Later, when she was asleep, he telephoned an experimental physicist. "David," he asked softly, "do you remember your old boss? Emery Bainbridge?"
David did.
"I've got something here I want to tell you about, David. First, though, I've got to say I can't tell you where I got it. That's confidential-top secret. You've got to accept that. I won't ever be able to tell you.
Okay?"
It was."This thing is a little dish. It looks almost like an ashtray." There was a penny in the clutter on the table; he picked it up. "I'm going to drop a penny into it. Listen."
The penny fell with a clink.
"After a while, that penny will disappear, David. Right now it looks just a little misted, like it had been outside in the cold, and there was condensation on it."
Emery moved the dish closer to the kerosene lantern. "Now the penny is starting to look sort of silvery. I think most of the copper's gone, and what I'm seeing is the zinc underneath. You can barely make out Lincoln's face."
David spoke.
"I've tried that. Even if you hold the dish upside down and shake it, the penny-or whatever it is-won't fall out, and I'm not about to reach in and try to pull it out."
The crackling voice in the receiver sounded louder than Emery's own.
"I wish you could, David. It's not much bigger than the end of a pencil now, and shrinking quickly.
Hold on- "There. It's gone. I think the dish must boil off atoms or molecules by some cold process. That's the only explanation I've come up with. I suppose we could check that by analyzing samples of air above it, but I don't have the equipment here.
"David, I'm going to start a new company. I'm going to do it on a shoestring, because I don't want to let any backers in. I'll have to use my own money and whatever I can raise on my signature. I know you've got a good job now. They're probably paying you half what you're worth, which is a hell of a lot.
But if you'll come in with me, I'll give you ten percent.
"Of course you can think it over. I expect you to. Let's say a week. How's that?"
David spoke at length.
"Yes, here too. The lights are off, as a matter of fact. It's just by the grace of God that the phone still works. I'll be stuck out here-I'm in the cabin-for another three or four days, probably. Then I'll drive into the city, and we'll talk.
"Certainly you can look at it. You can pick it up and try it out, but not take it back to your lab. You understand, I'm sure."
A last, querulous question.
Emery chuckled. "No, it's not from a magic store, David. I think I might be able to guess where it's actually from, but I'm not going to. Top secret, remember? It's technology way in advance of ours. We're medieval mechanics who've found a paper shredder. We may never be able to make another shredder, but we can learn a hell of a lot from the one we've got."
When he had hung up, he moved his chair back to the side of Tamar's bunk. She was lying on her back, her mouth and eyes closed, the soft sigh of her respiration distinct against the howling of the wind beyond the log walls.
"Jan's going to want to come back," Emery told Tamar, his voice less than a whisper. "She'll try to kiss and make up two weeks to a month after she finds out about the new company, I'd say. I'll have to get our divorce finalized before she hears. They'll back off a little on that property settlement when she gets back to the city, and then I'll sign."
Tamar's left hand lay on the quilt; his found it, stroking the back and fingers with a touch that he hoped was too light to wake her. "Because I don't want Jan anymore. I want you, Tamar, and you're going to need me."
The delicate brown fingers curled about his, though she was still asleep.
"You're learning to trust me, aren't you? Well, you can. I won't hurt you." He fell silent. He had taught the coyote to trust him; and because he had, the coyote had not feared the smell of Man on the cyanide gun. He would have to make certain Tamar understood that all men were not to be trusted-that there were millions of men who would rob and rape and kill her if they could.
"How did you reproduce, up there in our future, Tamar? Asexually? My guess is artificial insemination, with a means of selecting for females. You can tell me whether I'm right, by and by."
He paused, thinking. "Is our future still up there? The one you came from? Or did you change thingswhen you crashed? Or when you killed Brook. Even if it is, maybe you and I can change things with some new technology. Let's try."
Tamar sighed, and seemed to smile in her sleep. He bent over her to kiss her, his lips lightly brushing hers. "Is that why the crash was so bad that you could never get the ziggurat to fly again? Because just by crashing at all, or by killing my son, you destroyed the future you came from?"
In the movies, Emery reflected, people simply stepped into time machines and vanished, to reappear later or earlier at the same spot on Earth's surface, as if Copernicus had never lived. In reality, Earth was moving in the solar system, the solar system in the galaxy, and the galaxy itself in the universe. One would have to travel through space as well as time to jump time in reality.
Somewhere beneath the surface of the lake, the device that permitted such jumps was still functioning, after a fashion. No longer jumping, but influencing the speed with which time passed-the timing of time, as it were. The hours he had spent inside the ziggurat had been but a minute or two outside it; that had to be true, because the prints of his snowshoes coming in had still been sharp when he came out, and Aileen had spent half a day at least there in two hours.
He would burn the ziggurat tomorrow. He would have to, if he were not to lose everything he had taken from it, and be accused of the murder of the dead woman in the leaf bag, too-would have to, if he wished to keep Tamar.
But might not the time device, submerged who could say how deep in the lake, perhaps buried in mud at the bottom as well, survive and continue to function as it did now? Fishermen on Haunted Lake might see the sun stand still, while hours drifted past. Had the device spread itself through time to give the lake its name? He would buy up all the lakeside property, he decided, when the profits of the new company permitted him to.
"We're going to build a new cabin," he told the sleeping Tamar. "A house, really, and a big one, right on the shore there. We'll live in that house, you and me, for a long, long time, and we'll have children."
Very gently, her fingers tightened around his.
About the Editor
David G. Hartwell is a senior editor at Tor/Forge Books. He is the author of Age of Wonders and the editor of many anthologies, including The Dark Descent, The World Treasury of Science Fiction, and a number of Christmas anthologies. He has won the Eaton Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Science Fiction Chronicle Poll and has been nominated for the Hugo Award twenty-eight times to date.