Millennium

by John Varley

  And I swear, it got crazier from there.

  Testimony of Louise Baltimore

  "We don't name our babies until their second birthday," I told him.

  "Why is that?"

  "Isn't it obvious?" I wondered again how much of this he was believing. About one percent, I decided. Still, if I was going to tell this story I couldn't put it into safe, 1980s terms.

  "We don't name them because the chances are less than one percent they'll live to their second birthday. After that you can take a chance. Maybe they'll make it."

  "What was it this child had?"

  "Nothing. At least, that's how it looked. I was twelve, you understand, I'd had my first period and it looked like I was fertile. Genalysis hadn't turned up any major problems."

  I looked at him. Sometimes the truth just won't do.

  "I have a fertility problem," I said. "The doctors told me I wouldn't be able to have children. And then I got pregnant anyway."

  "At twelve?" he said.

  "Forget twelve. I'm drunk, okay? I had ... what's the word? Amniocentesis. Everybody thought that if f did get pregnant, the kid would be ... mongoloid."

  "They call it Down's syndrome these days."

  "Right. Right. Forgot the local jargon. So then the baby was born, and she was perfect.

  The sweetest, prettiest thing ever. The most perfect baby born in a hundred years."

  I was swigging right from the bottle. No pills, no nothing. It turned out ethanol ain't such a bad prescription for despair, after all.

  "She was my life. She was everything I ever wanted. Oh, they tried to take her away, they tried to put her in a hospital where they could keep a close eye on her all the time.

  "And smart? The kid was a genius. She was walking at six months, talking at nine. She was the earth, moon, and stars."

  "What did you say her name was?" he asked.

  I looked at him again. Okay, so he didn't even believe one percent.

  And why should he? And why should I? I started to cry again.

  Testimony of Bill Smith

  The lady was a lot more disturbed than I'd figured. I did my best to piece it together, almost like I'd handle an airplane crash.

  The baby had some sort of congenital disease. I'm not an expert on those kinds of problems, but a couple of things occurred to me. Such as: the mother had syphilis, or she was a heroin addict while she was carrying the child. What else could have given her such guilt? Why else would she be telling her story in such crazy metaphors? The child died before her second birthday. Or maybe not. There was a possibility she was a vegetable kept alive by machines.

  Come to that, the welfare department might have taken the kid. Maybe she was living with her foster parents. There was just no way I could tell.

  So it was well established Louise was crazy. The more she talked, the more certain it was.

  I've got a reaction to crazy people. I'd prefer to have nothing to do with them. She might get violent. There was no telling what she might imagine, what she might decide to blame me for.

  Yet I didn't feel it this time.

  It's true I was emotionally exhausted when she was through. It's true the back of my neck was getting sore from all the sympathetic nods I'd been giving her. But it didn't matter. I still liked her. I still wanted to be with her.

  Testimony of Louise Baltimore

  "I haven't got much time left," I said, when I'd finished telling him a story he had no background to comprehend. "I think I'll go freshen up." I glanced at my watch. "After all, at ten in the morning I turn into a pumpkin."

  I studied my face in the bathroom mirror. Same old Louise. Same old idiot.

  "See," I told myself. "You were making a lot of fuss about nothing. You told him the thing you least wanted to talk about, and he didn't believe a word. You might call that an anticlimax."

  I started coughing before I got through the speech. I found my Vicks inhaler and took a deep whiff, hoping the stench -- to Bill's nose -- wouldn't foul up the whole room. Then I took off my clothes and got in the shower.

  Sherman had cooked up a whole sub-plot to begin at this point. It was cuter than hell, chock full of lines borrowed from the likes of Katharine Hepburn and Jean Arthur, that ended up with me falling into his arms and -- I presume -- waves crashing on the beach as we faded tastefully away. Trouble was, it only works like that in movies. We'd met cute; that was about all the cuteness I could stand. It was time to leave the thirties and forties and get right into the explicit eighties.

  So I got out of the shower and opened the door.

  Testimony of Bill Smith

  She seemed to enjoy it. At least, if she didn't, she made all the right noises. God knows I enjoyed it. I felt she was at least as hungry for sex as I was, and I'd never been so hungry.

  When it was over she reached for her cigarettes, and that annoyed me just a little. Maybe I needed something to complain about. Maybe all of a sudden my life was too good.

  "Do you always smoke right after you make love?"

  She looked down at her crotch, and the punch line passed between us without her needing to deliver it. We both laughed. She lit up, and took a long drag, let the smoke out very slowly.

  She seemed utterly content.

  "I smoke after everything, Bill. I smoke before everything. If I could figure out a way to smoke while I was sleeping, I'd do it. It's only my inhuman self-restraint that leads me to smoke them one at a time in your presence."

  "I suppose you know what the Surgeon General has determined."

  "I can read the side of the box."

  "Then why do you smoke?"

  "Because I like the taste. It reminds me of home. And because getting lung cancer would be like a half-inch snowfall at the north pole."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean I'm already dying of a horrible disease."

  I looked at her, but her eyes weren't giving anything away. It could be the literal truth, or another of her weird delusions, or she could just be pulling my leg.

  I'd been proud of myself when I'd decided, back at the restaurant, that she was lying to me. Now, I couldn't read her at all.

  "We're all dying, Bill," she said. "Life is invariably fatal."

  "I'd say you had quite a while to live yet, though."

  "You'd be wrong."

  "Why did you run yesterday morning? When I asked you for a cup of coffee?"

  She stubbed out her smoke, lit another.

  "I didn't expect to see you there. l was looking for something else."

  "Do you really work for United?"

  She grinned at me.

  "What do you think?"

  "I think you're crazy."

  "I know that. The truth just isn't good enough for some people."

  I thought it over.

  "Yeah. I do think you work for United. I think you just have fun making people feel foolish. You like to keep them off-balance."

  "If you insist."

  "I think you were shocked by something else. Like bloody toys, and torn-up Christmas presents."

  She sighed, and looked at me with sad eyes.

  "You've discovered my dark secret. I've got a soft heart." She looked away from my face, down quite a bit lower, and stubbed out a cigarette half-smoked. From her, it was a startling gesture.

  "You ready to do it again?" she asked.

  Testimony of Louise Baltimore

  The mission was still there, though I'd practically forgotten it. I had to keep reminding myself: what you're here for is to change him, to keep him from going back to that hangar in the middle of the night and meeting an earlier version of Louise Baltimore.

  The fact that if he didn't go there a part of my life I'd already lived would be cancelled out, would never have happened, didn't bother me much. If the universe cancelled me out at least I'd fade away a contented woman. That's a lot better than I ever expected to get.

  When I looked at my watch it was seven in the morning, and we were still sitting there i
n bed, naked, laughing and talking as the sun came up outside. I don't know who suggested sleeping, but eventually we seemed headed in that direction. I didn't think I'd have much trouble keeping him away from the investigation tomorrow. For one thing, this C. Gordon Petcher item was certain to arrive some time that morning, taking a lot of pressure off Bill.

  He could plead illness, spend the day in bed.

  At least I kept telling myself that.

  The whole Window C business had turned out very strange. I had broken security up one side and down the other. I had told him the literal truth about many things. And I had not been believed.

  Strangely, I saw that as a good sign. He thought I was a kook, and yet he didn't seem-to mind too much, Could it be so hard for the lovely kook with all the crazy stories to enchant this man long enough to keep him out of that hangar tonight? Even if she was destined to turn into a pumpkin at ten A.M., Pacific Standard Time?

  Testimony of Bill Smith

  We laughed in each other's arms, roaring drunk, and made love again, more slowly. We laughed some more, and made love some more. I impressed even myself. I hope she appreciated it.

  I have no idea when I got to sleep. It didn't seem to matter.

  But it did. Oh, it did.

  I came out of bed like a guided missile ...

  ... and bumped my nose on the wall. I stood staring stupidly at it as my hungover thoughts arranged themselves into a dim state of awareness.

  The alarm didn't ring. What's this wall doing here? Who am I where am I what am I why am I ...

  Oh.

  "Good morning," she said. She was sitting on the bed, nude, propped on some pillows with her feet out in front of her. She took a drag on her cigarette. She was so heartbreakingly beautiful I thought I might cry.

  "Please," I croaked. "Don't smoke so loud."

  "Pretty feeble. You did a lot better last night." But she stubbed ii out.

  "I was feeling a lot funnier last night."

  "I was just sitting here wondering," she said. "While you woke up on your feet, l mean. It took a while for your eyes to focus."

  "They aren't focused yet."

  "Yes they are." She stretched, and I guess she was right. It was impossible not to focus on someone as spectacular as that.

  "What I was wondering is, what woke you up? I didn't hear anything and I didn't do anything. Brit brother, you sure as hell woke up."

  "What time is it?"

  "Eight-thirty."

  I sat on the edge of the bed and told her about my alarm clock. What I had to assume was I had just pulled a variation of the old story about the man at the lighthouse. Twenty years he sits out there, and the foghorn goes off in his ear every thirty seconds. One night it misses a blast and he jumps out of bed screaming, "What was that?"

  She listened solemnly, reached for another smoke, looked at me, and decided against it.

  She held out her arms.

  "Bill. Listen to me. You've been asleep for one hour. Your Mister Petcher can handle your duties this morning. Come back to bed. I'll rub your back."

  I sat back down, and she did rub it. She used a lot more than her hands, too, and I didn't complain. Then I did the hardest thing I ever did. I stood up.

  "Got to get to work," I said.

  She sat there like something out of the middle of Penthouse, even to the vaseline on the lens -- though that might have been simply the condition of my eyeballs. She just kept looking up at me.

  "This job is killing you, Bill."

  "Yeah. I know."

  "Stay with me today. I'll show you San Francisco."

  "I thought you had to go at ten."

  Her face fell. I didn't know what I'd said. She hadn't exactly said where she had to go at ten. Maybe to visit her baby in the hospital.

  The shower curtain rings rattled as she yanked the curtain open and stepped in with me.

  She shuddered when the cold water hit her and for a moment we clung together like children.

  I turned the tap over toward warm, and hugged her. She leaned back in my arms. I saw that her nipples hadn't crinkled up from the cold like my wife's used to in a cold shower. Funny the things you notice at a time like that.

  "I don't like to see you killing yourself. Take the day off."

  " Louise, don't bitch at me. I have a job, and I have to do it."

  "Don't work late, then. I'll be here at ten this evening: "That I can do. I'll be here, too."

  Testimony of Louise Baltimore

  He left, and I had no idea what he was going to do that night. Either way, it didn't look good.

  He could go to the hangar, meet me, and screw up the timeline.

  Or he could not go to a place I'd already been, to a place that, in my version of reality, he had already been. I didn't know what that would do to me.

  Either way, sitting there on the bed in my damp skinsuit, I figured I could be smoking my last cigarette. I made it last, savored every carcinogenic puff.

  Then the Gate arrived in the bathroom and I stepped through. For all I knew, there might be nothing on the other side. The thought didn't bother me much. For a night, anyway, I had lived.

  16 A Night to Remember

  Testimony of Bill Smith

  There were two cops at the desk as I went through the lobby. They were talking to the manager. I didn't think about it until I got outside and saw two more cops, two police cars, and a tow truck pulling Louise's Italian sports car out of its parking slot.

  I started over there. I was going to ask what the hell was going on, but something made me stop. Instead, I found a spectator and asked him what was going on.

  "The cop said it was stolen," the man said.

  "Stolen?"

  "That's what be said. Must have been a kid. Who the hell else would be dumb enough to steal a thing like that? I bet there's no more than six or seven of them in the whole country."

  I got out of the elevator and ran down the hall toward my room. I was getting out my key when a strange noise started. l looked around, up and down the hall, but I couldn't locate its source.

  We weren't that far from the airport, so I dismissed the noise. l had my key, so I started to put it in the lock.

  At least, I tried to.

  The door bulged away from me, like it was made of rubber.

  I almost fell over; putting out a hand, I caught myself against the wall, which had also distorted. Then, slowly, it eased back into position.

  I stood there, sweating. I backed away from the door, studied it and the wall. No paint was cracked. I ran my hand over the door, and around the frame. Nothing was warped, there were no splinters.

  Jesus. I'd had bad hangovers before, but nothing like that. I rubbed my hands over my face, and unlocked the door.

  For just a second it looked very odd in there. At the far end of the room were sliding glass doors that led to a coffin-sized balcony. The doors were shut, but the drapes were blowing as if in a high wind. I couldn't feel the slightest breeze. And everything in the room seemed to be coated with ice.

  Maybe ice isn't the right word. Frost, or powdered sugar.

  I blinked, and it was all gone. The curtains were barely stirring, and there was nothing wrong with the walls or the unmade bed.

  She was gone.

  I did everything I could think of. It didn't bring her back.

  The balcony door was locked from the inside. I opened it and stepped out, looked around, couldn't see how she could have gotten out from the fourth floor. There was no rope of knotted bedsheets or anything.

  I hadn't been gone that long. I suppose she could have come down one elevator while I was going up the other, or she might have used the stairs, but there was something that made me doubt that. Her clothes were still there. All of them, from the brown shoes to the cotton bra.

  Her purse was gone, though. Could she have had some clothes in there? The only other evidence she had ever been there was the stained sheets and the heaping ashtrays.

  I stayed in the
room for almost half an hour, trying to put it together.

  A stolen car. A night to remember. A strange story about a place where everybody died.

  A dead or stillborn or heroinaddicted infant.

  Oh, yes, and two more clues. In the bathroom trash can I found a Vicks inhaler and an empty package of Clorets breath freshener. I sniffed at the inhaler and wished I hadn't.

  Whatever was in the thing, l didn't want any part of it.

  Chalk it up to experience, I told myself, only it didn't help. You're supposed to learn something from experience, and all I had was questions.

  I decided not to tell the police anything about her, at least not until I'd had a chance to talk to her myself. Maybe she needed help. I didn't think she was dangerous.

  I had to call a cab to get to the airport. When I arrived, I went straight to the United desk, and around back to where Sarah Hacker had her office.

  She looked like she'd had about as much sleep as I had. Maybe there are worse jobs than personnel and public relations for an airline that's just lost a plane, but I don't know what they are.

  "Hi, Sarah," I said. "I'd like to find Louise Ball, if it's not too much trouble."

  "No trouble," she said. "What does she do, and in what city?"

  "She works right here," I said. "Or she did yesterday. She's a ticket agent."

  Sarah was shaking her head and reaching for a book. She flipped through it.

  "Not unless she was hired after five o'clock yesterday evening. I know all my people, Bill.

  She might have been a temporary. Let me look."

  She did, and came up with nothing. She put the name through her computer, and confirmed that no one named Louise Ball worked for United.

  It was time to call in the FBI. A harmless kook with an obsession about a dead daughter was one thing; an unauthorized person hanging around an investigation pretending to be something she wasn't was another.

  I actually got into a phone booth and had dialed the first couple digits of the number Freddie Powers had given me ... then I hung up. Louise had said she'd be back that evening.