The Butcher swung around. "They won't let me in the Time Theater. You
said so yourself."
"You could walk us over there."
"Well, maybe I will and maybe I won't."
"While you're deciding, we'll get swimming. Come along, Joggy."
Still scowling, the Butcher took a white soapy crayon from the bulging
pocket in his silver shorts. Pressed into the pavement, it made a
black mark. He scrawled pensively: KEEP ON THE GRASS.
He gazed at his handiwork. No, darn it, that was just what grownups
wanted you to do. This grass couldn't be hurt. You couldn't pull it up
or tear it off; it hurt your fingers to try. A rub with the side of the
crayon removed the sign. He thought for a moment, then wrote: KEEP OFF
THE GRASS.
With an untroubled countenance, he sprang up and hurried after the
others.
Joggy and the older boy were swimming lazily through the air at
shoulder height. In the pavement directly under each of them was a
wide, saucer-shaped depression which swam along with them. The uninjes
avoided the depressions. Darter was strutting on his hind legs, looking
up inquiringly at his master.
"Gimme a ride, Hal, gimme a ride!" the Butcher called. The older boy
ignored him. "Aw, gimme a ride, Joggy."
"Oh, all right." Joggy touched the small box attached to the front of
his broad metal harness and dropped lightly to the ground. The Butcher
climbed on his back. There was a moment of rocking and pitching, during
which each boy accused the other of trying to upset them.
Then the Butcher got his balance and they began to swim along
securely, though at a level several inches lower. Brute sprang up after
his master and was invisibly rebuffed. He retired baffled, but a few
minutes later, he was amusing himself by furious futile efforts to
climb the hemispherical repulsor field.
Slowly the little cavalcade of boys and uninjes proceeded down the
Avenue of Wisdom. Hal amused himself by stroking toward a tree. When he
was about four feet from it, he was gently bounced away.
* * * * *
It was really a more tiring method of transportation than walking
and quite useless against the wind. True, by rocking the repulsor
hemisphere backward, you could get a brief forward push, but it would
be nullified when you rocked forward. A slow swimming stroke was the
simplest way to make progress.
The general sensation, however, was delightful and levitators were
among the most prized of toys.
"There's the Theater," Joggy announced.
"I _know_," the Butcher said irritably.
But even he sounded a little solemn and subdued. From the Great Ramp
to the topmost airy finial, the Time Theater was the dream of a god
realized in unearthly substance. It imparted the aura of demigods to
the adults drifting up and down the ramp.
"My father remembers when there wasn't a Time Theater," Hal said softly
as he scanned the facade's glowing charts and maps. "Say, they're
viewing Earth, somewhere in Scandinavia around zero in the B.C.-A.D.
time scale. It should be interesting."
"Will it be about Napoleon?" the Butcher asked eagerly. "Or Hitler?" A
red-headed adult heard and smiled and paused to watch. A lock of hair
had fallen down the middle of the Butcher's forehead, and as he sat
Joggy like a charger, he did bear a faint resemblance to one of the
grim little egomaniacs of the Dawn Era.
"Wrong millennium," Hal said.
"Tamerlane then?" the Butcher pressed. "He killed cities and piled the
skulls. Blood-bath stuff. Oh, yes, and Tamerlane was a Scand of the
Navies."
Hal looked puzzled and then quickly erased the expression. "Well, even
if it is about Tamerlane, you can't see it. How about it, Joggy?"
"They won't let me in, either."
"Yes, they will. You're five years old now."
"But I don't feel any older," Joggy replied doubtfully.
"The feeling comes at six. Don't worry, the usher will notice the
difference."
Hal and Joggy switched off their levitators and dropped to their
feet. The Butcher came down rather hard, twisting an ankle. He opened
his mouth to cry, then abruptly closed it hard, bearing his pain in
tight-lipped silence like an ancient soldier--like Stalin, maybe, he
thought. The red-headed adult's face twitched in half-humorous sympathy.
Hal and Joggy mounted the Ramp and entered a twilit corridor which
drank their faint footsteps and returned pulses of light. The Butcher
limped manfully after them, but when he got inside, he forgot his
battle injury.
* * * * *