“Forget the police,” the voice said impatiently. “I’m maintaining vitality in a small cluster of cortical cells only with the greatest difficulty, in order to hold open this link through the Reinforcer! Don’t render the effort useless by dithering here! Start now!”
“B-but—my car won’t start!”
“Take the motorcycle!”
“That would be stealing!”
“Who’s going to report it? Relatives of a giant rutabaga?”
“You have a definite point there,” Roger said, hurrying toward the fallen machine. “Somehow, I never thought insanity would be like this.” He lifted the bike. Except for a few scratches in the green paint, it seemed as good as new. He kicked it into life, mounted, and gunned off down the highway, squinting into the darkness ahead.
3
At the next town, Roger scanned front lawns for a sign indicating the availability of an M.D. “No point in holding out for a high-powered big-city headshrinker,” he rationalized. “The old-time small-town GP is the man to see and he’ll be a lot less likely to demand cash in advance.”
He spotted what he was looking for, pulled to the curb beside ranked garbage cans in front of a looming, three-story frame house. At once lights went on inside. The door opened, and a small, sharp-nosed man emerged, shading his eyes.
“What’ll I tell him?” Roger asked himself, suddenly self-conscious. “I’ve heard about retarded kids stuffing things up their noses and ears and whatnot, but I’ll feel a little foolish explaining how I happened to pull a trick like that.”
“Who’s that?” a scratchy voice called. “Just step inside and lie down on the table. Have you diagnosed in three minutes flat.”
“I can’t just tell him I stuck it in there cold,” Roger reflected. “And if I tell him the real reason . . . ”
“No reason to go around worrying about cancer,” the sharp-nosed man said, venturing down the brick steps. “Take two minutes and set your mind at rest.”
“Suppose he sticks me in a straitjacket and calls for the fellows with the butterfly nets?” the thought occurred to Roger. “They say once you’re in, you have a heck of a time getting out again.”
“Now, if it’s just a touch of TB, I got just the thing.” The practitioner was advancing along the walk. “None o’ these fancy antibiotics, mind you—cost a fortune. My own patented formula, based on fermented mare’s whey. Packs a wallop and good for what ails you!”
“After all, it’s not as if it was actually unendurable or anything,” Roger pointed out to himself. “Old Uncle Lafcadio carried on for years with a whole troop of little silver men giving him advice from under the wallpaper.”
“Tell you what,” the healer proposed, producing a bottle from under his coat as he crossed the parched grass strip. “I’ll let you have a trial dosage for a dollar twenty-nine including tax; you can’t beat them prices this side of K. C.”
“Ah . . . no thank you, sir,” Roger demurred, revving his engine. “Actually I’m not a patient; I’m a treasury agent on the lookout for excise violations.”
“Excuse me, Buster,” the little man said. “I just came out to empty the garbage.” He lifted the lid of the nearest container and deposited the flat flask therein. Roger felt sharp eyes on him as he let out the clutch and sped off down the street.
“You made the right decision,” the small voice said in his ear.
“I’m a coward,” Roger groaned. “What do I care what he thinks? Maybe I’d better go back—”
A sharp pang in his ear made him yelp.
“I’m afraid I just can’t allow that,” his unseen companion stated firmly. “Just take a left at the next intersection, and we’ll be in Pottsville in less than two hours.”
4
One hour and fifty-five minutes later, Roger was wheeling the bike slowly along a garishly lit avenue lined with pawnshops, orange-juice and shoe-shine stands, billiard emporia, and places of refreshment decorated with eight-by-ten glossies of startling candor, all bustling with activity in spite of the hour.
“Slower,” the dead girl’s voice cautioned. “Turn in up ahead, that big garage-like place.”
“That’s the bus station,” Roger said. “If you’re planning on my buying a ticket, forget it. I’m broke.”
“Nothing like that. We’re within a few yards of our objective.”
Roger narrowly averted being crushed against the tiled wall by the snorting bulk of an emerging Chicago-bound Greyhound as he steered into the echoing interior. As directed, he abandoned the motorcycle, pushed through the revolving door into the fudgy atmosphere of the waiting room, with its traditional décor of sleeping enlisted personnel and unwed-looking mothers.
“Cross the room,” the voice directed. Roger complied, halted on command before a closed door.
“Try in here.”
Roger pushed through the door. A corpulent lady with a mouthful of hairpins whirled on him with a shrill cry of alarm. He backed out hastily.
“That was the ladies’ room!” he hissed.
“Damn right, Clyde,” a bass voice rumbled at his elbow. A large cop eyed him with hostility from a height of at least six-three. “I got my eye on you birds. Dumbrowski runs a clean beat, and don’t you forget it!” He bellied closer and lowered his voice. “Uh—by the way: what’s it look like in there, anyways?”
“Just like a men’s room,” Roger gulped. “Practically.”
“Yeah? Well, watch yourself, Ralph!”
“Certainly, officer.” Roger backed to the adjoining door and stepped inside, urged by the voice. An elderly colored man straightened from his post against the wall.
“Yes, sir,” he said briskly. “Shine? Shave? Massage? What about a fast clean and press?”
“No thanks, I just . . . ”
“Little something to cut the fog?” He slid a flat bottle from his pocket.
“Say, if you’ve got TB, you ought to be in Arizona,” Roger said.
The Negro gave him a thoughtful look. He removed the cap from the bottle and took a large swallow; he frowned, upended the bottle in the nearest sink.
“Man, you’re right,” he said. “I can just catch the 2:08 to Phoenix.” He left hastily.
“At least I’m not the only one who’s insane,” Roger muttered.
“The last stall,” the girl’s voice said. “Sorry about the mix-up, but I left here in something of a hurry.”
“I should think so!” Roger said. “What were you doing in a men’s room?”
“No time to explain now. Just swing that door open.”
Roger did so. The cubicle contained the usual plumbing, nothing more.
“A little to the left—there!”
A glowing line had appeared in mid-air, directly over the bowl, shining with a greenish light of its own, brilliant in the gloom. When Roger moved his head a few inches, it disappeared.
“An optical illusion,” he said doubtfully.
“By no means. It’s an Aperture. Now, here’s what I want you to do: write a note—I’ll dictate—and simply toss it through. That’s all. I’ll just have to trust to luck that it lands where I want it to.”
“It will land in the local sewage processing plant,” Roger protested. “This is the craziest method I ever heard of for delivering mail!”
“Move a little closer to the Aperture; you’ll see it’s not as simple as it appears at first glance.”
Roger edged closer. The line broadened into a ribbon that gleamed with rainbow colors like a film of oil on water. Closer still, it widened to become a shimmering plane that seemed to extend through the wall to infinity. He stepped back, dizzy.
“It was like looking over the edge of the world,” he whispered.
“Close,” the voice said. “Now quickly, the note.”
“I’ll have to borrow a pencil.” Roger stepped back into the lobby, secured the loan of a gnawed stub from a ticket clerk. Back inside, he took out a crumpled envelope and smoothed it.
“Shoot,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Very well, start off ‘Dear S’lunt.’ Or no, make that ‘Technor Second Level S’lunt.’ Or maybe ‘Dear Technor’ would be better . . . ”
“I don’t know how to spell ‘Technor,'” Roger said. “And I’m not sure about ‘S’lunt.'”
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s just launch right into the matter: ‘My attempt to traverse Axial Channel partially successful. Apparent Museum and associated retrieval system work of advanced race capable of manipulations in at least two superior orders of dimensionality. Recommend effort to dispatch null-engine to terminal coordinates to break temporal statis. Signed, Q’nell, Field Agent.'”
“What does all that mean?” Roger queried.
“Never mind! Did you get it all down?”
“I missed the part after ‘My attempt.'”
The voice repeated the message. Roger copied it out in block capitals.
“Now pitch it through the Aperture, and you’re finished,” the voice said.
As Roger made a move to step into the stall, two men burst through the outer door. One was the ticket clerk.
“That’s him!” He pointed excitedly at Roger. “I knew as soon as he asked for a pencil and started for the john that he was one of those fellows you’re looking for!”