Myths of the Modern Man Read Free

even-handed. Eleanor needed me. I was her pet project, the time-traveling astronaut on whom so much faith, energy, planning, and trillions of dollars were invested. I reminded her of this fact when she most disgusted me, which was happening a lot lately.
    Dr. Ford walked into the lab in an expensive pair of very shiny shoes and set down his constant companion, a cup of coffee. He sat on the metal stool by the lab table and rubbed his eyes. Dr. Roberts turned from her notes and gave him a prolonged glance of concern. Concern? Anxiousness? Tenderness? Desire? I could never tell. I always wondered, but I could never really tell.
    “ It’s Colonel Moore, or nothing,” he said at last, looking up at her with his habitual rueful smile. She probably found that smile boyish and charming. She was that unimaginative.
    “ That’s what they said?” Dr. Roberts looked close to a pout.
    “ That’s what they just released to the press.”
    “ Even before confirming it with us?”
    “ General English made the move.”
    Dr. Roberts turned back to her digital note pad, refusing to share her disappointment with us just as she shut us out of her thoughts. I could sense, rather than see, the sharp frown working on her delicate features, a kind of benign budgerigar ferocity in her pale blue eyes, eyes so pale as to give the impression of having faded from some more brilliant former color.
    Brian K. Yorke sat opposite me in the same coarse trousers, tunic and neck torque of the ancient Celtic warrior as me, our hair now grown to shoulder length. We gave up haircuts when we were assigned to prepare for this mission. During months of physical training and education on the ancient Celts, Gauls and Romans our hair grew freely, which was the easiest part of the assignment. His hair was jet black, thick and curly, and mine was still partly brown where it had not already turned gray. Even with the bruises from the fight, he looked like Hercules at twenty-eight. I looked like a vagrant, and much older than thirty-eight. They chose me.
    Brian K. Yorke bit his lip, jerked his head down into his lap for a split second of wounded pride, the picture of an athlete in defeat as he might have been captured in a Michelangelo sculpture, then looked up, flexing his neck muscles in brave resignation at his fate. He looked at Dr. Roberts with rigid, square-jawed respect, like he was pledging allegiance to the flag, but she looked away. She was as uncomfortable with his display of dignity as she was with expressions of her own disappointment that he had not been chosen.
    Then Yorke stood, stepped smartly over to me and shook my hand.
    “ Congratulations, Colonel Moore.” I think he would have added “happy hunting” or “happy landing” or some such lucky charm, but there was none for time travel. Not yet. After a few experiments in the lab, the only successful mission of note in time travel was last year when I was catapulted back to the Hundred Years War, rode shotgun for Joan of Arc, hung out at her immolation, and was pulled back through the tenacious, greedy fingers of gravity back here, back to the late Twenty-First Century with a smoldering banner in my hand and a case of emotional ecstasy and terror that drove me into the psych ward for a few weeks while Dr. Roberts and Dr. Ford debriefed me, Eleanor muttering her thoughts into her voice recorder. Milly, faithful transcriptionist, knew all about my supposed new-found if still tenuous religious faith after having seen a saint in action. It was all the talk of the agency commissary, but she took that in stride, as she did the whole crazy business of the time travel study. Her previous position was transcribing for an orthopedist with a lisp. It was all the same to her.
    Which is more than I can say for the rest of us. Dr. Roberts and Dr. Ford took it all too seriously, and General English, who figure-headed the mission and ran end-runs around the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was playing like a codger in