Times Change (5 page)

“Time’s relative. In the early part of this century a flight to the moon was considered implausible. But it has been done.” Clumsily, he thought, but it had been done. “In the next century man goes to Mars and beyond.”

“Maybe.” She got up to take two bottles of soda from the refrigerator. “But it would be hard for me to devote my life to something I’d never see happen.” As Jacob watched in fascination, she took a small metal object out of a drawer, applied it like a lever to the top of each bottle and dislodged the caps. “I guess I like to see results, and see them now,” she admitted as she set the first bottle in front of him. “Instant gratification. Which is why I’m twenty-three and between jobs.”

The bottle was glass, Jacob mused. The same kind she had tried to strike him with the afternoon before. Lifting it, he sipped. He was pleasantly surprised by the familiar taste. He enjoyed the same soft drink at home, though it wasn’t his habit to drink it for breakfast.

“Why did you decide to study space?”

He glanced back at her. He recognized a grilling when he heard one, and he thought it would be entertaining to both humor and annoy her. “I like possibilities.”

“You must have studied a long time.”

“Long enough.” He sipped again.

“Where?”

“Where what?”

She managed to keep the pleasant smile intact. “Where did you study?”

He thought of the Kroliac Institute on Mars, the Birmington University in Houston and his brief and intense year in the L’Espace Space Laboratory in the Fordon Quadrant. “Here and there. At the moment I’m attached to a small private facility outside of Philadelphia.”

She wondered if the staff of that private facility wore white coats. “I guess you find it fascinating.”

“Only more so recently. Are you nervous?”

“Why?”

“You keep tapping your foot.”

She placed a hand on her knee to stop the movement. “Restless. I get restless if I stay in one place too long.” It was obvious, painfully so, that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with him this way. “Listen, I really do have some things to . . .” Her words trailed off as she glanced out the window. She didn’t know when the snow had begun, but it was coming down in sheets. “Terrific.”

Following her gaze, Jacob studied the thick white flakes. “Looks like it means business.”

“Yeah.” She let out her breath in a sigh. Maybe he did make her nervous, but she wasn’t a monster. “And it’s not the kind of weather suitable for camping in the woods.” Fighting with her conscience, she walked to the door, back to the table, then to the window. “Look, I know you don’t have a place to stay. I saw you walk into the forest yesterday.”

“I have . . . all I need.”

“Sure, but I can’t have you go trudging into the hills in a blizzard to sleep in a tent or something. Libby would never forgive me if you died of exposure.” Thrusting her hands in her pockets, she scowled at him. “You can stay here.”

He considered the possibilities and smiled. “I’d love to.”

Chapter 3

He stayed out of her way. It seemed the best method of handling the situation for the moment. She’d stationed herself on the sofa by the fire, books heaped beside her, and was busily taking notes. A portable radio sat on the table, crackling with static and music and the occasional weather report. Absorbed in her research, Sunny ignored him.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Jacob explored his new quarters. She’d given him the room next to hers—larger by a couple of meters, with a pair of paned windows facing southeast. The bed was a big, boxy affair framed in wood, with a spring-type of mattress that creaked when he sat on the edge.

There was a shelf crowded with books, novels and poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They were paperbacks, for the most part, with bright, eye-catching covers. He recognized one or two of the names. He flipped through them with an interest that was more scientific than literary. It was Cal, he thought, who read for pleasure, who had a talent for retaining little bits of prose and poetry. It was rare for Jacob to while away an hour of his time with fiction.

They were still using trees to make the pages of books, he remembered with a kind of dazed fascination. One side had cut them down to make room for housing and to make furniture and paper and fuel, while the other side had scurried to replant them. Never quite catching up.

It had been an odd sort of game, one of many that had led to incredible and complicated environmental problems.

Then, of course, they’d saturated the air with carbon dioxide, gleefully punching holes in the ozone, then fluttering their hands when faced with the consequences. He wondered what kind of people poisoned their own air. And water, he recalled with a shake of his head. Another game had been to throw whatever was no longer useful into the ocean, as if the seas were a bottomless dumping ground. It was fortunate that they had begun to get the picture before the damage had become irreparable.

Turning from the window, he wandered the room, running a fingertip along the walls, over the bedspread, the bedposts. Certainly the textures were interesting, and yet . . .

He paused when he spotted a picture framed in what appeared to be silver. The frame itself would have caught his attention, but it was the picture that drew him. His brother, smiling. He was wearing a tuxedo and looking very pleased with himself. His arm was around the woman called Libby. She had flowers in her hair and wore a white full-sleeved dress that laced to the throat.

A wedding dress, Jacob mused. In his own time the ceremony was coming back into style after having fallen into disfavor in the latter part of the previous century. Couples were finding a new pleasure in the old traditions. It had no basis in logic, of course. There was a contract to seal a marriage, and a contract to end one. Each was as easily forged as the other. But elaborate weddings were in fashion once more.

Churches were once again the favored atmosphere for the exchange of rings and vows. Designers were frantically copying gowns from museums and old videos. The gown Libby wore would have drawn moans of envy from those who admired the fuss and bother of marriage rites.

He couldn’t imagine it. The entire business puzzled him, and it would have amused him if not for the fact that it involved his brother. Not Cal, who had always been enamored of women in general but never of one in particular. The idea of Cal being matched was illogical. And yet he was holding the proof in his hand.

It infuriated him.

To have left his family, his home, his world. And for a woman. Jacob slammed the picture down on the dresser and turned away. It had been madness. There was no other explanation. One woman couldn’t change a life so drastically. And what else was there here to tempt a man? Oh, it was an interesting place, certainly. Fascinating enough to warrant a few weeks of study and research. He would undoubtedly write a series of papers on the experience when he returned to his own time. But . . . what was the ancient saying? A nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

He would put Caleb in his right mind again. Whatever the woman had done to him he would undo. No one knew Caleb Hornblower better than his own brother.

They had been together not so long ago. Time was relative, he thought again, but without humor. The last evening they had spent together had been in Jacob’s quarters at the university. They’d played poker and drank Venusian rum—a particularly potent liquor manufactured on the neighboring planet. Cal had commandeered an entire case from his last run.

As Jacob remembered, Cal had lost at cards, cheerfully and elaborately, as was his habit.

They had both gotten sloppy drunk.

“When I get back from this run,” Cal had said, tipping back in his chair and yawning hugely, “I’m going to spend three weeks on the beach—south of France, I think—watching women and staying drunk.”

“Three days,” Jacob had told him. He’d swirled the coal-black liquor in his glass. “Then you’d go up again. In the last ten years you’ve been in the air more than on the ground.”

“You don’t fly enough.” With a grin, Cal had taken Jacob’s glass and downed the contents. “Stuck in your lab, little brother. I tell you it’s a lot more fun to bounce around the planets than to study them.”

“Point of view. If I didn’t study them, you couldn’t bounce around them.” He had slid down in his chair, too lazy to pour himself more rum. “Besides, you’re a better pilot than I am. It’s the only thing you do better than I do.”

Cal had grinned again. “Point of view,” he had tossed back. “Ask Linsy McCellan.”

Jacob had stirred himself enough to raise a brow. That particular woman, a dancer, had generously shared her attributes with both men—on separate occasions. “She’s too easily entertained.” His smile had turned wicked, “In any case, I’m here, on the ground, with her, a great deal more than you are.”

“Even Linsy—” he lifted his glass “—bless her, can’t compete with flying.”

“With running cargo, Cal? If you’d stayed with the ISF you’d be a major by now.”

Cal had only shrugged. “I’ll leave the regimentation for you, Dr. Hornblower.” Then he had sat up, sluggish from drink but still eager. “J.T., why don’t you give this place the shake for a few weeks and come with me? There’s this club in the Brigston Colony on Mars that needs to be seen to be believed. There’s this mutant sax player— Anyhow, you’ve got to be there.”

“I’ve got work.”

“You’ve always got work,” Cal had pointed out. “A couple of weeks, J.T. Fly up with me. I can make the transport, show you a few of the seedier parts of the colony, then I can call in to base before we watch those women on the beach. You just have to name the beach.”

It had been tempting, so tempting that Jacob had nearly agreed. The impulse had been there, as always. But so had the responsibilities. “Can’t.” Heaving a sigh, he’d lunged for the bottle again. “I have to finish these equations before the first of the month.”

He should have gone, Jacob thought now. He should have said the hell with the equations, with the responsibilities, and jumped ship with Cal. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been along. Or, if it had, at least he would have been there, with his brother.

The video report on Cal’s wounded ship had shown exactly what Cal had been through. The black hole, the panic, the helplessness as he’d been sucked toward the void and battered by its gravitational field. That he had survived at all was a miracle, and a tribute to his skill as a pilot. But if he’d had a scientist on board he might have avoided the rest. And he would be home now. They would both be home. Where they belonged.

Calming himself, he turned from the window. In a few weeks, they would be. All he had to do was wait.

To pass the time, he began to toy with the clunky computer sitting on the desk in the corner. For an hour he amused himself with it, dismantling the keyboard and putting it together again, examining switches and circuits and chips. For his own entertainment he slipped one of Libby’s disks into the drive.

It was a long, involved report on some remote tribe in the South Pacific. Despite himself, Jacob found himself caught up in the descriptions and theories. She had a way of turning dry facts about a culture into a testament to the people who made it. It was ironic that she had focused on the effects of modern tools and technology on what was to her a primitive society. He had spent a great deal of time over the last year wondering what effect the technology he had at his fingertips would have on her time and place.

She was intelligent, he admitted grudgingly. She was obviously thorough and precise when it came to her work. Those were qualities he could admire. But that didn’t mean she could keep his brother.

Shutting the machine down, he went back downstairs.

Sunny didn’t bother to look up when she heard him come down the stairs. She wanted to think she’d forgotten he was there at all as she’d pored over her law books. But she hadn’t. She couldn’t complain that he was noisy or made a nuisance of himself. Except that he did make a nuisance of himself just by being there.

Because she wanted to be alone, she told herself as she glanced up and watched him stroll into the kitchen. That wasn’t true. She hated to be alone for long periods of time. She liked people and conversation, arguments and parties. But he bothered her. Tapping her pen against her pad, she studied the fire. Why? That was the big question.

Possibly loony
, she wrote on her pad. Then she grinned to herself. Actually, it was more than possible that he’d had a clearance sale on the top floor. Popping out of nowhere, living in the forest, playing with faucets.

Possibly dangerous.
That turned her grin into a scowl. There weren’t many men who could get past her guard the way he had. But he hadn’t hurt her, and she had to admit he’d had the opportunity. Still, there was a difference between dangerous and violent.

Forceful personality.
There was an intensity about him that couldn’t be ignored. Even when he was quiet, watchful in that strange way of his, he seemed to be charged. A live wire ready to shock. Then he would smile, unexpectedly, disarmingly, and you were willing to risk the jolt.

Wildly attractive.
Sunny didn’t like the phrase, but it suited him too well for her not to use it. There was something ruthless and untamed in his looks—the lean, almost predatory face and the mane of dark hair. And his eyes, that deep, dark green that seemed to look straight into you. The heavy lids didn’t give them a sleepy look, but a brooding one.

Heathcliff, she thought, and laughed at herself. It was Libby who was the romantic one. Libby would always look into a person’s heart. Sunny would always be compelled to dissect the brain.

Absently she sketched his face on a corner of the paper. There was something different about him, she mused as she penciled in the dark brows and the heavy lashes. It bothered her that she couldn’t put her finger on it. He was evasive, secretive, eccentric. She could accept all that—once she discovered what he was evading. Was he in trouble? Had he done something that required him to pack up quickly and find a place, a quiet, remote place, to hide?

Or was it really as simple as he said? He had come to see his brother and to get a firsthand look at his brother’s wife.

No. Scowling down at the impromptu portrait, Sunny shook her head. That might be the truth, but it was no more than half of it. J.T. Hornblower was up to something. And, sooner or later, she was going to find out what it was.

With a shrug, she set her pad aside. That was reason enough for her interest in Jacob Hornblower. She only wanted to know what made the man tick. With that in mind, she rose and went into the kitchen.

“What in the hell are you doing?”

Jacob glanced up. Spread all over the table in front of him were the various parts of the toaster and a carpet of crumbs. He’d found a screwdriver in a drawer and was having the time of his life.

“It needs to be fixed.”

“Yes, but—”

“Do you like your bread burned?”

She narrowed her eyes. His fingers, long, lean and clever, skimmed over screws. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Maybe.” He smiled, wondering what she would say if he told her he could dismantle an X-25 primary unit in under an hour. “Don’t you trust me?”

“No.” She turned to put on the kettle. “But I don’t suppose you can make it any worse than it already is.” Friendly, she reminded herself. She would be friendly and casual, then move in for the kill. “Want some tea?”

“Sure.” With the screwdriver in his hand, he watched her walk from stove to cupboard and back to stove. Grace, he thought, when combined with strength, was an appealing combination. She had a way of shifting her weight so that her whole body flowed into the movement. Yet there was a control about her, the kind of discipline seen in athletes and dancers. And it wasn’t genderless, but innately and completely female.

When the nerves at the back of her neck began to prickle, she glanced over her shoulder. “Problem?”

“No. I like to watch you.”

Because she didn’t have a ready response for that, she poured the tea. “Want a cupcake?”

“Okay.”

She tossed him a little chocolate cake wrapped in clear paper. “If you want something more elaborate for lunch, you’re on your own.” She brought the cups to the table, then sat across from him. “How are you with plumbing?”

“Excuse me?”

“The faucet in the tub leaks.” Sunny tore the paper from her cupcake. “My solution’s been to put a wash-rag on the drain to muffle the noise at night, but if you’re handy there’s probably a wrench around somewhere.” She took the first bite, closing her eyes to better enjoy the taste. “We could consider it a tradeoff for your meals.”

“I can take a look.” He was still holding the screwdriver, but he was more interested in the way she gently licked icing from the cake. It had never occurred to him that eating could be quite so sexy. “Do you live alone?”

She lifted a brow, then nipped at the cake again. “Obviously.”

“When you’re not here.”

“Most of the time.” She sucked chocolate from her finger and had his stomach clenching. “I like living alone, not having to check with anyone if I want to eat at ten or go dancing at midnight. Do you?”