"Dried fruits!" I said in disgust.
"Rather excessively dried, I'm sorry to say," the manager agreed
mournfully.
I sipped the blue stuff in a glass and almost spat it out. "Powdered
milk! Are these things what you people have to live on?"
"No, our diet is quite varied," Carr said in embarrassment. "But we
unfortunately can't give you any of the foods we normally eat
ourselves."
"And why in blazes not?"
"Please eat, Mr. Weldon," Carr begged with frantic earnestness.
"There's so much to explain--this is part of it, of course--and it
would be best if you heard it on a full stomach."
I was famished enough to get the stuff down, which wasn't easy;
uninviting as it looked, it tasted still worse.
When I was through, Carr pushed several buttons on the glowing menu.
Dishes came up from an opening in the center of the table and he
showed me the luscious foods they contained.
"Given your choice," he said, "you'd have preferred them to what you
have eaten. Isn't that so, Mr. Weldon?"
"You bet I would!" I answered, sore because I hadn't been given that
choice.
"And you would have died like the pathetic old people you were
investigating," said a voice behind me.
I turned around, startled. Several men and women had come in while I'd
been eating, their footsteps as silent as cats on a rug. I looked
blankly from them to Carr and back again.
"These are the clothes we ordinarily wear," Carr said. "An 18th
Century motif, as you can see--updated knee breeches and shirt
waists, a modified stock for the men, the daring low bodices of that
era, the full skirts treated in a modern way by using sheer materials
for the women, bright colors and sheens, buckled shoes of spun
synthetics. Very gay, very ornamental, very comfortable, and
thoroughly suitable to our time."
"But everybody I saw was dressed like me!" I protested.
"Only to keep you from feeling more conspicuous and anxious than you
already were. It was quite a project, I can tell you--your styles
varied so greatly from decade to decade, especially those for
women--and the materials were a genuine problem; they'd gone out of
existence long ago. We had the textile and tailoring cities working a
full six months to clothe the inhabitants of this city, including, of
course, the children. Everybody had to be clad as your contemporaries
were, because we knew only that you would arrive in this vicinity, not
where you might wander through the city."
"There was one small difference you didn't notice," added a handsome
mature woman. "You were the only man in a gray suit. We had a full
description of what you were wearing, you see, and we made sure nobody
else was dressed that way. Naturally, everyone knew who you were,
and so we were kept informed of your movements."
[Illustration]
"What for?" I demanded in alarm. "What's this all about?"
* * * * *
Pulling up chairs, they sat down, looking to me like a witchcraft jury
from some old painting.
"I'm Leo Blundell," said a tall man in plum-and-gold clothes. "As
chairman of--of the Mark Weldon Committee, it's my responsibility to
handle this project correctly."
"Project?"
"To make certain that history is fulfilled, I have to tell you as much
as you must know."
"I wish _somebody_ would!"
"Very well, let me begin by telling you much of what you undoubtedly know
already. In a sense, you are more a victim of Dr. Anthony Roberts than his
daughter. Roberts was a brilliant physicist, but because of his eccentric
behavior, he was ridiculed for his theories and hated for his arrogance.
He was an almost perfect example of self-defeat, the way in which a man
will hamper his career and wreck his happiness, and then blame the world
for his failure and misery. To get back to his connection with you,
however, he invented a time machine--unfortunately, its secret has since
been lost and never re-discovered--and used it for anti-social purposes.
When he died, his daughter May carried on his work. It was she who sent
you to this time to learn the principle by which the Dynapack operates.
She was a thoroughly ruthless woman."
"Are you sure?" I asked uneasily.
"Quite sure."
"I know a number of old people died after she sent them on errands
through time, but she said they'd lied about their age and health."
"One would expect her to say that," a woman put in cuttingly.
Blundell turned to her and shook his head. "Let Mr. Weldon clarify his
feelings about her, Rhoda. They are obviously very mixed."
"They are," I admitted. "She seemed hard, the first time I saw her,
when I answered her ad, but she could have been just acting
businesslike. I mean she had a lot of people to pick from and she had
to be impersonal and make certain she had the right one. The next
time--I hope you don't know about that--it was really my fault for
breaking into her room. I really had a lot of admiration for the way
she handled the situation."
"Go on," Carr encouraged me.
"And I can't complain about the deal she gave me. Sure, she came out
ahead on the money I bet and invested for her. But I did all right
myself--I was richer than I'd ever been in my life--and she gave that
money to me before I even did anything to earn it!"
"Besides which," somebody else said, "she offered you half of the
profits on the Dynapack."
* * * * *
I looked around at the faces for signs of hostility. I saw none. That
was surprising. I'd come from the past to steal something from them
and they weren't at all angry. Well, no, it wasn't really stealing. I
wouldn't be depriving them of the Dynapack. It just would have been
invented before it was supposed to be.
"She did," I said. "Though I wouldn't call that part of it
philanthropy. She needed me for the data and I needed her to
manufacture the things."
"And she was a very beautiful woman," Blundell added.