, huh? Just 
remember something, Little Miss Pontius Pilot, if it's 
my funeral, then it's your funeral too."

I stared silently while Cloe stepped through the Gate. 
Funeral? I had not thought of it in quite that way 
before. I felt a sudden impulse to rush through the 
Gate myself, catch up with my alter ego, and keep watch 
over her. The stupid jerk might do anything. Like get 
herself killed. Where would that leave Trish Wilson, 
huh? Dead, of course. 

*

Standing before the mirror in the closet-sized 
bathroom, I stripped off my warm-up suit--how long had 
I had this on? I definitely smelled bad to my own nose-
-threw it on the floor and brushed out my shoulder-
length hair. It was greasy to the touch and hung limply 
between my grimy fingers. Yuck. 

Cloe's actions could not endanger me here; I remembered 
everything that Cloe had done--was going to do--the 
crash course in Time Travel control, the argument with 
Leda, the stepping back through the Gate. No, I was in 
no danger here. 

Staring at my face in the mirror, I wondered why I had 
failed to recognize it the first time. I had to admit 
that I had never looked at it objectively before. I had 
always just taken it for granted. I acquired a crick in 
my neck from trying to look at my own profile through 
the corner of one eye, gave up and started the shower. 

"I want a bath!" I complained. Sighing, cursing the 
cheap university accommodations, I stepped into the 
stall and adjusted the flow of water over my head. I 
let the water drown me. I stood there while the almost 
unbearable heat worked the kinks out of my body and 
forced me to relax. I wanted to fuck. Jesus, I wanted 
to fuck. How long had it been? Thirty thousand years? 
This struck me as funny and soaping myself up into a 
lather, I found myself laughing without end. 

On leaving the bathroom, the Gate caught my eye--
forcibly. For some reason, I had assumed that it would 
be gone. It wasn't. I inspected it, walked around it, 
carefully refrained from touching it. Wasn't the damned 
thing ever going to go away? It had served its purpose, 
hadn't it? Why didn't Leda just shut it down?

I stood in front of it, felt a sudden surge of the 
compulsion that leads men to climb mountains and jump 
from high places--with or without parachutes--and 
wondered would happen if I went through again? What 
would I find? I suddenly thought of Arma, off in the 
dim future without me, wondering what that thought 
meant to me. Certainly I wasn't . . . 

"I know my own orientation," I said to the Gate. "And 
it's not in that direction." Still, I had Arma on my 
mind and the thought would not go away. 

I restrained myself and forced myself to sit back down 
at the desk. If I was going to stay here--and of course 
I was, I was resolved on that point--I must finish the 
thesis. I needed the degree to get a decent job in this 
time. No half-ruler of the western world, here. 

Twenty minutes later I had come to the conclusion that 
the thesis would have to be rewritten from scratch. My 
prime theme, the application of the empirical method of 
the problems of speculative metaphysics and its 
expression in rigorous formulae was still valid, but I 
had acquired a mass of new and as yet undigested data 
to incorporate into it. If incorporation was even 
possible. In rereading the manuscript, I was amazed to 
find how dogmatic I had been. Time after time I had 
fallen into the pathetic fallacy of Descartes, 
mistaking clear reasoning for correct reasoning.

The telephone rang.

I answered it absentmindedly. "Yes?"

"Is that you, Trish?'

"Hi. Who's this?"

"It's me, of course. What's with you today? That's the 
second time you haven't recognized my voice."

His voice had a distinctly peevish tone and that 
brought on a surge of annoyance. I ignored his 
complaint. "Look, Greg, I've asked you before not to 
call while I'm working. Now I have to go."

"Hey, wait a minute! First of all, you weren't working 
today. In the second place, what makes you think you 
can be all milk and honey to me and two hours later 
practically snarl? I'm not so sure I want to marry you 
after all."

I sat up, positively stunned. "Marry you? What put that 
silly idea in your head?"

The phone was silent for several seconds. "Excuse me? 
Are you kidding?" he finally said.

I wondered how much confusion I could take in one day. 
"Now listen just a minute. I like you a Greg,  I like 
you a lot, but you can't just assume that after a few 
dates that I intend to marry you."

There was another long silence. I had just begun to 
think the line had gone dead when Gregory said: "So 
that's the game, is it?" His voice was so cold and hard 
and completely un-Greg-like that I almost failed to 
recognize it. "Well, there's a way to handle women like 
you, Trish. A woman isn't guaranteed anything on this 
campus except a place to spread her legs and fuck!"

"You ought to know!" I answered savagely. "You've hung 
around the campus enough years."

The receiver clicked in my ear.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead. That son-of-bitch! 
I knew he was trouble. His father was on the board of 
admissions and his uncle was Dean of Women. I had been 
warned before I ever started running around with him 
that he was a shit, but I had been so sure of my own 
ability to take care of myself that I had ignored the 
cautions. I should have known better--but then I had 
never expected anything quite so raw as this.

I tried to get back to work on the thesis, but found 
myself unable to concentrate. The deadline of 10 a. m. 
the next morning seemed to be racing toward me--like a 
runaway munitions train. I looked at my watch. Four-ten 
in the afternoon. Even if I sat up all night I could 
never get it done in time.

The telephone rang again. It was Gregory. I let it 
ring. It continued to ring and finally I took the 
receiver off the cradle. I would not talk to him again.

I walked over to the window and stared down into the 
dusty, noisy quad. Half-subconsciously, I compared it 
with the green and placid countryside I had seen from 
the balcony where Leda and I had breakfasted. This was 
a lousy world full of lousy people. I wished poignantly 
that Leda had been on the up-and-up with me.

The idea broke surface in my brain like a submarine-
launched missile. The Gate was still open. The Gate was 
still open! Why worry about Gregory? I was my own 
master now. Go back and play it out--everything to 
gain, nothing to lose.

I stepped up to the Gate, then hesitated. Was this wise 
to do? After all, how much did I know about the future?

I heard the elevator door open and footsteps coming 
down the hall; they stopped at my door. I was suddenly 
convinced that it was Gregory and that decided for me. 
I stepped through the Gate. 



CHAPTER SIX:

Trish 3 in Arcadia to Steal the Gate

Sunday, June 4, 32109, 9:46 AM


The Hall of the Gate was empty. The hall was eerily 
silent. I hurried around the control box to the 
passageway door, expecting to hear, "Now come on. 
There's work to be done," and two figures retreating 
down the corridor. I saw no one. 

If I could work out the controls, the Gate might give 
me all the advantage I needed. I entered the control 
box and felt around where I recalled having seen Leda 
reach to turn it on, then reached in my pocket for my 
lighter. Instead, I pulled out a piece of paper. 

It was the list that Leda had given me, the things I 
was to obtain in 2006. Up to the present moment there 
had been too much going on for me to look it over.

My eyebrows arched as I read. It was a very strange 
list. I had subconsciously expected it to call out for 
technical reference books, samples of modern electronic 
goods, weapons maybe. There was nothing of the sort. 
Still, there was sort of a weird logic to the 
assortment. I decided to make one more trip back and do 
the shopping. Not for Leda's benefit, but for my own. 
Screw Leda. I fumbled in the semidarkness of the 
control booth, seeking the switch or whatever it was 
that controlled the viewscreen. My hand encountered a 
soft mass tucked back into the angle formed by the side 
wall and the control panel and I snatched it back. Then 
I realized what it was: it was my hat.

Laughing, I placed it on top of my head. Leda must have 
stowed it there for some reason. I reached in again and 
this time brought forth a small, leather-bound 
notebook. Instructions for the machine? Hoping it was, 
I hurriedly thumbed to the first page and found page 
after page of handwritten notes. There were three 
columns to the page; the first was in English, the 
second in some type of phonetic symbols, the third in a 
completely strange sort of writing. It took no 
brilliance for me to identify it as a lexicon, a 
paperback version of the Rosetta Stone. I slipped it 
into my pocket with a broad smile; it probably have 
taken Leda months or even years to work out the 
relationship between the two languages. Now it was 
mine.

On the third try I located the control and the 
viewscreen lighted up. I felt again the curious 
uneasiness I had felt before; I was gazing again into 
my own room. There was no one inside it--or in view, 
anyway--but I wanted no more face-to-face encounters. 
Cautiously, I touched one of the colored globes.

The scene shifted, panned out through the walls of the 
dorm room and came to rest in the air, four stories 
above the campus. I was pleased to have gotten the Gate 
out of the room, but four stories was a little too much 
of a jump. I fiddled with the other two globes and 
established that one of them caused the scene to move 
toward me or away, while the other moved the Gate up or 
down.

I wanted a reasonably inconspicuous--and safe--place to 
locate the Gate. There was no ideal place I could think 
of; I compromised on a blind alley, a little court 
formed by the campus powerhouse and the rear wall of 
the library. Cautiously and clumsily, I maneuvered my 
seeing eye port and set it down between the two 
buildings. Then I readjusted the position so that I 
stared right into a blank wall. 

Leaving the controls as they were, I hurried out of the 
booth and stepped unceremoniously back into my own time 
period. My nose bumped up against the brick wall as I 
slid cautiously out from between it and the Gate. The 
Gate hung in the air, about fifteen inches from the 
wall and roughly parallel to it. Close fit, but there 
was room enough, I decided. I ducked out of the areaway 
and cut across the campus toward the Students' Co-op, 
wasting no time. I entered and went to the cashier's 
window. To my surprise, the clock on the opposite wall 
read 9:28 am. I had thought it late in the afternoon, 
after my various other editions and I had fled the 
scene, but maybe I had nudged the wrong control 
somehow. At least the day was correct--or so said the 
date reminder sitting just behind the cashier's window 
glass.   

"Hi, Trish."

"Hi, Soupy." It was a red-haired, freckle-faced 
sophomore that I had three times turned down for dates.  
He made no comment about my black and blue face--
although it obviously killed him not to. "Cash a check 
for me?" I asked.

"How much?"

"A hundred bucks."

"Well--I suppose so. Is it a good check?" he asked 
playfully.

"Not very. It's my own."

"Well, I'll invest in it as a curiosity if it bounces." 
He counted out a four twenties, a ten, a five, and five 
ones. "Besides, it has your address and telephone 
number on it," he said.

"It still won't get you date. But hang on to it anyway: 
my autograph might be a rare collectors' item some 
day." 

I took the money and proceeded to the bookstore in the 
same building.  Most of the books on the list were 
there for sale. Ten minutes later I had acquired title 
to:

"The Prince," by Niccolo Machiavelli.

"Behind the Ballots," by James Farley.

"How to Win Friends and Influence People," by Dale 
Carnegie.

"It Takes a Village," by Hillary Roddam Clinton.

The other titles I wanted were not available in the 
bookstore. I went from there to the university library 
where I drew out "Real Estate Broker's Manual," 
"History of Musical Instruments," and a volume titled 
"Evolution of Dress Styles." The latter was a handsome 
book with beautiful colored plates and was classified 
as a reference. I had to argue a little to get it out 
on a twenty-four hour permission.

I was fairly well loaded down by then; I left the 
campus, went to a pawnshop on Route One and purchased 
two used, but sturdy suitcases, into one of which I 
packed the books. From there I went to the largest 
music store in College Park and spent forty-five 
minutes selecting and rejecting old tunes, with 
emphasis on swing and ragtime and jazz--highly 
emotional stuff, all of it. I did not neglect classical 
and semi-classical, but applied the same rule to those 
categories--a piece of music had to be sensuous and 
compelling, rather than cerebral. No Heavy Metal, no 
Rap or Pop. My collection included such strangely 
assorted items as the "Marseillaise," Ravel's "Bolero," 
four Cole Porter tunes, and "L'Apres-midi d'un Faune." 
I bought nothing later than the 1940's.

I found a CD player with a solar panel built into the 
top. I bought two, along with a scad of rechargeable D-
cell batteries. I wrote a check for the lot, packed it 
all in my suitcases, and had the clerk call me a taxi.  

I had a bad moment over the check because the one I had 
cashed at the Students'  Co-op had cleaned out my 
account. But the phone lines were down and with it the 
store's TeleCheck system; I had just established, I 
reflected, the all-time record for bouncing checks--
thirty thousand years.

When the taxi drew up opposite the court where I had 
located the Gate, I jumped out and hurried in.

The Gate was gone.

*

I stood there for several minutes, whistling softly, 
and assessing--unfavorably--my own abilities, mental 
processes, and the consequences of writing bad checks 
under the present circumstances.

I felt a touch at my sleeve. "Young lady, do you want 
the cab, or don't you? The meter's still running, you 
know."

"Yes," I said distractedly, picking up the suitcases. I 
followed the driver back to the cab.

"Where to?"

That was a problem. I glanced at my watch, then 
realized that the usually reliable instrument had been 
through a process which rendered its reading 
irrelevant. "What time is it now?"

"Twelve noon." I reset my watch. 

Twelve noon. The original Trish was right now in her 
room, awaiting the jamboree. It would not start until 
sometime just after two o'clock but I didn't want to go 
there--not until my blood-sisters got through playing 
fun games with the Gate.

The Gate!

It would be in the room until sometime after four 
fifteen! If I timed it right--

"Drive to the corner of Cleveland and Eisenhower," I 
directed, naming the intersection closest to my dorm.

I paid off the taxi driver there, lugged my bags into 
the Student Union building across the street, where I 
obtained permission from the receptionist to leave them 
and assurance that they would be safe. Although I had 
nearly four hours to kill, I was reluctant to go very 
far from the dorm for fear some hitch would upset my 
timing. Then it hit me.

Gregory. 

I walked briskly to a point two blocks away, where 
Eisenhower intersected Route One, blundered onto a cab 
disgorging a group of four, giggling teenage girls at a 
record shop, and gave the driver directions to an 
apartment building two miles away. 

In response to my knock, the peephole in the door of 
Apartment 211 darkened. Then the door was flung wide 
and Gregory exclaimed. "Trisha! I thought you were 
working today!" 

"I decided to take some time off. Caffeine-brain, you 
know?" I made a cross-eyed, pinched-faced imitation of 
a mental-ward patient.

"I don't know," Greg said solemnly, looking back over 
his shoulder. "I wasn't expecting you. I haven't washed 
the dishes, or made up the bed. And I was just putting 
on my make-up."

"Don't be coy." I pushed the door open wide, and went 
in.

*

Standing on the front porch of Gregory's building some 
time later, I glanced at my watch. One fifty-five. I 
waited for my taxi, feeling like the cat that had got 
eaten by the canary. No wonder Gregory was enraged. Or 
would be enraged. I felt like a slut.

After checking on my bags, I borrowed a quarter from 
the Student Union receptionist and crossed to a phone 
booth across the street. I dialed my own number. 

"Hello," I heard.

"Trish. Is this Trish Wilson?"

"Yes. Who is this?"

"Never mind," I said. "I just wanted to be sure you 
were there. You've got quite an afternoon ahead of you, 
girl. Keep a stiff upper lip, okay?" I replaced the 
receiver with a joyless chuckle.

The afternoon dragged on and on. At four-o'clock, I was 
too nervous to wait any longer. Struggling under the 
load of the heavy suitcases, I made my way to the dorm. 
I took the elevator to the third floor, climbed the 
stairs to the fourth--that old elevator made the most 
horrendous racket--got out and heard a telephone 
ringing down the hall. It rang and rang. I glanced at 
my watch. Four ten. I waited in the hall for three 
interminable minutes, realized with a start whose 
footsteps in the hallway outside my door had chased me 
through the Gate and pressed the elevator call button. 
When the noisy old monster arrived, I waited for the 
doors to open, then clank back shut again, then labored 
down the hall under the weight of my books. I unlocked 
the door and let myself in.

The room was empty; the Gate was still there.

Without stopping for anything, filled with apprehension 
lest the Gate should suddenly blink out of existence 
while I crossed the room, I hurried to it, took a firm 
grip on my bags, and stepped through to the other side.



CHAPTER SEVEN:

Trish 3 in Arcadia Again to Steal the Gate

Sunday, June 4, 32109, 10:00 AM



The Hall of the Gate was empty. Just five minutes, I 
told myself, that's all I ask. Five uninterrupted 
minutes. 

I set the suitcases down near the Gate to be ready for 
a quick departure. As I did so I noticed that a large 
slice was missing from a comer of one case. Half a book 
showed through the opening, sheared as neatly as with a 
printer's trimmer. I identified it as "How to Win 
Friends and Influence People."

I did not mind the loss of the book but the 
implications made me slightly sick at my stomach. 
Suppose I had not described a clear arc when I had 
first been knocked through the Gate, had hit the edge, 
half in and half out? Woman Sawed in Half--and no 
illusion!

I wiped my face and went to the control booth. 
Following Leda's simple instructions, I brought all 
four spheres together at the center of the tetrahedron. 
I glanced over the side of the booth and saw that the 
Gate had disappeared entirely. "Check!" I thought. 
"Everything on zero--no Gate." 

I moved the white sphere slightly. The Gate reappeared. 
Turning on the viewscreen, I was able to see through 
the miniature scene the inside of the Hall of the Gate 
itself. So far so good--but I would not be able to tell 
what time the Gate was set for by looking into the 
Hall. I displaced a globe slightly and the scene 
flickered past the walls of the palace and hung in the 
open air. Returning the white time control to zero, I 
then displaced it very, very slightly. In the miniature 
scene the sun became a streak of brightness across the 
sky; the days flickering past like some effect in a 
science-fiction movie. I increased the displacement a 
little, saw the ground outside become brown and sallow, 
then snow covered, and finally green again.

Working cautiously, steadying my right hand with my 
left, I made the seasons march past. I had counted ten 
winters when I became aware of voices somewhere in the 
distance. I stopped and listened, then very hastily 
returned the spatial controls to zero, leaving the time 
control set as it was--set for ten years in the past--
and rushed out of the booth.

I hardly had time to grasp my bags, lift them and swing 
them through the Gate, myself with them, as the sound 
of voices entered the room. This time, I was 
exceedingly careful not to touch the edge of the 
circle. 



CHAPTER EIGHT:

Trish 3 in Arcadia Ten Years Before

Wednesday, September 22, 32099, 11:14 PM



I found myself, as I had planned to, still in the Hall 
of the Gate. But, if I had interpreted the controls 
correctly, I was ten years in the past. I had intended 
to give Leda a wider berth than that, but there had 
been no time. But since Leda was, by her own admission 
and the evidence of the little notebook I had lifted 
from the machine, a native of the twenty-first century, 
it was quite possible that ten years was enough. She 
might not be in this era. If she was, there was always 
the Time Gate. Caution, however, told me it was 
reasonable to scout out the situation first before 
making any more jumps.

In retrospect, it seemed obvious to me that I should 
have brought along enough food to last me a day or two, 
and maybe a gun. I had not been very foresighted. But I 
easily forgave myself for that--it was hard to be 
foresighted when the future kept slipping up behind one 
like this. 

"All right, Trish," I told myself aloud, "let's see if 
the natives are friendly--as advertised."

A cautious reconnoiter of the part of the Palace I was 
acquainted with turned up no human beings, no life of 
any sort, not even insect life. The place was dead, 
sterile, as static and unlived-in as a window display. 
I shouted once, just to hear a voice. The echoes caused 
me to shiver. I did not do it again.

The architecture of the place was confounding. Not only 
was it strange beyond my twenty-first century 
experience--I had expected that--but the place, with 
minor exceptions, seemed totally unadapted to the uses 
of human beings. There were great halls, large enough 
to hold ten thousand people at once--had there been 
floors in them to stand on. In following one long 
passageway I came suddenly to one of the great 
mysterious halls and almost fell in before I realized 
that the passage had terminated. I crawled gingerly 
forward and looked over the edge. The mouth of the 
passage terminated high up on a shear, vertical wall. 
Far below, the wall curved out and intersected with the 
wall on the opposite side--not in a horizontal plane, 
but at an acute angle that defied reason. There were 
other openings scattered around the walls, openings 
just as unserviceable to human beings as the one in 
which I crouched. 

"The High Ones," I whispered to myself. All my 
cockiness had fled me. I retraced my steps through the 
passageway and reached the almost friendly familiarity 
of the Hall of the Gate.

On my second try I attempted only those passages and 
compartments which seemed obviously adapted to human 
beings. I had already decided what such parts of the 
Palace must be . . . servants' quarters. I regained my 
courage by sticking to areas such as these because, 
even though completely deserted, by contrast with the 
rest of the great structure, a room or a passage that 
had been built for men seemed absolutely cheerful. 

Twelve hours later, hungry, thirsty, my legs aching 
from the continual searching and my eyes threatening to 
glue themselves closed, I had almost come to despair in 
my hopes of finding a way out of the Palace. Then, 
suddenly, the corridor I was following turned right and 
I found myself standing in bright  white sunlight. 

"Oh, thank God," I breathed, tone almost reverential.

I stood at the top of a broad steep ramp which spread 
fan-like down to the base of the building. Ahead of me 
and below, at least five hundred yards down, the 
surface of the ramp met the green of earth and bushes 
and trees. It was the same placid, lush, and familiar 
scene I had looked out over when I breakfasted with 
Leda--a few hours ago and ten years in the future.

I stood quietly for a short time, drinking in the 
sunshine, soaking up the heart-lifting beauty of the 
warm, autumn day. "This is going to be all right after 
all," I told the beautiful morning. "I just know it 
is."

I moved slowly down the ramp, my eyes searching for 
human beings. I was halfway down when I saw a small 
figure emerge from the trees into a clearing near the 
foot of the ramp. I called out to it in joyous 
excitement and the child--it was certainly a child--
looked up, stared at me for a moment, then fled back 
into the shelter of the trees.

"Wait!" I yelled, and then shut my mouth. "Don't scare 
them, Trish. Take it easy." But I was heartened by the 
incident. Where there were children there would be 
adults: parents, society, opportunities for a bright, 
young woman who took a broad view of things to get 
ahead. I moved on down at a leisurely pace.

A woman showed up at the point where the child had 
disappeared. I stood still. The woman looked at me for 
a time, then advanced hesitantly a step or two. 

"Please come," I invited in a friendly voice. "I won't 
hurt you."

The woman could hardly have understood my words, but 
she advanced slowly. At the edge of the ramp she 
stopped, eyed it apprehensively and would not proceed 
farther.

Something about her behavior clicked in my brain. 
"Unless I'm wrong," I said in a conversational tone, 
"and the time I spent in Anthropology 101 was totally 
wasted, this Palace is taboo to you, and the ramp I'm 
standing on is taboo."

And, by association, I was taboo too. 

"Play your cards, Trish. But not all of them at once."

I advanced to the edge of the ramp, careful not to step 
off it. The woman dropped to her knees and cupped her 
hands in front of her, head bowed in the same manner as 
had Arma. Without hesitation, I touched her on the 
forehead and the woman got back to her feet, her face 
radiant.

"This is despicable," I murmured. "I should be shot."

My new servant cocked her head, looked puzzled, and 
answered, in a light, melodious voice. The words were 
liquid and strange and sounded like a phrase from a 
song. 

"You ought to be on American Idol," I said admiringly. 
"Most of them got on with far less talent than you." I 
pointed to my mouth, made exaggerated chewing motions, 
and rubbed my belly. "Food?"

The woman looked hesitant, spoke again, and I 
remembered the book.  I looked up "eat," then looked up 
"food," and found it was the same word. "Blellan," I 
said carefully.

"Blellaaaan?"

"Blellaaaan," I agreed. "You'll have to excuse my 
accent. I'm was lousy at French." 

I tried to find "hurry" in the vocabulary, but it was 
not there. Either the language did not contain the idea 
or Leda had not thought it worthwhile to write it down. 
I found the word for "bring"--Egmorey--and the woman 
departed.

I sat myself down Buddha-fashion and passed the time 
studying the notebook. The speed of my assimilation 
with these people, I decided, was limited only by the 
time it took me to get into full communication with 
them. But I had only time enough to look up a few 
common words when my first acquaintance returned, in 
company.

The procession was headed by an extremely elderly man, 
white-haired but beardless. All of the men were 
beardless. He walked under a canopy carried by four 
stout, young male bearers. Of all the crowd, only he 
wore enough clothes to get by anywhere but on a beach. 
That he was the head man was evident.

I hurriedly looked up the word for "chief."

The word for chief was "Leda."

It should not have surprised me, but it did. I had to 
laugh. Leda--the Leda--had added a note under the word. 
"One of the few words which shows some probability of 
having been derived from the old languages. This word, 
plus a few dozen others, and the grammatical structure 
of the language itself, appear to be the only link 
between the language of the 'Forsaken Ones' and the 
English language."

The chief stopped in front of me, just short of the 
pavement. He knelt down as the woman had down before 
him, cupped his face in his hands; I touched his 
forehead.

The food that had been fetched was plentiful and very 
pleasant to eat. I ate slowly and with dignity, keeping 
in mind the importance of "face." I never left the 
ramp. None of them dared come on to it.

While I ate I was serenaded by the entire assemblage. 
Their ideas of harmony I found a little strange and the 
performance, as a whole, seemed primitive, but their 
voices were clear and mellow--especially those of the 
young women--and they sang as if they enjoyed it.

The concert gave me an idea. After I had satisfied my 
hunger, I made the chieftain understand--with the aid 
of the indispensable little notebook--that he and his 
flock were to wait where they were. I then returned to 
the Hall of the Gate and brought back with me one of 
the CD players and a dozen assorted albums. I treated 
them to a recorded concert of "modern" music. 
Beethoven.

The reaction exceeded my hopes. "Begin the Beguine" 
caused tears to stream down the old chieftain's face, 
and the first movement of Tschaikowsky's "Concerto 
Number One in B-Flat Minor" practically caused a 
stampede. As it grew dark, the assembled crowd swayed 
alarmingly back and forth, held their heads and wailed. 
They shouted their applause so enthusiastically that I 
refrained from giving them the second movement, tapered 
them off instead with the compelling monotony of the 
"Bolero."

"Leda," I said softly, "you certainly had these people 
pegged. By the time you show up--if you ever do--I'll 
own this place."

*

This is not an account of how dictatorship came to 
Arcadia. My rise to power was more in the nature of a 
triumphal progress than a struggle for supremacy; it 
contained little that was dramatic. Whatever it was 
that the High Ones had done to the human race, it had 
left them with only physical resemblance and with 
little else. The docile, friendly, children-like people 
with whom I dealt had little in common with the 
brawling, vulgar, lusty, dynamic swarms who had once 
upon a time called themselves the People of the United 
States. The fight was gone out of them. .

Having established myself as High Priestess of the 
Land, I, for a time, busied myself in organizing 
certain projects intended to bring the culture "up-to-
date"--the reinvention of musical instruments, 
establishment of a systematic system of mail service, 
redevelopment of the idea of styles in dress--and a 
taboo against wearing the same fashion more than one 
season. I figured correctly that arousing a hearty 
interest in fashion in the minds of the womenfolk would 
force the men to hustle to satisfy their wishes. My 
subjects co-operated with my wishes, but in a bemused 
fashion, like a dog performing a trick, not because it 
understands it, but because its master desires it to. 
Despite my best efforts, the culture was slipping 
downhill.  

Never far from my mind was the mystery of the High 
Ones, and especially the mystery of their Time Gate. I 
became quite skilled in handling its controls, but I 
never acquired the foggiest notion of how it worked, or 
how it had been built. It seemed to me that the 
creatures who built it, in order to anchor the Gate to 
the structure of space-time, must necessarily have been 
able to stand outside the limits that confined me. The 
concept escaped me as badly as quantum physics would 
have escaped a fourteenth century alchemist.

What I suspected was that the controls I saw were 
simply the part of the machine that stuck through into 
the space we knew. The very Palace itself may have been 
no more than a three-dimensional section of a more 
involved structure--the tip of the quantum iceberg, 
lets say. Such a condition would help to explain the 
otherwise inexplicable nature of its architecture.

I became possessed of an overpowering desire to know 
more about these strange creatures, the "High Ones," 
who had come and ruled the human race and built this 
Palace and this Gate, and then gone away again--and in 
whose backwash I had been flung. To the human race they 
were no more than a sacred myth, a contradictory mass 
of tradition. No picture of them remained, no trace of 
their writing, nothing of their works save the High 
Palace of Norkaal and the Gate. And a sense of 
irreparable loss in the hearts of the race they had 
ruled, a loss expressed by their own term for 
themselves--the Forsaken Ones.

With controls and viewscreen  I hunted back through 
time, seeking the Builders. It was slow work, as I had 
found before. A passing shadow, a tedious retracing--
and failure.

Once I was sure that I had seen such a shadow in the 
miniature Hall depicted in the viewscreen. I set the 
controls back far enough to be sure that I had repassed 
it, then armed myself with food and drink, and waited.

I waited three weeks.

The shadow might have passed during the hours I was 
forced to take out for sleep. But I felt sure that I 
was in the right period; I kept up the vigil.

Finally I saw it.

It was moving toward the Gate.

When I pulled myself together I was halfway down the 
passageway leading away from the Hall. I realized that 
I had been screaming and I felt like screaming still. I 
had an attack of the shakes.

Sometime later--it might have been days, weeks, maybe--
I forced myself to return to the Hall, and, with eyes 
averted, enter the control booth and return the spheres 
to zero. I backed out hastily and left the Hall for my 
apartment. I did not touch the controls nor enter the 
Hall for more than two years.

It had not been fear that had shaken my reason. It had 
been a feeling of intense sadness, infinitely 
compounded which had flooded through me at the instant, 
a sense of absolute tragedy. I had been flayed with 
emotions too many times too strong for my spiritual 
fiber to take. I was no more fitted to experience the 
presence of the "High Ones" than an oyster is to play a 
violin.

The shadow of that moment ruined my sleep for years, 
brought me sweating out of dreams.

*

As the end of my first ten years in Arcadia approached, 
I became more and more nervous, less and less certain 
of my design. Dammit, I thought, if Leda is going to 
show up it was high time she did so. I was anxious to 
come to grips with her, establish who was to be boss.

I had agents posted throughout the mid- and low 
countries, with instructions to arrest any woman 
unknown to them and fetch her forthwith to the Palace. 
The Hall of the Gate I watched myself.

From tedium and partly from curiosity, I attempted to 
see the other end of the process. I tried fishing the 
future for Leda, but with no luck. This end of the 
apparatus was anchored in the present it appeared; the 
Gate looked only into the past. Instead, I tried to 
relocate my original home, thirty thousand years in the 
past.

It was a long chore. The further the time globe was 
displaced from the center, the poorer the control 
became. It took patience and practice to be able to 
stop the image within a century or so of the period I 
wanted. It was in the course of this experimentation 
that I discovered what I had once so desperately 
wanted, a fractional control--a caliper, in effect. It 
was as simple as the primary control: twist the globe 
instead of moving it directly.

I steadied down on the twenty-first century, 
approximating the year by the models of automobiles, 
types  of clothing and other gross evidence--no more 
McDonald's restaurants, for instance--and stopped in 
what I believed to be 2006. Careful displacement of the 
spatial controls took me to the university town where I 
had started--after several false tries; the image did 
not enable me to read road signs.

I located my dormitory, brought the Gate into my own 
room. It was vacant, no furniture in it at all.

I adjusted the time globe by a tiny increment. Success-
-my own room, my own furniture, but empty. I adjusted 
gradually back, looking for shadows. There! 

There were three figures in the room, but the image was 
too small, the light too poor for me to be sure whether 
or not one of them was myself. I leaned over and 
studied the scene. Not yet convinced, I nudged the 
portal back what I hoped was perhaps an hour, and just 
as I did so I was startled by a dull thump outside the 
booth. I straightened up and looked over the side.

Sprawled on the floor was a limp human figure. Near it 
lay a baseball cap.



CHAPTER EIGHT:

The Truth of The Matter

Friday, June 2, 32109, 8:58 PM



I stood perfectly still for an uncounted time, staring 
at the recumbent figure while the winds of unreason 
swept through my mind--and shook it. There was no need 
to examine the unconscious form to know who it was it. 
I knew of course. It was my younger self, knocked 
willy-nilly through the Time Gate.

I had known eventually that this would happen. I had 
fully expected to confront Leda when it did, demand a 
final reckoning, dispatching the older woman to the 
netherlands if necessary. Only now the introductory 
event had occurred and I myself had been the only 
witness present!

I was Leda. I was the Leda. I was the only Leda!

I would never confront my nemesis, never have it out 
with her. I need never have feared the woman's arrival 
in the first place. There never had been, never would 
be, any other person called Leda, because Leda never 
had been anyone but me.

There were so many bits of evidence pointing to it, and 
yet it had never been obvious. Each point of similarity 
between myself and Leda had arisen from rational 
causes--usually from my desire to appropriate the 
woman's characteristics, thereby consolidating my own 
position of power and authority before her arrival. I 
had established myself in the very apartments that 
"Leda" had used--so that they would be "mine" first.

To be sure, the people of Arcadia called me Leda, had 
so for many years, but they called anyone who ruled by 
that title--even the little sub-chieftains who were my 
local administrators. I had designed a new wardrobe for 
myself, to set myself apart from the local inhabitants, 
had cut my hair short for the same reason--the females 
all had long, thick luxurious hair. I had even added 
gray highlights to my hair to enhance me prestige. I 
had never thought for a moment to question that my own 
appearance might coincided with that of "Leda." 

I had remembered Leda's face as being lined, her hair 
gone mostly gray, her body under the purple loungewear 
middle age-soft. Perhaps an unbiased witness would 
believe myself to be her age. My face was lined--
running a country, even a peaceful one like Arcadia, 
will worry a woman to death, keep her awake nights, to 
say nothing of the year she had succeeded too well in 
spying on the High Ones. 

The woman on the floor groaned, but did not open her 
eyes.

Trish Wilson, now the infamous Leda, bent over her but 
made no effort to revive her. She was not seriously 
injured--other than maybe her sense of pride--and I did 
not wish her to wake up until I'd had time to get my 
own thoughts entirely in order.

I had work to do, work which must be done meticulously, 
without mistake. Everyone, I thought with a wry smile, 
makes plans to provide for their future.

I was about to provide for my past.

*

The Time Gate was perfectly positioned. The viewscreen 
showed a young woman slouched in a swivel chair before 
a computer, one hand holding a cigarette, the other 
worrying her hair. I had moved the portal just as the 
unfortunate first edition of myself had tumbled 
through. There would be no need to reset it now. 
Indeed, everything depended on the portal's remaining 
right where it was . . . for now.

Picking up the Maryland Terrapin's ball-cap, I looked 
at it with a pang of bitter nostalgia, tried it on and 
smiled at the way it felt. I had last worn that hat ten 
year's before--in Gregory Dane's apartment. 

Of all the questionable things I had done that 
afternoon, and in the ten intervening years, nothing 
bothered me more than what I had done to Gregory Dane. 

Flush with ambition and riding a wave of adrenalin 
higher than an earthquake-driven tsunami, desperate to 
get on with my mission, I had nonetheless forced myself 
to acknowledge that leaving "now" meant leaving 
everybody--Gregory Dane included--behind. Forever. I 
would never again see anyone from 2006. 

The only way to end it safely with Gregory, I felt, was 
to make myself into some kind of psycho bitch, someone 
whom people could accept as coming unhinged enough to 
flip out and just boogie. I had spent roughly an hour 
and a half that afternoon blowing Gregory's mind--as 
well as something else--setting him up for the stress-
induced paranoia/temper tantrums scheduled to follow. 
To this day I was still convinced that lust had been 
the lynch pin of your relationship--I had certainly 
lusted after him back then, and him I--but the ache at 
what I felt every time I thought of Gregory outlasted 
any other ache I had ever had.

And Gregory had been my last.

With a sigh, I removed the ball cap and placed both it 
and the little translator notebook I kept--judiciously 
recopied two years before, after dropping the original 
copy, dog-eared and tattered almost to illegibility, 
into a rocky stream--into the wing of the machine. I 
smiled sadly again, knowing that my coming 
pronouncement would be right: There are some very 
strange paradoxes connected with time travel. 

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

If God created the world, who created God?

The woman on the floor stirred again, sat up. I knew 
that the time had come. I bent over my alter ego and 
asked, "Are you all right?"

The woman looked dazedly around at her surroundings. 
She appeared not to have heard.

"Are you all right?" I repeated.

"I guess so," the younger woman mumbled. She put her 
hand to her bloody mouth. "My head hurts."

"I'm not surprised," I agreed. "You came through head 
first. I think you hit it when you landed."

My younger self did not appear to have fully comprehend 
the words. She looked around as if to get her bearings. 
Presently she said, "Came through? Came through what?"

"The Gate, of course." I nodded toward the Gate, 
knowing that the sight of it would help orient the 
still groggy, younger Trish.

Trish looked over her shoulder in the direction 
indicated, shuddered and closed her eyes. "Oh God," she 
said, "now I really am nuts." She opened them again 
only after what seemed to be a short period of prayer. 
"Did I come through that?"

"Yes," I assured her.

"Where am I?"

"In the Hall of the Gate in the High Palace of Norkaal. 
But what is more important," I added, "is when you are. 
You've stepped forward a little more than thirty 
thousand years."

"Now I know I'm crazy," she moaned. She got up 
unsteadily and moved toward the Gate.

I put a restraining hand on her shoulder. "Easy, Trish. 
Where are you going?"

"Back!"

"You can't go back. At least not yet. But you will, I 
promise you that. Let me dress your wounds first, and 
get you something the eat. And you should rest. Some 
explanation is due you, of course and there is an 
errand you can do for me when you get back--to our 
mutual advantage, Trish." 

I paused and the smile lengthened on my face. I said, 
almost whimsically, "There's a great future in store 
for the two of us, Trish. A great future."

A great future, indeed.


THE END

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Please keep this story, and all erotic stories out of
the hands of children. They should be outside playing
in the sunshine, not thinking about adult situations.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Kristen's collection - Directory 26