"And how would you know that?" I asked, doing my best to not get angry at some woman who was trying to give me back my guitar.
She stared at me, then said flatly, "I"ll be honest with you. Coldly honest if you can take it."
I nodded and looked her right in the eyes.
"No one with your talent, your former career, would ever give up their instrument," she said, not looking away from my gaze, "without being flat on the bottom, with no hope. And right now I need someone with talent who thinks there is no hope."
I figured right at that moment I had two options. I could let my normal pride make me turn away from this woman, ignore her, or I could laugh. And since my guitar, the special Earth-made guitar I had hocked just a few hours ago, was sitting on the bar in front of me, I figured laughing was the better option.
"Am I right?" she asked.
I finished off my beer and turned on the stool to face her. "Oh, lady are you right. With the money from the guitar I bought food for a week and that money right there to drink tonight."
I pointed at my last fifty station credits.
"After the food and money are gone, I"m done. I"m about to be kicked out of my room in the workers section of the station since I haven"t paid in three of months. I"ve borrowed from every friend and some strangers, and more than likely I"ll be sleeping in some station shelter in the outer ring in a week and eating handouts or from garbage before it gets recycled."
I held up my empty beer gla.s.s, caught Carl"s attention, and motioned for him to bring me another. "Friend, I don"t know about the talent part, but you found someone with no hope."
The woman nodded, then stuck out her hand. "Mr. Danny Kenyon, my name is Alexis Pierce. Just call me Lex."
I reached out and shook her hand. Her grip was firm, like she had done a few years of good solid work. But at the same time there was a softness to her hand and I held the grasp a little too long as I looked into her eyes.
She didn"t look away.
I felt disappointed when I let her hand go finally. I was sure attracted to this woman for some reason.
I stared down into my beer, now feeling embarra.s.sed. "Lex, I don"t know what to say."
Carl brought me another beer at that moment, and Lex, bless her heart, paid for it, indicating that Carl should take the price from the money in front of her on the bar. Lex was going to make my fifty credits last a little longer than I had hoped at this rate.
"Just listen to my offer," Lex said. "You don"t have to say anything yet. And no strings attached." She shoved the guitar a few more inches my way. "Better put that under your chair before we spill something on it."
I picked up my guitar and slid it to the floor between my legs. I had sat in many a bar over the years in many a different solar system and s.p.a.ce station with the guitar in its case in that same position.
Me and my guitar had seen a lot of bars and a lot of light years. It felt good to have it back.
No, better than good. It felt great. I was whole again. I decided right at that moment I"d head for garbage cans to eat and sleep in the hallways before I p.a.w.ned the thing again.
"Thanks," I said. "I"d offer to pay you back, but I doubt I"m going to be able to do that any time soon."
"Just considering my job offer is all I ask in return," Lex said. "I"ll call it even if you do that."
"Lex, I"ve been looking for any job for the past year. So I"m more than willing to listen. Fire away."
As I looked into her eyes I felt even more an attraction. Was she drawing me in with some chemical or some special way she looked? I could see no reason why she would, but I had better be d.a.m.n careful. Men have disappeared around the systems over far less than a good-looking woman with a fast pitch.
"I need you to play a series of concerts for me."
I laughed again. "For who? I haven"t had a gig in three years."
"After I got your guitar this morning I made some calls about you," Lex said. "The information I got is that you"re talented and could have made it all the way to the top, but drank it all away."
"That and a few other bad breaks," I said, stung by her words. What did this blonde b.i.t.c.h know about how hard it was to push ahead in the music business day after d.a.m.ned day, sleeping in tiny shuttles, playing in station bars for drunks? It wasn"t until everything fell apart that I really started drinking.
Lex shrugged. "What happened in the past doesn"t matter to me. I just needed to know you were good, that you could play, and I discovered you can. And that you can write your own songs as well."
I stared at her, then smiled. "You didn"t just happen to see me come out of that p.a.w.nshop, did you? You"ve been following me or something."
Lex laughed. "No, not really. I just had some good contacts in p.a.w.nshops around the stations in this system. The p.a.w.n dealer contacted me."
"Why?" I asked.
"I"m sort of a talent agent," Lex said. "My job is to find talented people who have hit bottom, give them one special job, and a new chance for the future."
I kept staring at her, fighting the attraction, trying to not really ignore everything she was saying. Even with my eyes now used to the dim lights of the bar, I just couldn"t get a read on her. She looked like an agent, she was sneaky like an agent, and she dressed like an agent. And she tossed money around like an agent. And over the years I had been around enough booking agents to know not to trust them with a mouthful of spit.
"Look," Lex said, scooting over to sit in the chair next to me.
Her wonderful soft smell shocked me. I wanted to lean away and get closer at the same time, so I just stayed centered, holding onto my cold beer like an anchor in a rough sea.
"I"m willing to give you a half million Intersystem Credits for ten concerts over a fourteen-day concert period. I need you to play about twenty or so songs per concert. I don"t even much care which songs they are. Covers or your own originals."
"Lady, you are totally nuts," I said, turning back to face my almost empty gla.s.s of beer, doing my best to ignore her wonderful smell.
"You promised you"d listen to me," Lex said. "That"s all I asked for the guitar."
I moved my right leg and b.u.mped it into my guitar just to make sure it was still there. It was.
"All right," I said, "you"re willing to give a washed-out guitar player a half million Intersystems to sing a few songs. What"s the catch?"
"The catch is the location of the concert tour," Lex said, glancing at Carl to see if he could hear. He couldn"t since he was down the bar cutting up limes for his fruit tray.
"So, I got to go out to the frontier or into the Farms or something like that?"
No way I was going into the Farms. They were the systems occupied by the only aliens humans had run into. The aliens looked like a cross between a black beetle and ma.s.s of mud shaped like a deformed cow, which is why humans called their systems the Farms. And from what I hear, they smelled like a sewer. I was fairly certain they had no desire for human country music.
"No, actually, your part of the tour will take just over two weeks each way, all done in a first cla.s.s luxury cabin. But here in the human systems about ninety years will pa.s.s before you come back."
This woman was keeping me entertained, I had to hand her that. I hadn"t wanted to laugh this much since I found a hundred credits on the sun deck on the way to the bar three weeks ago.
"I"m a talent agent here in this time period for this section of the Consolidated Planets," Lex said, talking fast and low. "In this time period the Consolidated Planets have not yet been formed, and except for a few high-ranking officials, no one here knows it will even exist in the future. There"s a great demand for original old-style Earth music and musicians in the future and this is as far back in time as we talent agents are allowed to go."
I decided to play along with the nut case for a minute. "So how come you just can"t beam me into the future and have me back for my next beer?"
"s.p.a.ce and time travel don"t work that way I"m afraid," Lex said. "You"ll be gone your time about six weeks total, but because of the speeds involved, and a whole bunch of stuff I don"t really understand about time travel, about ninety years will pa.s.s here. That"s why we look for musicians who have nothing to lose and very little family. Of course, it"s a help that you are also very talented. Your talent, to be honest with you, is one of the reasons I can offer you as much as I can."
"Thanks, I guess."
"Look," Lex said, leaning forward. "I don"t expect you to believe me. I wouldn"t believe me if I lived in this time period. But I do want you to think about it. You"ll play ten concerts, to audiences as human as I am a very long time into the future. You can stay in the future as long as you would like beyond the tour, maybe never come back."
"Stay?" I asked.
"Sure," Lex said, nodding. "You can stay for a week, or a year. If you stay a year it will be ninety-one years pa.s.sing here. If you decide to stay in the future and make a career there, your money for this can be transferred forward. But if you do decide to return to here, you won"t make it back until at least ninety years into this future."
"And a half million will be worth nothing then, right?"
"Actually, no, with some minor bubbles, money in the systems stays amazingly stable all the way up and into my time period in the Consolidated Planets."
"And I"ll be too old to spend it when I get back."
"No," Lex said, shaking her head, "You"ll only be six weeks older than the day you leave. Just ninety years will pa.s.s here. Again, I don"t expect you to believe me, but at least think about it and meet me back here tomorrow."
Before I could say anything, Lex handed me five hundred station credits. "This should help get your rent caught up. Thanks for considering this."
I stared at the money in my hand like it was a snake that might bite me as Lex slid off her stool and headed for the door.
Five hundred station credits was about 50 Interstellar Credits. She was offering me a half million Interstellars. That was a lot of beers.
I watched her walk, wanting more than anything to jump up and follow her and never let her from my sight. But the money in my hand froze me to my stool.
When she opened the door to the sun deck, she was gone into the bright white light.
"Wow, she was a looker. Was she as weird as she seemed?" Carl asked, glancing down the bar at me.
I took another look at the five hundred station credits in my hand, then stuffed them in my pocket. "You have no idea," I said, finishing my beer and motioning Carl for another. "You have no idea at all."
As it turned out, Lex"s offer, my guitar, and the money in my pocket put me right off the idea of drinking the night away. I had one more beer, grabbed a take-home Old Earth style pizza on the way to my room, and then surprised the dump"s manager with payment in full for all the back rent.
I was living in such a slum that even after the pizza and rent, I still had enough money left over to last for almost a month if I watched the drinking. Maybe by then I could find a job. A real job, not the crazed thing some good-looking woman had talked to me about. But at least she had bought me some time.
I dropped the pizza on the old scarred coffee table, then brushed some food wrappers aside and dropped onto the couch. I opened up my guitar case like I was standing at the door of a blind date. Inside was my guitar, just as I had left it this morning at the p.a.w.nshop.
I held it to my chest for a moment, just letting myself believe that it was actually back in my hands. Then after a few quick adjustments for tuning, I strummed a few chords before putting it back in the case.
How had I let myself get so low?
And why did some woman I didn"t know go through the trouble of getting my guitar back for me, not counting the five big ones she had tossed my way? She couldn"t be serious about the job.
There had to be something else going on.
I took a piece of pizza and worked at it, thinking over any possibility of a scam, which was unlikely since I had nothing to take in a scam. After a second piece of pizza, I still hadn"t come up with anything that made any sense at all.
I was exactly what I seemed on the surface, a washed-out musician who liked to play in the style of old Earth country. I had nothing to scam. I was worth exactly the amount she had given me and not one credit more.
So, with a quick bite out of a third slice, I went out the door and down to the manager"s office to use his com device. I used to know a guy who was one of the brainy types, read a lot; actually had a major education from somewhere. He had done soundboards on a tour I worked once, and we drank a few nights together. He"d understand this time travel stuff and if it was real or not.
I had to give the manager the fifty station credits I had planned to drink earlier to cover any intersystem charges. I hoped like h.e.l.l the call was going to be worth that.
"Steve," I said as he came up the com link. He looked about the same, maybe a little shorter hair, and he still hadn"t had his lack of chin fixed. "This is Danny Kenyon, from the Country Old-Style Planetary Tour back a few years. Remember me?"
"Uh, yah, sure Danny, how are you?"
I knew he didn"t remember me, I could see it in his eyes, but at this point, that didn"t matter. At least I didn"t owe him money, so he wasn"t either cutting the link or asking for his money back just at the mention of my name.
"Sorry to bother you, Steve," I said, "but I got this dumb science question that a few friends and I have been arguing about, and I figured if anyone would know the answer, you might."
"Fire away," Steve said. "I took some science cla.s.ses back in college." Clearly not talking music or money made him relax a little, even though he didn"t remember me.
"Okay, promise not to laugh too hard," I said.
He laughed and said, "Promise."
"Okay, my friend was telling me that time travel is possible and in the future we might actually invent it. Does that sound stupid to you or what?"
"Not at all," Steve said. "Lots of scientists over the years, starting with Einstein back on Old Earth, thought that time travel might be possible. But a lot of factors would have to be solved and we"re no where near that kind of major breakthrough."
"You"re kidding?" I said, shocked. "It might actually be possible in the future?"
"Possible yes," Steve said. "Likely, probably not. Not in our lifetimes anyway."
"Well, d.a.m.n," I said. "I lost that bet. Thanks, Steve."
"No problem," Steve said, "take care of yourself, Danny."
I shut down the com link and headed back to my room, thinking over what Lex had said. It was possible. How completely crazy was that?
By the time I had finished the pizza and played a few songs, I had decided to go back to Scott"s tavern and meet Lex tomorrow. What could it hurt, as long as she didn"t ask for her money back?
Just as the day before, it took my eyes a moment to adjust inside the dark bar from all the light in that stupid sun section of the station. I had managed to finally get some sleep and by the time I reached the bar I was slowly getting angry. I might be broke, but I"m not completely stupid, and Lex, for some reason, was trying to get me to buy a huge pile-of-s.h.i.t story.
I just didn"t know why.
As I headed across the dark bar I felt like I needed a beer more than just about anything, especially after the hot sun beating down on me in my walk through that sundeck ring.
I could see through the darkness that Lex was sitting on the stool beside my favorite, sipping on something. Just the fact that she was there again surprised me.
And actually made me happy.
I hated that I was attracted to a nut case. Just hated it.
My former wife had turned into a nut case, swearing there were aliens in every station, on every planet we visited, and that they were watching us every minute. Invisible aliens.
She blamed the aliens for our divorce. She was partially right.
Carl was behind the bar as always. Otherwise, the tavern was empty.
"Danny," Carl said, slipping a beer onto a napkin in front of my stool. "Good to see you."