‘Wait,’ he instructed the cab. ‘Do you have a glass of water?’
‘Certainly.’ From the slot facing Eric a paper cup of water slid forward, teetered on the lip of the slot, and then halted.
Seated in the cab Eric swallowed the capsule of JJ-180 which he had brought with him. Purloined from Kathy’s stock.
Several minutes passed.
‘Why aren’t you getting out, sir?’ the cab inquired. ‘Have I done something wrong?’
Eric waited. When he felt the drug begin to reach him he paid the cab, got out and walked slowly up the redwood-round path toward the Office of Hazeltine Corporation.
The building flashed as if caught by a whip of lightning. And, overhead, the blue sky twisted laterally. He saw, gazing up, the clear blue of day dawdle as if attempting to remain and then collapse; he shut his eyes because the dizziness was too great, the reference point of outside objects had become too tenuous, and he walked, step by step, feeling his way ahead, bent down, for some reason motivated to continue in motion, however slow.
It hurt. This, unlike the initial exposure, was a major readjustment of the reality structure impinging on him. His steps made no sound, he noticed; he had strayed onto the lawn, but he still kept his eyes shut. Hallucination, he thought, of another world. Is Hazeltine right? By a paradox perhaps I can answer that within the hallucination itself… if that is what it is. He did not think so; Hazeltine was wrong.
When a heather branch brushed his arm he let his eyes open. One of his feet had penetrated the soft black soil of a flower bed; he rested on a half-crushed tuberous begonia. Past the heather hedge the gray side of Hazeltine Corporation rose, exactly as before, and above it the sky was a washed-out blue with irregular clouds sweeping toward the north, the same sky, as nearly as he could tell. What had changed? He returned to the redwood-round path. Shall I go in? he asked himself. He looked back toward the street. The cab had gone. Detroit, the buildings and ramps of the city, seemed somehow elaborate. But he did not know this area.
When he reached the porch the door flew open automatically for him and he looked in on a neat office, with relaxing, leather-covered chairs, magazines, a deep-pile carpet whose design changed continuously… he saw, , through an open doorway, a business area: accounting machines and a computer of some ordinary kind, and at the same time he heard the buzz of activity beyond that, from the labs themselves.
As he started to sit down, a four-armed reeg walked into the office, its blue, chitinous face inexpressive, its embryonic wings pressed tightly to its sloping, bullet-shiny back. It whistled a greeting to him – he had not heard that about them – and passed on out through the doorway. Another reeg, manipulating its extensive network of double-jointed arms vigorously, made its appearance, traveled up to Eric Sweet-scent, halted, and produced a small square box.
Scudding across the side of the box, words in English took shape and departed; he woke to the fact that he had to pay attention to them. The reeg was communicating with him.
WELCOME TO HAZELTINE CORPORATION
He read the words but did not know what to do with them. This was a receptionist; he saw that the reeg was a female. How did he reply? The reeg waited, buzzing; its structure was so convoluted that it seemed unable to remain entirely still; its multilensed eyes shrank and grew as they were partially absorbed back into the skull, then pushed out like flattened corks. If he hadn’t known better he would have said it was blind. And then he realized that these were its false eyes; the genuine ones, compound, were at its top-arm elbows.
He said, ‘May I speak to one of your chemists?’ And he thought, So we did lose the war. To these things. And now Terra is occupied. And its industries are run by these. But, he thought, human beings still exist, because this reeg was not dumbfounded to see me; it has accepted my presence as natural. So we can’t be mere slaves, either.
REGARDING WHAT MATTER?
Hesitating, he said, ‘A drug. Produced here in the past. Called either Frohedadrine or JJ-180; both names refer to the same product.’
JUST A MOMENT PLEASE
The female reeg scuttled through the inner doorway to the business office, then disappeared entirely. He stood waiting, thinking to himself that if this was an hallucination it certainly was not a voluntary one.
A larger reeg, a male, appeared; its joints seemed stiff and Eric realized that it was old. They had a short life span, measured in terms of months, not years. This one had almost come to the end of his.
Utilizing the translating box, the elderly male reeg said:
WHAT IS YOUR INQUIRY ABOUT JJ-180? PLEASE BE BRIEF
Eric bent, picked up a magazine that lay on a table nearby. It was not in English; the cover bore a picture of two reegs and the writing consisted of the crabbed, pictorial reegian script. Startled, he stared at it. The magazine was Life. Somehow it shocked him more than the actual sight of the enemy itself.
PLEASE
The elderly reeg rattled with impatience.
Eric said, ‘I want to purchase an antidote to the addictive drug JJ-180. In order to break my addiction.’
YOU DID NOT NEED ME FOR THAT; THE RECEPTIONIST COULD HAVE TAKEN CARE OF YOU
Turning, the elderly reeg scrabbled haltingly off, eager to return to his work. Eric was left alone.
The receptionist returned with a small brown paper bag; she held it out to him, not with a jointed arm but with a mandible. Eric accepted it, opened it and looked inside. A bottle of pills. This was it; there was nothing more to be done.
THAT WILL BE FOUR THIRTY-FIVE SIR
The receptionist watched as he got his wallet; he took a five-dollar bill from it and passed it to her.
I AM SORRY SIR; THIS IS OUTDATED WARTIME CURRENCY NO LONGER IN USE
‘You can’t take it?’ he said.
WE HAVE A RULE FORBIDDING US TO
‘I see,’ he said numbly, and wondered what to do. He could gulp down the contents of the bottle before she could stop him. But then he would probably be arrested, and the rest could be visualized in an instant; once their police had examined his identification they would know that he came from the past. And they would be aware that he might carry back information affecting the outcome – which had obviously been favorable for them – of the war. And they couldn’t afford that. They would have to murder him. Even if the two races now lived in concert.
‘My watch,’ he said. He unfastened it from his wrist, passed it to the female reeg. ‘Seventeen jewel, seventy-year battery.’ On inspiration he added, ‘An antique, perfectly preserved. From prewar days.’
JUST A MOMENT SIR
Accepting the watch, the receptionist made her way on her long yielding legs to the business office, conferred with someone invisible to Eric; he waited, making no attempt to devour the pills – he felt trapped in a membrane of crushing density, unable to act or escape from action, caught in a halfway land between.
From the business office something emerged. He looked up.
It was a human. A man, young, with close-cropped hair, wearing a work smock that was stained and rumpled. ‘What’s the trouble, buddy?’ the man asked. Behind him the reeg receptionist followed, her points clacking.
Eric said, ‘Sorry to bother you. Could you and I talk in private?’
The man shrugged. ‘Sure.’ He led Eric from the room and into what appeared to be a storage chamber; shutting the door, the man turned to him placidly and said. That watch is worth three hundred dollars; she doesn’t know what to do with it – she’s only got a 600-type brain; you know how the D-class is.’ He lit a cigarette, offered the pack – Camels – to Eric.
‘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 be 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.’