Pigs? Dogs? Trial runs, perhaps, in the early days of the time-travel enterprise, Quellen wondered? The machine was still new and unreliable, he imagined, and hapless beasts had been placed within its field, and then had been spurted into the past to the consternation of the devout, devil-dreading citizens of the middle ages. A deplorable overshoot had taken the unhappy creatures back beyond the industrial revolution, but of course the operators of the machine could not have known the ultimate destinations of their passengers, unless they had had knowledge of these same records that Brogg had unearthed.
Nor did all Broggs cases involve medieval episodes. A good many sections of Exhibit B dealt with instances more recent, though still well outside the 1979 date that had been considered the extreme limit of pastward travel. Quellen gave heed to the case of a girl who appeared at the door of a cottage near Bristol, England, on the evening of April 3, 1817, and begged for food in what was described as an unknown language.
How did they know what she was begging for, then, Quellen asked himself? The spool did not answer. It informed him instead that the girl who spoke unintelligibly was brought before a magistrate, one Samuel Worral, who instead of arresting her on a vagrancy charge took her to his home. (Suspicious, Quellen thought!) He questioned her. She wrote replies in an unknown script whose characters looked like combs, birdcages, and frying pans. Linguists came to analyze her words. At length came one who described himself as a gentleman from the East Indies. He interrogated her in the Malay language and received comprehensible replies.
She was, he declared, the Princess Caraboo, kidnapped by pirates from her Javan home and carried off to sea, involving her in many adventures before at length she made her escape on the English shore. Through the medium of the gentleman from the East Indies, Princess Caraboo imparted many details of life in Java. Then a woman of Devonshire, a Mrs. Wilcocks, came forward and announced that the Princess was actually her own daughter Mary, born in 1791. Mary Wilcocks confessed her imposture and emigrated to America.
Brogg had appended the following speculation to the case of the Princess Caraboo:
According to some authorities a multiple imposture was practiced here. A girl mysteriously appeared. A man stepped forward and claimed to understand her language. An older woman declared that it was all a fraud. But the records are faulty. What if the girl was a visitor from the future, and the gentleman from the East Indies another hopper who shrewdly tried to pass her off as a Javan princess in order to keep her true origin from coming out, and the pretended mother yet another hopper who moved in to protect the girl when it looked likely that the Javan hoax would be exposed? How many time-travelers were living in England in 1817, anyway?
It seemed to Quellen that Brogg was being too credulous. He passed on to the next instance.
Cagliostro: appeared in London, then in Paris, speaking with an accent of an unidentifiable kind. Supernal powers. Aggressive, gifted, unconventional. Accused of being in actuality one Joseph Balsamo, a Sicilian criminal. The same never proven. Earned a good living in eighteenth-century Europe peddling alchemistic powders, love philtres, elixirs of youth, and other useful compounds. Grew careless, was imprisoned in the Bastille in 1785, escaped, visited other countries, was arrested again, died in prison, 1795. Fraud? Impostor? Time-traveler? It was wholly possible. Anything, thought Quellen sadly, was possible once you began giving credence to such evidence.
Kaspar Hauser: staggered into the town of Nuremberg, Germany, on an afternoon in May, 1828. Apparently sixteen or seventeen years old. (A trifle young for becoming a hopper, Quellen thought. Perhaps deceptive in appearance.) Capable of speaking only two sentences in German. Given a pencil and paper, he wrote a name: Kaspar Hauser. Assumption made that that was his name. He was unacquainted with the commonest objects and experiences of everyday affairs of human beings. Dropped down out of a time fault, no doubt.
A quick learner, though. Detained for a while in prison as a vagrant, then turned over to a schoolmaster, Professor Daumer. Mastered German and wrote an autobiographical essay, declaring that he had lived all his life in a small, dark cell, living on bread and water. Yet a policeman who had found him declared, He had a very healthy color: he did not appear pale or delicate, like one who had been some time in confinement.
Many contradictions. Universal fascination in Europe; everyone speculating on the mysterious origin of Kaspar Hauser. Some said he was the crown prince of Baden, kidnapped in 1812 by the agents of the morganatic wife of his postulated father, the grand duke. Denied. Subsequently disproven. Others said he was sleepwalker, amnesiac. October 17, 1829: Kaspar Hauser found with a wound in forehead,allegedly inflicted by a man in a black mask. Policemen assigned to guard him. Several further purported assaults. December 14, 1833: Kaspar Hauser found dying in a park, with deep stab wound on his left breast. Claimed that a stranger had inflicted the wound. No sign of weapon in the park, no footprints in vicinity except Hausers own.
Suggestion that the wound was self-inflicted. Died several days afterward after exclaiming, My God! that I should so die in shame and disgrace!
Quellen disconnected the spool. Pigs, dogs, the Princess Caraboo, Kaspar Hauserit was all quite entertaining. It might even support a belief that the whole of human history was besprinkled with time-travelers, and not simply the period from 1979 to 2106. Fine. But such facts did little to solve Quellens immediate problems, however much the gathering of them had gratified the beefy Broggs taste for scholarship. Quellen put the spool away.
He dialed Judiths number. Her face appeared on the screen, pale, somber, austere. She fell short of being beautiful by quite a good deal. The bridge of her nose was too high, her forehead was somewhat domed, her lips were thin, her chin was long. Her eyes were disquietingly far apart, with the right one slightly higher than the left. Yet she was not unattractive. Quellen had toyed with the temptation of allowing himself to fall in love with her. It was awkward, though; he could not let her get too far within his emotional defenses without telling her about the place in Africa, and he did not want to share that fact with her. She had a streak of righteousness; she might inform on him.
She said, Have you been hiding from me, Joe?
Ive been busy. Submerged in work. Im sorry, Judith.
Dont let your guilts overflow. Ive been getting along quite well.
Im sure you have. Hows your frood?
Dr. Galuber? Hes fine. Hed like to have the chance to meet you, Joe.
Quellen bristled. Ive got no plans for entering therapy, Judith. Im sorry.
Thats the second time youve said you were sorry in the last three sentences.
Im sor Quellen began, and then they both laughed.
Judith said, I meant for you to meet Dr. Galuber socially. Hell be at our next communion.
Which is?
Tonight, as a matter of fact. Will you come?
You know that social regurgitation has never delighted me very much, Judith.
She smiled in a wintry way. I know that. But its time you got out of your shell a little. You live too much to yourself, Joe. If you want to be a bachelor, thats your business, but you dont have to be a hermit too.
I can put a piece in the slot of a frood machine and get advice just as profound as that.
Maybe so. Will you come to the communion, though?
Quellen thought of the case he had studied only an hour or so back, of the earnest communicant who had slipped pseudoliving glass into the alimentary canals of his fellow worshippers and then had watched them die in agony. He pictured himself writhing in torment while a weeping Judith clung to him and tried to extract the last vestige of empathic sorrow from his sufferings, after the manner of her cult.
He sighed. She was right: he had been living too much to himself these days. He needed to get out, away from his official responsibilities.
Yes, he said. Yes, Judith, Ill come to the communion. Are you happy?
9.
Stanley Brogg had had a busy day.
The UnderSec was juggling a lot of Quellens hot potatoes at once, but it did not trouble him, for Brogg had a good capacity for work. He privately felt that he and Spanner between them kept the whole department going. They were two of a kind, both big men, massive and methodical, with a reserve of flesh to draw extra energy from in times of crisis. Of course, Spanner was in the administrative end, and Brogg a lowly legworker. Spanner was Class Six, Brogg Class Nine. Yet Brogg saw himself as Spanners comrade-in-arms.
Those other two, Koll and Quellenthey were excresences on the department. Koll was full of hatred and mischief, seething with wrath simply because he was small and ugly. He had ability, of course, but his basically neurotic orientation made him dangerous and useless. If ever there was a case for compulsory frooding, it was Koll. Brogg often compared him to Tiberius Caesar: a baleful man full of menace, not insane but badly askew and so to be avoided.
If Koll were Tiberius, Quellen was Claudius: amiable, intelligent, weak to the core. Brogg despised his immediate superior. Quellen struck him as a ditherer, unfit for his post. Now and then Quellen could act with vigor and determination, but it didnt come naturally to him. Brogg had been doing the legwork for Quellen for years; otherwise, the department would long since have fallen apart.
A surprising thing about Quellen, though: he was capable of criminality. That had startled Brogg. He didnt think the man had it in him. To obtain a plot of land in Africa by diligently falsifying records, to apply and receive illegal stat service from a Class Seven apartment to the Congo, to live a secret life of ease and even luxurywhy, it was an achievement so monstrously bold that Brogg still couldnt see how Quellen had carried it off. Unless the explanation was that Quellen was so repelled by the harshness of life all about him that he was willing to take any risk to escape from it. Even a coward could rise to what looked like moral grandeur in the interests of his own cowardice. In the same way, a soft, flabby man like the Emperor Nero could transform himself into a demon simply to preserve his own flabbiness. Nero, thought Brogg, hadnt been innately demonic after the fashion of Caligula; he had drifted into monstrosity in easy stages. In a way it was out of character for him, just as Quellens surprising act of boldness jarred with the image of the man that Brogg had constructed.
Brogg had found out Quellens great secret purely by accident, though there was some degree of treachery mixed into it. He had suspected for quite a while that Quellen was up to something peculiar, but he had no idea what it was. Deviant religious activity, perhaps; maybe Quellen belonged to one of the proscribed cults, a chaos group perhaps, or one of the rumored bands that gathered in dark corners to pray to the vicious pyrotic assassin, Flaming Bess.
Not knowing the details, but sensing the defensive wariness in Quellens recent behavior, Brogg sought to turn the situation to his personal profit. He had high expenses. Brogg was a man with pretensions to scholarship; immersed as he was in the study of ancient Romans, he had surrounded himself with books, authentic Roman coins, scraps of history. It took money to buy anything authentic. Brogg was living to the hilt of his salary now. It had struck him that Quellen might be a fruitful victim for extortion.
First Brogg had spoken to Quellens roommate of the time, Bruce Marokfor Quellen had not yet been promoted to Class Seven, and like any unmarried male of his class he was required to share an apartment. Marok, while confirming that something odd was going on, did not offer any details. He didnt seem to know much. Then came Quellens promotion, and with the uptwitch Marok dropped out of the picture.
Brogg slapped an Ear on his boss and sat back to listen. The truth came out soon enough. Quellen had connived to get a chunk of Africa registered under a blind name for which he was the nominee. Much of Africa had been set aside as a private reserve for members of the High Governmentthe tropical part, particularly, which had been generally depopulated during the Spore War a century and a half back. Quellen had his slice. He had arranged for a house to be built there, and for unauthorized stat service so that he could pop back and forth across the Atlantic in a twinkling. Of course, Quellens little scheme was certain to be exposed eventually by one of the resurvey squads. But that part of the world was not due for a resurvey for some fifty years, by which time Quellen would be in little danger.
Brogg spent a fascinated few weeks tracking Quellens movements. He had thought at first that Quellen must take women to the hideaway for participation in illicit cultist activities, but no, Quellen went alone. He simply sought peace and solitude. In a way, Brogg sympathized with Quellens need. However, Brogg had needs of his own, and he was not a sentimental man. He went to Quellen.
The next time you stat to Africa, he said blandly, think of me. I envy you, CrimeSec.
Quellen gasped in shock. Then he recovered. Africa? What are you talking about, Brogg? Why would I go to Africa?
To get away from it all. Yes?
I deny all your accusations.
Ive got proof, said Brogg. Want to hear?
In the end, they reached an accommodation. For a generous cash payment, Brogg would keep silent. That had been several months ago, and Quellen had paid regularly. So long as he did, Brogg observed the bargain. He was not really interested in informing on Quellen, who was much more useful to him as a source of money than he would be in an institution for corrective rehabilitation. Pursuing his studies more easily on Quellens hush money, Brogg hoped earnestly that no one else would unmask the CrimeSecs secret. That would mean the loss of his extra income, and might even send him to jail too, as an accomplice after the fact. These days, Brogg watched over Quellen like a guardian angel, protecting him from the prying eyes of others.
Brogg knew that Quellen feared and hated him, of course. It didnt trouble him. Secreted in various places throughout the vicinity were taped accounts of Quellens iniquity, programmed to deliver themselves to High Government authorities in the event of Broggs sudden death or disappearance. Quellen knew that. Quellen wasnt about to do anything. He was well aware that the moment sensors of those devilish little boxes ceased to pick up the alpha rhythms of Stanley Brogg, autonomic legs would come forth and the telltales would march down to headquarters to pour forth their accusations. So Quellen and Brogg were at a standstill of mutual benefit.
Neither of them ever mentioned the situation. In the office, work proceeded serenely, though Brogg occasionally allowed himself a veiled reminder to keep Quellen uncomfortable. Generally Brogg took orders and carried them out.
As, for example, on this hopper business.
He had spent the last few days tracking Donald Mortensen, the potential hopper who was due to skip out on May 4. Quellen had asked Brogg to handle the Mortensen case with the greatest delicacy. Brogg knew why. He was clever enough to foresee the time-paradox consequences that might result if somebody interfered with the departure of Mortensen, who was on the documented hopper list. Brogg had gone over those old lists himself to compile the spool he had labeled Exhibit A. Subtract a man from the old records and the whole world might totter. Brogg knew that. Undoubtedly Quellen knew that too. Why, most likely Kloofman and Danton would have a dozen aneurysms pop in their aging arteries when they found out that Quellens department was monkeying with the structure of the past. Such monkeying jeopardized everybodys status in the present, and those who had the most status to losethe Class Oneswere the ones who would get most agitated over the investigation.
So Brogg was careful. He was pretty sure that the High Government would quash the Mortensen investigation once word of it got to Them. In the meanwhile, though, Brogg was merely carrying out his assignment. He could fry Quellen by botching the work and tipping off Mortensen; but Brogg had powerful motives for preserving Quellen from harm.
He found Mortensen easily: a lean, blonde man of twenty-eight, with pale blue eyes and eyebrows so white they were virtually invisible. Brushing against him at a quickboat ramp, Brogg managed to affix an Ear to the man, hanging the hooked patch of transponding equipment neatly in Mortensens flesh. Brogg used a splinter model, working it into a callus in Mortensens palm. The man would never feel it. In a few days it would dissolve, but meanwhile it would transmit a world of information. Brogg was expert at such things.
He tuned in on Mortensen and recorded his activities.
The man was involved with a person named Lanoy. Brogg picked up things like:
at the station with Lanoy on the hop day
Lanoys fee is on deposit
you tell Lanoy that Ill be going out the first week in May
yes, at the lake, the place I met him the last time
Mortensen was married. Class Ten. Didnt like his wife. Hopping provided instant divorce, Brogg thought with amusement. The Ear gave him Sidna Mortensens shrill complaints, and he couldnt help but agree that the best thing Mortensen could do was hop. Brogg compiled a considerable dossier on the potential hopper.
Then came The Word, from Kloofman via Giacomin via Koll to Quellen and thence to Brogg:
Leave Mortensen alone. Hes not to be tampered with. Thats The Word.
Brogg looked questioningly at Quellen. What should I do? Were learning a lot from Mortensen.
Discontinue the investigation.
We could chance carrying it on quietly, Brogg suggested. So long as Mortensen takes no alarm, wed continue to get data from him. Im not suggesting that we actually interfere with his departure, but until
No.
Coward, Brogg thought. Afraid the High Government will flay you!
In a moment of anarchy Brogg saw himself deliberately destroying Donald Mortensen, flying in the face of the High Government, possibly smashing everything like Samson putting his shoulders to the pillars of the temple. It would have amused Brogg to learn that the supposedly meek Quellen had had the same rebellious thought. There was tremendous power in knowing that the minor act of a minor official could threaten the security of the High Government. Yet Brogg did not give way to the impulse, any more than Quellen had. He obediently discontinued the Mortensen investigation. Mortensen would depart for the past on May 4, and the continuum would be preserved.
Anyway, Brogg had a new lead on Lanoy.
It had come to light today. A prolet named Brand, Class Fifteen, had had too much to drink in a common saloon. Leeward, refreshing himself in the drinker, had listened to Brand running off at the mouth about Lanoy and his hopper business. Without benefit of modern technology, Leeward thus picked up a vital clue and brought it to Brogg.
Lets have Brand in for interrogation, Brogg said when he heard what Leeward had done. Get him here. Nowait. Ill get him. You cover the office.
Brogg went out for a reconnaissance. He scouted the drinker, saw Brand, calculated the imponderables. After some hesitation he cut Brand out from the herd, identified himself as a government man, and remanded the prisoner for interrogation. Brand looked frightened. I didnt do nothing, he insisted. I didnt do nothing!
Therell be no harm to you, Brogg promised. We simply-want to question you.
He took Brand into custody. When he reached the Secretariat building with the prolet, Brogg learned that Quellen had issued a new instruction.
He wants an Ear put on his brother-in-law, Leeward said.
Brogg grinned. Nepotism even in criminal investigations? Doesnt the man have any shame?
I couldnt answer that, said Leeward stolidly. But he says that the brother-in-law is thinking of making a hop. He wants it checked. He wants an Ear on the fellow and round-the-clock monitoring, right away. Norman Pomraths the name. Ive already got the data on him.
Good. Well take care of Pomrath at once.
Pomraths supposed to be in contact with Lanoy. Quellen said.
Looks like everybodys in contact with Lanoy. Even Quellens been approached, did you know that? Brogg laughed. I havent had a chance to tell him that Mortensen was dealing with Lanoy too, but I doubt that itll surprise him. And this prolet here, this Brand you foundtheres another lead to Lanoy. Were bound to trace one of them back to the source in another day or so.
Do you want me to put the Ear on Pomrath? Leeward asked.
Ill do it, said Brogg. Ive got a gift for that kind of thing. You have to admit it.
Brogg certainly did. He could move gracefully for a man of his bulk. As sinuously as any dedicated frotteur, Brogg could approach a victim in a quickboat and gently introduce an Ear to the unlikeliest of places. It was a gift that had stood him in good stead when he set out to spy on Quellen; he had handled the Mortensen situation equally skillfully. Now Pomrath. Brogg went down to the laboratory and rummaged about for the most advanced model Ear that was available.
Heres a beauty, the lab technician told him with pride. Weve just finished it. Weve succeeded in melding Ear technology to a substrate of pseudoliving glass, and the result is unique. Take a look.
Brogg held out a fleshy palm. The technician dumped onto it a tiny metallic transponding plaque a few molecules in thickness, wholly invisible but snugly contained in a glossy little bead of some green plastic.
What does it do? Brogg asked.
It functions normally as an Ear. But the spicule of the glass has a life-tropism of unusual character. Once the Ear is in place on the recipients body, the glass goes into action and bores its way through the skin, generally looking for entry by way of the pores. Its a kind of artificial parasite, you see. It gets inside and stays there, where it cant possibly be removed by an itchy subject. And it broadcasts indefinitely. Surgical removal is necessary to shut off the information flow.
Brogg was impressed. There were plenty of models of Ear designed for internal use, of course, but they all had to be introduced through one of the bodily orifices of the victim, which presupposed certain difficulties for the agent. The usual method was to smuggle it into the victims food. Since most people were reticent about eating in the presence of strangers, that required considerable planning. And in any event the Ear would be digested or excreted in short order. There were other bodily orifices, naturally, and Brogg had on occasion planted Ears in women who were off their guard in a throbbing moment of ecstatic passion, but the technique was a tricky one. This was infinitely better: to slap the Ear on externally, and let the device itself take care of the job of getting within the victims body. Yes. Brogg liked the concept.
He spent an hour learning how to use the new model Ear. Then he went after Norm Pomrath.
The televector scanner located Pomrath quickly for him: at the Central Employment Register, doubtless punching the job machine in the customary prolet mood of total despair. Brogg changed into a shabby prolet tunic, suitable for Class Twelve slope vicinity, and headed for the domed building of the job machine.
He had no difficulty finding Pomrath In the crowd. Brogg knew approximately what the man was supposed to look likestocky, dark, tenseand almost at once he found himself staring right at him. Brogg insinuated himself into the line not far from Pomrath and observed the CrimeSecs unhappy brother-in-law for a while. Pomrath spoke to no one. He peered at the red and green and blue banks of the job machine as though they were his personal enemies. His lips were tight with distress and his eyes were harshly shadowed. This man is in anguish, Brogg thought. No wonder hes planning to become a hopper. Well, well soon know a great deal about him, wont we?
Brogg sidled up behind Pomrath.
Excuse me, he said, and stumbled. Pomrath reached out a hand to steady him. Brogg clasped his fingers around Pomraths wrist and pressed the Ear firmly into the hairy skin just above the ulna. Straightening, he thanked Pomrath for his assistance, and all the while the pseudoliving glass in which the Ear was embedded was activating its tropism and drilling a path into Pomraths living flesh.
By evening, the Ear would have migrated up Pomraths arm to some nice warm fatty deposit where it could settle down and transmit its signals.
Clumsy of me, Brogg muttered. He moved away. Pomrath did not show any sign of being aware that something had been affixed to him.
Returning to the office, Brogg examined the flow from the monitor device. Pomrath had left the job-machine building now, it appeared. The tracer line on the oscilloscope showed the minute neural explosions that told of footsteps. Pomrath walked for ten minutes. Then he halted. Complex muscular actions: he was entering a building with a manually operated door. Now came a voice pickup.
POMRATH:Here I am again, Jerry.
STRANGE VOICE:We got a couch all ready for you.
POMRATH:With a nice goddam hallucination, okay? Here I am fighting off the Crab People, you see, and theres this naked blonde panting to be rescued, while Kloofman is waiting to give me the Galactic Medal of Honor.
VOICE:I cant pick the effect for you, Norm. You know that. You pay your pieces and you get what comes. Its all whats stirring around inside your head that settles the picture for you.
POMRATH:Theres plenty stirring around inside my head, pal. Wheres the mask? Im going to dream a beauty. Norm Pomrath, the destroyer of worlds. Disrupting time and space. The devourer of continua.
VOICE:You sure got a crazy imagination, Norm.
Brogg turned away. Pomrath was in a sniffer palace, evidently. Nothing meaningful was going to turn up on the monitor nownothing but Pomrath asleep on the couch enjoying or perhaps not enjoying his hallucination.
In another room, Leeward was still interrogating the hapless prolet Brand. Brand looked disturbed. Brogg listened for a while, found little of significance going on, and checked out for the day. Quellen had already gone home, he observed. To Africa, maybe, for the evening.
Brogg reached his own apartment in a short while. As required, he had a roommatea legal assistant in one of the judiciary divisionsbut they had managed to work things out so that their paths rarely crossed. You had to make the best accommodation you could to the existing living conditions.
Tired, Brogg got quickly under the molecular bath and cleansed himself of the days grime. He programmed dinner. Then he selected a book. He was pursuing a fascinating theme in his favorite subject, Roman history: Tiberius handling of the rebellion of Sejanus. The interplay of character was irresistible: Sejanus, the sly favorite of the sinister old Caesar, overreaching himself at last and being cast down from the heights of power by Tiberius, the Capri-dwelling old goat.
Easily, Brogg drifted into contemplation of those distant and violent events.
If I had been Sejanus, he thought, how would I have handled the situation? More tactfully, no doubt. I would never have provoked the old boy that way. Brogg smiled. If he had been Sejanus, he knew, he would ultimately have come to hold the throne in his own name. On the other hand
On the other hand, he was not Sejanus. He was Stanley Brogg of the Secretariat of Crime. Mores the pity, Brogg thought. But we must make do with what we have.
10.
Night was closing in like a clamped fist. Quellen changed his clothes after a leisurely shower that used up nearly his entire weeks quota of washing water. He dressed in clothes that were a bit on the gaudy side, in sullen rebellion against the sort of evening that Judith was going to inflict on him. The people who came to these communions of social regurgitation tended to be drab, consciously so. He despised their puritanical austerity. And so he donned a tunic shot through with iridescent threads, gleaming red and violet and azure as he shifted the angles of refraction.