Her only saving grace was that she would always put the food on the table and leave, which let the two of us talk shop over the dining room table without breaching security.
At one point, discussing something having to do with causality, Ian said, “It’s undefinable. It’s like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg?”
“That’s a perfectly stupid question. Obviously, the egg came first.”
“You seem remarkably positive about that. Would you care to illuminate me with the glow of this newfound wisdom?”
“Certainly, my conventional little friend. Consider that what we call a chicken is in fact a domesticated Ceylonese jungle fowl. That domestication could not possibly have taken place more than ten thousand years ago.”
“I’ll accept that for the sake of argument. What has it to do with the subject at hand?”
“Why, everything. Eggs have been around for hundreds of millions of years. Billions, maybe. Dinosaurs laid eggs, you know, and fishes were laying eggs long, long before that. The time difference between ten thousand years and a billion years is so great as to make the question of priority blatantly obvious. Now, had you asked about the chicken and the chicken egg, the problem might have been less easily resolvable, but fortunately that’s not what you said.”
Ian’s rejoinder was lost for all time because I had to get up to answer the telephone.
“Tom, can you and Ian get over here at one this afternoon? It’s important.” Hasenpfeffer sounded tired over the phone.
“Sure. Where are you?” I said.
“I have the top two floors of the Madison Building.”
“The big new one on Third?”
“Yes. And put a suit on, will you? Appearances, you know.”
It was already half past noon, so we changed quickly without bothering to wash up. We left on the run, not realizing that we’d never see our home again. Ten minutes after we were gone, a small fleet of moving vans arrived and cleaned the place out in two hours flat. And I do mean cleaned out. They even took all the trash in the garbage cans.
When we got to the Madison Building, we found that the top floor button on the elevator had been replaced with a key lock, so we got off on the sixteenth. The elevator door opened on a large room half-filled with impressively dressed and manicured people. Silk ties. Leather attache cases. Three-piece grey wool suits.
Presiding over it all was an incredibly beautiful and efficient-looking woman. She sat behind this nine-foot desk that was just encrusted with gadgets.
“Quite a layout,” Ian said, looking past his dirty fingernails to his unshined shoes.
“Yeah. Look, let’s go somewheres and buy a tie or something.”
The woman at the desk spotted us and came over quickly, smiling. “You must be Mr. McTavish and Mr. Kolczyskrenski.”
An angel. She even pronounced my name right. She ushered us past the briefcase crowd and through a much larger room. There were scores of desks with intent people sitting at them, talking quickly on an equal number of telephones. Word processors were being operated. A big computer on the far wall was in operation, with dozens of big tape decks whirling and stopping and whirling once more with simpleminded diligence. All told, maybe a hundred people doing important looking things.
At the top of the escalator, where they couldn’t be seen from the floor below, stood two uniformed guards, festooned with radios, side arms and submachine guns. These were not your usual rent-a-cops. They were deadly types.
“This way, sir.” The angel put her hand on a wall mirror and a heavy door opened electrically.
“The screen is keyed to my palm print,” she said. “This is as far as I am allowed to go. The next door is keyed to both of your prints.”
“Hey, this is getting a little ridiculous,” I said.
“Dr. Hasenpfeffer’s orders.”
“Look, Hasenpfeffer isn’t God.”
“Indeed?”
I didn’t know how to answer that one, so I went in and Ian limped after me. Inside were more guards with that sleepy look and more guns with thirty-round clips. Ian opened the next door and we finally saw Hasenpfeffer, sitting behind a huge desk in a big, dirty, and profoundly cluttered office. There were old newspapers and computer printouts all over the place.
“I see that you gentlemen made it.”
“Quite a setup you have here, Jim.”
“Thank you. It’s quite necessary, I assure you.”
“Look, what’s with the guards and bank vault doors?” I asked.
“My friends, you must understand that when you convert twelve thousand dollars into something in excess of twenty-six million within six months, people are bound to ask questions. For obvious reasons, it is preferable that they do not receive accurate answers.”
“Twenty-six million!” I gasped.
“At present. Six times that amount by this time tomorrow, if all goes well.” Hasenpfeffer said.
“How in the hell did you do it?” Ian rasped.
“The stock market. The race tracks. And real estate. I asked you both here to sign several warranty deeds. We have four closings scheduled this afternoon, but I have arranged them at forty-five minute intervals so as to interrupt your schedules as little as possible.”
“Like, what schedules? We work and we sleep.”
“Jim,” Ian said, “With the staff you have here, what do you need with our help?”
“In most things I can act in your names with relatively little difficulty, but when a major corporation pays thirty-one million dollars for a parcel of oil producing land, they naturally expect a clear title.”
“Hey, back up.” I said. “Our signatures? You mean I own a piece of this?”
“One third, of course. This is a group venture.”
The year before, Hasenpfeffer had taken my four-channel, two-gigahertz, delayed sweep Textronics storage scope and dropped it down the basement steps. It was at this moment that I finally forgave him.
“But we must hurry,” he continued. “It is imperative that we finish by 4:15. Soybean futures will be hitting a three year low this afternoon, Great Stag will be paying thirty-seven to one this evening, and Mitsubishi will be announcing a three to one split at 11:30 local time. Come, now.”
Hasenpfeffer led us quickly to the corridor.
“Is that all?” Ian was having trouble keeping up with Hasenpfeffer’s rapid, jerky stride.
“Of course not. There’s the heavyweight championship, National Robotics is going public in the morning, and Exxon will announce an inexpensive shale oil recovery process. It won’t prove to be practical, but there will still be plenty of money to be made in trading its stocks for a few months.” Hasenpfeffer broke into a trot. “We’ll be receiving fifty-five million dollars in certified checks, which must be in the bank before it closes.”
“Hey, calm down,” I said. “The universe will still be here.”
“If we upset today’s schedule, we’ll slow our growth by four months. So many highly profitable things are happening today! We are at a cusp, and there is a sea tide in these things. We must not miss it!”
The office was empty except for the angel.
“Where are they, Haskins?”
“Standard Oil called from Chicago. They’ll be at least an hour late, Dr. Hasenpfeffer,” the angel said.
“Reschedule this afternoon’s appointments.”
“I’ve been trying to, sir. I haven’t been able to contact the Texaco group or Bradford Development. Mobile will get here on time, but not before. And they are the last of the four.”
“Most annoying. Keep trying, Haskins.”
When she left, Hasenpfeffer said, “Shit!” and flopped down on a couch. “Oh, yes. There is the matter of your new laboratory. I have taken the liberty of having a moving company clean out your present quarters. I think the new facility in Arizona will be very much to your liking.”
“New facility!” Ian cried. “What on earth for? We’ve got pretty much what we need right where we’re at.”
“Primarily for security. Your coming here has announced your presence. We can not have our project known to the public.”
“Security! Damn it, if you think that I’m going to let a gang of armed thugs into my lab . . .” I said.
“Tom, security forces are the lesser of the possible evils. Your staff can isolate you from any unpleasantries.”
“Staff?” Ian said. “Jim, one of our primary goals with the time field was to keep it to ourselves. With a staff, there’s bound to be a leak.”
“They will be quite reliable people, selected from my own personnel here. Many of them are very competent, technically, and Haskins will set up the organization along the lines of the Manhattan Project.”
“Haskins? The angel?” I said.
“Yes, she’ll be going with us as General Manager. You’ll find that she’s quite efficient.”
I pondered maybe twenty milliseconds.
“Ian,” I announced, “if you’re against it, you’re outvoted.” Arizona suddenly sounded good.
“Don’t worry, gentlemen,” Hasenpfeffer said. “Soon, I’m sure you will be successful and we will soon be able to travel in the fourth dimension.”