And I felt sick and frightened.
The old people had died of starvation somehow with all that dough in
cash or banks. I didn't give a hang if the time travel was
responsible, or something else was. I wasn't going to be found dead in
my hotel and have Lou Pape curse my corpse because I'd been borrowing
from him when, since 1931, I'd had a little fortune put away. He'd
call me a premature senile psychotic and he'd be right, from his point
of view, not knowing the truth.
* * * * *
Rather than make the deposit in October, 1938, I grabbed a battered
old cab and told the driver to step on it. When I showed him the $10
bill that was in it for him, he squashed down the gas pedal. In 1938,
$10 was real money.
We got a mile away from the bank and the driver looked at me in the
rear-view mirror.
"How far you want to go, mister?"
My teeth were together so hard that I had to unclench them before I
could answer, "As far away as we can get."
"Cops after you?"
"No, but somebody is. Don't be surprised at anything that happens, no
matter what it is."
"You mean like getting shot at?" he asked worriedly, slowing down.
"You're not in any danger, friend. I am. Relax and step on it again."
I wondered if she could still reach me, this far from the bank, and
handed the guy the bill. No justice sticking him for the ride in case
she should. He pushed the pedal down even harder than he had been
doing before.
We must have been close to three miles away when I blinked and was
standing outside the first bank I'd seen in 1931.
I don't know what the cab driver thought when I vanished out of his
hack. He probably figured I'd opened the door and jumped while he
wasn't looking. Maybe he even went back and searched for a body
splashed all over the street.
Well, it would have been a hopeless hunt. I was a week ahead.
I gave up and drearily made my deposit. The one from early October
that I'd missed I put in with this one.
There was no way to escape the babe with the beautiful hard face,
gorgeous warm body and plans for me that all seemed to add up to
death. I didn't try any more. I went on making deposits, mailing
orders to her stock brokers, and putting down bets that couldn't miss
because they were all past history.
I don't even remember what the last one was, a fight or a race. I hung
around the bar that had long ago replaced the speakeasy, until the
inevitable payoff, got myself a hamburger and headed out the door. All
the envelopes I was supposed to use were gone and I felt shaky,
knowing that the next place I'd see was the room with the wire mesh
cage and the hooded motors.
It was.
* * * * *
She was on the other side of the cage, and I had five bankbooks and
envelopes filled with cash amounting to more than $15,000, but all I
could think of was that I was hungry and something had happened to the
hamburger while I was traveling through time. I must have fallen and
dropped it, because my hand was covered with dust or dirt. I brushed
it off and quickly felt my face and pulled up my sleeves to look at my
arms.
"Very smart," I said, "but I'm nowhere near emaciation."
"What made you think you would be?" she asked.
"Because the others always were."
She cut the motors to idling speed and the vibrating mesh slowed down.
I glared at her through it. God, she was lovely--as lovely as an ice
sculpture! The kind of face you'd love to kiss and slap, kiss and
slap....
"You came here with a preconceived notion, Mr. Weldon. I'm a
businesswoman, not a monster. I like to think there's even a good deal
of the altruist in me. I could hire only young people, but the old
ones have more trouble finding work. And you've seen for yourself how
I provide nest eggs for them they'd otherwise never have."
"And take care of yourself at the same time."
"That's the businesswoman in me. I need money to operate."
"So do the old people. Only they die and you don't."
She opened the gate and invited me out. "I make mistakes occasionally.
I sometimes pick men and women who prove to be too old to stand the
strain. I try not to let it happen, but they need money and work so
badly that they don't always tell the truth about their age and state
of health."
"You could take those who have social security cards and references."
"But those who don't have any are in worse need!" She paused. "You
probably think I want only the money you and they bring back, that
it's merely some sort of profit-making scheme. It isn't."
"You mean the idea is not just to build up a fortune for you with a
cut for whoever helps you do it?"
"I said I need money to operate, Mr. Weldon, and this method serves.
But there are other purposes, much more important. What you have gone
through is--basic training, you might say. You know now that it's
possible to travel through time, and what it's like. The initial
shock, in other words, is gone and you're better equipped to do
something for me in another era."
"Something else?" I stared at her puzzledly. "What else could you
want?"
"Let's have dinner first. You must be hungry."
* * * * *
I was, and that reminded me: "I bought a hamburger just before you
brought me back. I don't know what happened to it. My hand was dirty
and the hamburger was gone, as if I'd fallen somehow and dropped it
and got dirt on my hand."
She looked worriedly at the hand, probably afraid I'd cut it and
disqualified myself. I could understand that; you never know what kind
of diseases can be picked up in different times, because I remember
reading somewhere that germs keep changing according to conditions.
Right now, for instance, strains of bacteria are becoming resistant to
antibiotics. I knew her concern wasn't really for me, but it was
pleasant all the same.
"That could be the explanation, I suppose," she said. "The truth is
that I've never taken a time voyage--somebody has to operate the
controls in the present--so I can't say it's possible or impossible to
fall. It must be, since you did. Perhaps the wrench back from the
past was too violent and you slipped just before you returned."
She led me down to an ornate dining room, where the table had been set
for two. The food was waiting on the table, steaming and smelling
tasty. Nobody was around to serve us. She pointed out a chair to me
and we sat down and began eating. I was a little nervous at first,
afraid there might be something in the food, but it tasted fine and
nothing happened after I swallowed a little and waited for some
effect.
"You did try to escape the time tractor beam, didn't you, Mr. Weldon?"
she asked. I didn't have to answer; she knew. "That's a mistaken
notion of how it functions. The control beam doesn't cover _area_; it
covers _era_. You could have flown to any part of the world and the
beam would still have brought you back. Do I make myself clear?"
She did. Too bloody clear. I waited for the rest.
"I assume you've already formed an opinion of me," she went on. "A
rather unflattering one, I imagine."
"'Bitch' is the cleanest word I can find. But a clever one. Anybody
who can invent a time machine would have to be a genius."
"I didn't invent it. My father did--Dr. Anthony Roberts--using the
funds you and others helped me provide him with." Her face grew soft
and tender. "My father was a wonderful man, a great man, but he was
called a crackpot. He was kept from teaching or working anywhere. It
was just as well, I suppose, though he was too hurt to think so; he
had more leisure to develop the time machine. He could have used it to
extort repayment from mankind for his humiliation, but he didn't. He
used it to help mankind."
"Like how?" I goaded.
"It doesn't matter, Mr. Weldon. You're determined to hate me and
consider me a liar. Nothing I tell you can change that."
* * * * *
She was right about the first part--I hadn't dared let myself do
anything except hate and fear her--but she was wrong about the second.
I remembered thinking how Lou Pape would have felt if I had died of
starvation with over $15,000, after borrowing from him all the time
between jobs. Not knowing how I got it, he'd have been sore, thinking
I'd played him for a patsy. What I'm trying to say is that Lou
wouldn't have had enough information to judge me. I didn't have enough
information yet, either, to judge her.
"What do you want me to do?" I asked warily.
"Everybody but one person was sent into the past on specific
errands--to save art treasures and relics that would otherwise have
been lost to humanity."
"Not because the things might be worth a lot of dough?" I said
nastily.
"You've already seen that I can get all the money I want. There were
upheavals in the past--great fires, wars, revolutions, vandalism--and
I had my associates save things that would have been destroyed. Oh,
beautiful things, Mr. Weldon! The world would have been so much poorer
without them!"
"El Greco, for instance?" I asked, remembering the raving old man who
had been found wandering with $17,000 in his coat lining.
"El Greco, too. Several paintings that had been lost for centuries."
She became more brisk and efficient-seeming. "Except for the one man I
mentioned, I concentrated on the past--the future is too completely
unknown to us. And there's an additional reason why I tentatively
explored it only once. But the one person who went there discovered
something that would be of immense value to the world."
"What happened to _him_?"
She looked regretful. "He was too old. He survived just long enough to
tell me that the future has something we need. It's a metal box,
small enough to carry, that could supply this whole city with power to
run its industries and light its homes and streets!"
"Sounds good. Who'd you say benefits if I get it?"
"We share the profits equally, of course. But it must be understood
that we sell the power so cheaply that everybody can afford it."
"I'm not arguing. What's the other reason you didn't bother with the
future?"
"You can't bring anything from the future to the present that doesn't
exist right now. I won't go into the theory, but it should be obvious
that nothing can exist before it exists. You can't bring the box I
want, only the technical data to build one."
"Technical data? I'm an actor, not a scientist."
"You'll have pens and weatherproof notebooks to copy it down in."
* * * * *
I couldn't make up my mind about her. I've already said she was
beautiful, which always prejudices a man in a woman's favor, but I
couldn't forget the starvation cases. They hadn't shared anything but
malnutrition, useless money and death. Then again, maybe her
explanation was a good one, that she wanted to help those who needed
help most and some of them lied about their age and physical condition
because they wanted the jobs so badly. All I knew about were those who
had died. How did I know there weren't others--a lot more of them than
the fatal cases, perhaps--who came through all right and were able to
enjoy their little fortunes?
And there was her story about saving the treasures of the past and
wanting to provide power at really low cost. She was right about one
thing: she didn't need any of that to make money with; her method was
plenty good enough, using the actual records of the past to invest in
stocks, bet on sports--all sure gambles.
But those starvation cases....
"Do I get any guarantees?" I demanded.
She looked annoyed. "I'll need you for the data. You'll need me to
turn it into manufacture. Is that enough of a guarantee?"
"No. Do I come out of this alive?"
"Mr. Weldon, please use some logic. I'm the one who's taking the risk.
I've already given you more money than you've ever had at one time in
your life. Part of my motive was to pay for services about to be
rendered. Mostly, it was to give you experience in traveling through
time."
"And to prove to me that I can't run out," I added.
"That happens to be a necessary attribute of the machine. I couldn't
very well move you about through time unless it worked that way. If
you'd look at my point of view, you'd see that I lose my investment if
you don't bring back the data. I can't withdraw your money, you
realize."
"I don't know what to think," I said, dissatisfied with myself because
I couldn't find out what, if anything, was wrong with the deal. "I'll
get you the data for the power box if it's at all possible and then
we'll see what happens."
Finished eating, we went upstairs and I got into the cage.
She closed the circuit. The motors screamed. The mesh blurred.
And I was in a world I never knew.
* * * * *
You'd call it a city, I suppose; there were enough buildings to make
it one. But no city ever had so much greenery. It wasn't just
tree-lined streets, like Unter den Linden in Berlin, or islands
covered with shrubbery, like Park Avenue in New York. The grass and
trees and shrubs grew around every building, separating them from each
other by wide lawns. The buildings were more glass--or what looked
like glass--than anything else. A few of the windows were opaque
against the sun, but I couldn't see any shades or blinds. Some kind of
polarizing glass or plastic?
I felt uneasy being there, but it was a thrill just the same, to be
alive in the future when I and everybody who lived in my day was
supposed to be dead.
The air smelled like the country. There was no foul gas boiling from
the teardrop cars on the glass-level road. They were made of
transparent plastic clear around and from top to bottom, and they
moved along at a fair clip, but more smoothly than swiftly. If I
hadn't seen the airship overhead, I wouldn't have known it was there.
It flew silently, a graceful ball without wings, seeming to be borne
by the wind from one horizon to the other, except that no wind ever
moved that fast.
One car stopped nearby and someone shouted, "Here we are!" Several
people leaped out and headed for me.
I didn't think. I ran. I crossed the lawn and ducked into the nearest
building and dodged through long, smoothly walled, shadowlessly lit
corridors until I found a door that would open. I slammed it shut and
locked it. Then, panting, I fell into a soft chair that seemed to
form itself around my body, and felt like kicking myself for the
bloody idiot I was.
[Illustration]
What in hell had I run for? They couldn't have known who I was. If I'd
arrived in a time when people wore togas or bathing suits, there would
have been some reason for singling me out, but they had all had
clothes just like ours--suits and shirts and ties for the men, a dress
and high heels for the one woman with them. I felt somewhat
disappointed that clothes hadn't changed any, but it worked out to my
advantage; I wouldn't be so conspicuous.
Yet why should anyone have yelled "Here we are!" unless.... No, they
must have thought I was somebody else. It didn't figure any other way.
I had run because it was my first startled reaction and probably
because I knew I was there on what might be considered illegal
business; if I succeeded, some poor inventor would be done out of his
royalties.
I wished I hadn't run. Besides making me feel like a scared fool, I
was sweaty and out of breath. Playing old men doesn't make climbing
down fire escapes much tougher than it should be, but it doesn't
exactly make a sprinter out of you--not by several lungfuls.
* * * * *
I sat there, breathing hard and trying to guess what next. I had no
more idea of where to go for what I wanted than an ancient Egyptian
set down in the middle of Times Square with instructions to sneak a
mummy out of the Metropolitan Museum. I didn't even have that much
information. I didn't know any part of the city, how it was laid out,
or where to get the data that May Roberts had sent me for.
I opened the door quietly and looked both ways before going out. After
losing myself in the cross-connecting corridors a few times, I finally
came to an outside door. I stopped, tense, trying to get my courage.
My inclination was to slip, sneak or dart out, but I made myself walk
away like a decent, innocent citizen. That was one disguise they'd
never be able to crack. All I had to do was act as if I belonged to
that time and place and who would know the difference?
There were other people walking as if they were in no hurry to get
anywhere. I slowed down to their speed, but I wished wistfully that
there was a crowd to dive into and get lost.
A man dropped into step and said politely, "I beg your pardon. Are you
a stranger in town?"
I almost halted in alarm, but that might have been a giveaway. "What
makes you think so?" I asked, forcing myself to keep at the same easy
pace.
"I--didn't recognize your face and I thought--"
"It's a big city," I said coldly. "You can't know everyone."
"If there's anything I can do to help--"
I told him there wasn't and left him standing there. It was plain
common sense, I had decided quickly while he was talking to me, not to
take any risks by admitting anything. I might have been dumped into a
police state or the country could have been at war without my knowing
it, or maybe they were suspicious of strangers. For one reason or
another, ranging from vagrancy to espionage, I could be pulled in,
tortured, executed, God knows what. The place looked peaceful enough,
but that didn't prove a thing.
I went on walking, looking for something I couldn't be sure existed,
in a city I was completely unfamiliar with, in a time when I had no
right to be alive. It wasn't just a matter of getting the information
she wanted. I'd have been satisfied to hang around until she pulled me
back without the data....
But then what would happen? Maybe the starvation cases were people who
had failed her! For that matter, she could shoot me and send the
remains anywhere in time to get rid of the evidence.
Damn it, I didn't know if she was better or worse than I'd supposed,
but I wasn't going to take any chances. I had to bring her what she
wanted.
* * * * *
There was a sign up ahead. It read: TO SHOPPING CENTER. The arrow
pointed along the road. When I came to a fork and wondered which way
to go, there was another sign, then another pointing to still more
farther on.
I followed them to the middle of the city, a big square with a park in
the center and shops of all kinds rimming it. The only shop I was
interested in said: ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES.