It was a midsize room made entirely of some kind of composite stone. At one end was a bench, molded into a deep indentation in the wall. The bench faced an extremely ordinary-looking desk. Zoey was waiting there, with a device that looked unnervingly like a gun.
“I’m going to shoot a tracker into your arm,” she said.
“Good morning, Zoey. I’m fine, thanks for asking. Nice to see you too.”
“It’s a microcomputer. It interacts with your device, which interacts with the machine.”
“Okay,” I said, giving up on pleasantries. “So the tracker sends information to my device?”
“Remember that time I gave you a cat?” she said.
“Of course. Marvin. He’s napping at home as we speak.”
“We sent an agent back to another century,” Zoey said, “but the agent fell in love with someone and didn’t want to come home, so she removed her own tracker, fed it to a cat, and then when we tried to forcibly return her to the present, the cat appeared in the travel chamber instead of her.”
“Wait,” I said, “my cat’s from another century?”
“Your cat’s from 1985,” she said.
“What,” I said, at a loss for words.
She took my hand—when was the last time we’d touched one another?—and I observed her grim concentration as she shot a silver pellet into my left arm. It hurt much more than I would’ve imagined. She opened a projection over the desk, and turned her attention to the floating screen.
“You should have told me,” I said. “You should have told me my cat was a time traveler.”
“Honestly, Gaspery, what difference would it make. A cat’s a cat.”
“You never were an animal person, were you.”
Her mouth was set in a thin line. She wouldn’t look at me.
“You should be happy for me,” I said, while she was adjusting something in her projection. “This is the only thing I’ve ever really wanted to do, and I’m doing it.”
“Oh, Gaspery,” she said absently. “My poor little lamb. Device?”
“Here.”
She took my device, held it close to the projection, and handed it back to me.
“Okay,” she said. “Your first destination has been programmed. Go sit in the machine.”
10
A transcript:
Gaspery Roberts: Okay, it’s on. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.
Alan Sami: You’re welcome. Thank you for lunch.
GR: Now, just for the benefit of my recording, you’re a violinist.
AS: I am. I play in the airship terminal.
GR: For spare change?
AS: For pleasure. I don’t need the money, to be clear.
GR: But you do collect change, in that hat at your feet…
AS: Well, people were throwing change at me, so I did at one point decide to just turn my hat upside down in front of me, so that all the change would at least land in one place.
GR: May I ask, why do you do it, if you don’t need the money?
AS: Well, because I love it, son. I love playing the violin, and I love seeing people.
GR: I’d like to play a short clip for you, if I may.
AS: Of music?
GR: Music with some ambient noises. I’ll play it, and then I’m going to ask you to tell me anything you can about it. That sound all right?
AS: Sure. Go ahead.
[…]
GR: That was you, right?
AS: Yes, that’s me in the airship terminal. Poor-quality recording, though.
GR: How can you be sure it’s you?
AS: How can I…really? Well, son, because I know the music and I heard an airship. That whoosh just at the end.
GR: Let’s focus on the music for a moment. That piece you were playing, can you tell me about it?
AS: My lullaby. I composed it, but I never gave it a title. It was something I made up for my wife, my late wife.
GR: Your late…I’m sorry.
AS: Thank you.
GR: Is there—did you ever record yourself playing it, or write down the score?
AS: Neither. Why?
GR: Well, as I mentioned, I’m an assistant to a music historian. I’ve been tasked with investigating similarities and differences between the music played at airship terminals in various regions on Earth.
AS: And your affiliation, what institution was that, again?
GR: University of British Columbia.
AS: That where your accent’s from?
GR: My accent?
AS: It just shifted. I have an ear for accents.
GR: Oh. I’m from Colony Two.
AS: Interesting. My wife was from Colony One, but I wouldn’t say she sounded anything like you. How long have you been doing this?