Invigoration

by Julia Verinder

Part 1

MAGDA

Most plane accidents happened at take-off and landing. That's what people used to say, back in the days when they squandered Earth's dwindling resources to spend a week in a place that was a few degrees warmer than their home or a weekend emptying shops that were different in nothing but name from those in their nearest city.

Like all Earth's denizens, she knew those facts from the archives and yet she could scarcely imagine a time when priorities could have been so skewed. Long after they knew the probable cost, her ancestors put their own pleasure over their children's survival. Decades had passed since those profligate days. In the twenty-four years of her life, every milliliter of fuel that wasn't needed to keep human beings alive was dedicated to the search for a planet that could support human life - a new home that they had no guarantee even existed.

Space accidents were just like plane accidents - most happened at launch or re-entry. That had always been the case, because of the tremendous heat and energy involved, but the increasingly unstable atmospheric conditions had multiplied the risk beyond a point where it could comfortably be ignored.

Staring at the roiling clouds on the view-screen, she was at once terrified and yet fascinated. Although her arrival and trajectory had been calculated by the powerful computers back at base, they were based on imperfect information and subject to imperfect implementation because of the practical limitations of her craft. Ground crews tried to bring Searchers home safely but everyone knew that the overall probability of surviving a mission was less than one in four.

She knew that her own chances were now a good deal worse than that. The storm below was far outside the tolerances of her craft but she had no fuel left to delay or adjust her approach. Her ground crew had done their best and now they could do no more. With communication blocked by the electrical disturbances, there was no one even to console her in her wait for death.

She wasn't as afraid as she'd expected to be. Several generations too late to be one of the End-Timers, counting the days to Christ's triumphant return, she expected that being dead would be much the same as being unborn. As she had no memory of that, there seemed little to fear.

 

VIN

'What the...?'

The words were whipped from Vin's lips by the wind and he doubted that Chris, standing less than a yard away, could have heard them. It was all they could do to stay on their feet on the porch of the saloon, as sizeable parts of the town's buildings flew down Main Street. In his thirty years of life, he had never seen anything like it.

He grabbed Chris's elbow and pointed to the sky to the south-west. The clouds had been growing denser and more violent all afternoon but, until that moment, they'd looked natural. Now it was as if the sky were tearing, a great rent opening through which he saw neither clouds nor stars. What he saw had no name in his vocabulary. The closest he might have come was fire but, even if it were possible for the sky to catch fire, what he saw was not flames - only something a little like flames.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, as reliable a sign of impending danger as he knew. Perhaps he was afraid merely because he couldn't understand what he was seeing or perhaps there was something to be afraid of. He couldn't tell.

He looked at Chris, whose gaze was still turned upwards. The fire - or whatever it was - reflected in his eyes, transforming his familiar features and adding to Vin's unease. When Chris looked at him, Vin saw in an instant the same shock and wariness that was surely clear on his own face.

The fire grew brighter, almost angrier it seemed to Vin, and then spat out a bright white spark.

His eyes instinctively tracked the spark down to Earth. When they flicked back to its source, the tear had miraculously been repaired. Seconds later, he felt the storm begin to pass. The change was infinitesimal but, to a man who'd weathered as many storms in open country as he had, obvious. He stared into the darkness where the spark had fallen.

'Shooting star?' Chris shouted beside his ear.

He shrugged. 'Wasn't like no shootin' star I ever saw.'

 

MAGDA

She stirred groggily. She couldn't place where she was, thinking first that she was in her bunk aboard her craft and then that she was back on Earth. It was hardly surprising that it took her a few seconds to realize she was inside a cramped re-entry capsule, given that she'd never slept in one before and had no reason to expect to awaken in one either. Still, when she managed to open her eyes, that was what she saw.

She raised a hand to her aching forehead only to find her fingertips coated in coagulating blood. As she was still safely strapped in, she had to conclude that some piece of equipment had broken free and hit her. She must report that, so future missions could be made one iota less dangerous.

The capsule was bobbing and spinning fiercely. So fiercely, in fact, that she - veteran of eight years of space travel - was nauseous within half a minute. With the benefit of a lifetime's training, she forced herself to concentrate, working back to something that she remembered clearly and then thinking logically about what must have followed.

The last thing she could remember was preparing to re-enter the atmosphere, while way outside normal operating parameters. Now she could see from the view-screen that she'd miraculously managed to splash down on water, which was of course what the capsule was programmed to do, but that the storm still raged. She hadn't been recovered and the communications link was silent. It seemed to be functional, picking up low-level static, but had failed to auto-tune into a source.

That meant she had a problem. She wasn't equipped to survive for long before being recovered.

Needing to make contact with someone, she started the capsule's diagnostic routines. Meanwhile, her first problem would be breathing. Having stalled for as long as possible before re-entry, hoping that the storm would abate, she was already near the limit of the capsule's resources. She pressed more buttons to initiate tests on the air outside. Earth's atmosphere was no longer safe for long-term exposure but she might be able to survive outside for a while, provided that the storm hadn't stirred up any of the more deadly toxins.

When the test results flickered onto the monitor, she stared in puzzlement: nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide and a few trace elements. She saw none of the usual contaminants that compromised life, human and otherwise, but she knew that was impossible. The carbon dioxide reading was half its normal level - also impossible. She'd have to wait for all the diagnostics to complete before she dared trust anything that she saw.

She settled back into her seat and tried to rest. With luck, base would trace her and someone else could worry about the strange readings.

 

VIN

'Do you think it was a sign from God, Josiah?' JD asked at breakfast the next morning. 'The end of the world? That's what everyone's saying.'

Josiah was non-committal, as he often was. 'The Lord moves in mysterious ways, that's for sure.'

JD wasn't to be put off. 'Have you ever seen anything like it, Vin?'

Vin chewed slowly on half a sausage and then swallowed. 'Can't say I have, kid.'

He wiped his plate with a crust, washed the bread down with an inch of cold coffee and then sauntered out to where Chris was standing in the same spot they'd occupied the night before.

He nodded in greeting. 'Reckon mebbe I'll ride on out and take a look.'

Chris had been looking at the place where the sky had opened but now he glanced to the south-western horizon.

'Why?'

Vin shrugged. 'I've heard tell that sometimes rocks fall outta the sky...'

Chris considered that for fully a minute. 'You think something came down from that...?'

'That's how it looked to me.'

'Want company?'

'Don't see no need. A rock's a rock. I can always bring a bit back if it's worth looking at.'

'Fair enough. I'd sooner we weren't down by more than a man right now.'

Vin had already considered that, when he decided whether he was right to leave town on his own business. When they first arrived, it was the kind of place where men died every day. Things had changed a lot but the growth that their protection had allowed brought its own scourges of drunks, sore losers and brawlers. If the threat had been greater, he wouldn't have left his friends without his sure aim to cover them. If the threat had been less, he'd probably have taken one of them along. As it was, he was more than capable of riding out to investigate a strange light in the sky without help. As a matter of fact, he reckoned it might make a welcome vacation.

 

MAGDA

When she woke again, the storm had passed. She knew that immediately from the gentle swaying of the capsule, its movement now soothing instead of sick-making. Instinctively, before she was even fully conscious, she was checking monitors and finding all diagnostics in the green. Perhaps she'd dreamed the atmospheric results - wishful thinking? No, there they were and still the same. She turned to the view-screen and felt her eyes widen as if they were about to pop out.

The screen showed blue sky over blue water. She looked closer. The capsule appeared to be floating in a small lake surrounded by low bluffs of reddish stone and little beaches of reddish sand. The trouble was that no such place existed on Earth or at least, if it did, in atmospheric conditions clear enough for anyone to see it.

She raised her hand to her hairline, tracing a sizeable lump there that accounted for the dull throbbing she felt. Perhaps she was concussed and hallucinating? Yes, that had to be it.

The trouble was, she thought wryly, believing that she'd landed in paradise wasn't going to make the air any more breathable after a violent storm. She checked the capsule's reserves again - still an hour or two of air left. Resolving not to open the hatch until she absolutely had to, she settled back and stared at the view-screen.

She'd seen landscapes like that before, of course, in old photographs and films. It felt tantalizingly different to see it on the view-screen of a capsule. Even if it couldn't be real, it felt as if it was. She teased herself with it, imagining what it would be like to open the hatch and breathe in that fresh air, unprocessed and in all its natural glory.

 

VIN

His gelding was covering the miles at a steady lope. For all its faults, and the contrary beast had many, it had an economical gait that enabled him to cover more ground in a day than any mount he had ever owned and to leave its rider's backside unscathed at the end of it.

He scarcely needed to think to guide the horse to the area where he estimated the white light would have struck the ground. His compensations for the sky's optical effects and the Earth's curvature were so automatic that he was barely aware of making them. While it might be the first sky-rock he'd ever pursued, he'd located places from plumes of smoke or flares often enough.

When he reached the area in which he judged anything fallen would be found, he set about a systematic search. If the rock was small and ordinary, he doubted that he would find it but, if it was of fair size and unusual composition, he though his chances were better than even. Riding a series of north-south lines about fifty yards apart, he scanned the ground for anything strange.

 

MAGDA

She waited until the last possible moment to open the hatch.

First the reserve gauge reached zero and then the carbon dioxide gauge began to climb. Only when the air in the capsule was too poisonous to breathe did she press the hatch release.

She closed her eyes and waited for unknown toxins from outside to kill her.

If she was hallucinating, all her senses must be affected. A huge waft of cool air swept into the capsule - she felt it fan her face.

She opened her eyes. The view through the hatch matched the one on-screen. She cautiously breathed in, sneezed then choked.

But she wasn't suffocating. She coughed and spluttered, and her eyes streamed, but she felt none of the burning she'd expect from a toxic gas. Her training reasserted itself and she guessed that what she was experiencing was a kind of allergic reaction - something they'd been warned about.

A lifetime of filtered air made the airways sensitive to all manner of natural irritants, the kinds of things that used to give some people hay fever. She gasped and waited for her body's special programming to kick in. Provided the irritants here were known to Earth scientists, her immune system should quickly react and adjust her physiology to suit the new environment.

Genetic engineering gave her in less than a minute what countless potions had failed to deliver over the centuries. She took a long, slow breath and savored the unfamiliar cocktail of scents.

No means of recording scent had ever been found so, while she knew what many natural phenomena looked like and sounded like, she had no idea what they smelled like. She'd certainly never imagined that anything could smell as... fresh... as this atmosphere. It was invigorating in a way that she'd only experienced through chemical stimulants before.

She pulled herself to the edge of the hatch and looked out. The lake and its surroundings were exactly as they had appeared on screen, only twice as exciting when she saw them without the distance of a camera and display.

She looked around the capsule. There was nothing useful to pack and nothing to carry it in either. A re-entry capsule was not an exploratory vehicle and contained nothing beyond what was needed to break through the atmosphere. All she had was the pockets in her belt, and all they held were a few personal essentials.

She flipped the hatch to voice activation, checked the code and then threaded herself out through it.

The coldness of the water was her first unpleasant shock since landing. Settlements on Earth, concentrated in the most temperate regions of the ailing planet, were kept at constant temperatures chosen as energy-efficient compromises between human needs and local conditions. The Searcher training facility was maintained at eighteen degrees Celsius and her only experience of extreme temperatures was during brief training exercises designed to consume minimal amounts of fuel.

Her teeth chattered so hard that she could barely utter the code to close the hatch.

She struck out confidently for the shore, using a swift overarm stroke to haul herself through the water and enjoying the way it cleansed her and her suit as she went. Each time she took a breath, pink water streamed past her eyes as the blood on her forehead was washed away.

She kept swimming until she felt her knees graze the bottom and then strode onto the beach. She was too excited for caution and, besides, she had nothing with which to investigate the conditions or to defend herself. She wasn't equipped to explore a new world but, just then, she didn't care.

 

VIN

Nothing he had done before prepared him for the sight that greeted him when his search ended. His diligence had been unnecessary. He topped a ridge and, in a small lake below, a strange sphere floated. He rode down to the shore and dismounted.

Around fifteen feet in diameter, the sphere was blackened but looked as if it had probably once been silver. If it had hit the ground, it would surely have been flattened. As it was, it seemed intact.

He studied it thoughtfully. As one who knew the natural world inside out and upside down, he was pretty sure the sphere wasn't natural. On the other hand, it didn't look like anything man-made that he'd ever seen. Mary had shown him pictures of cities in books, and he'd seen rail road locomotives, but never anything of the uninterrupted smoothness - perfection even - of this object.

Pondering the discovery, he made his horse comfortable and then checked his gun carefully.

 

MAGDA

She wished that her training had prepared her better for discovering a new world.

As the third stage in a protracted process, Searchers were not intended to land on the planets they explored. First, astronomers on Earth scanned the skies for potential new homes using ever more powerful telescopes. When they identified planets that scientists calculated to have a 25% or better chance of supporting life, automated probes were sent to collect more data. When the test results raised the probability to 50% or better, the planets were added to a Searcher's schedule. Using tiny craft built around a superlight drive, a powerful computer and a suspended animation pod, they toured the galaxy gathering more details about short-listed worlds. So far, no planet had delivered on its promise but someday, when one did, a larger spacecraft would deliver a colony of specialists to shape New Earth. The people of the world had been training and waiting for that for forty years. The question was whether Old Earth could support them for long enough to find New Earth.

She thought, by some fluke, she might have found New Earth. She would have been elated but for the fact that she had no means of communicating its location back home and, even if she had, she had no idea where its location was. She must have been pulled through a wormhole, although she couldn't understand how a wormhole could exist nearby without the astronomers discovering it.

First things first though: she was already getting hungry. With no supplies and no survival kit, she would have to live on what she could find. Unfortunately, the landscape was as austere as it was spectacular - there was no guarantee that it could sustain her.

At that moment, a shadow passed overhead. She looked up instinctively, expecting a craft of some kind. What she saw was far more wonderful than that: a huge bird drifted effortlessly above the valley, its great wingspan ending in upturned feathers like fingertips and its head moving from side to side as it scanned the land below for prey.

She gazed in awe. She had never see a real bird and no one on Earth had ever seen one flying free against a clear blue sky like this one. It was the most thrilling moment of her life.

 

VIN

He stripped off his outer clothes, draped his gun belt over his shoulder, settled his gun into the hollow of his collarbone and waded into the frigid water of the lake. He had no idea how deep it was, or whether he could keep his gun dry while swimming, but he wanted to take a closer look at the sphere and couldn't see any way of doing that from the shore.

The water rose steadily, seeping up the legs of his union suit and shriveling his balls even before the level reached his groin. He clenched his teeth. He'd enjoyed a swim on a hot day many times in his life but he could count on the fingers of one hand the times that he'd felt such cold water, and they had usually involved falling off of horses or out of canoes. It was hard to walk deliberately into something so unpleasant but he did it.

The aching cold that was already working into his bones built until unpleasantness became pain. At least, he noted, once the water reached his chest it rose no further. He wasn't familiar with the location but began to wonder whether, rather than a permanent feature of the landscape, the lake was only an accumulation of run-off from the surrounding higher ground after the heavy rains.

If so, it was even luckier that the sphere had fallen just there. When he reached it, he stood and stared. He already knew two things for sure: it was made of metal and its perfect spherical shape was no freak of nature. Even through the soot, he could make out writing and, thanks to Mary's lessons, he could recognize the letters and numbers, even though they made no sense.

He recognized one other thing too: the outline of a hatch, just like the hatch to a storm cellar. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no handle.

Would he have turned the handle, if there had been one, he wondered?

Only then did the obvious consequence of a hatch strike him. Doors were for going through: the presence of a hatch suggested the presence of an occupant. He drew back a little and pondered.

If someone inside the sphere wanted to hurt him, why hadn't they done so? Were they waiting to see what he would do? Did they have weapons? He couldn't see any guns, or any opening from which guns might emerge as he knew they did aboard a warship.

Another possibility occurred to him: the occupant might have been injured in the crash.

He edged nearer to the sphere. Perhaps he should declare his intentions.

'I ain't gonna hurt you. I'm just gonna see if I can open this hatch.'

His raised voice sounded unnaturally loud in the surrounding silence. He hoped it also sounded friendly, in case anyone inside didn't speak English.

Acting bolder than he felt, he explored the hatch. He couldn't see how to open the damned thing. He pushed, tapped and eventually thumped, all to no avail.

With his feet already numb from the cold, he decided that he'd rather investigate the sphere on the shore than in the middle of a lake in early spring and pushed it tentatively. It drifted away from him. Moving around to the other side, he steered it back to where he'd tethered his horse.

It grounded, as he'd expected, a few yards from shore. Nevertheless, its new position was far more convenient. The air was a lot warmer than the water, which hadn't recovered up from a vicious cold snap that lasted into the previous week, so he let the sun start the job of drying his underwear and sat on a boulder to consider his next move. What other possibilities might there be?

One. Someone was inside, seeing what he was going to do. Either they were incapable of hurting him from in there or they'd decided not to hurt him yet.

Two. Someone was inside but they were injured. They might not even know he was outside.

Three. No one was inside. The hatch was used for loading something into the sphere.

Four. Someone had been inside but had climbed out after landing.

He thought about the last one. Unless that person could fly without the sphere - which was a real possibility he realized with a shudder - they would have left tracks somewhere around the lake. That, he reflected with some relief, was something he knew how to check out. Pausing only long enough to shift half a dozen boulders around the sphere to stop it floating away and buckle his gun belt over his union suit, he set off on foot to check the perimeter of the lake.

 

MAGDA

The only good thing that she could see about being hungry was that it convinced her that the world she'd discovered was real. If it was a lovely dream, why would she dream herself to be starving? Why wouldn't she just stumble onto a wonderful meal? If she was dead, and she'd certainly considered that, why would she need to eat? Either she'd be in oblivion, she reasoned, or in heaven or hell. If it was heaven, why would she go hungry? If it was hell, why was it so beautiful?

Although she'd lived her entire life on scant and tasteless rations, she'd never starved. It was now more than forty-eight hours since she'd eaten, which was a while by any measure, and the physical exertion and emotional upheaval had taken their toll. She was more hungry and more tired than she'd known it was possible to be.

Yet even those intense biological imperatives couldn't dent her joy at the delights of her New Earth. She hadn't understood how the rays of a sun actually felt on the skin, nor how its intense light lifted the spirits. Although she'd always wanted to see real wildlife, she could never have imagined the majesty of that eagle.

She would rather die in this place than live a hundred years on Old Earth.

 

VIN

Tracks!

He knelt beside them, studying carefully what might have been the small imprints of a woman or child's feet. The footwear was like nothing he'd ever seen, with strange patterns across the whole sole from heel to toe. Maybe that improved the grip, he thought, as he estimated the length of stride. So far, so good: the stride would be normal for a child or a small woman, and the heel-toe weight-shift was also perfectly normal. That came as a relief, making him realize that he wasn't confident he was looking for a person even though he couldn't begin to imagine what else he should be expecting to come out of a metal sphere that had somehow flown across the sky.

He went back for his horse, dressed quickly and then set out in pursuit of his quarry. The familiarity of the task offset his anxiety at the strangeness of the events leading up to it.

But who would send a woman or child up in a metal ball? What kind of man would subject them to a risk that he was too yellow to take himself? Seeing the foolishness of his thinking, he realized that his quarry had to be a midget. Perhaps they couldn't make a bigger sphere fly and so they needed a small man to fly it, just as a jockey rode a racehorse. Yes, that must be it.

The midget was making no effort to hide his tracks. He urged his horse into a steady jog alongside the footprints, leaving them undamaged without consciously deciding that he should.

The tracks held a fairly steady course, the hallmark of someone who'd decided that the best thing was to keep going in a straight line until they reached somewhere. While that was clearly better than going in circles, his own choice would have been more complex, taking into account aspect, direction, geology and watercourses to predict likely centers of human activity. His method required the ability to navigate by sun, moon and stars to avoid disorientation. Not many people could do that, which was why men like him could so readily get work as scouts.

Although the tracks continued in roughly the same direction, they veered erratically from side to side every few yards. At first, he thought the midget must be injured after all, staggering around in confusion, but slowly he saw that every diversion led to something: a bush, a spoor or a view. The midget seemed to be distracted by everything he saw.

Beside one such diversion, he picked up a freshly broken twig. One of its leaves bore the trace of teeth - human as best he could tell - and a small piece was missing.

He smiled. The plant wasn't poisonous but it was bitter as hell. Then he frowned. It seemed like his quarry had no supplies and it would take all his considerable skills to live off the land right here.

After that, he noticed that each plant by the wayside had been sampled. He began to worry. Most local varieties wouldn't do anyone much harm but he could think of at least two with the power to kill even in tiny doses and others that, while seeming edible, would cause violent gut ache later.

He kept up a fast pace, determined not to let a stranger die on his watch, no matter how odd the circumstances of their arrival in the territory. Knowing from the condition of the broken leaves and twigs that he was gaining fast, he put his quarry less than an hour ahead. Traveling faster himself, he reckoned he could close the gap in about twenty minutes.

Had he carried a pocket watch, he would have known that he did it in eighteen.

Even so, he was almost too late. As he rounded a bend alongside a fast-flowing creek, his horse's hoof-beats deadened by the sandy ground and drowned by the babbling water, he came upon a small figure with a spray of scarlet berries in one hand. As odd as the figure was in a dozen ways, even though it was no midget, it was the berries that drew his attention.

'Don't eat those!' he yelled.

The woman, for that was what she was, looked startled, stared at the spray in her hand and then spat into the brush at her side. He fairly leapt from his horse and thrust his water-bottle at her.

'Rinse out your mouth.'

She did so without question, surely persuaded of his sincerity by the anxiety in his voice.

'Did you swallow any?'

She shook her head.

'Hell, ma'am, you can't just go eatin' anythin' you find out here.'

She stared up at him in stunned silence. Only then did he notice how small she was, scarce five feet tall and fine-boned to boot. She was a person, of that he was sure, and yet every second revealed another detail that didn't quite fit.

One detail caught his eye more than the others: she wore something like a union suit except that it was sky-blue and too tight fitting to be decent. There was no sign that she wore anything else underneath it either. He could plainly see the nipples on her small breasts and the curve of her sex at her crotch. He was glad he was too confused to react as strongly as he'd have expected to.

If he'd had time to think about it, he'd have known she spoke English because she'd understood what he said but, with everything moving too fast, he was still surprised when she spoke.

'Where is here?'

The question was reassuringly normal after everything else. If he arrived somewhere by accident, as he suspected she had, he'd want to know where he was.

'Well, the nearest town is Four Corners but that's more than a day's ride.'

'I mean, what planet is this?'

The word 'planet' meant nothing to him.

'Huh?'

'What do you call this whole world?'

He still couldn't grasp what she was talking about. 'America?' he offered uncertainly.

That took her by surprise, he could see. He knew that she recognized the name and that it was just about the last thing she'd expected him to say.

There was a long pause. He could see she was thinking hard on his answer and, given that he had no idea what to say, he was content to say nothing.

Finally, she spoke again in a tone that declared she was as confused as he was. 'What year is it?'

'You're kiddin', right?' He saw she wasn't. 'Eighteen-eighty-two. What year do you think it is?'

Another long pause.

This time he got the feeling she was trying to decide how much to tell him. He hoped she'd opt for trust but couldn't offer any better reason than he'd already given by saving her from the berries.

'Twenty-one-twenty-seven.' Then, murmuring softly to herself, 'Nearly two hundred and fifty years in the future.'

'That's...' he began.

Impossible? Ridiculous? Both?

 

MAGDA

She saw that he wasn't shocked by the prospect of time travel because he knew there was no such prospect. She, however, was stunned.

Could she be back in her own planet's history? It seemed no more unlikely than a parallel culture developing somewhere else. No scientist herself, she had no means of comparing the probability of some of the wilder aspects of quantum theory with the feasibility of moving through time. In practical terms, she wasn't sure it made much difference to her position.

She looked more closely at the man who'd found her.

He was tall for her times but, from what she could recall, probably average for his own. Her society had been using suppressants for generations to curb growth just as farmers had once used hormones on their stock to promote it. Ten per cent smaller people needed ten per less of everything - food, water and space.

His clothes were hand-stitched, his gun and belt buckle the products of only the most basic manufacturing techniques, and she saw nothing incompatible with the date he'd given. He looked exactly how she would expect a man to look in the Old West, albeit more kindly than deadly.

Like everything else in his world, he exuded strong and unfamiliar scents. The only one she recognized was sweat. She assumed that the others must be things no longer used in her own time like tobacco and leather. Even at a distance, the odors were strong. Close up, they must be overwhelming. Strangely, although she would expect to be repelled, she found herself drawn to him. Casting around for an explanation, she wondered whether the men of this time - untroubled by estrogen-emulating compounds in the atmosphere - were more potent not only in their semen but in the pheromones that governed sexual attraction. That could explain the fascination she felt for a man she would have expected to find primitive, unwashed and repulsive.

Finally, she decided that the maxim of the greatest fictional detective of the era must serve for the time being: after eliminating the impossible, whatever was left - no matter how improbable - must be the truth. For the time being, she would accept that she had returned to eighteen-eighty-two.

Now she must convince him.

'There was a terrible storm in my time,' she began. 'The worst I've ever seen.'

His eyes narrowed minutely. 'Same here,' he conceded.

'Perhaps it wasn't a normal storm. Perhaps somehow there was interference between our times, and that caused the electrical disturbances we saw. Some theorists think time travel is possible.'

'Some what?'

'People who think about such problems. Some of them think that time is like a ribbon and that it might be possible to move from one point to another where the ribbon folds over itself. So far as we know, no one has done it. Will have done it. By then.'

She waited for him to take that in, seeing him study her with the same care that she had studied him. She detected no sign that he was primitive in the sense she might have predicted. Of course, he had none of the knowledge that enabled her to theorize about what might have happened but he didn't seem to be leaping to any wildly superstitious conclusions either.

Her scalp itched around the injury she'd sustained in landing. She rubbed at it, looked at the blood on her fingertips and then felt a fresh trickle run down her forehead.

'Let me see to that.'

He went over to his horse and rummaged in a leather bag fixed behind the saddle. She went to the horse's head and looked into the deep brown eyes placed on either side of its long face. Some of the super-rich in her time still held on to a few horses but she'd never seen a real one.

'Is it safe?'

He looked to see what she was doing.

'He's an ornery critter but he don't mean no harm. Tickle his ears - he likes that.'

She reached up tentatively and touched the beast's ear. It was warm, just like a person's flesh except that it was furry. The horse remained still for a few seconds before inclining its head into her caress, pushing against her hand.

'See?' Vin said, as he came back to her with a red square of material similar to the blue one he wore around his neck. 'He ain't so bad.'

He used a corner to wipe away the new blood and then, with a practiced hand, folded the cloth into a strip and tied it around her head as a makeshift bandage.

She smiled at him, touched by his concern. 'Thank you. Something hit me during the landing.'

He looked at her intently. In his eyes, she saw curiosity and skepticism.

'I found the thing you came in.'

It seemed odd for him to stumble onto the capsule in this vast place.

'Were you looking for it?'

He nodded.

'Why?'

'I saw somethin' strange during the storm.'

'Strange how?'

He thought before tackling her question. She was getting used to the way he took his time with conversation and felt no need to fill the silences in between his carefully considered replies.

'Seemed as if... the sky tore right open and there was some kinda fire in the hole it made.' He frowned. 'It wasn't fire, but it kinda looked like it - yellow, hot...'

'That sounds like an energy field.'

His furrowed brow indicated he needed a better explanation than that.

'In my time, we don't use fire. We have something else to provide heat and light. What you saw sounds like that in its natural form. Perhaps that somehow tore a hole between our times. Why did you come looking? What did you hope to find?'

He shrugged. 'I'd heard talk of rocks fallin' out of the sky, so I came to see if I could find one.'

'But you found a re-entry capsule instead?'

'I found a round thing made outta metal.'

'Who do you think made it?

'I don't know.'

'Someone from this time and place?'

More thought preceded his eventual concession: 'I doubt it was made around here.'

'You are a wise man for your time. Perhaps a wise man for any time. What's your name?'

'Vin Tanner.'

'I'm Magda Friel.' She held out her hand. 'I'm very pleased to meet you, Vin. I think I'm lucky to have been found by a man like you.'

He took her hand cautiously. 'Ma'am.'

 

VIN

He studied her again. He could say with certainty that he knew of nowhere to buy flying metal spheres or skin-tight sky-blue suits. He'd never seen anyone as slight or pale as she was either. He couldn't believe she was from the future but he was getting surer by the minute that she came from some place far away. Unable to frame any useful questions, he was at a loss for what to say.

She broke the silence.

'Forgive my rudeness but is there anything here that I can eat?'

It reassured him that she felt hunger, just as she bled. No matter how strange she might seem, she was normal in some ways. He went back to his saddlebag and pulled out the greasy remains of his supper, wrapped in a cloth. It was his dinner but he offered it to her without a second thought.

She was slow to take it.

'Is that animal flesh?'

He nodded. 'Jackrabbit. I can bag a fresh one later but that's the best I've got right now.'

'Is it... raw?'

'No. What the hell do you take me for?'

She accepted it and, after a moment's hesitation, nibbled the end of one piece.

'Not so bad?' he asked.

'No. No, it tastes a lot better than it sounds. Actually, it's very good.'

She perched on a boulder and worked her way through all the meat.

'Didn't you bring no supplies?' he asked, finding himself another boulder facing her.

She shook her head. 'I shouldn't have needed them. This was the final stage of my journey. I should be back at base now, undergoing medical tests and debriefing.'

It was strange listening to her, the mix of unfamiliar words and military terms seeming all wrong from a pretty young woman. For she was pretty in her way, her delicate features just right for her translucent complexion, and her slender form offering enough curves to whet his appetite. Even the way her short black hair stuck up out of the bandanna he'd wrapped around her head was cute. He only realized that he was no longer listening when she drew attention to it.

'Does my body distract you?'

He looked away, feeling as guilty as if he'd been caught looking through a lady's keyhole.

'Women dress differently in your time, don't they? More modestly?'

Yes, he reflected, even women in the tribes - whom most white women judged savages - dressed more modestly than her. He said nothing.

'I don't have anything else to put on. I'm sorry.'

'It's all right.' Another man might have said the words lasciviously but he meant only that he could control himself and planned to do just that.

'History isn't my specialty,' she went on. 'But I like movies and I've seen lots of westerns.'

He shook his head. She was losing him again.

'You know what a theatre is?'

He nodded.

'People will be able to make things like plays that anyone can watch any time - well, except we're rationed now because we can't waste energy to watch them often or by ourselves - but they're like moving photographs. I've seen actors pretending to be men like you: hunting, tracking and fighting. In my time, the people who settled the West are like heroes - they help us to believe that we will be able to find New Earth and settle there. The movies might not have been very realistic, but I'll try to remember what the life they portrayed was like. Oh, this is all so exciting.'

He had to agree with that, even though he knew she was referring to a different kind of excitement from the one he'd been feeling on and off since the moment he set eyes on her. He wondered if she'd given any thought to what she was going to do next. She'd last about a day out there on her own - was she relying on him to help her out? Was she ready to trust him? Did he want her to?

Too many questions and not enough answers. He'd settle for time to see how things panned out.

'You gonna show me inside that capsule thing?'

'Do you want to see it?'

'Reckon that's what I rode out here for.'

She smiled, a merry smile that lifted her wan features. If he believed she came from the future, he'd have been glad to know that they still smiled like that there.

'Of course. I think I can find my way back. I got so carried away with everything I saw but...'

He grinned. 'I know where it is.'

 

MAGDA

She wasn't sure whether she should show the science of her time to a man of this time. If it had been nineteen-eighty-two, she wouldn't have done but here, in this distant time and this remote place, she couldn't see the capsule coming to the attention of anyone that mattered nor them being able to make sense of it if it did. This society lacked the knowledge and equipment needed to exploit the more interesting pieces of technology that the capsule contained, although it was nothing compared with the Searcher craft she'd left in orbit two-and-a-half centuries away.

When he mounted his horse and offered his arm to her, she didn't understand what he expected.

'Faster this way. Don't last too long on foot out here.'

She clasped his hand and sprang up lightly behind him. Although she'd never ridden, Searchers followed a grueling physical fitness program that made it easy for her to emulate what she'd seen in the movies. It was already cluttered behind his saddle, with two leather bags and a roll of bedding, but she managed to get comfortable perched on top of it. It was a long way up, with a correspondingly long way to fall, so she gripped the sides of his jacket firmly.

Horses must be immensely strong, she reflected, to carry the weight of two people and their bags. Perhaps animals weren't as inefficient as people of her time grew up to believe, knowing only a society where their work had long since been taken from them.

Thinking she'd walked much further than she had, she was surprised how quickly they reached the lake where she'd splashed down. The capsule was at the edge now, ringed by boulders.

'Did you move it there?' she asked.

'Yeah, didn't wanna get in that cold water one more time than I had to.'

She shivered at the memory of her swim to the shore.

'I couldn't open it,' he added.

'It's voice-activated.'

'Huh?'

She jumped down as soon as they reached it. Standing beside it, she recited the code. It would be no use to him anyway, because the voice-recognition circuits verified that the voice belonged to an authorized user, but she saw no need to try to explain that.

She watched his face as the hatch opened. It was a picture! Her opinion of him was confirmed when she saw no trace of fear or awe. He didn't understand how it worked but he wasn't afraid of the unknown and nor did he accredit it to supernatural gods. She was glad not to have misjudged him.

He looked inside, cautious but only to the extent that any rational man had a right to be.

He echoed her earlier question. 'Is it safe?'

She nodded.

He climbed inside, sat in the seat and inspected the monitors and switches that lined the walls. She let him look for a minute or two before climbing in behind him and sitting on his lap. She outlined what some of the equipment did, from showing what was outside the capsule to monitoring the occupant's health. He followed her simple explanations with interest.

When she'd finished, she looked into his eyes and gauged his reaction. He smiled.

'All right,' he conceded. 'You ain't from around these parts, or any other parts I ever heard of.'

She laughed aloud, delighted that at last he accepted her story.

'This ain't got no weapons then?'

The question immediately alarmed her. Perhaps she had misjudged him after all.

'Don't go on the worry. I ain't lookin' for anythin' better than I already got. But I wouldn't like to see the other fella get somethin' better - know what I mean?'

She did indeed, well versed in the prolonged arms races of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

'No, there's nothing like that. All this capsule is designed for is to return a single person from the sky to the earth. The equipment is all for monitoring and navigating.' She returned to her earlier train of thought. 'Even so, I'm not sure that people of this time should see something from my time. I don't believe I can avert what will come but perhaps I'd risk making it come sooner than it should.'

'Give people ideas, you mean?'

She nodded. 'There are visionaries from around this time, writers like Jules Verne and H G Wells, who will make some good guesses. There are more still in another seventy years or so. But I think they should reach their own ideas, just as I was taught that they did.'

'You don't know somebody didn't see your capsule and keep it quiet.'

'No, I don't. That's one of the paradoxes that made people doubt time travel.'

'Paradoxes?'

'Contradictions that seemingly can't be resolved.'

'Hmm. When I circled the lake lookin' for tracks, I saw a cave over there.' He indicated a point less that a quarter of the way around the shore. 'If this thing'll roll, I reckon we could hide it in there.'

It seemed a reasonable plan, so she powered down the equipment and prepared the capsule for storage. She couldn't think of any way in which it could possibly be of service on this world but she found it comforting to know that it would be safely hidden if she later discovered a use for it. He watched what she was doing, his keen eyes following her every movement. She suspected he'd be able to describe everything she'd done, no matter that he couldn't know its purpose.

'You got any money?' he asked suddenly.

'Money?' She knew the word, although in her time debits and credits were more familiar terms for the same concept. 'No, we don't have it in the form you know. You have paper notes, don't you?'

He nodded. 'And coins. Thing is, you'll need stuff and I ain't exactly rich. Anythin' here to sell?'

She looked around, surprised to realize that she'd overlooked such a fundamental issue.

'I don't know. What has value here?'

He shrugged. 'Gold's good.'

She shook her head slowly. Some of the capsule's circuitry might be plated with gold but it would be difficult to extract and the quantities would be infinitesimal.

'Silver?'

Although silver was an excellent electrical conductor, copper was generally used in circuitry.

'I don't think so.'

He paused before making his next suggestion in a voice that suggested he thought it unlikely.

'Gems?'

Why hadn't she thought of that? At the heart of the capsule's sensor system was a large industrial diamond. Although it wouldn't have been selected for color or brilliance, it was several carats in size and absolutely clear. Surely it must have some value.

'A diamond?'

'That'd be mighty fine.'

She retrieved the capsule's toolkit from a compartment and began to disassemble the sensor unit. An important aspect of a Searcher's training program was an extensive maintenance course, given that long periods in space required them to keep everything in working order. It took her about ten minutes to extract the stone. She passed it to him.

'Do you think I could sell that?'

He examined its functional cut, symmetrical on all planes, and then held it up to the light.

'Fact is, I ain't no expert but I reckon it'd give you a fair start, if you're sure it's a diamond.'

'Oh, yes, solid carbon. No doubt about that.'

His quizzical look told her that he wasn't familiar with the chemical composition of diamonds.

'Well, it'll have to do because I don't have anything else.'

She tucked it into a pocket in her belt.

'Let's get goin' then. Don't wanna lose the light.'

They climbed out and began the task of moving the capsule. It was hard going, especially the last few meters up to the cave, but eventually it rolled to a halt against the back wall. It wasn't visible even from the mouth of the cave.

'No reason for anybody to look in here. There ain't nothin' out there but the water that any man'd want, and I reckon that's only here after the heavy rains. It ain't a cattle route, that's for sure.'

'Thanks, Vin. I could never have moved it on my own. I wasn't even much help.'

He grinned. 'You ain't cut out for heavy work - a good gust of wind would blow you away.'

He couldn't have known how right he was, given that she'd been designed to consume minimal resources rather than to perform manual labor.

'What next, then?'

He shrugged. 'We might as well stay here for the night - it's as good a place as any.'

She didn't know whether he was deferring a more detailed assessment of their plans or whether he hadn't as yet considered the matter. With an unprecedented sense of freedom, she realized that she didn't care. Spending the night right there with him sounded, in his words, mighty fine.

 

VIN

He started a fire in the mouth of the cave while she took care of private matters. When she returned, he saw that she was fumbling with the ring on her suit. The front was open to her crotch, revealing a tantalizing slice of pale skin. When she pulled upwards on the ring, the suit seemed to seal itself, leaving only a fine line that was hardly visible in the twilight. She fastened her belt.

'Does everybody dress like that where you come from then?'

He realized that, with the evidence of the capsule, he now accepted she came from the future.

She nodded. 'These suits are made from recycled plastic. They absorb soiling into the weave but not into the fibers, so they can be laundered with the minimum of water and detergent. We're short of everything and we dare not destabilize the atmosphere further with more waste products.'

He grasped the general gist of what she was saying but recognized few of the specifics. Returning to his question, he wondered what it would be like to see the contours of every woman's body - did a man stop noticing after a while? He wasn't sure he liked that prospect. Then it struck him that wearing a suit like that, with all he'd got on show, would be worse still.

'Would it help if we had sex?' she asked suddenly.

'Hell, no!' he said sharply, as appalled by the odd but recognizably base phrase as by the offer.

She put her hand on his chest, her tiny fingers hooked over his collarbone. Her expression was earnest, a little confused, but he saw no hint of embarrassment.

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. I thought you wanted sex.'

He cast around, trying to put into words the visceral reaction that she'd provoked in him.

'Fact a man wants it don't mean a woman has to give it to him. Not in my time, anyhow.'

'Nor in mine,' she reassured him. 'It's just one of the few things that aren't rationed. If people want to, they do.'

'Women just...?'

'Women, men, any number of either. Since all the related diseases were cured and fertility fell so low, most people can't see any harm in it.'

That piqued his interest. He hadn't realized that such diseases could be cured, although he hadn't truly subscribed to the notion of them being God's punishment either. The rest of it didn't sound so good but there was no way he intended to discuss such matters with a woman. He backtracked to what she'd said before that. Was she saying she wanted to lie with him? He wasn't sure and couldn't ask. He didn't even know what answer he'd want to get if he could ask, given he wasn't particularly fond of loose women and yet found the idea of uninhibited carnality intriguing.

He changed the subject. 'How will you get back there?'

'I can't. The capsule is designed for splash-down not take-off.'

He shook his head to indicate his - increasingly familiar - sense of incomprehension.

'It was built to bring me home. Even in my time, it couldn't have taken me away again. No one there will know what happened to me and they certainly don't have the means to bring me back. I'm stranded.'

He'd expect someone who was stranded to be far less happy than she sounded.

'You don't seem too broken up about it.'

'You haven't seen my time.'

He heard the immense sadness behind her words. Somehow, in just a couple of hundred years, people had ruined the whole world. It had often seemed to him that people destroyed pretty much everything they touched and now, if he was to believe her, he knew it to be true. To his surprise, he found that he was beginning to believe her. He knew she'd read his reaction when she spoke.

'There are a hundred good years before it all goes wrong, Vin. Your children and grandchildren will see diseases cured, great discoveries made and material comfort increased beyond the wildest dreams of your generation. It's the people of my time who suffer, in ways I doubt you can imagine. I have lived my life under that shadow - I can't help being happy now I've somehow escaped it.'

'Don't you wanna try and change the way things go?'

He knew from her expression that his accusation had touched a raw nerve.

'It can't be changed. For decades, people knew the damage they were doing but still most refused to make even the smallest sacrifices. Thousands of dissenting voices, libraries full of research, were not enough to change the course of history. Some fools even wanted to hasten the end of the world because they believed it would bring the second coming - it took another two centuries of false alarms before that idiocy eventually burned itself out. One voice now cannot change the future.'

She leaned closer, her voice lower but still more intense.

'I'm a Searcher, Vin. I was selected and conditioned from before my birth to pilot missions to look for a new home for humankind. I was... altered... to make me better suited to it: small, resistant to most known conditions and so on. I have spent eight years - a third of my life - on that search and I expected to devote the rest of my life to it. Please don't judge me when I say that I'm happy to be here. Now I've seen the world as it was, before it's spoiled, it doesn't matter what happens next.'

'It matters to me.'

'Of course it does. It's your future. that's as it should be.'

'I meant it matters to me what happens to you next.'

'It does?' She promptly threw her arms around his neck.

He raised his hands slowly and placed them on her back. He could feel the warmth of her skin through the fine fabric. His impressions had been right: not only were there no stiff corsets underneath it - there was nothing but flesh. But, before he could respond, he sensed that her embrace wasn't sexual. She was clinging to him, trembling.

Only then did he realize that, in spite of everything she knew and everything she'd seen, she was still a young woman totally alone in a strange place. Somewhere, beneath all that confidence and courage, was someone who would never see home again. No matter how bad life had become in her time, someone as warm-hearted as her must have people she'd miss, people who'd miss her.

He hugged her tighter.

'We better eat and get some rest. I've only got one bedroll and blanket, so it'll be kinda snug.'

They made a poor supper from biscuits and jerky.

'Sorry but I can't do no better right here. The game stopped with the trees ten miles back. That's why I figure the lake ain't permanent - there'd be more life here if it was.'

'It's all right,' she said, after forcing down the piece she'd been chewing. 'The food in my time is nutritionally adequate but mostly not very nice.'

When they were done, he arranged his bedroll near the fire and settled himself on it before drawing her against him, her back against his chest. He pulled the blanket over them.

'Okay?'

She snuggled closer. 'Mmm. You must tell me all about everything. I recognize some things but so little of what you have here remains in my time. I've never been in the outdoors.'

'Never... How...?'

'The atmosphere became too toxic, once the balance was upset. We live in enclosed cities, breathing processed air and drinking processed water. This is all so wonderfully smelly.'

He smiled at the idea of a woman who liked things smelly. 'You sayin' I stink?'

'Yes.' She was murmuring now. 'But you're so alive. Everything is so alive.'

She sighed - a long, happy, tired exhalation that seemed to drain her last reserves.

He doubted more than two minutes passed before her steady breathing told him that she slept. After the events of the past forty-eight hours, she had to be dog-tired but still he liked it that she felt safe with him at her back. Although she'd already offered him what most men would want from her, that diamond would have tempted some. Still, if he'd been that kind of man, he'd probably have sampled her body before stealing her only possession. He couldn't tell whether she'd calculated the risks so dispassionately or whether she simply trusted him.

From his point of view, finding her was a good deal more interesting than finding the sky-rock he'd set out to look for. Perhaps his reticence about sex was quaint - given that he surely would take up her offer in time, if it still stood - but he was happy just to hold her. Female company was too scarce in town and he'd been alone since he bade Charlotte Richmond farewell months before.

He pondered what he'd seen in the capsule, things that he was certain were not of his time. Not even an educated man in a big city would know what to make of them. He'd have thought he'd seem like a savage to her, as red men often did to white, but her faith in him seemed to belie that. He wasn't sure if her people had come out of his: she was as pale as the whitest woman but he thought he saw something of the Chinese rail road workers in her hair and eyes. Perhaps people would eventually learn to live together, united by their desperate plight on a dying world.

He kissed the top of her head, his desire for her subsumed by a surge of protectiveness.

She was safe now.

 

MAGDA

'Mornin'.'

The softly spoken word next to her ear welcomed her into wakefulness. She remembered instantly the man at her back and the consideration he'd shown her. She pressed herself close to him, delighting in his strong embrace. She guessed he'd been awake for a while.

'You don't have to take care of me.'

It hurt her to say it but it had to be said.

'Don't I? You gonna take care of yourself out here then?'

His tone was mocking but without a trace of malice. She suspected she was hearing something closer to his true character, now he'd had time to assimilate what was by any standards an extraordinary tale. There was a wary side to his nature, perhaps born of hardship, but she sensed that beneath it beat a warm heart.

'I'm not your problem.'

She thought she managed to sound a lot surer about that than she felt.

'Who says you're a problem?'

'You'll think I'll fit right in?'

He laughed. 'No, I reckon there ain't too many like you around these parts.'

'Do you think I can learn to fit in somehow?'

'Sure. How hard can it be? You must be smart or they wouldn't have picked you for the job. Take it a step at a time. We'll fix you up with some clothes, get you back to town and say you're a stranger to these parts. There's a lady called Mary who'll help you out. She's smart too, and real nice.'

She twisted around to face him.

'Why are you helping me, Vin?'

The corners of his eyes crinkled in a smile.

'Can't just leave you to starve, can I?'

She touched her lips to his, gently but lingeringly, hoping he would reciprocate. When he did, his kiss was more assured than she'd expected from his manner the previous day. She felt the power of his desire in the control he exerted over himself, like a fire-storm barely contained by an energy field. Like everything in this younger world, he was more vital.

Not until then had she understood how grievously the human race had damaged itself when it destroyed everything else. If he ever agreed to have sex with her, it might be something entirely different from the tired couplings of her own time. Perhaps people had become casual about sex because it lacked its former intensity. Perhaps people of his time needed their social constraints to rein in an urge that would otherwise overwhelm them. She hoped she was capable of matching his passion, revitalized by the bracing air and mouth-watering food of this place.

She hoped to have the chance to find out.

 

VIN

He felt his body responding and knew that she, pressed close to him as she was, would feel it too. Having registered his interest, he deliberately broke the mood.

'Be easier on the horse if we take it steady. I got a place in mind for tonight that'll put us just past halfway. Sun's well up so we'd better get movin'.'

They broke camp quickly and began the journey back to town. She sat firmly behind him, as if she'd been riding all her life. He liked the boldness with which she tackled each new challenge, and her ease with the horse even though he was the first she'd seen in real life.

It would be a fair journey riding double but it was like an instant in the whole of history compared with her journeys. He traded stories, answering her questions about the country they were riding through in exchange for her stories about the stars and the future. He soon discovered that she was much happier to talk of the stars than the future: all her hopes had been bound up in her search.

'Still glad you ended up here?' he asked eventually.

She tightened her grip around his waist so much that it pinched his gut.

'Oh, yes! Look... listen... Oh, yes!'

He looked around. It was the finest of days in, for his money, the finest of seasons and they had reached greener country. He'd always loved the spring, the way even the harshest winter had to surrender to its gentler cousin bringing the gift of new life. Everything about the season and the landscape was an old friend, the sun telling him time and direction and the earth giving him food and water. Even the birdsong, a meaningless chorus to city folk, was a choir of individual voices to him - he recognized each singer, knowing its species and whether it called to declare its territory, attract a mate or warn its flock of danger.

She was right: the world was splendid, something he realized was all too easy to take for granted when a man was worrying on other things. How must it seem to someone who had never been outdoors? He had some idea, from the frequent sighs and gasps that punctuated their progress.

 

MAGDA

The gentle insistence with which he instructed her before heading off to 'rustle up some supper', as he put it, struck her as strangely sweet. She wasn't to wander off or eat anything or approach any animals she might see - she might drink from the creek and that was all. He was a man who clearly didn't shy from giving orders and she wondered if he felt able to do that because she was female and, in the way of thinking of his time, that subordinated her to him. He did it too kindly for her to take offense but she'd have found it harder to accept from a different kind of man.

More seriously, though, she was glad to have his protection in the unfamiliar landscape. Without it, she might not have lasted long. Although she'd had some survival training, she'd soon seen how his skills surpassed those of anyone in her time. No one had lived at close quarters with nature has he had. No one had ever seen most of the birds and beasts that he named so effortlessly. He didn't describe them dryly, citing sections of a long-out-of-date field guide, but instead talked about them from personal experience, peppering his descriptions with anecdotes from his own observations.

After watching a pair of black birds bathing in the creek for a while, she thought of one thing she wasn't forbidden from doing. She could wash her suit, which felt grubby after a day's ride through the dusty landscape. She peeled it off, knelt beside the water and began to knead it inexpertly.

People washed clothes by hand in her time - they did manually many things for which their great-grandparents had used machines - but Searchers escaped everyday labors. On Earth, during their training, domestic staff cleaned their quarters. In space, chores were mechanized through necessity: every available technology was employed to miniaturize and minimize all facets of daily life.

A distant shot confirmed that Vin had located his prey.

She wondered how long it would take him to hit a beast. At an emotional level, she found killing barbaric. Hunting had been banned long before her time, to protect wildlife already under the dual assault of climate change and human population growth. Then, before her birth, the raising of domestic animals was outlawed because it was too wasteful of resources. One benefit of the gradual removal of anything palatable from human diet was that obesity rates finally began to fall after half a century of steady growth. By her time, people would have been ashamed to be fat, even if they'd been able to obtain enough food to put on weight in the first place.

She wrung out the suit fiercely and spread it on a boulder to dry. The fabric, a small miracle of its kind, would be dry in no time. She stretched out on a flat rock, still warm from the weak afternoon sunshine of the most perfect day she'd ever known, and closed her eyes.

 

VIN

He strode briskly back to where he'd left her.

He hoped she had obeyed him. If she had, she should be safe. He knew the area to be quiet and careful scrutiny of the ground while hunting had confirmed that no humans or large predators had been around since the storm. Any older tracks would have been erased by the heavy rain.

The feelings that swept over him when he reached the spot were too complex to categorize. Any relief he might have predicted was swamped by arousal at the sight of her naked body and dread at the prospect of having to wake her in that state.

He stood, undecided, appreciating her beauty while berating himself for looking at it. Her body, as pale as her face, was totally hairless, without even the light smattering he'd seen in Indians. Was that, he wondered, one of the ways in which she'd been changed? If so, why would they do that?

He fingered the damp fabric of her suit. It was unlike any cloth he'd ever touched. During the day, the certainty he'd felt after seeing the capsule had waxed and waned. She wasn't from nearby, or even from back East, of that he was sure but that didn't make what she said about time travel true. But then he could see no reason for her to make up an unbelievable tale about time when she could just as easily say she came from the far side of the world. Whenever he looked into her eyes, he became convinced that she was telling him the truth, or at least what she believed to be the truth. He'd detected not the slightest hint in her manner that she'd lied at any point. Until he did, he had to take her version of events at face value.

That was far easier to do than feigning ease with her naked body. Still, the temperature would soon drop and he didn't want her to catch cold, so he felt justified in covering her with a blanket.

Afterwards, he laid a fire, kindled a spark to light it and then speared the duck he'd shot ready for spit-roasting. He was glad to find something different for supper and reckoned the plump bird would make a fine meal. It was cooked right through before his companion awoke.

She groaned wretchedly as she tried to straighten. It must have been a tough couple of days for her and sleeping on a rock wasn't to be recommended. He went to her side and helped her to sit. She clasped the blanket around herself, smiling warmly at him.

'Thanks, Vin. You're very kind. I didn't mean to fall asleep but I was so tired.'

She reached for her suit. When he passed it to her, he noticed that it was already bone dry. She let the blanket fall open so that it was still around her shoulders while she pushed her legs into the suit. He resolved to stay where he was, not moving and not even averting his eyes. He tried to behave exactly as if she was just putting her boots on, which she then went on to do.

'Men and women... where you come from... they do this kinda stuff in front of each other...?'

She nodded. 'It's very crowded. We live at very close quarters. I suppose modesty was a casualty of that. I don't really know - it changed before my time.'

'You can't keep doin' that here. It'll get you into trouble.'

'I won't. It just seemed pointless to worry now, after you've already seen me.' She glanced over at where his horse was contentedly filling its belly with new grass after two days on the barren rocks they'd left. 'Wasn't there some old saying about horses and stables...?'

'Yeah, lockin' the stable door after the horse has bolted.' He smiled. ' But it don't hold true for this. The fact I've seen you don't change how I feel about seein' you again. Trust me on that.'

'I meant what I said before, Vin. You're welcome to take what you want so much.' Her attention wandered to the duck. 'But not until after we've eaten. I'm starving.'

He considered her offer throughout dinner, encouraging her to chat about her time while they chewed the tender meat and swallowed bitter mouthfuls of strong coffee. She was old enough to know her mind and good reasons to decline seemed scarce. The one he kept coming back to was practical, rather than moral, and harked back to something she'd said earlier. With the same determination that had enabled him to sit alongside her while she dressed, he tackled the question.

'You said somethin' before about fertility. You mean folk where you come from can't have kids?' How can that be?'

She stared into the fire with an expression he was coming to recognize. He guessed that she was casting around for a way to explain something in terms that he could understand.

'It started about a hundred years from now. Doctors began to notice that men were finding it more difficult to father children. When they looked at the men's semen through microscopes, they could see that there weren't many seeds in it.'

She glanced over to gauge his understanding. He nodded slowly. It was a horrifying prospect but he could follow what she was saying.

'They discovered that some of the things they were manufacturing were making men more like women in certain ways. This was one of the symptoms. It affected animals too. Later, other things began to affect women in different ways. It got harder for couples to have children. Often doctors would have to carry out treatments to make it possible. After a while, it became unusual to conceive naturally. Later it became almost impossible. It hardly ever happens in my time.'

'You too?'

'Me especially. Searchers are always created in laboratories and some of the modifications make it certain that we won't have children.'

'How can they do that? They don't have no right.'

'People argued about that for years. In the end, though, they did what they had to, to survive. We human beings always do, then we think up a justification for it afterwards.' She smiled, as if to confirm that there was no bitterness in her words. 'I don't mind. My job was even more important than having babies. Imagine if I had been the one to find New Earth - my name would have gone down in history. That's every Searcher's dream.'

The sincerity in her assertion touched his very soul. If he'd doubted her words about her power to change the future, he believed them now. No one who'd devoted their life to such a quest could be blamed if fate rewarded them with a fresh start in a better place.

If there were no risk of a child, he wondered how much freer folk might act in his own time. Even married couples lived under the threat of more children they couldn't feed. Imagine being able to do what you wanted, when you wanted, without the slightest risk. He'd seen a glimpse of that a time or two, in places where boys stood in for women, so he had some idea of the outcome.

'Do folk still get married? If they can get... friendly... with anyone...'

'Of course. Some people prefer an exclusive bond, although most choose legal partnerships rather than marriages of the kind you know.'

'And you? Do you... did you... have somebody?'

'Searchers can't make lasting bonds. We are rarely on Earth after maturity.' She giggled, the first sign of shyness he'd seen in her. 'Of course, here I'm just like anyone else - I can do what I want.'

He doubted that there was another person in the world quite like her but her reply was revealing. She'd been no freer in her life than he was in his: she was free only to make love, while he was free to feel love. He knew which he preferred, although obviously a bit of both was ideal.

He'd thought through the situation a good deal more than he normally would before accepting an invitation from a pretty woman. Initially, he'd felt a responsibility of some kind towards her but, now, it was concern for himself that slowed him down. If she gave in town what she was offering so readily to him now, he could see all kinds of problems arising and not least among them was his own jealousy. He was as capable as any man of having casual relations, whether with a whore or a passing stranger, but he couldn't make love to a young woman he was growing to like and then stand by contentedly while she worked her way through his friends.

'Thing is,' he said softly. 'I ain't so good at sharin'. Not when it comes to the ladies anyhow.'

She looked at him, as if puzzled, but didn't reply.

'Ain't sayin' it has to last,' he clarified. 'But I ain't given to sharin' while it does.'

She stared at the fire for some time.

'You decide this before you come together?'

'Not always,' he admitted. 'But you're puttin' your cards on the table, so I'm showin' my hand.'

She shook her head, as if he was mad, then said gaily, 'I'll try it your way. I might not be very good at it, because I've never had an exclusive bond before, but I promise I won't have sex without asking you first. Does that mean women as well as men?'

Privately, he wasn't so sure about that but, knowing he needed to keep it simple, he answered firmly. 'Definitely. Don't do that - or even talk about that - whether you're with me or not.'

'Oh, yes, of course. It's a taboo here, isn't it? Forbidden?'

'Yeah. Stuff goes on but you gotta be real sure of folk before you let on about it. You hear me?'

She nodded. 'I like men best anyway.'

'Glad to hear it.'

Feeling that they'd reached an understanding of sorts, he reached for her. He wasn't hung up on rigid customs or fixed schedules. Their courtship might have been brief, as it often was in nature, but he felt he'd got a measure of her and given her time to get a measure of him. Ready now to take was had seemed forward the previous evening, he saw no benefit to either of them in his spending another long night resisting her allure.

 

MAGDA

The sudden shift in his demeanor took her by surprise. Just as she'd been unprepared for his abrupt rebuff the previous day, so she was unprepared for his change of heart now. Of course, she reflected, she'd also had a change of heart over precisely the same period.

She had offered sex to please him, partly to repay the kindness he'd shown her and partly to free him from the influence that her body was so evidently exerting over him. His refusal had been unexpected but, to start with, it hadn't troubled her in the least. It was later, secure in his arms, that she'd begun to wish that the social constraints of his time did not bind him so tightly. Now she saw that he was his own man, reacting at his own pace, shaped but not controlled by his world.

He unfastened her belt and pulled down to its full extent the zipper on her suit. She let him take the lead, aware that he might demand it but also wanting it to be that way. The men she'd known might far surpass him in education and sophistication, but she couldn't think of one who exuded the raw masculinity that seemed to flood out of every pore in his skin.

He parted her suit and kissed her sternum delicately. The sharp contrast between his rough manners and his gentle touch delighted her. He folded back the left side of her suit and laid his stubbled cheek on her small breast. She could see her heartbeat, reverberating through her ribs and against his skin. Her nipple ripened, anticipating his lips, lengthening and hardening while he watched. Instead of claiming it, he folded back the right side of her suit and blew across her chest until the cool draft teased the other nipple into a salute. Only when she began to squirm with frustration did he indulge her, sucking first one side and then the other, using little tugs to draw her areola into puffy cones of sexual tension.

'You're real pretty,' he said, between mouthfuls.

She wriggled out of the top half of her suit, her breasts bobbing as she did so. He caught the nipples deftly as they swayed, twisting his head to match himself to her movements, trapping her flesh between his teeth and nibbling in a way that sparked an instant reaction from her sex.

She hadn't been sure what to expect from a nineteenth-century man, coming as he did from a time before women's rights and Marie Stopes' ground-breaking work to improve the lot of the wife. If history told the truth, some women had suffered wretchedly at the hands of their men. Clearly, he was no such man, knowing instead both how to pleasure a woman and that her pleasure could only intensify his own.

He moved over her, touching his lips to hers in a kiss that combined passion and tenderness to ecstatic effect. She closed her arms around his neck, drawing him closer and opening her mouth to his. His tongue flickered inquisitively, tracing first her lips and then the edge of her teeth. She sucked gently to encourage him to explore her more fully. He grew bolder, sweeping the line of her gums and then probing her throat.

He was still fully dressed, all bar his jacket. She pulled playfully at his shirt.

He stood to unbutton its placket and then pulled it over his head, with the bandanna following a moment later. He wore the shapeless underwear she'd seen cowboys wear in films, sometimes in place of a proper shirt. His was worn, faded and stained in places, but no worse than his other clothes. He shrugged out of the top half in the same way as she'd done with her suit.

When he stopped there, she giggled and slithered out of hers.

He grinned and stripped, standing butt-naked in front of her as if he was a completely different man from the one who, shocked by the suggestion of sex, had questioned her about modesty. It was as people said: sex might be hidden but it always went on - there'd be no people if it didn't.

Now there was no doubting his interest. He was ready to enter her and she was ready for him to do it. She laid back and parted her legs in invitation.

He knelt and leaned over her, kissing her again and then working slowly down her body. He returned, briefly, to her breasts and then planted kisses in a circle on her belly. She stretched contently, pulling her abdomen into a hollow for him to explore as she did so. He traced its outline with more kisses before straying further down.

If she'd thought his repertoire would be limited, she'd been wrong. He touched the tip of his tongue to her cleft and then ran it slowly along the groove without parting it. She wanted him to go faster but she wanted him to take his time. She shivered.

Each time he moved, his tongue slipped almost immeasurably deeper, until she knew he must brush her clitoris soon. When he did, the contact was electrifying. Suddenly, she forgot all about who he was and what he might expect. She thrust herself against him, claiming the satisfaction that she so desperately needed now.

He slipped his hands under her butt and held her to him, devouring her until she moaned in delight. She was on the brink, so close that she feared she would be too soon, but he seemed completely relaxed even while every muscle in his body was corded with tension. Just as she thought she was finished, he was back over her and thrusting into her gaping sex.

In that moment, she glimpsed the primeval heritage that they shared but to which he seemed so much closer. With her teetering on the edge of her climax, he pumped into her body with an urgency that she'd never felt before.

No longer tender, he ground her into the earth with the intensity of his need. His pubic bone slammed against hers as he prepared to inject his potent fluids into her. Too thrilled by the image of his semen alive with strong-swimming sperm, she had no room for regret at the barren soil that her body offered to his seed. When he slowed, she knew the moment had arrived.

Breathing raggedly, he made three powerful but clumsy lunges.

Feeling the lack of co-ordination in her own trembling limbs, she empathized with his faltering control. She was no longer breathing, frozen by the random firing in her brain, on the verge of passing out. She arched her back and pushed her clitoris against him, letting his final thrust take her with him to a place outside of time where they were one.

Then he was stroking her cheek and her body's systems were resuming normal operation. She cuddled up against him, refusing to surrender the intimacy of their joining before she had to.

'That made me feel so alive,' she whispered. 'Is it always like that for you?'

'Only when it's good.'

'It was good with me?'

'It was great with you. I know it's wrong, but I'm glad you can't get back.'

'I wouldn't want to, even if I could. This is my New Earth.'

 

VIN

He was hooked, and man enough to know it. He'd spent a good part of the night awake, pondering her future, while she slept peacefully, seemingly unconcerned about it. His careful consideration extended beyond breakfast and into the ride back to town. The last time he'd planned a life with a woman, it was only a dream that never faced the test of reality.

In truth, he doubted that a new life with Charlotte would have lasted six months - she wanted to be a farmer's wife, and he was no farmer. His prospects for some kind of life with Magda seemed to hinge on what kind of life she could build in his time. Knowing that motherhood was not a part of her destiny - although he had no idea how that could be determined before a woman was born - he reflected that she was equally ill-equipped to be a frontier wife. Her fragility wasn't of the kind that good food could put right. Even her bones were unnaturally thin and he could barely picture her laboring over a tub of washing, much less helping a man with the back-breaking toil of sod-busting. In a way, he was glad that she was as unsuited physically to an ordinary life as he was spiritually, but he didn't subscribe to the notion that a problem shared was a problem halved.

The only role he could envision for her was that of teacher, although even he - who'd never entered a schoolroom - knew that no school in his time would teach the kind of knowledge she possessed. A school of the sort that the townsfolk had begun to talk about of late would teach the bare basics of numbers, letters and history. Still, it would pay her board and keep her in town, with him, meeting his objectives if not her own.

All he could do was put it to her and see what she thought.

'I been thinkin'...' he began.

She had been holding his jacket loosely in one hand as they rode, fully at ease with the horse's movements, but now she put her arms around him and squeezed lightly.

'I know.'

He leaned back into her embrace, seeking to close the distance he might unwittingly have opened by letting his practical concerns come between them after their love-making,

'I was wonderin' how you'd feel a bout teachin' littl'uns.'

'In school?'

He nodded.

'Wouldn't I need to be qualified?'

'Huh?'

'Pass some kind of test?'

He hadn't thought about that.

'I ain't sure,' he admitted. 'I think there's some kind of certificate, but I reckon it'd be easy for someone who knows the stuff you know.'

'People here wouldn't believe a lot of the stuff I know.'

'True. Well, Mary'll know about it. Would you like teachin'?'

She seemed to think hard about that, probably the first time he'd put a question to her that she didn't know the answer to.

'It's not really what I was hoping for,' she eventually admitted.

'Oh. What was you hopin' for then?'

'I'd like to be outdoors. I wondered if I might get enough from the diamond to have a piece of land of my own.'

He could hear her fear that it was a foolish hope.

'You might at that. What would you do with your piece of land then?'

He heard his own caution, fearful that he'd found himself another farmer's wife after all.

'Is it hard to breed animals? Horses, for example?'

The ambition only surprised him for a moment before he saw that he should have known she'd want to enjoy the strengths of this time, not what must surely seem to her like its weaknesses.

He grinned. 'Horses ain't so different from men. They'll breed all right, given half a chance. The hard work comes in breedin' good ones.'

'Do you know how to breed good ones.'

'I know a man who does.'

'Would he help?'

'He had that life once and I ain't sure he's lookin' to go back to it. But I reckon he wouldn't mind pointin' a friend in the right direction. I could help you, if you want.'

She laid her cheek against his shoulder blade and sighed.

'I want.'

Her words came as a delightful confirmation that somehow, in the space of two nights and a day, he had found a place in her heart, just as she had in his.

'Okay. The way I see it, there's two things we need to do for starters. One, get you some clothes so you can ride into town without tongues waggin'. Two, find out what you can get for that diamond. I got friends I can call on for both.'

'You have a lot of friends, Vin.'

He'd never thought of it that way, having seemingly spent half his life alone, but she was right.

'Yeah, I reckon I do at that.'

 

MAGDA

It was well after noon when they stopped atop a small rise. Below them was a small wooden house, porch out front and a wisp of smoke at the chimney, just as she'd imagined frontier life. Vin walked the horse down to it, something she'd learned was to cool him ready for rest so that he didn't take a chill. Everything about the animal's regime fascinated her, not least the close parallels between his needs and theirs. She also saw how, when a person depended on an animal's well-being for survival, those needs must always be considered first.

She had no sooner hopped down than an elderly woman appeared at the door. Sharp eyes roved over her suit before settling on Vin.

'Well, well. What has the cat dragged in today?'

'Hey, Nettie, I'd like you to meet Magda Friel.' He ushered Magda forward. 'Magda, this here is Nettie Wells. She's lived out here since the territory was wilderness.'

Magda held out her hand. 'I'm very pleased to meet you, Ms Wells.'

'Likewise, young lady, likewise. Come on in. I've got fresh coffee on the stove.'

After they'd drunk away the dust and exchanged more pleasantries, Vin came to the point.

'I was wonderin' if you could fix Magda up with some clothes. We're ridin' on into town and I reckoned she'd set tongues waggin' in that.'

'That she would, son, that she would. You going to tell me where you hail from, girl?'

Magda looked at Vin. He hadn't briefed her on what she should say. He shrugged, which she took to mean that he considered Nettie his equal in understanding and that he trusted her to keep their secret. Still, it had taken the capsule to persuade him and they couldn't show that to this woman. She hesitated, afraid more of alienating a friend of his than of any risk to herself.

'Your arrival wouldn't have anything to do with that storm the other night, would it? I saw some mighty strange things in the sky. I ain't seen nothing like that in all my born days.'

Magda inclined her head to admit the fact.

Nettie rose from her chair stiffly and came closer. She fingered the cuff of Magda's suit.

'You came down from the stars?'

That seemed near enough to the truth. 'Yes. Will you help me?'

Nettie returned to her chair and pondered the answer. 'What exactly would I be helping you to do?'

'To start a new life here.'

'Why would you want to do that? Ain't you got folks back home?'

'Not really. Besides, I can't go back. Landing here was an accident and I don't have the means to leave.'

'Won't somebody come looking for you?'

'They won't know I'm here. The storm threw me a long way off course, so far that they wouldn't be able to reach me without the same freak conditions occurring again.'

'So you're shipwrecked, in a manner of speaking.'

'Exactly.'

Nettie studied her, the scrutiny long and intent. Only then did Magda realize how much Vin had wanted to believe her, swayed by his loneliness and his attraction to her. This woman had nothing to gain and she was thinking carefully about what others might have to lose from any mistake she might make. Vin was right to value her as a friend - she had the courage and integrity to challenge.

Magda had been staring down at her hands, hoping against hope that Nettie would help. Finally, she looked up and met the penetrating gaze of those old eyes.

'Can you give me your word that you won't be hurting nobody here?'

'Oh, yes. I have never hurt anyone. I promise.' A promise seemed inadequate but it was all she could offer. Feeling the need to explain herself better, she added, 'I want to breed horses. Vin says he'll help me.'

'Does he?' Nettie looked at him with what Magda recognized, from observation rather than personal experience, was motherly pride. She saw him like a son, no matter that they shared no blood. 'Well, he's a good boy, there's no mistake. All right, my girl, I'll help you and trust you not to make me wish I hadn't.'

She went over and knelt by a big old chest against the far wall.

'I got a dress my late husband bought for me way back. I never wore it - darn thing was way too fancy for me - but I reckon it'd look right nice on you. I could make it over some, so it looks more like what the young'uns are wearing these days, if you care to bed down here for the night.'

'You sure you don't mind?' Vin asked.

'I never mind you being around, son. Reckon you know that by now. Your friend can take Casey's old room, now she's boarding in town, if you take the floor in here.'

'The porch'll do me just fine.'

'Suit yourself. Ah, here is it.'

She pulled out a dress of ivory lawn, dotted with sprigs of flowers. Magda fingered the fine fabric just as Nettie had fingered her cuff.

'It's beautiful.'

Nettie's warm smile brimmed with memories but her reply was light-hearted.

'That man always had good taste.' She turned to Vin. 'Reckon that horse of yours needs seeing to.'

Magda noted the indirect way that the old woman dispatched Vin for the private matter of fitting the dress. She probably didn't realize that they'd already explored each other's bodies but, even if she had, she might not have acknowledged the fact. What this society lacked in education it made up for in its rituals. It would take careful observation and analysis to learn the behaviors she would need to mimic if she was to pass for local, making her grateful for the substantial anthropological component included in Searcher training on the off-chance that an advanced life-form might be discovered.

 

VIN

Much later, he closed the bedroom door softly behind him. He'd been surprised how quickly Magda fell into deep sleep until she explained that her body was constantly adjusting to the strange environment, developing responses to each new substance she encountered, and that the process was tiring. He didn't understand exactly what she meant but equated it to how soon he tired in big towns full of people - it was always harder to deal with the new than the familiar.

When Nettie looked up at him, her wise old eyes were twinkling.

'Reckon she's caught you good, son.'

He saw no point in denying it and let his silence indicate his acceptance of the fact.

'You trust her?'

He nodded, hesitated and then decided to explain.

'I saw what she came in, so I know that part of it's true. The thing was small and kinda simple - seemed to me like it'd be better at fallin' down than flyin' up, but I can't be sure.'

'But you don't know that she means no harm or that nobody'll come after her.'

'No, I don't know that.'

She smiled. 'Just wanted to check you was thinking straight.'

He grinned. 'Most of the time.'

'So, what are you going to use for money when it comes to this horse ranch?'

Now the position of trust was reversed. He wasn't sure he had the right to tell Nettie about the diamond, but then they'd already trusted her with Magda's origins, albeit in a simplified form.

'One of the machines in that thing had a big ol' diamond inside. I ain't sure what it's worth, but I reckon she'll get somethin' for it.'

Nettie pondered that for a while before clearing her throat thoughtfully.

'I'm gonna put something to you to think on. I ain't decided on it yet myself but there's no harm in raising it with you.'

He raised his eyebrows encouragingly.

'Never thought I'd say it, but I've been feeling a mite lonesome now Casey's boarding in town. I've pondered selling up and taking a room too, but I've spent my whole life out here and I ain't sure I want to live right on top of folks. Thing is, I've talked to Casey and she don't want this place. She likes town and...' She gave a little laugh. '...that young friend of yours sees himself as a lawman, not a rancher, don't he?'

'I reckon he does at that.'

'So, maybe if your lady friend wanted to buy this place and let me keep on living here, well, maybe I'd want to think about it.' She paused before adding, ' And the fact is, it'd be mighty nice having you around.'

Although the suggestion came as a surprise, he took it in his stride.

'How much you figure it's worth?'

Nettie shrugged. 'What with you fellas paying off the mortgage and the money from the rail road company, it don't make too much difference to me. I'd want to see Casey right because she's kin, and see you right because I wouldn't have no land to sell without you taking on Guy Royal.'

He turned the idea over carefully. It was only a small ranch, even smaller since Nettie sold a strip along the north-eastern border for the railroad to pass through, but then raising good horses didn't need the kind of acreage that cattle grazed down to the dirt. The soil was good and the position was better, sheltered from the worst of the weather and closer to town than any other available parcels he could think of. There was a spot about a mile on from Nettie's place that'd be just fine for a second house, far enough for privacy but close enough to be on hand.

'Sounds good to me. How about I find out what the stone is worth and, if it comes close to the mortgage you had on the place, we can put it to Magda?'

'All right, but remember you'll need some over for a house and foundation stock. It ain't cheap to set yourself up these days.'

'Tell me about it.'

'She never said why she wants to breed horses. I'd have thought a wisp of a thing like her would want to stay inside, maybe teach school or some such.'

'Yeah, that's what I thought. But, where she comes from, they live inside all the time and they ain't got no animals to speak of.'

'Rum kinda place.'

'Yeah. Anyhow, that's why she's set her sights on something different.'

'She ain't got the build to be much help on the land. I know you know how to work hard, son, but are you sure you know what you're taking on?'

'Yeah. But she's real comfortable around a horse for someone who'd never been near one before. I reckon she's a natural and raisin' horses ain't all hard graft. What about tendin' them when they're sick, or rearin' a foal that's lost its Ma?'

'True enough, son. And, what with the land getting all settled up, there'll be plenty of call for horses with nice manners that a lady from back East can ride or drive.'

Vin nodded, considered for a moment and then voiced his thoughts. He'd accepted that Nettie's feelings towards him were close to a mother's, just as his for her were something like a son.

'I hadn't planned on tellin' you all this just yet. I figured you'd say it was hasty... try and talk me out of it.'

'It is hasty and no mistake. But sometimes folk just know what's right when they see it. 'Sides, if you're wanting to settle down, she's sharper than some of the young ninnies round these parts.'

He hadn't realized he was wanting to settle down but, after so long on his own, he'd fallen for two women inside a year. Maybe it was a sign that he was tired of living alone. Although Magda couldn't have been more different from Charlotte in looks or circumstance, they shared a courage and determination that appealed to him. They'd also both invested all they had in a dream of a new life. Could that be symbolic of his hopes for a new life after letting Eli Joe take his old one?

Those were feelings he'd find hard to speak about, even if they were less tangled.

Nettie smiled. 'You've been on your lonesome too long, Vin. There ain't no shame in wanting company in this life.'

Somehow, he knew that she meant warmth at night as well as conversation during the hours of daylight. He hadn't thought about her late husband, and knew she could look after herself, but only then did he understand that she'd missed the comfort of a man's touch in the years since.

'I know it.'

They turned in soon after that but he was still awake hours later. He wasn't troubled, far from it, but it took him a while to place the turbulence that prevented sleep as excitement. He was ready for a new life and he reckoned he could come around to the idea of raising horses, even though he'd never planned on it. It was better than sod-busting and, with Magda, he wasn't making matters any worse for her than they already were. If he'd left with Charlotte and things had gone bad, she might have been left with nothing when she could have had husband and home. He would throw himself into helping Magda but, if he failed her, she'd still be better off than she was now: she'd own her bit of land, know how the world worked in his time and maybe even have some friends. It felt like one of Ezra's card games, no gamble because the odds were so heavily stacked in his favor. He was hoping for perfection in his new life, but there were worse things than trading some hard graft for more sessions like the one they had already shared.

With his excitement spreading to his groin, he stole along the porch and listened at Nettie's window. She was snoring quietly but steadily. He moved to Magda's window in time to hear her sigh. Dawn was close and it sounded like she was in the restless sleep that often came before waking. He ran his fingers around the window, exploring the shrunken frame of the old sash. He lifted it cautiously and found that it moved readily. He took off his jacket, boots and gun in total silence, years of experience now equipping him for a lighter mission. He had no idea of Nettie's views on matters of propriety and saw no need to test them. It was several minutes before he knelt by Magda's side, collected himself, then leaned across and placed his palm firmly over her mouth.

She jerked into wakefulness, breathed in through her nose and then relaxed instantly.

So, being smelly had its uses. He took his hand away from her face and slipped it under the covers. She was wearing a nightgown that Nettie must have given her. Its fine cambric presented only the flimsiest of barriers, letting him feel her hardening nipples as he caressed her breasts.

Her hand found his shoulder, felt its way around his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers. He chewed hungrily at her, rougher than before, his appetite whetted more than satisfied by their first love-making. The pressure at his neck increased but, as she tensed, a bedspring groaned. He shook his head and positioned himself so that he could lift her squarely. She didn't move a muscle as he worked his hands underneath her and then raised her scant weight easily. He set her down on the floor with only the slightest rustle and a creak from one knee. Feeling her shake with suppressed laughter at the silliness of their situation and knowing how strange the secrecy must be for her, he appreciated that she was humoring their customs.

The room wasn't as dark now, the pre-dawn light making lighter patches among the deeper shadows. He scooted backwards so that his back was against the wall and then opened his pants and union suit. She rolled onto her knees, held up the skirt of the nightgown and shuffled over without a sound. She clambered onto his lap and let the nightgown settle modestly around her. He could see little but its whiteness but that didn't stop him imagining what was inside it. They held each other tightly, kissing then hugging and then kissing again. Then, in the easiest and most natural way he'd ever felt, she simply relaxed and sat on his hard cock.

He knew that her feelings must match his own, for her to go from sleep to soaked readiness in the moments since he roused her, and let her set the pace. She writhed on him, still kissing, and rubbed herself against his knuckle when he rested his hand at the base of his cock. Her body was shaking as if with sobs but she didn't make a sound. He claimed her mouth in a fierce kiss as the pressure from his balls grew and then exploded inside her, his passion only intensified by the need to suppress its every manifestation.

She sank back into sleep with his cock still inside her. He held her close, his cheek against her short hair and his hands linked behind her back. He stayed like that as long as he dared, which wasn't long given that he expected Nettie to rise with the sun, and then laid her on the bed, covered her and slipped out the way he'd come. Reclaiming his jacket, boots and gun, he went to the barn to see to his horse.

Yes, he was ready to settle down, especially if it meant starting off every day like this one.

 

MAGDA

She woke when the sun streamed through the dusty window, recalling a delicious dream and then feeling the stickiness between her thighs. She drew up her knees and cradled herself in delight. Vin had crept in before dawn and taken her, urgently and yet gently, respecting Nettie's instructions for their sleeping arrangements while still taking what he needed. He was everything she'd ever imagined a man might be.

Listening to the birds outside, she realized that this whole world was everything she'd ever imagined life might be. Although the scientists warned that New Earth was unlikely to be much like Old Earth, trying to set the people's sights on a realistic goal of breathable air and edible food, she'd been like everyone else - hoping for a paradise. None of her hopes surpassed this place.

She got up and washed using a jug and basin on a piece of furniture that she thought was called a washstand. If she'd come from a less distant future, she might have found the antiques quaint or the facilities inadequate. In her time, however, few people had much interest in relics of a past that had left them with so little future, and they were accustomed to so many privations that washing in cold water was no hardship.

Over a simple chemise and knickers that Nettie had made from a torn sheet in under an hour, she put on the dress that now fit snugly. It felt very strange but not uncomfortable. The waist sat lower on her than it would have on Nettie and other little changes subtly shifted it from the middle to the end of the nineteenth century. Combined with a claim to distant origins, it should be good enough.

When she went into the main room of the little house, she drew appreciative gazes from Nettie and Vin. In Nettie's, she saw pride in a job well done. In Vin's, she detected desire that had only been deepened by her transformation into a woman of his time. She recalled an old design mantra with amusement: less is more. Seeing virtually nothing of her body only made him want it more.

She wished they were alone, wanting to sit on his lap and feel his arms around her again, but she felt guilty when she thought of Nettie's help. She returned to the matter of her camouflage.

'My hair will look odd.'

She'd been worrying about that, after replaying westerns in her head and picturing all the women with long braids coiled onto their heads. Nettie's hair was quite short, but still longer than her own.

'Folk'll just think you've had the fever,' Nettie said kindly. 'You're pale enough.'

'Why would a fever make my hair short?'

'They sometimes cut it off,' Vin explained. 'So washin' it don't bring on a chill.'

She was unlikely to fall prey to any of the diseases of his time, although she couldn't be certain that the geneticists of hers knew of every virus and bacterium, but it was chastening to realize how his people lived with the knowledge that they might die of a hundred minor ailments that wouldn't even require hospital treatment in her time. A different kind of chill ran through her as she pictured losing him to something that should have been curable. She shuddered.

'You all right?' he asked.

She nodded uncertainly. 'I hadn't realized what it's like to have to worry so much about sickness.'

'Don't they have sickness where you come from neither?' Nettie asked.

'Yes, but not nearly as much as you do. Most things can be cured.'

'That so? Guess you still gotta die sometime though, don't you?'

'Oh, yes. In fact, I don't think our oldest people are any older than yours, even though fewer people die young.'

Nettie nodded sagely. 'Folk wear out - that's the way of things. If they've got any sense, they're ready for it when it comes.'

Only then did Magda realize that she wasn't ready to plunge into this strange society after all. It had been so easy getting to know Vin that she'd fooled herself that she'd be able to cope with a town full of people based on a few old films. She was going to make mistakes at every turn. It wasn't that she feared making those mistakes - it was just that she so desperately wanted to be able to build a life with Vin without anyone knowing she was anything but an ordinary traveler.

'I'm not ready, Vin. I can't go into town.'

He looked startled but, characteristically, didn't react without thinking first.

'You afraid you'll catch somethin'?'

'No. I just... I just don't know enough yet. I need more time.'

'All righty,' he said slowly. 'Time's somethin' we got plenty of.'

'Vin and me was talking last night.' Nettie glanced over at him and then seemed to make up her mind. 'I was saying you could do worse than this place for raising horses. How'd you like to stay on here for a while, catch your breath and think things through. Vin can ride on into town - he's got friends'll be on the worry if he's gone too long - and then come back out in a day or two.'

'I think... I think I'd like that. Do you mind, Vin?'

'What's to mind?' he said, his tone light enough but the disappointment clear in his blue eyes.

Nettie got to her feet and picked up a pail of vegetable peelings from the floor.

'I've got chickens that need feeding.'

Magda was in Vin's arms almost before the door closed behind her.

'It's not you,' she breathed urgently.

'You sure about that?'

'It's the only thing I am sure of.'

He kissed her. 'Good. I hope I wasn't out of line talkin' it through with Nettie. She brought it up, says she's gettin' kinda lonesome out here and thought maybe she'd sell up if you'd let her stay on in the house. She's got a niece she wants to do right by.'

'It is lovely here. Would it be suitable?'

'Yeah, it's good land and handy for town. I was gonna wait until we'd had someone look at that diamond before I told you.'

'Nettie wants you here, not me.'

'Well, she ain't hardly met you. Maybe this is best all round - give you a chance to get to know each other and see if this is the kind of place you want. I can tell folk in town you're out here. I've been thinkin' on a story about you losin' everything in a flash flood and so there wouldn't be nothin' unusual about you restin' here a while.'

'How much money would we need?'

'Somethin' close to three hundred dollars for the spread, then maybe another hundred for lumber and stock.'

'Is that a lot?'

'Depends on your point of view, I reckon. I've took in men with bigger prices on their heads than that, but it ain't so easy to come by that sort of money by hard work alone.'

'Take the diamond with you - ask your friend if it'll be enough.'

'You can't trust me with that.'

'I'd trust you with anything.'

His strong embrace closed around her, sending all her fears scurrying away again. It seemed so easy to believe that everything would work out when they were alone, so much harder when they had to explain their plans to other people - even someone as kind as Nettie.

'All right. I'll take care of it. You take whatever time you need.'

'I'm sorry if I've disappointed you.'

He shook his head. 'I was surprised how well you was doin'. I don't know as I'd have done so well if I'd have pitched up in your time.'

'It must be easier going backwards than forwards. This is all familiar to me, in a distant sort of way, but my time wouldn't be familiar to you at all.'

'No, I'd already thought on that. I reckon I'd be a mite wild to find things all gone to hell. I mighta blamed the wrong folk, before I got the story straight. Your way's better - take it steady and move on when you're ready. Works for huntin' so I reckon it'll do for this.'

Less than an hour later, she stood beside Nettie to wave him off. She wanted to cry but that seemed foolish so she held back the tears and said nothing for fear that her voice would betray her.

'He'll be back in no time, never you fear. You ain't the only one come over all soft.'

She nodded.

'C'mon. You can help me with the chores, find out if the outdoor life'll suit you.'

Magda followed meekly. It was a golden opportunity to experience the future she hoped to share with Vin and she wouldn't squander it.

 

VIN

He missed her all the way into town. He'd expected the nagging physical frustration but had been less prepared for the emptiness he felt without her to share the beauty of the surrounding country. She'd brought to life in him more than mere sexual desire and, in her absence, he felt lonely rather than just alone. Still, he would do what he'd undertaken to do and return to her with an idea of whether they could afford their dream, for somehow it had become his dream too.

His mind told him that it was good to have a chance to cool down, and that his feelings might fade away from the influence of his desire for her, but his heart told him that it was set on her. He put the matter aside, preferring to dwell on his memories of their intimacies than a futile debate about an uncertain future. Reliving their two encounters only increased his frustration but he couldn't, or wouldn't, stop doing it.

'Hey, Vin,' JD shouted down the street. 'We was starting to think you'd hit some trouble.'

'Hey, kid. No, but I run into someone who had. There were some flash floods to the south-west.'

He hitched his horse outside the saloon.

'Yeah? Where are they?'

'I left her out at Nettie's to get some rest. Said I'd come in for some supplies.'

'Her?' Buck's head appeared over the saloon doors. 'A damsel in distress?'

'She ain't your type, Bucklin.'

'Any woman is Buck's type, Vin. You know that.'

Vin gave JD a sharp look before shifting a more intense glare onto Buck. 'I said, she ain't his type.'

Buck held up his hands. 'Fast work. I like a man who knows what he wants.'

Chris stepped out from somewhere behind Buck.

'No rocks from the sky then?'

There was casual curiosity in the softly spoken question. One of the things Vin liked about Chris was how smart he was and how he took an interest in the most unexpected things. He shook his head: he'd found no sky-rocks, that much was true. He was happy to stake his claim to Magda but otherwise planned to act normally. He would talk to Ezra later about the diamond but, for now, he would drink whiskey and kill time with his friends, same as always. They followed him to a table.

'What's she like then?'

Buck's question was matter of fact and Vin reckoned a straight answer would be easier all round.

'Young, small, pretty. Came to America from some place way off and now she's lost everythin' she had in that darn flood.'

He hoped that would be enough to quell Buck's curiosity and give Chris the main facts, incomplete but true as far as they went. Being as objective as he could, he thought it was about his usual level of detail.

JD was shaking his head sympathetically. He surely knew better than most what it was like to strike out into the unknown to forge a new life, starting with little and not needing to lose that.

Vin played a few hands and caught up on the news in town, what there was of it, before taking his leave. He stabled his horse and visited the bathhouse, timing his activities carefully so that he was done by six o'clock. That was Ezra's customary hour for supper, the prelude to an evening's gambling when they were all in town and things were quiet, as they were that day.

He smiled to the waitress, scanned the room and then nodded towards the corner where Ezra was sipping an aperitif. She returned the smile and waved him in. His choice to meet Ezra there wasn't unprecedented. He always enjoyed good food, which the hotel served him as part of the Judge's arrangement for board, and Ezra sometimes enjoyed company at dinner. He couldn't recall exactly when they'd gone from acquaintance to friendship, but he found himself hanging around town with Ezra more than he'd have believed possible when they met.

'Good evening, Mr. Tanner. Ah had not realized you were back in town.'

Ezra's southern drawl was inclined to become more pronounced when he was eating in style: perhaps the fine china and silverware reminded him of his roots.

'Not two hours since.'

'Would you care to join me?'

'Thanks.'

'I heard that you went in search of meteorites.'

'Huh?'

Ezra's eyes narrowed, a sign Vin recognized of his retrieving something - whether an obscure fact or a fragment of conversation - from his remarkable memory.

'Rocks from the sky?'

'Oh. Yeah. Me-te-or-rites? That what they're called?'

Ezra nodded before turning to the waitress who was approaching.

'I'd like the beef this evening. Vin?'

'Same, thanks.'

'And were you successful?' Ezra continued smoothly after she left.

Vin gave a slight shake of his head. 'There'd been floods after all that rain. I found a woman who'd lost all she had - she was lucky to get out alive - and so I stopped to help.'

Ezra studied him in amused silence. Vin knew he was thinking much the same as Buck had, but was deducing his own answers to his questions rather than be so vulgar as to voice them. He gave his answer in a smile and shrug.

'Don't they say that every cloud has a silver lining?'

Vin wasn't sure whether he was implying that the good luck of their meeting was his or hers but, either way, he could see that the remark was kindly meant.

'I reckon,' he conceded. 'We kinda took to each other right away.'

'I have witnessed before that you are inclined to move quickly in matters of the heart.'

He couldn't deny that.

'Well,' Ezra smiled. 'I wish you better fortune on this occasion.'

'Thanks. Matter of fact, fortune is what I'm here about.'

'Really?'

Ezra sat back to let the waitress serve their meals. The sight of the steak and the scent of the steaming gravy sent Vin's salivary glands into action. Swallowing to clear his mouth, he hoped Nettie was feeding Magda well. He cleared half his plate before resuming the conversation, silently amused at how he emptied his mouth and wiped his lips before continuing, a sure sign of having spent too much time with Ezra. He kept his voice low when he finally expanded on his point.

'Would you know how to get a diamond valued and sold?'

He saw Ezra's surprise, but only because he knew him so well. The reply was as smooth as ever.

'I might. I take it the lady in question didn't lose absolutely everything, unless you have been concealing the extent of your assets.'

'I wish I had but I ain't. But this diamond came out of a piece of machinery, not a ring.'

'An industrial diamond? In that case, its value is likely to be much reduced. Are you familiar with the principles of valuing such gems?'

Having taken another mouthful of tender steak, Vin settled for making a face that asked whether Ezra thought he was likely to have such knowledge at his fingertips.

'It's called the four Cs: carat, cut, clarity and color.'

Vin glanced around to satisfy himself that their table was not closely overlooked, and that the other diners were looking elsewhere, before pulling a knotted handkerchief from his pocket. He passed it to Ezra casually.

'Do tell me this is clean.' Ezra murmured in habitual protest as he untied the knot and studied the stone inside. 'Well, you have carats in abundance - at least five by my estimate.' He held the stone close to the lamp and studied it. 'And clarity too.' He turned it between his dexterous fingertips, his pleasure in its worth as clear as the stone itself. 'The cut is basic, but that is easily remedied, and I'd need to see it in daylight to evaluate the color.'

'I thought diamonds were just like glass.'

'Many are, hence the premium for those with a pleasing tint - particularly lemon or rose.'

'I've seen it in daylight and I didn't see no color.'

'All right, if we assume it has only two of the four desirable properties, I believe the lady might still achieve somewhere in the low hundreds for it.'

Vin raised his eyebrows. 'Is that a fact? That's all she needs.'

Ezra smiled. 'It sounds as if she has a plan. May I be privy to it?'

'She's kinda hopin' to buy a parcel of land and raise horses.' Vin considered before adding, 'And Nettie's been thinkin' on sellin' up, so...'

'Most fortuitous.' Ezra's attention seemed to drift. 'I must confess that, occasionally, I envy you.'

Vin frowned. He had nothing that he'd expect Ezra to envy, except maybe Magda but he couldn't see how a man could feel envy over a woman he hadn't even seen, and a few hundred dollars wasn't enough to make her a prize for a man who could win double that during a run of luck.

'A woman who has known you only days trusts you with this? It has taken my friends more than a year to trust me and, even then, the extent of that trust is limited.'

'I trust you, Ezra. I'm askin' you, ain't I?'

'Yes, you are. Why, make I ask?'

'Well, it ain't as if I know too many people who could help.' He grinned to soften the admission. 'But that ain't all of it. I know you'd help yourself if you couldn't see no harm in it - like with that blood money - but you ain't gonna take a woman's last chance at a new life no more than I am.'

Ezra's gaze was fixed on the stone, a tactic Vin had seen him use before when he wanted to conceal emotions that were threatening to get the better of him, so he moved the conversation on.

'Could you help me sell it for her?'

'We would need to journey to a larger town. I don't believe we could realize its true value in a backwater such as this.'

'Landon?'

'I'll make enquiries.'

Ezra wrapped the stone and knotted the handkerchief. After weighing it once more in his palm, he passed it back.

'Thanks, Ezra.' Vin set down his knife and fork. 'That was a mighty fine steak.'

 

MAGDA

Not only was she being fed well by Nettie but she was enjoying every aspect of her stay. She liked the old woman and loved her home, the simplicity of her life and the gentle pleasures it afforded. Vin had warned her that it wouldn't be a fair picture, that building up a horse ranch would take a lot more work than the elderly woman devoted to the kitchen garden and few chickens off which she lived, and that the fine spring weather was no indicator of the harshness of winter's long nights. She believed him, and tried to take all those factors into account, but still she loved it.

What he couldn't know was the more dismal aspects of her own heritage. She doubted that she could explain to him the psychological burden under which her people toiled because there was no equivalent in his time. He lived in a young nation, vibrant and confident. How could he imagine the mental fatigue and emotional stagnation of a dying world? Would she even want him to?

Her single frustration during the days that followed his departure was the absence of communication devices in his time. Only the fact that she was a Searcher, used to long periods out of contact with Earth, enabled her to endure the absolute separation, something that no ordinary person in her time had experienced. They could never get away from other people, crowded into their enclosed cities, linked by embedded communication devices and total strangers to isolation.

Nettie stood up stiffly and leaned on her hoe. They were tending the kitchen garden, something that Magda usually enjoyed, but her attention had wandered from her mentor's customary descriptions of the plants and their tasks that day.

'You on the worry about him, girl?'

Magda shook her head, then began to worry. 'He'll be safe won't he?'

'Of course he'll be safe.' Nettie shook her head. 'That ain't exactly what I meant.'

'I don't understand.'

She often heard herself saying that in this time.

'I thought maybe you was starting to think you could be wrong to trust him.'

The thought had never crossed Magda's mind, but it gave her a sickening jolt now it had been planted. She'd been naïve to trust someone on such short acquaintance. If he hadn't been so handsome...? If she hadn't been so dazzled by this place...?

Nettie strode over and put a hard old hand on her shoulder. Magda felt its bony grip through her borrowed work shirt, suddenly as frightening as the distrust she felt of Vin. He'd introduced them, and she knew nothing of this place but what he'd told her. What if it was all lies?

'There, there, now. You calm down now. There ain't a man on this Earth you can trust more than him and I didn't mean to make you think different. I was only going to say... you listening to me?'

Magda had to make an effort to listen, to push aside the unwelcome doubts now jostling through her mind. She nodded uncertainly.

'Vin's a good boy, but he's apt to do things in his own way and in his own time. He said he'd find out what that stone of yours was worth and he'll do it. If he has to ride ten days, he'll still do it. He'll figure you know what he's about and expect him when you see him. Thing is, he's spent a lot of time alone and he don't always realize other folks might see things different.'

'I've spent a lot of time alone too.'

'Well, then, you'll know what it's like. You've got things to do, and you get on and do them.'

Magda nodded. 'Yes, I know what that's like.'

'Well, you get on back to your day-dreaming, if that's all it was.'

'I miss him.'

'You only just met him.' Nettie clucked her tongue, as if in despair, and went back to her hoeing. 'Young love!'

Magda followed behind, picking up the big weeds with the long tubers, while Nettie chopped the smaller ones back into the ground. The vegetable matter enriched the soil but they didn't want to dig back in the kind that could regrow from a small piece of root.

'Were you ever in love, Nettie?'

'My stars! You do ask some questions.'

Magda knew by now that Nettie, who never seemed to take offense, usually answered if she persisted.

'Were you?'

'Maybe.'

'Your late husband?'

Nettie chuckled.

'Not your husband?'

'My husband was a fine man.'

'Who then?'

'It don't matter who it was now, does it? Ain't like you'd know him from Adam. He was a fella I met out here, just before my husband took sick, and he wasn't around by the time I was free.'

'Oh. Couldn't you find him?'

'Country was wild back then and he headed north for the trapping. I wouldn't have known where to start. It'd be like you looking for Vin if he left this place. Where would you start?'

Magda considered that for a while. There were none of the things in this time that she would use for such a search in her time. With a man like Vin, who seemed to own nothing much beyond his clothes and his horse, she could see no way of locating him.

'Was he like Vin, a wanderer?'

Nettie smiled. 'Can't say I'd thought about it, but I reckon he was at that.'

'Do you think he'd have stayed, if things had been different?'

Nettie shrugged. 'Why do you ask?'

'I've wondered whether Vin will be happy to stay here. He talked about all the places he's been while we were riding. I thought he might not like being settled.'

'We none of us know how things'll take us till we get there. It was my husband's idea to come out here - I didn't want to come - but he never took to it and I loved it. Just now, I reckon Vin needs company more than he needs the trail. Time will tell if that's how it stays.'

Magda had noticed how Nettie often used aphorisms to express her views, and also how apt those old sayings were for the times in which they'd been coined. They often seemed trite in her own time - time had told on issues like climate change but, but by that stage, it was too late to halt the decline - but here the land was so big and the communities so small that people had to be more pragmatic about the extent of their influence.

Nettie paused in her work again.

'Maybe what you should be asking yourself is whether you could go with him, if he feels the need to move on. There has to be give as well as take in a marriage.'

Magda pondered on the discussion on and off throughout the afternoon but it was the possibility that she'd been wrong to trust Vin that kept coming back to her. If he could move on just like that, leaving no way to trace where he'd gone, perhaps a few hundred dollars would be more attractive than a life with her. Although Nettie's intentions had been good, she'd planted a seed of doubt that readily took root in the mind of a young woman not yet sure of her place in his heart or his time.

In her own time, Magda was highly trained and self-sufficient, but she was still an ordinary person. The geneticists might have honed her physiology but her psychology was unaltered - their knowledge of the brain's structure and chemistry wasn't advanced enough for them to enhance it, so the Searcher program relied on drugs to stabilize the levels of key substances in the brain. Those drugs were something else she'd left on her craft in orbit and all traces of them would have left her system by now. She had no way of knowing whether the violent mood swings she was starting to experience resulted from the shock of finding herself marooned in the past, the love she felt - or thought she felt - for Vin, or the instability of a life without drugs. Whatever it was, she suddenly yearned for the controlled existence that had ended so abruptly only days ago.

 

VIN

Nettie, of course, was right about Vin. He'd said he would do something and he'd done it. The hard ride they undertook and the bank robbery they foiled on arrival were, according to Ezra, akin to the tasks of Hercules, something he must complete before he could return triumphant. Vin had no idea what he was talking about, and would have much preferred an easier trail to his objective, but saw that Ezra was enjoying the whole affair. As they rode out to Nettie's, he raised the subject.

'You've been mighty cheerful these past few days, for a man who hates gettin' up early and ridin' hard.'

'I have never said I hate riding hard.'

'Well, gettin' all dirty then.'

Ezra said nothing. His silence extended for several miles, so that Vin was certain he wouldn't get an answer, but then he cleared his throat.

'Do you realize that only once has one of our number selected me specifically for a task?'

Vin hadn't realized that and tried to recall the circumstances.

'It was when Buck and I had in mind to take the fate of that young Indian into our own hands. We doubted your motives.' He paused. 'Chris never did, rightly of course as we later discovered.'

Vin shrugged. That situation had been a powder keg ready to explode. He knew it had challenged Ezra's attitudes, but he set the blame for that with his friend's background more than his character.

'In any event, suffice it to say that I welcome the opportunity to assist a friend and I particularly welcome the fact that the friend is you.'

'Thanks, Ezra. For what it's worth, you're good company on the trail.'

'It's worth a lot.'

'And I never would have got that fella up to three-fifty for the diamond either.'

'I have my mother to thank for my ability to read a price in a man's eyes. He still expected to make a fair profit after cutting it.'

'It'd be fair for you to take a fee. She'd still be ahead.'

'I find myself in funds at present.'

Vin had never noticed that making him more generous in the past but decided to leave it be. They had what they needed and, if Ezra was happy to settle for having what he needed, all to the good.

They finished the journey at a steady jog, bringing in the horses cool and ready for stabling. He was far from cool himself, longing for time alone with Magda and prepared for that to be hard to come by. He caught Ezra's amused glance and knew that his anticipation showed in his manner, even if not yet in a more obvious physical manifestation.

Nettie came out onto the porch when they were still fifty yards off. He thought there was something off about her smile and wave, although maybe that was just because he expected to see Magda beside her. He dismounted and hitched his horse, trying to look unconcerned.

'She all right?'

Nettie hesitated. 'She got herself all worked up, thinking you wasn't coming back, and now she's got a touch of fever. I don't think it's bad.'

He knew instantly that she wasn't sure of that and that she'd expected him to be anxious, after what he'd told her about his mother's death. People died all the time from fevers.

'I thought maybe I should go on into town for that doctor friend of yours, but I didn't like to leave her. Besides, I reckon I've got just as many potions for fevers as he does.'

He would have liked Nathan to be there but, in all fairness, he wouldn't have wanted Nettie to leave Magda alone. He trusted her knowledge of everyday ailments almost as much as Nathan's anyway.

'Maybe she didn't trust me as much as you thought,' he muttered to Ezra.

'The expedition took longer than we anticipated,' Ezra countered gallantly. 'I am not surprised that it might have been longer than the young lady expected. You should set her mind at rest.'

Vin went inside alone, leaving Nettie and Ezra to see to the weary horses. He opened the door to Casey's old room silently and found Magda sleeping.

She looked paler than ever, apart from the dark smudges below her eyes, but he thought she was a little less thin. The first part of her stay must have gone well, until the doubts set in. He didn't entirely blame her for her doubts because he'd had a few himself. He'd thought her interest in him might fade when she met other men in town who were smarter, richer or better looking. What she'd misjudged about him was that his honesty ran right through him. Even if he changed his mind about his part in her future, he would still have brought her the money as he'd promised.

He glanced across the room to where they'd joined together when he was last there. The intense satisfaction of that union had only made his need for another more urgent, but he supposed it might have fed her doubts: why not take her money as well as the pleasure of her body?

He sat on the chair at her bedside. It creaked under his weight. Her eyelids fluttered.

He covered her hand with his own and waited for her to wake.

When she did, he read every expression that chased across her face.

'You came back,' she said simply.

'You shoulda had more faith,' he rebuked her gently.

'I did, but then...'

'I know.'

'Are you angry?'

He grinned. 'No. You've tested me now. Next time I say I'll do something, you'll believe me.'

She pulled herself up using his arm and clung to him as if he'd been gone five years. He held her close for a minute or two, reflecting that the separation had actually resolved some doubts for him about hasty decisions and clouded judgment.

'Now, you get yourself cleaned up and put on that pretty dress Nettie fixed up. I had help from a good friend to sell that stone and I wanna let him tell you what we got for it.'

Leaving her to it, he followed the smell of coffee to where Nettie and Ezra were sitting on the porch.

'What do you think?' Nettie asked anxiously.

It wasn't like her to worry over so little, and Vin knew that her concern stemmed from his involvement and her fondness for him.

'She'll be fine.' He looked at Ezra. 'More like one of those faintin' fits fine ladies have than a fever, I'd say. She'd got herself all in a lather like a green horse.'

Ezra smiled. 'I had not envisioned you with a young lady prone to fainting fits.'

'Neither had I, Ezra. Neither had I.'

When Magda came out to them, she was transformed. Her skin once again looked translucent, rather than merely pale, and her eyes shone. He knew he'd have to be mindful in future that the inner beauty which radiated from her when she was happy could so easily be turned to wasted frailty by unhappiness. Still, he wasn't planning on making her unhappy.

'Ezra, I'd like you to meet Miss. Magda Friel. Magda, this is Ezra Standish. If you ever need help when I ain't around, you can rely on him.'

Ezra rose and kissed her hand with genuine warmth. Vin knew that he'd made his friend almost as happy as he planned on making his prospective wife.

'I have something for you, Miss. Friel.'

Ezra handed her an envelope. He hadn't offered it to Vin after they left the jeweler and Vin deliberately hadn't asked for it. And, during the return journey, the fact that Ezra held the money hadn't bothered him in the slightest. That hadn't been a revelation to him but he knew that it had told Ezra more about their friendship than words could ever have done.

From the moment he and Chris met, they'd shared an understanding that needed no confirmation, either in words or actions. The path to friendship with Ezra had been slower and harder, but they were now at a place where he'd trust his money, his life and even his woman with Ezra just as readily as he would with Chris. Fast or slow, it made no difference in the end.

With Magda, he'd felt the same instant connection that he'd felt with Chris. The confidence he'd gained from that friendship now enabled him to trust in this new relationship easily, but his past life meant that he could understand why it had been harder for Magda to reach the same point. Now that she had, they were ready to face whatever life threw at them.

She counted the bills slowly. Of course, she'd said that she wasn't used to money as he knew it.

'Over three hundred dollars?'

'Three-fifty,' he told her. 'Enough to get you started.'

She frowned. 'Enough to get us started?'

'Yeah,' he agreed. 'Us.'

 

Part 2

EZRA

Yet again, I fear, Vin may be confusing pity with love.

Even I, with the example and tuition of my dear Mother, am not immune to the plight of a pretty young thing. I once allowed myself to be seduced by a China doll, who had been cruelly abused by her uncle and, I confess, my feelings were of a carnal nature for a time. Soon, however, I saw my situation for what it was, akin to a kinder uncle, and returned the child to her true family. If ever I pledge myself to a woman, her character will be as admirable and self-sufficient as my Mother's.

Something within me, though, doubts the authenticity of what I am witnessing. During a sojourn of several years in New Orleans, I made the acquaintance of countless travelers from distant lands and never did I see a creature as frail and pale as this one. She is riding alongside us now, on a sorrel mare purchased from Mrs. Wells and in a once-fashionable dress skillfully brought almost up to date by that doughty matron, and a casual glance might not detect her foreign origins.

Closer inspection, however, reveals a woman who is watching everything and mimicking our actions. That pattern of behavior is familiar to me, given that I have witnessed it in my Mother and practiced it myself, but the reason for it eludes me. Mr. Tanner appears oblivious to it, an oversight that I must credit to his heart given that his eye is as keen as mine.

I wait until the young lady has temporarily taken her leave from us, the first time we have been alone since my doubts began to form, to raise the matter.

'May I speak freely, Mr. Tanner?'

His countenance, which has been entirely relaxed since his reunion with his betrothed - for I assume he intends marriage to accompany their shared ranching venture, becomes cautious.

'I reckon y'always do.'

'True. However, on this occasion, I doubt what I have to say will be welcome.'

'Best you just spit 'em out then.'

'It is my considered opinion that Miss. Friel is concealing something.'

His measured gaze is hard to read.

'It pains me to imply any impropriety but I would not want to see a friend deceived.'

He smiles, a reaction I had not foreseen.

'Thanks, Ezra. It's good to know you're lookin' out for me.'

'I had expected the warning to be resented.'

'Time was, it mighta been but I reckon I've tried warnin' a friend since then.'

Ah, of course, his doubts about the machinations of Chris's paramour. But that does not explain his apparent lack of surprise.

'But you believe my concerns are unfounded?'

'The fact she's hidin' somethin' don't mean she's hidin' it from me.'

I find myself smiling back at him, once again reminded that unschooled does not mean unintelligent. Acquaintance with Mr. Tanner has led me down a path strewn with surprises.

'Very true. And this secret is something of which you believe I need no knowledge.'

'That's about the size of it. Mebbe one day she'll tell you herself but it ain't f'me to do it for her.'

'Then I shall respect your judgment.'

'Just like that?'

'Just like that. Trust flows in two directions.'

'Thanks, Ezra.'

I mean what I say to him but trust does not allay curiosity. If anything, my scrutiny becomes still more intense while we continue our journey and, not long before nightfall, return to town. It will be interesting to monitor the reactions of the other five members of our group to his companion.

 

JD

She's not what I expected and that's for sure. When Vin warned Buck off before even bringing her into town, I expected something real special but this one's not as pretty as Mrs. Richmond and I didn't think she was anything out of the ordinary.

The fact is men and women are still a bit of a mystery to me. I don't mean I don't know what goes on, or that I don't want it as much as any man, but I don't understand what makes a man like Buck chase every piece of cuff in town, even when he's had a woman not a day since, and I don't understand what makes a man like Vin, who don't do more than take a look most of the time, suddenly run off after a particular woman he don't hardly know. I guess I have to get to like a girl and even then that's only one of the things I want from her. Vin wants it all the time from this one. Don't ask me how I know, because he don't make a big thing of it like Buck does, but I know.

Then again, she seems nice and Vin's my friend so I'd be nice to her even if she wasn't.

She's buying some clothes in Mrs. Potter's store at the minute and I'm taking the chance to catch up with Vin while he's got time on his hands. He's spending most of it with her just now, which I figure is to be expected when a fella's stepping out, so I catch him when I can.

'It's a real shame she lost all her stuff.'

'Yeah.'

It ain't easy getting anything out of Vin, not like it is with Buck, but I feel like this is something I want to understand better. Maybe that's partly because things are taking their course with Casey and I wonder if I'll be standing at the altar one day without really knowing how I got there. Most of what I know came from Buck and Josiah, which you could say is going to extremes.

'Can I ask you something, Vin?'

He smiles, that slow smile of his that tells me he knew I was working around to something, and gives a slight nod that says it's all right. He's not as fearsome as Chris but he's still a man you take seriously.

'How do you know she's the one?'

'I never said I did.'

I give him a look that tells him not to try to pull the wool over my eyes. He may not have said much but, when it comes to this, he don't need to.

'All righty. How do you know Casey's the one?'

'I don't.'

He thinks about that and I see he understands why I'm asking. Casey told me what happened with him and Ezra, while I was busy making a fool of myself with Mattie, and it meant a lot to me. It ain't just that he said no - maybe he didn't want her anyhow - but he tried to protect what I had, even while I was being too stupid to do that for myself.

'You ever think maybe there ain't just one?'

That catches me by surprise. I thought he'd be the loyal sort, although I know a lot of men ain't. He's watching me and grins.

'That ain't what I meant. I reckon to pick just the one, same as you do, but I ain't so sure that means there's only one would do.'

I think on that for a minute. 'But you don't make a move that often.'

It seems a long time until he answers. I get the feeling he ain't too sure about saying something he might regret. I hope he'll tell me what's on his mind because I've got a lot of respect for him and so I'd like to know his thinking on this. He glances around, as if to check there's no one nearby.

'I make a move when it feels right here, here and here.' He only moves his hand an inch or two, so it hardly shows, but I know he means his head, heart and pants. 'Simple as that.'

'So you're not looking for nothing particular?'

He shakes his head.

'And that works for you?'

'Reckon you been around me long enough to know the answer to that.'

'Mrs. Richmond?'

He nods. 'But then the trouble there was I wasn't listenin' to my head.'

'But this time you're sure on all three counts?'

'That's how it feels, but it don't mean I'm right.'

'But I want to be sure.'

'Why?'

I can't believe he's asking me that. Surely any man wants to know he's making the right move.

He smiles at me. 'What else are you sure of? That you'll be alive this time next week? That you'll make enough money to live on? You'd give your life to save someone else - I've seen it a dozen times - so why worry about what could go wrong with a woman? Most of 'em ain't likely to kill you.' His eyes twinkle and I know he's thinking about Mattie.

Before I can answer, Miss. Friel comes out of the store with her arms full of packages. She smiles across at him and, for a second, maybe I see something of what he does. There's a kind of freshness about her, as if everything is a surprise, not always a nice surprise but a surprise all the same. His smile gets broader, and I know it ain't his head he's thinking with just now, so I don't say no more. He gets up to go to her, then turns back to me for a second.

'I reckon it's a lot like poker. The more there is in the pot, the bigger the chance a man'll take.'

I watch him stride over to her, covering the ground fast but looking casual, and offer his arm. I ponder what he said. I figure the heart's the part that makes me miss Casey when I go outta town with the fellas and look forward to seeing her when I get back. And I'm not so green I don't know about the pants part: I've only ever done the whole thing with Mattie, and that was like casting pearl before swine as Josiah would say, but Casey makes me want to do it sure enough, especially when we're wet from swimming and pressed up close. My head must be what's holding me back but I don't know why it should. I can see what Vin meant about Mrs. Richmond because she already had a husband, not to mention we was there to do a job and the bad blood between him and Vin wasn't helping none, but there's no reason why Casey and me shouldn't be together.

I guess that could be what Vin was trying to tell me.

 

BUCK

'You know you've got yourself a firecracker there?'

Vin gives me one of his knowing looks but he only says, 'Most folk don't see it.'

'Yeah, well, she's on her best behavior.'

'How can y'tell?'

'As if you need to ask.' I grin. 'She's a woman, ain't she?'

'Things not so good between you?'

'You expecting them not to be?'

Vin and I don't usually beat about the bush like this. He's a man who says what he means - I figure that's what makes us get along so well, even if we're chalk and cheese when it comes to women.

He shrugs.

'I haven't laid a hand on her. I swear it.'

'I know.'

'So what's with all the attitude from her?'

He raises an eyebrow.

'I can't make it out. She don't have a problem with what I'm doing. I've seen that often enough to know it. But she's sure as hell got a problem with something.'

He takes a sip of his beer. What he ain't saying tells me as much as anything he might say, and he ain't saying I'm wrong about this.

'Maybe she thinks it ain't right,' he says slowly, 'that a fella can run around the way you do but a woman gets a name for herself if she steps out with a different fella more than once or twice.'

Well, I never would have got to that if I'd thought on this for a week. Vin knows as well as anyone that I don't judge a woman by that. Mind, he's right that a lot of busybodies do. Just last week, there was a fuss after I was seen leaving the Johnson place. Maybe that was what sparked this off.

'It's just the way of things. I don't like it but nobody's gonna change it.'

'Mebbe it ain't the same all over.'

'It's the same every place I ever heard of.'

'But if you came from a place where things was different...'

'And where exactly is it that she comes from?'

I know before I ask that he won't give me an answer on that. He started out acting as if everything was normal but it's like he's realized that there's no point trying to fool us and he's depending on us trusting him enough not to push the point. I can't put my finger on it but, even without what he's just said, I knew she came from someplace strange. I'll let it go for now.

'Why blame me for how things are?'

'Mebbe she blames you for leadin' ladies astray, when you know it could cost 'em dear.'

That sets me back, just like it did when Kate Stokes thought ill of me.

'That what you think?'

'I think it takes two.'

That's not much of an answer, saying it ain't all my fault but it ain't all not my fault either.

'Look, I ain't fell out with you over it in two years and I ain't about to now.'

Maybe that's what I needed to hear. I didn't see him as the kind of man to be pushed around by his woman but I know he's picked one with a mind of her own this time. I guess that only means she won't be letting him push her around, which he'd never do anyhow, not that she plans on telling him who his friends are.

'So, where she comes from, respectable women sow their wild oats too?'

'That's what I hear.'

'And that don't bother you?'

His eyes crinkle at the corners, telling me it don't and that my thinking it would kinda tickles him. I don't have much of a handle on how he is with women, given that this is only the second time we've so much as seen him with one.

'But I don't see you sharing your good fortune now.'

He laughs and stands up to stretch. Before he leaves, he drops in his answer, quiet but chilly enough to make any man think twice.

'You ever do lay a hand on her, Bucklin, and you won't be layin' it on nothin' else.'

He means it too. I know he'd never put a hold on a woman who didn't want him, but I reckon he just might cut off a friend's hand if it wandered where it shouldn't. I don't plan to find out.

 

NATHAN

Well, that's a sight I don't often see: Vin comin' into my clinic of his own accord. Oh, I've patched him up a time or two but only after he's run into somebody's fist or bullet. I've never known him to take sick and I figure he just puts up with the usual aches and pains we all get from time to time.

'Howdy, Nathan. You got a minute?'

'Sure.' I pull the door shut to give him some privacy. 'What's the problem?'

'Nothin'.'

It ain't the first time I've had to play guessin' games with a patient.

'Folk usually come in here for a reason.'

He catches on and gives me grin. 'I just wanted to ask you about some stuff.'

I grin back. 'For a friend?'

'Yeah, as it happens.' He winks to show he's onto me. 'And, before you go thinkin' it's me, she's a lady.'

'Magda?'

He nods.

'It's always better if I can examine the patient.'

I wouldn't have him down as the kind of man who won't let his woman see a doctor but he wouldn't be the first and I ain't no doctor.

'I ain't sure she'd let you.'

'Why? She don't seem to have a problem with my kind.'

'Negros? No, you won't find no one that pays less mind.'

'You know, she asked me what it's like bein' African American here. I been called a lot of things in my time but never that. I told her I was born in Alabama like my Daddy before me. She said she thought Negro was an insult. How could it be? It's what I am, ain't it?'

He shrugs. 'Names come and go, I reckon.'

'That's not the only strange thing she's said. Sometimes I can see her thinkin' through what she's goin' to say, almost like she's checkin' all the words.'

'Ain't easy bein' a stranger.'

'And you ain't gonna tell me no more?'

His answer is to change the subject.

'Fact is, she don't have a lot of faith in our doctorin'.'

I give myself a few seconds to take that in before reacting. Vin's a man who thinks before he speaks and so I know he picked those particular words for a reason. He's not saying that she doesn't trust me, but that she wouldn't trust any doctor in these parts. I'd be a fool to take that to heart.

'Well, I reckon doctors back East are mighty fine fellas but I doubt they make house calls out here.'

He lets that go but I know she ain't from back East. I've dropped in things like that a few times but I never get a rise out of him. He ain't sayin' where she's from and he don't want us askin'. That'd be a problem comin' from most fellas but we all trust him enough to let it go. I've heard Buck and JD talkin' about it and they figure she's harmless because she probably don't make ninety pounds after supper. I don't think a person needs to be big to do damage but I do trust Vin.

'There ain't nothin' wrong with her, anyhow. I just wanted to ask you about somethin' she said. Can you stop folk gettin' sick by puttin' stuff into their blood?'

'What sort of stuff?'

'I don't know. She called it a vac-cine.'

'For smallpox?'

'For lots of things. Like diphtheria or measles.'

'There is a preventative for smallpox, although you'd only get it from a city doctor, but I never heard of one for nothin' else. Course, I ain't a doctor and I don't get to see the sort of journals and books that doctors read.'

'But, if they could do it for smallpox, mebbe they could do it for other things?'

'I guess.' He's talking almost as strange as she does these days. 'It took some fella years to come up with the smallpox one, though, and a lot of folk still won't take it because it's got cowpox in it.'

That's the thing with medicines. It takes a hell of a time to study on a problem, ruling out all the nonsense and dangers, before getting something folk can use and even then you've got to convince them to use it. I'd love for the day to come when I never saw another child die from a sickness that he might just as easily have survived but I doubt I'll live that long.

'I never took you for the kind to be frettin' over gettin' sick.'

He grins. 'Hell, no. It'll be a bullet or a rope for me.' The smile fades. 'I just wanted to know if you thought it was possible.'

I could be mistaken but I think he was checking up on his lady friend. Maybe some of the things she says sound as outlandish to him as they do to me. But then, if this one's anything to go by, maybe they're not so far-fetched after all.

Well,' I tell him. 'I wouldn't say it was impossible.'

 

JOSIAH

The more I talk to that young woman, the less sure I become about anything. I've spent a lifetime thinking and studying on the ways of God and man but, no matter what I say, she always has another question that shows things in a different light. I've been thinking so hard lately that my head starts to ache, even first thing in the morning, just like it is now.

Maybe I'll catch a breath of fresh air. When I open the door, I see the familiar outline of Vin's hat. He's sprawling across the steps to the church like he often does, catching the sun's early rays.

'Mornin', Vin.'

'Josiah.' He looks up at me. 'You all right? You look beat.'

I hunker down next to him. 'Seems a while since I slept through the night.'

He looks uneasy. 'Your sister...?'

I shake my head and smile. 'No. Your beloved, if you must know.'

He frowns. 'She ain't done nothin' to you, has she?'

'Like what?' I can't imagine what he thinks a slip of a girl like that is going to do to me.

'I don't know. Why would you be losin' sleep over her?'

I can see that those words bring something to mind but that he doesn't believe it of me. I'm not past having base thoughts about a pretty girl but I wouldn't be likely to tell him if it was his girl.

'Oh, we've been talking about things.'

He nods. 'She likes you.'

I'm pleased to hear that, although I guess I knew. 'I like her too. But she asks tough questions. Sometimes I wrestle with them all night and still don't have an answer for her.'

'What kind of questions?'

'All kinds.' That's true but not much help. 'Religion, politics, science, geography - you name it and she has a question about it. Sometimes it's just facts. What do we know about this? Have we discovered that? But I guess the ones about religion and politics are hardest. Why do we do this? Surely I can't think that is right.' I scratch my head when I get to the heart of the matter. 'Fact is, by the time I'm done listening to her, I begin to wonder how I ever thought something was right.'

Vin's looking troubled now.

'I'm not complaining,' I reassure him. 'It's good to have someone make you think.'

It looks like my words are cold comfort.

'What's up?'

He eyes me up warily but eventually shrugs. 'She's supposed to be keepin' her head down.'

Those few words confirm some doubts that hadn't consciously registered with me: there's more to her arrival here than we know and he knows the whole truth, whatever that is. I'm curious but I won't compromise him by asking him to break a confidence. He forced my hand once, but he was desperate to save my hide at the time. As riled as I was, I could see how hard it was for a man as private as him to go behind my back rather than take my word about my innocence.

'She has nothing to fear from me.'

I don't give that undertaking out of loyalty to him, as dear a friend as I count him, but because countless hours in discussion with Magda tell me that she lives by values as strongly held as mine, even if she answers only to her own reason and not to a god above.

He nods. 'I know that, Josiah. I reckon sometimes she needs to talk to someone who knows more than I do about the ways of this world.'

This world not the world. I've wondered where she comes from but my questions never get straight answers. She's told me many things about the place but always fragments that never form a clear picture. Now Vin's letting me know there's more to this than we see. Maybe, in time, she'll trust me enough to tell me the rest but we have plenty of ground to cover in the meantime.

'I'll do my best.' I smile. 'Although I'm not sure I understand the ways of this world myself.'

'You do better than most.'

'You know that she's finding some things hard?'

'Women's rights? Negro's rights? Killin' things, man or beast?'

'Yes, all of those. And beliefs too.' It pains me to say it. 'All religious beliefs are mere superstitions to her. She hasn't said so but I suspect that she finds us primitive in many respects.'

'She don't always mean that in a bad way.'

'How can primitive be good?'

'Ain't nothin' wrong with livin' close to the land. Maybe she ain't had the chance to do that.'

I hadn't looked at it in that light before. Vin could rightly be described as primitive in some ways without intending an insult. If she likes him, and I know that she does, then that tells me a good deal about what she values - courage, loyalty and integrity for starters. If we lack knowledge compared with her society, and I know we do, perhaps we have other virtues to compensate.

 

CHRIS

It's a month to the day since the storm that set Vin off in search of rocks from the sky. It must be about two weeks since he brought back a woman instead and I guess the jury's still out on her. I've heard the others talk about her on and off, so I know they've noticed some of the same things I have, but none of it amounts to much.

There are some things I know. She's smart, careful and determined. She comes from somewhere way different to here because even everyday things are new to her. She takes her lead from other people, mostly Vin but Mary and Inez as well when the time is right, and pulls it off so well that most folk don't notice the act. The thing is, me and Vin's other friends aren't most folk.

There are other things I've guessed, mostly because I know Vin so well. She has his love and, independent of that as far as I can tell, his trust. He's a cautious man by nature, even if he moves fast once he's made up his mind, so I think he must have trusted her before he let it go too far.

The trouble is, I'm a cautious man too - from experience not nature - and I don't like feeling I haven't heard the whole story. I don't like being at the mercy of Vin's judgment, especially when it could be compromised by the sort of feelings that cloud the mind, as I know better than any.

Vin and I are pegged level when it comes to giving advice. When I warned him off Charlotte Richmond, he got mad. When he warned me off Ella Gaines, I got mad back. I was right about the timing on that wagon train but I can understand why he didn't want to hear it - that was just bad luck and nobody's fault. He was a lot more right about Ella and I was a fool to doubt his motives - that was me being blind because I didn't want to see.

I don't know if he'll trust my motives now but I can't stand by and say nothing.

I take my drink over to where he's sitting on the porch. He's looking at the sky towards the south-west, right where we saw it tear. He's happy, I can feel it without the need for words or even looks, and I'm sorry to be the one ready to put an end to that.

'Hey, Vin.'

'Hey, Chris.'

He looks up at me and then grins.

'Not you too.'

'What?'

'Seems like all my friends think I'm walkin' around with my eyes shut these days.'

I can tell from the tone of his voice that he likes it that we care. There's no anger there and he's as relaxed as I've ever known him, although I always knew there was a younger, lighter-hearted man inside the shell he's built up over a hard life. I pull up a chair next to him and look where he was looking. Nothing there now but a few wisps of cloud painted pink by the sinking sun.

'That was a hell of a night.'

'Yeah.'

'I never saw anything like it.'

'Nor me.'

Only then does that coincidence strike me. A sky like I never saw before and a woman like I never saw before. I look over at Vin. He's watching me and I know he's wondering if I'm putting two and two together. I think back to when he introduced the woman to me. He told me she was a stranger to these parts, and that she might need some help fitting in, but he didn't say anything about what parts she might have come from. It didn't strike me as strange at the time but I guess most of us would say something like she's from back East or she's from Europe.

I was going to say something about my suspicions but maybe I should start with a question.

'Where does she come from?'

'Would you believe me if I said she fell through that tear?'

'Is that what you're saying?'

He chews his lip for a few seconds before nodding.

He was right here with me, so I know he didn't see it happen. Maybe he's saying that light we saw wasn't a spark, or a rock, but a craft of some sort.

'You got any more than her word for that?'

He leans closer. 'I saw the thing she came in. It was a metal ball with a seat inside and all kinds of machines I never saw the likes of before. It didn't come from nowhere around here.'

'Could you show me this thing?'

'If y'need to see it.'

Do I need to see it? It's not as if I think he's losing his mind and, if he's mesmerized or something, she could do the same to me.

'How do you know it's safe to help her? How can you be sure what she wants?'

'I can't. If there are more like her and they ain't friendly, I reckon we're outclassed. If they can fly through the sky, they can probably do other stuff too. Last thing we'd wanna do is give them cause to pick a fight but I don't see me helpin' her set up a horse ranch'll make no difference either way.'

'All right,' I admit. 'You're not walking around with your eyes shut.'

I go back to thinking like a friend, rather than the unofficial lawman I've become around here, and wonder if he's thought it through. I don't know what kind of problems a stranger from the skies might bring but, life being how it is, there are sure to be some.

'Are you sure she's how she seems?'

He looks puzzled.

'I mean, she might not be a real woman underneath.'

He gives me a look worthy of Buck but then sobers. 'She's a woman.'

'Do you know where she's from?'

He nods.

'But you think it's best to keep it quiet?'

'Most folk wouldn't believe it anyhow. Those that do will ask questions she can't answer.'

'Can't or won't.'

He considers that. 'Shouldn't.'

What is there that a man's best off not knowing? I think on that. I'm the kind of man who likes to know what he's up against and I know Vin is too. What doesn't a man want to know about? Maybe that his woman's cheating on him, depending on his ideas about that, but what else?

The strangest thought comes into my mind. I've been reading a book that Mary lent me. It has a tale about a one-eyed creature, which traded its other eye for the ability to see the future but was short-changed and could only see the time of its own death. That knowledge brought despair.

The future surely is one thing that a man shouldn't know too much about.

Even thinking that makes me wonder if it's me who's lost my mind. But it would fit with what Vin's said and with what I've seen. She'd be human if she came from another time, not another place, and she might have the kind of ideas that I've noticed in her conversations with Mary among others. There are plenty of independent-minded women around here but they've all had to struggle for their places. It's hard to put my finger on the difference but it's like Nathan's belief in his humanity compared with ours: he asserts his whereas we take ours for granted.

'You're not talking about the future, are you?'

Vin doesn't answer. I'm not sure whether he thought I'd guess or not, but I think maybe it's a relief for someone else to know. He's not expecting me to believe it, though, and I'm not sure if I do.

'What makes you believe a story like that?'

He purses his lips. 'Probably her reaction when she found out what year it was. Seems to me her story adds up but I could be wrong. Like I say, most folk wouldn't believe it and I can't see no good comin' from tellin' them.' He stretches, as if casting off the tension that's built up between us while we talk about it, and then shrugs. 'What does it matter?'

Maybe he's right: the far side of the world, the dark side of the moon or the future - it's not like we know anything about any of them.

'How far in the future?'

'About two hundred and fifty years.'

I think what it was like that far in the past. My ancestors were probably fighting in some European war back then. What could I do to change their world? If future people can fly through the sky and slip through time, things must change even more in the time to come. Is the change for the better? Something about Vin's feeling that she shouldn't answer questions makes me doubt it.

'Is it a bad future?'

He chews his lip again. 'It ain't good.'

'Can it be changed?'

'She don't think so. Do you reckon people can change?'

I can see he's interested in the answer to that. I shake my head.

'Probably not enough.'

'That's what I figured. She was lookin' for a new land for people in her time. She fetched up here by accident and I reckon it's fine to leave it at that. She did her bit and now she wants a quiet life.'

That reminds me of a conversation out at my shack a while back.

'I never figured you for the settling kind.'

His smile tells me he's placed the quote.

'Nettie thinks I'm lonesome.'

I know that's his way of admitting it's true. Lonesome doesn't begin to describe how I've felt since losing my family. If I hadn't felt so bad, I doubt I'd have fallen for Ella's lies. Vin's a good man and he deserves a piece of what I had.

'If I can help...'

'I was kinda hopin' you'd say that. I told her you know horses.'

The truth is that I'm happy to help him. Having a purpose has got me through the days better than anything else I've found - a hell of a lot better than the bottle, that's for sure. Now things are more settled around here, the town doesn't need men like us most of the time. It'll be good to have some kind of project that'll let me make a difference without hanging a millstone around my neck because, even if Vin's ready for that kind of responsibility, I don't reckon I am.

 

Part 3

Vin stood on Nettie's porch, resplendent in his best scarlet shirt, waiting for the two women in his life. He and Magda continued to maintain a pretense of decency, enough to keep gossip at bay but not to fool his friends, while she stayed with Nettie and he split his time between the barn and his wagon in town. He'd told her that stock must come before a home and she'd accepted it in a way that conveyed her understanding of his need for time to adjust to the prospect of matrimony.

When she appeared at the door, she was looking her loveliest. He knew from the journals that Mrs. Potter passed on to her from time to time that her dress was in the latest style, allowing for the time that those journals took to reach Four Corners and the limitations of the materials available. He'd been proud to discover that she could turn her hand to many things once shown the principles, from growing food to preparing meals, and her slender fingers and meticulous attention to detail, not to mention her keen eye for design, made her a natural at needlework.

'Do I look all right?'

He nodded approvingly. 'Real pretty.'

'Handsome is as handsome does.'

Nettie's words were typically brusque but her tone revealed pride in her protégé to match his own. She herself looked much the same as usual, except for a new band on her hat, which was as frivolous as she was likely to get and he loved her for that.

They were going to a Fourth of July party at the creek just outside town. He had no interest in the political dimension of the celebration, given that many of his friends had lost their freedom to the current regime, but enjoyed a party as much as anybody.

As well as its conventional significance, the date also marked the end of Magda's third month in his time. The intervening weeks had passed smoothly in the main, without any major upsets, although all his friends knew more than he'd intended when he brought Magda into town. Only Chris and Josiah knew the whole truth, Chris from him and Josiah from Magda, while the others, one at a time, had divined the same version of the truth as Nettie. He was satisfied with that position, given that keeping the truth from Chris would have been burdensome for him and managing without Josiah's wisdom would have been harder for Magda.

He helped them into the buggy, handed the lines to Nettie and then swung onto his gelding. His reluctance to leave the security of his saddle, preferring to remain poised to intercept any threat that might arise, was another sign that he was not yet reconciled to his impending role of husband. He wondered if a man who'd lived the life he had could ever shed the wariness of being on the run, even though each passing year in obscurity made it less likely that the bounty on his head would be collected. Sometimes hiding in plain sight, as he had for so long in this town, was the safest kind of concealment. Naturally, he had confided his plight to Magda in due course and, equally naturally to her it seemed, she had accepted his explanation without question. She could have checked the Eli Joe part with one of his friends but, as far as he knew, she had not done so.

They heard the party before they saw it. Children's shouts and squeals punctuated a merry duel between a fiddle and a squeeze box, while an undercurrent of adult conversation rumbled beneath both. The town had finally come of age, its residents at last confident enough to step out and celebrate in public without the risk of gunslingers or cattle barons interrupting their innocent pleasures. He was glad that his own skill had contributed to building that confidence and content to put his life on the line again to protect it if necessary. Respect from some of the townspeople had been slow in coming but now his patrols were interrupted by frequent greetings and regular conversations that declared him truly part of a community for the first time in his life.

Over the next two hours, he was pleased to see that he'd been able to share his insider status with Magda. She chatted to the other women, played with the children and helped with the food. From a distance, she fitted in perfectly. Close up, her conversation was still peppered with the careful pauses for thought that Nathan had noted. Now and then, she made mistakes bad enough, or strange enough, to raise eyebrows but nothing that could not be forgiven and forgotten.

'Looks like you got away with it,' Chris said, as they watched her.

'Yeah. She's tried so hard to fit in...'

He didn't need to explain the mixture of emotions that her struggle evoked in him. If he'd sometimes thought of himself as an outsider, she was the real thing.

'Ma! Ma!'

A small boy's voice tore through the tapestry of sound. Filled with fear not fun, it drew alarmed adults instantly to his aid.

Vin sensed the same tension in Chris as he felt in himself. Something in the cry suggested worse than the normal pains of childhood. He scanned the landscape for any sign of trouble and then, finding nothing there, looked back at the huddle around the boy. Nathan rose from the midst of the group, bellowing an explanation over his shoulder even as he broke into a run.

'Tommy Wilkins has fallen into the creek below the falls.'

Like everybody else, Vin knew the spot. The water there was deep and the currents set up by the torrents flowing over the bluff above would put all but the strongest swimmer in danger. Little Tommy had a stout heart but only a skinny frame.

Almost every man, and a good many women, ran after Nathan. More than two or three would be nothing but a hindrance but the urge to help was as irresistible to Vin as it was to the others. Barely a minute could have passed before they assembled on the shore but there was no sign of Tommy.

Several men waded into the water, Nathan and Buck among them, groping beneath the surface as if the boy might have sunk like a stone. Doubting that, Vin forced a gap between the watchers on the waterline and scanned the undergrowth around the rim of the pool. If Tommy had fallen, he might have hit his head and passed out.

Seconds later, a glimpse of plaid shirt confirmed Vin's suspicion.

'Buck!' His friend was closer and precious moments could be saved. 'There!'

Buck looked up, first at him and then at where he was pointing, and lunged over to the body in the water. He scooped it up and waded back to shore.

Nathan wasted no time in pumping the water from the lungs and searching for signs of life.

Vin knew before his friend looked up that the news was bad. The slump of his shoulders and the bent of his head declared that the youngster's heart had stopped beating. Sometimes life hung on after it was wanted, keeping old folk on earth when they'd as soon be with their maker, and other times it could be snuffed out by a delay of a minute or two. Perhaps a blow to the head had killed poor Tommy but, just as likely, he'd been plain unlucky to pass out with his face under water.

The townspeople stood around in a ragged circle, too stunned to react to the disaster that had overtaken them. Only Magda moved. He could see she was agitated and he steeled himself for some kind of reaction to a tragedy that wouldn't have happened in her time, if only because the enclosed cities had no creeks for little boys to fall into. She came to his side and pulled on his arm to bring his ear down to her lips. Appreciating her reserve, he leaned over.

'Isn't anyone going to do anything?' she whispered.

'Like what?' he muttered back. 'The boy's dead.'

'But surely it's worth trying to resuscitate him? It's only been minutes...'

He stared at her in disbelief, wondering what kind of weird custom she might mean, but then saw hope in her eyes. He had no idea what she thought should be done but, somehow, he knew he had to let her try. He pushed her forward.

'Go on, then.'

Shock held most of the onlookers in place but two of the men blocked her path.

'Leave him be. He ain't your boy.'

Magda faltered. Vin stepped behind her, ready to back her up, but it was Nathan who took the initiative. Pushing the two men aside, he waved her through and knelt beside the boy. Picking up on the unspoken invitation, she knelt opposite him and Vin moved closer so that he could hear what passed between them. He knew from her body language that, whatever her plan, time was of the essence. She spoke in a murmur.

'He needs CPR.'

Nathan shook his head, clearly as baffled as Vin.

'May I?'

Nathan nodded.

Moving quickly but calmly, she moved the boy's head so that it tilted back, the neck arched upwards and mouth open. She took a deep breath, pinched the boy's nose and then blew into his mouth until his chest rose. She did the same twice more before positioning herself over the chest. She linked her hands carefully, the palm of one on the back of the other, fingers entwined. Then, not roughly but firmly enough to draw an outraged gasp from the crowd, she pressed down on the ribs three times. She nodded to Nathan to breathe into the boy's mouth as she had done.

Tommy's father, hunched at his son's feet, looked on as if mesmerized. His wife, who had been sobbing quietly as Nathan ministered to her child, suddenly flew at Magda. Ezra blocked her path, catching her wrists in his muscular grip, and stopping her in her tracks.

'Get her away from him!'

Ezra ignored her protest.

As Nathan's third breath left the boy's chest, Magda pushed again on his chest.

The onlookers became more restive.

'What's she doing?' a man demanded.

Vin's hand hovered by his gun.

Nathan took another breath and exhaled into the boy's mouth.

As the chest fell, the boy spluttered into life.

Vin saw Nathan start and knew then that he had no more expected their efforts to succeed than anybody else. He'd gone along with it only because he would never allow his closed mind to cost a life. He examined the child, listening to the heart and looking into the eyes. Only when satisfied that all was well did he hand his patient over to the anxious parents and muttering spectators and only then did he drift over to where Vin stood with Magda. Their other friends drew closer.

Ezra spoke first, his voice low. 'That was some trick, Miss. Friel.'

'It's not a trick. It's just ordinary first aid.'

'Raising people from the dead,' Josiah pointed out, 'is a mite out of the ordinary around here.'

'I can't raise people from the dead.'

Vin still couldn't grasp what he'd seen. 'You just did.'

'Sometimes the heart can be started again if it hasn't long stopped. Nathan pumped the water from the lungs, so resuscitation was a simple matter. Doctors can do far more than that in my tim-'

She stopped abruptly but way too late.

There was a tense silence. Vin looked from Ezra to Buck to JD to Nathan as they worked through the revelation. He was glad to see they had sense enough not to draw attention to their epiphany.

'Might I suggest, Mr. Jackson,' Ezra said softly, 'that you profess to have missed the patient's faint heartbeat? While folk love to pray for miracles, witnessing them often seems to lead to discord.'

Nathan nodded. He seemed to have been struck dumb by the sudden realization that Magda's world was far more different than he'd imagined even though, in a way, it was the same as theirs.

It was Buck who put the question that Vin expected and yet dreaded. 'Why didn't you tell us?'

It was Ezra who answered. 'For more reasons than we can discuss here, I suspect.' He smiled slyly at Magda. 'How distant a future?'

She smiled just as slyly. 'Too distant to discern the profit in any scheme you might have in mind.'

'I feared you might say that.'

'I only want to live as one of you. If there is good I can do without risk, like today, I will but you must believe me when I say that more harm than good might come from the knowledge I have.'

Josiah nodded slowly. 'Knowledge without wisdom can be a dangerous thing.'

'And wisdom will be very slow in coming.'

Vin knew from her tone that she intended to say no more on the subject. He put his arm around her shoulders and guided her away, leaving his friends to field the questions that would surely come once the shock abated.

'Will they keep my secret?'

'Yeah. They got about as much faith as you have in human nature.'

'I have faith in your nature. You're human, aren't you?'

He tightened his embrace. Although he accepted that the procedure she'd carried out was medical rather than occult, he was still astounded by Tommy's resurrection. It underlined how primitive his time was compared with hers and confirmed the truth of everything else she'd told him.

At a more profound level, he saw a parallel between the physical spark that she'd restored to Tommy and the emotional flame she had fanned in him. He'd rediscovered the joys of friendship in the town and now his life there was to be made complete by a lasting love. He couldn't remember ever being happier than he felt at that moment.

'You sure you wanna saddle yourself with an old-fashioned fella like me?'

'I'm sure.'

All righty. I'll make a start on that house next week.'

She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him with more vigor than most women would think seemly. He matched her intensity, sweeping her into his arms without breaking the contact between their lips. He knew a spot downstream where they'd be out of the sight of prying eyes.

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