‘How,’ she asked the cab, ‘can I send a letter in this time period with no contemporary stamps? Tell me that.’
‘Send the letter unstamped, with no return address, miss. The post office will deliver it with a postage due stamp attached.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course.’ But she could not get protonex into a first-class envelope; it would have to go parcel post, and in that class, lacking franking power, it would not be delivered. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Do you have any transistors in your circuits?’
‘A few. But transistors became obsolete when—’
‘Give me one. I don’t care what it does to you; yank it out and let me have it, and the smaller it is the better.’
Presently, from the slot in the back of the seat before her, a transistor rolled; she caught it as it fell.
That puts my radio transmitter out of service,’ the cab complained. ‘I’ll have to bill you for it; it’ll be expensive because of—’
‘Shut up,’ Kathy said. ‘And land in that town; get down as soon as you can.’ She wrote hurriedly on the tablet of paper: ‘This is a radio part from the future, Virgil Ackerman. Show it to no one but save it until the early 1940s. Then take it to Westinghouse Corp. or to General Electric or any electronics (radio) firm. It will make you rich. I am Katherine Sweetscent. Remember me for this, later on.’
The cab landed gingerly on the roof of an office building in the centre of the small town. Below on the sidewalk the rustic, archaic-looking passers-by gaped.
‘Land on the street,’ Kathy reinstructed the cab. ‘I have to put this in the mail.’ She found an envelope in her purse, hurriedly wrote out Virgil’s address in Wash-35, put the transistor and note into the envelope and sealed it. Below them the street with its obsolete old cars rose slowly.
A moment later she was racing to a mailbox; she deposited the letter and then stood gasping for breath.
She had done it. Insured Virgil’s economic future and therefore her own. This would make his career and hers forever.
The hell with you, Eric Sweetscent, she said to herself. I don’t ever have to marry you now; I’ve left you behind.
And then she realized with dismay, I’ve still got to marry you in order to acquire the name. So that Virgil can identify me, later on in the future, in our own time. What she had done, then, came to exactly nothing.
Slowly, she returned to the parked cab.
‘Miss,’ the cab said, ‘can you help me find fuel, please?’
‘You won’t find any fuel here,’ Kathy said. Its obstinate refusal – or inability – to grasp the situation maddened her. ‘Unless you can run on sixty octane gasoline, which I very much doubt.’
A passer-by, a middle-aged man wearing a straw hat, frozen in his tracks by the sight of the autonomic cab, called to her, ‘Hey lady, what’s that, anyhow? A US Marine Corps secret weapon for war games?’
‘Yes,’ Kathy answered. ‘And in addition later on it’ll stop the Nazis.’ As she boarded the cab she said to the group of people who had cautiously formed around the cab at a safe distance, ‘Keep the date December 7, 1941, in mind; it’ll be a day to remember.’ She closed the cab door. ‘Let’s go. I could tell those people so much … but it seems hardly worth it. A bunch of Middle Western hicks.’ This town, she decided, lay either in Kansas or Missouri, from the looks of it. Frankly, it repelled her.
The cab dutifully ascended.
The ‘Starmen should see Kansas in 1935, she said to herself. If they did they might not care to take over Terra; it might not seem worth it.
To the cab she said, ‘Land in a pasture. We’ll sit it out until we’re back in our own time period.’ It probably would not be long, now; she had an impression of a devouring insubstanti-ality here in this era – the reality outside the cab had gained a gaseous quality which she recognized from her previous encounter with the drug.
‘Are you joking?’ the cab said. ‘Is it actually possible that we—’
‘The problem,’ she said tartly, ‘is not in returning to our own time; the problem is finding a way to stay under the drug’s influence until something of worth can be accomplished.’ The time was just not long enough.
‘What drug, miss?’
‘None of your goddam business,’ Kathy said. ‘You nosy autonomic nonentity with your big prying circuits all opened up and flapping.’ She lit a cigarette and leaned back against the seat, feeling weary. It had been a tough day and she knew, with acuity, that more lay ahead.
——————————————————————————–
The sallow-faced young man, who oddly enough already possessed a conspicuous paunch, as if physically yielding to the more lush pleasures at this, the planet’s financial and political capital, shook Eric Sweetscent’s hand damply and said, ‘I’m Don Festenburg, doctor. It’s good to hear you’re joining us. How about an old-fashioned?’
‘No thanks,’ Eric said. There was something about Festenburg which he did not care for, but he could not put his finger on it. Despite his obesity and bad complexion Festenburg seemed friendly enough, and certainly he was competent; the latter alone counted, after all. But – Eric pondered as he watched Festenburg mix himself his drink. Perhaps it’s because I don’t think anyone should speak for the Secretary, he decided. I’d resent anyone who holds the job Festenburg does.
‘Since we’re alone,’ Festenburg said, glancing around the room, ‘I’d like to suggest something that may make me more, palatable to you.’ He grinned knowingly. ‘I can tell what your feelings are; I’m sensitive, doctor, even if I’m the pyknic body-type. Suppose I suggested that an elaborate ruse has been carried off successfully, convincing even you. The flabby, aging, utterly discouraged and hypochondriacal Gino Molinari whom you’ve met and accepted as the authentic UN Secretary—’ Festenburg lazily stirred his drink, eyeing Eric. ‘That’s the robant simulacrum. And the robust, energetic figure you witnessed on video tape a short while ago is the living man. And this ruse must necessarily be maintained, of course, to sidetrack no one else but our beloved ally, the ‘Starmen.’
‘What?’ Startled, he gaped. ‘Why would—’
‘The ‘Starmen consider us harmless, unworthy of their military attention, only .so long as our leader is palpably feeble. Quite visibly unable to discharge his responsibilities – in other words, in no sense a rival to them, a threat.’
After a pause Eric said, ‘I don’t believe this.’
‘Well,’ Festenburg said, shrugging, ‘it’s an interesting idea from the ivory tower, intellectual standpoint. Don’t you agree?’ He walked toward Eric, swirling the contents of his glass. Standing very close to him, Festenburg breathed his noxious breath into Eric’s face and said, ‘It could be. And until you actually subject Gino to an intensive physical examination you won’t know, because everything in that file you read – it could all be faked. Designed to validate a gross, well-worked-out swindle.’ His eyes twinkled with merciless amusement. ‘You think I’m out of my mind? I’m just playing, like a schizoid, with ideas for the fun of it, without regard to their actual consequences? Maybe so. But you can’t prove what I just now told you is untrue, and as long as this remains the case—’ He took a massive swallow of his drink, then made a face. ‘Don’t deplore what you saw on that Ampex video tape. Okay?’
‘But as you say,’ Eric said, ‘I’ll know as soon as I have a chance to examine him.’ And, he thought, that will come soon. ‘So if you’ll excuse me I’d like to end this conversation. I haven’t yet had time to set up my conapt here satisfactorily.’
‘Your wife – what’s her name? Kathy? – isn’t coming, is she?’ Don Festenburg winked. ‘You can enjoy yourself. I’m in a position to give you a hand. That’s my department, the land of the illicit, the feral, and the – let’s just call it the peculiar. Instead of the unnatural. But you come from Tijuana; I probably can’t teach you a thing.’
Eric said, ‘You can teach me to deplore not only what I saw on the video tape but—’ He broke off. Festenburg’s personal life was, after all, his own business.
‘But its creator as well,’ Festenburg finished for him. ‘Doctor, did you know that in the Middle Ages the ruling courts had people who lived in bottles. Spent their entire lives … all shrunken, of course, put in while babies, allowed to grow – to some extent, anyhow – within the bottle. We don’t have that now. However – Cheyenne is the contemporary ranking seat of kings; there are a few sights that could be shown you, if you’re interested. Perhaps from the purely medical standpoint — a sort of professional, disinterested—’
‘I think whatever it is you want to show me would only make me less pleased with my decision to come to Cheyenne,’ Eric said. ‘So frankly I don’t see what profit it would serve.’