Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(38)

And what had been especially foolish about their first kiss was her own response: not merely eager, but starved. She had absolutely embarrassed herself. And why? Because, as she learned when she started flipping backward through the months on her mental calendar, it had been at least—well, it had been a long, long, long time since she had had sex.

So all right, maybe her physical reaction—her overreaction, she firmly reminded herself—to the kiss had been understandable. But Ulrich wasn’t likely to understand it. Or, more problematically, he was all too likely to understand it the wrong way: that her sudden avid response had been to him, personally, rather than to his, er, generic maleness. And so how would she explain that to him so that he wouldn’t get more attached or more hopeful?

Are you sure that’s really what you want to do? said a voice at the back of her mind, the one that had been growing steadily louder and more ironic for the past three weeks.

Her response was indignant and maybe a little bit terrified. Of course she wanted to let Ulrich know that she wasn’t interested in him, per se. She had work, important work, to do. And after all, where could a relationship with him wind up?

Well, let’s see, said the voice, it could start in bed, then move to a house, which would quickly acquire some small, additional inhabitants—

Ann Koudsi stood up quickly, her stomach suddenly very compact and hard. She did not want to get married to a down-timer. No matter how nice, or how good-natured, or how gentlemanly—or how damnedly sexy—he was. It wouldn’t end well.

Right, agreed the grinning voice, because it wouldn’t end at all. Just like it hasn’t ended for the hundreds of other up-time-down-time marriages that have occurred over the past few years.

She paced to the bookshelf to get a book she didn’t need, opened it, furiously thumbing through the index for she had no idea what.

Unless, said the voice, what it’s really about is home.

Ann stopped thumbing the pages, forgot she was holding the book.

Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? If you marry a down-timer, it’s the final act of acceptance that you’re here in the past for good. That so much of your family, so many of your friends and almost everything else you ever knew and loved, is gone like that awful song said: dust in the wind. You won’t embrace anyone in this world because you won’t let go of the people in the other world.

Ann discovered she had clutched the book close to her chest, could feel her heart beating with a crisp, painful precision.

But here’s the problem, girl: you can’t hold on to what isn’t there, what no longer exists. And if you wait too long, if you push Ulrich away too hard, you just might lose the best thing—the best man—you’ve ever laid eyes on in this world or the—

A distinctive metallic cough broke the stillness of the remote, steep-sided glen in which they had set up their test rig. Ann looked up, disoriented and startled. That was the drilling rig’s engine, starting to run at full speed. But today’s test run had been cancelled—

Then she detected an almost subaudible hum: the rig’s turntable was spinning at operating RPMs.

Ann dropped the book and was out the door, sprinting for the drill site, which was located in a dead-end defile a quarter mile away. There was no fire-bell or even dinner-gong to ring to get them to stop, because other than the three cabins for the workers and the one for the senior site engineer—her—there was no one else nearby. And nothing with which to make alarm-level noise. “No reason to attract undue attention,” Professor Doctor Wecke of the Mines and Drilling Program of the University of Helmstedt had explained coyly to her when she had accepted the position. She had wondered at the isolation of the site and then wondered if Wecke’s caution about gongs and the like wasn’t a bit ridiculous. Why worry about noisemaking bells when you spent most of the day running a loud, crude, experimental rotary drilling rig?

As she ran, Ann saw the expected plume of steam from the rig’s engine obscuring the black cloud of its wood-fired boiler, and glimpsed a small figure well ahead of her, also running toward the drill site. That figure was moving very quickly and angling in from the main access road that led off to the rig’s supply and service sheds. Then she saw its gray-dyed down-time coveralls. Distinct from the typical brown ones of the rank and file workers, that could only be Ulrich. He must have heard the engine start, too. Had probably been in the materials depot, checking the quality of the new casing before it went in the hole to shore up the soft, unconsolidated walls that would be left behind by the next day’s digging.