I'm not complaining. I was lucky to get the lumber. Most of the cabin was made of rough-hewn logs notched together at the ends, chinked with adobe.

The board had turned gray in the heat and sun, but after a few strokes I was down to the yellow pine interior. The wood curled up around the blade and the chips dropped around my bare feet. It smelled fresh and new and I found myself smiling as the sweat dripped off my nose. It would be good to be a carpenter, I thought. Maybe I'd quit the newspaper business.

Then the blade broke and jammed into the wood. My palm slipped off the knob in front and tried to skate across the fresh-planed surface, driving long splinters into my skin. The plane clattered off the board and went for my toe with the hellish accuracy of a pain-guided missile.

I shouted a few words rarely heard in 1845, and some uncommon even in the 23rd century. I hopped around on one foot. Another lost art, hopping.

"It could have been worse," a voice said in my ear. It was either incipient schizophrenia, or the Central Computer. I bet on the CC.

"How? By hitting both feet?"

"Gravity. Consider the momentum such a massive object could have attained, had this really been West Texas, which lies at the bottom of a space-time depression twenty-five thousand miles per hour deep."

Definitely the CC.

I examined my hand. Blood was oozing from it, running down my forearm and dripping from the elbow. But there was no arterial pumping. The foot, though it still hurt like fire, was not damaged.

"You see now why laborers in 1845 wore work boots."

"Is that why you called, CC? To give me a lecture about safety in the work place?"

"No. I was going to announce a visitor. The colorful language lesson was an unexpected bonus of my tuning in on-"

"Shut up, will you?"

The Central Computer did so.

The end of a splinter protruded from my palm, so I pulled on it. I got some, but a lot was still buried in there. Others had broken off below skin level. All in all, a wonderful day's work.

A visitor? I looked around and saw no one, though a whole tribe of Apaches could have been hiding in the clumps of mesquite. I had not expected to see any sign of the CC. It uses the circuitry in my own head to produce its voice.

And it wasn't supposed to manifest itself in Texas. As is often the case, there was more to the CC than it was telling.

"CC, on-line, please."

"I hear and obey."

"Who's the visitor?"

"Tall, young, ignorant of tampons, with a certain puppy-like charm-"

"Oh, Jesus."

"I know I'm not supposed to intrude on these antique environments, but she was quite insistent on learning your location, and I thought it better for you to have some forewarning than to-"

"Okay. Now shut up."