"Okay," he said grudgingly. "I suppose I'll have to give it to you.
But the stuff had better be good."
"Oh, it is," I assured him. "And you don't have to be afraid, because
I couldn't possibly skip with the loot. I'll have to travel naked. I
can't get there with so much as a sandal on one foot or a filling in a
single tooth. Fortunately, my teeth are perfect."
Sweat poured off Krasnow's florid face as he worked the combination of
his office safe. His fat jowls quivered unhappily around his cigar
while he counted out the bills. Ten per cent was cash in advance, and
the rest went into a bank account in my name. I paid off a batch of
bills, then stripped and did my off-to-Buffalo.
* * * * *
"Honest" John Krasnow was a crooked District Attorney who wanted to be
Governor and then President. He had the Machine, but he didn't have
the People. And, because he needed the People, he needed me. I had
been to this other dimension--the one on the farthest branch of the
time-tree--and I could give him what he wanted.
Krasnow found out about it after I was hauled up in front of him on a
check-kiting charge. I'd had something of a reputation before I got
into difficulties and, in trying to live up to the reputation, I had
done some plain and fancy financing. Nothing that fifteen to twenty
grand wouldn't have fixed--but while I scrounged around, trying to get
cash, I kited a few checks. They pyramided me right into the D.A.'s
office, where Krasnow was properly sympathetic.
"How," he asked, "could a man of your standing in the scientific world
stoop so low?" It developed into quite a lecture and, even coming from
Krasnow, it made me feel pretty low.
So I began explaining. I told him where I was born, and where I went
to school, and where I had taken my sabbaticals--including this other
dimension. And Krasnow believed me. I can't account for it, except
possibly because he knew he was a crook and knew I wasn't
one--exactly. Anyway, he believed me, and we made the deal and I did
the side-shuffle, as agreed.
The journey to that other dimension is not a pleasant one. It does
disturbing things to the stomach, and you see everything thin and
elongated, as if you're sitting too far to the side in a movie
theater.
I got there, however, and waited for the hiccups to subside. _Hiccupi
laterali_, I had called them when I considered writing an article for
the _Medical Journal_ after my first trip. With the hiccupi gone, I
stole some clothing--which was one of the riskiest parts of the
program--and waited for morning. I didn't have any money, of course,
so I had to hitchhike into town.
I could have stolen myself a better fit, but people aren't
clothes-conscious in that dimension. They're more interested in what
you are and what you can do. The driver of the car that gave me a lift
asked, "And what is your field of endeavor?"
I told him, "I am able to eliminate the long wait in ivory production
by accelerating the growth cycle of elephants."
He was deeply impressed and tipped me handsomely. I was less impressed
with his talent for growing cobless corn, and therefore had to return
only a small part of the sum he gave me.
The world of this dimension had developed some remarkable parallels to
Earth. I mean our Earth, which falls into what I have designated
Timeline One Point One, since it's the Earth with which I am most
familiar. Every other world that has a language calls itself Earth,
too. I had to visit briefly hundreds of the lateral worlds, hovering
over primordial swamps, limitless oceans, insect kingdoms and
radioactive planetoids, before I found the one that was truly
parallel.
It existed in Timeline Seventeen Point Zero Eight, and it had
refrigerators, platinum blondes, automobiles, airplanes, apple pie,
tabloids, television, scotch and soda--just about everything we think
makes life worthwhile. But it had its little differences, which was
only to be expected in a timeline where the bionomics could create a
new world each time someone changed his mind.
Thus, the cobless-corn man was driving what looked to me like a
Chevrolet, but which was a Morton in his world. He let me off near a
downtown restaurant where, thanks to our little exchange of talent
talk, I had enough money for breakfast. It was considered unethical to
swap talent talk outside the limits of certain rigidly defined groups,
so I didn't try to out-impress the waitress.
* * * * *
Fed, and filling my stolen clothes a bit better, I walked to the
recorder's office and spent the rest of the morning looking up old
documents. There was nothing there for Krasnow, as I had expected. But
for me there was a very pretty file clerk. Talking to her, I verified
my impression that human instincts and relationships were much the
same in this dimension as in my own--except in the one basic respect
that interested Krasnow, of course.
The file clerk and I lunched together and then I spent the afternoon
in the library. But I didn't find anything there, either, and then I
had dinner with her. She said her name was Julie. I told her mine was
Heck, for Hector, which it is. She thought this was "awfully cute" and
we got along fine.
[Illustration]
Julie had a delightful apartment and a matching sense of hospitality.
The following day, when she went to work, I stayed home and washed the
dishes and made the bed and used the telephone.
I ran up quite a bill with my long-distance calls, but I found out
what I needed to know. I impressed a lot of people with my elephant
story and pretended to be impressed hardly at all with what they told
me they did--although often I was, very much.
The trouble with these people is that they no longer know how to lie,
if that can be listed as trouble. I don't think it can. Neither did
Krasnow, obviously. He'd never have sent me off on my expensive
side-trip if he had.
Of course, Krasnow looked at it objectively. What he wanted from
Timeline Seventeen Point Zero Eight was not for himself. It was for
everybody else. He wanted the formula for the truth gas these people
had developed long ago and loosed upon their world to put a stop to
wars.
They had been in a bad way, although no worse than the sort of problem
we were up against. Their trans-ocean squabbles and power politics
seemed to have settled into a pattern of a war or two per generation.
Just like us. Hence, the man who invented the truth gas became a
global hero, after a certain amount of cynicism and skepticism. All
the doubts vanished, naturally, once the gas got to working. And so
did war.
[Illustration]
You can't do much plotting and scheming if, every time you open your
mouth to tell a lie, you stammer, sweat, turn red and gasp for breath.
It's a dead giveaway. Nobody tries it more than once.
One or two men had tried to nullify the gas or work out a local
antidote, either as a pure research project or through power-madness.
But, because they had had to state their purposes as soon as they
thought of them, they were put away. Neat. Very neat.
What I wanted was the formula for the truth gas. Its location wasn't
exactly a secret in this land of complete candor, but it wasn't writ
large on any wall for all to see, either. They kept it in their
capital--located about where our Omaha is--on file among the Vital
Statistics.