"That is correct."
"Like hell you do. You think I'm stupid? I never even seen you before."
Joe Prantera came abruptly to his feet. "I'm gettin' outta here."
For the second time, Reston-Farrell said, "Where would you go, Mr.
Prantera?"
Joe glared at him. Then sat down again, as abruptly as he'd arisen.
* * * * *
"Let's start all over again. I got this straight, you brought me, some
screwy way, all the way ... here. O.K., I'll buy that. I seen what it
looks like out that window--" The real comprehension was seeping through
to him even as he talked. "Everybody I know, Jessie, Tony, the Kid, Big
Louis, everybody, they're dead. Even Big Louis."
"Yes," Brett-James said, his voice soft. "They are all dead, Mr.
Prantera. Their children are all dead, and their grandchildren."
The two men of the future said nothing more for long minutes while Joe
Prantera's mind whirled its confusion.
Finally he said, "What's this bit about you wanting me to give it to
some guy."
"That is why we brought you here, Mr. Prantera. You were ... you are, a
professional assassin."
"Hey, wait a minute, now."
Reston-Farrell went on, ignoring the interruption. "There is small point
in denying your calling. Pray remember that at the point when we ...
_transported_ you, you were about to dispose of a contemporary named
Alphonso Annunziata-Rossi. A citizen, I might say, whose demise would
probably have caused small dismay to society."
They had him pegged all right. Joe said, "But why me? Why don't you get
some heavy from now? Somebody knows the ropes these days."
Brett-James said, "Mr. Prantera, there are no professional assassins in
this age, nor have there been for over a century and a half."
"Well, then do it yourself." Joe Prantera's irritation over this whole
complicated mess was growing. And already he was beginning to long for
the things he knew--for Jessie and Tony and the others, for his favorite
bar, for the lasagne down at Papa Giovanni's. Right now he could have
welcomed a calling down at the hands of Big Louis.
Reston-Farrell had come to his feet and walked to one of the large
room's windows. He looked out, as though unseeing. Then, his back
turned, he said, "We have tried, but it is simply not in us, Mr.
Prantera."
"You mean you're yella?"
"No, if by that you mean afraid. It is simply not within us to take the
life of a fellow creature--not to speak of a fellow man."
Joe snapped: "Everything you guys say sounds crazy. Let's start all over
again."
Brett-James said, "Let me do it, Lawrence." He turned his eyes to Joe.
"Mr. Prantera, in your own era, did you ever consider the future?"
Joe looked at him blankly.
"In your day you were confronted with national and international,
problems. Just as we are today and just as nations were a century or a
millennium ago."
"Sure, O.K., so we had problems. I know whatcha mean--like wars, and
depressions and dictators and like that."
"Yes, like that," Brett-James nodded.
The heavy-set man paused a moment. "Yes, like that," he repeated. "That
we confront you now indicates that the problems of your day were solved.
Hadn't they been, the world most surely would have destroyed itself.
Wars? Our pedagogues are hard put to convince their students that such
ever existed. More than a century and a half ago our society eliminated
the reasons for international conflict. For that matter," he added
musingly, "we eliminated most international boundaries. Depressions?
Shortly after your own period, man awoke to the fact that he had
achieved to the point where it was possible to produce an abundance for
all with a minimum of toil. Overnight, for all practical purposes, the
whole world was industrialized, automated. The second industrial
revolution was accompanied by revolutionary changes in almost every
field, certainly in every science. Dictators? Your ancestors found, Mr.
Prantera, that it is difficult for a man to be free so long as others
are still enslaved. Today the democratic ethic has reached a pinnacle
never dreamed of in your own era."
"O.K., O.K.," Joe Prantera growled. "So everybody's got it made. What I
wanta know is what's all this about me giving it ta somebody? If
everything's so great, how come you want me to knock this guy off?"
Reston-Farrell bent forward and thumped his right index finger twice on
the table. "The bacterium of hate--a new strain--has found the human
race unprotected from its disease. We had thought our vaccines immunized
us."
"What's that suppose to mean?"
Brett-James took up the ball again. "Mr. Prantera, have you ever heard
of Ghengis Khan, of Tamerlane, Alexander, Caesar?"
Joe Prantera scowled at him emptily.
"Or, more likely, of Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin?"
"Sure I heard of Hitler and Stalin," Joe growled. "I ain't stupid."
The other nodded. "Such men are unique. They have a drive ... a drive to
power which exceeds by far the ambitions of the average man. They are
genii in their way, Mr. Prantera, genii of evil. Such a genius of evil
has appeared on the current scene."
"Now we're getting somewheres," Joe snorted. "So you got a guy what's a
little ambitious, like, eh? And you guys ain't got the guts to give it
to him. O.K. What's in it for me?"
The two of them frowned, exchanged glances. Reston-Farrell said, "You
know, that is one aspect we had not considered."
Brett-James said to Joe Prantera, "Had we not, ah, taken you at the time
we did, do you realize what would have happened?"
"Sure," Joe grunted. "I woulda let old Al Rossi have it right in the
guts, five times. Then I woulda took the plane back to Chi."
Brett-James was shaking his head. "No. You see, by coincidence, a police
squad car was coming down the street just at that moment to arrest Mr.
Rossi. You would have been apprehended. As I understand Californian law
of the period, your life would have been forfeit, Mr. Prantera."
Joe winced. It didn't occur to him to doubt their word.
Reston-Farrell said, "As to reward, Mr. Prantera, we have already told
you there is ultra-abundance in this age. Once this task has been
performed, we will sponsor your entry into present day society.
Competent psychiatric therapy will soon remove your present--"
"Waita minute, now. You figure on gettin' me candled by some head
shrinker, eh? No thanks, Buster. I'm going back to my own--"
Brett-James was shaking his head again. "I am afraid there is no return,
Mr. Prantera. Time travel works but in one direction, _with_ the flow of
the time stream. There can be no return to your own era."
Joe Prantera had been rocking with the mental blows he had been
assimilating, but this was the final haymaker. He was stuck in this
squaresville of a world.
* * * * *
Joe Prantera on a job was thorough.
Careful, painstaking, competent.
He spent the first three days of his life in the year 2133 getting the
feel of things. Brett-James and Reston-Farrell had been appointed to
work with him. Joe didn't meet any of the others who belonged to the
group which had taken the measures to bring him from the past. He didn't
want to meet them. The fewer persons involved, the better.
He stayed in the apartment of Reston-Farrell. Joe had been right,
Reston-Farrell was a medical doctor. Brett-James evidently had something
to do with the process that had enabled them to bring Joe from the past.
Joe didn't know how they'd done it, and he didn't care. Joe was a
realist. He was here. The thing was to adapt.
There didn't seem to be any hurry. Once the deal was made, they left it
up to him to make the decisions.
They drove him around the town, when he wished to check the traffic
arteries. They flew him about the whole vicinity. From the air, Southern
California looked much the same as it had in his own time. Oceans,
mountains, and to a lesser extent, deserts, are fairly permanent even
against man's corroding efforts.
It was while he was flying with Brett-James on the second day that Joe
said, "How about Mexico? Could I make the get to Mexico?"
The physicist looked at him questioningly. "Get?" he said.
Joe Prantera said impatiently, "The getaway. After I give it to this
Howard Temple-Tracy guy, I gotta go on the run, don't I?"
"I see." Brett-James cleared his throat. "Mexico is no longer a separate
nation, Mr. Prantera. All North America has been united into one unit.
Today, there are only eight nations in the world."
"Where's the nearest?"
"South America."
"That's a helluva long way to go on a get."
"We hadn't thought of the matter being handled in that manner."
Joe eyed him in scorn. "Oh, you didn't, huh? What happens after I give
it to this guy? I just sit around and wait for the cops to put the arm
on me?"
Brett-James grimaced in amusement. "Mr. Prantera, this will probably be
difficult for you to comprehend, but there are no police in this era."
Joe gaped at him. "No police! What happens if you gotta throw some guy
in stir?"
"If I understand your idiom correctly, you mean prison. There are no
prisons in this era, Mr. Prantera."
Joe stared. "No cops, no jails. What stops anybody? What stops anybody
from just going into some bank, like, and collecting up all the bread?"