Conrad Starguard - Conrad's Time Machine Part 13

h.e.l.l, I can outstubborn a cat.

We wandered up the beach and then through a grove of palm trees. Just when the drying salt water was starting to make me itch, I saw it.

Coming out of the side of a curving Royal Palm tree was a golden shower nozzle, with a pair of gold faucets within easy reach.

I didn't say anything. I just used it and Barb joined me. It was not only fresh water, but heated fresh water. Disregarding the technical problems of a water spigot in a tree-I mean the bark wasn't damaged, and that tree trunk started out being horizontal and then bent a full ninety degrees to become vertical.

How did they drill a fifteen foot long curving hole to put the water pipe through?

But disregarding that, how did they know that I wanted a shower at just that time? If it was that they could read my mind, why were they going through this hugely expensive charade of trying to please me? Or was I going to say something about it in the future, my future, so that they would know what to do in the past?

By d.a.m.n, I would not say anything about it! I never did, ever, to anyone. I had, in fact entirely forgotten the incident until I came to be writing this narrative, years later, and . . .

No! d.a.m.n it, they got me again!

When we were through showering, Barb opened a concealed door in the side of a boulder and took out a few towels. I stared at her in surprise.

"Did you think that we were the first people ever to use this beach, Tom?"

But I was resolved on the strong, silent technique. I went over to the gold faucets and gave them a yank. They came loose in my hand. They weren't connected to any water pipes. There were potentiometers on the back of the faucets and they were wired to this tape recorder still inside the tree trunk. Barb looked amused as I s.h.i.+mmied up the tree and tore out the shower spigot. There was nothing behind it. Absolutely nothing but a short hole drilled in the wood. And the end of the pipe was capped. There was no way for the water to get into the shower nozzle that I had just used!

"Barb, how the h.e.l.l . . . ?"

"I'm not allowed to answer technical questions, Tom."

"Grunt," I said.

I went back down with the nozzle and turned the water on. I'd half expected the water to come out of the nozzle in my hand, but no, it came out of the hole in the tree. Still holding the nozzle, I went back up the tree. Looking in the hole, I could see the water appearing just inside, about at the level of the bark on the tree. It just appeared out of nowhere. I stared at this for a while, then tried to put the nozzle back into the tree. Barb started to shout something, but I ignored her. That was my big mistake.

It exploded in my hand, blowing a fair chunk of the tree away and sending me flying to the ground.Barb had a first aid kit ready and was soon using it competently.

"It blew just when I tried to push the metal cap through the interface where the water was coming out. That was a temporal explosion if I ever saw one," I said. "So you guys have it so down pat that you can send something to the time and place that you want it, and it's cheaper to do it that way than to run a water pipe all the way out here. But tell me, do they send a truck of hot water around every few months, or do they just work it all from some central location, somehow?"

"I'm not allowed to say, Tom," she said as she finished with my hand and started on the wood splinters scattered about my body.

"You know, a few simple answers would have saved me a lot of grief," I said. "I could have been killed there, and then where would your little game be?"

"You're not going to die, Tom." I didn't know just how she meant that, but she was pretty positive about it.

It was dusk when we returned to the palaces. Ian was in a quiet, smiling mood on the way back. He let me drive, probably so he could hold Ming Po's hand in the back seat.

"Dinner at my place, Tom?"

Ian's Taj Mahal was as spectacular, in its own way, as my place, but the thing that grabbed you was his womenfolk.

They were the same racial mix as my crowd-mostly northern European, with a sprinkling of everything else-but every one of them was trying her honest and phony best to act Oriental. It was like they'd all taken a six-week crash course in bowing and groveling.

Barb could not have told them to do this since she had not left my side since I had suggested that Ian's crew adopt Ming Po's manners, so-datum: it wasn't necessary to do something in order to get something done. It was sufficient to merely intend to do something. Only, what would happen if you meant to do something and then didn't do it?

I hadn't figured that one out yet.

One odd point about the place was that while much of the furniture was specifically intended for little Ian's use, the building itself seemed to be designed for someone my size or bigger. Whereas the doorways on my palace were all eight feet high, those in the Taj Mahal looked to be closer to eight and a half. Maybe these people just liked to build palaces with big doorways.

The meal was excellent-about thirty Chinese dishes, half of them on fire when they were brought out, and some Siamese food that wasn't actually burning, but tasted like it should have been. That last was for my benefit only. Ian, of course, wouldn't touch it. He was spending all of his time touching Ming Po.

He was soon hinting that Barb and I might want to leave.

I slept with Barb again that night, but the next morning I made full use of the bath girls. When in Rome, eat all the pasta you can get.

Ian invited himself and five of his women over to breakfast, a bit of a crowd for the small breakfast room. I had the meal set up on a big porch that overlooked the ocean. Or that is to say, I moved the party out to the porch and breakfast was waiting for us.

It was another beautiful day. Actually, the weather on San Sebastian was usuallygreat, barring the odd hurricane, and those were fun, too. I knew I couldn't be hurt. Who would invent all this stuff if I wasn't here to do it?

"Tom, the girls tell me there are some nine-meter racing yachts in the harbor. My crew and I challenge you and yours to twice around the island. What do you say?"

"Well, sure. Barb'll line up our four best sailors and we'll take you on. Care to make a wager on it?"

"A bet, Tom? How? When you have everything possible in a material sense, what significance can there possibly be in winning or losing money?"

"Huh. You got a point there. Okau. My complete Poul Anderson collection up against your Harley. a.s.suming they're still in Michigan."

"Hardly a fair bet, Tom, but then it's not going to be a fair race. You've forgotten that I'm a whiz at fluid dynamics, whereas you've never even had a course in it. And what is sailing but simply applied fluid dynamics? I'm going to beat your socks off."

The twelve of us were walking across the drawbridge in yachting garb when Hasenpfeffer ran up. His bandage was gone and his nose looked as straight as ever.

"What are you gentlemen up to? There's work to be done!"

"Well then, you better get cracking, son, because you get to handle it all by your lonesome! We're going to go ride on some sailboats!"

Actually, I'd never been sailing before.

"But don't you realize our obligations to these people? And what they can do for us?"

"Look, I don't remember signing any contracts and I like what they're doing just fine."

I had my arms around Barb and Tammy, and gave them both a squeeze.

"Oh, that, certainly. But look, look here." Hasenpfeffer was vigorously sticking a pencil into the fingers of his left hand. "That hurts, I tell you. It hurts painfully."

"Then stop doing it, stupid!"

"No, Tom! He's telling us that the nerves in his hand have regenerated, that their medical technology is better than ours."

"So?"

"So then they might be able to get me back my foot and you your hair."

"Good idea. Somebody make us some doctor appointments for right after the boat ride. And thinking about it, I want to ride horses down to the harbor."

Two cowgirls promptly rode up with a dozen empty horses. We saddled up and left a frustrated Hasenpfeffer standing in the plaza.

"Tom, maybe we should have invited him along."

"So send one of the girls back with an invite. But he won't come. He's too busy pontificating with the local bureaucrats."

The palaces were at the north end of the island, and we were a good hour riding to the city. The land between was flat and fertile, with well-tended fields and orchards. We pa.s.sed one big dairy farm, but mostly it was all in fruit and vegetables.

The few farmers we saw were smiling, well-built fellows, and the one woman I saw driving a Ford tractor was as beautiful as any of the dozen girls in our party.The city did not have the usual suburban sprawl of single-family homes. The fields stopped where a half mile of parks started, and where the parks ended, high-rise buildings began.

No, that's not quite true. The parks never actually stopped, but continued right through most of the city. It was a city without streets. Sidewalks, yes, but no provisions were made for motor vehicles unless you drove on the lawns. There weren't any cars at all.

"Subways," Ian said. "These buildings all have to be connected with subways.

Somebody really spent with a lavish hand. . . ."

"Well, maybe not. Remember what you were saying once about cheap tunneling and underground highways?"

"Hey, yeah." Ian obviously regretted being on the surface. "We'll have to explore the things on the way back."

We were attracting a fair amount of attention. People were leaning out of windows, waving. The park around us was starting to fill up.

"Barb, if we get involved in a ticker-tape parade, I'm turning back. Somehow, tell everybody to just go about their usual business."

"Yes, Tom," she said, and glanced at her watch. Without any one individual doing anything unusual, the crowds quickly thinned out.

Most of the city was high rise, but there was a certain eclecticism about it. No two buildings were alike, and there was a cl.u.s.ter of amus.e.m.e.nt sections, "Old Town," "China Town" and "Greek Town," which had a feeling of brand new quaintness, sort of like a world's fair.

Yet, despite the phoniness of it all, the city of Morrow was truly beautiful, with sweeping modern structures and meticulous copies of every great piece of architecture in the world.

And it had such healthy, happy population! Thinking about it, I saw no one who looked over forty nor any under fifteen.

I turned to Ian. "Hey. They don't have any old people."

"Perhaps their medical technology is such that people don't have to look old."

"Maybe. They don't have any kids, either."

"Good G.o.d, you're right! Ming Po! Where are the children?"

She stared at the pommel of her saddle and was silent.

"Barb?" She just looked away. All twelve of our companions had been chattering a moment before, but suddenly they were silent.

"Well. Another little mystery."

"But . . . But it's so unnatural, Tom!"

"Yeah, it's that and more."

We wound our way towards the harbor through an industrial section. Here suddenly the parks ended, and what wasn't built of concrete was made of steel. Huge blocks of grey buildings surrounded us, identified only by large, painted numbers. Thinking about it, except in old town, where garish signs were part of the decor, there had been very fewsigns, and those few were small and discreet.

These were factories with very little noise, and no smoke or dirt at all. There were trucks here, and Hysters scurrying between buildings. Our nautical garb and horses were more out of place than ever.

The harbor was more of the same. A fair-sized tanker was being pumped out, a huge container s.h.i.+p was being unloaded and a second was steaming into the bay. There were a hundred small pleasure craft coming and going, and three sleek racing yachts were tied to a dock. But what caught my eye were two very deadly looking gun boats. They were small, as naval vessels go, maybe a hundred fifty feet long and thirty wide. They had big flat areas that told of phase-array radar antennas, and each sported a dozen gun turrets.

There was some sort of covered torpedo tube high on the bow, above the water line.

"Tom, that unloading platform . . . It looks like the hoists are somehow sticking to the ceiling of the bodacious thing. . . . Would you mind if we delayed the race for an hour or so? I mean, they're so d.a.m.n fast and efficient. . . ."

"Yeah, sure. Only I want to check out the gun boats."

My crowd automatically split off to join me for my naval tour. Both of the cowgirls (alias French maid and bath girl. I recognized them.) stayed on the dock to take the horses back to wherever they came from, while the rest of us took an "impromptu" tour of the gunboat Hotspur.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Gunboats and Yatchs

There were about fifty people working on deck, and we eventually found another fifty doing maintenance below.

The boat's skipper, Leftenant Fitzsimmon, spoke with a crisp British accent that he probably got out of a World War II English propaganda film. His mannerisms followed suit, with much flas.h.i.+ng of eyes and a tendency to strike heroic poses. He was a decent enough looking fellow, yet somehow he lacked the beefy smoothness of most of the other men I'd seen on the island.

"Right, sir. Shall we start at the bottom and work up?"

I don't know much about boats, but I know when to be impressed by good machinery.

That little s.h.i.+p carried at least four inches of armor on all of her external surfaces, and twice that in some places. Her hull was a single, huge alloy casting, and her streamlined deck and upper works was a second single piece. There were no portholes, no windows except on the bridge, and two ma.s.sive powered doors provided the only entrances.

"Hey, wouldn't that make it hard if you had to get out in a hurry?"

"Not a very likely circ.u.mstance, sir. Oh, I suppose that if more than three of her water tights were badly holed, she'd sink. But even then I think I'd rather go down with her than put to sea in a rubber raft."

Seeing me stare, he continued, "Oh, no heroics, sir. It's just that she's as strong as any submarine and just as watertight. If she sank, likely someone would be along directly to pull the old girl up."

So they did the "get it when you want it" routine with themselves as well as with us.

It figured.

Much of the interior s.p.a.ce was taken up by four huge Rolls-Royce gas turbine engines.

"She'll cruise at fifty knots, and hit sixty in a pinch. Planing hull, don't you know. She draws eighteen feet in harbor, but at cruise she'll raise up to six."

"Yeah, but those engines look hungry."