“I’m a time traveler,” Eric said as he took a cigarette.
“Sure you are.” The man laughed. He extended his match to Eric.
“Don’t you know the action of JJ-180? It was made right here.”
After a thoughtful pause the man said, “But not for years. Because of its addictive qualities and its toxicity. In fact there hasn’t been any since the war.”
“They won the war?”
“ ‘They’? Who’s that?”
“The reegs,” Eric said.
“The reegs,” the man said, “is us. Not they. They was Lilistar. If you’re a time traveler you ought to know that even better than I.”
“The Pact of Peace—”
“There was no ‘Pact of Peace.’ Listen, buddy, I minored in world history in college; I was going to teach. I know all about the last war; it was my specialty. Gino Molinari—he was UN Secretary then, just before hostilities broke out—signed the Era of Common Understanding Protocols with the reegs and then the reegs and the ’Starmen started fighting and Molinari brought us in, on the reeg side, because of the protocols, and we won.” He smiled. “And this stuff you say you’re hooked on, it was a weapon that Hazeltine Corp. developed in 2055, during the war, for use against Lilistar, and it didn’t work out because the Freneksytes were advanced even over us in pharmacology and quickly worked out an antidote-which antidote you’re attempting to buy. God, they had to develop it; we got the snunk into their drinking water; that was the Mole’s idea himself.” He explained, “That was Molinari’s nickname.”
“All right,” Eric said. “Let’s just leave it at this. I want to buy the antidote. I want to trade that watch. It is satisfactory?” He still held the brown paper bag; reaching into it, he lifted out the bottle. “Get me some water and let me take it and then let me get out of here; I don’t know how long it’ll be before I go back to my own time. Is there any objection to that?” He had difficulty controlling his voice; it tried to rise and escape. And he was shaking, but he did not know with what. Anger, possibly fear—more likely bewilderment. At this point he did not even know if he were bewildered.
“Calm down.” Cigarette jutting from his lips, the man walked off, evidently in search of water. “Can you take them with a Coke?”
“Yes,” Eric said.
The man returned with a half-empty bottle of Coca-Cola and watched as Eric struggled to get the pills down one after another.
At the door the female reeg receptionist appeared.
IS HE ALL RIGHT?
“Yes,” the man said, as Eric managed to wash down the last pill.
WILL YOU TAKE CHARGE OF THE WATCH?
Accepting it from her, the man said, “Of course it’s company property; that goes without saying.” He started out of the storeroom.
“Was there ever a UN Secretary near the end of the war named Donald Festenburg?” Eric said.
“No,” the man said.
HE SHOULD RECEIVE SOME CASH SETTLEMENT FOR THE
WATCH IN ADDITION TO THE MEDICATION
The flashing box, declaring its message was extended by the female reeg toward the man; he halted, frowning, then shrugged. “One hundred in cash,” he said to Eric. “Take it or leave it; it’s all the same to me.”
“I’ll take it,” Eric said, and followed him to the business office. As the man counted out the money—in odd, unfamiliar bills which Eric had never seen the like of—he thought of another question. “How did Gino Molinari end his term in office?”
The man glanced up. “Assassinated.”
“Shot?”
“Yes, by old-fashioned lead slugs. A fanatic got him. Because of his lenient immigration policy, his letting the reegs settle here on Terra. There was a racist faction, scared about polluting the blood … as if reegs and humans could interbreed.” He laughed.
This, then, Eric thought, may be the world from which Molinari got that bullet-riddled corpse which Festenburg showed me. The dead Gino Molinari lying mangled and blood-spattered in his helium-filled casket.
From behind him a dry, matter-of-fact voice said, “Are you not going to make the attempt, Dr. Sweetscent, to take the antidote for JJ-180 back to your wife?”
It was an organism without eyes entirely, and he thought, seeing it, of fruit he had come onto as a child, overripe pears lying in the weedy grass, covered by a crawling layer of yellow jackets attracted by the sweet odor of rot. The creature was vaguely spherical. It had fitted itself into a harness, however, which had squeezed its soft body tortuously; no doubt it needed this in order to get around in the Terran environment. But he wondered why it was worth it to the thing.
“Is he really a time traveler?” the man at the cash register asked, jerking his head at Eric.
The spherical organism, wedged within its plastic harness, said by means of its mechanical audio system, “Yes, Mr. Taubman, he is.” It floated toward Eric, then halted, a foot above the ground, making an indistinct sucking noise, as if pulling fluids through its artificial tubes.
“This guy,” Taubman said to Eric, indicating the spherical organism, “is from Betelgeuse. His name is Willy K. He’s one of our best chemists.” He shut the register. “He’s a telepath; they all are. They get a kick out of prying into our minds and the reegs’ but they’re harmless. We like them.” He walked over to Willy K, bent toward him, and said, “Listen, if he’s a time traveler—I mean, we can’t let him just walk out of here; isn’t he dangerous or worth something? Shouldn’t we at least call in the city police? I thought he was nuts or kidding me.”
Willy K floated a little closer to Eric, then withdrew. “There is no way we can keep him here, Mr. Taubman. When the drug wears off he will go back to his own period. However, I would like to interrogate him to a certain extent while he’s here.” To Eric he said, “Unless you object, sir.”
“I don’t know,” Eric said, rubbing his forehead. It had been too much of the unexpected, hearing Willy K ask about Kathy; it had disoriented him entirely and all he wanted to do now was leave—he had no curiosity, no interest in the situation.
“I sympathize with your situation,” Willy K said. “In any case to question you formally is sham; I am getting everything I want from you as it is. What I had hoped to do was answer, if I could, some of your questions by the way I phrased mine. Your wife, for example. You have great conflicting emotions about her, fear for the most part, then hatred, and also a good deal of undistorted love.”
Taubman said, “God, how the Betels love to be psychologists. It must come natural to telepaths; I don’t think they can even help it.” He loitered nearby, evidently interested in Willy K’s probing.
“Can I take the antidote back to Kathy?”
“No, but you can memorize the formula,” Willy K said. “So that Hazeltine Corporation, in your time, can reproduce it. But I don’t think you want to. I’m not going to urge you to … and I can’t force you to.”
“You mean his wife’s hooked on JJ-180, too,” Taubman said, “and he isn’t going to try to help her?”
“You’re not married,” Willy K said. “In marriage the greatest hatred that is possible between human beings can be generated, perhaps because of the constant proximity, perhaps because once there was love. The intimacy is still there, even though the love element has disappeared. So a will to power, a struggle for domination, comes into being.” To Taubman he explained, “It was his wife Kathy who addicted him in the first place, so it is easy to understand his sentiments.”
“I hope I never get in a fix like that,” Taubman said. “Hating someone I once loved.”
The female reeg had clacked up to listen, watching the conversation as it was reproduced on the surface of her translating box. Now she added her own comment.
HATE AND LOVE ARE CLOSELY LINKED, MUCH
MORE SO THAN MOST TERRANS REALIZE
“Do you have another cigarette?” Eric asked Taubman.
“Sure.” Taubman passed him the pack.
“What I find most
interesting of all,” Willy K said, “is that Dr. Sweetscent comes from a universe in which a pact exists between Terra and Lilistar. And that in his year, 2055, a war is being fought in which they are slowly but steadily losing. Clearly this is not our past but another past entirely. And, in his mind, I find the excruciatingly interesting thought that Terra’s quondam warlord, Gino Molinari, has already discovered this rank of parallel universes and has made use of it for his immediate political advantage.” Willy K was silent a moment and then declared, “No, Dr. Sweetscent, after having visualized your memory of the Molinari corpse I am fairly certain that it was not obtained from our world; true, Molinari died by assassination, but I recall pics of his corpse and there is a small but crucial difference. In our world the Secretary was hit repeatedly in the facial area; his features were destroyed. The corpse you saw was not so damaged and I would assume it comes from another world in which he was assassinated, similar to ours but not identical.”
“This must be why so few time travelers have shown up here,” Taubman said. “They’re scattered through all the different possible futures.”
“As to the virile Molinari,” Willy K said thoughtfully, “I suppose that, too, is an alternate configuration. You realize of course, doctor, that all this indicates that your Secretary has taken JJ-180 himself; there is therefore an element of cruel hypocrisy in his threatening you with death if you became addicted. But I would guess, by several clues in your mind, that he also possesses the ’Star-manufactured antidote which you just now took. So he has no fears and can move freely about among the worlds.”
The Mole, Eric realized, could have given me and Kathy the antidote any time.
It was hard for him to accept that about Gino Molinari; he had seemed more humane than this. He was just playing with us, Eric realized. As Willy K said, with an element of cruel hypocrisy.
“But wait,” Willy K cautioned. “We don’t know what he intended to do; he had just found out about your addiction, and he was as usual suffering from a spasm of his chronic illness pattern. He might have given it to you in time. Before it ceased to matter.”
COULD YOU EXPLAIN THIS DISCUSSION?
The reeg receptionist, and also Taubman, had lost the thread of the discourse.
“Would you care to begin the laborious process of memorizing the formula?” Willy K said to Eric. “It will take all the time you have left.”
“All right,” Eric said, and listened intently.
WAIT
Willy K ceased, rotated his supporting mechanism inquiringly.
THE DOCTOR HAS LEARNED SOMETHING
MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY CHEMICAL
FORMULA
“What is it?” Eric asked her.
IN YOUR UNIVERSE WE ARE YOUR ENEMY BUT HERE YOU
HAVE SEEN TERRANS AND OURSELVES LIVE TOGETHER. YOU
KNOW THAT WAR AGAINST US IS UNNECESSARY. AND WHAT
IS MORE IMPORTANT, SO DOES YOUR LEADER.
That was so. No wonder Molinari had no heart for the war; it was not merely a suspicion on his part that this was the wrong war with the wrong enemy and the wrong ally; it was a fact which he had experienced for himself, perhaps many times. And all due to JJ-180.
But not only that. There was something more, something so ominous that he wondered why the inhibition barriers of his mind had permitted the thought to rise from his unconscious. JJ-180 had reached Lilistar—and in quantity. ’Starmen had certainly been experimenting with it. So they, too, knew the alternate possibility, knew that Terra’s better hope lay in cooperation with the reegs. Had witnessed it for themselves.
In both branches of possibility Lilistar had lost the war. With or without Terra on her side. Or—
Was there a third alternative, one in which Lilistar and the reegs joined against Terra?
“A pact between Lilistar and the reegs is unlikely,” Willy K said. “They have been antagonists for too many years. I feel that it is only your planet, on which we now stand, that hangs in the balance; Lilistar will be defeated by the reeg power in any eventuality.”
“But that means,” Eric said, “that the ’Starmen have nothing to lose; if they know they can’t win—” He could imagine Freneksy’s reaction to this information. The nihilism, the destructive violence of the ’Starmen, would be inconceivable.
“True,” Willy K agreed. “So your Secretary is wise to walk softly. Now perhaps you can comprehend why his illness pattern must be so vast, why he must push himself actually over the brink, into repeated death, to serve his people. And why he would hesitate to provide you with the antidote to JJ-180; if ’Star intelligence agents—and your wife may be one—learned that he possessed it, they might—” Willy K was silent. “It is hard, as you yourself might observe, to predict the behavior of psychotics. But this much is clear: they would not ignore the situation.”
“They’d find a way to get it away from him,” Eric said.
“You’ve missed the point. Their attitude would be punitive; they would know that Molinari possesses too much power, that by having unhindered use of JJ-180, without the possibility of addiction, of neural deterioration, he can’t be controlled by them. This is why, on a deep, psychosomatic basis, Molinari can defy Minister Freneksy. He is not entirely helpless.”
“This is all over my head,” Taubman said. “Excuse me.” He walked off.
The reeg receptionist remained.
URGE YOUR SECRETARY TO CONTACT THE
REEG AUTHORITY. WE WOULD ASSIST IN
PROTECTING TERRA FROM STAR VENGEANCE, I AM SURE.
It was, Eric thought, a rather wistful message which the multi-armed creature had flashed at him with her translation box. The reegs might want to assist, but ’Starmen were already on Terra, holding key positions. At the first hint that Terra was negotiating with the reegs the ’Starmen would move in prearranged order; they would seize the planet overnight.
A tiny Terran-controlled state might function for a limited time in the Cheyenne vicinity, shelled and bombed day and night by the ’Starmen. But then it, too, would capitulate. Its shield of Jupiter-obtained rexeroid compounds would not protect it forever—and Molinari knew that. Terra would become a conquered state, supplying war material and slave labor to Lilistar. And the war would go on.
And the irony was this: as a slave planet Terra would be able to contribute more to the war effort than she did now as a quasi-independent entity. And no one recognized this more than did the Mole. Hence his entire foreign policy; this explained everything that he did.
“By the way,” Willy K said, and there was a trace of amusement in his voice. “Your former employer, Virgil Ackerman, is still alive; he still governs Tijuana Fur & Dye. He is two hundred and thirty years old and retains twenty org-trans surgeons within call. I believe I have read that he has gone through four matched sets of kidneys, five livers, spleens, and undetermined numbers of hearts—”
“I feel sick,” Eric said, and rocked back and forth.
“The drug is wearing off.” Willy K floated toward a chair. “Miss Ceeg, assist him, please!”
“I’m okay,” Eric said thickly. His head ached and nausea staggered him. All the lines, the surfaces around him, had become astigmatic; under him the chair felt unreal and then, abruptly, he fell, lay on his side.
“The transition is difficult,” Willy K said. “Apparently we can’t help him, Miss Ceeg. Good luck to your Secretary, doctor. I can appreciate what a great service he performed for your people. Perhaps I will write a letter to the New York Times, conveying this knowledge.”
A prism of primal colors tapped at Eric like an illuminated wind; it was, he thought, the wind of life blowing over him, sweeping him where it desired without regard for his small wishes. And then the winds became black; they were no longer the winds of life but the opaque smoke of death.
He saw, projected as a pseudo environment around him, a travesty of his injured nervous system; the multitudes of conduits were visibly corrupted, had turned inky as the drug’s damage spre
ad throughout him and established its grim self. A voiceless bird, some carrion eater of the storm, sat on his chest, croaking in the silence left behind as the winds receded from him. The bird remained and he felt its dunglike claws penetrate his lungs, his chest cavity, and then his abdominal cavity. Nothing within him remained untouched; it had all been disfigured and even the antidote had not stopped this. As long as he lived he would never regain the purity of the original organism.
This was the price exacted from him by the deciding forces.
Dragging himself to a crouched position, he saw that he inhabited an empty waiting room. No one had seen him and he was free to get up and go. He rose to his feet, steadied himself by means of a chrome and leather chair.
The magazines, in the nearby rack, were in English. And their covers, laughing Terrans. Not reegs.
“Did you want something?” A male voice, lisping slightly. A Hazeltine employee wearing florid, fashionable robes.
“No,” Eric said. This was his own time; he recognized the trappings of 2055. “Thanks just the same.”
A moment later he had made his way painfully outdoors in the direction of the sidewalk, down the path of redwood rounds.
What he wanted was a cab, a place to sit down and rest, as he made his trip back to Cheyenne. He had gotten what he wanted; presumably he was no longer an addict and if he cared to he could also free his wife. And in addition he had viewed a world over which the shadow of Lilistar did not obtain.
“Ferry you somewhere, sir?” An autonomic cab drifted toward him.
“Yes,” he said, and walked toward it.
Suppose an entire planet took the drug, he thought as he boarded. A mass fugue away from our dismal, ever-narrowing world of reality. Suppose Tijuana Fur & Dye gave the order to produce it in enormous quantity, distributed it, through the government’s help, to everyone. Would that be a moral solution? Are we entitled to that?