To Sail Beyond the Sunset Read Free Page A

would love him.”
    (I didn’t swindle him. I could have but I didn’t. Pixel can’t be sold—he can’t stay sold—because he can’t be locked up. For him, stone walls do not a prison make.) “Oh, I’m sorry! I can’t sell him; he’s not mine. He’s a member of the family of my grandson—one of my grandsons—and his wife. But Colin and Hazel would never sell him. They can’t sell him; they don’t own him. No one owns him; Pixel is a free citizen.”
    “So? Then perhaps I can bribe him. How about it, Pixel? Lots of horse liver, fresh fish, cat nibbles, all you want. Plenty of friendly girl cats around and we’ll leave your spark plugs right where they are. Well?”
    Pixel gave the restless wiggle that means “Let me down,” so I did. He sniffed the doctors legs, then brushed against him. “ Nnnow? ” he inquired.
    Dr. Ridpath said to me, “You should have accepted my offer. I seem to have acquired a cat.”
    “I wouldn’t bet on it, Doctor. Pixel likes to travel but he always comes back to my grandson Colin. Colonel Colin Campbell. And his wife Hazel.”
    For the first time Dr. Ridpath really looked at me. “‘Grandson.’ ‘Colonel.’ Miss, you’re hallucinating.”
    (I suddenly realized how it looked to him. Before I left Tertius, Ishtar had given me a booster treatment—it had been fifty-two years—and Galahad had given me a cosmetic refresher and had overdone it. Galahad likes ’em young, especially redheads—he keeps my twin daughters permanent teenagers, and now we three look like triplets. Galahad cheats. Except for Theodore, Galahad is my favorite husband, but I shan’t let anyone find out.)
    “Yes, I must be hallucinating,” I agreed. “I don’t know where I am, I don’t know what day this is, I don’t know what became of my clothes or my money or my purse, and I don’t know how I got here…save that I was in an irrelevancy bus for New Liverpool and there was an accident of some sort. If Pixel were not still with me, I would wonder if I were me.”
    Dr. Ridpath reached down; Pixel allowed himself to be picked up. “What was that bus you mentioned?”
    “A Burroughs shifter. I was on Tellus Tertius at Boondock on time line two at Galactic year 2149, or Gregorian 4368 if you like that better. I was scheduled for New Liverpool in time line two, where I was to base for a field trip. But something went wrong.”
    “Ah, so. Hmm. And you have a grandson who is a colonel?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And how old are you?”
    “That depends on how you count it, Doctor. I was born on Earth in time line two on the Fourth of July, 1882. I lived there until 1982, one century minus two weeks, whereupon I moved to Tertius and was rejuvenated. That was fifty-two years ago by my personal calendar. I’ve had a booster just recently, which made me younger than I should be—I prefer to be mature rather than girlish. But I do have grandchildren, lots of them.”
    “Interesting. Will you come down to my office with me?”
    “You think I’m out of my head.”
    He was not quick to answer. “Let me put it this way. One of us is hallucinating. Tests may show which one. Besides that, I have an exceptionally cynical office nurse who can, without tests, almost certainly spot which one of us has slipped his clutch. Will you come?”
    “Yes, certainly. And thank you, sir. But I’ve got to find some clothes first. I can’t very well leave this room until I do.” (I wasn’t certain that this was true. That crowd that had just left obviously did not have the attitudes on “indecent exposure” that were commonplace in Missouri when I was born. On the other hand, where I now lived on Tertius nudity at home was unremarkable and it didn’t cause any excitement even in the most public places—like overalls at a wedding: unusual but nothing to stare at.)
    “Oh. But Festival is about to start.”
    “‘Festival’? Doctor, I’m a stranger in a strange land; that is what I’ve been trying to