Chapter 4
It was an education. Cal spent several hours engrossed in a sea of daytime television.
Every ten or fifteen minutes he switched channels, moving from game show to soap opera, from talk show to commercial.
He found the commercials particularly entertaining, with their bright, often startling, intensity.
He preferred the musical ones, with their jumpy tunes and contagious cheer. But others made him wonder about the people who lived in this time, in this place.
Some selections showcased frazzled women fighting things like grease stains and dull wax buildup. He couldn’t imagine his mother—or any other woman, for that matter—worrying about which detergent made whites whiter. But the commercials were delightful entertainment.
There were others that had attractive men and women solving their problems by drinking carbonated beverages or coffee. It seemed everyone worked, many outside, in sweaty jobs, so that they could go to a bar with friends at the end of the day and drink beer. He thought their costumes were wonderful.
On a daytime drama he watched a woman have a brief, intense conversation with a man about the possibility of her being pregnant.
Either a woman was pregnant or she wasn’t, Cal mused, switching over to see a paunchy man in a checked jacket win a week’s vacation in Hawaii.
From the winner’s reaction, Cal figured that must be a pretty big deal in the twentieth century.
He wondered, as he caught snippets of The News At Noon, how humanity had ever made it to the twenty-first century and beyond.
Murder was obviously a popular sport. As were discussions on arms limitations and treaties.
Politicians apparently hadn’t changed much, he thought as he snacked on a box of cookies he’d found in Libby’s kitchen, his legs folded under him.
They were still long-winded, they still danced around the truth, and they still smiled a great deal.
But to imagine that world leaders had actually negotiated over how many nuclear weapons each would build and maintain was ludicrous. How many had they thought they needed?
No matter, he decided, and switched back to a soap. They had come to their senses eventually.
He liked the soaps the best. Though the picture was wavy and the sound occasionally jumped, he enjoyed watching the people react, agonizing about their problems, contemplating marriages, divorces and love affairs. Relationships had apparently been among the top ten problems of this century.
As he watched, a curvy blonde with tears in her eyes and a tough-looking bare-chested man fell into each other’s arms for a long, deep, passionate kiss. The music swelled until fade-out. Kissing was obviously an accepted habit of the time, Cal reflected. So why had Libby been so upset by one?
Restless, he rose and walked to the window. He hadn’t exactly reacted in an expected fashion himself. The kiss had left him feeling angry, uneasy and vulnerable. None of those reactions had ever occurred before. And none of them, he admitted now, had lessened his desire for her in the least.
He wanted to know everything there was to know about Liberty Stone.
What she thought, what she felt, what she wanted most, what she liked the least. There were dozens of questions he wanted to ask her, dozens of ways he wanted to touch her, and he knew that when he did her eyes would become dark and confused and depthless.
He could imagine, with only the slightest effort, what her skin would feel like on the back of her knee, at the small of her back.
It was impossible. There was only one thing he should be thinking about now. Going home.
The time with Libby was only an interlude. Knowing as little as he did about women of this time didn’t prevent him from being certain that Liberty Stone was not a woman a man could love and leave with any comfort. One look in her eyes and you saw not only passion but home fires burning.
He was a man who had no intention of settling down anytime soon.
True, his parents had matched early and had married fairly young, at thirty.
But he had no desire to be matched, mated or married yet.
And when he did, Cal reminded himself it would be on his own ground.
He would think of Libby only as a distraction, however pleasant, in a tense and delicate situation.
He needed to be gone. He pressed his palms against the cool glass of the window as if it were a prison he could easily escape. This was an experience some men might have craved, but he preferred breaking the boundaries of his own world—and his own time.
True, he’d learned things by reading the newspapers and watching the television.
In the twentieth century the world was a long way from reaching peace, people worried a great deal about what to have for dinner and weapons were owned and used with reckless abandon.
A dozen farm-fresh eggs could be had for about a dollar—which was the current U.S. currency—and everyone was on a diet.
It was all very interesting, but he didn’t think any of this information was going to help. He had to concentrate on taking his mind back to what had happened on board his ship.
But he wanted to think about Libby, about what it had felt like to hold her against him. He wanted to remember how she had heated, about the way her lips had softened when his had met them.
When her arms had come around him, he had trembled.
That had never happened to him before. He had what he considered a normal, healthy track record with women.
He enjoyed them, both for company and for mutual physical pleasure.
Since he believed in giving as much as he took, most of his lovers had remained his friends.
But none of them had ever made his system churn as it had during one kiss with Libby.
All at once she’d taken him beyond what he knew and into some wild, gut-wrenching spin.
Even now he could remember what it had felt like when her lips had gone hot and urgent against his.
His balance had tilted. He’d almost believed he saw lights whirling behind his eyes.
It had been like being pulled toward something of enormous, limitless force.
His legs turned to water under him. Slowly he lifted a hand to brace himself against the wall.
The dizziness passed, leaving a hollow throbbing at the base of his skull.
And suddenly he remembered. He remembered the lights.
The flashing, blinking lights in the cockpit.
Navigational system failed. Shields inoperative. Automatic distress signal engaged.
The void. He could see it, and even now the sweat pearled cold on his brow. A black hole, wide and dark and thirsty. It hadn’t been on the charts. He would never have wandered so close if it had been on the charts. It had just been there, and his ship had been dragged toward it.
He hadn’t gone in. The fact that he was alive and undoubtedly on Earth made him certain of that.
It was possible that he had somehow skimmed the edge of it, then shot like a rubber band through space and time.
The scientists of his era would question that idea.
Time travel was only a theory, and one that was usually laughed at.
But he’d done it.
Shaken, he sat on the edge of the bed. He’d survived what no one in recorded history had survived.
Lifting his hands, he turned the palms upward and stared at them.
He was whole, and relatively undamaged. And he was lost. He fought back a fresh wave of panic, balling his hands into fists.
No, not lost—he wouldn’t accept that. If he had been shot one way, it was only logical that he could be shot another. Back home.
He had his mind, and his skill. He glanced at his wrist unit. He could work some basic computations on it. It wouldn’t be enough, it wouldn’t be nearly enough, but when he got back to his ship . . . If there was anything left of his ship.
Refusing to consider the fact that it might be completely destroyed, he began to pace. It was possible that he could interface his mini with Libby’s machine. He had to try.
He could hear her downstairs. It sounded as though she were in the kitchen again, but he doubted she would fix him another meal.
The regret came, too quickly to block, and the image of her sitting across the table from him flashed through his mind.
He couldn’t afford regrets, Cal reminded himself.
And, if there was any choice, he wouldn’t hurt her.
He’d apologize again, he decided. In fact, if he was successful with her computer, he would get out of her life as smoothly and painlessly as possible.
He moved quickly, quietly, into her room.
He could only hope she would stay occupied until he made a few preliminary calculations.
He’d have to be satisfied with those until he could find his ship and employ his own computer.
Though impatience pushed at him, he hesitated for another moment, listening at the doorway.
She was definitely in the kitchen, and, judging by the banging going on, she was still in a temper.
The computer, with its awkward box screen and its quaint keyboard, sat on the desk, surrounded by books and papers. Cal sat in Libby’s chair and grinned at it.
“Engage.”
The screen remained blank.
“Computer, engage.” Impatient with himself, Cal remembered the keyboard. He tapped in a command and waited. Nothing.
Sitting back, he drummed his fingers on the desk and considered.
Libby, for reasons Cal couldn’t fathom, had shut the machine down.
That was easily remedied. He pushed through a few papers and picked up a letter opener.
He turned the keyboard over, preparing to pry off the face. Then he saw the switch.