“Now there,” I said, expanding my flesh to radiate confidence, “just tell me what happened. We know from the dial readings that the Machine got you to London in 1880—”
“To prevent the marriage of Edwin Sullivan to Angelina Gilbert,” she grimaced. “Time knows why.”
I sighed. I was always patient with her. “Because that marriage joined two sets of genes which in the course of three generations would produce—”
Suddenly she gave me one of her old grins, with the left eyebrow up. “I’ve never understood the time-results of an assignment yet, and don’t try to teach me now. Marriage-prevention’s fun enough on its own. And I thought it was going to be extra good this time. Edwin’s beard was red and this long, and I haven’t had a beard in five trips. But something went— The worst of it is, it went wrong when I was naked.”
I was incredulous, and said so.
“I don’t think even you really understand this, Chief. Because you are a man—” her half-smile complimented me by putting the italics of memory under man “—and men never have understood it. But the fact is that what men want naked, in any century, in any country, is what they’re used to seeing clothed, if you follow me. Oh, there are always some women who have to pad themselves out or pull themselves in, but the really popular ones are built to fit their clothes. Look at what they used to call feelthy peectures; any time, any place, the girls that are supposed to be exciting have the same silhouette naked as the fashion demands clothed. Improbable though it seems.”
“L!” I gasped. She had suddenly changed so completely that there was hardly more than one clue that I was not looking at a boy.
“See?” she said. “That’s the way I had to make myself when you sent me to the 1920s. And the assignment worked; this was what men wanted. And then, when you sent me to 1957 . . .”
I ducked out of the way as two monstrous mammae shot out at me. “I hadn’t quite realized—” I began to confess.
“Or the time I had that job in sixteenth-century Germany.”
“Now you look pregnant!”
“They all did. Maybe they were. Or when I was in Greece, all waist and hips . . . But all of these worked. I prevented marriages and improved the genetic time-flow. Only with Edwin . . .”
She was back in her own delectable shape, and I was able to give her a look of encouraging affection.
“I’ll skip the build-up,” she said. “I managed to meet Edwin, and I gave him this . . .” I nodded; how well I remembered this and its effects. “He began calling on me and taking me to theaters, and I knew it needed just one more step for him to forget all about that silly pink-and-white Angelina.”
“Go on,” I urged.
“He took the step, all right. He invited me to dinner in a private room at a discreet restaurant—all red plush and mirrors and a screen in front of the couch. And he ordered oysters and truffles and all that superstitious ritual. The beard was even better than I’d hoped: crisp and teasing, ticklish and . . .” She looked at me speculatively, and I regretted that we’ve bred out facial follicles beyond even somatic control. “When he started to undress me—and how much trouble that was in 1880!—he was delighted with this.”
She had changed from the waist up, and I had to admit that this was possibly more accurate than these. They were as large as the startling 1957 version, but molded together as almost one solid pectoral mass.
“Then he took off my skirts and . . .” L-3H was as near to tears as I had ever known her. “Then he . . . ran. Right out of the restaurant. I would’ve had to pay the check if I hadn’t telekinned the Machine to bring me back to now. And I’ll bet he ran right to that Angelina and made arrangements to start mixing genes and I’ve ruined everything for you.”
I looked at her new form below the waist. It was indeed extraordinary and hardly to my taste, but it seemed correct. I checked the pictures again in the Sullivan dossier. Yes, absolutely.
I consoled and absolved her. “My dear L, you are—Time help me!—perfectly and exactly a desirable woman of 1880. The failure must be due to some slip on the part of the chronopsychist who researched Edwin. You’re still a credit to the bureau, Agent L-3H!—and now, let’s celebrate. No, don’t change back. Leave it that way. I’m curious as to the effects of—what was the word they used for it in 1880?—of a woman’s bustle.”
Summer’s Cloud
Can such things be,
And overcome us like a summer’s cloud,
Without our special wonder?
—Macbeth, act III, scene 4
Walter Hancock was not superstitious. He said so to his wife when they walked on either side of a post on their way from the little Italian pension to the railway station. And he said so to his table companion at dinner that evening, when he had drunk a glass more than usual to prove that he was a bachelor for the night. This, of course, was why he had spilled the salt—or perhaps it was because his table companion spoke with a strange accent and wore a low-necked gown. He could not decide which intrigued him the more, and took another glass of wine to find out. He decided upon the gown, or at least . . . Well, yes—the gown.
Giuseppe, proprietor of the pension, looked surprised and not altogether pleased when Mr. Hancock danced with his table companion after dinner. The proprietor was talking excitedly with his wife Maria when the two guests came off the balcony out of the Italian moonlight. Maria passed near to them and looked at Mr. Hancock very closely. Especially at his throat.
Giuseppe was still displeased when Mr. Hancock ordered brandy. But Mr.
