I found a slip in Normans clothes, Helaine said. It was some kind of advert.Out of work? See Lanoy. I asked him about it. He got very embarrassed. Took the slip away from me, tried to tell me it was an employment agency, something like that. I could see he was lying. Hiding something. The trouble is, I dont know what.
You better start worrying hard, Helaine.
You think its bad?
I think its just the same as with Bud. Norms in contact with them. Hes probably trying to raise the money now. And they send him out.Poof!Gone. No husband. The widow Pomrath. Two kids, shift for yourself. Beth Wisnacks eyes were glittering strangely now. She did not look unhappy at the prospect that Helaines husband might go hopper. It was the misery that craves company, Helaine knew. Let every husband in the world vanish into the maw of the past and perhaps Beth Wisnack would feel some delight.
Helaine fought to stay calm.
When the police investigated Buds disappearance, she said, did you mention this Lanoy to them?
I named him, yes. They wanted to know if Bud had been seeing anyone unusual just before he vanished, and I said I didnt know, but there was this name he had mentioned a few times, Lanoy, that I didnt know. They took it down. I dont know what they did about it. It isnt going to bring Bud back. You can only go one direction in time, you know. Backward. They dont have any machines back there to send people ahead again, and in any case I understand it isnt possible. You go back, youre stranded there for keeps. So when Norm goes
Hes not going, said Helaine.
Hes seeing Lanoy, isnt he? Beth asked.
All he had was the minislip. It didnt even have an address on it. He said he didnt know where to find Lanoy. And we arent sure that Lanoy is connected with the hopper business, anyhow.
Beths eyes sparkled. The Lanoy mob is in contact with him, she said. That means they can reach him any time. So he can reach them. And theyll send him back. Hes going to be a hopper, Helaine. Hes going to go.
Q.E.D.
A quickboat took her to the flamboyant skyscraper that housed the Secretariat of Crime. Some persistent work at the front desk yielded Helaine the information that her brother was at the office today, and if she cared to wait a while perhaps he would see her. She requisitioned an appointment with him. The machine asked for her thumbprint, and she gave it, and then sat down to wait in an anteroom draped with somber purplish fabrics.
Helaine was not accustomed to venturing out into the world of office buildings and walking servomechanisms. She stayed close to home, and did her shopping by remote contact. Downtownthe world at the end of the quickboat routeswas a frightening place to her. She forced herself to remain cool. On a matter as serious as this, she had to see her brother face to face across a desk, so that he could not escape from her at the flick of a switch. She was terrified.
The CrimeSec will see you, a flat impersonal vocoder voice told her.
She was ushered into the presence of her brother. Quellen stood up, flashed a quick, uncomfortable smile, beckoned her into a chair. The chair grabbed her and began to knead the muscles of her back. Helaine shuddered at the sensation, and pulled away in alarm as the invisible hands within the chair started to go to work on her thighs and buttocks. The delicate feedback sensors of the chair caught her mood, and the attentions ceased.
She looked uncertainly at her brother. Quellen seemed to be as ill at ease with her as she was with him; he tugged at his ear, clenched his jaws, popped his knuckles. They were practically strangers. They met on family occasions, but there had been no real communication between them for a long time. He was a few years older than she was. Once, they had been quite close, two devoted siblings bantering and heckling one another just as her Joseph and Marina did today. Helaine could remember her brother as a boy, stealing his peeks at her body in their one-room apartment, pulling her hair, helping her with her homework. Then he had begun his training for government service, and after that he had not been part of her world in any meaningful way. Now she was an edgy housewife and he was a busy public officer, and she was somewhat afraid of him.
For perhaps three minutes they exchanged friendly pleasantries about domestic matters. Helaine talked about her children, her social conscience unit in the apartment, her personal reading program. Quellen said very little. He was a bachelor, which set him further apart from her. Helaine knew that her brother kept company with some woman, somebody named Judith, but he rarely talked about her and seemed hardly ever even to think of her. There were times when Helaine suspected that Judith did not existthat Quellen had invented her as camouflage for some solitary vice he preferred, or, worse, for some homosexual involvement. Sodomy was acceptable socially these days; it helped to keep the birth rate low. But Helaine did not like to think of her brother Joe taking part in such practices.
She brought the chatter to a deliberate end by asking about Judith. Is she well? Youve never kept your promise to bring her to visit us, Joe.
Quellen looked as uncomfortable at the mention of Judith as Norm Pomrath had looked while Helaine was questioning him about the Lanoy minislip. He said evasively, Ive mentioned the idea to her. She thinks it would be fine to meet you and Norm, but not just yet. Judiths a little disturbed by having to meet your children. Children unsettle her. But Im sure well work something out. He flashed the quick, hollow smile again. Then he dismissed the touchy subject of Judith by getting down to the business at hand. Im sure this wasnt just a social call, Helaine.
No. Its business, Joe. I see by the faxtapes that youre conducting an investigation of the hoppers.
Yes. True.
Norms going to hop.
Quellen sat stiffly upright, his left shoulder rising higher than the right one. What gives you that idea? Has he told you so himself?
No, of course not. But I suspect it. Hes been very depressed lately, about not working and all that.
Nothing new with him.
More so than usual. You should hear the way he talks. Hes so bitter, Joe! He talks absolute nonsense, just a stream of angry words that dont make any sense. I wish I could quote him for you. Hes building up to some kind of psychological explosion, I know it. I can feel the steam gathering inside him. She winced. The chair was starting to massage her again. He hasnt worked for months now, Joe.
Quellen said, Im aware of that. You know, the High Government is furthering a whole sequence of plans designed to alleviate the unemployment problem.
Thats fine. But in the meanwhile Norm isnt working,and I dont think itll matter much longer. Hes in contact with the hopper people and hes going to hop. Even while Im sitting here telling you this, he might be getting into the machine!
Her voice had risen to a tinny screech. She could hear the echoes of it go bouncing around in her brothers office. It seemed to her that the ends of her nerves had burst through her skin all over her body, and were jutting out like quills.
Quellens manner changed. He seemed to make a conscious effort to relax, and he leaned forward benevolently, giving her a froodlike smile. Helaine expected him to ask, Shall we now attempt to get to the bottom of this delusion of yours? What he actually said, in honeyed, humoring tones, was, Maybe youre getting overwrought for no real reason, Helaine. What makes you think hes having dealings with the hopper criminals?
She told him about the Lanoy minislip, and about Norms exaggerated reaction of unconcern when she had queried him on Lanoy. As she quoted the five-word slogan on the slip, Helaine was startled to see her brothers beaming look of phony solicitude give way for a moment to a blank expression betokening some sudden absolute terror within. Then Quellen recovered; but he had already betrayed himself. Helaine was sharp to detect such momentary flickers of the inner persona.
She said, You know about Lanoy?
It happens that Ive seen one of those slips, Helaine. Theyre being circulated pretty widely. You go up a quickboat ramp and somebody comes up to you and hands one out. No doubt thats how Norm got his.
And its advertising for the hopper people, isnt it?
Ive got no reason to think so, Quellen drawled, his eyes proclaiming his lie to her.
Are you investigating Lanoy, though? I mean, if theres reason to suspect
Were investigating, yes. And I repeat, Helaine, theres no necessary cause to feel that this person Lanoy is in any way connected with the hopper problem.
But Beth Wisnack said that her husband Bud talked about Lanoy all week before he went.
Who?
Wisnack. A recent hopper. When I asked her about Lanoy, Beth told me point-blank that he was responsible for Buds disappearance, and she also said that it was a sure thing that Norm would be going too. Agitated, Helaine crossed and uncrossed her legs. The chairs dull brain picked up the evidence of her restlessness, and after having been quiescent for a few minutes began to fondle her again.
Quellen said, We can check this business of Norms going hopper very easily. He swung around and produced a spool. I have here the complete listing of all the documented hoppers who were recorded as they arrived in the past. This list was compiled recently for me and of course I havent studied it completely, because it contains hundreds of thousands of names. But if Norm did hop, well find him here.
He activated the spool and began to search it, explaining in a half-mumble that the listings were alphabetical. Helaine sat rigidly as the search continued through the alphabet at a rate of thousands of bits per second. It would not take long for Quellen to reach the P entries. And then
If Norm had gone, he would be entered here. His fate would be plain for her to seehis fate and hers, inscribed in this Doomsday Book of thermoplastic tape. She would learn that her marriage had been doomed three hundred years before she contracted it. She would find that her husbands name had been inscribed centuries ago on a roster of fugitivestives from this century. Why had that roster not been a matter of public record all this time? Because, she knew, it would lie like a dead hand across the souls of those who had hopped, would hop, must hop. What would it be like to grow up under the shadow of the knowledge that you were destined to leap from your own era?
You see? Quellen said triumphantly. He isnt on the list.
Does that mean he didnt hop?
Id say so.
But how can you be sure that all the hoppers are really listed? Helaine demanded. What if a lot of them slipped through?
Its possible.
And the names, she went on. If Norm gave a different name when he got to the past, he wouldnt be on your list either. Right?
Quellen looked glum. Theres always the possibility that he adopted a pseudonym, he admitted.
Youre hedging, Joe. You cant be sure he didnt hop. Even with the list.
So what do you want me to do, Helaine?
She took a deep breath. You could arrest Lanoy before he sends Norm back in time.
Ive got to find Lanoy, Quellen observed. And then Ive got to have some proof that hes involved. So far there isnt even any circumstantial evidence, just a lot of conclusion-jumping on your part.
Then arrest Norm.
What?
Find him guilty of something and lock him up. Give him a year or two of corrective therapy. Thatll keep him out of circulation until the hopper crisis is over. Call it protective custody.
Helaine, I cant use the law as a private plaything for members of my family!
Hes my husband, Joe. I want to keep him. If he goes back in time, Ive lost him forever. Helaine stood up. She swayed, and had to grip Quellens desk. How could she make him understand that she stood at the edge of an abyss? To hop was effectively the same as to die. She was fighting to keep her husband. And there sat her brother in the cloak of his righteousness, doing nothing while precious seconds ticked away.
Ill do what I can, Quellen promised. Ill look into this Lanoy. If youd like to send Norm here, Ill talk to him and try to find out whats on his mind. Yes. Perhaps thats best. Get him to come to see me.
If hes planning to hop, said Helaine, hes not likely to tell you about it. He wont come within five miles of this building.
Why dont you tell him that I want to talk to him about a job opportunity? Hes been complaining that I havent been doing anything for him, yes? All right. Hell come to me, thinking that Ive got an opening for him. And Ill pump him about hopping. Subtly. If he knows anything, Ill get it out of him. Well smash the hopper ring and therell be no danger of his taking off. How does that sound, Helaine?
Encouraging. Ill talk to him. Ill send him to you. If he hasnt already taken off.
She moved toward the door. Her brother smiled once again. Helaine winced. She was fearful that Norm had already vanished irretrievably, while she sat here talking. She had to get back to him in a hurry. Until this crisis was over, she knew she must keep close watch.
Remember me to Judith, Helaine said, and went out.
8.
Quellen had not enjoyed the interview with his sister. Helaine always left him feeling flayed. She was so visibly unhappy that it pained him to see her at all. Now she looked five or six years older than he was. He remembered Helaine at thirteen or so, virginal and radiant, naive enough to think that life held something wonderful for her. Here she was a few years short of forty, marooned within four walls, clawing like a demon to hang on to her morose, embittered husband, because he was just about all that she had.
Still, she had given him some useful information. Lanoy had been on Quellens mind ever since the sallow-faced stranger had pressed the wadded minislip into his hand on the flyramp. The next day, Quellen had initiated a routine check, but it had turned up nothing tangible. A mere last name was useless to the computer. There were thousands of Lanoys in the world, and Quellen could scarcely investigate every one of them for possible criminal activities. A random scoop had yielded no information. Now, though, came Helaine with her intuitive conviction that Lanoy was behind the hopper business. And this woman she had mentioned, this Beth WisnackQuellen made a note to send a man around to talk to her again. No doubt Beth Wisnack had already been interrogated about her husbands disappearance, but she would have to be approached from the direction of Lanoy information this time.
Quellen considered the possibility of posting a guard on Norm Pomrath to prevent any untimely departure. He had been ordered in no ambiguous terms to leave Donald Mortensen alone and to do no meddling with any of the listed hoppers. Koll had received The Word from Giacomin, who had it from the lips of Kloofman himself: Hands off Mortensen.
They were afraid of changing the past. Quellen could feel the fear in them running right up to the High Government. It was within his power to shake the underpinnings of the universe. Pick up Donald Mortensen for questioning and put a laser bolt through his skull, for example.
Sorry. Resisted arrest and had to be destroyed.
Yes. And then Donald Mortensen would never take off for the past on May 4. Which would upset the entire structure of the last few centuries. At the moment I shoot Mortensen, Quellen thought, everything will shift and it will turn out that we were conquered by an army of slimy centipedes from the Magellanic Clouds in A.D. 2257a conquest that would have been prevented by one of the descendants of Donald Mortensen, if I hadnt been so thoughtless as to shoot him down.
Quellen had no intention of inviting the wrath of the High Government by interfering with the departure of Donald Mortensen. But Norm Pomrath was not on the hopper list. Was he covered by Kloofmans directive, then? Was Quellen required to abstain from any action that could possibly lead to the time-departure of any person whatever?
That made no sense. Therefore Quellen agreed with himself-that he could without compromising himself keep watch on his brother-in-law and take steps to prevent Norm from going hopper. That would make Helaine happy. It might also, Quellen thought, contribute to an ultimate solution to this entire worrisome assignment.
Get me Brogg, he said into his communicator mouthpiece.
Brogg turned out to be conducting an investigation outsidethe building. The other UnderSec, Leeward, entered Quellens office.
The CrimeSec said, Ive got a possible lead. My brother-in-law Norm Pomrath is allegedly on the verge of seeking out a contact wholl help him become a hopper. Im not sure theres any truth in it, but I want it checked. Slap an Ear on Pomrath and have him monitored on a twenty-four-hour, round-the-clock basis. If he utters so much as a syllable about hopping, well make our move.
Yes, sir, said Leeward stolidly.
Theres also this matter of a certain Lanoy. Did anything new turn up?
Not yet, sir.
Ive learned that Pomraths supposed contact man is this Lanoy. So thats our key syllable. Make sure that the monitors are triggered to flash if Pomrath mentions the name. Im to be summoned immediately.
Leeward went off to take care of things. There was the end to Norm Pomraths privacy, of course. From now until Quellen withdrew the Ear, Pomrath could not embrace his wife, relieve his bowels, scratch his armpit, or denounce the High Government without having some omniscient monitoring system making a record of it. Too bad. Quellen himself had been victimized by an Ear, and he knew the anguish of it, because that was how the treacherous Brogg had learned of the CrimeSecs illegal home in Africa. Yet Quellen had no real regrets about what he was doing to Pomrath. It was for Helaines sake. She had asked to have Norm put in jail, hadnt she? This would be far less inconvenient to him. Hed never even know, most likely. And he might just lead Quellen to the source of the hopper enterprise. In any event it would be extremely difficult for Pomrath to take leave of the present century while he was being monitored.
Quellen dismissed the Pomrath problem from his mind, for the moment, and turned his attention to other matters of urgency.
The days general crime reports had landed on his desk. Obsessed as he was with hoppers, Quellen still had responsibilities in other sectors. He was required to examine the details of all crimes committed within his zone of Appalachia, and to make recommendations for dispensation. The new stack was about the same size as yesterdays crime was a statistical constantand, Quellen knew, todays atrocities would be neither less nor more imaginative than yesterdays.
He leafed through the documents.
The roster of crimes no longer chilled Quellen, and that was the worst part of the job. A creeping loss of sensitivity was overtaking him year by year. When he had been young and new at this game, a fledging Class Eleven just finding out what it was all about, the extent of mans capacity to do injury to man had numbed him. Now it was all statistics and coded tapes, divorced from reality.
The crimes tended to be motiveless. The benign High Government had removed most of the archaic causes for crime, such as hunger, want, and physical frustration.Everyone received a paycheck, whether he worked or not, and there was enough food for all, nutritious if not particularly tasty. No one was driven into banditry to support a starving family. Most addictive drugs were easily available. Sex of all varieties could be had cheaply at government regulated cubicles. These measures were signs of maturity, so it was said. By making most things legal, the High Government had removed the need to commit illegalities.
True. The motives for crime were largely extinct. Crime itself, though, remained. Quellen had had ample proof of that melancholy sociological fact. Theft, murder, rapethese were amusements, now, not matters of need. The middle classes were shot through with criminality. Respectable Class Six burghers did the most hideous things. Plump matrons from Class Five households waylaid strangers in dark alleyways. Bright-eyed children took part in abominations. Even the officers of the law themselves, Quellen knew, circumvented authority by illegal acts, such as establishing second homes for themselves in reservations supposedly limited to Class Two personnel. Yet at least Quellens own crime did no direct injury to other human beings. Whereas
Here was the account of a Class Eight hydroponics man who was accused of a biological crime: unlawful insertion of living matter in the body of another human being. It was alleged that he had anesthetized a fellow technician, made a surgical opening in his body with an ultrasonic probe, and placed within it a lethal quantity of a newly developed Asian carniphage that proceeded to devour the circulatory system of the victim, rampaging up one artery and down the next vein, flowing like flame through the web of vessels. Why? To see his reactions, was the explanation. It was quite instructive.
Here was a Class Six instructor in advanced hermeneutics at a large Appalachian university who had invited a nubile young student to his luxurious two-room apartment and upon her refusal to participate in sexual relations with him did inflict on her a short-circuit of the pain centers, after which he raped her and turned her loose, minus all sensory reactions. Why? A matter of masculine pride, he told the arresting officer. The Latin-American concept of machismo
He had his pride. But the girl would never feel sensation again. Neither pain nor pleasure, unless the damage could be undone by surgery.
And here, Quellen saw, was the seamy account of a gathering of believers in the cult of social regurgitation, which had ended in tragedy instead of mystical experience. One of the worshippers, impelled by fathomless motives of cruelty, had covertly intruded three crystals of pseudoliving glass in his cud before turning it over to his companions. The glass, expanding in a congenial environment, had penetrated the internal organs of the victims in a fatal fashion. It was all a terrible error, the criminal declared. My intention was to swallow one of the crystals myself, and so share with them the torment and the ultimate release. Unfortunately
The story touched a chord of shock in Quellen. Most of these daily nightmare tales left him unmoved; but it happened that his Judith was a member of this very cult, and Judith had been on his mind since Helaines visit. Quellen hadnt seen Judith or even been in touch with her since his last return from Africa. And it might just as easily have been Judith who swallowed these devilish crystals of pseudoliving glass as the unknown victims listed here. It might even have been me, Quellen thought in distaste. I should call Judith soon. Ive been ignoring her.
He looked on through the reports.
Not all of the current crimes had been so imaginative.There was the customary quota of bludgeonings, knifings, laserings, and other conventional assaults. But the scope for criminality was infinitely great, and fanciful atrocities were the hallmark of the era. Quellen turned page after page, jotting down his observations and recommendations. Then he pushed all the troublesome material aside.
He had not yet had a chance to look at the spool that Brogg had labeled Exhibit B in the hopper investigation. Brogg had said that it represented some tangential evidence of timetravel outside the recorded 19792106 zone. Quellen put the spool on and settled back to watch.
It consisted of Broggs scholarly cullings of the annals of occultism. The UnderSec had compiled hundreds of accounts of mysterious appearances and apparitions, evidently under the assumption that they might represent time travelers of a prehopper phase. I wish to suggest, Broggs memorandum asserted, that while the normal range of the time-transport apparatus lies within five hundred years of the present time, there have been instances when an overshoot resulted in transportation to a much earlier period.
Maybe so, Quellen mused. He examined the evidence in a mood of detached curiosity.
Exhibit: the testimony of Giraldus Cambrensis, chronicler, born at the castle of Manorbier in Pembrokeshire, circa
A.D.1146. Giraldus offered the tale of a red-haired young man who turned up unexpectedly in the house of a knight known as Eliodore de Stakepole in western Wales:
This strange man said his name was Simon. He took the keys from the seneschal, and took over, also, the seneschals job; but he was so clever and finished a manager that nothing was ever lost or wanting in the house, which ever more became prosperous. Ifthe master or mistress thought of something they would like, and did not even speak their thought, he read their minds and, hey presto, he got it, and no orders given him! He knew where they cached their gold and jewels. He would say to them: Why this niggard care of your gold and silver? Is not life short? Then enjoy it, spend your gold or you will die without enjoying life and the money you so cautiously hoard will do you no service. He had an eye for the good opinion of menials and rustics, and he gave them the choicest food and drink . . . This strange red-haired man set foot in no church, used no breviary, and uttered no Catholic word or religious sentiment. He did not sleep in the manor house; but was always on hand to serve and spring forward to give what was wanted.
The chronicler related that the Stakepole children were curious about this mysterious Simon, and took to spying on him around the grounds of the manor house:
And, one night, peering out from behind a holly bush, when the strange man was, by chance, gazing hard into the waters of a still mill dam, they saw him moving his lips as if in converse with something unseen.
Which was duly reported to the elder Stakepole, and that virtuous knight instantly summoned Simon to his private chamber and gave him the sack:
As they took the keys from him, the lady of the manor asked him: Who art thou?
He replied: I am begotten of the wife of a yokel of the parish by a demon who lay upon her in the shape of her own husband.
He named the man who was so cuckolded, who was lately dead. The mother was still alive, and when strict inquiry was made of her, the thing was certified to be true by her public confession.
Interesting, Quellen thought. Where did Brogg get these things? It could very well have been that the red-haired demon was a hopper accidentally hurled too far in time. So, too, these other monkish accounts. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries, according to Broggs researches, had been a fertile era for the arrival of inexplicable strangers. Not all of them had arrived in human form, either. Quellen observed an extract from the Eulogium Historiarum prepared at Malmesbury Abbey, under the rubric A.D. 1171:
On the night of the birthday of the Lord, there were thunderings and lightnings of which the like had not been heard before. And at Andover, a certain priest, at midnight, in the presence of the whole congregation, was cast down by lightning, with no other injuries . . . but what looked like a pig was seen to run to and fro between his feet . . .
Brogg had ferreted out a parallel case in the Annales Francorum Regium of the monk Bertin, inscribed circa A.D. 1160. The entry for A.D. 856 declared:
In August, Teotogaudus, Bishop of Trier, with clerics and people was celebrating the office when a very dreadful cloud, with thunderstorms and lightning, terrified the whole congregation in the church, and deadened the sound of the bells ringing in the tower. The whole building was filled with such dense darkness that one and another could hardly see or recognize his or her neighbor. On a sudden, there was seen a dog of immense size in a sudden opening of the floor or earth, and it ran to and fro around the altar.