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Archivists said.
    When
the evidence supported an Open Time Loop during the Summer of Love, the directors
of the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications threw billions of dollars at
the project. Never mind that Chi’s skipfather was himself a LISA tech and a project
director. Or that Chi’s skipmother owned seventy-one percent of the patent on
transmission. If anything, their eminent positions made transmitting their own
skipson to a Hot Dim Spot in the middle of the Crisis all the more compelling.
    As
Chi had stood in the Portals of the Past, waiting to translate-transmit, he’d
stooped and pressed his fingers on that cool, smooth marble, learning the shape
of the carving by touch, as well as by sight:

    What
did it mean? Who could say?
    Chi
knew the theories. The Eye of Horus was a prehistoric charm signifying wisdom,
prescience. The heart symbol was even older, depicting not the organ of
circulation but the buttocks of a beloved as a lover would see them. And the old-fashioned
key? The key was an invention of the first millennium and a powerful symbol. A
key unlocked secrets, secured ownership and possession. There were associations
with music, translations, maps, codes, and ciphers.
    As
it turned out, the key could also—at a probability of just over fifty percent--refer
to him, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco. The fanciful, mythological name he
was born with twenty-one years ago. Calliope had chosen it. How Calliope loved
fanciful, mythological things. In myths, Chiron was the centaur, half-man,
half-horse. Chiron’s symbol was the key.
    You
are the key , Chi’s skipfather told him.
    But
why carve those three symbols inside a triangle? Why on a pillar in the Portals
of the Past? And who had carved them, long ago?
    No
one knew. No one could trace the source.
    Chi
wishes he could disbelieve his eyes. The link to the loop, the last piece of
the puzzle, the final bit of evidence that sealed his ticket to a dangerous
tachyportation.
    The
damn carving. It’s gone.
    An
awful thought strikes him: What if they made a mistake?
    Which
leads him to his last point of reference. He checks for his time of arrival,
peering at his microfusion wristwatch. The watch is guaranteed not to lose more
than a second every two millennia, and he’s only t-ported five hundred years. June
21 to June 21, San Francisco 2467 to San Francisco 1967, portals to portals.
    It’s
supposed to be ten-fifteen in the morning--five centuries, one-hundred-twenty-five
days, fifty-three minutes, thirty-nine seconds, and three hundred milliseconds,
minus one picosecond to account for superluminal drift.
    Instead,
it’s nearly half-past ten at night. He’s twelve hours and ten minutes late.
    He’s
late. He’s fucking late.
    Chi’s
knees buckle. He slumps on the steps of the Portals of the Past, stunned. The
rank green water of Lloyd Lake shimmers, the surface splintering from the dance
of night insects. He wishes he could laugh at the pretentious name of this
swampy little pond that will, in a hundred years, freeze solid. In two hundred
years, seep with radioactive saltwater. In three hundred years, come alive again
beneath the dome. In four hundred years, serve as sanctuary for rare fish and
birds. And in five hundred years? This swampy little pond will provide the
required humidity to facilitate a tachyportation on its shores.
    His
t-port.
    The
awful chasm of the centuries yawns before him.
    Towering
eucalyptus trees rustle in a night breeze. Cattails, vervain, and mint stir on
the shoreline. An insomniac duck quacks.
    Chi
is all alone in the Portals of the Past.
    He
heaves himself to his feet and mutters gloomily, “Let the Summer of Love
Project begin.”
    *  
*   *
    A
woman’s laughter floats across Lloyd Lake from John F. Kennedy Boulevard, a
bright chuckle like that of his lass, Bella Venus. Ah, a woman’s laughter.
Still the same.
    What
did Chi expect? People haven’t changed all that much, not really. His neckjack,
his neurobics, the