Thank you,’ Kathy said, and sat back against the seat, rubbing her forehead and thinking. So it’s confused, too. Then this is not merely subjective; there’s been a genuine snarl in time, involving both me and my surroundings.
The cab said, as if in apology for its inability to assist her, ‘Since the trip will be several hours, miss, would you enjoy to watch TV? It, the screen, is placed directly before you; only touch the pedal.’
Reflexively she lit the screen with the tip of her toe; it came to life at once and Kathy found herself facing a familiar image, that of their leader, Gino Molinari, in the middle of a speech.
‘Is that channel satisfactory?’ the cab asked, still apologetic.
‘Oh sure,’ she said. ‘Anyhow when he gets up and rants it’s on all channels. “That was the law.
And yet here, too, in this familiar spectacle, something strange absorbed her; peering at the screen, she thought, He looks younger. The way I remember him when I was a child. Ebullient, full of animation and shouting excitement, his eyes alive with that old intensity: his original self that no one has forgotten, although long since gone. However, obviously it was not long since gone; she witnessed it now with her own eyes, and was more bewildered than ever.
Is JJ-180 doing this to me? she asked herself, and got no answer.
‘You enjoy to watch Mr Molinari?’ the cab inquired.
‘Yes,’ Kathy said, ‘I enjoy to watch.’
‘May I hazard,’ the cab said, ‘that he will obtain the office for which he is running, that of UN Secretary?’
‘You stupid autonomic robant machine,’ Kathy said wither-ingly. ‘He’s been in office years now.’ Running? she thought. Yes, the Mole had looked like this during his campaign, decades ago.. . perhaps that was what had confused the circuits of the cab. ‘I apologize,’ she said. ‘But where the hell have you been? Parked in an autofac repair garage for twenty-two years?’
‘No, miss. In active service. Your own wits, if I may say so, seem scrambled. Do you request medical assistance? We are at this moment over desert land but soon we will pass St George, Utah.’
She felt violently irritable. ‘Of course I don’t need medical assistance; I’m healthy.’ But the cab was right. The influence of the drug was upon her full force now. She felt sick and she shut her eyes, pressing her fingers against her forehead as if to push back the expanding zone of her psychological reality, her private, subjective self. I’m scared, she realized. I feel as if my womb is about to fall out; this time it’s hitting me much harder than before, it’s not the same, maybe because I’m alone instead of with a group. But I’ll just have to endure it. If I can.
‘Miss,’ the cab said suddenly, ‘would you repeat my destination? I have forgotten it.’ Its circuits clicked in rapid succession as if it were in mechanical distress. ‘Assist me, please.’
‘I don’t know where you’re going,’ she said. That’s your business; you figure it out. Just fly around, if you can’t remember.’ What did she care where it went? What did it have to do with her?
‘It began with a C,’ the cab said hopefully.
‘Chicago.’
‘I feel otherwise. However, if you’re sure—’ Its mechanism throbbed as it altered course.
You and I are both in this, Kathy realized. This drug-induced fugue. You made a mistake, Mr Corning, to give me the drug without supervision. Corning? Who was Corning?
‘I know where we were going,’ she said aloud. ‘To Corning.’
‘There is no such place,’ the cab said flatly.
‘There must be.’ She felt panic. ‘Check your data again.’
‘Honestly, there isn’t!’
‘Then we’re lost,’ Kathy said, and felt resigned. ‘God, this is awful. I have to be in Corning tonight, and there’s no such place; what’ll I do? Suggest something. I depend on you; please don’t leave me to flounder like this – I feel as if I’m losing my mind.’
‘I’ll request administrative assistance,’ the cab said. ‘From top-level dispatching service at New York. Just a moment.’ It was silent for a time. ‘Miss, there is no top-level dispatching service at New York, or if there is, I can’t raise them.’
‘Is there anything at New York?’
‘Radio stations, lots of them. But no TV transmissions or anything on the FM or ultra-high frequency; nothing on the band we use. Currently I am picking up a radio station which is broadcasting something entitled “Mary Marlin.” A piano piece by Debussy is being played as theme.’
She knew her history; after all she was an antique collector and it was her job. ‘Put it on your audio system so I can hear it,’ she instructed.
A moment later she heard a female voice, retailing a wretched tale of suffering to some other female, a dreary account at best. And yet it filled Kathy with frantic excitement.
They’re wrong, she thought, her mind working at its peak pitch. This won’t destroy me. They forgot this era is my specialty – I know it as well as the present. There’s nothing threatening or disintegrative about this experience for me; in fact it’s an opportunity.
‘Leave the radio on,’ she told the cab. ‘And just keep flying.’ Attentively, she listened to the soap opera as the cab continued on.
EIGHT
It had – against nature and reason – become daytime. And the autonomic cab knew the impossibility of this; its voice was screechy with pain as it exclaimed to Kathy, ‘On the highway below, miss! An ancient car that can’t possibly exist!’ It sank lower. ‘See for yourself! Look!’
Gazing down, Kathy agreed, ‘Yes. A 1932 Model A Ford. And I agree with you; there haven’t been any Model A Fords for generations.’ Rapidly and with precision she reflected, then said, ‘I want you to land.’
‘Where?’ Decidedly, the autonomic cab did not like the idea.
‘That village ahead. Land on a rooftop there.’ She felt calm. But in her mind one realization dominated: it was the drug. And only the drug. This would last only so long as the drug operated within her cycle of brain metabolism; JJ-180 had brought her here without warning and JJ-180 would, eventually, return her to her own time – also without warning. ‘I am going to find a bank,’ Kathy said aloud. ‘And set up a savings account. By doing so—’ And then she realized that she possessed no currency of this period; hence there existed no way by which she could transact business. So what could she do? Nothing? Call President Roosevelt and caution him about Pearl Habor, she decided caustically. Change history. Suggest that years from now they not develop the atom bomb.
She felt impotent – and yet overwhelmed with her potential power; she experienced both sensations at once, finding the mixture radically unpleasant. Bring some artifact back to the present for Wash-35? Or check on some research quibble, settle some historical dispute? Snare the actual authentic Babe Ruth, bring him back to inhabit our Martian enterprise? It would certainly impart verisimilitude.
‘Virgil Ackerman,’ she said slowly, ‘is alive in this period as a small boy. Does that suggest anything?’
‘No,’ the cab said.
‘It gives me enormous power over him.’ She opened her purse. ‘I’ll give him something. The coins I have, bills.’ Whisper to him the date the United States enters the war, she thought. He can use that knowledge later on, somehow … he’ll find a way; he’s always been smart, much smarter than I. God, she thought, if only I could put my finger on it! Tell him to invest in what? General Dynamics? Bet on Joe Louis in every fight? Buy real estate in Los Angeles? What do you tell an eight- or nine-year-old boy when you have exact and complete knowledge of the next hundred and twenty years?
‘Miss,’ the cab said plaintively, ‘we’ve been in the air so long that I’m running short of fuel.’
Chilled, she said, ‘But you ought to be good for fifteen hours.’
‘I was low.’ It admitted this reluctantly. ‘It’s my fault; I’m sorry. I was on my way to a service station when you contacted me.’
‘You damn fool mechanism,’ she said with fury. But that was that; they couldn’t reach Washington D.C.; they were at least a thousand miles from it. And this period, of course, lacked the high-grade super-refined protonex which the cab required. And then all at once she knew what she had to do. The cab had given her the idea, unintentionally. Protonex was the finest fuel ever developed – and it was derived from sea water. All she had to do was mail a container of protonex to Virgil Ackerman’s father, instruct him to procure analysis of it and then a patent on it.
But there was no way she could mail anything, not without money to buy stamps. In her purse she had a small wad of dogeared postage stamps, but of course all from her own era, from 2055. ——, she said furiously to herself, overwhelmed. Here I have it right before me, the solution as to what I should do – and I can’t do it.