“You know what Ray Hollis says about us?” Runciter said. “He says we’re trying to turn the clock back.” He eyed the individuals who had begun to fill up his office; they gathered near one another, none of them speaking. They waited for him. What an ill-assorted bunch, he thought pessimistically. A young stringbean of a girl with glasses and straight lemon-yellow hair, wearing a cowboy hat, black lace mantilla and Bermuda shorts; that would be Edie Dorn. A good-looking, older, dark woman with tricky, deranged eyes who wore a silk sari and nylon obi and bobby socks; Francy something, a part-time schizophrenic who imagined that sentient beings from Betelgeuse occasionally landed on the roof of her conapt building. A woolly-haired adolescent boy wrapped in a superior and cynical cloud of pride, this one, in a floral mumu and Spandex bloomers, Runciter had never encountered before. And so it went: five females and – he counted – five males. Someone was missing.
Ahead of Joe Chip the smoldering, brooding girl, Patricia Conley, entered. That made the eleventh; the group had all appeared.
“You made good time, Mrs. Jackson,” he said to the mannish, thirtyish, sand-colored lady wearing ersatz vicuna trousers and a gray sweatshirt on which had been printed a now faded full-face portrait of Bertrand Lord Russell. “You had less time than anybody else, inasmuch as I notified you last.”
Tippy Jackson smiled a bloodless, sand-colored smile.
“Some of you I know,” Runciter said, rising from his chair and indicating with his hands that they should find chairs and make themselves comfortable, smoking if necessary. “You, Miss Dorn; Mr, Chip and I chose you first because of your topnotch activity vis-a-vis S. Dole Melipone, whom you eventually lost through no fault of your own.”
“Thank you, Mr. Runciter,” Edie Dorn said in a wispy, shy trickle of a voice; she blushed and stared wide-eyed at the far wall. “It’s good to be a part of this new undertaking,” she added with undernourished conviction.
“Which one of you is Al Hammond?” Runciter asked, consulting his documents.
An excessively tall, stoop-shouldered Negro with a gentle expression on his elongated face made a motion to indicate himself.
“I’ve never met you before,” Runciter said, reading the material from Al Hammond’s file. “You rate highest among our anti-precogs. I should, of course, have gotten around to meeting you. How many of the rest of you are anti-precog?” Three additional hands appeared. “The four of you,” Runciter said, “will undoubtedly get a great bloop out of meeting and working with G. G. Ashwood’s most recent discovery, who aborts precogs on a new basis. Perhaps Miss Conley herself will describe it to us.” He nodded toward Pat-
And found himself standing before a shop window on Fifth Avenue, a rare-coin shop; he was studying an uncirculated U.S. gold dollar and wondering if he could afford to add it to his collection.
What collection? he asked himself, startled. I don’t collect coins. What am I doing here? And how long have I been wandering around window-shopping when I ought to be in my office supervising – he could not remember what he generally supervised; a business of some kind, dealing in people with abilities, special talents. He shut his eyes, trying to focus his mind. No, I had to give that up, he realized. Because of a coronary last year, I had to retire. But I was just there, he remembered. Only a few seconds ago. In my office. Talking to a group of people about a new project. He shut his eyes. It’s gone, he thought dazedly. Everything I built up.
When he opened his eyes he found himself back in his office; he faced G. G. Ashwood, Joe Chip and a dark, intensely attractive girl whose name he did not recall. Other than that his office was empty, which for reasons he did not understand struck him as strange.
“Mr. Runciter,” Joe Chip said, “I’d like you to meet Patricia Conley.”
The girl said, “How nice to be introduced to you at last, Mr. Runciter.” She laughed and her eyes flashed exultantly. Runciter did not know why.
Joe Chip realized, she’s been doing something. “Pat,” he said aloud, “I can’t put my finger on it but things are different.” He gazed wonderingly around the office; it appeared as it had always: too loud a carpet, too many unrelated art objects, on the walls original pictures of no artistic merit whatever. Glen Runciter had not changed; shaggy and gray, his face wrinkled broodingly, he returned Joe’s stare – he too seemed perplexed. Over by the window G. G. Ashwood, wearing his customary natty birch-bark pantaloons, hemp-rope belt, peekaboo see-through top and train-engineer’s tall hat, shrugged indifferently. He, obviously, saw nothing wrong.
“Nothing is different,” Pat said.
“Everything is different,” Joe said to her. “You must have gone back into time and put us on a different track; I can’t prove it and I can’t specify the nature of the changes -”
“No domestic quarreling on my time,” Runciter said frowningly.
Joe, taken aback, said, “‘Domestic quarreling’?” He saw, then, on Pat’s finger the ring: wrought-silver and jade; he remembered helping her pick it out. Two days, he thought, before we got married. That was over a year ago, despite how bad off I was financially. That, of course, is changed now; Pat, with her salary and her money-minding propensity, fixed that. For all time.
“Anyhow, to continue,” Runciter said. “We must each of us ask ourselves why Stanton Mick took his business to a prudence organization other than ours. Logically, we should have gotten the contract; we’re the finest in the business and we’re located in New York, where Mick generally prefers to deal. Do you have any theory, Mrs. Chip?” He looked hopefully in Pat’s direction.
Pat said, “Do you really want to know, Mr. Runciter?”
“Yes.” He nodded vigorously. “I’d very much like to know.”
“I did it,” Pat said.
“How?”
“With my talent.”
Runciter said, “What talent? You don’t have a talent; you’re Joe Chip’s wife.”
At the window G. G. Ashwood said, “You came in here to meet Joe and me for lunch.”
“She has a talent,” Joe said. He tried to remember, but already it had become foggy; the memory dimmed even as he tried to resurrect it. A different time track, he thought. The past. Other than that, he could not make it out; there the memory ended. My wife, he thought, is unique; she can do something no one else on Earth can do. In that case, why isn’t she working for Runciter Associates? Something is wrong.
“Have you measured it?” Runciter asked him. “I mean, that’s your job. You sound as if you have; you sound sure of yourself.”
“I’m not sure of myself,” Joe said. But I am sure about my wife, he said to himself. “I’ll get my test gear,” he said. “And we’ll see what sort of a field she creates.”
“Oh, come on, Joe,” Runciter said angrily. “If your wife has a talent or an anti-talent you would have measured it at least a year ago; you wouldn’t be discovering it now.” He pressed a button on his desk intercom. “Personnel? Do we have a file on Mrs. Chip? Patricia Chip?”
After a pause the intercom said, “No file on Mrs. Chip. Under her maiden name, perhaps?”
“Conley,” Joe said. “Patricia Conley.”
Again a pause. “On a Miss Patricia Conley we have two items: an initial scout report by Mr. Ashwood, and then test findings by Mr. Chip.” From the slot of the intercom repros of the two documents slowly dribbled forth and dropped to the surface of the desk.
Examining Joe Chip’s findings, Runciter said, scowling, “Joe, you better look at this; come here.” He jabbed a finger at the page, and Joe, coming over beside him, saw the twin underlined crosses; he and Runciter glanced at each other, then at Pat.
“I know what it reads,” Pat said levelly. “‘Unbelievable power. Anti-psi field unique in scope.'” She concentrated, trying visibly to remember the exact wording. “‘Can probably-‘”
“We did get the Mick contract,” Runciter said to Joe Chip. “I had a group of eleven inertials in here and then I suggested to her-”
Joe said, “That she show the group what she could do. So she did. She did exactly that. And my evaluation was right.” With his fingertip he traced the symbols of danger at the bottom of the sheet. “My own wife,” he said.
“I’m not your wife,” Pat said. “I changed that, too. Do you want it back the way it was? With no changes, not even in details? That won’t show your inertials much. On the other hand, they’re unaware anyhow… unless some of them have retained a vestigial memory as Joe has. By now, though, it should have phased out.”
Runciter said bitingly, “I’d like the Mick contract back; that much, at least.”
“When I scout them,” G. G. Ashwood said, “I scout them.” He had become gray.