In his own way, Marok was undoubtedly a genuinely fine fellow, Quellen reflected. But he had jarred on Quellens nerves, crucifying him with his sloppiness and his unending visiphone calls and his constant presence. Quellen had longed for the day when he would reach Seven and could live alone, no longer with a roommate as a constant check.Then he would be freefree to hide from the inpressing crowd.
Did Koll know the truth? Quellen soon would find that out.
Restlessly he walked down the echoing corridor to the monitoring wing. Might as well find out what theyve learned about Norm, he thought. The brown metal gate slithered into its slot as Quellen palmed the door identification plaque. He went in. Instruments hummed all over the place. Technicians salaamed to him. The smell of some antiseptic chemical was in the air, as though this were a hospital.
The Pomrath monitor bank, Quellen said.
This way, CrimeSec.
Whos watching it?
Its been on automatic, sir. Here we are. The man pulled out a pneumochair. Quellen planted himself before the turning spools of a tape pickup. The technician said, Would you like to plug in on realtime first, or go over what weve taped since last night?
Ill do a little of both, Quellen said.
This is the realtime jack, and this
I know. Ive used the equipment before.
The technician colored and went scuttering away. Quellen jacked himself into the realtime circuit, and abruptly jacked himself out again. His brother-in-law was performing natural bodily functions. Quellen bit his lip. With quick, edgy manipulation he activated the reserve spools and tuned in on what Norm Pomrath had been up to since Brogg had planted the Ear on him.
Quellen could not allow himself a one-to-one realtime correlation, of course, with Pomraths activities. He had to be selective. Skimming along the tape, he found remarkably little conversation recorded. Pomrath had been to a snifferpalace last night. Then he had gone home. He had quarrelled with Helaine. Quellen listened.
POMRATH:I dont give a damn. I need my relaxation.
HELAINE:But weve waited dinner for you. And here you are all full of drugs. You dont even have an appetite!
POMRATH:What of it? Im here. Put out the dinner. You program, Ill eat!
There was more of it, all relentlessly domestic and dreadfully dull. Quellen skipped ahead fifteen minutes and found the quarrel still going on, punctuated now by the snuffing sound of his nephews tears and the annoyed comments of little Marina. It pained Quellen that the family disputes of the Pomraths should be so commonplace. He moved the tape on a short distance. The Ear had picked up different sounds. Harsh breathing sounds.
HELAINE:put your hand there again.
POMRATH:Oh, honey, you know I will.
HELAINE:Right there. Oh! Oh, Norm!
POMRATH:Are you ready yet?
HELAINE:A little while. Give me time. This is so nice, Norm.
Quellen stared shamefully at the floor. A faintly incestuous pleasure went through him as he eavesdropped on the lovemaking of the Pomraths. He reached for the dial, hesitated, listened to sudden pangs of ecstasy, clenched his jaws together as the words on the tape became more intimate and then dissolved into a rush of gasping sighs.
I ought to erase this section, Quellen thought. I ought at least not to listen to it myself. How disgustingly curious we can get sometimes!
With a quick jerky motion he sped the dial ahead. Nothing-but sleep-sounds now. Then morning-sounds. Children pattering around. Pomrath under the molecular bath. Helaine yawning, asking about the breakfast menu.
POMRATH:Im going out early today.
HELAINE:You think you have a line on that job opportunity?
POMRATH:What job opportunity?
HELAINE:You know, the minislip you were carrying. About the man to see if youre out of work.
POMRATH:Oh. Him.
Quellen waited for more. The telemetry showed unusual excitement in Pomrath, a surge of pulse intensity, a rise in skin temperature. Nevertheless, the conversation was truncated without any word about Lanoy. Quellen skimmed again. The timer told him that he was approaching realtime levels now. Quellen jacked in once more.
POMRATH:You can take me to Lanoy, cant you?
The monitor was programmed to trip an alarm when the name Lanoy was mentioned. There was an imperceptible lag while the computer analyzed the wave forms of Pomraths speech, and then the alarm went off. A red light began to glow on the control panel of the monitor system. Signals blared around the room. A warning bell sounded. Pong. Pong.
Three technicians came running toward the instrument.
Pong.
Quellen said, Its all right. Ill monitor it. Just shut off these damned alarms.
Pong. Pong.
Quellen leaned forward, and sweat poured down the palms of his hands as he listened to his brother-in-law commit the ultimate betrayal of his family.
Pomrath had traveled a considerable distance that morning, unaware, of course, that his motions were being transmitted to the headquarters of the Secretariat of Crime and that his words and even his heartbeats were being recorded.
In the past several days he had asked many questions, mostly prior to the mounting of the Ear in his flesh. The minislips advertising Lanoys services were widely distributed. Information about the actual whereabouts of Lanoy was not so easily had. But Pomrath had persistence.
He was determined to leave, now.
He had had all he could take. It was too bad about Helaine, of course, and the kids. Hed miss them. Yet he was fed up, and he sensed that he was on the edge of psychotic collapse. Words were losing their meaning for him. Hed stare up at a faxtape for half an hour, trying to puzzle out the significance of the rows of symbols on the yellow sheet. They had become squirming microbes to him. KLOOFMAN. UNEMPLOYMENT. TAX RATE. DANTON. MANKLOOF. LOYPMEMUNTNE. TONDAN. XAT RAET. KL. OOF. PLOYM. AX R. Dancing animalcules. EMPL. FMAN. Time to get away, ANTO. UNEM, THEM. FLOOK. FLOOK! FLOOK! FLOOK!
KLOOF!
A simpler world, thats what he needed. To hop to a place not yet this fouled with humanityyes. Yes. Lanoy was the answer. Pomraths head throbbed. It seemed to him that his frontal lobes were swelling, pushing against his forehead dangerously forward. Can you direct me to Lanoy? His head might burst, spewing brains all over the street. Im out of work. I want to see Lanoy. FLOOK! XAT RAET! Lanoy?
A squat, flabby-faced man with a row of natural teeth on top and a single seamless chopper below said, Ill get you to Lanoy. Four pieces, huh?
Pomrath paid him. Where do I go? What do I do?
Quickboat. Number Sixteen Line.
Where do I get off?
Just get on, thats all.
EMPL! FMAN! Pomrath headed for the quickboat ramp. He filed obediently aboard. It seemed a pleasant coincidence that someone would have been so conveniently available to tell him how to reach the elusive Lanoy, Norm thought. But a moments reflection led him to think it was no coincidence at all. The flabby-faced man had probably been an agent of Lanoy, haunting him, ready to guide him in the right direction when the critical moment approached. Of course. His eyes were aching. Something coarse and gritty was in the air, a special eyeball-abrasive gas, perhaps, released by order of the High Government to bring about universal polishing of proletarian corneas. MANK! NOTD! Pomrath huddled in a corner of the quickboat. A cowled figure came up to him, a girl with shaven scalp, jutting cheekbones, no lips at all. For Lanoy? she asked.
Why not?
Transfer to the Northpass Line.
If you say so.
Its the only way. She smiled at him. Her skin seemed to change color, cycling attractively through the spectrum from infragreen to ultralemon. PLOYM! XAT! Pomrath trembled. He wondered what Helaine would say when she knew. Would she weep? How soon would she remarry? Would his children bear his name? The line of Pomraths extinct? Yes. Yes. For he would have to bear some other name back there. FMANK! What if he called himself Kloofman? Sublime irony: my great-grandchild a member of the High Government. Some chance.
Pomrath got off the quickboat. The cowled girl remained aboard. How did they know who he was andwhere he was bound? He felt frightened. The world was full of specters. Pray for the repose of my soul, he thought. Im so tired. OOF! TON!
He waited at the ramp. Around him the spires of ugly buildings of the previous century stabbed holes in the sky. He was out of the central slum-clearance zone now. Who knew what stinking warren he was heading toward? A new quickboat arrived. Pomrath boarded it unquestioningly. I am in your hands, he thought. LANOY! YONAL! Anyone. Anyone. Just get me out of here.
Out!
He journeyed northward. Was this still Appalachia? The sky was dark here. Programmed for rain, perhaps. A clean flush to purify the streets. What if Danton recommended a rain of sulfuric acid? The pavement hissing and smoking, citizens running to and fro as their flesh dissolved. The ultimate population control. Death from the skies. Serve you right for going outdoors. The quickboat halted. Pomrath got out and waited on the ramp. Rain was falling here, pocking against the sidewalk.
Im Pomrath, he said to a kindly old lady.
Lanoys waiting. Come on.
He found himself in rural surroundings ten minutes later. There was a shack by the edge of a lake. Figures moved mysteriously in and out. Pomrath was thrust forward. A purring voice said, Lanoys waiting for you out back.
He was a small man with a big nose. He wore clothing that seemed to be two hundred years old.
Pomrath?
I think so.
What are you, Class Twelve?
Fourteen, Pomrath confessed. Get me out of here, will you please?
My pleasure, said Lanoy.
Pomrath looked at the lake. It was a hideous sight, crawling with pollution. Great greasy swatches of coarse algae roiled in the oily water.
Lanoy said, Isnt it lovely? Six centuries of nonstop pollution interspersed with high-sounding official speeches. The renewal zone is still twenty years away by public count. Would you like to take a swim? We dont practice baptism here, but we can arrange a ceremony to fit anybodys religious preferences.
Pomrath shuddered. I cant swim. Just get me out of here.
The alga is cladaphora. Biologists sometimes come up here to admire it. It reaches lengths of ninety feet. Weve also got anaerobic sludgeworms here, and fingernail clams. Quite primeval. I dont know how they survive. Youd be shocked if you knew the oxygen content of that water.
Nothing shocks me, said Pomrath. Please. Please.
Its full of coliform intestinal bacteria also, Lanoy remarked. I believe the current count is 10,000,000 per 100 milliliters. Thats about 10,000 times the safe level for human contact. Lovely? Come inside, Pomrath. You know its not easy, being a hopper.
Its not easy being anything, these days.
Consider the challenges, though. Lanoy led him within the shack. Pomrath was startled to see that the interior was out of keeping with the weatherbeaten exterior. Inside, everything was neat, spanking clean. A partition divided the building into two huge compartments. Lanoy dropped into a web and lay there, jiggling, like a spider. Pomrath remained standing. Lanoy said, I can take you and dump you into the year 1990, if youd like, or 2076, or most any other year. Dont be fooled by what you read in the faxtapes. Were actually more versatile than the public knows. Were improving the process constantly.
Send me anywhere, said Pomrath.
The correct term is anywhen. But look here: I send you to 1990. Can you face it? You wont even be able to speak the language properly. Youll speak a weird jargon that they wont understand, all your grammar blurred. Do you know the distinction between who and whom? Between shall and will? Can you handle tenses?
Pomrath could feel the blood surging in his arteries. He did not understand why Lanoy was weaving this cocoon of words about him. He had had enough words.
Lanoy laughed. Dont let me frighten you. You dont need to know those things. They were forgotten, even then. People were sloppy in their speech. Not as sloppy as we are today, because weve had another few hundred years to erode the language. But they had blotted out all the conjugations and declensions already. Still, itll take you a couple of weeks to learn how to communicate. You can get into a lot of trouble in a couple of weeks. Are you prepared to be sent to a lunatic asylum? Shock treatments, straight-jacket, all the barbarities of our ancestors?
Just get me out of here.
The police will interrogate you. Dont give them your right name, Pomrath. You arent listed in the hopper records, which means you never gave them your right name, and dont you dare try to do it. Make up a name. You can admit to being a hopper if you land in 1979 or later. If you go back earlier, youre entirely on your own. Frankly, I wouldnt try it. I dont think youve got the caliber for a free-lance trip like that. Youre an intelligent man, Pomrath, but youre worn thin by care. Dont take risks. Go as an orthodox hopper and throw yourself on the mercies of the past. Youll make out.
What does it cost?
Two hundred units. A token fee, really. Barely covers the energy costs.
Is it safe?
As safe as taking a quickboat ride. Lanoy grinned. Its disconcerting. No High Government to watch over you. Dozens of independent national states. Local rivalries. Conflicting taxing bodies. Youll have to cope, but thats all right. I think youll manage.
It cant be worse than whats here.
Are you married, Pomrath?
Yes. Two children. I love them deeply.
Want to take the whole family along?
Can it be done?
With uncertainties. Weve got to send you separately: mass limits. You could get scattered over a range of as much as a dozen years. Your kids arriving first, then you and your wife a few years later, maybe.
Pomrath trembled. Suppose I go first. Will you keep a record of where Im sentwhen Im sentso that my family can come after me if thats what my wife wants to do?
Of course. We look out for your welfare. Ill get in touch with Mrs. Pomrath. Shell have the option of following you. Not many wives do it, of course, but shell have the option. Well, Pomrath? Still with us?
You know I am, Pomrath said.
Quellen, monitoring the conversation, sat trance-like and chilled. He could not see Lanoy, he had no real idea where the conversation was taking place, but yet he realized that his brother-in-law was about to enroll in the legion of hoppers, and there was nothing that could be done about it. Unless Brogg and Leeward reached Lanoys headquarters in the nick of time, and came bursting in to make the arrest
A voice said, Sir, UnderSec Brogg is calling.
Quellen pulled himself away from the monitor. A visionless phone was rolled up. Quellen put it to his ear.
Where are you? he demanded. Have you traced Lanoy yet?
Were working on it, Brogg said. It turned out Brand didnt know the exact location. He just knew somebody who could take him to somebody who could bring him to Lanoy.
I see.
But weve got a geographical area pegged. Were cordoning it and closing in by televector. Its only a matter of time now before we put the intercept on Lanoy in person.
How much time? asked Quellen icily.
Id say six hours, Brogg replied. Plus or minus ninety minutes. Were certain to nail him today.
Six hours, Quellen thought. Plus or minus. And then Lanoy would be in custody.
But Norm Pomrath would be a hopper by then.
12.
Brogg said in a relaxed tone, I have to arrest you, of course. You understand that. Its regulations.
Of course, Lanoy said. It goes almost without saying. I wondered what took you people so long to get to me.
Uncertainty in high places. There was a lot of dithering. Brogg smiled at the little man. I dont mind telling you, you have the High Government quite upset. Theyre sweating to arrest you, but at the same time theyre afraid of wrecking their position of power through some sort of rearrangement of past events. So theyve been stalemated. Its the classic conflict situation: they must stop you, and they dont dare it.
I appreciate their troubles, said Lanoy. Its a terribly complicated life even for Them, isnt it? Well, youre here, now. Come outside. Lets watch the sunset, shall we?
Brogg followed Lanoy from the shack. It was late, now, well into his overtime phase, but Brogg did not object. All day long he and Leeward had zeroed in on Lanoy, juggling televector constants until they had located him within anarrowing radius. As Brogg had told Quellen earlier in the day, it was only a matter of hours. In fact, it had taken four hours and some minutes from the time of Broggs call. Deftly, Brogg had sent Leeward off on a wild goose chase an hour ago. Now Brogg and Lanoy were alone at this remote shack. Brogg had much to say to the hopper man.
A swollen golden sun hung suspended in the darkening sky. The track of illumination cast a purplish glow over the polluted lake. It took on an eerie glitter, and the slime-creatures that writhed on its surface seemed ennobled by the aura of the dying day. Lanoy stared raptly into the west.
It is beautiful, he said finally. I could never leave this era, UnderSec Brogg. I see the beauty within the ugliness. Regard that lake. Was there ever anything like it? I stand here at sunset each night in awe.
Remarkable.
Very. Theres poetry in that ooze. The oxygens just about gone, you see. Theres been a devolution of organic life there, so that weve got only anaerobic forms. I like to think that the sludgeworms dance down there at sunset. About, about, in reel and rout. Look at the play of colors on that big swatch of algae. It grows as long as seaweed here. Do you care for poetry much, Brogg?
My passions for history.
What period?
Roman. The early Empire. Tiberius through Trajan, approximately. Trajans time: a true golden age.
The Republic doesnt interest you? asked Lanoy. The brave puritans? Cato? Lucius Junius Brutus? The Gracchi?
Brogg was astounded. You know such things?
I cast a wide net, said Lanoy. You realize that I deal with the past on a daily basis. Ive acquired a certain familiarity with history myself. Trajan, eh? Youd like to visit Rome of Trajans era, would you?
Of course, Brogg said huskily.
What about Hadrian? Still a golden age there. If you couldnt have Trajan, would you settle for Hadrian? Let us say, a margin of error covering a generationwe might miss Trajan, but in that case wed land somewhere in Hadrian. Wed do better to aim for the forward end of Trajans rule. Otherwise the error might take us the other way, and you wouldnt like that, eh? Youd come out in Titus, Domitian, one of that nasty bunch. Not at all to your liking.
Brogg could manage only a hoarse, croaking voice. What are you talking about?
You know quite well. The sun had set. The magic glow ebbed from the ruined lake. Shall we go in? Lanoy asked. Ill show you some of the equipment.
Brogg allowed himself to be led back inside. He towered over the little man; Lanoy was no bigger than Koll, and had something of Kolls nervous inner energy. Yet Koll brimmed with hatred and pustulence; Lanoy seemed utterly confident, with a core of tranquility within his active dynamism.
Lanoy opened a door in the partition that divided the building. Brogg peered in. He saw vertical bars of some gleaming material, an openwork cage, dials, switches, an array of rheostats. Rows of color-coded panels on the machinery radiated bright glows of data. It all seemed to be put together with an eye toward deliberate confusion.
This is the time-travel machine? Brogg asked.
Part of it. There are extensions both in time and space. I wont plague you with the details. The principle is simple, anyway. A sudden strain on the fabric of the continuum; we thrust present-day material in, scoop out an equal bucketload of mass from the past. Conservation of matter, you understand. When our calculations are off by a few grams, it causes disturbances, implosions, meteorological effects. We try not to miss, but we sometimes do. Theres a fusion plasma at the heart of it all. No better way to rip open the continuum; we use our own little sun to do it. We tap off the theta force, you see. Every time someone uses a stat, it builds up temporal potential that we grab and utilize. Even so, its an expensive process.
What do you charge for a trip?
Two hundred units, generally. That is, if were willing to take money at all.
You send some people free? Brogg asked.
Not exactly. We wont accept the money of certain individuals, I mean. We insist on payment of a different kindservices, information, that sort of thing. If theyre not willing to render what we need, we dont transport them. For those people, no amount of money could hire us.
I dont altogether follow.
You will, Lanoy said. He closed the partition and returned to the office part of the shack. Sprawling out comfortably in his web, he asked Brogg, What arrest procedure are you going to follow in my case?
Youll have to come down to the office to talk to CrimeSec Quellen. Hell have disposition of the case.
Meanwhile well have to cordon this place off with a wide-band radion, and itll remain sealed pending appeal. Any habeas corpus will go automatically to the High Government. Of course, if you can handle Quellen, the picture will change completely.
But I must go to the office?
Yes.
What sort of man is this Quellen. Malleable?
I think so. Especially if you use the right hammer on him, Brogg said.
Does the hammer have a high rental cost?
Not very high. Brogg leaned forward. Is your machine really limited to a reach of only five centuries?
Not at all. We keep improving. Weve had a controlled reach of five centuries for quite some time, but an uncontrolled reach thats much greater.
Yes, said Brogg. The pigs and dogs thrown back to the twelfth century, and such.
You know about those?
Ive been very thorough. Whats your controlled reach now?
Lanoy shrugged. Its variable. We can hit almost anywhere in two thousand years, but the built-in error gets wider the further the throw. Weve got it down to plus or minus thirty years now, but thats quite a range. At the furthest, that is. We could hit 1492 or 1776 smack on the nose, I firmly believe. He smiled. Whats the hammer for pounding Quellen?
Itll cost you, said Brogg. Whats the cost of a ticket to Hadrian?
The hammer for Quellen.
You wont take cash?
Not from you.
Brogg nodded. Lets negotiate, he said. I think we can strike a deal.
By sunset, Helaine Pomrath was convinced that her husband had become a hopper.
It was almost a telepathic thing. He had not come home for dinner, but he had been late for dinner quite frequently the last few weeks. Yet this was different. Helaine felt a strange sense of his absence. She had shared her life with him for so long that she had grown accustomed to his presence, even when he was not with her physically. Now she felt herself in the company of the presence of his absence.
The room seemed smaller, darker. The childrens eyes were wide. Helaine said reassuring things to them. She tried not to think of Beth Wisnack and her grim prophecy that Norm was soon to become a hopper. Helaine asked the time, and the earwatch told her that it was half past eighteen. She gave the children their dinner, but did not eat herself.
At quarter after nineteen, she phoned her brother at his apartment.
I hate to disturb you, Joe, but its about Norm. He isnt home for dinner, and Im worried.
There was a long silence at the other end. Helaine watched Quellens face, but the expression on it baffled her. His lips were tightly compressed.
Joe? Why arent you answering me? Listen, I know Im just a foolish woman whos worrying about nothing at all, but I cant help it. Ive got this definite feeling that something terrible has happened.
Im sorry, Helaine. I did what I could.
What are you talking about?
Theres been an arrest. Weve pulled in the slyster who ran the hopper outfit. But there just wasnt time to get Norm. He slipped right through.
She felt the chill sweeping up from her legs and invading her internal organs, turning them one by one to lumps of resonating ice. Joe, I dont understand you. Do you know something about Norm?
We were monitoring him. Brogg put an Ear on him last night at my instruction. He went out to look for Lanoy this morning. The slyster.
The one you arrested?
Yes. Lanoys running the hopper game. Was running. Hes in custody. Ill be interrogating him in the morning. Norm went to him. It was far outthe trip took him all morning. We were vectoring in on Lanoy, you understand, but there was absolutely no way to get to Norm in time. Ive got a tape of the whole thing as it came out of the Ear.
Hesgone?
Gone, Quellen said. His destination was 2050. Lanoy wasnt sure that they could hit the year exactly, but he said the odds were in favor. I want you to know, Helaine, that Norm was thinking of you right up until he left. You can listen to the tapes yourself. He said he loved you and the children. He was trying to arrange things so you and the children could follow him to 2050. Lanoy agreed to do it. Its all on record.
Gone. He just hopped like that.
He was in bad shape, Helaine. The things he was saying this morninghe was practically insane.
I know it. Hes been like that for days. I tried to get him to go to a frood, but
Is there anything I can do, Helaine? Do you want me to come over and stay with you?
No.
I can have a registered consolation service come around.
Dont bother.
Helaine, youve got to believe me, I did everything that was in my power to prevent this from happening. And if you choose to follow him the hopper way, Ill see to it that you get the opportunity. That is, if the High Government permits further hopper operations, now that weve taken Lanoy into custody.
Ill think about it, said Helaine quietly. I dont know what Ill do. Just let me alone now. Thanks for everything, anyway, Joe.
She opaqued the screen and broke the contact. Now that the worst had happened, Helaine felt oddly calm. Glacially calm. She would not go into the past hunting for her husband. She was the widow Pomrath, betrayed, abandoned.
Joseph said, Mommy, wheres Daddy?
Hes gone away, son.
Will he be coming back soon?
I dont think so, Helaine said.
Marina looked up. Does that mean that Daddys dead?
Not quite, Helaine told her. Its too complicated. Ill explain it some other time. Plug yourselves in and do your homework, children. Its almost bedtime.
She went to the drawer where they kept the alcohol tubes. Withdrawing one quickly, she pressed the snout against her skin and took a quick, subcutaneous jolt. It left her feeling neither more animated nor more depressed. She was frozen, at an emotional constant of zero.