The Time Traveler's Almanac

“Rubbish.” He looked directly at her, taking in everything: her flounced scholar-lady’s dress, the jeweled rings through her ears and nipples, her painstakingly knotted chignon. This was a high-energy civilization, but a very staid, conservative one with strict sumptuary laws: were she a commoner, she would risk a flogging for indecency, or worse, dressing above her station. “Who are you really? And why are you so interested in me?”

“Oh! If you must know, I am doctor-postulant Xiri, daughter of doctor-professor archivist His Excellency Dean Imad of the College of History, and Her Ladyship doctor-professor emeritus Leila of the faculty of hot super-Jovian moons” – she smiled coyly – “and I have been charged, by my duty and my honor as a scholar, to study you in absolute detail by my tutors. They have assigned you to me as the topic of my first dissertation. On the hero-guardians of time.”

“Your first dissertation—” Her parents were a professor and a dean; she might as well have said sheikh or baron. “Do I have any choice in the matter?”

“You can refuse, of course.” She shivered and tugged her filmy shawl back into position. “But I can’t.”

“Why? What happens if you refuse?”

She shivered. “I would forfeit my doctorate. The shame! My parents” – for a moment the bright-eyed optimism cracked – “would blame themselves. It would cast doubt on my commitment.”

Was failure to make tenure track justification for an honor killing? Pierce shook his head, staring at her. “I’m just a trainee!” He reached for the bed’s control, stabbing the button to raise his back. The interview was out of control, heading for deep waters, and lying down gave him an unaccountable fear of drowning. “I’m the nobody around here!”

“How do you know that, my lord? For all you know, you might be destined for glory.” She tugged at her shawl again and smiled, an ingenue trying to look mysterious.

“But I don’t have any—” He switched off the bed lift once he was level with her, looked her in the eyes, and changed the subject in midsentence. “Have your people ever met me before?”

The hardest part of arguing with her, he found, was avoiding staring at her chest. She was really very pretty, but her pedigree suggested he’d be wise to abandon that line of thought; she’d be about as safe to seduce as a rattlesnake.

“No.” Her smile widened. “A handsome man of mystery and a time hero to boot: yes, they told us why you were here.” Her gaze briefly covered his chest.

For the first time in many months, Pierce resorted to his native language. “Oh, hell.” He glanced at the window, then back at Xiri. “Everybody wants to study me,” he confessed. “I don’t know why, I really don’t…” He crossed his arms, looked at her. “Study away. I am at your disposal.” At least it promised to be a less harrowing experience than Kafka’s cross-examination.

“Oh! Thank you, my lord!” She placed a proprietorial hand on the side of his bed. “I will do my utmost to make it an enjoyable experience.”

“Really?” There was something about her tone of voice that took him aback, as if he’d answered a question that he didn’t remember being asked. The idea of being studied struck Pierce as marginally more enjoyable than banging his head on the wall, but on the upside, Xiri was high-quality eye candy. On the downside – Don’t go there, he reminded himself. “Where would you like to begin?”

“Right here, I think,” she said, sliding her hand under the covers.

“Hey! I! Huh.” Pierce found, to his mild alarm, that her busy hand was getting results. “Um. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but we really shouldn’t – why are you – aren’t you going to shut off your cameras—”

“I have read about your culture.” She sat down on the bed beside him with a rustle of silk. “In some ways, it sounded very familiar. Did they not record everything that happened to them? Did they not talk about people marrying their work? Well, that is just how we do that here.”

“But that’s just a metaphor!” He tried to push her hand away, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“Hush.” She responded by making him shudder. “You’re the subject of my dissertation! I’m going to find out all about you. It’s to be my life’s work! I’m so happy! Just relax, my lord, and everything will be wonderful. Don’t worry, I have studied the customs of your time, and they are not so very alien. We can talk about the wedding tomorrow, after you’ve met my father.”

Empty Mansions