He walked stiffly across the hearth with her, trying to keep his snowsuit from falling down, and dumped her on the bunk, where she lay flopped like a puppy with her knees open and her little flat belly going in and out, in and out. There was an emerald b.u.t.terfly on her ash-blond m.u.f.f.

"All right," he said firmly (but nicely). "Now look. Who are you?"

Her mouth worked silently and her eyes sent Love you, love you, love you up to him. Her eyes didn't seem wild or druggy, but they had a funny deep-down spark, like something lived in there.

"Your name, kid. What's your name?"

"L-Loolie," she whispered.

"Loolie who?" He said patiently.

"Loolie Aerovulpa." Somewhere in his head a couple of neurones twitched, but they didn't connect.

"Why did you come here, Loolie?"

Her eyes glistened, brimmed over. "Oh, no," she sobbed, gulped. "It's been so long, such a terribly long, long, way-" her head rolled from side to side, hurtfully. "Oh, Dovy, please, there'll be time for all this later, I know you don't remember me-just please let me touch you, please-it hurt so-"

Soft arms pleading up for him, little b.r.e.a.s.t.s pleading with their puckered noses. This was getting more like the script. When Dov didn't move she suddenly wailed and curled up into a fetal ball.

"I've sp-spoiled everything," she wept, burrowing wetly in the Hudson Bay blanket.

That did it, for a nice person like Dov. One of his hands went down and patted little Tarbaby's back, and then his other hand joined the first and his snowsuit fell down. Her back somehow turned into her front and curled up around him, and his knees were feeling the bunk boards while two downy thighs locked around his hips and sucked him in.

And he got a shock.

The shock came a bit late, the shock was wrapped around him and thrusting at him so that he had no choice but to ram on past her squeal-and after that he didn't have time to worry about anything except letting the sun burst in.

But it is a fact that even in Calgary you don't meet many maidenheads. It says something for Dov that he knew the way.

Now, a twenty-first-century maidenhead isn't a big thing, socio-psychologicalwise. On the otherhand, it wasn't exactly nothing, especially for a nice person like Dov. What it did was to move the episode one step out of the fantasy cla.s.s-or rather, one step into another fantasy. Particularly when Loolie said what girls often do, afterward. Looking at him anxious-humble, stroking his stomach. "Do you mind? I mean, my being a virgin?"

"Well, now," said Dov, trying to think decisively while peeling a squashed green b.u.t.terfly out of his neck. "Truly, honestly, did you mind?"

"Honestly, no."

He balanced the b.u.t.terfly on her head. "It did hurt a little... oh, ooh," she cried distractedly, "your blanket-"

They were deciding the blanket didn't matter when Loolie looked at her little fingernail and started kissing his stomach.

"Dovy dear, don't you think, couldn't we," she mumbled, "I mean, it's only the first time I ever-try again?" Dov found himself agreeing.

The second time was infinitely better. The second time was something to challenge fantasy. It was so good that the sc.r.a.p of Dov's mind that wasn't occupied with the electric baby eeling under and over and around him... began to wonder. Virginal f.u.c.ks did not, in his experience, achieve such loin-bursting poetry, such fitting, such flowing surge to velocities sustained beyond escape, such thrust and burn and build with the first-time f.u.c.kee sobbing rhythmically, "Love you, Dovy, Do-o-ovy," giving everything to it in the best position of all until all the stages went nova together- "... Don't sleep yet, Dovy, please wake up a minute?"

He opened one eye and rolled off; he was a very nice person.

Loolie leaned on his chest, worshipping him through her pale damp hair.

"I almost forgot." She grinned, suddenly naughty. He felt her hair, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s move down his belly, down his thighs and shins to his feet. Sleepily he noted a warm wetness closing over his big toe. Her mouth? Some kind of toe joy, he thought-and then the signal made it six feet back to his brain.

"Hey-y-y!" He smacked her b.u.t.t. "That hurt! You bit me!"

Her face came around laughing. She was really neat-looking.

"I bit your big toe." She nodded solemnly. "That's very important. It means you're my true love."

Her eyes suddenly got wet again. "I love you so, Dovy. Will you remember, I bit your toe?"

"Well, sure I'll remember," he grinned uneasily. The neurones that had twitched sometime back, boosted by stimulation from his toe, finally made connection.

"Hey, Loolie. What you said... is your name Aerovulpa?"

She nodded, yes.

"The Aerovulpa?"

Another nod, her eyes glowing at him.

"Oh G.o.d." He tried to remember what he'd seen about it. Aerovulpa... The Family... Mr.

Aerovulpa, he gathered, was not in tune with the twenty-first century- maybe not the twentieth, even.

And this was an Aerovulpa virgin all over his legs. Ex-virgin..

"By any chance is your father sending a private army up here after you, Loolie?"

"Poor daddy," she smiled. "He's dead." The far beacon in her eyes was coming closer. "Dovy. You didn't ask me my whole name."

"Your what?"

"I'm Loolie Aerovulpa... Rapelle."

He stared. He didn't get it at all.

"I don't-are you some kind of relative?"She nodded, her eyes enormous, weird.

"A very close relative." Her lips feathered his cheek.

"I never met you. I swear."

He felt her swallow. Loolie drew back and looked at him for a couple of long breaths and then glanced down at her little finger. He saw she had a tiny timer implanted in the nail.

"You haven't asked me how old I am either," she said quietly.

"So?"

"I'm seventy-five."

"Huh?" Dov stared. No geriatrics imaginable could...

"Seventy-five years old. I am. Inside, I mean, me, now."

Then he got it.

"You-you-"

"Yes. I'm time-jumping."

"Time-jumper...!" He'd heard about it, but he didn't believe it. Now he looked and saw...

seventy-five years looking out of her baby eyes. Old. The spark in there was old.

Loolie checked the nail again. "I have to tell you something, Dovy." She took hold of his face solemnly. "I have to warn you. It's very important. Darling, don't ever ig-g-g-eugh-gh-"

Her jaws jabbered, her head flopped-and her whole body slumped on him, dead girl.

He scrambled out and had just got his ear on her heartbeat when Loolie's mouth gulped air. He turned his head and saw her eyes open, widen, wander to his body, her body, and back to his.

"Who're you?" she asked interestedly. Asking for information.

He drew back.

"Uh. Dov Rapelle." He saw her face, her eyes were different. She sat up. A strange teenager was sitting in his bunk, studying him so clinically he reached for the blanket.

"Hey, look!" She pointed at the window. "Snow! Oh, great! Where am I? Where is this?"

"It's my cabin. Calgary, Alberta. Listen, are you all right? You were time-jumping, I think."

"Yeah," said Loolie absently, smiling at the snow. "I don't remember anything, you never do." She squirmed, looking around and then suddenly squirmed again and said "Oh, my," and stopped looking around. She put her hand under herself and her eyes locked on his.

"Uh... hey-what happened?"

"Well," Dov began, "You, I mean we-" He was too nice to blame it all on her.

She bugged her eyes, still feeling herself.

"But that's impossible!"

Dov shook his head, no. Then he changed it to yes.

"No," she insisted bewilderedly. "I mean, I've been hyped. Daddy had me fixed so I couldn't. I mean, men are repulsive to me." She nodded. "Girls too. s.e.x, it's a nothing. All I do, all I do is sailing races. Star cla.s.s, yick. I'm so bored!"

Dov couldn't find a thing to say, he just sat there on the bunk holding the blanket. Loolie put out her hand and touched his shoulder tentatively.

"Hey." She frowned. "That's funny. You don't feel repulsive." She put her other hand on him. "You feel all right. Maybe nice. Hey this is weird. You mean, we did it?"

He nodded.

"Did I, like, enjoy it?"

"You seemed to, yes."She shook her head wonderingly, grinning. "Oh, ho, ho. Hey, daddy will be wild!"

"Your father?" said Dov. "Isn't he-you said he was dead."

"Daddy? Of course he's not dead." She stared at him. "I don't remember a thing about it. All I remember is being in some big old house, being seventy-five. It was awful." She shuddered. "All stringy and creepy. I felt, bleeah. And those weird old people. I just said I was sick and went and lay down and watched the shows. And slept. For two days, I guess. Hey, when is this? I'm hungry!"

"December twenty-ninth," Dov told her dazedly. "Do you do this a lot, time-jumping?"

"Oh no." She pushed her hair back, "just a few times, I mean, daddy just installed it. I was so bored, I thought, well, it would be nice to give myself a treat. I mean, when I'm old, I'll enjoy being sixteen again for a little while, don't you think?"

"I wouldn't know, we don't have anything like that here. In fact, I never believed they existed."

"Oh, they exist." She nodded importantly, frowning at him. "Of course they're very expensive.

There's only a few in the world I guess. Hey, you know, I saw your picture there. By the mirror. I am so hungry. There has to be food here. s.e.x is supposed to make you hungry, right?"

She scrambled off the bunk, trailing blanket. "I'm starved! Can I help you cook? Oh, my glitterbugs.

Oh dear. Is that the moon? We're up in real mountains?" She ran around to the windows. "Daddy never lets me go anywhere. Oh, mountains are fantastic! Hey, you really do look nice. I mean, being a man isn't so hideous." She spun back to him, nose to nose. "Look, you have to tell me all about it." Her eyes slid around, suddenly shy. "I mean, everything, G.o.d, I'm hungry. Listen, since we, I mean, I don't remember, you know. Can't we sort of try it over again? Hey, I forgot your name, I'm sorry-"

"Loolie." Dov closed his eyes. "Will you please just shut up one minute? I have to think."

But all he could think was that she had a good idea: food.

So he fried up some corned beef hash, with Loolie all over the cabin like a mongoose, opening the door, smooshing snow on her face, admiring the moon and the mountains, running over to poke him with a spruce icicle. When she turned her attention to the fire he was pleased to see that she put the wood on right. They sat down to eat. Dov wanted very much to ask about her father. But he couldn't-being Dov-break through Loolie's excitement about him, and the mountains, and him, and the cabin, and him, and...

It began to dawn on Dov that this little Aerovulpa had a pretty sad locked-up sliver of the twenty-first century.

"You ought to see this place when the ice goes out," he told her. "The big melt. And the avalanches."

"Oh, Dovy, I'm so b.i.t.c.hed with people-places. I mean, n.o.body cares about anything real. Like this is beautiful. Dovy, will you, when I-"

That was when her father's private army came chunga-chunga out of the night sky.

Dov scrambled into his suit and discovered that the army consisted of one small hysterical man and one large hairless man.

"Uncle Vic!" cried Loolie. She ran up and patted the small man while the large man showed Dov several embossed badges.

"Your father, your father!" Uncle Vic spluttered, thrusting Loolie away and glaring around the cabin.

His eyes focused on the bank. The big man stood stolidly by the door.

"Angry, yes!" moaned Uncle Vic. He took off his hat and put it on again and grabbed Dov's snowsuit.

"Do you know who this girl is?" he hissed.

"She says she's Loolie Aerovulpa. She was time-jumping," Dov said, being reasonable.

"I know, I know! Terrible!" The little man's eyes rolled. "Louis-Mr. Aerovulpa-turned it off.How could you do this to him, girl?"