Free The Seeds of Time by Kay Kenyon Page A

suit.
    “How was the run?”
    Clio continued stretching. “It was swell.”
    He watched her stretch for a moment. “You’re looking good, Clio.”
    “Try to.”
    “This running business. Do you find it pleasurable? Well-being, happiness, that sort of thing?”
    Clio worked on her hamstrings. “No.”
    “Ah. I suppose not. Mind on business, I suppose. Good practice, good practice.” He glanced quickly around the gym, then back at her. “I’m sorry, by the way, about what happened.”
    Clio stopped and gazed at him, her expression fixed.
    “About what you went through. With those men.” He glanced at her fleetingly, took a roll of fizzes from his breast pocket, squeezed one into his mouth.
    “You mean when they beat me up and tried to rape me?”
    Brisher looked to one side. A few people in the gymlooked toward Clio. Brisher said, in a lower voice, “Yes, about that. A bad business. I hate to think what might have happened if Hillis and Zee hadn’t fought them off.”
    Clio got up, grabbed her towel, headed for the locker room.
    “I can imagine what it must have been like,” he said, starting after her. “Just awful, just awful. If you ever need to talk about it …”
    Clio stopped, turned to face him. “I’ve talked it out, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” This came out more rudely than she intended. Got to be nice to Brish. She conjured up a really good smile. “Thanks, though, OK?”
    “You have to be careful, going Earthside, Clio. Can’t just sleep in the woods, these days. Too dangerous. Greenies, kooks, whatnot. Hate to lose a good pilot. Before her time.” He took a step closer to her, confiding. “You should be more careful, Clio. You and Hillis. These are dangerous times, even for a Dive pilot. Nobody’s immune.”
    Clio remembered to breathe. “I always try to be careful.”
    He nodded. “Good. Good practice, being careful.”
    She made a beeline for the showers. He knew. Something. But how much did he know? There was always a hint behind his words. A warning. An invitation. She let the water sluice over her a long time.
    Clio found HIllis in his room, stabbing at the keyboard, running a game. She watched over his shoulder until he won the round.
    “Brish is watching us, Hill,” she said. “After the episode with stealing the specimen. He may know a lot of things, about you as well as me.”
    “No. No, he doesn’t. All he knows is that I swiped a dead plant from the transition farm, and there’s nothing he can do about it, because he can’t admit he’s got retroids running around beating up people.” He punched in another round of Space Ace.
    “Jesus, aren’t you worried?”
    “We haven’t done anything yet.” Hillis blanked thescreen and swung his chair around to face her. He looked at her a long time, and she grew uneasy.
    “What do you mean ‘yet’?” She sat on the bunk, with a sinking feeling in her belly.
    “We’re going to take a Dive. We’re going up a couple decades, Clio. You’re going to take
Starhawk
to the future.”
    Clio stared at him a moment. “I’m going to
what?”
    Hillis sprang from his chair, and kneeled in front of her, taking her hands in his. “You’re going to take us to the future. Oh Clio, it’s possible, possible to see our future!”
    “What are you talking about, ‘see the future’?”
    “Zee broke through. The Future Ceiling. There isn’t any ceiling, we can go both ways. Zee did the math. No ceiling.”
    Clio pulled her hands out of his. He was crazy.
    “He’s been working on it for weeks,” Hillis said. “Turns out, it wasn’t that hard.”
    “You’re saying Zee did what Vandarthanan couldn’t?”
    “No.” Hillis sat next to her on the bunk, close, his blue eyes trying to trap her gaze. “I think Vandarthanan did it years ago. And I think we just never heard about it because the powers that be didn’t want us to hear about it. Anyhow, he’s dead now, so who’s to say? Point is, we can get to