been technical. Peking has enough on its hands without meddling into subjects where they have no research capability.”
“I thought they were doing well.”
Peterson shrugged. “As well as anyone can with a billion souls to care for. They’re less concerned with foreign matters these days. They’re trying to slice up precisely equal portions of an ever-diminishing pie.”
“Pure communism at last.”
“Not so pure. Equal slices keeps down unrest due to inequality. They’re reviving terraced farming, even though it’s labor-intensive, to get food production up. The opiate of the masses in China is groceries. Always has been. They’re stopping use of energy-intensive chemicals in farming, too. I think they’re afraid of side effects.”
From the crowd there came a sudden, rattling cry. A woman surged up from a nearby table, clutching at her throat. She was trying to say something. Another woman with her asked, “Elinor, what is it? Your throat? Something caught?”
The woman gasped, a rasping cough. She clutched at a chair. Heads turned. Her hands went to her belly and her face pinched with a rush of pain. “I—it hurts so—” Abruptly she vomited over the table. She jerked forward, hands clutching at herself. A stream of bile spattered over the plates of food. Nearby patrons, frozen until this moment, frantically spilled from chairs and backed away. The woman tried to cry out and instead vomited again. Glasses smashed to the floor; the crowd moved back. “He—elp!” the woman cried. A convulsion shook her. She tried to stand and vomited over herself. She turned to her companion, who had retreated to the next table. She looked down at herself, eyes glazed, and pressed her palms to her belly. Hesitantly she stepped back from the table. She slipped suddenly and crashed to the floor.
Peterson had been shocked into immobility, as had Markham. As she fell he leaped to his feet and dashed forward. The crowd muttered and did not move. He leaned over the woman. Her scarf was tangled about her neck. It was twisted and sour with puke. He yanked at it, using both hands. The fabric ripped. The woman gasped. Peterson fanned the air around her, creating a breeze. She sucked in air. Her eyes fluttered. She stared up at him. “It … it hurts … so …”
Peterson scowled up at the surrounding crowd. “Call a doctor, will you? Bloody hell!”
• • •
The ambulance had departed. The Whim staff were busy mopping up. Most of the patrons were gone, driven off by the stench. Peterson came back from the ambulance, where he had followed, making sure the attendants had a sample of her food.
“What did they say it was?” Markham asked.
“No idea. I gave them the sausage she’d been eating. The medic said something about food poisoning, but those weren’t any poisoning symptoms I’ve ever heard about.”
“All we’ve been hearing about impurities—”
“Maybe.” Peterson dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “Could be anything, these days.”
Markham sipped meditatively on his stout. A waiter approached bearing their food. “Tongue for you, sir,” he said to Peterson, placing a platter. “And sausage here.”
Both men stared at their meals. “I think …” Markham began slowly.
“I agree,” Peterson followed up briskly. “I believe we’ll be skipping these. Could you fetch me a salad?”
The waiter looked dubiously at the plates. “You ordered this.”
“So we did. Surely you don’t expect us to choke it down after what’s just happened, do you? In a restaurant like this?”
“Well, I dunno, the manager, he says—”
“Tell your manager to watch his raw materials or I’ll bloody well have this place closed down. Follow me?”
“Christ, no reason to—”
“Just tell him that. And bring my friend here another stout.”
When the waiter had backed away, obviously unwilling to confront either Peterson or the manager, Markham murmured, “Great. How’d you know I’d prefer another stout?”
“Intuition,” he said with weary camaraderie.
• • •
They had both had more drinks when Peterson said, “Look, it’s Sir Martin who’s really the technical type on the British delegation. I’m a nonspecialist, as they call it. What I want to know is, how in hell do you get around this grandfather paradox bit? That fellow Davies explained about the discovery of tachyons right enough, and I accept that they can travel into our past, but I still can’t see how one can logically change the past.”
Markham sighed. “Until tachyons were discovered, everybody thought communication with the past was impossible. The incredible thing is that the physics of time communication