A Sterkarm Kiss

by Susan Price

  “I don’t know …” It was all Andrea could do to speak. She felt that she was melting in heat. Another snatch of song returned to her, one that moved to a slow, almost sad tune that rippled like the little river that ran through Bedesdale:

  For there’s sweeter rest

  On a truelove’s breast

  Than any other where.

  Per, was all she could think. Per, Per, Per. I’ll see him again, be with him again. Back to all the squalor and hardship of the 16th—but she knew that, she was prepared for it, could face it. It would mean being with Per again. But still, a small voice struggled to be heard: This will be a disaster. Say no. Escape.

  “More money, of course,” Windsor said. “And we’ll help you find a place up here, a nice little apartment—or a house. We’ll help you with moving. Can you drive? I could maybe wangle you a company car for when you’re this side. Get yourself a little MPV and you could—”

  “Get a what?”

  Windsor sighed heavily. “An M-P-V. A multipurpose vehicle. You can drive it here, 21st side, but press a button and you can drive it off road in the 16th, too. Get yourself one of them and take it through. Things have changed over there. We’re not being so purist this time.”

  “I don’t know,” Andrea said, trying, despite herself, to save herself. “I have to think it over. It would mean giving up my job—”

  “As a barmaid?”

  “I have to talk it over with my partner.”

  Windsor looked surprised and was about to speak, but swallowed whatever jibe he’d been about to make on the unlikelihood of her having a partner. “Take all the time you need,” he said, displaying his new, patient, caring nature. She rose, and he rose with her. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said.

  3

  21st Side—16th Side: The Elf-Palace

  Andrea parked her little blue MPV in the parking lot at the side of Dilsmead Hall and locked it up. She’d taken it on the principle of screwing as much out of FUP as she could, but as driving 16th side was even more nervewracking than 21st side, she was quite happy to leave it here and accept a lift from Windsor. Shouldering her rucksack, she walked to the rear of the Hall, where the Time Tube stood.

  The Time Tube—a huge concrete tube, as its nickname implied—was where it had always been, behind Dilsmead Hall, on the lawn, close beside the gravel path. There was the shed that housed the cold-fusion power plant, about which Andrea understood nothing, and there was the long prefab office, raised on stilts, that housed the controls and the many monitoring computers. The building, painted an ugly beige, was grubby and mundane. You would never have suspected it of holding such technology.

  A large white van was parked on the gravel nearby. Lettering on its side, to Andrea’s surprise, proclaimed it to be from a catering company. In front of it was parked a big, dirty truck that looked as if it was used for heavier business. Around these vehicles, and the office, stood a crowd of waiting people. Despite her curiosity about them, Andrea passed the gathering by, crunching along the gravel path to get a look at the Tube itself. She wanted to see if it had changed.

  It was far more impressive than the shabby office. The vast concrete tube was supported in a cradle of steel girders, all painted a flat blue. A ramp rose from the gravel path to the mouth of the Tube, which was screened by dangling strips of plastic. Vehicles would drive up the ramp and stop on the platform outside the Tube’s mouth. When the green light beside the Tube gave them the signal, they would drive slowly into the Tube as its shrill sound mounted and passed beyond hearing. And somewhere around the middle of the Tube, they passed into another dimension and another time. Half of the Tube punched through into that other dimension and vanished from the 21st. It was said to have “traveled” while the other half “stayed at home.” Utterly miraculous and, at the same time, just technology, like the cell phone in her bag.

  She left the path and went onto the lawn, to look at the Tube from the side. Its whole length was “at home,” and she could clearly see the division between the half that remained always in the 21st and the half that “traveled.” The stationary half was gray with 21st-century dirt and stained with rust, while the traveling half was unmarked and white.

  The last time she had stood here, there had been a battle going on. Well, all right, a skirmish. Whatever you called it, people had been killed. She remembered the huge, sweating, thundering horses, the crunching and thumping of hooves and feet on the gravel, the frantic, panicky running to and fro, the threatening yells and terrified wails, the hacking, the blood. Bryce, the Head of Security, had been beheaded in that skirmish. With a gulp she turned quickly to look behind her, and was only slightly relieved to find the path empty and no threat nearby. Windsor might claim that he never had flashbacks, but for a few moments, feeling increasingly queasy, she wondered if she had the nerve to go through with this …

  Snap out of it, she told herself. Have you come this far—all the misery of parting with Mick and packing and moving and finding a new place—to chicken out now? And unless you go through the Tube, you’ll never see Per again. He just doesn’t do the 21st.

  That wasn’t what she’d said to Mick. She’d talked to him about work. How fascinated she was with research, with the past—she’d told him about the Tube, though swearing him to secrecy. “I had to sign a paper saying I wouldn’t tell anyone about it, so if you tell anyone, you’ll drop me in it.” Mick wouldn’t tell anyone if she asked him not to, she was sure of that. “How many people get this chance?” she’d said to him. “I can’t let it slip. I’ve got to go.”

  “It’s dangerous,” he’d said.

  “So’s crossing the road.” He’d looked glum. “I’ve been there before. I know the risks. I’ll be careful. But I’ve got to go.”

  “Well,” he’d said, in the end. “If it makes you happy.”

  He always said that. And meant it. A great feeling of love for him rose up in her as she stood outside the Tube’s office, bringing tears to her eyes. Lovely Mick. Few people would see him as a great catch. He was older than her by nearly fifteen years, and he looked it. He was a bit chubby and had great shaggy eyebrows and thinning hair on his head, but he was gentle, loving, protective, and didn’t seem to be aware that she was fat. Most of the time she felt fond of him, but now and again—as now—she was shocked to discover how deeply she adored him. Never did she want to hurt him, but—on the other end of the Tube was Per.

  She felt that she needed to brace herself by doing something ordinary and bureaucratic. Walking back along the path, she pushed through the people standing around the office steps and went inside. In a tiny anteroom a receptionist sat at a desk. Behind her was the doorway leading to the room, crowded with more computers, where technicians and scientists controlled the Tube.

  “I’m Andrea Mitchell. I’m booked to go through the Tube.”

  “Do you have your pass?”

  Andrea had forgotten that she would need it, and had to take off her rucksack and search through its pockets until she found the bit of paper. The receptionist studied it, and looked at her computer screen, while Andrea marveled yet again at the mix of breathtaking technology and plodding bureaucratic ineptitude that made up the Time Tube project. It had always been the same. Bryce—when he’d been alive—had frequently raged against the penny-pinching accountancy that wouldn’t pay to repair broken security cameras or train guards, and then had blamed him for failures of security.

  “That’s fine,” the receptionist said. “Enjoy your trip.”

  There were toilets off this entrance hall, and Andrea went in—after all, it would be five hundred years before she had a chance to go again, and then it would be in nowhere near as much comfort. Afterward she checked her face in the mirror. One of the pockets of her rucksack held a small makeup kit, and she carefully applied just a trace of lipstick and kohl. Dotting a little lipstick on her cheekbones, she rubbed it in to cr
eate a slight, becoming flush. For a moment she studied herself, then pulled out the pins and ties that held her hair up. It fell down about her face and onto her shoulders in heavy, light-brown waves.

  She grimaced at herself, then gathered her hair up in her hands, holding it on top of her head, trying to decide whether she looked better with it up or down. It looked slightly better up, she thought, but 16th side only unmarried women wore their hair uncovered and loose. As soon as a woman married, she pinned up her hair and covered it with a cap. When she met Per again, her loose hair would be a signal. She put the pins and ties in her pocket.

  Wandering outside, she found that things were moving, with people shouting good-byes and hastily clambering into vehicles. Quickly she slipped the weight of the rucksack from her shoulders again and took a cell phone from one of its side pockets. Sixteenth side it wouldn’t be any use to her, but she’d brought it for this moment. Switching it on, she keyed in a text message. “Going thru. Luv U. C U. Andy.” As she sent the message to Mick, she looked up. A large, square MPV, in a metallic racing green, was coming up the drive. She knew immediately that Windsor was behind the wheel.

  Windsor saw her and smiled. Good old reliable big fat Andrea: He’d known she would be waiting. Drawing the jeep up alongside her with a spray of gravel, he leaned over and opened the passenger door. “Get in!”

  She did, noticing that two big men were seated silently in the long back. “Hello,” she said to them, and smiled. They looked at her, but neither smiled or spoke.

  “Never mind them,” Windsor said. “They’re just muscle.”

  Andrea supposed that after his previous experiences with the Sterkarms, you couldn’t blame him for taking bodyguards with him this time. She fastened her seat belt, half expecting some jibe about it needing to be extended before it would fit around her.

  Instead, peering at her, he said, “Are you wearing makeup?”

  “No!” she said. She felt like asking him why he was dressed in a light-gray suit with an embroidered yellow waistcoat and a lavender tie—but that would show more interest in him than he deserved.

  “You’re looking well,” he said, and moved the car slowly forward. She was wearing makeup, he was sure of it—and he didn’t need three guesses to know whose benefit it was for. All to the good: If she was actually making an effort to catch young Sterkarm’s eye, he was all the more likely to notice her, and young Sterkarm was known to have a weakness for big room darkeners like Andrea.

  The truck was ahead of them on the ramp, the catering van behind them. Windsor switched the radio on. “Good old Handel.” He liked to know the exact moment when the Tube transferred him from the 21st century, and at that moment the radio would cut out. It gave him some slight feeling of control, and helped him overcome the unease that he felt now whenever he used the Tube. Deliberately he moved his mind from consideration of what might go wrong to the objectives be had to achieve.

  Oh God! Andrea thought as the MPV slowly crept forward. We’re going through! We’re going into the Tube. Her heart hammered. How could she have agreed to go back there? As if life wasn’t difficult enough in the 21st century. She wondered whether Windsor would listen to her if she demanded that he stop and let her out.

  He’ll have to stop at the top of the ramp, she thought. I’ll get out then. But he didn’t stop. The plastic strips slapped against the windshield as they drove straight through.

  Andrea couldn’t find her voice to say that she wanted to get out, and in any case she was afraid to get out now that they were in the Tube. She had no understanding of how it worked, and feared radiation, atom dismemberment, or possibly being whizzed back to the Age of Dinosaurs. Evil magic.

  The inside of the Tube looked like a section of an underground walkway. There was a road of some sort under the wheels—possibly made of rubber—and the walls were covered with white tiles, though with many inspection hatches. Terrified, she stared at the back of the truck ahead.

  The truck lifted up the plastic strips at the other end of the Tube, went through, and the strips fell back into place. Their car still moved forward slowly, and Andrea found herself sitting with every muscle braced hard. When the music from the radio stopped in mid note, replaced by static, she clenched her teeth, and her hands gripped the edge of the seat. I’m growing cowardly in my old age, she thought. I used to buzz backward and forward through the Tube without a care. True, the first time she’d ever used it, she’d been awestruck, but after that, she’d soon grown used to it, and had used it as casually as she might have used a lift or an escalator. But now she could remember all too well what had come of that casualness. Casualties.

  She looked at Windsor. He was staring ahead, drumming his fingers on the wheel, and making a hissing noise between his teeth in time to some tune in his head. Perhaps he’s telling the truth, she thought; and he really has recovered completely. Well, was it so surprising? The man always had been as sensitive as a brick.

  The plastic strips scratched over the car’s bonnet, windshield, and roof as the car proceeded. Whatever the Tube did, she realized, it had already done it. Somewhere about the midway mark, when the music had stopped, they’d been translated from the 21st to the 16th century. They’d left their own dimension, whatever that meant. Anyone looking at the Tube, back in the good old 21st, had seen their half of it vanish.

  The car nosed through the plastic strips and emerged on the platform beside the office, 16th side. In front of them was the 16th century.

  Space. That was her first impression. The world opened out. The wide hills, and the wider sky, spread out before her—and there were hills beyond the hills she could see, and hills beyond those. She wound down the window, and a small breeze, cool, damp, and carrying the scent of thyme, touched her face. She could sense the miles and miles and miles of emptiness it had traveled over.

  And silence. A deep silence, so deep it muffled her ears. A silence that she could almost gather up in her arms and fold in great, thick, velvety layers. All the petty din that the 21st century called silence fell away. There was no longer any drone of traffic noise, not even in the distance. No constant, almost disregarded hum of electrical equipment. No piped music, no radios, no cell phones, no car alarms, no planes flying overhead. This was true silence.

  And color. Here there were no scarlets, no Day-Glo yellows or electric pinks. Everything was green, gray, buff, brown. But before visiting the 16th, she’d never realized how many subtle tints of green there were. And here they were again, on the hillsides, in the trees, together with soft golds and russets. The cloud-filled sky was full of grays, violets, and gentle blues. It was like being given new eyes, because the air was so clean here that every delicate tint of every color was more distinct, and everything was pin sharp. You could see farther, in more detail, than in the 21st. The heather was flowering, pink and mauve among the greens and fawns of the grass. There were harebells, bluer than the sky, and yellow stonecrop, and white and red campion, and many other flowers that she couldn’t name. She felt a thrill of homecoming as she experienced, again, what she had always loved about the 16th. Why had she been so nervous about going through the Tube again? It was less frightening than flying, and it brought you—not to another airport in another crowded, dirty city, but here.

  Then, with a sharp sense of bafflement, she realized that she had never seen these hills before. They were in the wrong place, and were the wrong shape, to be the Bedesdale hills! What had gone wrong? Was a Tyrannosaurus Rex going to be the next thing they saw? When she looked at Windsor, he seemed quite relaxed. And beside the ramp the MPV rested on, there was the usual ugly, prefabricated office.

  Ahead of them, the truck had reached the bottom of the ramp and was turning, to drive around the office. Windsor steered the MPV to follow.

  “This isn’t Bedesdale,” Andrea said.

  “Should it be?” Windsor asked.

  “I thought—”


  “That we were going to have tea with your friends, the Sterkarms? Well, we are—but the Grannams have graciously agreed to join us.”

  “What?” Andrea said.

  “Oh, did I forget to mention that?” He thumped his hand on the steering wheel. “Damn! I bet I forgot to mention that it’s a wedding, too, didn’t I?”

  Andrea almost choked. “A wedding?”

  “Silly me. You could have bought yourself a new outfit and a big hat. It’s all part of the new deal—we’re promoting cuddling and snoogling of all kinds between Sterkarms and Grannams. We’re paying for the wedding, heaping the happy couple with gifts—just doing everything we can to promote happiness and harmony, really.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Andrea said. “Who’s getting married?”

  “Look at that,” Windsor said. They’d rounded the corner of the office. The truck ahead of them was driving toward the steel-link fence, and Andrea glimpsed buildings beyond the fence. Shining buildings. They didn’t look like anything the 16th siders would build. She stared ahead, trying to make out more.

  Gates in the fence opened automatically to let the truck ahead of them through. The MPV followed, onto a rough, rutted track. Despite its superb suspension it lurched and swayed.

  The truck turned aside, and Andrea had a clear view of what lay ahead. Her eyes and mouth opened. A few yards from the steel fence of the FUP compound, a large inflatable building had been erected—unmistakably a 21st-century building, the kind put up for posh weddings. It had a central dome surrounded by four smaller domes at the corners, and it was made from silver fabric with a metallic sheen. “Architectural” detail had been added, in white and gold, especially around the arched door. On either side, painted silver, were the generators that kept it inflated. Strange, shining buttresses of filigree metal sprang from its roof to the ground—scaffolding that would support the weight of the building if the generators should fail and it deflated. To Andrea’s eye the whole thing had an oddly Eastern appearance, but with a slight shock she realized how utterly bizarre and alien it would look to the 16th siders. Its strange shape, its unknown, glittering fabric, its weird beauty, the fact that it had appeared, in an hour, where previously there had been nothing—it would seem to them a truly eldritch palace.