Time

Now she was being pushed into something that gently resisted, like a thick, viscous liquid. She looked down. Her legs were disappearing into the silver wall, now her waist, arms.

There was a glare of complex light, a sound of tearing, a ferocious wind that ripped over her face. The air was sucked out of her lungs. The dome had been breached. Seconds left—

There was a flash of electric blue, an instant of searing pain.

Reid Malenfant:

Malenfant found himself falling.

It was just a couple of feet, but he landed on his belly, and his helmet slammed against the ground. He tasted copper. Maybe he’d bitten his lip.

He’d fallen hard. His faceplate was badly scuffed, and he had trouble seeing out.

He pushed at the surface under him, expecting to find himself floating upward, defying the feeble tug of Cruithne’s gravity. He could barely raise his upper body. He was heavy here.

And where was here?

The ground was purple. It had a furry texture. It was obvious this wasn’t the coal-dust regolith of Cruithne. Christ, it looked like carpet.

“No.” His own voice sounded loud in his head. “No, no. I don’t want this.” He fumbled at his chest, probing at his ribs through the layers of the suit. There was no feeling of pain. “I just set off a damn grenade hi my face. I don’t want this.” It was true. He had been reconciled. It was done. This surreal coda was not welcome.

He shut his eyes and lay flat on the floor, the ridiculous carpet. But the world didn’t go away; he could still hear the whirring of the faithful little machines of his backpack, the pumping of blood in his ears, his own reluctant breath; and he could feel, deep within himself, the slow pulse of time, the river bearing him endlessly downstream.

He was still alive, still embedded in the universe, whether he liked it or not.

Emma, I’m sorry.

He started to feel ridiculous. Suppose there were a bunch of medics (or orderlies or guards or inmates) standing around laughing at the asshole who was trying to bury himself in the carpet? Angry, embarrassed, he opened his eyes and pushed himself upright to a sitting position. He glanced around. He got a brief impression of a room, shadowy bulks that must be furniture. There was nobody here, laughing or otherwise.

He stayed there unmoving. He and Cornelius and Emma had not been too scrupulous in maintaining their zero G exercise routines. If he really was back on Earth he could expect to fall straight back over as the blood drained from his head and his weakened heart struggled to keep up. But he felt, essentially, okay.

So maybe he had been back for a while, months even. But he didn’t remember any of it. The last thing he remembered was the portal and the grenade. How could he have survived? And, if this was a hospital, why the pressure suit?

He found himself staring at a wall a few inches from his face.

There was a notice stuck there. He leaned forward and squinted to read it. It was written out in clumsy block capitals.

ABOUT THE GRAVITY. THEY MADE SOME ADJUSTMENTS TO YOUR SORRY ASS SO YOU DON T PASS OUT AND SO FORTH. IT SEEMED THE SIMPLEST WAY.

It was in his own hand.

He growled, exasperated, and reached out for the notice with a gloved hand — a glove still stained dark with Cruithne dust — and ripped the notice off the wall. It had been stuck there with tape. On the back was another message, again in his own hand.

GO WITH THE FLOW, MALENFANT.

He crumpled up the paper and threw it aside.

For a few heartbeats he just sat there. He ran his gloved hand over the carpet, leaving a grimy streak. Seemed like good quality, a thick pile.

Impulsively he reached up and cracked the seal of his helmet. As the seal broke there was the softest hiss of equalizing pressure. Not a vacuum, then. The air seemed neither warm nor cold, a neutral temperature. He held his breath. His heart beat a little faster — after all, if the atmosphere wasn’t exactly right he was about to die, probably painfully, and despite his determination to do just that he was afraid — but he gripped his helmet and pushed it up.

The enclosed, magnified noises of the helmet were replaced by a remote, deeper hum. Air-conditioning?

He gasped, releasing the last of his suit air, and dragged in a lungful of whatever filled this room.

Well, he didn’t start gagging or choking and his lungs didn’t hurt. That didn’t mean there wasn’t something else, something colorless and odorless like carbon monoxide lingering here to kill him, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that.

At least he could see clearly now.

He was in what looked like a small hotel room: a single bed, a table and chair, a TV on a wall bracket, a little corridor with a bathroom and a wardrobe, a door. He could see into the bathroom. There was sanitary tape on the toilet, fluorescent light panels in the ceiling.

It wasn’t the kind of place he’d choose to stay. But it looked clean, and at least it didn’t look like a prison cell.

He got to his feet. He felt a little stiff, and his suit was heavy in the full gravity. He walked to the door, wrapped his gloved hand around the handle, and twisted. It felt like he was dragging at a

concrete wall.

There was an in-case-of-emergency notice stuck on the door in front of his nose, another note scrawled on it. ONE STEP AT A

TIME, MALENFANT. YOU OBVIOUSLY AREN’T IN A REAL HOTEL

ROOM, AND THIS IS NOT EARTH. BUT YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT.

And of course that was true. After all, he had jumped into a time-hopping, universe-breaching alien portal with a grenade clutched to his chest; it wasn’t your conventional way of checking in. Anyhow he thought he knew what must have happened to him.

“I don’t think I’m me,” he said aloud. “I think I’m some kind of reconstruction in a giant computer in the far downstream. Tell me I’m wrong.” He scanned down the notice.

SOMETHING LIKE THAT, IF YOU MUST KNOW. ALL WILL BE REVEALED. IN THE MEANTIME, CHILL OUT, HAVE A DRINK, TAKE A SHOWER.

“A shower?”

There was one more line on the notice.

MALENFANT, IF ANYBODY CAN TELL YOU THIS IT’S ME. YOU STINK, BUDDY.

Malenfant stalked back into the bedroom, leaving more dusty boot prints, and sat on the bed, which creaked under the combined weight of himself and the suit. He said, “On.” The TV didn’t respond.

He looked at his gloved hand, its gritty texture. His hand wasn’t real. None of this was. He was completely powerless. He could be turned off, changed, distorted, reprogrammed, whatever the hell they wanted, whoever they were.

He tried to lie back on the bed, but his space suit backpack was in the way.

“Jesus Christ,” he said to himself. “What a mess.”

He didn’t want this. He didn’t want any of it. He ought to be dead, or grieving for Emma, in that order. He had seen enough. He looked around the room, hoping for another notice, a couple of lines from himself to himself, telling him what to do, how to feel. But there was nothing.

What would he tell himself, if he had the chance?

Get a grip. Don’t worry about what you can’t change. In the meantime take the shower.

With a sigh, he started to peel off his suit: his boots and gloves first, then his zips. He dumped the suit in the middle of the floor. Cruithne dust and flakes of charred fabric — scorched by multiple Big Bangs, for God’s sake — fell to the bright purple carpet.

When he got down to his skinsuit, life got a lot more unpleasant. The stink of his own body, exposed, hit him like a smack in the mouth. He had been living in the suit, after all, for days. In places the suit stuck to him, and when he tried to peel it away he found himself pulling the skin off blisters and half-healed friction rubs. In a couple of places he found edema patches and busted blood vessels.

He picked up the pieces of the battered, grimy suit, folded them up, and crammed them into the cupboard. He brushed at the bedspread, but he only succeeded in grinding Cruithne dust deeper into the fabric.

He gave up and went to the shower.

It turned out to be a power jet. When it first hit his damaged skin it hurt, but he stuck with it, bathing the wounds gently. He just ran the spray for a while, and dark dust ran out of his hair and skin and down the plug. He kept the water running until it ran off him clear except for traces of crimson blood from his broken skin. Even so he still had Cruithne dirt buried under his fingernails and worked deep into his fingertips; he suspected it would be a long time, if ever, before he was rid of the stuff.

Then he used shampoo and soap, stuff that came in bottles and wrappers and boxes in a little wicker basket. There was no manufacturers’ logo, no hotel title.

There was no bathroom cabinet in here, no place he could see where there might be a resupply of his cancer drugs. Well, maybe he wasn’t going to be here long enough for that to matter.

The shower actually felt good. He was feeling pleasure.

Emma.

He tried to explore his feelings, tried to find regret, a sense of loss. And failed. And now here he was washing his damn hair.

If they did reconstruct you, Malenfant, they didn’t take time to put in a soul.

When he came out of the shower, wrapped in a fat white bathrobe (no monogram or label), the dusty mess he had left on the carpet had vanished. Not only that, a shirt and slacks, socks, and slip-on leather shoes had been laid out, nice and fresh. Neat touch, he thought; that much unreality he could stand.

He went around the room. The minibar turned out to be tucked under a desk near the TV bracket. The desk held a writing pad and pencils. There was no heading on the paper. The minibar wasn’t locked, which was definitely a touch of unreality, and the bottles and cans and packets, while looking authentic enough, weren’t labeled either.

He pulled out what looked like a miniature of whiskey, broke the seal, threw the liquor into his mouth straight from the bottle. The heat hit the back of his throat. He may be one computer simulation sucking on another, but that felt authentic enough, and the spreading of the warmth through his chest and head were welcome.

He reached for another bottle, then thought better of it. Maybe now wasn’t the time to get smashed.

If it was even possible. If they, whoever had reconstructed him, permitted it. He wondered if they would let him hurt himself. What if he busted one of the bottles and started to saw at a wrist? Or—

There was a knock at the door. It made him jump, and he dropped his miniature. He got up, checked his robe was closed around him (why, Malenfant? — like your mother, they have surely seen it all before), and padded across the carpet. The bristles were sharp under his cleaned feet. He grasped the door handle. This time, of course, the door opened easily.

There was a corridor beyond, but it was somehow blurred, as if he couldn’t see it properly. “Imperfectly simulated,” he muttered.

Something like that. A Seattle accent.