“We’re carrying so much weight,” Jespersen said without emotion; he did not seem alarmed. The plane at last wobbled up into the air, leaving the runway permanently behind; noisily it droned over the rooftops of buildings, on its way west.
Joe yelled, “How long will it take to get there?”
“Depends on how much tailwind we get. Hard to say. Probably around noon tomorrow if our luck holds out.”
“Will you tell me now,” Joe yelled, “what’s in the bottle?”
“Gold flakes suspended in a base composed mostly of mineral oil,” the pilot yelled back.
“How much gold? Very much?”
Jespersen turned his head and grinned without answering. He did not have to say; it was obvious.
The old Curtiss-Wright biplane blurpled on, in the general direction of Iowa.
At three in the afternoon the following day they reached the airfield at Des Moines. Having landed the plane, the pilot sauntered off for parts unknown, carrying his flask of gold flakes with him. With aching, cramped stiffness, Joe climbed from the plane, stood for a time rubbing his numb legs, and then unsteadily headed toward the airport office, as little of it as there was.
“Can I use your phone?” he asked an elderly rustic official who sat hunched over a weather map, absorbed in what he was doing.
“If you got a nickel.” The official, with a jerk of his cowlick head, indicated the public phone.
Joe sorted through his money, casting out all the coins which had Runciter’s profile on them; at last he found an authentic buffalo nickel of the period and laid it before the elderly official.
“Ump,” the official grunted without looking up.
Locating the local phone book, Joe extracted from it the number of the Simple Shepherd Mortuary. He gave the number to the operator, and presently his party responded.
“Simple Shepherd Mortuary. Mr. Bliss speaking.”
“I’m here to attend the services for Glen Runciter,” Joe said. “Am I too late?” He prayed silently that he was not.
“Services for Mr. Runciter are in progress right now,” Mr. Bliss said. “Where are you, sir? Would you like us to send a vehicle to fetch you?” He seemed fussily disapproving.
“I’m at the airport,” Joe said.
“You should have arrived earlier,” Mr. Bliss chided. “I doubt very much if you’ll be able to attend any of the service. However, Mr. Runciter will be lying in state for the balance of today and tomorrow morning. Watch for our car, Mr.-”
“Chip,” Joe said.
“Yes, you have been expected. Several of the bereaved have asked that we maintain a vigil for you as well as for Mr. Hammond and a” – he paused – “a Miss Wright. Are they with you?”
“No,” Joe said. He hung up, then seated himself on a curved, polished wooden bench where he could watch cars approaching the airport. Anyhow, he said to himself, I’m here in time to join the rest of the group. They haven’t left town yet, and that’s what matters.
The elderly official called, “Mister, come over here a sec.”
Getting up, Joe crossed the waiting room. “What’s wrong?”
“This nickel you gave me.” The official had been scrutinizing it all this time.
“It’s a buffalo nickel,” Joe said. “Isn’t that the right coin for this period?”
“This nickel is dated 1940.” The elderly official eyed him unblinkingly.
With a groan Joe got out his remaining coins, again sorted among them; at last he found a 1938 nickel and tossed it down before the official. “Keep them both,” he said, and once more seated himself on the polished, curved bench.
“We get counterfeit money every now and then,” the official said.
Joe said nothing; he turned his attention to the semi-high-boy Audiola radio playing by itself off in a corner of the waiting room. The announcer was plugging a toothpaste called Ipana. I wonder how long I’m going to have to wait here, Joe asked himself. It made him nervous, now that he had come so close physically to the inertials. I’d hate to make it this far, he thought, within a few miles, and then – He stopped his thoughts at that point and simply sat.
Half an hour later a 1930 Willys-Knight 87 put-putted onto the airfield’s parking lot; a hempen home-spun individual wearing a conspicuously black suit emerged and shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand in order to see into the waiting room.
Joe approached him. “Are you Mr. Bliss?” he asked.
“Certainly, I am.” Bliss briefly shook hands with him, meanwhile emitting a strong smell of Sen-sen, then got back at once into the Willys-Knight and restarted the motor. “Come along, Mr. Chip. Please hurry. We may still be able to attend a part of the service. Father Abernathy generally speaks quite a while on such important occasions as this.”
Joe got into the front seat beside Mr. Bliss. A moment later they clanked onto the road leading to downtown Des Moines, rushing along at speeds sometimes reaching forty miles an hour.
“You’re an employee of Mr. Runciter?” Bliss asked.
“Right,” Joe said.
“Unusual line of business that Mr. Runciter was in. I’m not quite sure I understand it.” Bliss honked at a red setter which had ventured onto the asphalt pavement; the dog retreated, giving the Willys-Knight its pompous right of way. “What does ‘psionic’ mean? Several of Mr. Runciter’s employees have used the term.”
“Parapsychological powers,” Joe said. “Mental force operating directly, without any intervening physical agency.”
“Mystical powers, you mean? Like knowing the future? The reason I ask that is that several of you people have talked about the future as if it already exists. Not to me; they didn’t say anything about it except to each other, but I overheard – you know how it is. Are you people mediums, is that it?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“What do you foresee about the war in Europe?”
Joe said, “Germany and Japan will lose. The United States will get into it on December 7th, 1941.” He lapsed into silence then, not feeling inclined to discuss it; he had his own problems to occupy his attention.
“I’m a Shriner, myself,” Bliss said.
What is the rest of the group experiencing? Joe wondered. This reality? The United States of 1939? Or, when I rejoin them, will my regression be reversed, placing me at a later period? A good question. Because, collectively, they would have to find their way back fifty-three years, to the reasonable and proper form-constituents of contemporary, unregressed time. If the group as a whole had experienced the same amount of regression as he had, then his joining them would not help him or them – except in one regard: He might be spared the ordeal of undergoing further world decay. On the other hand, this reality of 1939 seemed fairly stable; in the last twenty-four hours it had managed to remain virtually constant. But, he reflected, that might be due to my drawing nearer to the group.
On the other hand, the 1939 jar of Ubik liver and kidney balm had reverted back an additional eighty-odd years: from spray can to jar to wooden-mold bottle within a few hours. Like the 1908 cage elevator which Al alone had seen-
But that wasn’t so. The short, fat pilot, Sandy Jespersen, had also seen the wooden-mold bottle, the Elixir of Ubique, as it had become finally. This was not a private vision; it had, in fact, gotten him here to Des Moines. And the pilot had seen the reversion of the LaSalle as well. Something entirely different had overtaken Al, it would seem. At least, he hoped so. Prayed so.
Suppose, he reflected, we can’t reverse our regression; suppose we remain here the balance of our lives. Is that so bad? We can get used to nine-tube screen-grid highboy Philco radios, although they won’t really be necessary, inasmuch as the superheterodyne circuit has already been invented – although I haven’t as yet run across one. We can learn to drive American Austin motorcars selling for $445 – a sum that had popped into his mind seemingly at random but which, he intuited, was correct. Once we get jobs and earn money of this period, he said to himself, we won’t be traveling aboard antique Curtiss-Wright biplanes; after all, four years ago, in 1935, transpacific service by four-engine China clippers was inaugurated. The Ford trimotor is an eleven-year-old plane by now; to these people it’s a relic, and the biplane I came here on is – even to them – a museum piece. That LaSalle I had, before it reverted, was a considerable piece of machinery; I felt real satisfaction driving it.
“What about Russia?” Mr. Bliss was asking. “In the war, I mean. Do we wipe out those Reds? Can you see that far ahead?”
Joe said, “Russia will fight on the same side as the U.S.A.” And all the other objects and entities and artifacts of this world, he mulled. Medicine will be a major drawback; let’s see – just about now they should be using the sulfa drugs. It’s going to be serious for us when we become ill. And – dental work isn’t going to be much fun either; they’re still working with hot drills and novocaine. Fluoride toothpastes haven’t even come into being; that’s another twenty years in the future.