Even these things, he decided, are determined to live. Bruce was right. They deserve their opportunity, their minuscule place under the sun and sky. That’s all they’re asking for and it isn’t much. He thought. And I can’t even do what they do, make my stand, use my wits to survive in a debris-littered alley in Tijuana; that thing that’s taken refuge there in that zinc bucket, without a wife, a career, a conapt or money or the possibility of encountering any of these, still persists. For reasons unknown to me its stake in existence is greater than mine.
The g-Totex blau no longer seemed attractive to him.
Even if I’m going to do this, he thought, why does it have to be now? Like everything else it can be put off – ought, in this case, to be put off. And anyhow he did not feel well; he felt dizzy and he shut his eyes, although by doing so he was inviting another attack by the fearsome Lazy Brown Dog cart which Bruce Himmel had made.
The slight weight in his hand disappeared entirely. He opened his eyes, saw that the paper bag with its black carton inside, the box of g-Totex blau, had disappeared. And the litter heaped here and there in the alley did not appear quite as extensive. From the long shadows cast by the sun he knew that it had become late in the day and this meant that the JJ-180 had worn off and he had gone back in time to – roughly – his own period. But he had taken the piece of capsule at night, in the dark, and this seemed more like five p.m. So, as before, the return was not exact and he wondered just how far off it was in this instance. After all, the ‘Starmen were on their way.
In fact, he saw, they had already arrived.
Overhead a vast, dark, ugly mass hung in the sky, like something that had descended into this world from a lightless land of iron and surprise and frightened, purposeful silence. It was huge enough, he thought, to feed forever; even from the spot where he stood, at the very least a mile from it, he could see that it consisted of a limitless, appetitive self which would begin any time now to gulp down everything in sight. It made no sound. Its engines were off. This ship had come a long way, from the lines deep in intersystem space. It was a seasoned, informed, world-weary apparition, brought out by strange needs from its normal place of residence.
I wonder how easy it’s going to be, Eric wondered. For them simply to drop to the surface and enter key buildings and take everything over. Probably easier than I think, than anyone here on Terra thinks.
He walked from the alley to the street, thinking to himself, I wish I had a gun.
Strange, he thought, that in the center of the greatest abomination of our time, this war, I should find something meaningful. A desire animating me equal to that possessed by the Lazy Brown Dog cart hiding in the zinc pail ten years from now. Maybe I’m its compatriot at last. Able to take my place in the world beside it, do as it does, fight as it fights; whenever it’s necessary and then some, for the pleasure of it. For the joy. As was intended from the start anterior to any time or condition I could comprehend or call my own or enter into.
Traffic had slowed to a near stop along the street. Everyone, in the vehicles and on foot, watched the ‘Star ship.
‘Taxi!’ Walking out into the street he hailed an autonomic cab capable of non-surface flight. ‘Take me to Tijuana Fur & Dye,’ he ordered it. ‘Make it as fast as you can and don’t pay any attention to that ship up there, including any instructions it might broadcast.’
The cab shuddered, rose slightly from the asphalt, and hung stationary. ‘We’ve been forbidden to take off, sir. The Lilistar Army Command for this area sent out orders that—’
‘I’m in supreme charge of this situation,’ Eric told the cab. ‘I outrank the Lilistar Army Command; they’re dirt compared with me. I have to be at Tijuana Fur & Dye immediately – the war effort hangs on my being there.’
‘Yes sir,’ the cab said, and soared up into the sky. ‘And it’s an honor, sir; believe me, a rare honor to convey you.’
‘My presence there,’ Eric said, ‘is of incomparable strategic importance.’ At the factory I’ll make my stand, he said to himself. With the people I know. And, when Virgil Ackerman escapes to Wash-35, I’ll go along with him; it’s beginning to unfold as I witnessed it a year from now.
And, at Tijuana Fur & Dye, he realized, I’ll undoubtedly run into Kathy.
To the cab he said suddenly, ‘If your wife were sick—’
‘I have no wife, sir,’ the cab said. ‘Automatic Mechanisms never marry; everyone knows that.’
‘All right,’ Eric agreed. ‘If you were me, and your wife were sick, desperately so, with no hope of recovery, would you leave her? Or would you stay with her, even if you had traveled ten years into the future and knew for an absolute certainty that the damage to her brain could never be reversed? And staying with her would mean—’
‘I can see what you mean, sir,’ the cab broke in. ‘It would mean no other life for you beyond caring for her.’
‘That’s right,’ Eric said.
‘I’d stay with her,’ the cab decided.
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ the cab said, ‘life is composed of reality configurations so constituted. To abandon her would be to say, I can’t endure reality as such. I have to have uniquely special easier conditions.’
‘I think I agree,’ Eric said after a time. ‘I think I will stay with her.’
‘God bless you, sir,’ the cab said. ‘I can see that you’re a good man.’
‘Thank you,’ Eric said.
The cab soared on toward Tijuana Fur & Dye Corporation.