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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/31892-h.zip b/31892-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5fcfbf1 --- /dev/null +++ b/31892-h.zip diff --git a/31892-h/31892-h.htm b/31892-h/31892-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5f9cbfb --- /dev/null +++ b/31892-h/31892-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3168 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Old Die Rich, by H. L. Gold + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; background-color: #FFFFFF; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; +} + +.tr {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; margin-top: 5%; margin-bottom: 5%; padding: 2em; background-color: #f6f2f2; color: black; border: dotted black 1px;} + + +.img1 {border:solid 1px; } + +.p1 { margin-left: 70%; } + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +/* Images */ +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +.figleft { + float: left; + clear: left; + margin-left: 0; + margin-bottom: 0em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-right: 0.25em; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +.figleft1 { + float: left; + clear: left; + margin-left: 0; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; + margin-top: 0.2em; + margin-right: 0.25em; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + + +/* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Die Rich, by Horace Leonard Gold + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Old Die Rich + +Author: Horace Leonard Gold + +Illustrator: Camerage + William Ashman + +Release Date: April 5, 2010 [EBook #31892] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD DIE RICH *** + + + + +Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Robert Cicconetti, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="tr"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p> +<p class="center">This etext was produced from the March 1953 issue of Galaxy. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p></div> +<p> </p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img class="img1" src="images/cover.jpg" width="400" height="531" alt="" title="" /> +</div> +<p> </p> +<h1>THE OLD DIE RICH</h1> +<p> </p> +<h2>By H. L. GOLD</h2> +<p> </p> +<h3>Illustrated by ASHMAN</h3> +<p> </p> +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>It is the kind of news item you read at least a dozen times +a year, wonder about briefly, and then promptly forget—but +the real story is the one that the reporters are unable to +cover!</i></p></div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_y2.jpg" alt="Y" width="75" height="50" /></div> +<p>ou again, Weldon," the Medical Examiner said wearily.</p> + +<p>I nodded pleasantly and looked around the shabby room with a feeling +of hopeful eagerness. Maybe <i>this</i> time, I thought, I'd get the +answer. I had the same sensation I always had in these places—the +quavery senile despair at being closed in a room with the single shaky +chair, tottering bureau, dim bulb hanging from the ceiling, the +flaking metal bed.</p> + +<p>There was a woman on the bed, an old woman with white hair thin enough +to show the tight-drawn scalp, her face and body so emaciated that the +flesh between the bones formed parchment pockets. The M.E. was going +over her as if she were a side of beef that he had to put a federal +grade stamp on, grumbling meanwhile about me and Sergeant Lou Pape, +who had brought me here.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img class="img1" src="images/image_001.jpg" width="400" height="541" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>"When are you going to stop taking Weldon around to these cases, +Sergeant?" the M.E. demanded in annoyance. "Damned actor and his +morbid curiosity!"</p> + +<p>For the first time, Lou was stung into defending me. "Mr. Weldon is a +friend of mine—I used to be an actor, too, before I joined the +force—and he's a follower of Stanislavsky."</p> + +<p>The beat cop who'd reported the D.O.A. whipped around at the door. "A +Red?"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p> let Lou Pape explain what the Stanislavsky method of acting was, +while I sat down on the one chair and tried to apply it. Stanislavsky +was the great pre-Revolution Russian stage director whose idea was +that actors had to think and feel like the characters they portrayed +so they could <i>be</i> them. A Stanislavskian works out everything about a +character right up to the point where a play starts—where he was +born, when, his relationship with his parents, education, childhood, +adolescence, maturity, attitudes toward men, women, sex, money, +success, including incidents. The play itself is just an extension of +the life history created by the actor.</p> + +<p>How does that tie in with the old woman who had died? Well, I'd had +the cockeyed kind of luck to go bald at 25 and I'd been playing old +men ever since. I had them down pretty well—it's not just a matter of +shuffling around all hunched over and talking in a high cracked voice, +which is cornball acting, but learning what old people are like +inside—and these cases I talked Lou Pape into taking me on were +studies in senility. I wanted to understand them, know what made them +do what they did, <i>feel</i> the compulsion that drove them to it.</p> + +<p>The old woman on the bed, for instance, had $32,000 in five bank +accounts ... and she'd died of starvation.</p> + +<p>You've come across such cases in the news, at least a dozen a year, +and wondered who they were and why they did it. But you read the +items, thought about them for a little while, and then forgot them. My +interest was professional; I made my living playing old people and I +had to know as much about them as I could.</p> + +<p>That's how it started off, at any rate. But the more cases I +investigated, the less sense they made to me, until finally they were +practically an obsession.</p> + +<p>Look, they almost always have around $30,000 pinned to their +underwear, hidden in mattresses, or parked in the bank, yet they +starve themselves to death. If I could understand them, I could write +a play or have one written; I might really make a name for myself, +even get a Hollywood contract, maybe, if I could act them as they +should be acted.</p> + +<p>So I sat there in the lone chair, trying to reconstruct the character +of the old woman who had died rather than spend a single cent of her +$32,000 for food.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_m1.jpg" alt="M" width="55" height="40" /></div> +<p>alnutrition induced by senile psychosis," the M.E. said, writing out +the death certificate. He turned to me. "There's no mystery to it, +Weldon. They starve because they're less afraid of death than digging +into their savings."</p> + +<p>I'd been imagining myself growing weak from hunger and trying to +decide that I ought to eat even if it cost me something. I came out of +it and said, "That's what you keep telling me."</p> + +<p>"I keep hoping it'll convince you so you won't come around any more. +What are the chances, Weldon?"</p> + +<p>"Depends. I will when I'm sure you're right. I'm not."</p> + +<p>He shrugged disgustedly, ordered the wicker basket from the meat wagon +and had the old woman carried out. He and the beat cop left with the +basket team. He could at least have said good-by. He never did, +though.</p> + +<p>A fat lot I cared about his attitude or dogmatic medical opinion. +Getting inside this character was more important. The setting should +have helped; it was depressing, rank with the feel of solitary +desperation and needless death.</p> + +<p>Lou Pape stood looking out the one dirty window, waiting patiently for +me. I let my joints stiffen as if they were thirty years older and +more worn out than they were, and empathized myself into a dilemma +between getting still weaker from hunger and drawing a little money +out of the bank.</p> + +<p>I worked at it for half an hour or so with the deep concentration you +acquire when you use the Stanislavsky method. Then I gave up.</p> + +<p>"The M.E. is wrong, Lou," I said. "It doesn't feel right."</p> + +<p>Lou turned around from the window. He'd stood there all that time +without once coughing or scratching or doing anything else that might +have distracted me. "He knows his business, Mark."</p> + +<p>"But he doesn't know old people."</p> + +<p>"What is it you don't get?" he prompted, helping me dig my way through +a characterization like the trained Stanislavskian he was—and still +would have been if he hadn't gotten so sick of the insecurity of +acting that he'd become a cop. "Can't money be more important to a +psychotic than eating?"</p> + +<p>"Sure," I agreed. "Up to a point. Undereating, yes. Actual starvation, +no."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"You and the M.E. think it's easy to starve to death. It isn't. Not +when you can buy day-old bread at the bakeries, soup bones for about a +nickel a pound, wilted vegetables that groceries are glad to get rid +of. Anybody who's willing to eat that stuff can stay alive on nearly +nothing a day. Nearly nothing, Lou, and hunger is a damned potent +instinct. I can understand hating to spend even those few cents. I +can't see going without food altogether."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="41" height="40" /></div> +<p>e took out a cigarette; he hadn't until then because he didn't want +to interrupt my concentration. "Maybe they get too weak to go out +after old bread and meat bones and wilted vegetables."</p> + +<p>"It still doesn't figure." I got up off the shaky chair, my joints now +really stiff from sitting in it. "Do you know how long it takes to die +of starvation?"</p> + +<p>"That depends on age, health, amount of activity—"</p> + +<p>"Nuts!" I said. "It would take weeks!"</p> + +<p>"So it takes weeks. Where's the problem—if there is one?"</p> + +<p>I lit the pipe I'd learned to smoke instead of cigarettes—old men +seem to use pipes more than anything else, though maybe it'll be +different in the next generation. More cigarette smokers now, you see, +and they'd stick to the habit unless the doctor ordered them to cut it +out.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever try starving for weeks, Lou?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"No. Did you?"</p> + +<p>"In a way. All these cases you've been taking me on for the last +couple of years—I've tried to be them. But let's say it's possible to +die of starvation when you have thousands of dollars put away. Let's +say you don't think of scrounging off food stores or working out a way +of freeloading or hitting soup lines. Let's say you stay in your room +and slowly starve to death."</p> + +<p>He slowly picked a fleck of tobacco off his lip and flicked it away, +his sharp black eyes poking holes in the situation I'd built up for +him. But he wasn't ready to say anything yet.</p> + +<p>"There's charity," I went on, "relief—except for those who have their +dough in banks, where it can be checked on—old age pension, +panhandling, cadging off neighbors."</p> + +<p>He said, "We know these cases are hermits. They don't make contact +with anybody."</p> + +<p>"Even when they're starting to get real hungry?"</p> + +<p>"You've got something, Mark, but that's the wrong tack," he said +thoughtfully. "The point is that <i>they</i> don't have to make contact; +other people know them or about them. Somebody would check after a few +days or a week—the janitor, the landlord, someone in the house or the +neighborhood."</p> + +<p>"So they'd be found before they died."</p> + +<p>"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" he agreed reluctantly. "They don't +generally have friends, and the relatives are usually so distant, they +hardly know these old people and whether they're alive or not. Maybe +that's what threw us off. But you don't need friends and relatives to +start wondering, and investigate when you haven't shown up for a +while." He lifted his head and looked at me. "What does that prove, +Mark?"</p> + +<p>"That there's something wrong with these cases. I want to find out +what."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p> got Lou to take me down to Headquarters, where he let me see the +bankbooks the old woman had left.</p> + +<p>"She took damned good care of them," I said. "They look almost new."</p> + +<p>"Wouldn't you take damned good care of the most important thing in +the world to you?" he asked. "You've seen the hoards of money the +others leave. Same thing."</p> + +<p>I peered closely at the earliest entry, April 23, 1907, $150. My eyes +aren't that bad; I was peering at the ink. It was dark, unfaded. I +pointed it out to Lou.</p> + +<p>"From not being exposed to daylight much," he said. "They don't haul +out the bankbooks or money very often, I guess."</p> + +<p>"And that adds up for you? I can see them being psychotics all their +lives ... but not <i>senile</i> psychotics."</p> + +<p>"They hoarded, Mark. That adds up for me."</p> + +<p>"Funny," I said, watching him maneuver his cigarette as if he loved +the feel of it, drawing the smoke down and letting it out in plumes of +different shapes, from rings to slender streams. What a living he +could make doing cigarette commercials on TV! "I can see <i>you</i> turn +into one of these cases, Lou."</p> + +<p>He looked startled for a second, but then crushed out the butt +carefully so he could watch it instead of me. "Yeah? How so?"</p> + +<p>"You've been too scared by poverty to take a chance. You know you +could do all right acting, but you don't dare giving up this crummy +job. Carry that far enough and you try to stop spending money, then +cut out eating, and finally wind up dead of starvation in a cheap +room."</p> + +<p>"Me? I'd never get that scared of being broke!"</p> + +<p>"At the age of 70 or 80?"</p> + +<p>"Especially then! I'd probably tear loose for a while and then buy +into a home for the aged."</p> + +<p>I wanted to grin, but I didn't. He'd proved my point. He'd also shown +that he was as bothered by these old people as I was.</p> + +<p>"Tell me, Lou. If somebody kept you from dying, would you give him any +dough for it, even if you were a senile psychotic?"</p> + +<p>I could see him using the Stanislavsky method to feel his way to the +answer. He shook his head. "Not while I was alive. Will it, maybe, not +give it."</p> + +<p>"How would that be as a motive?"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="41" height="40" /></div> +<p>e leaned against a metal filing cabinet. "No good, Mark. You know +what a hell of a time we have tracking down relatives to give the +money to, because these people don't leave wills. The few relatives we +find are always surprised when they get their inheritance—most of +them hardly remember dear old who-ever-it-was that died and left it to +them. All the other estates eventually go to the State treasury, +unclaimed."</p> + +<p>"Well, it was an idea." I opened the oldest bankbook again. "Anybody +ever think of testing the ink, Lou?"</p> + +<p>"What for? The banks' records always check. These aren't forgeries, if +that's what you're thinking."</p> + +<p>"I don't know what I'm thinking," I admitted. "But I'd like to turn a +chemist loose on this for a little while."</p> + +<p>"Look, Mark, there's a lot I'm willing to do for you, and I think I've +done plenty, but there's a limit—"</p> + +<p>I let him explain why he couldn't let me borrow the book and then +waited while he figured out how it could be done and did it. He was +still grumbling when he helped me pick a chemist out of the telephone +directory and went along to the lab with me.</p> + +<p>"But don't get any wrong notions," he said on the way. "I have to +protect State property, that's all, because I signed for it and I'm +responsible."</p> + +<p>"Sure, sure," I agreed, to humor him. "If you're not curious, why not +just wait outside for me?"</p> + +<p>He gave me one of those white-tooth grins that he had no right to +deprive women audiences of. "I could do that, but I'd rather see you +make a sap of yourself."</p> + +<p>I turned the bankbook over to the chemist and we waited for the +report. When it came, it had to be translated.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="36" height="40" /></div> +<p>he ink was typical of those used 50 years ago. Lou Pape gave me a jab +in the ribs at that. But then the chemist said that, according to the +amount of oxidation, it seemed fresh enough to be only a few months or +years old, and it was Lou's turn to get jabbed. Lou pushed him about +the aging, asking if it couldn't be the result of unusually good care. +The chemist couldn't say—that depended on the kind of care; an +airtight compartment, perhaps, filled with one of the inert gases, or +a vacuum. They hadn't been kept that way, of course, so Lou looked as +baffled as I felt.</p> + +<p>He took the bankbook and we went out to the street.</p> + +<p>"See what I mean?" I asked quietly, not wanting to rub it in.</p> + +<p>"I see something, but I don't know what. Do you?"</p> + +<p>"I wish I could say yes. It doesn't make any more sense than anything +else about these cases."</p> + +<p>"What do you do next?"</p> + +<p>"Damned if I know. There are thousands of old people in the city. Only +a few of them take this way out. I have to try to find them before +they do."</p> + +<p>"If they're loaded, they won't say so, Mark, and there's no way of +telling them from those who are down and out."</p> + +<p>I rubbed my pipe disgruntledly against the side of my nose to oil it. +"Ain't this a beaut of a problem? I wish I liked problems. I hate +them."</p> + +<p>Lou had to get back on duty. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do +except worry my way through this tangle. He headed back to +Headquarters and I went over to the park and sat in the sun, warming +myself and trying to think like a senile psychotic who would rather +die of starvation than spend a few cents for food.</p> + +<p>I didn't get anywhere, naturally. There are too many ways of beating +starvation, too many chances of being found before it's too late.</p> + +<p>And the fresh ink, over half a century old....</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p> took to hanging around banks, hoping I'd see someone come in with an +old bankbook that had fresh ink from 50 years before. Lou was some +help there—he convinced the guards and tellers that I wasn't an +old-looking guy casing the place for a gang, and even got the tellers +to watch out for particularly dark ink in ancient bankbooks.</p> + +<p>I stuck at it for a month, although there were a few stage calls that +didn't turn out right, and one radio and two TV parts, which did and +kept me going. I was almost glad the stage parts hadn't been given to +me; they'd have interrupted my outside work.</p> + +<p>After a month without a thing turning up at the banks, though, I went +back to my two rooms in the theatrical hotel one night, tired and +discouraged, and I found Lou there. I expected him to give me another +talk on dropping the whole thing; he'd been doing that for a couple of +weeks now, every time we got together. I felt too low to put up an +argument. But Lou was holding back his excitement—acting like a cop, +you know, instead of projecting his feelings—and he couldn't haul me +out to his car as fast as he probably wanted me to go.</p> + +<p>"Been trying to get in touch with you all day, Mark. Some old guy was +found wandering around, dazed and suffering from malnutrition, with +$17,000 in cash inside the lining of his jacket."</p> + +<p>"<i>Alive?</i>" I asked, shocked right into eagerness again.</p> + +<p>"Just barely. They're trying intravenous feeding to pull him through. +I don't think he'll make it."</p> + +<p>"For God's sake, let's get there before he conks out!"</p> + +<p>Lou raced me to the City Hospital and up to the ward. There was a +scrawny old man in a bed, nothing but a papery skin stretched thin +over a face like a skull and a body like a Halloween skeleton, +shivering as if he was cold. I knew it wasn't the cold. The medics +were injecting a heart stimulant into him and he was vibrating like a +rattletrap car racing over a gravel road.</p> + +<p>"Who are you?" I practically yelled, grabbing his skinny arm. "What +happened to you?"</p> + +<p>He went on shaking with his eyes closed and his mouth open.</p> + +<p>"Ah, hell!" I said, disgusted. "He's in a coma."</p> + +<p>"He might start talking," Lou told me. "I fixed it up so you can sit +here and listen in case he does."</p> + +<p>"So I can listen to delirious ravings, you mean."</p> + +<p>Lou got me a chair and put it next to the bed. "What are you kicking +about? This is the first live one you've seen, isn't it? That ought to +be good enough for you." He looked as annoyed as a director. "Besides, +you can get biographical data out of delirium that you'd never get if +he was conscious."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="41" height="40" /></div> +<p>e was right, of course. Not only data, but attitudes, wishes, +resentments that would normally be repressed. I wasn't thinking of +acting at the moment, though. Here was somebody who could tell me +what I wanted to know ... only he couldn't talk.</p> + +<p>Lou went to the door. "Good luck," he said, and went out.</p> + +<p>I sat down and stared at the old man, <i>willing</i> him to talk. I don't +have to ask if you've ever done that; everybody has. You keep thinking +over and over, getting more and more tense, "Talk, damn you, <i>talk</i>!" +until you find that every muscle in your body is a fist and your jaws +are aching because you've been clenching your teeth so hard. You might +just as well not bother, but once in a while a coincidence makes you +think you've done it. Like now.</p> + +<p>The old man sort of came to. That is, he opened his eyes and looked +around without seeing anything, or it was so far away and long ago +that nobody else could see what he saw.</p> + +<p>I hunched forward on the chair and willed harder than ever. Nothing +happened. He stared at the ceiling and through and beyond me. Then he +closed his eyes again and I slumped back, defeated and bitter—but +that was when he began talking.</p> + +<p>There were a couple of women, though they might have been little girls +in his childhood, and he had his troubles with them. He was praying +for a toy train, a roadster, to pass his tests, to keep from being +fired, to be less lonely, and back to toys again. He hated his father, +and his mother was too busy with church bazaars and such to pay much +attention to him. There was a sister: she died when he was a kid. He +was glad she died, hoping maybe now his mother would notice him, but +he was also filled with guilt because he was glad. Then somebody, he +felt, was trying to shove him out of his job.</p> + +<p>The intravenous feeding kept dripping into his vein and he went on +rambling. After ten or fifteen minutes of it, he fell asleep. I felt +so disappointed that I could have slapped him awake, only it wouldn't +have done any good. Smoking would have helped me relax, but it wasn't +allowed, and I didn't dare go outside for one, for fear he might +revive again and this time come up to the present.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_b1.jpg" alt="B" width="46" height="40" /></div> +<p>roke!" he suddenly shrieked, trying to sit up.</p> + +<p>I pushed him down gently, and he went on in frightful terror, "Old and +poor, nowhere to go, nobody wants me, can't make a living, read the +ads every day, no jobs for old men."</p> + +<p>He blurted through weeks, months, years—I don't know—of fear and +despair. And finally he came to something that made his face glow like +a radium dial.</p> + +<p>"An ad. No experience needed. Good salary." His face got dark and +awful. All he added was, "El Greco," or something that sounded like +it, and then he went into terminal breathing.</p> + +<p>I rang for the nurse and she went for the doctor. I couldn't stand the +long moments when the old man's chest stopped moving, the abrupt +frantic gulps of air followed by no breath at all. I wanted to get +away from it, but I had to wait for whatever more he might say.</p> + +<p>It didn't come. His eyes fogged and rolled up and he stopped taking +those spasmodic strangling breaths. The nurse came back with the +doctor, who felt his pulse and shook his head. She pulled the blanket +over the old man's face.</p> + +<p>I left, feeling sick. I'd learned things I already knew about hate and +love and fear and hope and frustration. There was an ad in it +somewhere, but I had no way of telling if it had been years ago or +recently. And a name that sounded like "El Greco." That was a Spanish +painter of four-five hundred years ago. Had the old guy been +remembering a picture he'd seen?</p> + +<p>No, he'd come up at least close to the present. The ad seemed to solve +his problem about being broke. But what about the $17,000 that had +been found in the lining of his jacket? He hadn't mentioned that. Of +course, being a senile psychotic, he could have considered himself +broke even with that amount of money. None coming in, you see.</p> + +<p>That didn't add up, either. His was the terror of being old and +jobless. If he'd had money, he would have figured how to make it last, +and that would have come through in one way or another.</p> + +<p>There was the ad, there was his hope, and there was this El Greco. A +Greek restaurant, maybe, where he might have been bumming his meals.</p> + +<p>But where did the $17,000 fit in?</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="40" /></div> +<p>ou Pape was too fed up with the whole thing to discuss it with me. He +just gave me the weary eye and said, "You're riding this too hard, +Mark. The guy was talking from fever. How do I know what figures and +what doesn't when I'm dealing with insanity or delirium?"</p> + +<p>"But you admit there's plenty about these cases that doesn't figure?"</p> + +<p>"Sure. Did you take a look at the condition the world is in lately? +Why should these old people be any exception?"</p> + +<p>I couldn't blame him. He'd pulled me in on the cases with plenty of +trouble to himself, just to do me a favor. Now he was fed up. I guess +it wasn't even that—he thought I was ruining myself, at least +financially and maybe worse, by trying to run down the problem. He +said he'd be glad to see me any time and gas about anything or help me +with whatever might be bothering me, if he could, but not these cases +any more. He told me to lay off them, and then he left me on my own.</p> + +<p>I don't know what he could have done, actually. I didn't need him to +go through the want ads with me, which I was doing every day, figuring +there might be something in the ravings about an ad. I spent more time +than I liked checking those slanted at old people, only to find they +were supposed to become messengers and such.</p> + +<p>One brought me to an old brownstone five-story house in the East 80s. +I got on line with the rest of the applicants—there were men and +women, all decrepit, all looking badly in need of money—and waited my +turn. My face was lined with collodion wrinkles and I wore an antique +shiny suit and rundown shoes. I didn't look more prosperous or any +younger than they did.</p> + +<p>I finally came up to the woman who was doing the interviewing. She sat +behind a plain office desk down in the main floor hall, with a pile +of application cards in front of her and a ballpoint pen in one +strong, slender hand. She had red hair with gold lights in it and eyes +so pale blue that they would have seemed the same color as the whites +if she'd been on the stage. Her face would have been beautiful except +for her rigid control of expression; she smiled abruptly, shut it off +just like that, looked me over with all the impersonality and +penetration of an X-ray from the soles to the bald head, exactly as +she'd done with the others. But that skin! If it was as perfect as +that all over her slim, stiffly erect, proudly shaped body, she had no +business off the stage!</p> + +<p>"Name, address, previous occupation, social security number?" she +asked in a voice with good clarity, resonance and diction. She wrote +it all down while I gave the information to her. Then she asked me for +references, and I mentioned Sergeant Lou Pape. "Fine," she said. +"We'll get in touch with you if anything comes up. Don't call +us—we'll call you."</p> + +<p>I hung around to see who'd be picked. There was only one, an old man, +two ahead of me in the line, who had no social security number, no +references, not even any relatives or friends she could have checked +up on him with.</p> + +<p>Damn! <i>Of course</i> that was what she wanted! Hadn't all the starvation +cases been people without social security, references, either no +friends and relatives or those they'd lost track of?</p> + +<p>I'd pulled a blooper, but how was I to know until too late?</p> + +<p>Well, there was a way of making it right.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="48" height="40" /></div> +<p>hen it was good and dark that evening, I stood on the corner and +watched the lights in the brownstone house. The ones on the first two +floors went out, leaving only those on the third and fourth. Closed +for the day ... or open for business?</p> + +<p>I got into a building a few doors down by pushing a button and waiting +until the buzzer answered, then racing up to the roof while some man +yelled down the stairs to find out who was there. I crossed the tops +of the two houses between and went down the fire escape.</p> + +<p>It wasn't easy, though not as tough as you might imagine. The fact is +that I'm a whole year younger than Lou Pape, even if I could play his +grandpa professionally. I still have muscles left and I used them to +get down the fire escape at the rear of the house.</p> + +<p>The fourth floor room I looked into had some kind of wire mesh cage +and some hooded machinery. Nobody there.</p> + +<p>The third floor room was the redhead's. She was coming out of the +bathroom with a terrycloth bathrobe and a towel turban on when I +looked in. She slid the robe off and began dusting herself with +powder. That skin <i>did</i> cover her.</p> + +<p>She turned and moved toward a vanity against the wall that I was on +the other side of. The next thing I knew, the window was flung up and +she had a gun on me.</p> + +<p>"Come right in—Mr. Weldon, isn't it?" she said in that completely +controlled voice of hers. One day her control would crack, I thought +irrelevantly, and the pieces would be found from Dallas to North +Carolina. "I had an idea you seemed more curious than was justified by +a help-wanted ad."</p> + +<p>"A man my age doesn't get to see many pretty girls," I told her, +making my own voice crack pathetically in a senile whinny.</p> + +<p>She motioned me into the room. When I was inside, I saw a light over +the window blinking red. It stopped the moment I was in the room. A +silent burglar alarm.</p> + +<p>She let her pale blue eyes wash insolently over me. "A man your age +can see all the pretty girls he wants to. You're not old."</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img class="img1" src="images/image_002.jpg" width="400" height="538" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>"And you use a rinse," I retorted.</p> + +<p>She ignored it. "I specifically advertised for old people. Why did you +apply?"</p> + +<p>It had happened so abruptly that I hadn't had a chance to use the +Stanislavsky method to <i>feel</i> old in the presence of a beautiful nude +woman. I don't even know if it would have worked. Nothing's perfect.</p> + +<p>"I needed a job awful bad," I answered sullenly, knowing it sounded +like an ad lib.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="26" height="40" /></div> +<p>he smiled with more contempt than humor. "You had a job, Mr. Weldon. +You were very busy trying to find out why senile psychotics starve +themselves to death."</p> + +<p>"How did you know that?" I asked, startled.</p> + +<p>"A little investigation of my own. I also happen to know you didn't +tell your friend Sergeant Pape that you were going to be here +tonight."</p> + +<p>That was a fact, too. I hadn't felt sure enough that I'd found the +answer to call him about it. Looking at the gun in her steady hand, I +was sorry I hadn't.</p> + +<p>"But you did find out I own this building, that my name is May +Roberts, and that I'm the daughter of the late Dr. Anthony Roberts, +the physicist," she continued. "Is there anything else you want me to +tell you about yourself?"</p> + +<p>"I know enough already. I'm more interested in you and the starvation +cases. If you weren't connected with them, you wouldn't have known I +was investigating them."</p> + +<p>"That's obvious, isn't it?" She reached for a cigarette on the vanity +and used a lighter with her free hand. The big mirror gave me another +view of her lovely body, but that was beginning to interest me less +than the gun. I thought of making a grab for it. There was too much +distance between us, though, and she knew better than to take her eyes +off me while she was lighting up. "I'm not afraid of professional +detectives, Mr. Weldon. They deal only with facts and every one of +them will draw the same conclusions from a given set of circumstances. +I don't like amateurs. They guess too much. They don't stick to +reality. The result—" her pale eyes chilled and her shapely mouth +went hard—"is that they are likely to get too close to the truth."</p> + +<p>I wanted a smoke myself, but I wasn't willing to make a move toward +the pipe in my jacket. "I may be close to the truth, Miss Roberts, but +I don't know what the devil it is. I still don't know how you're tied +in with the senile psychotics or why they starve with all that money. +You could let me go and I wouldn't have a thing on you."</p> + +<p>She glanced down at herself and laughed for real for the first time. +"You wouldn't, would you? On the other hand, you know where I'm +working from and could nag Sergeant Pape into getting a search +warrant. It wouldn't incriminate me, but it would be inconvenient. I +don't care to be inconvenienced."</p> + +<p>"Which means what?"</p> + +<p>"You want to find out my connection with senile psychotics. I intend +to show you."</p> + +<p>"How?"</p> + +<p>She gestured dangerously with the gun. "Turn your face to the wall and +stay that way while I get dressed. Make one attempt to turn around +before I tell you to and I'll shoot you. You're guilty of +housebreaking, you know. It would be a little inconvenient for me to +have an investigation ... but not as inconvenient as for you."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p> faced the wall, feeling my stomach braid itself into a tight, +painful knot of fear. Of what, I didn't know yet, only that old people +who had something to do with her died of starvation. I wasn't old, but +that didn't seem very comforting. She was the most frigid, +calculating, <i>deadly</i> woman I'd ever met. That alone was enough to +scare hell out of me. And there was the problem of what she was +capable of.</p> + +<p>Hearing the sounds of her dressing behind me, I wanted to lunge around +and rush her, taking a chance that she might be too busy pulling on a +girdle or reaching back to fasten a bra to have the gun in her hand. +It was a suicidal impulse and I gave it up instantly. Other women +might compulsively finish concealing themselves before snatching up +the gun. Not her.</p> + +<p>"All right," she said at last.</p> + +<p>I faced her. She was wearing coveralls that, if anything, emphasized +the curves of her figure. She had a sort of babushka that covered her +red hair and kept it in place—the kind of thing women workers used to +wear in factories during the war. She had looked lethal with nothing +on but a gun and a hard expression. She looked like a sentence of +execution now.</p> + +<p>"Open that door, turn to the right and go upstairs," she told me, +indicating directions with the gun.</p> + +<p>I went. It was the longest, most anxious short walk I've ever taken. +She ordered me to open a door on the fourth floor, and we were inside +the room I'd seen from the fire escape. The mesh cage seemed like a +torture chamber to me, the hooded motors designed to shoot an +agonizing current through my emaciating body.</p> + +<p>"You're going to do to me what you did to the old man you hired +today?" I probed, hoping for an answer that would really answer.</p> + +<p>She flipped on the switch that started the motors and there was a +shrill, menacing whine. The wire mesh of the cage began blurring +oddly, as if vibrating like the tines of a tuning fork.</p> + +<p>"You've been an unexpected nuisance, Weldon," she said above the +motors. "I never thought you'd get this far. But as long as you have, +we might as well both benefit by it."</p> + +<p>"Benefit?" I repeated. "<i>Both</i> of us?"</p> + +<p>She opened the drawer of a work table and pulled out a stack of +envelopes held with a rubber band. She put the stack at the other edge +of the table.</p> + +<p>"Would you rather have all cash or bank accounts or both?"</p> + +<p>My heart began to beat. <i>She was where the money came from!</i></p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft1"><img src="images/image_y1.jpg" alt="Y" width="60" height="40" /></div> +<p>ou trying to tell me you're a philanthropist?" I demanded.</p> + +<p>"Business is philanthropy, in a way," she answered calmly. "You need +money and I need your services. To that extent, we're doing each other +a favor. I think you'll find that the favor I'm going to do for you +is a pretty considerable one. Would you mind picking up the envelopes +on the table?"</p> + +<p>I took the stack and stared at the top envelope. "May 15, 1931," I +read aloud, and looked suspiciously at her. "What's this for?"</p> + +<p>"I don't think it's something that can be explained. At least it's +never been possible before and I doubt if it would be now. I'm +assuming you want both cash and bank accounts. Is that right?"</p> + +<p>"Well, yes. Only—"</p> + +<p>"We'll discuss it later." She looked along a row of shelves against +one wall, searching the labels on the stacks of bundles there. She +drew one out and pushed it toward me. "Please open that and put on the +things you'll find inside."</p> + +<p>I tore open the bundle. It contained a very plain business suit, black +shoes, shirt, tie and a hat with a narrow brim.</p> + +<p>"Are these supposed to be my burial clothes?"</p> + +<p>"I asked you to put them on," she said. "If you want me to make that a +command, I'll do it."</p> + +<p>I looked at the gun and I looked at the clothes and then for some +shelter I could change behind. There wasn't any.</p> + +<p>She smiled. "You didn't seem concerned about my modesty. I don't see +why your own should bother you. Get dressed!"</p> + +<p>I obeyed, my mind anxiously chasing one possibility after another, all +of them ending up with my death. I got into the other things and felt +even more uncomfortable. They were all only an approximate fit: the +shoes a little too tight and pointed, the collar of the shirt too +stiffly starched and too high under my chin, the gray suit too narrow +at the shoulders and the ankles. I wished I had a mirror to see myself +in. I felt like an ultra-conservative Wall Street broker and I was +sure I resembled one.</p> + +<p>"All right," she said. "Put the envelopes in your inside pocket. +You'll find instructions on each. Follow them carefully."</p> + +<p>"I don't get it!" I protested.</p> + +<p>"You will. Now step into the mesh cage. Use the envelopes in the order +they're arranged in."</p> + +<p>"But what's this all about?"</p> + +<p>"I can tell you just one thing, Mr. Weldon—don't try to escape. It +can't be done. Your other questions will answer themselves if you +follow the instructions on the envelopes."</p> + +<p>She had the gun in her hand. I went into the mesh cage, not knowing +what to expect and yet too afraid of her to refuse. I didn't want to +wind up dead of starvation, no matter how much money she might have +given me—but I didn't want to get shot, either.</p> + +<p>She closed the mesh gate and pushed the switch as far as it would go. +The motors screamed as they picked up speed; the mesh cage vibrated +more swiftly; I could see her through it as if there were nothing +between us.</p> + +<p>And then I couldn't see her at all.</p> + +<p>I was outside a bank on a sunny day in spring.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="43" height="40" /></div> +<p>y fear evaporated instantly—I'd escaped somehow!</p> + +<p>But then a couple of realizations slapped me from each side. It was +day instead of night. I was out on the street and not in her +brownstone house.</p> + +<p>Even the season had changed!</p> + +<p>Dazed, I stared at the people passing by. They looked like characters +in a TV movie, the women wearing long dresses and flowerpot hats, +their faces made up with petulant rosebud mouths and bright blotches +of rouge; the men in hard straw hats, suits with narrow shoulders, +plain black or brown shoes—the same kind of clothes I was wearing.</p> + +<p>The rumble of traffic in the street caught me next. Cars with square +bodies, tubular radiators....</p> + +<p>For a moment, I let terror soak through me. Then I remembered the +mesh cage and the motors. May Roberts could have given me +electro-shock, kept me under long enough for the season to change, or +taken me South and left me on a street in daylight.</p> + +<p>But this was a street in New York. I recognized it, though some of the +buildings seemed changed, the people dressed more shabbily.</p> + +<p>Shrewd stagesetting? Hypnosis?</p> + +<p>That was it, of course! She'd hypnotized me....</p> + +<p>Except that a subject under hypnosis doesn't know he's been +hypnotized.</p> + +<p>Completely confused, I took out the stack of envelopes I'd put in my +pocket. I was supposed to have both cash and a bank account, and I was +outside a bank. She obviously wanted me to go in, so I did. I handed +the top envelope to the teller.</p> + +<p>He hauled $150 out of it and looked at me as if that was enough to buy +and sell the bank. He asked me if I had an account there. I didn't. He +took me over to an officer of the bank, a fellow with a Hoover collar +and a John Gilbert mustache, who signed me up more cordially than I'd +been treated in years.</p> + +<p>I walked out to the street, gaping at the entry in the bankbook he'd +handed me. My pulse was jumping lumpily, my lungs refusing to work +right, my head doing a Hopi rain dance.</p> + +<p>The date he'd stamped was May 15, 1931.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p> didn't know which I was more afraid of—being stranded, middle-aged, +in the worst of the depression, or being yanked back to that +brownstone house. I had only an instant to realize that I was a kid in +high school uptown right at that moment. Then the whole scene vanished +as fast as blinking and I was outside another bank somewhere else in +the city.</p> + +<p>The date on the envelope was May 29th and it was still 1931. I made a +$75 deposit there, then $100 in another place a few days later, and so +forth, spending only a few minutes each time and going forward +anywhere from a couple of days to almost a month.</p> + +<p>Every now and then, I had a stamped, addressed envelope to mail at a +corner box. They were addressed to different stock brokers and when I +got one open before mailing it and took a look inside, it turned out +to be an order to buy a few hundred shares of stock in a soft drink +company in the name of Dr. Anthony Roberts. I hadn't remembered the +price of the shares being that low. The last time I'd seen the +quotation, it was more than five times as much as it was then. I was +making dough myself, but I was doing even better for May Roberts.</p> + +<p>A few times I had to stay around for an hour or so. There was the +night I found myself in a flashy speakeasy with two envelopes that I +was to bet the contents of, according to the instructions on the +outside. It was June 21, 1932, and I had to bet on Jack Sharkey to +take the heavyweight title away from Max Schmeling.</p> + +<p>The place was serious and quiet—no more than three women, a couple of +bartenders, and the rest male customers, including two cops, huddling +up close to the radio. An affable character was taking bets. He gave +me a wise little smile when I put the money down on Sharkey.</p> + +<p>"Well, it's a pleasure to do business with a man who wants an American +to win," he said, "and the hell with the smart dough, eh?"</p> + +<p>"Yeah," I said, and tried to smile back, but so much of the smart +money was going on Schmeling that I wondered if May Roberts hadn't +made a mistake. I couldn't remember who had won. "You know what J. P. +Morgan said—don't sell America short."</p> + +<p>"I'll take a buck for my share," said a sour guy who barely managed to +stand. "Lousy grass growing in the lousy streets, nobody working, no +future, nothing!"</p> + +<p>"We'll come out of it okay," I told him confidently.</p> + +<p>He snorted into his gin. "Not in our lifetime, Mac. It'd take a +miracle to put this country on its feet again. I don't believe in +miracles." He put his scowling face up close to mine and breathed +blearily and belligerently at me. "Do you?"</p> + +<p>"Shut up, Gus," one of the bartenders said. "The fight's starting."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p> had some tough moments and a lot of bad Scotch, listening. It went +the whole 15 rounds, Sharkey won, and I was in almost as bad shape as +Gus, who'd passed out halfway through the battle. All I can recall is +the affable character handing over a big roll and saying, "Lucky for +me more guys don't sell America short," and trying to separate the +money into the right amounts and put them into the right envelopes, +while stumbling out the door, when everything changed and I was +outside a bank again.</p> + +<p>I thought, "My God, what a hangover cure!" I was as sober as if I +hadn't had a drink, when I made that deposit.</p> + +<p>There were more envelopes to mail and more deposits to make and bets +to put down on Singing Wood in 1933 at Belmont Park and Max Baer over +Primo Carnera, and then Cavalcade at Churchill Downs in 1934, and +James Braddock over Baer in 1935, and a big daily double payoff, +Wanoah-Arakay at Tropical Park, and so on, skipping through the years +like a flat stone over water, touching here and there for a few +minutes to an hour at a time. I kept the envelopes for May Roberts and +myself in different pockets and the bankbooks in another. The +envelopes were beginning to bulge and the deposits and accrued +interest were something to watch grow.</p> + +<p>The whole thing, in fact, was so exciting that it was early October of +1938—a total of maybe four or five hours subjectively—before I +realized what she had me doing. I wasn't thinking much about the fact +that I was time traveling or how she did it; I accepted that, though +the sensation in some ways was creepy, like raising the dead. My +father and mother, for instance, were still alive in 1938. If I could +break away from whatever it was that kept pulling me jumpily through +time, I could go and see them.</p> + +<p>The thought attracted me enough to make me shake badly with intent, +yet pump dread through me. I wanted so damned badly to see them again +and I didn't dare. I couldn't....</p> + +<p><i>Why</i> couldn't I?</p> + +<p>Maybe the machine covered only the area around the various banks, +speakeasies, bars and horse parlors. If I could get out of the area, +whatever it might be, I could avoid coming back to whatever May +Roberts had lined up for me.</p> + +<p>Because, naturally, I knew now what I was doing: I was making deposits +and winning sure bets just as the "senile psychotics" had done. The +ink on their bankbooks and bills was fresh because it <i>was</i> fresh; it +wasn't given a chance to oxidize—at the rate I was going, I'd be back +to my own time in another few hours or so, with $15,000 or better in +deposits, compound interest and cash.</p> + +<p>If I'd been around 70, you see, she could have sent me back to the +beginning of the century with the same amount of money, which would +have accumulated to something like $30,000.</p> + +<p>Get it now?</p> + +<p>I did.</p> + +<p>And I felt sick and frightened.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_r.jpg" alt="R" width="35" height="40" /></div> +<p>ather 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.</p> + +<p>We got a mile away from the bank and the driver looked at me in the +rear-view mirror.</p> + +<p>"How far you want to go, mister?"</p> + +<p>My teeth were together so hard that I had to unclench them before I +could answer, "As far away as we can get."</p> + +<p>"Cops after you?"</p> + +<p>"No, but somebody is. Don't be surprised at anything that happens, no +matter what it is."</p> + +<p>"You mean like getting shot at?" he asked worriedly, slowing down.</p> + +<p>"You're not in any danger, friend. I am. Relax and step on it again."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>We must have been close to three miles away when I blinked and was +standing outside the first bank I'd seen in 1931.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Well, it would have been a hopeless hunt. I was a week ahead.</p> + +<p>I gave up and drearily made my deposit. The one from early October +that I'd missed I put in with this one.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>It was.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="26" height="40" /></div> +<p>he 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.</p> + +<p>"Very smart," I said, "but I'm nowhere near emaciation."</p> + +<p>"What made you think you would be?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Because the others always were."</p> + +<p>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....</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And take care of yourself at the same time."</p> + +<p>"That's the businesswoman in me. I need money to operate."</p> + +<p>"So do the old people. Only they die and you don't."</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>"You could take those who have social security cards and references."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"You mean the idea is not just to build up a fortune for you with a +cut for whoever helps you do it?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Something else?" I stared at her puzzledly. "What else could you +want?"</p> + +<p>"Let's have dinner first. You must be hungry."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 <i>area</i>; it +covers <i>era</i>. You could have flown to any part of the world and the +beam would still have brought you back. Do I make myself clear?"</p> + +<p>She did. Too bloody clear. I waited for the rest.</p> + +<p>"I assume you've already formed an opinion of me," she went on. "A +rather unflattering one, I imagine."</p> + +<p>"'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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Like how?" I goaded.</p> + +<p>"It doesn't matter, Mr. Weldon. You're determined to hate me and +consider me a liar. Nothing I tell you can change that."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="26" height="40" /></div> +<p>he 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.</p> + +<p>"What do you want me to do?" I asked warily.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Not because the things might be worth a lot of dough?" I said +nastily.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"El Greco, for instance?" I asked, remembering the raving old man who +had been found wandering with $17,000 in his coat lining.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"What happened to <i>him</i>?"</p> + +<p>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!"</p> + +<p>"Sounds good. Who'd you say benefits if I get it?"</p> + +<p>"We share the profits equally, of course. But it must be understood +that we sell the power so cheaply that everybody can afford it."</p> + +<p>"I'm not arguing. What's the other reason you didn't bother with the +future?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Technical data? I'm an actor, not a scientist."</p> + +<p>"You'll have pens and weatherproof notebooks to copy it down in."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p> 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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>But those starvation cases....</p> + +<p>"Do I get any guarantees?" I demanded.</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>"No. Do I come out of this alive?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And to prove to me that I can't run out," I added.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>Finished eating, we went upstairs and I got into the cage.</p> + +<p>She closed the circuit. The motors screamed. The mesh blurred.</p> + +<p>And I was in a world I never knew.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_y.jpg" alt="Y" width="38" height="40" /></div> +<p>ou'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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>One car stopped nearby and someone shouted, "Here we are!" Several +people leaped out and headed for me.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img class="img1" src="images/image_003.jpg" width="400" height="564" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p> 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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>A man dropped into step and said politely, "I beg your pardon. Are you +a stranger in town?"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I—didn't recognize your face and I thought—"</p> + +<p>"It's a big city," I said coldly. "You can't know everyone."</p> + +<p>"If there's anything I can do to help—"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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....</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="36" height="40" /></div> +<p>here was a sign up ahead. It read: <span class="smcap">to shopping center</span>. 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.</p> + +<p>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: <span class="smcap">electrical appliances</span>.</p> + +<p>I went in.</p> + +<p>A neat young salesman came up and politely asked me if he could do +anything for me. I sounded stupid even to myself, but I said, "No, +thanks, I'd just like to do a little browsing," and gave a silly +nervous laugh. Me, an actor, behaving like a frightened yokel! I felt +ashamed of myself.</p> + +<p>He tried not to look surprised, but he didn't really succeed. Somebody +else came in, though, for which I was grateful, and he left me alone +to look around.</p> + +<p>I don't know if I can get my feelings across to you. It's a situation +that nobody would ever expect to find himself in, so it isn't easy to +tell what it's like. But I've got to try.</p> + +<p>Let's stick with the ancient Egyptian I mentioned a while back, the +one ordered to sneak a mummy out of the Metropolitan Museum. Maybe +that'll make it clearer.</p> + +<p>The poor guy has no money he can use, naturally, and no idea of what +New York's transportation system is like, where the museum is, how to +get there, what visitors to a museum do and say, the regulations he +might unwittingly break, how much an ordinary citizen is supposed to +know about which customs and such. Now add the possible danger that he +might be slapped into jail or an insane asylum if he makes a mistake +and you've got a rough notion of the spot I felt I was in. Being able +to speak English doesn't make much difference; not knowing what's +regarded as right and wrong, and the unknown consequences, are enough +to panic anybody.</p> + +<p>That doesn't make it clear enough.</p> + +<p>Well, look, take the electrical appliances in that store; that might +give you an idea of the situation and the way it affected me.</p> + +<p>The appliances must have been as familiar to the people of that time +as toasters and TV sets and lamps are to us. But the things didn't +make a bit of sense to me ... any more than our appliances would to +the ancient Egyptian. Can you imagine him trying to figure out what +those items are for and how they work?</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="41" height="40" /></div> +<p>ere are some gadgets you can puzzle over:</p> + +<p>There was a light fixture that you put against any part of a wall—no +screws, no cement, no wires, even—and it held there and lit up, and +it stayed lit no matter where you moved it on the wall. Talk about +pin-up lamps ... this was really it!</p> + +<p>Then I came across something that looked like an ashtray with a blue +electric shimmer obscuring the bottom of the bowl. I lit my +pipe—others I'd passed had been smoking, so I knew it was safe to do +the same—and flicked in the match. It disappeared. I don't mean it +was swirled into some hidden compartment. <i>It vanished.</i> I emptied the +pipe into the ashtray and that went, too. Looking around to make sure +nobody was watching, I dredged some coins out of my pocket and let +them drop into the tray. They were gone. Not a particle of them was +left. A disintegrator? I haven't got the slightest idea.</p> + +<p>There were little mirror boxes with three tiny dials on the front of +each. I turned the dials on one—it was like using three dial +telephones at the same time—and a pretty girl's face popped onto the +mirror surface and looked expectantly at me.</p> + +<p>"Yes?" she said, and waited for me to answer.</p> + +<p>"I—uh—wrong number, I guess," I answered, putting the box down in a +hurry and going to the other side of the shop because I didn't have +even a dim notion how to turn it off.</p> + +<p>The thing I was looking for was on a counter—a tinted metal box no +bigger than a suitcase, with a lipped hole on top and small +undisguised verniers in front. I didn't know I'd found it, actually, +until I twisted a vernier and every light in the store suddenly glared +and the salesman came rushing over and politely moved me aside to shut +it off.</p> + +<p>"We don't want to burn out every appliance in the place, do we?" he +asked quietly.</p> + +<p>"I just wanted to see if it worked all right," I said, still shaking +slightly. It could have blown up or electrocuted me, for all I knew.</p> + +<p>"But they always work," he said.</p> + +<p>"Ah—always?"</p> + +<p>"Of course. The principle is simple and there are no parts to get worn +out, so they last indefinitely." He suddenly smiled as if he'd just +caught the gist. "Oh, you were joking! Naturally—everybody learns +about the Dynapack in primary education. You were interested in +acquiring one?"</p> + +<p>"No, no. The—the old one is good enough. I was just—well, you know, +interested in knowing if the new models are much different or better +than the old ones."</p> + +<p>"But there haven't been any new models since 2073," he said. "Can you +think of any reason why there should be?"</p> + +<p>"I—guess not," I stammered. "But you never can tell."</p> + +<p>"You can with Dynapacks," he said, and he would have gone on if I +hadn't lost my nerve and mumbled my way out of the store as fast as I +could.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_y.jpg" alt="Y" width="38" height="40" /></div> +<p>ou want to know why? He'd asked me if I wanted to "acquire" a +Dynapack, not <i>buy</i> one. I didn't know what "acquire" meant in that +society. It could be anything from saving up coupons to winning +whatever you wanted at some kind of lottery, or maybe working up the +right number of labor units on the job—in which case he'd want to +know where I was employed and the equivalent of social security and +similar information, which I naturally didn't have—or it could just +be fancy sales talk for buying.</p> + +<p>I couldn't guess, and I didn't care to expose myself any more than I +had already. And my blunder about the Dynapack working and the new +models was nothing to make me feel at all easier.</p> + +<p>Lord, the uncertainties and hazards of being in a world you don't know +anything about! Daydreaming about visiting another age may be +pleasant, but the reality is something else again.</p> + +<p>"Wait a minute, friend!" I heard the salesman call out behind me.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p> looked back as casually, I hoped, as the pedestrians who heard him. +He was walking quickly toward me with a very worried expression on his +face. I stepped up my own pace as unobtrusively as possible, trying to +keep a lot of people between us, meanwhile praying that they'd think I +was just somebody who was late for an appointment. The salesman didn't +break into a run or yell for the cops, but I couldn't be sure he +wouldn't.</p> + +<p>As soon as I came to a corner, I turned it and ran like hell. There +was a sort of alley down the block. I jumped into it, found a basement +door and stayed inside, pressed against the wall, quivering with +tension and sucking air like a swimmer who'd stayed underwater too +long.</p> + +<p>Even after I got my wind back, I wasn't anxious to go out. The place +could have been cordoned off, with the police, the army and the navy +all cooperating to nab me.</p> + +<p>What made me think so? Not a thing except remembering how puzzled our +ancient Egyptian would have been if he got arrested in the subway for +something everybody did casually and without punishment in his own +time—spitting! I could have done something just as innocent, as far +as you and I are concerned, that this era would consider a misdemeanor +or a major crime. And in what age was ignorance of the law ever an +excuse?</p> + +<p>Instead of going back out, I prowled carefully into the building. It +was strangely silent and deserted. I couldn't understand why until I +came to a lavatory. There were little commodes and wash basins that +came up to barely above my knees. The place was a school. Naturally it +was deserted—the kids were through for the day.</p> + +<p>I could feel the tension dissolve in me like a ramrod of ice melting, +no longer keeping my back and neck stiff and taut. There probably +wasn't a better place in the city for me to hide.</p> + +<p><i>A primary school!</i></p> + +<p>The salesman had said to me, "Everybody learns about the Dynapack in +primary education."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_g.jpg" alt="G" width="36" height="40" /></div> +<p>oing through the school was eerie, like visiting a familiar childhood +scene that had been distorted by time into something almost totally +unrecognizable.</p> + +<p>There were no blackboards, teacher's big desk, children's little +desks, inkwells, pointers, globes or books. Yet it was a school. The +small fixtures in the lavatory downstairs had told me that, and so did +the miniature chairs drawn neatly under the low, vividly painted +tables in the various schoolrooms. A large comfortable chair was +evidently where the teacher sat when not wandering around among the +pupils.</p> + +<p>In front of each chair, firmly attached to the table, was a box with a +screen, and both sides of the box held spools of wire on blunt little +spindles. The spools had large, clear numbers on them. Near the +teacher's chair was a compact case with more spools on spindles, and +there was a large screen on the inside wall, opposite the enormous +windows.</p> + +<p>I went into one of the rooms and sat down in the teacher's chair, +wondering how I was going to find out about the Dynapack. I felt like +an archaeologist guessing at the functions of strange relics he'd +found in a dead city.</p> + +<p>Sitting in the chair was like sitting on a column of air that let me +sit upright or slump as I chose. One of the arms had a row of buttons. +I pressed one and waited nervously to find out if I'd done something +that would get me into trouble.</p> + +<p>Concealed lights in the ceiling and walls began glowing, getting +brighter, while the room gradually turned dark. I glanced around +bewilderedly to see why, because it was still daylight.</p> + +<p>The windows seemed to be sliding slightly, very slowly, and as they +slid, the sunlight was damped out. I grinned, thinking of what my +ancient Egyptian would make of that. I knew there were two sheets of +polarizing glass, probably with a vacuum between to keep out the cold +and the heat, and the lights in the room were beautifully synchronized +with the polarized sliding glass.</p> + +<p>I wasn't doing so badly. The rest of the objects might not be too hard +to figure out.</p> + +<p>The spools in the case alongside the teacher's chair could be wire +recordings. I looked for something to play them with, but there was no +sign of a playback machine. I tried to lift a spool off a spindle. It +wouldn't come off.</p> + +<p>Hah! The wire led down the spindle to the base of the box, holding the +spool in place. That meant the spools could be played right in that +position. But what started them playing?</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p> hunted over the box minutely. Every part of it was featureless—no +dials, switches or any unfamiliar counterparts. I even tried moving my +hands over it, figuring it might be like a theramin, and spoke to it +in different shades of command, because it could have been built to +respond to vocal orders. Nothing happened.</p> + +<p>Remember the Poe story that shows the best place to hide something is +right out in the open, which is the last place anyone would look? +Well, these things weren't manufactured to baffle people, any more +than our devices generally are. But it's only by trying everything +that somebody who didn't know what a switch is would start up a vacuum +cleaner, say, or light a big chandelier from a wall clear across the +room.</p> + +<p>I'd pressed every inch of the box, hoping some part of it might act as +a switch, and I finally touched one of the spindles. The spool +immediately began spinning at a very low speed and the screen on the +wall opposite the window glowed into life.</p> + +<p>"The history of the exploration of the Solar System," said an +announcer's deep voice, "is one of the most adventuresome in +mankind's long list of achievements. Beginning with the crude rockets +developed during World War II...."</p> + +<p>There were newsreel shots of V-1 and V-2 being blasted from their +takeoff ramps and a montage of later experimental models. I wished I +could see how it all turned out, but I was afraid to waste the time +watching. At any moment, I might hear the footsteps of a guard or +janitor or whoever tended buildings then.</p> + +<p>I pushed the spindle again. It checked the spool, which rewound +swiftly and silently, and stopped itself when the rewinding was +finished. I tried another. A nightmare underwater scene appeared.</p> + +<p>"With the aid of energy screens," said another voice, "the oceans of +the world were completely charted by the year 2027...."</p> + +<p>I turned it off, then another on developments in medicine, one on +architecture, one on history, the geography of such places as the +interior of South America and Africa that were—or are—unknown today, +and I was getting frantic, starting the wonderful wire films that held +full-frequency sound and pictures in absolutely faithful color, and +shutting them off hastily when I discovered they didn't have what I +was looking for.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img class="img1" src="images/image_004.jpg" width="400" height="546" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>They were courses for children, but they all contained information +that our scientists are still groping for ... and I couldn't chance +watching one all the way through!</p> + +<p>I was frustratedly switching off a film on psychology when a female +voice said from the door, "May I help you?"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p> snapped around to face her in sudden fright. She was young and slim +and slight, but she could scream loud enough to get help. Judging by +the way she was looking at me, outwardly polite and yet visibly +nervous, that scream would be coming at any second.</p> + +<p>"I must have wandered in here by mistake," I said, and pushed past her +to the corridor, where I began running back the way I had come.</p> + +<p>"But you don't understand!" she cried after me. "I really want to +help—"</p> + +<p>Yeah, help, I thought, pounding toward the street door. A gag right +out of that psychology film, probably—get the patient to hold still, +humor him, until you can get somebody to put him where he belongs. +That's what one of our teachers would do, provided she wasn't too +scared to think straight, if she found an old-looking guy thumbing +frenziedly through the textbooks in a grammar school classroom.</p> + +<p>When I came to the outside door, I stopped. I had no way of knowing +whether she'd given out an alarm, or how she might have done it, but +the obvious place to find me would be out on the street, dodging for +cover somewhere.</p> + +<p>I pushed the door open and let it slam shut, hoping she'd hear it +upstairs. Then I found a door, sneaked it open and went silently down +the steps.</p> + +<p>In the basement, I looked for a furnace or a coal bin or a fuel tank +to hide behind, but there weren't any. I don't know how they got their +heat in the winter or cooled the building in the summer. Probably some +central atomic plant that took care of the whole city, piping in the +heat or coolant in underground conduits that were led up through the +walls, because there weren't even any pipes visible.</p> + +<p>I hunched into the darkest corner I could find and hoped they wouldn't +look for me there.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="35" height="40" /></div> +<p>y the time night came, hunger drove me out of the school, but I did +it warily, making sure nobody was in sight.</p> + +<p>The streets of the shopping center were more or less deserted. There +was no sign of a restaurant. I was so empty that I felt dizzy as I +hunted for one. But then a shocking realization made me halt on the +sidewalk and sweat with horror.</p> + +<p>Even if there had been a restaurant, what would I have used for money?</p> + +<p>Now I got the whole foul picture. She had sent old people back through +time on errands like mine ... and they'd starved to death because they +couldn't buy food!</p> + +<p>No, that wasn't right. I remembered what I had told Lou Pape: anybody +who gets hungry enough can always find a truck garden or a food store +to rob.</p> + +<p>Only ... I hadn't seen a truck garden or food store anywhere in this +city.</p> + +<p>And ... I thought about people in the past having their hands cut off +for stealing a loaf of bread.</p> + +<p>This civilization didn't look as if it went in for such drastic +punishments, assuming I could find a loaf of bread to steal. But +neither did most of the civilizations that practiced those barbarisms.</p> + +<p>I was more tired, hungry and scared than I'd ever believed a human +being could get. Lost, completely lost in a totally alien world, but +one in which I could still be killed or starve to death ... and God +knew what was waiting for me in my own time in case I came back +without the information she wanted.</p> + +<p>Or maybe even if I came back with it!</p> + +<p>That suspicion made up my mind for me. Whatever happened to me now +couldn't be worse than what she might do. At least I didn't have to +starve.</p> + +<p>I stopped a man in the street. I let several others go by before +picking him deliberately because he was middle-aged, had a kindly +face, and was smaller than me, so I could slug him and run if he +raised a row.</p> + +<p>"Look, friend," I told him, "I'm just passing through town—"</p> + +<p>"Ah?" he said pleasantly.</p> + +<p>"—And I seem to have mislaid—" No, that was dangerous. I'd been +about to say I'd mislaid my wallet, but I still didn't know whether +they used money in this era. He waited with a patient, friendly smile +while I decided just how to put it. "The fact is that I haven't eaten +all day and I wonder if you could help me get a meal."</p> + +<p>He said in the most neighborly voice imaginable, "I'll be glad to do +anything I can, Mr. Weldon."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="43" height="40" /></div> +<p>y entire face seemed to drop open. "You—you called me—"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Weldon," he repeated, still looking up at me with that neighborly +smile. "Mark Weldon, isn't it? From the 20th Century?"</p> + +<p>I tried to answer, but my throat had tightened up worse than on any +opening night I'd ever had to live through. I nodded, wondering +terrifiedly what was going on.</p> + +<p>"Please relax," he said persuasively. "You're not in any danger +whatever. We offer you our utmost hospitality. Our time, you might +say, is your time."</p> + +<p>"You know who I am," I managed to get out through my constricted +glottis. "I've been doing all this running and ducking and hiding for +nothing."</p> + +<p>He shrugged sympathetically. "Everyone in the city was instructed to +help you, but you were so nervous that we were afraid to alarm you +with a direct approach. Every time we tried to, as a matter of fact, +you vanished into one place or another. We didn't follow for fear of +the effect on you. We had to wait until you came voluntarily to us."</p> + +<p>My brain was racing again and getting nowhere. Part of it was +dizziness from hunger, but only part. The rest was plain frightened +confusion.</p> + +<p>They knew who I was. They'd been expecting me. They probably even knew +what I was after.</p> + +<p>And they wanted to help!</p> + +<p>"Let's not go into explanations now," he said, "although I'd like to +smooth away the bewilderment and fear on your face. But you need to be +fed first. Then we'll call in the others and—"</p> + +<p>I pulled back. "What others? How do I know you're not setting up +something for me that I'll wish I hadn't gotten into?"</p> + +<p>"Before you approached me, Mr. Weldon, you first had to decide that we +represented no greater menace than May Roberts. Please believe me, we +don't."</p> + +<p>So he knew about that, too!</p> + +<p>"All right, I'll take my chances," I gave in resignedly. "Where does a +guy find a place to eat in this city?"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p>t was a handsome restaurant with soft light coming from +three-dimensional, full-color nature murals that I might mistakenly +have walked into if I'd been alone, they looked so much like gardens +and forests and plains. It was no wonder I couldn't find a restaurant +or food store or truck garden anywhere—food came up through pneumatic +chutes in each building, I'd been told on the way over, grown in +hydroponic tanks in cities that specialized in agriculture, and those +who wanted to eat "out" could drop into the restaurant each building +had. Every city had its own function. This one was for people in the +arts. I liked that.</p> + +<p>There was a glowing menu on the table with buttons alongside the +various selections. I looked starvingly at the items, trying to decide +which I wanted most. I picked oysters, onion soup, breast of guinea +hen under Plexiglas and was hunting for the tastiest and most +recognizable dessert when the pleasant little guy shook his head +regretfully and emphatically.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid you can't eat any of those foods, Mr. Weldon," he said in +a sad voice. "We'll explain why in a moment."</p> + +<p>A waiter and the manager came over. They obviously didn't want to +stare at me, but they couldn't help it. I couldn't blame them, I'd +have stared at somebody from George Washington's time, which is about +what I must have represented to them.</p> + +<p>"Will you please arrange to have the special food for Mr. Weldon +delivered here immediately?" the little guy asked.</p> + +<p>"Every restaurant has been standing by for this, Mr. Carr," said the +manager. "It's on its way. Prepared, of course—it's been ready since +he first arrived."</p> + +<p>"Fine," said the little guy, Carr. "It can't be too soon. He's very +hungry."</p> + +<p>I glanced around and noticed for the first time that there was nobody +else in the restaurant. It was past the dinner hour, but, even so, +there are always late diners. We had the place all to ourselves and it +bothered me. They could have ganged up on me....</p> + +<p>But they didn't. A light gong sounded, and the waiter and manager +hurried over to a slot of a door and brought out a couple of trays +loaded with covered dishes.</p> + +<p>"Your dinner, Mr. Weldon," the manager said, putting the plates in +front of me and removing the lids.</p> + +<p>I stared down at the food.</p> + +<p>"This," I told them angrily, "is a hell of a trick to play on a +starving man!"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="36" height="40" /></div> +<p>hey all looked unhappy.</p> + +<p>"Mashed dehydrated potatoes, canned meat and canned vegetables," Carr +replied. "Not very appetizing. I know, but I'm afraid it's all we can +allow you to eat."</p> + +<p>I took the cover off the dessert dish.</p> + +<p>"Dried fruits!" I said in disgust.</p> + +<p>"Rather excessively dried, I'm sorry to say," the manager agreed +mournfully.</p> + +<p>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?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And why in blazes not?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>I was famished enough to get the stuff down, which wasn't easy; +uninviting as it looked, it tasted still worse.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Given your choice," he said, "you'd have preferred them to what you +have eaten. Isn't that so, Mr. Weldon?"</p> + +<p>"You bet I would!" I answered, sore because I hadn't been given that +choice.</p> + +<p>"And you would have died like the pathetic old people you were +investigating," said a voice behind me.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"But everybody I saw was dressed like me!" I protested.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img class="img1" src="images/image_005.jpg" width="400" height="573" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>"What for?" I demanded in alarm. "What's this all about?"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="36" height="40" /></div> +<p>ulling up chairs, they sat down, looking to me like a witchcraft jury +from some old painting.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Project?"</p> + +<p>"To make certain that history is fulfilled, I have to tell you as much +as you must know."</p> + +<p>"I wish <i>somebody</i> would!"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Are you sure?" I asked uneasily.</p> + +<p>"Quite sure."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"One would expect her to say that," a woman put in cuttingly.</p> + +<p>Blundell turned to her and shook his head. "Let Mr. Weldon clarify his +feelings about her, Rhoda. They are obviously very mixed."</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"Go on," Carr encouraged me.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>"Besides which," somebody else said, "she offered you half of the +profits on the Dynapack."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="19" height="40" /></div> +<p> 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.</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>"And she was a very beautiful woman," Blundell added.</p> + +<p>I squirmed a bit. "Yes."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Weldon, we know a good deal about her from notes that have come +down to us among her private papers. She had a safety deposit box +under a false name. I won't tell you the name; it was not discovered +until many years later, and we will not voluntarily meddle with the +past."</p> + +<p>I sat up and listened sharply. "So that's how you knew who I was and +what I'd be wearing and what I came for! You even knew when and where +I'd arrive!"</p> + +<p>"Correct," Blundell said.</p> + +<p>"What else do you know?"</p> + +<p>"That you suspected her of being responsible for the deaths of many +old people by starvation. Your suspicion was justified, except that +her father had caused all those that occurred before 1947, when she +took over after his own death. All but two people were sent into the +past. Roberts was curious about the future, of course, but he did not +want to waste a victim on a trip that would probably be fruitless. In +the past, you understand, he knew precisely what he was after. The +future was completely unknown territory."</p> + +<p>"But she took the chance," I said.</p> + +<p>"If you can call deliberate murder taking a chance, yes. One man +arrived in 2094, over fifty years ago. The other was yourself. The +first one, as you know, died of malnutrition when he was brought back +to your era."</p> + +<p>"And what happened to me?" I asked, jittering.</p> + +<p>"You will not die. We intend to make sure of that. All the other +victims—I presume you're interested in their errands?"</p> + +<p>"I think I know, but I'd like to find out just the same."</p> + +<p>"They were sent to the past to buy or steal treasures of various +sorts—art, sculpture, jewelry, fabulously valuable manuscripts and +books, anything that had great scarcity value."</p> + +<p>"That's not possible," I objected. "She had all the money she wanted. +Any time she needed more, all she had to do was send somebody back to +put down bets and buy stocks that she knew were winners. She had the +records, didn't she? There was no way she or her father could lose!"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="41" height="40" /></div> +<p>e moved his shoulders in a plum-and-gold shrug. "Most of the +treasures they accumulated were for acquisition's sake—and for the +sake of vengeance for the way they believed Dr. Roberts had been +treated. When there were unusual expenses, such as replacing the very +costly parts of the time machine, that required more than they could +produce in ready cash, both Roberts and his daughter 'discovered' +these treasures."</p> + +<p>He waited while I digested the miserable meal and the disturbing +information he had given me. I thought I'd found a loophole in his +explanation: "You said people were sent back to the past to <i>buy</i> +treasures, besides stealing them."</p> + +<p>"I did," he agreed. "They were provided with currency of whatever era +they were to visit."</p> + +<p>I felt my forehead wrinkle up as my theory fell apart. "Then they +could buy food. Why should they have died of malnutrition?"</p> + +<p>"Because, as May Roberts herself told you, nothing can exist before it +exists. Neither can anything exist after it is out of existence. If +you returned with a Dynapack, for example, it would revert to a lump +of various metals, because that was what it was in your period. But +let me give you a more personal instance. Do you remember coming back +from your first trip with dust on your hand?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I must have fallen."</p> + +<p>"On one hand? No, Mr. Weldon. May Roberts was greatly upset by the +incident; she was afraid you would realize why the hamburger had +turned to dust—and why the old people died of starvation. <i>All</i> of +them, not just a few."</p> + +<p>He paused, giving me a chance to understand what he had just said. I +did, with a sick shock.</p> + +<p>"If I ate your food," I said shakily, "I'd feel satisfied until I was +returned to my own time. <i>But the food wouldn't go along with me!</i>"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="35" height="40" /></div> +<p>lundell nodded gravely. "And so you, too, would die of malnutrition. +The foods we have given you existed in your era. We were very careful +of that, so careful that many of them probably were stored years +before you left your time. We regret that they are not very palatable, +but at least we are positive they will go back with you. You will be +as healthy when you arrive in the past as when you left.</p> + +<p>"Incidentally, she made you change your clothes for the same +reason—they had been made in 1930. She had clothing from every era +she wanted visited and chose old people who would fit them best. +Otherwise, you see, they'd have arrived naked."</p> + +<p>I began to shake as if I were as old as I'd pretended to be on the +stage. "She's going to pull me back! If I don't bring her the +information about the Dynapack, she'll shoot me!"</p> + +<p>"That, Mr. Weldon, is our problem," Blundell said, putting his hand +comfortingly on my arm to calm me.</p> + +<p>"Your problem? I'm the one who'll get shot, not you!"</p> + +<p>"But we know in complete detail what will happen when you are returned +to the 20th Century."</p> + +<p>I pulled my arm away and grabbed his. "You know that? Tell me!"</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry, Mr. Weldon. If we tell you what you did, you might think +of some alternate action, and there is no knowing what the result +would be."</p> + +<p>"But I didn't get shot or die of malnutrition?"</p> + +<p>"That much we can tell you. Neither."</p> + +<p>They all stood up, so bright and attractive in their colorful clothes +that I felt like a shirt-sleeved stage hand who'd wandered in on a +costume play.</p> + +<p>"You will be returned in a month, according to the notes May Roberts +left. She gave you plenty of time to get the data, you see. We propose +to make that month an enjoyable one for you. The resources of our +city—and any others you care to visit—are at your disposal. We wish +you to take full advantage of them."</p> + +<p>"And the Dynapack?"</p> + +<p>"Let us worry about that. We want you to have a good time while you +are our guest."</p> + +<p>I did.</p> + +<p>It was the most wonderful month of my life.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="36" height="40" /></div> +<p>he mesh cage blurred around me. I could see May Roberts through it, +her hand just leaving the switch. She was as beautiful as ever, but I +saw beneath her beauty the vengeful, vicious creature her father's +bitterness had turned her into; Blundell and Carr had let me read some +of her notes, and I knew. I wished I could have spent the rest of my +years in the future, instead of having to come back to this.</p> + +<p>She came over and opened the gate, smiling like an angel welcoming a +bright new soul. Then her eyes traveled startledly over me and her +smile almost dropped off. But she held it firmly in place.</p> + +<p>She had to, while she asked, "Do you have the notes I sent you for?"</p> + +<p>"Right here," I said.</p> + +<p>I reached into my breast pocket and brought out a stubby automatic and +shot her through the right arm. Her closed hand opened and a little +derringer clanked on the floor. She gaped at me with an expression of +horrified surprise that should have been recorded permanently; it +would have served as a model for generations of actors and actresses.</p> + +<p>"You—brought back a weapon!" she gasped. "You shot me!" She stared +vacantly at her bleeding arm and then at my automatic. "But you +can't—bring anything back from the future. And you aren't—dying of +malnutrition."</p> + +<p>She said it all in a voice shocked into toneless wonder.</p> + +<p>"The food I ate and this gun are from the present," I said. "The +people of the future knew I was coming. They gave me food that +wouldn't vanish from my cells when I returned. They also gave me +the gun instead of the plans for the Dynapack."</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img class="img1" src="images/image_006.jpg" width="600" height="548" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>"And you took it?" she screamed at me. "You idiot! I'd have shared the +profits honestly with you. You'd have been worth millions!"</p> + +<p>"With acute malnutrition," I amended. "I like it better this way, +thanks—poor, but alive. Or relatively poor, I should say, because +you've been very generous and I appreciate it."</p> + +<p>"By shooting me!"</p> + +<p>"I hated to puncture that lovely arm, but it wasn't as painful as +starving or getting shot myself. Now if you don't mind—or even if you +do—it's your turn to get into the cage, Miss Roberts."</p> + +<p>She tried to grab for the derringer on the floor with her left hand.</p> + +<p>"Don't bother," I said quietly. "You can't reach it before a bullet +reaches you."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="26" height="40" /></div> +<p>he straightened up, staring at me for the first time with terror in +her eyes.</p> + +<p>"What are you going to do to me?" she whispered.</p> + +<p>"I could kill you as easily as you could have killed me. Kill you and +send your body into some other era. How many dozens of deaths were you +responsible for? The law couldn't convict you of them, but I can. And +I couldn't be convicted, either."</p> + +<p>She put her hand on the wound. Blood seeped through her fingers as she +lifted her chin at me.</p> + +<p>"I won't beg for my life, Weldon, if that's what you want. I could +offer you a partnership, but I'm not really in a position to offer it, +am I?"</p> + +<p>She was magnificent, terrifyingly intelligent, brave clear through ... +and deadlier than a plague. I had to remember that.</p> + +<p>"Into the cage," I said. "I have some friends in the future who have +plans for you. I won't tell you what they are, of course; you didn't +tell me what I'd go through, did you? Give my friends my fondest +regards. If I can manage it, I'll visit them—and you."</p> + +<p>She backed warily into the cage. It would have been pleasant to kiss +those wonderful lips good-by. I'd thought about them for a whole +month, wanting them and loathing them at the same time.</p> + +<p>It would have been like kissing a coral snake. I knew it and I +concentrated on shutting the gate on her.</p> + +<p>"You'd like to be rich, wouldn't you, Weldon?" she asked through the +mesh.</p> + +<p>"I can be," I said. "I have the machine. I can send people into the +past or future and make myself a pile of dough. Only I'd give them +food to take along. I wouldn't kill them off to keep the secret to +myself. Anything else on your mind?"</p> + +<p>"You want me," she stated.</p> + +<p>I didn't argue.</p> + +<p>"You could have me."</p> + +<p>"Just long enough to get my throat slit or brains blown out. I don't +want anything that much."</p> + +<p>I rammed the switch closed.</p> + +<p>The mesh cage blurred and she was gone. Her blood was on the floor, +but she was gone into the future I had just come from.</p> + +<p>That was when the reaction hit me. I'd escaped starvation and her gun, +but I wasn't a hero and the release of tension flipped my stomach over +and unhinged my knees.</p> + +<p>Shaking badly, I stumbled through the big, empty house until I found a +phone.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="40" /></div> +<p>ou Pape got there so quickly that I still hadn't gotten over the +tremors, in spite of a bottle of brandy I dug out of a credenza, maybe +because the date on the label, 1763, gave me a new case of the +shivers.</p> + +<p>I could see the worry on Lou's face vanish when he assured himself +that I was all right. It came back again, though, when I told him what +had happened. He didn't believe any of it, naturally. I guess I +hadn't really expected him to.</p> + +<p>"If I didn't know you, Mark," he said, shaking his big, dark head +unhappily, "I'd send you over to Bellevue for observation. Even +knowing you, maybe that's what I ought to do."</p> + +<p>"All right, let's see if there's any proof," I suggested tiredly. +"From what I was told, there ought to be plenty."</p> + +<p>We searched the house clear down to the basement, where he stood with +his face slack.</p> + +<p>"Christ!" he breathed. "The annex to the Metropolitan Museum!"</p> + +<p>The basement ran the length and breadth of the house and was twice as +high as an average room, and the whole glittering place was crammed +with paintings in rich, heavy frames, statuettes, books, manuscripts, +goblets and ewers and jewelry made of gold and huge gems, and +tapestries in brilliant color ... and everything was as bright and +sparkling and new as the day it was made, which was almost true of a +lot of it.</p> + +<p>"The dame was loaded and she was an art collector, that's all," Lou +said. "You can't sell me that screwy story of yours. She was a +collector and she knew where to find things."</p> + +<p>"She certainly did," I agreed.</p> + +<p>"What did you do with her?"</p> + +<p>"I told you. I shot her through the arm before she could shoot me and +I sent her into the future."</p> + +<p>He took me by the front of the jacket. "You killed her, Mark. You +wanted all this stuff for yourself, so you knocked her off and got rid +of her body somehow."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you go back to acting, where you belong, Lou, and leave +sleuthing to people who know how?" I asked, too worn to pull his hands +loose. "Would I kill her and call you up to get right over here? +Wouldn't I have sneaked these things out first? Or more likely I'd +have sneaked them out, hidden them and nobody—including you—would +know I'd ever been here. Come on, use your head."</p> + +<p>"That's easy. You lost your nerve."</p> + +<p>"I'm not even losing my patience."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="41" height="40" /></div> +<p>e pushed me away savagely. "If you killed her for this stuff or +because of that crazy yarn you gave me, I'm a cop and you're no +friend. You're just a plain killer I happened to have known once, and +I'll make sure you fry."</p> + +<p>"You always did have a taste for that kind of dialogue. Go ahead and +wrap me up in an airtight case, have them throw the book at me, send +me up the river, put me in the hot squat. But you'll have to do the +proving, not me."</p> + +<p>He headed for the stairs. "I will. And don't try to make a break or +I'll plug you as if I never saw you before."</p> + +<p>He put in a call at the phone upstairs. I didn't give a particular +damn who it was he'd called. I was too relieved that I hadn't killed +May Roberts; destroying anything that beautiful, however evil, would +have stayed with me the rest of my life. There was another reason for +my relief—if I'd killed her and left the evidence for Lou to find, +he'd never help me. No, that's not quite so; he'd probably have tried +to get me to plead insanity on the basis of my unbelievable +explanation.</p> + +<p>But most of all, I couldn't get rid of the look on her face when I'd +shot her through the arm, the arm that was so wonderful to look at and +that had held a murderous little gun to greet me with.</p> + +<p>She was in the future now. She wouldn't be executed by them; they +regarded crime as an illness, and they'd treat her with their +marvelously advanced therapy and she'd become a useful, contented +citizen, living out her existence in an era that had given me more +happiness than I'd ever had.</p> + +<p>I sat and tried to stupefy myself with brandy that should long ago +have dried to brick-hardness, while Lou Pape stood at the door with +his hand near his holster and glared at me. He didn't take his eyes +off me until somebody named Prof. Jeremiah Aaronson came in and was +introduced briefly and flatly to me. Then Lou took him upstairs.</p> + +<p>It was minutes before I realized what they were going to do. I ran up +after them.</p> + +<p>I was just in time to see Aaronson carefully take the housing off the +hooded motors, and leap back suddenly from the fury of lightning +sparks.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="36" height="40" /></div> +<p>he whole machine fused while we watched helplessly—motors, switches, +panel and mesh cage. They flashed blindingly and blew apart and melted +together in a charred and molten pile.</p> + +<p>"Rigged," Aaronson said in the tone of a bitter curse. "Set to short +if it was tampered with. I wouldn't be surprised if there were +incendiaries placed at strategic spots. Nothing else could have made a +mess like this."</p> + +<p>He finally glanced down at his hand and saw it was scorched. He hissed +with the realization of pain, blew on the burn, shook it in the air to +cool it, and pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket by reaching +all the way around the rear for it with his left hand.</p> + +<p>Lou looked helplessly at the heap of cooling slag. "Can you make any +sense of it, Prof?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Can you?" Aaronson retorted. "Melt down a microtome or any other +piece of machinery you're unfamiliar with, and see if you can identify +it when it looks like this."</p> + +<p>He went out, wrapping his hand in the handkerchief.</p> + +<p>Lou kicked glumly at a piece of twisted tubing. "Aaronson is a top +physicist, Mark. I was hoping he'd make enough out of the machine +to—ah, hell, I wanted to believe you! I couldn't. I still can't. Now +we'll have to dig through the house to find her body."</p> + +<p>"You won't find it or the secret of the machine," I answered +miserably. "I told you they said the secret would be lost. This is +how. Now I'll never be able to visit the future again. I'll never see +them or May Roberts. They'll straighten her out, get rid of her hate +and vindictiveness, and it won't do me a damned bit of good because +the machine is gone and she's generations ahead of me."</p> + +<p>He turned to me puzzledly. "You're not afraid to have us dig for her +body, Mark?"</p> + +<p>"Tear the place apart if you want."</p> + +<p>"We'll have to," he said. "I'm calling Homicide."</p> + +<p>"Call in the Marines. Call in anybody you like."</p> + +<p>"You'll have to stay in my custody until we're through."</p> + +<p>I shrugged. "As long as you leave me alone while you're doing your +digging, I don't give a hang if I'm under arrest for suspicion of +murder. I've got to do some straightening out. I wish the people in +the future could take on the job—they could do it faster and better +than I can—but some nice, peaceful quiet would help."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="41" height="40" /></div> +<p>e didn't touch me or say a word to me as we waited for the squad to +arrive. I sat in the chair and shut out first him and then the men +with their sounding hammers and crowbars and all the rest.</p> + +<p>She'd been ruthless and callous, and she'd murdered old people with no +more pity than a wolf among a herd of helpless sheep.</p> + +<p>But Blundell and Carr had told me that she was as much a victim as the +oldsters who'd died of starvation with the riches she'd given them +still untouched, on deposit in the banks or stuffed into hiding places +or pinned to their shabby clothes. She needed treatment for the +illness her father had inflicted on her. But even he, they'd said, had +been suffering from a severe emotional disturbance and proper care +could have made a great and honored scientist out of him.</p> + +<p>They'd told me the truth and made me hate her, and they'd told me +their viewpoint and made that hatred impossible.</p> + +<p>I was here, in the present, without her. The machine was gone. +Yearning over something I couldn't change would destroy me. I had no +right to destroy myself. Nobody did, they'd told me, and nobody who +reconciles himself to the fact that some situations just are +impossible to work out ever could.</p> + +<p>I'd realized that when the squad packed up and left and Lou Pape came +over to where I was sitting.</p> + +<p>"You knew we wouldn't find her," he said.</p> + +<p>"That's what I kept telling you."</p> + +<p>"Where is she?"</p> + +<p>"In Port Said, exotic hellhole of the world, where she's dancing in +veils for the depraved—"</p> + +<p>"Cut out the kidding! Where is she?"</p> + +<p>"What's the difference, Lou? She's not here, is she?"</p> + +<p>"That doesn't mean she can't be somewhere else, dead."</p> + +<p>"She's not dead. You don't have to believe me about anything else, +just that."</p> + +<p>He hauled me out of the chair and stared hard at my face. "You aren't +lying," he said. "I know you well enough to know you're not."</p> + +<p>"All right, then."</p> + +<p>"But you're a damned fool to think a dish like that would have any +part of you. I don't mean you're nothing a woman would go for, but +she's more fang than female. You'd have to be richer and +better-looking than her, for one thing—"</p> + +<p>"Not after my friends get through with her. She'll know a good man +when she sees one and I'd be what she wants." I slid my hand over my +naked scalp. "With a head of hair, I'd look my real age, which happens +to be a year younger than you, if you remember. She'd go for me—they +checked our emotional quotients and we'd be a natural together. The +only thing was that I was bald. They could have grown hair on my head, +which would have taken care of that, and then we'd have gotten +together like gin and tonic."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="33" height="40" /></div> +<p>ou arched his black eyebrows at me. "They really could grow hair on +you?"</p> + +<p>"Sure. Now you want to know why I didn't let them." I glanced out the +window at the smoky city. "That's why. They couldn't tell me if I'd +ever get back to the future. I wasn't taking any chances. As long as +there was a possibility that I'd be stranded in my own time, I wasn't +going to lose my livelihood. Which reminds me, you have anything else +to do here?"</p> + +<p>"There'll be a guard stationed around the house and all her holdings +and art will be taken over until she comes back—"</p> + +<p>"She won't."</p> + +<p>"—or is declared legally dead."</p> + +<p>"And me?" I broke in.</p> + +<p>"We can't hold you without proof of murder."</p> + +<p>"Good enough. Then let's get out of here."</p> + +<p>"I have to go back on duty," he objected.</p> + +<p>"Not any more. I've got over $15,000 in cash and deposits—enough to +finance you and me."</p> + +<p>"Enough to kill her for."</p> + +<p>"Enough to finance you and me," I repeated doggedly. "I told you I had +the money before she sent me into the future—"</p> + +<p>"All right, all right," he interrupted. "Let's not go into that again. +We couldn't find a body, so you're free. Now what's this about +financing the two of us?"</p> + +<p>I put my fingers around his arm and steered him out to the street.</p> + +<p>"This city has never had a worse cop than you," I said. "Why? Because +you're an actor, not a cop. You're going back to acting, Lou. This +money will keep us both going until we get a break."</p> + +<p>He gave me the slit-eyed look he'd picked up in line of duty. "That +wouldn't be a bribe, would it?"</p> + +<p>"Call it a kind of memorial to a lot of poor, innocent old people and +a sick, tormented woman."</p> + +<p>We walked along in silence out in the clean sunshine. It was our +silence; the sleek cars and burly trucks made their noise and the +pedestrians added their gabble, but a good Stanislavsky actor like Lou +wouldn't notice that. Neither would I, ordinarily, but I was giving +him a chance to work his way through this situation.</p> + +<p>"I won't hand you a lie, Mark," he said finally. "I never stopped +wanting to act. I'll take your deal on two considerations."</p> + +<p>"All right, what are they?"</p> + +<p>"That whatever I take off you is strictly a loan."</p> + +<p>"No argument. What's the other?"</p> + +<p>He had an unlit cigarette almost to his lips. He held it there while +he said: "That any time you come across a case of an old person who +died of starvation with $30,000 stashed away somewhere, you turn fast +to the theatrical page and not tell me or even think about it."</p> + +<p>"I don't have to agree to that."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="41" height="40" /></div> +<p>e lowered the cigarette, stopped and turned to me. "You mean it's no +deal?"</p> + +<p>"Not that," I said. "I mean there won't be any more of those cases. +Between knowing that and both of us back acting again, I'm satisfied. +You don't have to believe me. Nobody does."</p> + +<p>He lit up and blew out a pretty plume, fine and slow and straight, +which would have televised like a million in the bank. Then he +grinned. "You wouldn't want to bet on that, would you?"</p> + +<p>"Not with a friend. I do all my sure-thing betting with bookies."</p> + +<p>"Then make it a token bet," he said. "One buck that somebody dies of +starvation with a big poke within a year."</p> + +<p>I took the bet.</p> + +<p>I took the dollar a year later.</p> + +<p class="p1"><b>—H. L. GOLD</b></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Die Rich, by Horace Leonard Gold + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD DIE RICH *** + +***** This file should be named 31892-h.htm or 31892-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/8/9/31892/ + +Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Robert Cicconetti, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Old Die Rich + +Author: Horace Leonard Gold + +Illustrator: Camerage + William Ashman + +Release Date: April 5, 2010 [EBook #31892] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD DIE RICH *** + + + + +Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Robert Cicconetti, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + Transcriber's Note: + + This etext was produced from the March 1953 issue of Galaxy. Extensive + research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this + publication was renewed. + + + THE OLD DIE RICH + + + By H. L. GOLD + + + Illustrated by ASHMAN + + + _It is the kind of news item you read at least a dozen times + a year, wonder about briefly, and then promptly forget--but + the real story is the one that the reporters are unable to + cover!_ + + * * * * * + + + + +"You again, Weldon," the Medical Examiner said wearily. + +I nodded pleasantly and looked around the shabby room with a feeling +of hopeful eagerness. Maybe _this_ time, I thought, I'd get the +answer. I had the same sensation I always had in these places--the +quavery senile despair at being closed in a room with the single shaky +chair, tottering bureau, dim bulb hanging from the ceiling, the +flaking metal bed. + +There was a woman on the bed, an old woman with white hair thin enough +to show the tight-drawn scalp, her face and body so emaciated that the +flesh between the bones formed parchment pockets. The M.E. was going +over her as if she were a side of beef that he had to put a federal +grade stamp on, grumbling meanwhile about me and Sergeant Lou Pape, +who had brought me here. + +[Illustration] + +"When are you going to stop taking Weldon around to these cases, +Sergeant?" the M.E. demanded in annoyance. "Damned actor and his +morbid curiosity!" + +For the first time, Lou was stung into defending me. "Mr. Weldon is a +friend of mine--I used to be an actor, too, before I joined the +force--and he's a follower of Stanislavsky." + +The beat cop who'd reported the D.O.A. whipped around at the door. "A +Red?" + + * * * * * + +I let Lou Pape explain what the Stanislavsky method of acting was, +while I sat down on the one chair and tried to apply it. Stanislavsky +was the great pre-Revolution Russian stage director whose idea was +that actors had to think and feel like the characters they portrayed +so they could _be_ them. A Stanislavskian works out everything about a +character right up to the point where a play starts--where he was +born, when, his relationship with his parents, education, childhood, +adolescence, maturity, attitudes toward men, women, sex, money, +success, including incidents. The play itself is just an extension of +the life history created by the actor. + +How does that tie in with the old woman who had died? Well, I'd had +the cockeyed kind of luck to go bald at 25 and I'd been playing old +men ever since. I had them down pretty well--it's not just a matter of +shuffling around all hunched over and talking in a high cracked voice, +which is cornball acting, but learning what old people are like +inside--and these cases I talked Lou Pape into taking me on were +studies in senility. I wanted to understand them, know what made them +do what they did, _feel_ the compulsion that drove them to it. + +The old woman on the bed, for instance, had $32,000 in five bank +accounts ... and she'd died of starvation. + +You've come across such cases in the news, at least a dozen a year, +and wondered who they were and why they did it. But you read the +items, thought about them for a little while, and then forgot them. My +interest was professional; I made my living playing old people and I +had to know as much about them as I could. + +That's how it started off, at any rate. But the more cases I +investigated, the less sense they made to me, until finally they were +practically an obsession. + +Look, they almost always have around $30,000 pinned to their +underwear, hidden in mattresses, or parked in the bank, yet they +starve themselves to death. If I could understand them, I could write +a play or have one written; I might really make a name for myself, +even get a Hollywood contract, maybe, if I could act them as they +should be acted. + +So I sat there in the lone chair, trying to reconstruct the character +of the old woman who had died rather than spend a single cent of her +$32,000 for food. + + * * * * * + +"Malnutrition induced by senile psychosis," the M.E. said, writing out +the death certificate. He turned to me. "There's no mystery to it, +Weldon. They starve because they're less afraid of death than digging +into their savings." + +I'd been imagining myself growing weak from hunger and trying to +decide that I ought to eat even if it cost me something. I came out of +it and said, "That's what you keep telling me." + +"I keep hoping it'll convince you so you won't come around any more. +What are the chances, Weldon?" + +"Depends. I will when I'm sure you're right. I'm not." + +He shrugged disgustedly, ordered the wicker basket from the meat wagon +and had the old woman carried out. He and the beat cop left with the +basket team. He could at least have said good-by. He never did, +though. + +A fat lot I cared about his attitude or dogmatic medical opinion. +Getting inside this character was more important. The setting should +have helped; it was depressing, rank with the feel of solitary +desperation and needless death. + +Lou Pape stood looking out the one dirty window, waiting patiently for +me. I let my joints stiffen as if they were thirty years older and +more worn out than they were, and empathized myself into a dilemma +between getting still weaker from hunger and drawing a little money +out of the bank. + +I worked at it for half an hour or so with the deep concentration you +acquire when you use the Stanislavsky method. Then I gave up. + +"The M.E. is wrong, Lou," I said. "It doesn't feel right." + +Lou turned around from the window. He'd stood there all that time +without once coughing or scratching or doing anything else that might +have distracted me. "He knows his business, Mark." + +"But he doesn't know old people." + +"What is it you don't get?" he prompted, helping me dig my way through +a characterization like the trained Stanislavskian he was--and still +would have been if he hadn't gotten so sick of the insecurity of +acting that he'd become a cop. "Can't money be more important to a +psychotic than eating?" + +"Sure," I agreed. "Up to a point. Undereating, yes. Actual starvation, +no." + +"Why not?" + +"You and the M.E. think it's easy to starve to death. It isn't. Not +when you can buy day-old bread at the bakeries, soup bones for about a +nickel a pound, wilted vegetables that groceries are glad to get rid +of. Anybody who's willing to eat that stuff can stay alive on nearly +nothing a day. Nearly nothing, Lou, and hunger is a damned potent +instinct. I can understand hating to spend even those few cents. I +can't see going without food altogether." + + * * * * * + +He took out a cigarette; he hadn't until then because he didn't want +to interrupt my concentration. "Maybe they get too weak to go out +after old bread and meat bones and wilted vegetables." + +"It still doesn't figure." I got up off the shaky chair, my joints now +really stiff from sitting in it. "Do you know how long it takes to die +of starvation?" + +"That depends on age, health, amount of activity--" + +"Nuts!" I said. "It would take weeks!" + +"So it takes weeks. Where's the problem--if there is one?" + +I lit the pipe I'd learned to smoke instead of cigarettes--old men +seem to use pipes more than anything else, though maybe it'll be +different in the next generation. More cigarette smokers now, you see, +and they'd stick to the habit unless the doctor ordered them to cut it +out. + +"Did you ever try starving for weeks, Lou?" I asked. + +"No. Did you?" + +"In a way. All these cases you've been taking me on for the last +couple of years--I've tried to be them. But let's say it's possible to +die of starvation when you have thousands of dollars put away. Let's +say you don't think of scrounging off food stores or working out a way +of freeloading or hitting soup lines. Let's say you stay in your room +and slowly starve to death." + +He slowly picked a fleck of tobacco off his lip and flicked it away, +his sharp black eyes poking holes in the situation I'd built up for +him. But he wasn't ready to say anything yet. + +"There's charity," I went on, "relief--except for those who have their +dough in banks, where it can be checked on--old age pension, +panhandling, cadging off neighbors." + +He said, "We know these cases are hermits. They don't make contact +with anybody." + +"Even when they're starting to get real hungry?" + +"You've got something, Mark, but that's the wrong tack," he said +thoughtfully. "The point is that _they_ don't have to make contact; +other people know them or about them. Somebody would check after a few +days or a week--the janitor, the landlord, someone in the house or the +neighborhood." + +"So they'd be found before they died." + +"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" he agreed reluctantly. "They don't +generally have friends, and the relatives are usually so distant, they +hardly know these old people and whether they're alive or not. Maybe +that's what threw us off. But you don't need friends and relatives to +start wondering, and investigate when you haven't shown up for a +while." He lifted his head and looked at me. "What does that prove, +Mark?" + +"That there's something wrong with these cases. I want to find out +what." + + * * * * * + +I got Lou to take me down to Headquarters, where he let me see the +bankbooks the old woman had left. + +"She took damned good care of them," I said. "They look almost new." + +"Wouldn't you take damned good care of the most important thing in +the world to you?" he asked. "You've seen the hoards of money the +others leave. Same thing." + +I peered closely at the earliest entry, April 23, 1907, $150. My eyes +aren't that bad; I was peering at the ink. It was dark, unfaded. I +pointed it out to Lou. + +"From not being exposed to daylight much," he said. "They don't haul +out the bankbooks or money very often, I guess." + +"And that adds up for you? I can see them being psychotics all their +lives ... but not _senile_ psychotics." + +"They hoarded, Mark. That adds up for me." + +"Funny," I said, watching him maneuver his cigarette as if he loved +the feel of it, drawing the smoke down and letting it out in plumes of +different shapes, from rings to slender streams. What a living he +could make doing cigarette commercials on TV! "I can see _you_ turn +into one of these cases, Lou." + +He looked startled for a second, but then crushed out the butt +carefully so he could watch it instead of me. "Yeah? How so?" + +"You've been too scared by poverty to take a chance. You know you +could do all right acting, but you don't dare giving up this crummy +job. Carry that far enough and you try to stop spending money, then +cut out eating, and finally wind up dead of starvation in a cheap +room." + +"Me? I'd never get that scared of being broke!" + +"At the age of 70 or 80?" + +"Especially then! I'd probably tear loose for a while and then buy +into a home for the aged." + +I wanted to grin, but I didn't. He'd proved my point. He'd also shown +that he was as bothered by these old people as I was. + +"Tell me, Lou. If somebody kept you from dying, would you give him any +dough for it, even if you were a senile psychotic?" + +I could see him using the Stanislavsky method to feel his way to the +answer. He shook his head. "Not while I was alive. Will it, maybe, not +give it." + +"How would that be as a motive?" + + * * * * * + +He leaned against a metal filing cabinet. "No good, Mark. You know +what a hell of a time we have tracking down relatives to give the +money to, because these people don't leave wills. The few relatives we +find are always surprised when they get their inheritance--most of +them hardly remember dear old who-ever-it-was that died and left it to +them. All the other estates eventually go to the State treasury, +unclaimed." + +"Well, it was an idea." I opened the oldest bankbook again. "Anybody +ever think of testing the ink, Lou?" + +"What for? The banks' records always check. These aren't forgeries, if +that's what you're thinking." + +"I don't know what I'm thinking," I admitted. "But I'd like to turn a +chemist loose on this for a little while." + +"Look, Mark, there's a lot I'm willing to do for you, and I think I've +done plenty, but there's a limit--" + +I let him explain why he couldn't let me borrow the book and then +waited while he figured out how it could be done and did it. He was +still grumbling when he helped me pick a chemist out of the telephone +directory and went along to the lab with me. + +"But don't get any wrong notions," he said on the way. "I have to +protect State property, that's all, because I signed for it and I'm +responsible." + +"Sure, sure," I agreed, to humor him. "If you're not curious, why not +just wait outside for me?" + +He gave me one of those white-tooth grins that he had no right to +deprive women audiences of. "I could do that, but I'd rather see you +make a sap of yourself." + +I turned the bankbook over to the chemist and we waited for the +report. When it came, it had to be translated. + + * * * * * + +The ink was typical of those used 50 years ago. Lou Pape gave me a jab +in the ribs at that. But then the chemist said that, according to the +amount of oxidation, it seemed fresh enough to be only a few months or +years old, and it was Lou's turn to get jabbed. Lou pushed him about +the aging, asking if it couldn't be the result of unusually good care. +The chemist couldn't say--that depended on the kind of care; an +airtight compartment, perhaps, filled with one of the inert gases, or +a vacuum. They hadn't been kept that way, of course, so Lou looked as +baffled as I felt. + +He took the bankbook and we went out to the street. + +"See what I mean?" I asked quietly, not wanting to rub it in. + +"I see something, but I don't know what. Do you?" + +"I wish I could say yes. It doesn't make any more sense than anything +else about these cases." + +"What do you do next?" + +"Damned if I know. There are thousands of old people in the city. Only +a few of them take this way out. I have to try to find them before +they do." + +"If they're loaded, they won't say so, Mark, and there's no way of +telling them from those who are down and out." + +I rubbed my pipe disgruntledly against the side of my nose to oil it. +"Ain't this a beaut of a problem? I wish I liked problems. I hate +them." + +Lou had to get back on duty. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do +except worry my way through this tangle. He headed back to +Headquarters and I went over to the park and sat in the sun, warming +myself and trying to think like a senile psychotic who would rather +die of starvation than spend a few cents for food. + +I didn't get anywhere, naturally. There are too many ways of beating +starvation, too many chances of being found before it's too late. + +And the fresh ink, over half a century old.... + + * * * * * + +I took to hanging around banks, hoping I'd see someone come in with an +old bankbook that had fresh ink from 50 years before. Lou was some +help there--he convinced the guards and tellers that I wasn't an +old-looking guy casing the place for a gang, and even got the tellers +to watch out for particularly dark ink in ancient bankbooks. + +I stuck at it for a month, although there were a few stage calls that +didn't turn out right, and one radio and two TV parts, which did and +kept me going. I was almost glad the stage parts hadn't been given to +me; they'd have interrupted my outside work. + +After a month without a thing turning up at the banks, though, I went +back to my two rooms in the theatrical hotel one night, tired and +discouraged, and I found Lou there. I expected him to give me another +talk on dropping the whole thing; he'd been doing that for a couple of +weeks now, every time we got together. I felt too low to put up an +argument. But Lou was holding back his excitement--acting like a cop, +you know, instead of projecting his feelings--and he couldn't haul me +out to his car as fast as he probably wanted me to go. + +"Been trying to get in touch with you all day, Mark. Some old guy was +found wandering around, dazed and suffering from malnutrition, with +$17,000 in cash inside the lining of his jacket." + +"_Alive?_" I asked, shocked right into eagerness again. + +"Just barely. They're trying intravenous feeding to pull him through. +I don't think he'll make it." + +"For God's sake, let's get there before he conks out!" + +Lou raced me to the City Hospital and up to the ward. There was a +scrawny old man in a bed, nothing but a papery skin stretched thin +over a face like a skull and a body like a Halloween skeleton, +shivering as if he was cold. I knew it wasn't the cold. The medics +were injecting a heart stimulant into him and he was vibrating like a +rattletrap car racing over a gravel road. + +"Who are you?" I practically yelled, grabbing his skinny arm. "What +happened to you?" + +He went on shaking with his eyes closed and his mouth open. + +"Ah, hell!" I said, disgusted. "He's in a coma." + +"He might start talking," Lou told me. "I fixed it up so you can sit +here and listen in case he does." + +"So I can listen to delirious ravings, you mean." + +Lou got me a chair and put it next to the bed. "What are you kicking +about? This is the first live one you've seen, isn't it? That ought to +be good enough for you." He looked as annoyed as a director. "Besides, +you can get biographical data out of delirium that you'd never get if +he was conscious." + + * * * * * + +He was right, of course. Not only data, but attitudes, wishes, +resentments that would normally be repressed. I wasn't thinking of +acting at the moment, though. Here was somebody who could tell me +what I wanted to know ... only he couldn't talk. + +Lou went to the door. "Good luck," he said, and went out. + +I sat down and stared at the old man, _willing_ him to talk. I don't +have to ask if you've ever done that; everybody has. You keep thinking +over and over, getting more and more tense, "Talk, damn you, _talk_!" +until you find that every muscle in your body is a fist and your jaws +are aching because you've been clenching your teeth so hard. You might +just as well not bother, but once in a while a coincidence makes you +think you've done it. Like now. + +The old man sort of came to. That is, he opened his eyes and looked +around without seeing anything, or it was so far away and long ago +that nobody else could see what he saw. + +I hunched forward on the chair and willed harder than ever. Nothing +happened. He stared at the ceiling and through and beyond me. Then he +closed his eyes again and I slumped back, defeated and bitter--but +that was when he began talking. + +There were a couple of women, though they might have been little girls +in his childhood, and he had his troubles with them. He was praying +for a toy train, a roadster, to pass his tests, to keep from being +fired, to be less lonely, and back to toys again. He hated his father, +and his mother was too busy with church bazaars and such to pay much +attention to him. There was a sister: she died when he was a kid. He +was glad she died, hoping maybe now his mother would notice him, but +he was also filled with guilt because he was glad. Then somebody, he +felt, was trying to shove him out of his job. + +The intravenous feeding kept dripping into his vein and he went on +rambling. After ten or fifteen minutes of it, he fell asleep. I felt +so disappointed that I could have slapped him awake, only it wouldn't +have done any good. Smoking would have helped me relax, but it wasn't +allowed, and I didn't dare go outside for one, for fear he might +revive again and this time come up to the present. + + * * * * * + +"Broke!" he suddenly shrieked, trying to sit up. + +I pushed him down gently, and he went on in frightful terror, "Old and +poor, nowhere to go, nobody wants me, can't make a living, read the +ads every day, no jobs for old men." + +He blurted through weeks, months, years--I don't know--of fear and +despair. And finally he came to something that made his face glow like +a radium dial. + +"An ad. No experience needed. Good salary." His face got dark and +awful. All he added was, "El Greco," or something that sounded like +it, and then he went into terminal breathing. + +I rang for the nurse and she went for the doctor. I couldn't stand the +long moments when the old man's chest stopped moving, the abrupt +frantic gulps of air followed by no breath at all. I wanted to get +away from it, but I had to wait for whatever more he might say. + +It didn't come. His eyes fogged and rolled up and he stopped taking +those spasmodic strangling breaths. The nurse came back with the +doctor, who felt his pulse and shook his head. She pulled the blanket +over the old man's face. + +I left, feeling sick. I'd learned things I already knew about hate and +love and fear and hope and frustration. There was an ad in it +somewhere, but I had no way of telling if it had been years ago or +recently. And a name that sounded like "El Greco." That was a Spanish +painter of four-five hundred years ago. Had the old guy been +remembering a picture he'd seen? + +No, he'd come up at least close to the present. The ad seemed to solve +his problem about being broke. But what about the $17,000 that had +been found in the lining of his jacket? He hadn't mentioned that. Of +course, being a senile psychotic, he could have considered himself +broke even with that amount of money. None coming in, you see. + +That didn't add up, either. His was the terror of being old and +jobless. If he'd had money, he would have figured how to make it last, +and that would have come through in one way or another. + +There was the ad, there was his hope, and there was this El Greco. A +Greek restaurant, maybe, where he might have been bumming his meals. + +But where did the $17,000 fit in? + + * * * * * + +Lou Pape was too fed up with the whole thing to discuss it with me. He +just gave me the weary eye and said, "You're riding this too hard, +Mark. The guy was talking from fever. How do I know what figures and +what doesn't when I'm dealing with insanity or delirium?" + +"But you admit there's plenty about these cases that doesn't figure?" + +"Sure. Did you take a look at the condition the world is in lately? +Why should these old people be any exception?" + +I couldn't blame him. He'd pulled me in on the cases with plenty of +trouble to himself, just to do me a favor. Now he was fed up. I guess +it wasn't even that--he thought I was ruining myself, at least +financially and maybe worse, by trying to run down the problem. He +said he'd be glad to see me any time and gas about anything or help me +with whatever might be bothering me, if he could, but not these cases +any more. He told me to lay off them, and then he left me on my own. + +I don't know what he could have done, actually. I didn't need him to +go through the want ads with me, which I was doing every day, figuring +there might be something in the ravings about an ad. I spent more time +than I liked checking those slanted at old people, only to find they +were supposed to become messengers and such. + +One brought me to an old brownstone five-story house in the East 80s. +I got on line with the rest of the applicants--there were men and +women, all decrepit, all looking badly in need of money--and waited my +turn. My face was lined with collodion wrinkles and I wore an antique +shiny suit and rundown shoes. I didn't look more prosperous or any +younger than they did. + +I finally came up to the woman who was doing the interviewing. She sat +behind a plain office desk down in the main floor hall, with a pile +of application cards in front of her and a ballpoint pen in one +strong, slender hand. She had red hair with gold lights in it and eyes +so pale blue that they would have seemed the same color as the whites +if she'd been on the stage. Her face would have been beautiful except +for her rigid control of expression; she smiled abruptly, shut it off +just like that, looked me over with all the impersonality and +penetration of an X-ray from the soles to the bald head, exactly as +she'd done with the others. But that skin! If it was as perfect as +that all over her slim, stiffly erect, proudly shaped body, she had no +business off the stage! + +"Name, address, previous occupation, social security number?" she +asked in a voice with good clarity, resonance and diction. She wrote +it all down while I gave the information to her. Then she asked me for +references, and I mentioned Sergeant Lou Pape. "Fine," she said. +"We'll get in touch with you if anything comes up. Don't call +us--we'll call you." + +I hung around to see who'd be picked. There was only one, an old man, +two ahead of me in the line, who had no social security number, no +references, not even any relatives or friends she could have checked +up on him with. + +Damn! _Of course_ that was what she wanted! Hadn't all the starvation +cases been people without social security, references, either no +friends and relatives or those they'd lost track of? + +I'd pulled a blooper, but how was I to know until too late? + +Well, there was a way of making it right. + + * * * * * + +When it was good and dark that evening, I stood on the corner and +watched the lights in the brownstone house. The ones on the first two +floors went out, leaving only those on the third and fourth. Closed +for the day ... or open for business? + +I got into a building a few doors down by pushing a button and waiting +until the buzzer answered, then racing up to the roof while some man +yelled down the stairs to find out who was there. I crossed the tops +of the two houses between and went down the fire escape. + +It wasn't easy, though not as tough as you might imagine. The fact is +that I'm a whole year younger than Lou Pape, even if I could play his +grandpa professionally. I still have muscles left and I used them to +get down the fire escape at the rear of the house. + +The fourth floor room I looked into had some kind of wire mesh cage +and some hooded machinery. Nobody there. + +The third floor room was the redhead's. She was coming out of the +bathroom with a terrycloth bathrobe and a towel turban on when I +looked in. She slid the robe off and began dusting herself with +powder. That skin _did_ cover her. + +She turned and moved toward a vanity against the wall that I was on +the other side of. The next thing I knew, the window was flung up and +she had a gun on me. + +"Come right in--Mr. Weldon, isn't it?" she said in that completely +controlled voice of hers. One day her control would crack, I thought +irrelevantly, and the pieces would be found from Dallas to North +Carolina. "I had an idea you seemed more curious than was justified by +a help-wanted ad." + +"A man my age doesn't get to see many pretty girls," I told her, +making my own voice crack pathetically in a senile whinny. + +She motioned me into the room. When I was inside, I saw a light over +the window blinking red. It stopped the moment I was in the room. A +silent burglar alarm. + +She let her pale blue eyes wash insolently over me. "A man your age +can see all the pretty girls he wants to. You're not old." + +[Illustration] + +"And you use a rinse," I retorted. + +She ignored it. "I specifically advertised for old people. Why did you +apply?" + +It had happened so abruptly that I hadn't had a chance to use the +Stanislavsky method to _feel_ old in the presence of a beautiful nude +woman. I don't even know if it would have worked. Nothing's perfect. + +"I needed a job awful bad," I answered sullenly, knowing it sounded +like an ad lib. + + * * * * * + +She smiled with more contempt than humor. "You had a job, Mr. Weldon. +You were very busy trying to find out why senile psychotics starve +themselves to death." + +"How did you know that?" I asked, startled. + +"A little investigation of my own. I also happen to know you didn't +tell your friend Sergeant Pape that you were going to be here +tonight." + +That was a fact, too. I hadn't felt sure enough that I'd found the +answer to call him about it. Looking at the gun in her steady hand, I +was sorry I hadn't. + +"But you did find out I own this building, that my name is May +Roberts, and that I'm the daughter of the late Dr. Anthony Roberts, +the physicist," she continued. "Is there anything else you want me to +tell you about yourself?" + +"I know enough already. I'm more interested in you and the starvation +cases. If you weren't connected with them, you wouldn't have known I +was investigating them." + +"That's obvious, isn't it?" She reached for a cigarette on the vanity +and used a lighter with her free hand. The big mirror gave me another +view of her lovely body, but that was beginning to interest me less +than the gun. I thought of making a grab for it. There was too much +distance between us, though, and she knew better than to take her eyes +off me while she was lighting up. "I'm not afraid of professional +detectives, Mr. Weldon. They deal only with facts and every one of +them will draw the same conclusions from a given set of circumstances. +I don't like amateurs. They guess too much. They don't stick to +reality. The result--" her pale eyes chilled and her shapely mouth +went hard--"is that they are likely to get too close to the truth." + +I wanted a smoke myself, but I wasn't willing to make a move toward +the pipe in my jacket. "I may be close to the truth, Miss Roberts, but +I don't know what the devil it is. I still don't know how you're tied +in with the senile psychotics or why they starve with all that money. +You could let me go and I wouldn't have a thing on you." + +She glanced down at herself and laughed for real for the first time. +"You wouldn't, would you? On the other hand, you know where I'm +working from and could nag Sergeant Pape into getting a search +warrant. It wouldn't incriminate me, but it would be inconvenient. I +don't care to be inconvenienced." + +"Which means what?" + +"You want to find out my connection with senile psychotics. I intend +to show you." + +"How?" + +She gestured dangerously with the gun. "Turn your face to the wall and +stay that way while I get dressed. Make one attempt to turn around +before I tell you to and I'll shoot you. You're guilty of +housebreaking, you know. It would be a little inconvenient for me to +have an investigation ... but not as inconvenient as for you." + + * * * * * + +I faced the wall, feeling my stomach braid itself into a tight, +painful knot of fear. Of what, I didn't know yet, only that old people +who had something to do with her died of starvation. I wasn't old, but +that didn't seem very comforting. She was the most frigid, +calculating, _deadly_ woman I'd ever met. That alone was enough to +scare hell out of me. And there was the problem of what she was +capable of. + +Hearing the sounds of her dressing behind me, I wanted to lunge around +and rush her, taking a chance that she might be too busy pulling on a +girdle or reaching back to fasten a bra to have the gun in her hand. +It was a suicidal impulse and I gave it up instantly. Other women +might compulsively finish concealing themselves before snatching up +the gun. Not her. + +"All right," she said at last. + +I faced her. She was wearing coveralls that, if anything, emphasized +the curves of her figure. She had a sort of babushka that covered her +red hair and kept it in place--the kind of thing women workers used to +wear in factories during the war. She had looked lethal with nothing +on but a gun and a hard expression. She looked like a sentence of +execution now. + +"Open that door, turn to the right and go upstairs," she told me, +indicating directions with the gun. + +I went. It was the longest, most anxious short walk I've ever taken. +She ordered me to open a door on the fourth floor, and we were inside +the room I'd seen from the fire escape. The mesh cage seemed like a +torture chamber to me, the hooded motors designed to shoot an +agonizing current through my emaciating body. + +"You're going to do to me what you did to the old man you hired +today?" I probed, hoping for an answer that would really answer. + +She flipped on the switch that started the motors and there was a +shrill, menacing whine. The wire mesh of the cage began blurring +oddly, as if vibrating like the tines of a tuning fork. + +"You've been an unexpected nuisance, Weldon," she said above the +motors. "I never thought you'd get this far. But as long as you have, +we might as well both benefit by it." + +"Benefit?" I repeated. "_Both_ of us?" + +She opened the drawer of a work table and pulled out a stack of +envelopes held with a rubber band. She put the stack at the other edge +of the table. + +"Would you rather have all cash or bank accounts or both?" + +My heart began to beat. _She was where the money came from!_ + + * * * * * + +"You trying to tell me you're a philanthropist?" I demanded. + +"Business is philanthropy, in a way," she answered calmly. "You need +money and I need your services. To that extent, we're doing each other +a favor. I think you'll find that the favor I'm going to do for you +is a pretty considerable one. Would you mind picking up the envelopes +on the table?" + +I took the stack and stared at the top envelope. "May 15, 1931," I +read aloud, and looked suspiciously at her. "What's this for?" + +"I don't think it's something that can be explained. At least it's +never been possible before and I doubt if it would be now. I'm +assuming you want both cash and bank accounts. Is that right?" + +"Well, yes. Only--" + +"We'll discuss it later." She looked along a row of shelves against +one wall, searching the labels on the stacks of bundles there. She +drew one out and pushed it toward me. "Please open that and put on the +things you'll find inside." + +I tore open the bundle. It contained a very plain business suit, black +shoes, shirt, tie and a hat with a narrow brim. + +"Are these supposed to be my burial clothes?" + +"I asked you to put them on," she said. "If you want me to make that a +command, I'll do it." + +I looked at the gun and I looked at the clothes and then for some +shelter I could change behind. There wasn't any. + +She smiled. "You didn't seem concerned about my modesty. I don't see +why your own should bother you. Get dressed!" + +I obeyed, my mind anxiously chasing one possibility after another, all +of them ending up with my death. I got into the other things and felt +even more uncomfortable. They were all only an approximate fit: the +shoes a little too tight and pointed, the collar of the shirt too +stiffly starched and too high under my chin, the gray suit too narrow +at the shoulders and the ankles. I wished I had a mirror to see myself +in. I felt like an ultra-conservative Wall Street broker and I was +sure I resembled one. + +"All right," she said. "Put the envelopes in your inside pocket. +You'll find instructions on each. Follow them carefully." + +"I don't get it!" I protested. + +"You will. Now step into the mesh cage. Use the envelopes in the order +they're arranged in." + +"But what's this all about?" + +"I can tell you just one thing, Mr. Weldon--don't try to escape. It +can't be done. Your other questions will answer themselves if you +follow the instructions on the envelopes." + +She had the gun in her hand. I went into the mesh cage, not knowing +what to expect and yet too afraid of her to refuse. I didn't want to +wind up dead of starvation, no matter how much money she might have +given me--but I didn't want to get shot, either. + +She closed the mesh gate and pushed the switch as far as it would go. +The motors screamed as they picked up speed; the mesh cage vibrated +more swiftly; I could see her through it as if there were nothing +between us. + +And then I couldn't see her at all. + +I was outside a bank on a sunny day in spring. + + * * * * * + +My fear evaporated instantly--I'd escaped somehow! + +But then a couple of realizations slapped me from each side. It was +day instead of night. I was out on the street and not in her +brownstone house. + +Even the season had changed! + +Dazed, I stared at the people passing by. They looked like characters +in a TV movie, the women wearing long dresses and flowerpot hats, +their faces made up with petulant rosebud mouths and bright blotches +of rouge; the men in hard straw hats, suits with narrow shoulders, +plain black or brown shoes--the same kind of clothes I was wearing. + +The rumble of traffic in the street caught me next. Cars with square +bodies, tubular radiators.... + +For a moment, I let terror soak through me. Then I remembered the +mesh cage and the motors. May Roberts could have given me +electro-shock, kept me under long enough for the season to change, or +taken me South and left me on a street in daylight. + +But this was a street in New York. I recognized it, though some of the +buildings seemed changed, the people dressed more shabbily. + +Shrewd stagesetting? Hypnosis? + +That was it, of course! She'd hypnotized me.... + +Except that a subject under hypnosis doesn't know he's been +hypnotized. + +Completely confused, I took out the stack of envelopes I'd put in my +pocket. I was supposed to have both cash and a bank account, and I was +outside a bank. She obviously wanted me to go in, so I did. I handed +the top envelope to the teller. + +He hauled $150 out of it and looked at me as if that was enough to buy +and sell the bank. He asked me if I had an account there. I didn't. He +took me over to an officer of the bank, a fellow with a Hoover collar +and a John Gilbert mustache, who signed me up more cordially than I'd +been treated in years. + +I walked out to the street, gaping at the entry in the bankbook he'd +handed me. My pulse was jumping lumpily, my lungs refusing to work +right, my head doing a Hopi rain dance. + +The date he'd stamped was May 15, 1931. + + * * * * * + +I didn't know which I was more afraid of--being stranded, middle-aged, +in the worst of the depression, or being yanked back to that +brownstone house. I had only an instant to realize that I was a kid in +high school uptown right at that moment. Then the whole scene vanished +as fast as blinking and I was outside another bank somewhere else in +the city. + +The date on the envelope was May 29th and it was still 1931. I made a +$75 deposit there, then $100 in another place a few days later, and so +forth, spending only a few minutes each time and going forward +anywhere from a couple of days to almost a month. + +Every now and then, I had a stamped, addressed envelope to mail at a +corner box. They were addressed to different stock brokers and when I +got one open before mailing it and took a look inside, it turned out +to be an order to buy a few hundred shares of stock in a soft drink +company in the name of Dr. Anthony Roberts. I hadn't remembered the +price of the shares being that low. The last time I'd seen the +quotation, it was more than five times as much as it was then. I was +making dough myself, but I was doing even better for May Roberts. + +A few times I had to stay around for an hour or so. There was the +night I found myself in a flashy speakeasy with two envelopes that I +was to bet the contents of, according to the instructions on the +outside. It was June 21, 1932, and I had to bet on Jack Sharkey to +take the heavyweight title away from Max Schmeling. + +The place was serious and quiet--no more than three women, a couple of +bartenders, and the rest male customers, including two cops, huddling +up close to the radio. An affable character was taking bets. He gave +me a wise little smile when I put the money down on Sharkey. + +"Well, it's a pleasure to do business with a man who wants an American +to win," he said, "and the hell with the smart dough, eh?" + +"Yeah," I said, and tried to smile back, but so much of the smart +money was going on Schmeling that I wondered if May Roberts hadn't +made a mistake. I couldn't remember who had won. "You know what J. P. +Morgan said--don't sell America short." + +"I'll take a buck for my share," said a sour guy who barely managed to +stand. "Lousy grass growing in the lousy streets, nobody working, no +future, nothing!" + +"We'll come out of it okay," I told him confidently. + +He snorted into his gin. "Not in our lifetime, Mac. It'd take a +miracle to put this country on its feet again. I don't believe in +miracles." He put his scowling face up close to mine and breathed +blearily and belligerently at me. "Do you?" + +"Shut up, Gus," one of the bartenders said. "The fight's starting." + + * * * * * + +I had some tough moments and a lot of bad Scotch, listening. It went +the whole 15 rounds, Sharkey won, and I was in almost as bad shape as +Gus, who'd passed out halfway through the battle. All I can recall is +the affable character handing over a big roll and saying, "Lucky for +me more guys don't sell America short," and trying to separate the +money into the right amounts and put them into the right envelopes, +while stumbling out the door, when everything changed and I was +outside a bank again. + +I thought, "My God, what a hangover cure!" I was as sober as if I +hadn't had a drink, when I made that deposit. + +There were more envelopes to mail and more deposits to make and bets +to put down on Singing Wood in 1933 at Belmont Park and Max Baer over +Primo Carnera, and then Cavalcade at Churchill Downs in 1934, and +James Braddock over Baer in 1935, and a big daily double payoff, +Wanoah-Arakay at Tropical Park, and so on, skipping through the years +like a flat stone over water, touching here and there for a few +minutes to an hour at a time. I kept the envelopes for May Roberts and +myself in different pockets and the bankbooks in another. The +envelopes were beginning to bulge and the deposits and accrued +interest were something to watch grow. + +The whole thing, in fact, was so exciting that it was early October of +1938--a total of maybe four or five hours subjectively--before I +realized what she had me doing. I wasn't thinking much about the fact +that I was time traveling or how she did it; I accepted that, though +the sensation in some ways was creepy, like raising the dead. My +father and mother, for instance, were still alive in 1938. If I could +break away from whatever it was that kept pulling me jumpily through +time, I could go and see them. + +The thought attracted me enough to make me shake badly with intent, +yet pump dread through me. I wanted so damned badly to see them again +and I didn't dare. I couldn't.... + +_Why_ couldn't I? + +Maybe the machine covered only the area around the various banks, +speakeasies, bars and horse parlors. If I could get out of the area, +whatever it might be, I could avoid coming back to whatever May +Roberts had lined up for me. + +Because, naturally, I knew now what I was doing: I was making deposits +and winning sure bets just as the "senile psychotics" had done. The +ink on their bankbooks and bills was fresh because it _was_ fresh; it +wasn't given a chance to oxidize--at the rate I was going, I'd be back +to my own time in another few hours or so, with $15,000 or better in +deposits, compound interest and cash. + +If I'd been around 70, you see, she could have sent me back to the +beginning of the century with the same amount of money, which would +have accumulated to something like $30,000. + +Get it now? + +I did. + +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. + +I went in. + +A neat young salesman came up and politely asked me if he could do +anything for me. I sounded stupid even to myself, but I said, "No, +thanks, I'd just like to do a little browsing," and gave a silly +nervous laugh. Me, an actor, behaving like a frightened yokel! I felt +ashamed of myself. + +He tried not to look surprised, but he didn't really succeed. Somebody +else came in, though, for which I was grateful, and he left me alone +to look around. + +I don't know if I can get my feelings across to you. It's a situation +that nobody would ever expect to find himself in, so it isn't easy to +tell what it's like. But I've got to try. + +Let's stick with the ancient Egyptian I mentioned a while back, the +one ordered to sneak a mummy out of the Metropolitan Museum. Maybe +that'll make it clearer. + +The poor guy has no money he can use, naturally, and no idea of what +New York's transportation system is like, where the museum is, how to +get there, what visitors to a museum do and say, the regulations he +might unwittingly break, how much an ordinary citizen is supposed to +know about which customs and such. Now add the possible danger that he +might be slapped into jail or an insane asylum if he makes a mistake +and you've got a rough notion of the spot I felt I was in. Being able +to speak English doesn't make much difference; not knowing what's +regarded as right and wrong, and the unknown consequences, are enough +to panic anybody. + +That doesn't make it clear enough. + +Well, look, take the electrical appliances in that store; that might +give you an idea of the situation and the way it affected me. + +The appliances must have been as familiar to the people of that time +as toasters and TV sets and lamps are to us. But the things didn't +make a bit of sense to me ... any more than our appliances would to +the ancient Egyptian. Can you imagine him trying to figure out what +those items are for and how they work? + + * * * * * + +Here are some gadgets you can puzzle over: + +There was a light fixture that you put against any part of a wall--no +screws, no cement, no wires, even--and it held there and lit up, and +it stayed lit no matter where you moved it on the wall. Talk about +pin-up lamps ... this was really it! + +Then I came across something that looked like an ashtray with a blue +electric shimmer obscuring the bottom of the bowl. I lit my +pipe--others I'd passed had been smoking, so I knew it was safe to do +the same--and flicked in the match. It disappeared. I don't mean it +was swirled into some hidden compartment. _It vanished._ I emptied the +pipe into the ashtray and that went, too. Looking around to make sure +nobody was watching, I dredged some coins out of my pocket and let +them drop into the tray. They were gone. Not a particle of them was +left. A disintegrator? I haven't got the slightest idea. + +There were little mirror boxes with three tiny dials on the front of +each. I turned the dials on one--it was like using three dial +telephones at the same time--and a pretty girl's face popped onto the +mirror surface and looked expectantly at me. + +"Yes?" she said, and waited for me to answer. + +"I--uh--wrong number, I guess," I answered, putting the box down in a +hurry and going to the other side of the shop because I didn't have +even a dim notion how to turn it off. + +The thing I was looking for was on a counter--a tinted metal box no +bigger than a suitcase, with a lipped hole on top and small +undisguised verniers in front. I didn't know I'd found it, actually, +until I twisted a vernier and every light in the store suddenly glared +and the salesman came rushing over and politely moved me aside to shut +it off. + +"We don't want to burn out every appliance in the place, do we?" he +asked quietly. + +"I just wanted to see if it worked all right," I said, still shaking +slightly. It could have blown up or electrocuted me, for all I knew. + +"But they always work," he said. + +"Ah--always?" + +"Of course. The principle is simple and there are no parts to get worn +out, so they last indefinitely." He suddenly smiled as if he'd just +caught the gist. "Oh, you were joking! Naturally--everybody learns +about the Dynapack in primary education. You were interested in +acquiring one?" + +"No, no. The--the old one is good enough. I was just--well, you know, +interested in knowing if the new models are much different or better +than the old ones." + +"But there haven't been any new models since 2073," he said. "Can you +think of any reason why there should be?" + +"I--guess not," I stammered. "But you never can tell." + +"You can with Dynapacks," he said, and he would have gone on if I +hadn't lost my nerve and mumbled my way out of the store as fast as I +could. + + * * * * * + +You want to know why? He'd asked me if I wanted to "acquire" a +Dynapack, not _buy_ one. I didn't know what "acquire" meant in that +society. It could be anything from saving up coupons to winning +whatever you wanted at some kind of lottery, or maybe working up the +right number of labor units on the job--in which case he'd want to +know where I was employed and the equivalent of social security and +similar information, which I naturally didn't have--or it could just +be fancy sales talk for buying. + +I couldn't guess, and I didn't care to expose myself any more than I +had already. And my blunder about the Dynapack working and the new +models was nothing to make me feel at all easier. + +Lord, the uncertainties and hazards of being in a world you don't know +anything about! Daydreaming about visiting another age may be +pleasant, but the reality is something else again. + +"Wait a minute, friend!" I heard the salesman call out behind me. + + * * * * * + +I looked back as casually, I hoped, as the pedestrians who heard him. +He was walking quickly toward me with a very worried expression on his +face. I stepped up my own pace as unobtrusively as possible, trying to +keep a lot of people between us, meanwhile praying that they'd think I +was just somebody who was late for an appointment. The salesman didn't +break into a run or yell for the cops, but I couldn't be sure he +wouldn't. + +As soon as I came to a corner, I turned it and ran like hell. There +was a sort of alley down the block. I jumped into it, found a basement +door and stayed inside, pressed against the wall, quivering with +tension and sucking air like a swimmer who'd stayed underwater too +long. + +Even after I got my wind back, I wasn't anxious to go out. The place +could have been cordoned off, with the police, the army and the navy +all cooperating to nab me. + +What made me think so? Not a thing except remembering how puzzled our +ancient Egyptian would have been if he got arrested in the subway for +something everybody did casually and without punishment in his own +time--spitting! I could have done something just as innocent, as far +as you and I are concerned, that this era would consider a misdemeanor +or a major crime. And in what age was ignorance of the law ever an +excuse? + +Instead of going back out, I prowled carefully into the building. It +was strangely silent and deserted. I couldn't understand why until I +came to a lavatory. There were little commodes and wash basins that +came up to barely above my knees. The place was a school. Naturally it +was deserted--the kids were through for the day. + +I could feel the tension dissolve in me like a ramrod of ice melting, +no longer keeping my back and neck stiff and taut. There probably +wasn't a better place in the city for me to hide. + +_A primary school!_ + +The salesman had said to me, "Everybody learns about the Dynapack in +primary education." + + * * * * * + +Going through the school was eerie, like visiting a familiar childhood +scene that had been distorted by time into something almost totally +unrecognizable. + +There were no blackboards, teacher's big desk, children's little +desks, inkwells, pointers, globes or books. Yet it was a school. The +small fixtures in the lavatory downstairs had told me that, and so did +the miniature chairs drawn neatly under the low, vividly painted +tables in the various schoolrooms. A large comfortable chair was +evidently where the teacher sat when not wandering around among the +pupils. + +In front of each chair, firmly attached to the table, was a box with a +screen, and both sides of the box held spools of wire on blunt little +spindles. The spools had large, clear numbers on them. Near the +teacher's chair was a compact case with more spools on spindles, and +there was a large screen on the inside wall, opposite the enormous +windows. + +I went into one of the rooms and sat down in the teacher's chair, +wondering how I was going to find out about the Dynapack. I felt like +an archaeologist guessing at the functions of strange relics he'd +found in a dead city. + +Sitting in the chair was like sitting on a column of air that let me +sit upright or slump as I chose. One of the arms had a row of buttons. +I pressed one and waited nervously to find out if I'd done something +that would get me into trouble. + +Concealed lights in the ceiling and walls began glowing, getting +brighter, while the room gradually turned dark. I glanced around +bewilderedly to see why, because it was still daylight. + +The windows seemed to be sliding slightly, very slowly, and as they +slid, the sunlight was damped out. I grinned, thinking of what my +ancient Egyptian would make of that. I knew there were two sheets of +polarizing glass, probably with a vacuum between to keep out the cold +and the heat, and the lights in the room were beautifully synchronized +with the polarized sliding glass. + +I wasn't doing so badly. The rest of the objects might not be too hard +to figure out. + +The spools in the case alongside the teacher's chair could be wire +recordings. I looked for something to play them with, but there was no +sign of a playback machine. I tried to lift a spool off a spindle. It +wouldn't come off. + +Hah! The wire led down the spindle to the base of the box, holding the +spool in place. That meant the spools could be played right in that +position. But what started them playing? + + * * * * * + +I hunted over the box minutely. Every part of it was featureless--no +dials, switches or any unfamiliar counterparts. I even tried moving my +hands over it, figuring it might be like a theramin, and spoke to it +in different shades of command, because it could have been built to +respond to vocal orders. Nothing happened. + +Remember the Poe story that shows the best place to hide something is +right out in the open, which is the last place anyone would look? +Well, these things weren't manufactured to baffle people, any more +than our devices generally are. But it's only by trying everything +that somebody who didn't know what a switch is would start up a vacuum +cleaner, say, or light a big chandelier from a wall clear across the +room. + +I'd pressed every inch of the box, hoping some part of it might act as +a switch, and I finally touched one of the spindles. The spool +immediately began spinning at a very low speed and the screen on the +wall opposite the window glowed into life. + +"The history of the exploration of the Solar System," said an +announcer's deep voice, "is one of the most adventuresome in +mankind's long list of achievements. Beginning with the crude rockets +developed during World War II...." + +There were newsreel shots of V-1 and V-2 being blasted from their +takeoff ramps and a montage of later experimental models. I wished I +could see how it all turned out, but I was afraid to waste the time +watching. At any moment, I might hear the footsteps of a guard or +janitor or whoever tended buildings then. + +I pushed the spindle again. It checked the spool, which rewound +swiftly and silently, and stopped itself when the rewinding was +finished. I tried another. A nightmare underwater scene appeared. + +"With the aid of energy screens," said another voice, "the oceans of +the world were completely charted by the year 2027...." + +I turned it off, then another on developments in medicine, one on +architecture, one on history, the geography of such places as the +interior of South America and Africa that were--or are--unknown today, +and I was getting frantic, starting the wonderful wire films that held +full-frequency sound and pictures in absolutely faithful color, and +shutting them off hastily when I discovered they didn't have what I +was looking for. + +[Illustration] + +They were courses for children, but they all contained information +that our scientists are still groping for ... and I couldn't chance +watching one all the way through! + +I was frustratedly switching off a film on psychology when a female +voice said from the door, "May I help you?" + + * * * * * + +I snapped around to face her in sudden fright. She was young and slim +and slight, but she could scream loud enough to get help. Judging by +the way she was looking at me, outwardly polite and yet visibly +nervous, that scream would be coming at any second. + +"I must have wandered in here by mistake," I said, and pushed past her +to the corridor, where I began running back the way I had come. + +"But you don't understand!" she cried after me. "I really want to +help--" + +Yeah, help, I thought, pounding toward the street door. A gag right +out of that psychology film, probably--get the patient to hold still, +humor him, until you can get somebody to put him where he belongs. +That's what one of our teachers would do, provided she wasn't too +scared to think straight, if she found an old-looking guy thumbing +frenziedly through the textbooks in a grammar school classroom. + +When I came to the outside door, I stopped. I had no way of knowing +whether she'd given out an alarm, or how she might have done it, but +the obvious place to find me would be out on the street, dodging for +cover somewhere. + +I pushed the door open and let it slam shut, hoping she'd hear it +upstairs. Then I found a door, sneaked it open and went silently down +the steps. + +In the basement, I looked for a furnace or a coal bin or a fuel tank +to hide behind, but there weren't any. I don't know how they got their +heat in the winter or cooled the building in the summer. Probably some +central atomic plant that took care of the whole city, piping in the +heat or coolant in underground conduits that were led up through the +walls, because there weren't even any pipes visible. + +I hunched into the darkest corner I could find and hoped they wouldn't +look for me there. + + * * * * * + +By the time night came, hunger drove me out of the school, but I did +it warily, making sure nobody was in sight. + +The streets of the shopping center were more or less deserted. There +was no sign of a restaurant. I was so empty that I felt dizzy as I +hunted for one. But then a shocking realization made me halt on the +sidewalk and sweat with horror. + +Even if there had been a restaurant, what would I have used for money? + +Now I got the whole foul picture. She had sent old people back through +time on errands like mine ... and they'd starved to death because they +couldn't buy food! + +No, that wasn't right. I remembered what I had told Lou Pape: anybody +who gets hungry enough can always find a truck garden or a food store +to rob. + +Only ... I hadn't seen a truck garden or food store anywhere in this +city. + +And ... I thought about people in the past having their hands cut off +for stealing a loaf of bread. + +This civilization didn't look as if it went in for such drastic +punishments, assuming I could find a loaf of bread to steal. But +neither did most of the civilizations that practiced those barbarisms. + +I was more tired, hungry and scared than I'd ever believed a human +being could get. Lost, completely lost in a totally alien world, but +one in which I could still be killed or starve to death ... and God +knew what was waiting for me in my own time in case I came back +without the information she wanted. + +Or maybe even if I came back with it! + +That suspicion made up my mind for me. Whatever happened to me now +couldn't be worse than what she might do. At least I didn't have to +starve. + +I stopped a man in the street. I let several others go by before +picking him deliberately because he was middle-aged, had a kindly +face, and was smaller than me, so I could slug him and run if he +raised a row. + +"Look, friend," I told him, "I'm just passing through town--" + +"Ah?" he said pleasantly. + +"--And I seem to have mislaid--" No, that was dangerous. I'd been +about to say I'd mislaid my wallet, but I still didn't know whether +they used money in this era. He waited with a patient, friendly smile +while I decided just how to put it. "The fact is that I haven't eaten +all day and I wonder if you could help me get a meal." + +He said in the most neighborly voice imaginable, "I'll be glad to do +anything I can, Mr. Weldon." + + * * * * * + +My entire face seemed to drop open. "You--you called me--" + +"Mr. Weldon," he repeated, still looking up at me with that neighborly +smile. "Mark Weldon, isn't it? From the 20th Century?" + +I tried to answer, but my throat had tightened up worse than on any +opening night I'd ever had to live through. I nodded, wondering +terrifiedly what was going on. + +"Please relax," he said persuasively. "You're not in any danger +whatever. We offer you our utmost hospitality. Our time, you might +say, is your time." + +"You know who I am," I managed to get out through my constricted +glottis. "I've been doing all this running and ducking and hiding for +nothing." + +He shrugged sympathetically. "Everyone in the city was instructed to +help you, but you were so nervous that we were afraid to alarm you +with a direct approach. Every time we tried to, as a matter of fact, +you vanished into one place or another. We didn't follow for fear of +the effect on you. We had to wait until you came voluntarily to us." + +My brain was racing again and getting nowhere. Part of it was +dizziness from hunger, but only part. The rest was plain frightened +confusion. + +They knew who I was. They'd been expecting me. They probably even knew +what I was after. + +And they wanted to help! + +"Let's not go into explanations now," he said, "although I'd like to +smooth away the bewilderment and fear on your face. But you need to be +fed first. Then we'll call in the others and--" + +I pulled back. "What others? How do I know you're not setting up +something for me that I'll wish I hadn't gotten into?" + +"Before you approached me, Mr. Weldon, you first had to decide that we +represented no greater menace than May Roberts. Please believe me, we +don't." + +So he knew about that, too! + +"All right, I'll take my chances," I gave in resignedly. "Where does a +guy find a place to eat in this city?" + + * * * * * + +It was a handsome restaurant with soft light coming from +three-dimensional, full-color nature murals that I might mistakenly +have walked into if I'd been alone, they looked so much like gardens +and forests and plains. It was no wonder I couldn't find a restaurant +or food store or truck garden anywhere--food came up through pneumatic +chutes in each building, I'd been told on the way over, grown in +hydroponic tanks in cities that specialized in agriculture, and those +who wanted to eat "out" could drop into the restaurant each building +had. Every city had its own function. This one was for people in the +arts. I liked that. + +There was a glowing menu on the table with buttons alongside the +various selections. I looked starvingly at the items, trying to decide +which I wanted most. I picked oysters, onion soup, breast of guinea +hen under Plexiglas and was hunting for the tastiest and most +recognizable dessert when the pleasant little guy shook his head +regretfully and emphatically. + +"I'm afraid you can't eat any of those foods, Mr. Weldon," he said in +a sad voice. "We'll explain why in a moment." + +A waiter and the manager came over. They obviously didn't want to +stare at me, but they couldn't help it. I couldn't blame them, I'd +have stared at somebody from George Washington's time, which is about +what I must have represented to them. + +"Will you please arrange to have the special food for Mr. Weldon +delivered here immediately?" the little guy asked. + +"Every restaurant has been standing by for this, Mr. Carr," said the +manager. "It's on its way. Prepared, of course--it's been ready since +he first arrived." + +"Fine," said the little guy, Carr. "It can't be too soon. He's very +hungry." + +I glanced around and noticed for the first time that there was nobody +else in the restaurant. It was past the dinner hour, but, even so, +there are always late diners. We had the place all to ourselves and it +bothered me. They could have ganged up on me.... + +But they didn't. A light gong sounded, and the waiter and manager +hurried over to a slot of a door and brought out a couple of trays +loaded with covered dishes. + +"Your dinner, Mr. Weldon," the manager said, putting the plates in +front of me and removing the lids. + +I stared down at the food. + +"This," I told them angrily, "is a hell of a trick to play on a +starving man!" + + * * * * * + +They all looked unhappy. + +"Mashed dehydrated potatoes, canned meat and canned vegetables," Carr +replied. "Not very appetizing. I know, but I'm afraid it's all we can +allow you to eat." + +I took the cover off the dessert dish. + +"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. + +I squirmed a bit. "Yes." + +"Mr. Weldon, we know a good deal about her from notes that have come +down to us among her private papers. She had a safety deposit box +under a false name. I won't tell you the name; it was not discovered +until many years later, and we will not voluntarily meddle with the +past." + +I sat up and listened sharply. "So that's how you knew who I was and +what I'd be wearing and what I came for! You even knew when and where +I'd arrive!" + +"Correct," Blundell said. + +"What else do you know?" + +"That you suspected her of being responsible for the deaths of many +old people by starvation. Your suspicion was justified, except that +her father had caused all those that occurred before 1947, when she +took over after his own death. All but two people were sent into the +past. Roberts was curious about the future, of course, but he did not +want to waste a victim on a trip that would probably be fruitless. In +the past, you understand, he knew precisely what he was after. The +future was completely unknown territory." + +"But she took the chance," I said. + +"If you can call deliberate murder taking a chance, yes. One man +arrived in 2094, over fifty years ago. The other was yourself. The +first one, as you know, died of malnutrition when he was brought back +to your era." + +"And what happened to me?" I asked, jittering. + +"You will not die. We intend to make sure of that. All the other +victims--I presume you're interested in their errands?" + +"I think I know, but I'd like to find out just the same." + +"They were sent to the past to buy or steal treasures of various +sorts--art, sculpture, jewelry, fabulously valuable manuscripts and +books, anything that had great scarcity value." + +"That's not possible," I objected. "She had all the money she wanted. +Any time she needed more, all she had to do was send somebody back to +put down bets and buy stocks that she knew were winners. She had the +records, didn't she? There was no way she or her father could lose!" + + * * * * * + +He moved his shoulders in a plum-and-gold shrug. "Most of the +treasures they accumulated were for acquisition's sake--and for the +sake of vengeance for the way they believed Dr. Roberts had been +treated. When there were unusual expenses, such as replacing the very +costly parts of the time machine, that required more than they could +produce in ready cash, both Roberts and his daughter 'discovered' +these treasures." + +He waited while I digested the miserable meal and the disturbing +information he had given me. I thought I'd found a loophole in his +explanation: "You said people were sent back to the past to _buy_ +treasures, besides stealing them." + +"I did," he agreed. "They were provided with currency of whatever era +they were to visit." + +I felt my forehead wrinkle up as my theory fell apart. "Then they +could buy food. Why should they have died of malnutrition?" + +"Because, as May Roberts herself told you, nothing can exist before it +exists. Neither can anything exist after it is out of existence. If +you returned with a Dynapack, for example, it would revert to a lump +of various metals, because that was what it was in your period. But +let me give you a more personal instance. Do you remember coming back +from your first trip with dust on your hand?" + +"Yes. I must have fallen." + +"On one hand? No, Mr. Weldon. May Roberts was greatly upset by the +incident; she was afraid you would realize why the hamburger had +turned to dust--and why the old people died of starvation. _All_ of +them, not just a few." + +He paused, giving me a chance to understand what he had just said. I +did, with a sick shock. + +"If I ate your food," I said shakily, "I'd feel satisfied until I was +returned to my own time. _But the food wouldn't go along with me!_" + + * * * * * + +Blundell nodded gravely. "And so you, too, would die of malnutrition. +The foods we have given you existed in your era. We were very careful +of that, so careful that many of them probably were stored years +before you left your time. We regret that they are not very palatable, +but at least we are positive they will go back with you. You will be +as healthy when you arrive in the past as when you left. + +"Incidentally, she made you change your clothes for the same +reason--they had been made in 1930. She had clothing from every era +she wanted visited and chose old people who would fit them best. +Otherwise, you see, they'd have arrived naked." + +I began to shake as if I were as old as I'd pretended to be on the +stage. "She's going to pull me back! If I don't bring her the +information about the Dynapack, she'll shoot me!" + +"That, Mr. Weldon, is our problem," Blundell said, putting his hand +comfortingly on my arm to calm me. + +"Your problem? I'm the one who'll get shot, not you!" + +"But we know in complete detail what will happen when you are returned +to the 20th Century." + +I pulled my arm away and grabbed his. "You know that? Tell me!" + +"I'm sorry, Mr. Weldon. If we tell you what you did, you might think +of some alternate action, and there is no knowing what the result +would be." + +"But I didn't get shot or die of malnutrition?" + +"That much we can tell you. Neither." + +They all stood up, so bright and attractive in their colorful clothes +that I felt like a shirt-sleeved stage hand who'd wandered in on a +costume play. + +"You will be returned in a month, according to the notes May Roberts +left. She gave you plenty of time to get the data, you see. We propose +to make that month an enjoyable one for you. The resources of our +city--and any others you care to visit--are at your disposal. We wish +you to take full advantage of them." + +"And the Dynapack?" + +"Let us worry about that. We want you to have a good time while you +are our guest." + +I did. + +It was the most wonderful month of my life. + + * * * * * + +The mesh cage blurred around me. I could see May Roberts through it, +her hand just leaving the switch. She was as beautiful as ever, but I +saw beneath her beauty the vengeful, vicious creature her father's +bitterness had turned her into; Blundell and Carr had let me read some +of her notes, and I knew. I wished I could have spent the rest of my +years in the future, instead of having to come back to this. + +She came over and opened the gate, smiling like an angel welcoming a +bright new soul. Then her eyes traveled startledly over me and her +smile almost dropped off. But she held it firmly in place. + +She had to, while she asked, "Do you have the notes I sent you for?" + +"Right here," I said. + +I reached into my breast pocket and brought out a stubby automatic and +shot her through the right arm. Her closed hand opened and a little +derringer clanked on the floor. She gaped at me with an expression of +horrified surprise that should have been recorded permanently; it +would have served as a model for generations of actors and actresses. + +"You--brought back a weapon!" she gasped. "You shot me!" She stared +vacantly at her bleeding arm and then at my automatic. "But you +can't--bring anything back from the future. And you aren't--dying of +malnutrition." + +She said it all in a voice shocked into toneless wonder. + +"The food I ate and this gun are from the present," I said. "The +people of the future knew I was coming. They gave me food that +wouldn't vanish from my cells when I returned. They also gave me +the gun instead of the plans for the Dynapack." + +[Illustration] + +[Illustration] + +"And you took it?" she screamed at me. "You idiot! I'd have shared the +profits honestly with you. You'd have been worth millions!" + +"With acute malnutrition," I amended. "I like it better this way, +thanks--poor, but alive. Or relatively poor, I should say, because +you've been very generous and I appreciate it." + +"By shooting me!" + +"I hated to puncture that lovely arm, but it wasn't as painful as +starving or getting shot myself. Now if you don't mind--or even if you +do--it's your turn to get into the cage, Miss Roberts." + +She tried to grab for the derringer on the floor with her left hand. + +"Don't bother," I said quietly. "You can't reach it before a bullet +reaches you." + + * * * * * + +She straightened up, staring at me for the first time with terror in +her eyes. + +"What are you going to do to me?" she whispered. + +"I could kill you as easily as you could have killed me. Kill you and +send your body into some other era. How many dozens of deaths were you +responsible for? The law couldn't convict you of them, but I can. And +I couldn't be convicted, either." + +She put her hand on the wound. Blood seeped through her fingers as she +lifted her chin at me. + +"I won't beg for my life, Weldon, if that's what you want. I could +offer you a partnership, but I'm not really in a position to offer it, +am I?" + +She was magnificent, terrifyingly intelligent, brave clear through ... +and deadlier than a plague. I had to remember that. + +"Into the cage," I said. "I have some friends in the future who have +plans for you. I won't tell you what they are, of course; you didn't +tell me what I'd go through, did you? Give my friends my fondest +regards. If I can manage it, I'll visit them--and you." + +She backed warily into the cage. It would have been pleasant to kiss +those wonderful lips good-by. I'd thought about them for a whole +month, wanting them and loathing them at the same time. + +It would have been like kissing a coral snake. I knew it and I +concentrated on shutting the gate on her. + +"You'd like to be rich, wouldn't you, Weldon?" she asked through the +mesh. + +"I can be," I said. "I have the machine. I can send people into the +past or future and make myself a pile of dough. Only I'd give them +food to take along. I wouldn't kill them off to keep the secret to +myself. Anything else on your mind?" + +"You want me," she stated. + +I didn't argue. + +"You could have me." + +"Just long enough to get my throat slit or brains blown out. I don't +want anything that much." + +I rammed the switch closed. + +The mesh cage blurred and she was gone. Her blood was on the floor, +but she was gone into the future I had just come from. + +That was when the reaction hit me. I'd escaped starvation and her gun, +but I wasn't a hero and the release of tension flipped my stomach over +and unhinged my knees. + +Shaking badly, I stumbled through the big, empty house until I found a +phone. + + * * * * * + +Lou Pape got there so quickly that I still hadn't gotten over the +tremors, in spite of a bottle of brandy I dug out of a credenza, maybe +because the date on the label, 1763, gave me a new case of the +shivers. + +I could see the worry on Lou's face vanish when he assured himself +that I was all right. It came back again, though, when I told him what +had happened. He didn't believe any of it, naturally. I guess I +hadn't really expected him to. + +"If I didn't know you, Mark," he said, shaking his big, dark head +unhappily, "I'd send you over to Bellevue for observation. Even +knowing you, maybe that's what I ought to do." + +"All right, let's see if there's any proof," I suggested tiredly. +"From what I was told, there ought to be plenty." + +We searched the house clear down to the basement, where he stood with +his face slack. + +"Christ!" he breathed. "The annex to the Metropolitan Museum!" + +The basement ran the length and breadth of the house and was twice as +high as an average room, and the whole glittering place was crammed +with paintings in rich, heavy frames, statuettes, books, manuscripts, +goblets and ewers and jewelry made of gold and huge gems, and +tapestries in brilliant color ... and everything was as bright and +sparkling and new as the day it was made, which was almost true of a +lot of it. + +"The dame was loaded and she was an art collector, that's all," Lou +said. "You can't sell me that screwy story of yours. She was a +collector and she knew where to find things." + +"She certainly did," I agreed. + +"What did you do with her?" + +"I told you. I shot her through the arm before she could shoot me and +I sent her into the future." + +He took me by the front of the jacket. "You killed her, Mark. You +wanted all this stuff for yourself, so you knocked her off and got rid +of her body somehow." + +"Why don't you go back to acting, where you belong, Lou, and leave +sleuthing to people who know how?" I asked, too worn to pull his hands +loose. "Would I kill her and call you up to get right over here? +Wouldn't I have sneaked these things out first? Or more likely I'd +have sneaked them out, hidden them and nobody--including you--would +know I'd ever been here. Come on, use your head." + +"That's easy. You lost your nerve." + +"I'm not even losing my patience." + + * * * * * + +He pushed me away savagely. "If you killed her for this stuff or +because of that crazy yarn you gave me, I'm a cop and you're no +friend. You're just a plain killer I happened to have known once, and +I'll make sure you fry." + +"You always did have a taste for that kind of dialogue. Go ahead and +wrap me up in an airtight case, have them throw the book at me, send +me up the river, put me in the hot squat. But you'll have to do the +proving, not me." + +He headed for the stairs. "I will. And don't try to make a break or +I'll plug you as if I never saw you before." + +He put in a call at the phone upstairs. I didn't give a particular +damn who it was he'd called. I was too relieved that I hadn't killed +May Roberts; destroying anything that beautiful, however evil, would +have stayed with me the rest of my life. There was another reason for +my relief--if I'd killed her and left the evidence for Lou to find, +he'd never help me. No, that's not quite so; he'd probably have tried +to get me to plead insanity on the basis of my unbelievable +explanation. + +But most of all, I couldn't get rid of the look on her face when I'd +shot her through the arm, the arm that was so wonderful to look at and +that had held a murderous little gun to greet me with. + +She was in the future now. She wouldn't be executed by them; they +regarded crime as an illness, and they'd treat her with their +marvelously advanced therapy and she'd become a useful, contented +citizen, living out her existence in an era that had given me more +happiness than I'd ever had. + +I sat and tried to stupefy myself with brandy that should long ago +have dried to brick-hardness, while Lou Pape stood at the door with +his hand near his holster and glared at me. He didn't take his eyes +off me until somebody named Prof. Jeremiah Aaronson came in and was +introduced briefly and flatly to me. Then Lou took him upstairs. + +It was minutes before I realized what they were going to do. I ran up +after them. + +I was just in time to see Aaronson carefully take the housing off the +hooded motors, and leap back suddenly from the fury of lightning +sparks. + + * * * * * + +The whole machine fused while we watched helplessly--motors, switches, +panel and mesh cage. They flashed blindingly and blew apart and melted +together in a charred and molten pile. + +"Rigged," Aaronson said in the tone of a bitter curse. "Set to short +if it was tampered with. I wouldn't be surprised if there were +incendiaries placed at strategic spots. Nothing else could have made a +mess like this." + +He finally glanced down at his hand and saw it was scorched. He hissed +with the realization of pain, blew on the burn, shook it in the air to +cool it, and pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket by reaching +all the way around the rear for it with his left hand. + +Lou looked helplessly at the heap of cooling slag. "Can you make any +sense of it, Prof?" he asked. + +"Can you?" Aaronson retorted. "Melt down a microtome or any other +piece of machinery you're unfamiliar with, and see if you can identify +it when it looks like this." + +He went out, wrapping his hand in the handkerchief. + +Lou kicked glumly at a piece of twisted tubing. "Aaronson is a top +physicist, Mark. I was hoping he'd make enough out of the machine +to--ah, hell, I wanted to believe you! I couldn't. I still can't. Now +we'll have to dig through the house to find her body." + +"You won't find it or the secret of the machine," I answered +miserably. "I told you they said the secret would be lost. This is +how. Now I'll never be able to visit the future again. I'll never see +them or May Roberts. They'll straighten her out, get rid of her hate +and vindictiveness, and it won't do me a damned bit of good because +the machine is gone and she's generations ahead of me." + +He turned to me puzzledly. "You're not afraid to have us dig for her +body, Mark?" + +"Tear the place apart if you want." + +"We'll have to," he said. "I'm calling Homicide." + +"Call in the Marines. Call in anybody you like." + +"You'll have to stay in my custody until we're through." + +I shrugged. "As long as you leave me alone while you're doing your +digging, I don't give a hang if I'm under arrest for suspicion of +murder. I've got to do some straightening out. I wish the people in +the future could take on the job--they could do it faster and better +than I can--but some nice, peaceful quiet would help." + + * * * * * + +He didn't touch me or say a word to me as we waited for the squad to +arrive. I sat in the chair and shut out first him and then the men +with their sounding hammers and crowbars and all the rest. + +She'd been ruthless and callous, and she'd murdered old people with no +more pity than a wolf among a herd of helpless sheep. + +But Blundell and Carr had told me that she was as much a victim as the +oldsters who'd died of starvation with the riches she'd given them +still untouched, on deposit in the banks or stuffed into hiding places +or pinned to their shabby clothes. She needed treatment for the +illness her father had inflicted on her. But even he, they'd said, had +been suffering from a severe emotional disturbance and proper care +could have made a great and honored scientist out of him. + +They'd told me the truth and made me hate her, and they'd told me +their viewpoint and made that hatred impossible. + +I was here, in the present, without her. The machine was gone. +Yearning over something I couldn't change would destroy me. I had no +right to destroy myself. Nobody did, they'd told me, and nobody who +reconciles himself to the fact that some situations just are +impossible to work out ever could. + +I'd realized that when the squad packed up and left and Lou Pape came +over to where I was sitting. + +"You knew we wouldn't find her," he said. + +"That's what I kept telling you." + +"Where is she?" + +"In Port Said, exotic hellhole of the world, where she's dancing in +veils for the depraved--" + +"Cut out the kidding! Where is she?" + +"What's the difference, Lou? She's not here, is she?" + +"That doesn't mean she can't be somewhere else, dead." + +"She's not dead. You don't have to believe me about anything else, +just that." + +He hauled me out of the chair and stared hard at my face. "You aren't +lying," he said. "I know you well enough to know you're not." + +"All right, then." + +"But you're a damned fool to think a dish like that would have any +part of you. I don't mean you're nothing a woman would go for, but +she's more fang than female. You'd have to be richer and +better-looking than her, for one thing--" + +"Not after my friends get through with her. She'll know a good man +when she sees one and I'd be what she wants." I slid my hand over my +naked scalp. "With a head of hair, I'd look my real age, which happens +to be a year younger than you, if you remember. She'd go for me--they +checked our emotional quotients and we'd be a natural together. The +only thing was that I was bald. They could have grown hair on my head, +which would have taken care of that, and then we'd have gotten +together like gin and tonic." + + * * * * * + +Lou arched his black eyebrows at me. "They really could grow hair on +you?" + +"Sure. Now you want to know why I didn't let them." I glanced out the +window at the smoky city. "That's why. They couldn't tell me if I'd +ever get back to the future. I wasn't taking any chances. As long as +there was a possibility that I'd be stranded in my own time, I wasn't +going to lose my livelihood. Which reminds me, you have anything else +to do here?" + +"There'll be a guard stationed around the house and all her holdings +and art will be taken over until she comes back--" + +"She won't." + +"--or is declared legally dead." + +"And me?" I broke in. + +"We can't hold you without proof of murder." + +"Good enough. Then let's get out of here." + +"I have to go back on duty," he objected. + +"Not any more. I've got over $15,000 in cash and deposits--enough to +finance you and me." + +"Enough to kill her for." + +"Enough to finance you and me," I repeated doggedly. "I told you I had +the money before she sent me into the future--" + +"All right, all right," he interrupted. "Let's not go into that again. +We couldn't find a body, so you're free. Now what's this about +financing the two of us?" + +I put my fingers around his arm and steered him out to the street. + +"This city has never had a worse cop than you," I said. "Why? Because +you're an actor, not a cop. You're going back to acting, Lou. This +money will keep us both going until we get a break." + +He gave me the slit-eyed look he'd picked up in line of duty. "That +wouldn't be a bribe, would it?" + +"Call it a kind of memorial to a lot of poor, innocent old people and +a sick, tormented woman." + +We walked along in silence out in the clean sunshine. It was our +silence; the sleek cars and burly trucks made their noise and the +pedestrians added their gabble, but a good Stanislavsky actor like Lou +wouldn't notice that. Neither would I, ordinarily, but I was giving +him a chance to work his way through this situation. + +"I won't hand you a lie, Mark," he said finally. "I never stopped +wanting to act. I'll take your deal on two considerations." + +"All right, what are they?" + +"That whatever I take off you is strictly a loan." + +"No argument. What's the other?" + +He had an unlit cigarette almost to his lips. He held it there while +he said: "That any time you come across a case of an old person who +died of starvation with $30,000 stashed away somewhere, you turn fast +to the theatrical page and not tell me or even think about it." + +"I don't have to agree to that." + + * * * * * + +He lowered the cigarette, stopped and turned to me. "You mean it's no +deal?" + +"Not that," I said. "I mean there won't be any more of those cases. +Between knowing that and both of us back acting again, I'm satisfied. +You don't have to believe me. Nobody does." + +He lit up and blew out a pretty plume, fine and slow and straight, +which would have televised like a million in the bank. Then he +grinned. "You wouldn't want to bet on that, would you?" + +"Not with a friend. I do all my sure-thing betting with bookies." + +"Then make it a token bet," he said. "One buck that somebody dies of +starvation with a big poke within a year." + +I took the bet. + +I took the dollar a year later. + + --H. L. GOLD + + * * * * * + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Die Rich, by Horace Leonard Gold + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD DIE RICH *** + +***** This file should be named 31892.txt or 31892.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/8/9/31892/ + +Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Robert Cicconetti, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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