Stars Across Time (21 page)

Perhaps, if he weren’t nervous, he could have asked her more about her studies and her experiences flying. Had she been in aerial combat? Engaging in dogfights in the sky?

“What kind of restaurant is it?” Andie asked, facing him. She had been looking out the window, leaning forward and peering at sights that must be curious to her.

“Pardon?” Theron asked, his mind still on dogfights.

“The style of food. Like Mexican? Or Italian?”

“Uhm.”
Excellent articulation, Theron...
But he wasn’t sure what types of foods those would be. Cuisines based on the old cultures, presumably. “They raise their poultry out back and make wonderful chicken and egg dishes. There’s usually beef and lamb. Pork belly. Several kinds of fish. The geoducks are good, if you don’t look too closely at them before they’re cooked.”

“Geoducks.” Andie grinned. “I suppose anything that ugly
would
survive an apocalypse.”

“I enjoy this restaurant. I hope you will too.” He wondered if it would be presumptuous to lay his hand on her hand. Probably. Especially since hers were folded in her lap. She would think he was overly friendly if he went groping in her lap.

“I’m sure it’ll be great.” She met his eyes, almost as if she was searching for something. “Theron, I appreciate you helping me. But I wanted to... I want to, uhm.” She lowered her gaze, staring at the floor of the carriage. “It wasn’t my intention to imply to your men, or the men on the ship, that I was—or we were... having a relationship. I hope you weren’t embarrassed by your general or anyone. I just didn’t think your people would believe me if I told them the time-travel story. I barely believe it myself, and I was there. I honestly didn’t tell them we were having a relationship. But I didn’t correct them when they made assumptions, either, because I obviously needed a lift back to your fort.”

“Oh.” Just when he thought he couldn’t become any less articulate...

The carriage had turned onto the street with the restaurant. Theron didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t thought anything odd at the men’s reactions to her. He was fairly certain the soldiers would have gossiped about him walking around with a woman, whether she had said anything or not. That was what soldiers did. It was what he had always done too. But her apology made him think that maybe she was letting him know that she didn’t want any kind of relationship with him. Maybe she knew that there was no point, since she would be going home soon.

His heart ached at the idea of never seeing her again. It was so rare that a woman made this kind of impression on him—of course, he was rarely back in civilized lands where he could seek out women, but even so, he knew she was special. Perhaps it had been a fool’s dream, but that was why he had asked Gideon to dig into the archives and see if he could find anything on her, such as if she had married one day and had children who had made a contribution to history—or if she herself had made a contribution. If she had been accepted into their NASA and gone up in space, he couldn’t ask someone like that to stay. Not that he had any idea if she would ever be interested in staying, anyway, but perhaps if he offered her something that would appeal to her, something more than his bumbling self.

“You’re not saying anything,” Andie observed as the carriage rolled to a stop at the front door of the stone building. She lifted her gaze, a vulnerability in her eyes that he hadn’t seen before, even when those thugs had been hurting her. “Are you mad?” she asked.

“No,” Theron blurted. Then more softly, he repeated, “No. I was thinking. It’s not a strength of mine, unless you’re talking about moving troops around and cutting off enemy attacks. I’m passable at that.”

“From what I’ve heard, you’re more than passable.”

“Well, we don’t have high standards in this century.” Theron risked laying his hand on hers, wanting to let her know that he didn’t mind having her identify herself as “his woman” or lady friend or any other acquaintance that she would like, so long as it was what she wanted. But the door opened before he could get the words out.

“Sir?” the private who had been wrangled into driving duty asked. “Do you want me to wait while you eat?”

Andie jumped out, ignoring the hand the soldier offered, and landed lightly on the balls of her feet. Theron smiled, remembering how many people she had kicked with those feet. Given the height of some of those kicks, she could have some interesting flexibility for certain bedroom activities.

Really, Theron? You’re as bad as those horny kidnappers.
He shook his head. Maybe it was a
good
thing that he hadn’t managed to articulate many words to her tonight.

“It depends,” Theron said, remembering the private’s question only after he had climbed out and the man was staring at him. “What would you be doing if you went back to the fort? You’re on a twenty-four hour CQ shift, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” the private said glumly. “Sergeant Ramirez had mops and floor polish out, and mentioned something about the latrines needing cleaning too.”

“In that case, you better wait for us. Take a nap, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” the private said more brightly. Then, as Theron and Andie were heading for the entrance, he added, “Take your time, sir. Appetizers. Desserts. Have good conversations.”

Theron offered a parting wave before hustling ahead to open the door for Andie.

“I see why they all like you,” she said, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “You’re the cool officer.”

“If cool means lenient, that’s applicable. At least back in the rear. I’m strict when it matters.” He tilted his head as she walked past him. “As long as there’s not pee on the floor of the latrine and excessive mold growing on the walls of the showers, I don’t see a reason to waste men on cleaning duty.”

One of the owners, a red-haired woman named Sue, was walking over to greet them, and she raised her eyebrows and shook her head at this mention of latrines and pee.

“Sorry.” Theron decided he had been in the field too long. The manners his mother had attempted to instill in him were rustier than that truck the kidnappers had driven. “That’s not appropriate dinner talk.”

Sue nodded at him as she picked up papers with the day’s menu typed on them.

Andie only smiled. “I’ve heard a lot worse. I’m in the military, too, remember?”

“Do your commanding officers discuss mold and pee with you?”

“Only the cool ones.”

“Welcome, Colonel Theron.” Sue extended a hand toward the cozy cellar-like dining room, with vines growing up the stone walls and decorative plates and bottles hanging from thick wooden beams that stretched across the ceiling. “It’s good to see you with a lady friend.”

“Yes, we’ll sit outside, please.” Theron recognized a number of faces from the fort at the handful of tables in the main room, and he was hoping for more privacy.

“This way.”

Unfortunately, heading out to the patio involved walking through the dining room, and the officers of his rank or above gave him unwanted encouragement. One reached out and slapped him on the back as he walked by, nodding approvingly at Andie. One of the officer’s wives, who he might have believed would be more circumspect, smiled and said, “She’s pretty. Good for you, Theron.”

By the time they reached the door to the patio, his cheeks were hot enough to use for lighting candles. Andie was going to think him some kind of pathetic recluse who never had companionship. True, it had been a while since he’d been in a relationship that lasted longer than whatever leave he had back home, but he wasn’t some celibate monk. He was just busy.

The handful of tables on the patio were empty, for which Theron let out a relieved breath. Sue turned up a couple of lamps. Andie glanced up, perhaps wondering if they risked being rained on, but they were in a tidy section of a greenhouse that attached to the building, so a glass ceiling protected them. An open door on the side let in a nice breeze that smelled of damp earth and the sea.

“The garden grotto,” Sue said, placing them at a table with a curved booth cut into a boulder that would seat them side by side. A fountain gurgled behind it, also built into the boulder.

Theron glanced at Andie. Would she object to the intimacy? The booth was large enough that four could have sat there, so it wasn’t as if they would have to touch.

She slipped onto the cushions of the seat and inhaled the scent from the nearby potted citrus trees. Rows of raised vegetable beds for the restaurant stretched into the darkness farther back. Theron always found this place restful, at least when men weren’t cackling at the fact that he had a lady friend. Even as he had the thought, laughter floated out from the dining room. He told himself he was far too old to worry about whether or not people were talking about him and eased into the booth beside Andie.

Sue lit candles on the table and left the menus. Theron noticed that only a couple of things he had mentioned were being served that day, and he hoped Andie wouldn’t mind the lack. Theron had seen enough of the outside world to appreciate this niche the Cascadians had carved out for themselves, but it all had to seem rustic and primitive to her. What could he offer her that might intrigue her enough to want to stay? Not that he even knew if that was an option yet. It would depend on what Gideon found. Still...

“Tell me, Andie,” he said. “Were you at all intrigued by our discussion in the office? The mention of a secret project?”

“Of course, but I know that secret military projects don’t get shared with civilians, or soldiers from other forces, or even most people within your own forces.”

“Well, in this case...”

“You’re allowed to share it with me? Because I’ll ultimately go back to my century and wouldn’t have anyone to tell, anyway?” Andie wriggled her eyebrows and laid her hand on his forearm.

“I...” He lost track of his thoughts for a moment, distracted by her touch. “I already mentioned that we have another time machine, one in Mount Olympus.”

She nodded.

“There’s a lot of other stuff down there. Six months ago, I wasn’t aware of any of it, but Morimoto has known me for almost twenty years, and I guess he figured I was trustworthy. Especially when some other people he chose proved they weren’t. He decided it was better to have someone loyal rather than someone with more qualifications.” He offered a self-deprecating smirk. “That’s how I came to be searching for you, by the way.”

“I’m glad for your integrity then.” She squeezed his arm.

Theron hoped he could convince her to squeeze other things too. But perhaps it was premature for that. And premature for all of this. But if Morimoto and Gideon were planning to send him to fetch those other women
tomorrow
, he didn’t have much time. Andie and her friends could be on their way back home the day after that. He closed his eyes.

“You probably wouldn’t guess it, looking around our simple town,” Theron said, “but we haven’t really
lost
that much technology from your time period and the generation after. It’s just that all of the easy-to-acquire resources were depleted back in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and there’s very little left that we can get to. You can’t burn five gallons of oil to retrieve one. So we live simply because we must. Because even the most basic things that people doubtlessly took for granted in your time require sophisticated extraction, manufacturing, and transportation processes that could not be maintained indefinitely. But information has survived and some resources have been squirreled away. I’m sure every government still running on any significant level out there has secret projects. We have...” He spread his hand, palm up. “A nearly complete space shuttle, with plans to launch a colony ship to another solar system in the next twenty years.”

Andie blinked a few times and looked around. From candlelight to a rocket ship? He would ask for proof, if he were in her shoes. With time, if she stayed here, he might be able to offer it. With her background and her education, it would be a simple matter to get her into the army with equal, if not higher rank than she had at home. But would she be even remotely tempted by that offer? He could hardly expect her to stay because of him, not after the short time they had known each other, but once again, he was all too aware of how little time he had to pique her interest.

“They were very close to launching colony ships in your time, you see,” Theron said. “A little past your time, actually, but before things fell apart. There were some wealthy individuals in your area who funded private space programs after your government stopped sending shuttles into space, and we—not myself, but others in the army—found a ship hidden away in the mountains out here. Our scientists have been learning everything they can, figuring out what needs to be done to finish the craft and launch it, to send humans to another planet where at least some of us could start over.”

When he stopped talking, it took Andie a moment to speak.

“That’s encouraging. So far what I’ve seen has been... less so. Not here,” she added, looking into his eyes, perhaps wondering if she had offended him, “but out there.” She waved vaguely toward the Cascade Mountains. “But why are you telling me this when it must be top secret? Your general wouldn’t approve.”

“No, but he doesn’t approve of anything. I’m telling you because I’d like you to think about...”
Staying
, he thought, but couldn’t manage to say it out loud. What if she said no? Better to ease her into the idea. “You said your odds of being invited to the space program in your own time are not good. Here, I could almost guarantee that you could go. We don’t have any pilots with the experience you have, on the kind of highly computerized equipment that’s onboard that shuttle.”

“I... Oh. Wow.” She traced the mortar between the tiles of the tabletop. “Would your people really go for that? How many would even believe my story? They might think I’m a spy from... ah, I really haven’t gotten the lay of the land yet. Is China still a thing? Russia?”

“I’ve never sailed across the Pacific Ocean, but there are traders who do regularly. China got decimated by a virus later in your century, as did most of the world, honestly. The Earth’s population fell from ten billion to one billion and then continued to decline for a while, thanks to wars over increasingly scarce resources. That had been going on for a long time, but people got even more scared after the virus. Russia is back to being an empire, but we don’t hear from them much. They have the same problems this continent does with toxic waste and fallout from—er, this isn’t a very good dinner topic, either, is it?” He wanted her to talk about her adventures—and the possibility of her staying here. He didn’t want to bore her with history lectures—or scare her away from his world.