No!” screamed Annie Lockwood. “It isn't fair! I came all the way through Time for you, Strat, and you—”
Her voice had no sound and her lungs no air. She wanted to beat her fists upon the chest of Time. This isn't fair! You brought me all this way! I deserve Strat!
How many times had Annie or her classmates shouted that? It isn't fair! In nursery school, when other kids got pushed on the swings and your turn never came. In third grade, when other kids got to sit next to their best friend, but you had to sit with a creep. In sixth, when other kids got to go to Disneyland for vacation, but you just grilled hotdogs in the backyard. In ninth grade, when you paid some attention to the world, and found that some citizens were treated a lot better than other citizens.
It isn't fair!
But by then, enough things had not been fair that you could shrug. Life isn't fair, you said to one another. But this is me, thought Annie. I should be an exception.
Time, like all the great powers, like gravity or velocity, continued on. It did not acknowledge what happened inside or outside its span. Annie fell, hair in her face, all sweat and tangles, desperate for a drink of water. The thirst of the desert had taken all moisture out of her. She could not open her eyes in the tremendous glare.
Slowly the rushing shriek of wind and Time left her ears. She tried to listen to the sounds around her, to separate speech from noise, but she was too battered by Time and loss. She tried to see where she was, but the immensity of sun blinded her, and she could make out only stones and mirages of water and palm. She wavered in her heart, as if she were nothing but heat on sand, a figment, impossible to catch up to, impossible to be.
It didn't really matter where or when Annie was, because she was not quite where or when. She was among but had not arrived.
She knew that Egypt did not care. Egypt had seen too much. From Alexander the Great consulting the oracle out in the western sands to the invasion by Napoleon. From Antony romancing Cleopatra on the deck of a Roman ship to the canal at Suez. From the ancient scribe who chiseled a decree of Ptolemy V on a slab of black basalt to Champollion who translated the Rosetta Stone, two thousand years later.
I don't care one little twitch about history! thought Annie. I want Strat. It isn't fair.
She had never felt quite so American or quite so spoiled brat, but she did not want to set an example. At last she stood up and stumbled over stones and steps toward a drinking fountain. The water was cold and refreshing and she drank as if she had not had a sip of water in a thousand years. She felt as if she had not showered in a thousand years either. She tottered back to the seat she had left.
I love you. I want to marry you. We'll have children and joy and hope and love.
Had she said that? Or had Strat? Or were the words a dream?
I love you. I want to marry you. We'll have children and joy and hope and love. Couldn't have been me saying that, thought Annie dully. In my time, the most a girl ever says is, “You wanna go to a movie?” and the most a boy ever says is, “Yeah, okay, if I got nothin' else to do.”
“The museum is closing,” said a bored voice.
Annie looked up, jarred. For a moment, she almost recognized the man; his ancient dark features; somebody's father, somebody's murderer—he was—no. He was only a guard, sweeping through the museum at closing. And she, Annie, was only a tourist, not even a New Yorker.
She was just a silly girl in silly clothing, wearing silly hopes.
“Oh, Strat,” she said, heart bursting with grief.
And across the room—not a room, really, but a vast, glass-ceilinged case; a case large enough to hold an entire ancient temple and an entire reflecting pool and three entire classes of middle school children on a field trip—across that room, somebody heard.
“Annie?” said Strat.