Smith's Monthly #9 Read online

  No, better than good. It felt great. I was whole again. I decided right at that moment I’d head for garbage cans to eat and sleep in the hallways before I pawned the thing again.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’d offer to pay you back, but I doubt I’m going to be able to do that any time soon.”

  “Just considering my job offer is all I ask in return,” Lex said. “I’ll call it even if you do that.”

  “Lex, I’ve been looking for any job for the past year. So I’m more than willing to listen. Fire away.”

  As I looked into her eyes I felt even more of an attraction. Was she drawing me in with some chemical or some special way she looked? I could see no reason why she would, but I had better be damn careful. Men have disappeared around the systems over far less than a good-looking woman with a fast pitch.

  “I need you to play a series of concerts for me.”

  I laughed again. “For who? I haven’t had a gig in three years.”

  “After I got your guitar this morning I made some calls about you,” Lex said. “The information I got is that you’re talented and could have made it all the way to the top, but drank it all away.”

  “That and a few other bad breaks,” I said, stung by her words. What did this blonde bitch know about how hard it was to push ahead in the music business day after damned day, sleeping in tiny shuttles, playing in station bars for drunks? It wasn’t until everything fell apart that I really started drinking.

  Lex shrugged. “What happened in the past doesn’t matter to me. I just needed to know you were good, that you could play, and I discovered you can. And that you can write your own songs as well.”

  I stared at her, then smiled. “You didn’t just happen to see me come out of that pawnshop, did you? You’ve been following me or something.”

  Lex laughed. “No, not really. I just had some good contacts in pawnshops around the stations in this system. The pawn dealer contacted me.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I’m sort of a talent agent,” Lex said. “My job is to find talented people who have hit bottom, give them one special job, and a new chance in the future.”

  I kept staring at her, fighting the attraction, trying to not really ignore everything she was saying. Even with my eyes now used to the dim lights of the bar, I just couldn’t get a read on her. She looked like an agent, she was sneaky like an agent, and she dressed like an agent. And she tossed money around like an agent. And over the years I had been around enough booking agents to know not to trust them with a mouthful of spit.

  “Look,” Lex said, scooting over to sit in the chair next to me.

  Her wonderful soft smell shocked me. I wanted to lean away and get closer at the same time, so I just stayed centered, holding onto my cold beer like an anchor in a rough sea.

  “I’m willing to give you a half million Intersystem Credits for ten concerts over a fourteen-day concert period. I need you to play about twenty or so songs per concert. I don’t even much care which songs they are. Covers or your own originals.”

  “Lady, you are totally nuts,” I said, turning back to face my almost empty glass of beer, doing my best to ignore her wonderful smell.

  “You promised you’d listen to me,” Lex said. “That’s all I asked for the guitar.”

  I moved my right leg and bumped it into my guitar just to make sure it was still there. It was.

  “All right,” I said, “you’re willing to give a washed-out guitar player a half million Intersystems to sing a few songs. What’s the catch?”

  “The catch is the location of the concert tour,” Lex said, glancing at Carl to see if he could hear. He couldn’t since he was down the bar cutting up limes for his fruit tray.

  “So, I got to go out to the frontier or into the Farms or something like that?”

  No way I was going into the Farms. They were the systems occupied by the only aliens humans had run into. The aliens looked like a cross between a black beetle and mass of mud shaped like a deformed cow, which is why humans called their systems the Farms. And from what I hear, they smelled like a sewer. I was fairly certain they had no desire for human country music.

  “No, actually, your part of the tour will take just over two weeks each way, all done in a first class luxury cabin. But here in the human systems about ninety years will pass before you come back.”

  This woman was keeping me entertained, I had to hand her that. I hadn’t wanted to laugh this much since I found a hundred credits on the sundeck on the way to the bar three weeks ago.

  “I’m a talent agent here in this time period for this section of the Consolidated Planets,” Lex said, talking fast and low. “In this time period the Consolidated Planets have not yet been formed, and except for a few high-ranking officials, no one here knows it will even exist in the future. There’s a great demand for original old-style Earth music and musicians in the future and this is as far back in time as we talent agents are allowed to go.”

  I decided to play along with the nut case for a minute. “So how come you just can’t beam me into the future and have me back for my next beer?”

  “Space and time travel don’t work that way I’m afraid,” Lex said. “You’ll be gone your time about six weeks total, but because of the speeds involved, and a whole bunch of stuff I don’t really understand about time travel, about ninety years will pass here. That’s why we look for musicians who have nothing to lose and very little family. Of course, it’s a help that you are also very talented. Your talent, to be honest with you, is one of the reasons I can offer you as much as I can.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  “Look,” Lex said, leaning forward. “I don’t expect you to believe me. I wouldn’t believe me if I lived in this time period. But I do want you to think about it. You’ll play ten concerts, to audiences as human as I am a very long time into the future. You can stay in the future as long as you would like beyond the tour, maybe never come back.”

  “Stay?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Lex said, nodding. “You can stay for a week, or a year. If you stay a year it will be ninety-one years passing here. If you decide to stay in the future and make a career there, your money for this can be transferred forward. But if you do decide to return to here, you won’t make it back until at least ninety years into this future.”

  “And a half million will be worth nothing then, right?”

  “Actually, no, with some minor bubbles, money in the systems stays amazingly stable all the way up and into my time period in the Consolidated Planets.”

  “And I’ll be too old to spend it when I get back.”

  “No,” Lex said, shaking her head, “You’ll only be six weeks older than the day you leave. Just ninety years will pass here. Again, I don’t expect you to believe me, but at least think about it and meet me back here tomorrow.”

  Before I could say anything, Lex handed me five hundred station credits. “This should help get your rent caught up. Thanks for considering this.”

  I stared at the money in my hand like it was a snake that might bite me as Lex slid off her stool and headed for the door.

  Five hundred station credits was about 50 Interstellar Credits. She was offering me a half million Interstellars. That was a lot of beers.

  I watched her walk, wanting more than anything to jump up and follow her and never let her from my sight. But the money in my hand froze me to my stool.

  When she opened the door to the sundeck, she was gone into the bright white light.

  “Wow, she was a looker. Was she as weird as she seemed?” Carl asked, glancing down the bar at me.

  I took another look at the five hundred station credits in my hand, then stuffed them in my pocket. “You have no idea,” I said, finishing my beer and motioning Carl for another. “You have no idea at all.”

  TWO

  AS IT TURNED out, Lex’s offer, my guitar, and the money in my pocket put me right off the idea of drinking the night away. I had one more beer, grabbed a ta
ke-home Old Earth style pizza on the way to my room, and then surprised the dump’s manager with payment in full for all the back rent.

  I was living in such a slum that even after the pizza and rent, I still had enough money left over to last for almost a month if I watched the drinking. Maybe by then I could find a job. A real job, not the crazed thing some good-looking woman had talked to me about. But at least she had bought me some time.

  I dropped the pizza on the old scarred coffee table, then brushed some food wrappers aside and dropped onto the couch. I opened up my guitar case like I was standing at the door of a blind date. Inside was my guitar, just as I had left it this morning at the pawnshop.

  I held it to my chest for a moment, just letting myself believe that it was actually back in my hands. Then after a few quick adjustments for tuning, I strummed a few chords before putting it back in the case.

  How had I let myself get so low?

  And why did some woman I didn’t know go to the trouble of getting my guitar back for me, not counting the five big she had tossed my way. She couldn’t be serious about the job.

  There had to be something else going on.

  I took a piece of pizza and worked at it, thinking over any possibility of a scam, which was unlikely since I had nothing to take in a scam. After a second piece of pizza, I still hadn’t come up with anything that made any sense at all.

  I was exactly what I seemed on the surface, a washed-out musician who liked to play in the style of old Earth country. I had nothing to scam. I was worth exactly the amount she had given me and not one credit more.

  So, with a quick bite out of a third slice, I went out the door and down to the manager’s office to use his com device. I used to know a guy who was one of the brainy types, read a lot, actually had a major education from somewhere. He had done soundboards on a tour I worked once, and we’d drunk a few nights together. He’d understood this time travel stuff and if it was real or not.

  I had to give the manager the fifty station credits I had planned to drink earlier to cover any intersystem charges. I hoped like hell the call was going to be worth that.

  “Steve,” I said as he came up the com link. He looked about the same, maybe a little shorter hair, and he still hadn’t had his lack of chin fixed. “This is Danny Kenyon, from the Country Old-Style Planetary Tour back a few years. Remember me?”

  “Uh, yah, sure Danny, how are you?”

  I knew he didn’t remember me, I could see it in his eyes, but at this point, that didn’t matter. At least I didn’t owe him money, so he wasn’t either cutting the link or asking for his money back just at the mention of my name.

  “Sorry to bother you, Steve,” I said, “but I got this dumb science question that a few friends and I have been arguing about, and I figured if anyone would know the answer, you might.”

  “Fire away,” Steve said. “I took some science classes back in college.” Clearly not talking music or money made him relax a little, even though he didn’t remember me.

  “Okay, promise not to laugh too hard,” I said.

  He laughed and said, “Promise.”

  “Okay, my friend was telling me that time travel is possible and in the future we might actually invent it. Does that sound stupid to you or what?”

  “Not at all,” Steve said. “Lots of scientists over the years, starting with Einstein back on Old Earth, thought that time travel might be possible. But a lot of factors would have to be solved and we’re nowhere near that kind of major breakthrough.”

  “You’re kidding?” I said, shocked. “It might actually be possible in the future?”

  “Possible yes,” Steve said. “Likely, probably not. Not in our lifetimes anyway.”

  “Well, damn,” I said. “I lost that bet. Thanks, Steve.”

  “No problem,” Steve said, “take care of yourself, Danny.”

  I shut down the com link and headed back to my room, thinking over what Lex had said. It was possible. How completely crazy was that?

  By the time I had finished the pizza and played a few songs, I had decided to go back to Scott’s tavern and meet Lex tomorrow. What could it hurt, as long as she didn’t ask for her money back?

  THREE

  JUST AS THE day before, it took my eyes a moment to adjust inside the dark bar from all the light in that stupid sun section of the station. I had managed to finally get some sleep and by the time I reached the bar I was slowly getting angry. I might be broke, but I’m not completely stupid, and Lex, for some reason, was trying to get me to buy a huge pile-of-shit story.

  I just didn’t know why.

  As I headed across the dark bar I felt like I needed a beer more than just about anything, especially after the hot sun beating down on me in my walk through that sundeck ring.

  I could see through the darkness that Lex was sitting on the stool beside my favorite, sipping on something. Just the fact that she was there again surprised me.

  And actually made me happy.

  I hated that I was attracted to a nut case. Just hated it.

  My former wife had turned into a nut case, swearing there were aliens in every station, on every planet we visited, and that they were watching us every minute. Invisible aliens.

  She blamed the aliens for our divorce. She was partially right.

  Carl was behind the bar as always, and otherwise the tavern was empty.

  “Danny,” Carl said, slipping a beer onto a napkin in front of my stool. “Good to see you.”

  “Give my eyes a minute,” I said, “and I might be able to see you back.”

  Carl and Lex both chuckled at my stupid joke, then Carl moved back down the bar to keep working on the evening preparations.

  “Thanks for the loan,” I said to Lex after taking a sip of the wonderful, cool beer. Again I’m not sure when I’ll be able to pay you back.”

  Lex held up a beautiful hand. “No need to even think of paying me back. The money was like an option on your time. I wanted you to consider my offer.”

  “Well,” I said, taking another sip of the beer. “I considered it. I even called a friend who confirmed that time travel at some point in the distant future would be possible.”

  Lex nodded. “It is.”

  “So how far forward would I be going?”

  “A very long ways,” Lex said.

  “How far?” I asked.

  Lex glanced at me, then at Carl to make sure he was far enough away to not hear.

  “Fourteen thousand years.”

  “Not possible,” I said, turning back to my beer. “Humans won’t be around for that long.”

  “Oh, they very much are and have a real desire for Old Earth music like you play.”

  “So why not go back another six hundred years and get real Old Earth musicians?”

  “Not allowed to,” she said.

  “So explain to me how it works,” I said. “Since you’re asking me to give up my life and climb into something that flies through time, I better know at least some basics about how it works.”

  Again Lex stared at me for a moment like I was some alien thing. Clearly other dead-end musicians she had offered this to hadn’t bothered with any homework.

  “I really don’t know how it works,” she said. “At least not the science of it. Something about folding space.” She glanced down the bar to make sure Carl couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  Damn I just couldn’t get the attraction I was feeling toward her out of my head. She had to be doing something to me. I hated agents and she was an agent. I couldn’t want to sleep with an agent. That would be like sleeping with some mud-cow alien on the Farms. But I still just wanted to lean forward and kiss her.

  Had to be the reaction to the money.

  “The Consolidated Planets are a group of about forty thousand systems banded together for safety and trade. The Planets as an organization has been in existence about ten thousand years now.”

  I was too stunned at the number to say anything since there were
only about fifty colonized systems now.

  She went on. “Travel between my time and this time is done by only people who have no ties or family because of the time loss issues.”

  “Okay, that makes my brain hurt,” I said. “So you have no family, no husband waiting for you back home?”

  “None,” she said. “If I did, they would be long dead by the time I returned from one trip. The time lag works both ways I’m afraid.”

  “Okay,” I said, not liking the sound of that either, but deep down happy she didn’t have anyone.

  Lex went on. “Only two weeks will pass on board the ship, but decades will pass on the planets at either end of the trip, forty-five years on the trip there, forty-five years on the trip back here.”

  I finished my beer and held up my glass until Carl saw it and nodded.

  “I see why you need someone with no ties to here.”

  Lex nodded and again I resisted the urge to just kiss her. She put her hand on my hand and the soft feel of her skin sent a shock through my system.

  “Are you drugging me?” I asked, looking into her blue eyes.

  “No,” she said, smiling. “Not my style. Just trying to do a job.”

  “And this attraction I’m feeling to you is part of the job?”

  She pulled her hand back and shook her head, looking away. “Never happened before.”

  I wanted to believe her but I wasn’t sure that I did.

  Carl slid another beer in front of me. Again Lex bought.

  I stared at her, then decided I still needed a few more questions answered. “So, what planet were you born on?”

  She smiled. “One named Small Five about two hundred light years from here. It hasn’t been discovered or explored yet in this time period.”

  “So, how many trips have you made to this time period?”

  “This is my second.”

  “Ninety years each?” I asked, staring at her. “How old are you?”

  Lex laughed. “Actually, in real time just three years younger than you are. I’m thirty. Time passes normally on either end. I’m still aging just like normal. But if you took my birth date on my home world, I guess you would say I’m a lot older than you.”