Infinite Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t know what a tit is, so I was just usin’ one of yours. Uh, lack of immediate culchural perspective, I shoulda knowed better.”
    Sarah feels a little dizzy, shakes her head slowly. “That’s all right. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.”
    “I’m dreaming,” Bob says. “Shouldn’t have—”
    “No you aren’t,” says Three-phasing, adjusting his diction again. “You’re in the future. Almost a million years. Pardon me.” He scurries to the mover-transom, is gone for a second, reappears with a bedsheet, which he hands to Bob. “I’m sorry, we don’t wear clothing. This is the best I can do, for now.” The bedsheet is too small for Bob to wear the way Sarah is using the blanket. He folds it over and tucks it around his waist, in a kilt. “Why us?” he asks.
    “You were taken at random. We’ve been time-casting”—he checks with Nine-hover—“for twenty-two years, and have never before caught a human being. Let alone two. You must have been in close contact with one another when you intersected the time-caster beam. I assume you were copulating.”
    “What-ing?” Bob says.
    “No, we weren’t!” Sarah says indignantly.
    “Ah, quite so.” Three-phasing doesn’t pursue the topic. He knows that humans of this culture were reticent about their sexual activity. But from their literature he knows they spent most of their “time” thinking about, arranging for, enjoying, and recovering from a variety of sexual contacts.
    “Then that must be a time machine over there,” Bob says, indicating the fake console.
    “In a sense, yes.” Three-phasing decides to be partly honest. “But the actual machine no longer exists. People did a lot of time-travelling about a quarter of a million years ago. Shuffled history around. Changed it back. The fact that the machine once existed, well, that enables us to use it, if you see what I mean.”
    “Uh, no. I don’t.” Not with synapses limited to three degrees of freedom.
    “Well, never mind. It’s not really important.” He senses the next question. “You will be going back … I don’t know exactly when. It depends on a lot of things. You see, time is like a rubber band.” No, it isn’t. “Or a spring.” No, it isn’t. “At any rate, within a few days, weeks at most, you will leave this present and return to the moment you were experiencing when the time-caster beam picked you up.”
    “I’ve read stories like that,” Sarah says. “Will we remember the future, after we go back?”
    “Probably not,” he says charitably. Not until your brains evolve. “But you can do us a great service.”
    Bob shrugs. “Sure, long as we’re here. Anyhow, you did us a favor.” He puts his arm around Sarah. “I’ve gotta leave Sarah in a couple of days; don’t know for how long. So you’re giving us more time together.”
    “Whether we remember it or not,” Sarah says.
    “Good, fine. Come with me.” They follow Three-phasing to the mover-transom, where he takes their hands and transports them to his home. It is as unadorned as the time-caster room, except for bookshelves along one wall, and a low podium upon which the volume of
Faust
rests. All of the books are bound identically, in shiny metal with flat black letters along the spines.
    Bob looks around. “Don’t you people ever sit down?”
    “Oh,” Three-phasing says. “Thoughtless of me.” With his mind he shifts the room from utility mood to comfort mood. Intricate tapestries now hang on the walls; soft cushions that look like silk are strewn around in pleasant disorder. Chiming music, not quite discordant, hovers at the edge of audibility, and there is a faint odor of something like jasmine. The metal floor has become a kind of soft leather, and the room has somehow lost its corners.
    “How did that happen?” Sarah asks.
    “I don’t know.” Three-phasing tries to copy Bob’s shrug, but only manages a spasmodic jerk. “Can’t remember not being able to do it.”
    Bob