The Armageddon Blues | Page 6

on her freeway.
She stood in the sun, quiet and motionless but for her breathing, for two
minutes that stretched into three. Once she drew her knife from its
sheath; then, looking back to the large building, she shook her head
against the silliness and put it back with an impatient movement. Jalian,
even at the age of six, knew the uses of a knife.
The action broke her paralysis, and Jalian found a strange, powerful
fury growing in her. Here, in her holy place, on her Big Road, someone
had grown a building.
The six-year old Jalian d'Arsennette, even through the worst anger that
she had ever experienced in her life, knew there was nothing she could
do about the building on her Big Road. She backed away from the
building a few steps, eyes still locked to it; then, reluctantly, turned and
began the long run back to the Clan House. She would be home nearly
a twelfth-day before she would be needed for the Ceremony meal, but
that was of no account. When she told Ralesh what she had done, she
would be badly punished, perhaps even ceremonially scarred; but
Jalian's mother would do something about the tall, thin building that
had grown up on Jalian's Big Road.
Jalian d'Arsennette had no way of knowing that the "building" was a
starship.
Dateline 1968 Gregorian.
Georges Mordreaux sat behind the wheel of a green ‘66 Camaro. He
was traveling north on the Pacific Coast Highway. Georges Mordreaux
was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with cheerful nondescript features,
light blue eyes and light brown hair. He smiled a lot.

The Camaro ran smoothly, with the sort of leashed power that a jet
pilot might have recognized, but which was utterly out of place in a
green 1966 model Camaro. (Or any other color Camaro.) Both the
passenger and driver's windows were down, and wind was blasting
through the car. The air conditioner was on. So was the heater.
The machine ran ... well, better than new was the term that came
immediately to Georges' mind. Georges did not think that the car would
break the sound barrier, even if he pushed it. The car was too
aerodynamically inefficient.
Georges had owned the car for two weeks now. He'd bought it from a
used-car dealer in New Jersey who swore that it had been driven by a
retired couple who simply liked Camaros. Georges had not put gasoline
into the car once on the way west.
"Better than new" was probably the correct term.
Georges whistled as he drove. He was not very good at it, and besides,
the car radio was competing; the Beatles were singing "I Want to Hold
Your Hand." Georges was whistling "Marseillaise." It did not occur to
him to turn the radio off. (To be fair, it is not likely that he could have
turned the radio off.)
Georges whistled, driving north. The Pacific Ocean sparkled in the
sunshine off to his left. He smiled quite a lot.
How likely is it that the world's only time traveler would encounter
Georges Mordreaux?
Not very. But then, there are things that are more improbable. That an
object should spontaneously gain more energy, assume a more orderly
pattern, is vastly more unlikely--and yet, still possible. In a world ruled
by quantum mechanics, there are no certainties; entropy is a function of
probability theory.
One might best consider Georges Mordreaux as an improbability locus.

There.
Dateline 1968 Gregorian.
Forty miles north of San Luis Obispo, Georges Mordreaux saw a
hitchhiker, walking briskly along the right shoulder of the highway. A
second closer look altered his impression slightly. Walking along the
roadside, yes; but she was not a hitchhiker. She paid no attention to the
cars skimming by her on the freeway.
The drivers passing her certainly paid attention to her; they were almost
unable to do otherwise. She stood out from her surroundings like a
Corvichi fusion torch at night. She was dressed in a white jumpsuit, and
carried a light blue satchel on one shoulder. Her hair hung to the small
of her back, long and straight and undeniably white, reflecting the
sunlight brilliantly. Her skin, where the rolled-up sleeves of the
jumpsuit showed the flesh of the arms, was bleached-white, with little
pink in its makeup. The jumpsuit legs were tucked into the tops of
calf-high black boots.
Georges smiled to himself absently, and brought the Camaro to a halt
next to the girl. He leaned over and called out through the right-hand
window.
"Do you need a ride, miss?"
The girl continued to walk when he stopped the car; she did not turn
when he spoke to her, in a voice that held faint traces of a French
accent.
Georges called, "Miss?" a bit more loudly.
Jalian d'Arsennette