[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

crummier sting than the beauty I put together, by
the way: it never woulda worked in real
life and then the punchline is, the real time
travelers hear he's blowing their cover, and they
come boil his brain. Naturally I didn't waste any
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Robinson, Spider - The Mind 3 - Lifehouse
time worrying about that little hazard hell, no!
I'm a rational man. Only in a science fiction
story would time travel turn out to be real and
unlike Wally and Moira, I don't wish my life
were a science fiction story. Guess what, honey:
it is anyway. Whether we like it or not."
The true horror of their situation washed over
her, and she began to laugh herself.
Unlike Paul, however, she had no trouble at all
stopping. She sat down on the deck with her
arms wrapped around her knees and thought,
hard. He sat beside her and let her think, silently
watching the dull grey glow go out of the world
to the west.
"I don't get it," June said finally, breaking the
silence. "I believe you, I guess, but I still don't
understand it. How the hell does this time
traveler think we threaten him? By knowing he
exists? How does that make us any different
from Kemp and Rogers? What are we supposed
to do with the information? Sell it to Geraldo?"
"We know where he has something buried. We
don't know what, but it must constitute proof
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Robinson, Spider - The Mind 3 - Lifehouse
he's a time traveler."
"So what? Everybody who sees it forgets."
"You didn't for long enough to phone me."
"So why doesn't he just move whatever it is fifty
meters east? We'd never find it again."
Paul shook his head. "I don't know. He must like
it right where it is, for some reason. Maybe it's
his time gate, and once you set it up you can't
move it." He frowned at the rain. "I wish I could
call up Wally and Moira and ask them. They've
had experience thinking seriously about this
shit."
She shook her own head, impatiently.
"Horseshit. They don't know any more about
time travel than we do. And they probably don't
even realize that."
"Maybe not, but they can think about this kind
of stuff logically without boggling," he said.
"They actually know some real science. I haven't
got a good enough sense of what's really
ridiculous, and what's only weird."
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Robinson, Spider - The Mind 3 - Lifehouse
"So we do that: stick to what we know, and
apply logic. How about this one this is the one
that keeps sticking in my craw: how come we
know as much as we do? How come we know
anything at all?"
"Huh?"
June went into lecture mode. "You're a time
traveler. You have powers beyond those of
mortal men. You bury something you want to
stay buried. So you booby-trap it: if a guy hits it
with a shovel, he gets hit with a mind-ray or
whatever, he forgets what he was doing and
wanders off. Now: won't you give the damn
mind-ray a large enough radius to also get his
buddy who wandered off a few meters to take a
pee?"
He nodded. "That bothers me some, too. You
shouldn't have had time to make that long a
phone call before you got bagged."
"Maybe it was just a robot security system that
mook triggered "
"Even so. It obviously read his mind; it should
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Robinson, Spider - The Mind 3 - Lifehouse
have noticed a better mind nearby. It would have
if I designed it, and I'm probably not as smart as
a time traveler."
June winced at the last clause, and spoke quickly
to distract him, lest he hear what he had just
said. "So we want to figure out why it didn't
notice me at first. Let's just riff and see what
happens. How am I different from Angel
Gerhardt? I'm smarter . . . right, and the mind-
ray only notices stupid people. It'd be getting a
great reading off of me, now. Uh . . . let's see:
I'm female, I weigh less, less upper-arm
strength, I probably have nicer tits "
"Try it this way," Paul said. "How were you
different from him that afternoon?"
"Okay, let's think about that. I probably had less
cocaine in my system ... I wasn't planning to
commit a crime, not that day, anyway ... I was
depressed from thinking about my mother . . . I
didn't have a backpack or a shovel "
"The depressed thing might be something," he [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]