A quickboat slid onto its ramp. Quellen joined the multitudes pressing into it. He felt the thrum of power as it moved outward. Aching humbly from fear, Quellen headed downtown to meet Koll.
The building of Secretariat of Crime was considered an architectural masterpiece, Quellen had been told. Eighty stories, topped by spiked towers, and the crimson curtain-walls were rough and sandy in texture, so that they sparkled like a beacon when illuminated. The building had roots; Quellen had never learned how many underlevels there were, and he suspected that no one really knew, save certain members of the High Government. Surely there were twenty levels of computer down there, and a crypt for dead storage below that, and a further eight levels of interrogation rooms even deeper. Of that much, Quellen had sure knowledge. Some said that there was another computer, forty levels thick, underneath the interrogation rooms, and there were those who maintained that this was the true computer, while the one above was only for decoration and camouflage. Perhaps. Quellen did not try to probe too deeply into such things. For all he knew, the High Government itself met in secret councils a hundred levels below street level in this very building. He kept his curiosity under check. He did not wish to invite the curiosity of others, and that meant placing a limit on his own.
Clerical workers nodded respectfully to Quellen as he passed between their close-packed rows. He smiled. He could afford to be gracious; here he had status, the mana of Class Seven. They were Fourteens, Fifteens, the boy emptying the disposal basket was probably a Twenty. To them, he was a lofty figure, virtually a confidant of High Government people, a personal associate of Danton and Kloofman themselves. All a matter of perspective, Quellen thought.
Actually he had glimpsed Dantonor someone said to be Dantononly once. He had no real reason to think that Kloofman actually existed, though probably he did.
Clamping his hand vigorously on the doorknob, Quellen waited to be scanned. The door of the inner office opened. He entered and found unfriendly figures hunched at desks within. Little sharp-nosed Martin Koll, looking for all the world like some huge rodent, sat facing the door, sifting through a sheaf of minislips. Leon Spanner, Quellens other boss, sat opposite him at the glistening table, his great bull neck hunching over still more memoranda. As Quellen came into the room, Koll reached to the wall with a quick nervous gesture and flipped up the oxy vent, admitting a supply for three.
Took you long enough, Koll said, without looking up.
Quellen glowered at him. Koll was gray-haired, grayfaced, gray of soul. Quellen hated him. Sorry, he said. I had to change. I was off duty.
Whatever we do wont alter anything, rumbled Spanner,as if no one had entered and nothing had been said. Whats happened has happened, and nothing we do will have the slightest effect. Do you see? It makes me want to smash things! To pound and break!
Sit down, Quellen, Koll said offhandedly. He turned to Spanner, a big, beefy man with a furrowed forehead and thick features. I thought wed been through this all before, Koll said. If we meddle its going to mix up everything. With about five hundred years to cover, well scramble the whole framework. That much is clear.
Quellen silently breathed relief. Whatever it was they were concerned about, it wasnt his illegal African hideaway. From the way it sounded, they were talking about the time-hoppers. Good. He looked at his two superiors more carefully, now that his eyes were no longer blurred by fear and the anticipation of humiliating punishment. They had obviously been arguing quite a while, Koll and Spanner. Koll was the deep one, with his agile mind and nervous, birdlike energy. But Spanner had more power. They said he had connections in high places, even High places.
All right, Koll, Spanner grunted. Ill even grant that it will mix up the past. Ill concede that much.
Well, thats something, the small man said.
Dont interrupt me. I still think weve got to put a stop to it. We cant undo whats done, but we can cut it short this year. In fact, we must.
Koll glared balefully at Spanner. Quellen could see that his own presence was the only reason Koll was concealing the anger lying just behind his eyes. They would be spewing curses at one another if the underling Quellen did not happen to be in the room.
Why, Spanner, why? Koll demanded in what passed for measured tones. If we keep the process going we maintain things as they are. Four thousand of them went in 86, nine thousand in 87, fifty thousand in 88. And when we get last years figures, theyll be even higher. Lookhere it says that over a million hoppers arrived in the first eighty years, and after that the figures kept rising. Think of the population were losing! Its wonderful! We cant afford to let these people stay here, when we have a chance to get rid of them. And when history says that we did get rid of them.
History also says that they stopped going back to the past after 2491. Which means that we caught them next year, Spanner said. I mean, that we will catch them next year. Its ordained. Weve got no choice but to obey. The pasts a closed book.
Is it? Koll laughed; it was almost a bark. What if we dont solve it? What if the hoppers keep on going back?
It didnt happen that way, though. We know it. All the hoppers who reached the past came from the years 2486 to 2491. Thats a matter of record, said Spanner doggedly.
Records can be falsified.
The High Government wants this traffic stopped. Why must I argue with you, Koll? You want to defy history, thats your business, but defying Them as well? No. We dont have that option.
But to clear away millions of prolets
Spanner grunted and tightened his grasp on the minislip she was holding. Quellen, feeling like an intruder, let his eyes flick back from one man to the other.
All right, Spanner said slowly. Ill agree with you that its nice to keep losing all those prolets. Even though on the face of things it appears that we wont go on losing them much longer. You say we have to let it keep going on, or else itll alter the past. I take the opposite view. But let that pass. I wont argue the point, since you seem so positive. Furthermore, you think that its a good thing to use this time-hopper business as a method of reducing population.Im with you on that too, Koll. I dont like overcrowding any more than you do, and Ill admit things have reached a ridiculous state nowadays. But consider: were being hoodwinked. For someone to be running a time-travel business behind our backs is illegal and unethical and a lot of other things, and he ought to be stopped. What do you say, Quellen? Ultimately this is going to be the responsibility of your department, you know.
The sudden reference to him came as a jolt. Quellen was still struggling to get his bearings in this debate, and he was not entirely sure what they were talking about. He smiled weakly and shook his head.
No opinion? Koll asked abrasively.
Quellen looked at him. He was unable to stare straight into Kolls hard, colorless eyes, and so he let his gaze rest on the bureau managers cheekbones instead. He remained silent.
No opinion, Quellen? Thats too bad indeed. It doesnt speak well of you.
Quellen repressed a shudder. Im afraid that I havent been keeping up with the latest developments in the timehopper case. As you know, Ive been very busy on certain projects that
He let his voice trail off, feeling like a fool. His eager assistants probably knew all about this situation, he thought. He wondered why he had never bothered to check with Brogg. But how could he anticipate everything?
Koll said, Are you aware that thousands of prolets have vanished into nowhere since the beginning of the year, Quellen?
No, sir. Ah, I mean, of course, sir. Certainly. Its just that we havent really had a chance to take action on it, Quellen said.
The footling sound of his own voice appalled him. Verylame, Quellen, very lame,he told himself. Of course you dont know anything about it, when you spend all your free time in that pretty little hideaway across the ocean. But Stanley Brogg probably knows every detail. Brogg is very efficient.
Well, just where do you think theyve gone? Koll asked. Maybe you think theyve all hopped into stats and gone off somewhere to look for work? To Africa, maybe?
The barb had poison on it. Quellen came close to gasping in shock before he could convince himself that Koll was stabbing in the dark. He hid his reaction as well as he could and replied evenly, I have no idea, sir.
You havent been reading your history books very well, then, Quellen. Think, man: what was the most important historical development of the past five centuries?
Quellen thought. What, indeed? The Entente? The comingof the High Government? The breakdown of the nations? The stat? He hated the way Koll could turn him into an idiotic schoolboy. Quellen knew he was no fool, however inane he might seem when hauled on the carpet. He was competent enough. But at the core of his being was his vulnerability, his hidden crime, and that meant he was jelly at the core. He began to sweat. He said, Im not sure how to evaluate that question, sir.
Koll casually flipped the oxy up a little higher, in an almost insulting gesture of friendliness. The sweet gas purred into the room. Softly Koll said, Ill tell you, then. Its the arrival of the hoppers. And this is the era theyre starting out from.
Of course, Quellen said. Everyone knew about the hoppers, and he was annoyed with himself for not simply offering the obvious to Koll.
Someones developed time travel in the past few years, Spanner said. Hes beginning to siphon the time hoppers back to the past. Thousands of unemployed prolets are gone already, and if we dont catch him soon hell clutter up the past with every wandering workingman in the country.
So? Thats just my point, Koll said impatiently. We know theyve already arrived in the past; our history books say so. Now we can sit back and let this fellow distribute our refuse all over the previous five centuries.
Spanner swiveled round and confronted Quellen. What do you think? he demanded. Should we follow the order of the High Government, round up this fellow, and stop the departure of the hoppers? Or should we do as Koll says and let everything go on, which defies not only Them but also incidentally the information of history?
Ill need time to study the case, Quellen said suspiciously. The last thing that he wanted to have happen to him was to be forced into making a judgement in favor of one superior over another.
Let me show you your path right now, Spanner said, with a side glance at Koll. We have our instructions from the High Government, and its futile to debate them. As Koll here knows quite well, Kloofman himself has taken an interest in this case. Our task is to locate the illegal nexus of time-travel activity and bring it under official control. Koll, if you object, youd better appeal to the High Government.
No objections, said Koll. Quellen?
Quellen stiffened. Yes, sir?
You heard Mr. Spanner. Get on it, fast. Track down this fellow whos shipping the hoppers and put him away, but not before you get his secret out of him. The High Government wants control of the process. And a halt to this illegal activity. Its all yours, Quellen.
He was dismissed.
2.
Norman Pomrath looked coldly at his wife and said, When is your brother going to do something for us, Helaine?
Ive told you. He cant.
He wont, you mean.
He cant. Who do you think he is, Danton? And will you please get out of my way? I need a shower.
At least you said please, Pomrath grumbled. Im grateful for small mercies.
He stepped to one side. Out of some tatter of modesty he did not watch as his wife stripped off her green tunic. She crumpled the garment, tossed it aside, and got under the molecular bath. Since she stood with her back to him while she washed, he let himself watch her. Modesty was an important thing, Pomrath thought. Even when youve been married eleven years, youve got to give the other person some privacy in these stinking one-room lives. Otherwise youll click your gyros. He gnawed a fingernail and stole furtive glances at his wifes lean buttocks.
The air in the Pomrath apartment was foul, but he didnt dare turn up the oxy. He had drawn this weeks supply, and if he nudged the stud, the utility computer somewhere in the bowels of the earth would say unpleasant things to him. Pomrath didnt think his nerves could stand much garbage from a utility computer just now. His nerves couldnt stand much of anything. He was Class Fourteen, which was bad enough, and he hadnt had any work in three months, which was worse, and he had a brother-in-law in Class Seven, which really cut into him. What good did Joe Quellen do him though? The damned guy was never around. Ducking out on his family responsibilities.
Helaine was finished with her shower. The molecular bath used no water; only Class Ten and up was entitled to use water for purposes of bodily cleaning. Since most people in the world were Class Eleven and down, the planet would stink halfway across the universe but for the handy molecular baths. You stripped down, stood in front of the nozzle, and ultrasonic waves cunningly separated the grime from your skin and gave you the illusion of being clean. Pomrath did not bother to avert his eyes as Helaines nude white form crossed in front of him. She wriggled into her tunic. Once, he remembered, he had thought she was voluptuous. He had been much younger then. Later, it had seemed to him that she had begun to lose weight. Now she was thin. There were timesespecially at nightwhen she hardly looked female to him.
He slid down into the webfoam cradle along one windowless wall and said, When do the kids get home?
Fifteen minutes. Thats why I showered now. Are you staying here, Norm?
Im going out in five minutes.
To the sniffer palace?
He scowled at her. His face, creased and pleated by defeat, was well designed for scowling. No, he said, not to the sniffer palace. To the job machine.
But you know the job machine will contact you here if theres any work, so
I want to go to it, Pomrath said with icy dignity. I do not want it to come tome. I will go to the job machine. And then, most likely to the sniffer palace afterward. Perhaps to celebrate and perhaps to drown my sorrow.
I knew it.
Damn you, Helaine, why dont you get off me? Is it my fault Im between jobs? I rank high in skills. I ought to be working. But theres a cosmic injustice in the universe that keeps me unemployed.
She laughed harshly. The harshness was a new note, something of the last few years. Youve had work exactly twenty-three weeks in eleven years, she told him. The rest of the time weve collected doles. Youve moved up from Class Twenty to Class Fourteen, and there you stick, year after year, and were getting nowhere, and the walls of this damned apartment are like a cage to me, and when those two kids are in it with me I feel like tearing their heads off, and
Helaine, he said quietly. Stop it.
To his considerable surprise, she did. A muscle knotted in her jaw as she caught herself headlong in her stream of protest. Much more calmly she said, Im sorry, Norm. Its not your fault were prolets. There are only so many jobs to be had. Even with your skills
Yes. I know.
Its the way things are. I didnt mean to screech, Norm. I love you, do you know that? For better, for worse, like they say.
Sure, Helaine. All right.
Maybe Ill go to the sniffer palace with you, this time. Let me get the kids programmed and
He shook his head. It was very touching, this sudden display of affection, but he saw enough of Helaine in the apartment, day and night. He didnt want her following him around as he took his pitiful pleasures. Not this time, sweeting, he said quickly. Remember, Ive got to go punch the job machine first. Youd better stay here. Go visit Beth Wisnack, or somebody.
Her husbands still gone.
Who, Wisnack? Havent they traced him?
They think hehe hopped. I mean, theyve had a televector on him and everything, Helaine said. No trace. Hes really gone.
You believe in this hopper business? Pomrath asked.
Of course.
Traveling in time? It doesnt make any sense. I mean, as a matter of teleology, if you start turning the universe upside down, if you confuse the direction in which events flow, Helaine, I mean
Her eyes were very wide. The faxtapes say theres such a thing. The High Government is investigating it. Joes own department. Norm, how can you say there are no time-hoppers, when people are disappearing every day? When Bud Wisnack right on the next level
Theres no proof he did that.
Where else is he, then?
Antarctica, maybe. Poland. Mars. A televector can slip up just like anybody else. I cant swallow this time-travel deal, Helaine. It has no thingness for me, do you follow? Its unreal, a fantasy, something out of a sniffer dream.
Pomrath coughed. He was doing a lot of vociferous talking lately. He thought about Bud Wisnack, small and bald, with an eternal blue stubble on his cheeks, and wondered if he had really jumped a hoop in time and gone off to 1999 or whenever.
The Pomraths looked at each other in awkward silence for a moment. Then Helaine said, Tell me something hypothetical, Norm. If you went outside now and a man came up to you and said he was running the hopper business, and did you want to go back in time and get away from it all, what would you say to him?
Pomrath considered. Id tell him no. I mean, would it be honorable to skip out on my wife and family? Its all right for a Bud Wisnack, but I couldnt duck all my responsibilities, Helaine.
Her gray-blue eyes sparked. She smiled her dont-fool-me-kiddo smile. Thats very nobly said, Norm. But I think youd go, all the same.
Youre entitled to think what you want to think. Since its all a fantasy anyway, it doesnt really matter. Im going to have a look at the job machine now. Ill give it a real punch. Who knows? I might find myself twitched right up to Class Seven with Joe.
Could be, Helaine said. What time will you be back?
Later.
Norm, dont spend too much time at the sniffer palace. I hate it when you get high on that stuff.
Im the masses, he told her. I need my opium.
He palmed the door. It slid open with a little whickering sound, and he went out. The hall light was burning feebly. Cursing, Pomrath groped his way toward the elevator. The hall lights werent like this in Class Seven places, he knew. He had visited Joe Quellen. Not often, true; his brother-in-law didnt mingle much with the prolets, even when they were his own kin. But he had seen. Quellen led a damned good life. And what was he, anyway? What were his skills?He was a bureaucrat, a paper-shuffler. There was nothing Joe Quellen could do that a computer couldnt do better. But he had a job. Tenure.
Gloomily Pomrath stared at his distorted reflection in the burnished framework of the elevator oval. He was a squat, broad-shouldered man just past forty, with heavy eyebrows and tired, sad eyes. The reflection made him look older, with much flesh at his throat. Give me time, he thought. He stepped through the oval and was sped upward toward the surface level of the huge apartment house.
I made my choices of my own free will, he insisted. I married the voluptuous Helaine Quellen. I had my permitted two children. I opted for my kind of work. And here I am in one room for four people, and my wife is skinny and I dont look at her when shes naked because I have to spare her nerves, and the oxy quota is used up, and here I am going to punch the job machine and find out the old, old story, and then to drop a lousy few pieces at the sniffer palace, and
Pomrath wondered what exactly he would do if some agent of the time-hopper people came up to him and offered to peddle him a ticket into a quieter yesterday. Would he do a Bud Wisnack and grab at the chance?
This is nonsense, Pomrath told himself. Such an option doesnt exist. The time-hoppers are imaginary. A fraud perpetrated by the High Government. You cant travel backward in time. All you can do is go relentlessly forward, at a rate of one second per second.
But if thats the case, Norm Pomrath asked himself, where did Bud Wisnack really go?
When the apartment door closed, and Helaine found herself alone, she slumped down wearily on the edge of the all-purpose table in the middle of the room and bit down hard on her lower lip to keep back the tears.
He didnt even notice me, she thought. I took a shower right in front of him and he didnt even notice.
Actually, Helaine had to admit, that wasnt true. She had watched his reflection in the coppery wall-plate that was their substitute for a window, and she had seen him covertly looking at her body as she stood with her back to him under the shower. And then, when she had walked naked across the room to pick up her tunic, he had looked at her again, the front view.
But he hadnt done anything. That was the essential thing. If he felt some spark of sexual feeling for her, he would have showed it. With a caress, a smile, a hasty hand slammed against the button that would bring the hidden bed sliding out of the wall. He had looked at her body, and it hadnt had any effect on him at all. Helaine suffered more from that than from all the rest.
She was thirty-seven, almost. That wasnt really old. She had seventy or eighty years of actuarial lifespan ahead of her. Yet she felt middle-aged. She had lost a great deal of weight lately, so that her hip-bones jutted out like misplaced shoulder blades. She no longer wore her off-the-bosom dresses. She knew that she had ceased to have much sensual appeal for her husband, and it pained her.
Was it true, the stories going around that the High Government was promoting special anti-sex measures? That by order of Danton the men were getting impotence pills and the women were receiving desensualizers? That was what the women were whispering. Noelle Kalmuck said that the laundry-room computer had told her so. You had to believe what a computer told you, didnt you? Presumably the machine was plugged right into the high Government itself.
But it made no sense. Helaine was no genius, but she had common sense. Why would the High Government want to meddle with the sex drive? Surely not as a birth-control measure. They controlled birth more humanely, by interfering with fertility, not with potency. Two children per married couple, that was it. If they allowed only one, they might be making some headway with the population problem, but unfortunately there were substantial pressure groups who insisted on the two-child family, and even the High Government had bowed. So population was stabilized, and even reduced a littletaking into account the bachelors, like Helaines brother Joe, and the couples who had sworn the Sterility Pledge, and suchbut no real headway was made.
Still, with fertility controlled, it was illogical for the High Government to take away sex as well. Sex was the sport of the prolets. It was free. You didnt need to have a job in order to enjoy sex. It passed the time. Helaine decided that the rumors she had heard were sheer foolishness, and she doubted that the laundry computer had said anything on the subject to Noelle Kalmuck. Why should the computer talk to Noelle at all? She was just a giggly little fool.
Of course, you could never tell. The High Government could be devious. This time-hopper business, for example: was there any truth in it, Helaine wondered? Well, there were all the accredited documents of time-hoppers who had arrived in previous centuries, but suppose they were all frauds inserted in the history books simply to baffle and confuse? What was the real and what was imagined?
Helaine sighed. What time is it? she asked.
Her earwatch said gently, Ten minutes to fifteen.
The children would be arriving home from school soon. Little Joseph was seven, Marina was nine. At this age they still had some shreds of innocence, as much as any children could have who spent all their lives in the same room as their parents. Helaine turned to the foodbox and programmed their afternoon snack with furious jabs of her knuckles. She had just finished the job when the children appeared.
They greeted her. Helaine shrugged. Plug in and have your snacks, she said.
Joseph grinned angelically at her. We saw Kloofman in school today. He looks like Daddy.
Sure, Helaine said. The High Government has nothing-better to do than visit schoolrooms, I know. And the reason-why Kloofman looks like Daddy is She cut herself short. She had been about to say something untrue, but Joseph had a literal mind. Hed repeat it, and the next day the investigators would come around to know why the class Fourteen Pomrath family was claiming to be related to one of Them.
Marina broke in, It wasnt really Kloofman anyway. Not himself. They just showed pictures of him on the wall. She nudged her brother. Kloofman wouldnt come to your grade, silly. Hes much too busy.
Marinas right, Helaine said. Listen, children, Ive programmed you. Have your snack and start your homework right away.
Wheres Daddy? Joseph asked.
He went to punch the job machine.
Will he get a job today? Marina wanted to know.
Its hard to say. Helaine smiled evasively. Im going to visit Mrs. Wisnack.
The children ate. Helaine stepped through the door and went uplevel to the Wisnack apartment. The door told her that Beth was home, so Helaine announced herself and was admitted. Beth Wisnack nodded to her wordlessly. She looked terribly tired. She was a small woman, just about forty, with dark, trusting eyes and dull-green hair pulled back in a tight grip to a bun. Her two children, the usual boy and girl, sat with their backs to the door, snacking.
Any news? Helaine asked.
None. None. Hes gone, Helaine. They wont admit it yet, but hes hopped, and he wont ever come back. Im a widow.
What about the televector search?
The little woman shrugged. According to law theyve got to keep it going eight days. Then thats all. Theyve searched the registered list of hoppers, but theres nobody named Wisnack on it. Which doesnt mean a thing, of course. Very few of them used their real names when they arrived in the past. And the early ones, they didnt even record the physical descriptions. So therell be no proof. But hes gone. Im applying for my pension next week.
Helaine felt the weight of Beth Wisnacks misery like some kind of additional humidity in the room. Her heart went out to her. Life wasnt very attractive here in Class Fourteen, but at least you had your family structure to cling to in times of stress. Beth didnt even have that, now. Her husband had put thumb to nose and disappeared on a oneway journey to the past. Good-by, Beth, good-by, kids, good-by, lousy twenty-fifth century, he might have said, as he vanished down the time tunnel. The coward couldnt face responsibility, Helaine thought. And who was going to marry Beth Wisnack now?
I feel so sorry for you, Helaine murmured.
Save it. Therell be troubles for you, too. All the men will run away. Youll see. Norm will go too. They talk big about obligations, but then they run. Bud swore hed never go, either. But he was out of work two years, you know, and even with the check every week he couldnt stand it any more. So he went.