“You better let the Admiral know,” the woman in red answered. She looked back at the body again and moved her head slowly back and forth, her long earrings swaying in glittering constellations against her neck. “Here we go again,” she murmured. “When you coming home, honey? When you gonna come home?”
Elsewhen, a thwarted teenage boy dragged a nauseated girl upright and shook her until her long straight hair flopped around her shoulders. “Did you see that? He threw it back in my face and took back my keg! What did he do that for?” the boy demanded.
Stifling a moan against the back of her hand, the girl shook her head, cautiously. “Ow. I dunno. Leave me alone.”
“Stupid bitch, you spend enough time hanging out with him.” He shoved her, and she staggered back a couple of steps and landed on her rump, staring up at him with her mouth in a round O of surprise.
A few of the others gathered around; one placed a warning hand on the boy’s arm. “Better cool it, Kev. She’s not your old lady any more, you can’t push her around like that.”
Other voices murmured agreement.
“She’s not my old lady because she spends all her time with that drunk Indian who’s screwing her aunt!” Kevin yelled.
“He is not!” the girl yelled back, getting to her feet. “And he isn’t drunk, you are!”
“He’s a—” Kevin began.
The girl interrupted. “He may be an Indian but he’s more of a gentleman than you are!”
This was greeted with laughter and catcalls. She looked around defiantly. “Well, when was the last time Wickie beat one of you up for the fun of it? I think that makes him better than Kevin Hodge any day!”
Nobody wanted to answer that. Someone at the other fire found a keg that hadn’t been emptied yet, and the wave of anger poised over the clearing dribbled away.
“C’mon, Kev. Let’s get a drink. We don’t even need the other keg.” The peacemaker stumbled across the way to join the rest.
But Kevin wasn’t quite ready to give up. He looked toward the opening in the trees through which the Indian had disappeared, and over to his friends—and his former girlfriend—who had seen the Indian make fun of him and get away with it, and his face contorted. “He’ll be sorry,” Kevin whispered. “Damn Indian.”
CHAPTER TWO
Talking sense into a crowd of drunken teens, particularly when one has just delivered the makings of the next carouse, was a waste of time and energy. Sam watched long enough to make sure the girl was going to be all right, and that no one else looked sick, and then he went up to the boy who’d paid, handed him his money back, picked up the keg, and came back the way he came. The boy came after him, shouting something about how he couldn’t do that, he’d paid for it, bring it back.
Sam ignored him. The pursuit stopped when the boy fell over something behind him.
Thirty feet along his backtrack, out of sight of the fires, he found a pickup truck with a side panel emblazoned with a large white bear and the logo, “Polar Bar: Snow Owl’s Finest Entertainment.” The truck reeked of beer. He heaved the keg into the back end, heard it bounce and hoped it cracked, and scrambled in his pockets for keys.
He had keys. He even had a New York State driver’s license, though it didn’t have a picture. He got in the truck and held the license up to the overhead, studying it curiously, and compared the description to the face staring back at him from the rearview mirror.
Wickie G. W. Starczynski was twenty-two, with black hair and brown eyes. He was cleanshaven, with deepset eyes and high cheekbones and a wide, thin-lipped mouth; the reflection was dark, but Sam thought at least some of that was probably the lighting from the overhead lamp. Nobody was going to mistake him for a Celt this time around, however; the inside wrist of the hand holding the driver’s license was a lightly toasted brown. He was six-two and weighed 173 pounds. He lived in a post office box.
Well, that was a great help.
The post office box was in Snow Owl, New York.
Maybe he’d get lucky, and find some signs.
He scrambled in the glove compartment. The truck was registered to a Rita Marie Hoffman. There was an insurance paper, with an expiration date of February 1976. It matched the expiration date on the license. Unless both this Rita Marie Hoffman and his current host were flagrantly ignoring renewals, it was sometime before February, 1976. And while it was cool, it wasn’t wintertime. Early summer, maybe.
Well, that was something. Always assuming the insurance paper wasn’t out of date. He knew now approximately when he was, and roughly where he was—somewhere in upstate New York. This was definitely progress.
He shifted the truck into gear and pulled out, bumping over rocks and fallen branches, wincing as branches scraped paint off the roof. He leaned back to look over his shoulder, hoping that the ruts would lead to pavement eventually.
Eventually, they did.
The seat belt was broken. After three serious tries to pull out the tongue side, he pulled it completely out of its housing.
“Great,” he said, as much to hear himself talk as for any other reason.
Elsewhere, elsewhen, a parallel hybrid neurocomputer noted a glitch in reality, and began tracking a new set of rapidly branching probabilities.
He made a wild guess and pointed the truck downhill.
The road was narrow and crumbling along the edges, and there was nothing but darkness yawning on the other side of the upward lane. He saw a “Beware of Falling Rocks” sign, and snorted grimly to himself.
His left headlight flickered and died, and he muttered wordlessly under his breath and slowed down even more. A gray boulder the size of a child’s playhouse jutted out into his lane, and he had to cross the double yellow line to get around it.
He glanced at
