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She said “This decontamination thing—do we have to go through it every time we go outside this place?”

“To visit place-times in human history—if you feel an overpowering urge to visit your old neighbourhood, or watch some famous theatrical performance—yes, you must go through Decontamination on your return. It is not so bad, after all. But also, there are holiday places—resorts—in eras where human diseases have not yet evolved; winter sports in the Pleistocene, a ranch in the South American Pliocene, tropical islands in the Lias Sea… A month’s holiday in each lifetime year. Short breaks whenever you want them, since they need not interrupt your work.”

The Lia Sea. Ammonites, Ichthyosaurs. Plesiosaurs. Even for a specialist on microorganisms, unbelievably exciting.

Unbelievable. That was the word.

Sandy swallowed, hard, and sternly banished the vision of Jurassic rock-pools. She said, “Why me?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“With what you’re offering you could take your pick of all the biologists from Darwin on. Nobel prizewinners, the lot. I haven’t even got my Ph.D.”

“How could we recruit Darwin? He lived on Earth until he was seventy-four, when he died. We cannot change history; we do not try.”

“Yes, well—half the people in my year got better marks than me.”

Marius frowned.

“In the first place, whatever your marks may have been, you have a rare and extremely useful skill—you are a genius at keeping small organisms alive in the absence of bacteria. Many biological students are good at passing exams, but very few of them have your green fingers.”

Sandy’s eyes opened wide. Only strong disciplinary action prevented her mouth from following suit. Of course, terraformers would want to control the species of bacteria and so on that got into their brand new worlds. They wouldn’t want to bring in water-borne pathogens like typhoid bacteria, or soil-borne ones like Clostridium tetani and botulinum. Or spores of potato-blight or the eggs of parasitic worms or other agents of catastrophe to men, animals and crops. Of course that meant they couldn’t just import soil or pond-wa-ter, complete with all inhabitants…

“In the second place,” Marius went on, “most people are not available for recruitment. To come here is to cut one’s self off completely from previous contacts. There is no going home.”

“You mean people aren’t allowed—”

“Oh, if they really want to leave it is not prevented. I know of three instances—no, four. All of them people who had hoped to use Donander’s facilities for political ends, but found they could not. They were let out at the place and time they chose, with enough money for a year or so, and given help where possible—in finding employment, for instance—but as scientists, their careers were finished. What could they put on a CV? Now, we avoid recruiting people with strong attachments to causes, or personal ties to families or friends—”

“You’d rather have unpopular orphans,” said Sandy, with a touch of bitterness.

“There are people here whose families or friends were lost—in accidents, in massacres, in natural catastrophes. Others had their careers destroyed, or aborted, through racial or national or religious persecution. It would be stupid to try to recruit people who are happy, and have good prospects where they are. It is hard enough to leave behind everything you ever knew; even if you have not found very much in it to love. And it is a very considerable strain to have to adapt yourself to a wholly new situation, where any and all of your assumptions may turn out to be wrong.”

“Yea, sure. I’ve been a freshman, remember? And I’ve been switched from one fosterer to another three separate times.”

“You may well be better prepared than most. Even so, if you decide to come to Donander you may find that you have more regrets than you expect.”

“What the hell—are you trying to put me off?”

“No, but I do not wish you to say, at some time when you are finding things difficult, that I did not warn you how it would be.”

Sandy sniffed. “Don’t worry, I won’t —if I decide to come.”

When she stepped back through the interface into the laboratory, Sandy was clutching a legal-sized envelope containing a letter from the manager of a small pharmaceutical firm, offering her a job.

She had said irritably, “So you got the cover story ready. You must be pretty certain which way I’m going to decide!”

Marius shook his head. “Not at all. If you tried to give me your decision now, I would refuse to hear it. The job is genuine. If you decide in the end that Donander is not for you, the firm will be glad to have you. It is one of the investments I mentioned; profitable, and useful in many other ways.

“If you decide to come—well, when people remember Sandy Jennings, it should not be as someone who disappeared suddenly without saying goodbye, but as the girl who has taken a good job on the other side of the country. We do not leave people unaccounted for when they have been recruited. It is antisocial to make mysteries.”

So, whichever way it went, she was provided for.

Much experience of welfare workers had left Sandy with a strong distrust of other people’s plans. They always thought they knew what was best for you, and they never, ever asked what you thought…

Something—maybe just an association of ideas with the envelope in her hand—had taken her in the direction of the pigeonholes. By the time she noticed Danny, it was too late to draw back.

He gave her a serious, commiserating smile.

“Sandy. I heard about your grant. Too bad.”

She ignored him in favour of the stuff in the J pigeon-hole—plenty of increase since she last looked. Including a stamped envelope addressed to her. Good-quality paper. Another turndown from a Foundation, probably.

She took it round a comer and ripped it open.

Not a Foundation, some jerkwater college. She didn’t remember if she’d ever heard of it.

...

Dear Miss Jennings,

Thank you for your letter.

(Presumably she had heard of it, then. Or anyway, it was on the list of colleges where biology was taught.)

...

I was much interested in your research and would be pleased to offer you facilities to complete your Ph.D. In return, you would be asked to make available, every six months, sufficient quantities of up to six of your cultures, for studies on—

(DNA, of course; wouldn’t you know?)

She skimmed through the rest of it, barely noticing the proposed terms; grant barely enough to live on (well, she could always get a part-time job waitressing or something, or grading papers for the biology faculty); available facilities—pretty good, they must have some kind of medical or industrial tie-up; help in finding accommodations…

Sandy read the letter again. Then she folded it and put it back in the envelope.

It was nice that somebody really wanted her—or her fifty-three cultures. And it was the kind of setup she knew and understood. And getting her Ph.D had been her goal in life for as long as she could remember. If Donander gave doctorates they wouldn’t count—no accreditation…

None of which mattered a damn. There was nothing, really, to think about; the decision had been made, in effect, when she saw the scum of algae on those tidal pools, under two alien moons. If there was a biologist anywhere who could turn down a job bringing life to brand-new worlds, it was not Sandy Jennings. Especially when the job included opportunities to explore life on the old world, back when it was new—or much younger, at any rate.

She should have given Marius her answer right away, whether he wanted it or not. What, after all, was she supposed to think about? There was nothing here that she needed, nothing for her to regret—

Except—

Her fingers tightened suddenly on the envelope.

Except—

No. She had the offer of a brand-new life, a clean break with the old one. The past didn’t matter any longer.

Except that it did.

There were white marks on her fingers where the stiff edge of the envelope had cut into them. She fumbled back the flap and searched through the papers inside. The card she wanted had gone to the bottom, naturally.

Marius had told her to call the number on the card, recite the number of the phone she was using to the answering machine, ring off, and stay where she was for two minutes; then, whichever universe he happened to be in, he would reply. She occupied the two minutes by trying to work out how it was done. On the deadline, the phone buzzed.

“This is Sandy. I have to talk to you.”

“Where?”

“The laboratory.” There was no one else around.

“Five minutes,” Marius said.

She was watching the wall, expecting him to come through it; but instead she heard the door open and brisk footsteps crossing the wooden floor. He pulled a stool from under a bench and sat down opposite her.

“Well, Sandy. What is wrong?”

“It’s not—that is, I—I wanted to know—”

Oh, damn. She should have spent the five minutes working out what she had to say, instead of just sitting here.

Sandy drew a deep breath and started again.

“You’ve got ways of finding things out, haven’t you? What happened in the past, I mean.”

Marius pursed his lips. “Some things, yes.”

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