Time and Again

can start the repairs on the ship tomorrow. I was hoping you'd let me stay until it's all ready."
    "Of course." It was foolish, and selfish, to hope that he would stay any longer than necessary. She put on a bright smile as they started from the room. "I have dozens of questions to ask you. I don't even know where to begin."
    Still, she asked him nothing on the drive back. He seemed distracted, moody, and her own mind was crowded with impressions and contradictions. It would be best, she decided, if they pretended a kind of normality for a few hours. Then, with a thud, inspiration hit.
    "How would you like to have lunch in town?"
    "What?"
    "Try to stay tuned, Hornblower. Would you like to drive into town? You haven't seen anything but this little slice. If I suddenly found myself back in, say, the 1700s, I'd want to explore a little, watch people. It only takes a couple of hours. What do you say?" The moodiness left his eyes, and he smiled. "Can I drive?"
    "Not on your life." She laughed and tossed her hair back. "We'll stop back at the cabin for my purse."
    It took more than thirty minutes to get to the highway through a narrow pass where the Land Rover had powered its way through the mud. When they reached the highway Cal saw the vehicles that had fascinated him on television. They rumbled noisily along. He shook his head as Libby jockeyed aggressively for position.
    "I could teach you to fly a jet buggy in an hour."
    The wind felt wonderful on her face. They had today, and perhaps a day or two more. She wasn't going to lose a moment of it.
    "Is that a compliment?"
    "Yeah. You're still using what-gasoline?"
    "That's right."
    "Amazing."
    "Being smug and superior suits you-especially since you didn't even know how to turn my car on."
    "I'd've figured it out." He reached out to touch the flying strands of her hair. "If I were home I'd fly you to Paris for lunch. Have you ever been there?"
    "No." She tried not to think too deeply about the romance of it. "We'll have to settle for pizza in Oregon."
    "Sounds great to me. You know, the strangest thing is the sky. There's nothing in it." A car whizzed by, muffler coughing, radio blaring. "What was that?"
    "A car."
    "That's debatable, but I meant what was the noise?"
    "Music. Hard rock." She reached over to turn on the radio. "That's not as hard, but it's still rock."
    "It's good." With the music playing in his head, he watched the buildings they passed. Neat single-family homes, chunky apartment complexes and a spreading single-level shopping center. The traffic thickened as they came closer to the city. He could see the high rectangular forms of office buildings and condos. It was a cluttered and, to his eyes, awkward skyline, but it was oddly compelling. Here were people, here life continued.
    Libby eased down the curving ramp and headed downtown. "There's a nice Italian place, very traditional. Red checked tablecloths, candles in bottles, hand-tossed pizza."
    Cal gave an absent nod. There were people walking the sidewalk, some old, some young, some plain, some pretty. There was noise from car engines, and the occasional bad-tempered blare of a horn. The air was warmer here and smelled slightly of exhaust. For him it was a picture out of an old book come to life.
    Libby pulled into a graveled lot next to a squat white-and-green building. The neon sign across the front window said Rocky's.
    "Well, it's not Paris."
    "It's fine," he murmured, but he continued to twist his head and stare.
    "It must feel like stepping through the looking glass."
    "Hmm. Oh." He remembered the book, one he'd read as a teenager. "Something like that. More like something from H. G. Wells."
    "It's nice to know literature has survived. Are you hungry?"
    "I was born hungry." Once again he fought off a darkening mood. She was trying, and so could he.
    The restaurant was dim, nearly empty, and the air simmered with spices. In the corner was a jukebox pumping out a current Top 40 hit. After a glance at a sign that read Please Seat Yourself, Libby led Cal to a corner booth. "The pizza's really wonderful here. Have you had pizza before?"
    He flicked a finger at the hardened candle wax on the bottle in the center of the table. "Some things transcend time. Pizza's one of them."
    The waitress toddled over, a plump young woman in a bright red bib apron that had Rocky's and a few splashes of tomato sauce dashed across the front. She placed two paper napkins beside place mats decorated with maps of