“Three hundred years in the future?” Roger’s voice failed. He swallowed a golf ball that had lodged in his throat. “I guess it figures. I should have known—”
“We wander afield, S’lunt,” a man in deep purple interrupted. “Jump-off hour approaches. Now, quickly, fellow! What was your mission?”
There was a small stir at the edge of the circle of men, but Roger scarcely noticed, due to a sensation like an aching tooth centered in the small of his back.
“Explain the nature of the binding forces subsumed in the Rho complex!”
A heavy boot trod on the tip of a long tail Roger had never suspected he possessed.
“Define the nature and alignment matrices of the pulse guides!”
A blunt saw amputated Roger’s antlers. The horns, he saw, squinting upward through a haze of pain, were imaginary, but the attendant sensations were vividly real.
“Enumerate the coordinate systems postulated in the syllogistical manipulations, and specify the axial rotations employed!”
A wrecker’s ball swung from somewhere and flattened him to a thin paste.
“Hmmm. I have a feeling this entire procedure is illegal, under the provisions of Spool Nine Eighty-Seven of the Social Motivation Code!” someone whispered in Roger’s ear.
“I demand a lawyer!” Roger squalled.
“Eh?” the man in blue inquired. He turned to his chartreuse-clad associate. “R’heet, run a quick semantic analysis of that utterance, in the fourth and twelfth modes, with special attention to connotational resonances of the second category.”
“This whole thing is illegal!” Roger yelled. “Under Spool, uh, Nine Eighty-Seven of the Social, uh, Motivation Code!”
“How’s that?” The man called S’lunt eyed Roger sharply. “How do you know of the Code?”
“What difference does that make?” the voice hissed. “Illegal is illegal!”
“What does that matter?” Roger echoed. “Illegal is illegal!”
“Why, er, as to that . . . ”
“Just because we’re faced with an emergency, there’s no reason to stoop to totalitarian techniques!”
“That’s right,” Roger nodded vigorously. “Just because there’s an emergency, is no reason to act like Hitler!”
“I don’t know, S’lunt,” the pink-garbed dial watcher said. “These readings are persistently in the retarded sector. I have a sneaking suspicion we may have made a mistake.”
“You mean—he’s not an agent of the Entity?”
“Of course not!” Roger shouted. “I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger named Roger Tyson!”
“In that case, why did he register so strongly on our gamitron detectors?”
“Maybe the varpilators need adjusting.”
“Better check your varpilators,” Roger said quickly.
“Say—that’s a thought—but—”
“And while you’re at it, you might just realign the transfrication rods.”
“And take a look at the transfrication rods!”
“See here, you seem to know a great deal about Culture One technical installations,” S’lunt said accusingly.
“Maybe you’re from our future, and have an interest in history.”
“That’s right, how do you know I’m not from the future, hah?”
“Say—in that case, he could tell us what’s going to happen next back home!”
“Gad! What an exciting prospect!” S’lunt said eagerly. “Tell me, sir, how did General Minerals do on the big board in fifty?”
“Did that intelligent slime-mould on Venus turn out to be alive?”
“Did they ever get the LBJ Memorial Asteroid towed out of the Mars-Terra space lane?”
“It’s kind of hard for me to remember while I’m paralyzed with my neck at this angle,” Roger pointed out.
“Dear me, forgive me, sir!” S’lunt flicked a switch and Roger felt himself unfreeze.
“R’heet, get our guest a chair. How about a little draught of medicinal alcohol, sir?”
“Thanks; don’t mind if I do.” Roger accepted the libation, sank into the seat, which squirmed sensually, adapting itself to his contours.
“Now, you were saying about the election of fifty-two . . . ?”
“The, ah, dark horse won,” Roger improvised. “By the way, how about letting me out of this place now?”
“Did the Immortality Bill pass?”
“By a landslide. If you don’t mind I’d like to just be dropped at the edge of town—any town.”
“By george, what did Alpha Expedition Three report?”
“Dense fog,” Roger replied tersely. “And if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get going now, before—”
“Amazing! Did you hear that, R’heet? Dense fog!”
“Incredible!”
“Ahem. What did history record as to the attainments of Technor Fourth Class S’lunt?”
“Yours was a dizzying career. I wonder, while you’re at it, could you just make that Chicago? I’ve got a brother-in-law there. Well, not exactly a brother-in-law; actually he’s the brother of a girl who was engaged to the fellow who later married my sister’s husband’s brother—but you know what I mean.”
“I wonder if those hemlines ever went down again? I mean, for some girls it’s all right, but if you don’t happen to have a cute navel . . . ”
“What about my General Minerals shares?” S’lunt inquired plaintively.
“They dropped to the ankle,” Roger announced.
“Good Lord! But I assume they recovered and rose again? Probably higher than ever, eh?”
“Actually, they went even lower than that,” Roger groped. “Of course, there was a corresponding adjustment at the top.”
“Well, I should think so! That scoundrel F’hoot should never have been elected Chairman of the Board!”
“At the top? Wouldn’t that be rather revealing?”
“In the end, the whole thing was exposed,” Roger amplified desperately. “But about my going home . . . ”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that F’hoot’s chicanery was brought out in the open,” S’lunt commented.
“I really shouldn’t be thinking about fashions at a time like this, but I just can’t help wondering what eventually happened to women’s clothes.”
“What about the rest of the Board?” S’lunt asked.
“Uh, they finally got rid of them entirely,” Roger said, “but—”
“Goodness!”
“You don’t mean . . . they did away with the whole capitalistic system?” R’heet exclaimed.
“It was a good thing, actually.” Roger attempted to justify the implication. “It put an end to all that speculating.”
“Gracious! I’m glad I never lived to see it!”
“Hrumph! Well, I hope it doesn’t happen in my time!” a man in blue put in.
“Actually, it’ll be along in the very near future, so how about turning me loose and concentrating your attention on your investments?”
“It appears I’ll be stripped of my holdings entirely!” S’lunt predicted.
“History records that everyone was allowed to keep the bare essentials.”
“B-but—what about when it got cold?”
“It’s an outrage! I’m to be beggared—at my time of life?”
“With your reputation, I’m sure you’ll find a partner with money,” Roger suggested. “He’ll probably have some way-out ideas to try, too.”
“Why, of all the impertinent suggestions!”
“I’m too old,” S’lunt mourned. “Too old to start again.”
“You don’t want to just sit on the sidelines and watch, do you, while the others have all the fun?”
“No . . . I suppose not,” S’lunt sighed. “But it is rather depressing news.”
“It sounds like an orgy!”
“It’s not that bad,” Roger said. “Just a mild depression. Afterwards things really got exciting—”
“It’s outrageous! The whole world running around stark naked!”
“Who said anything about being stark naked?” Roger demanded.
There was a sharp gasp from the periphery of Roger’s fascinated audience. A slim black-haired figure, exuberantly female in white skin-tights, thrust to the fore, pointed a finger at Roger.
“Put the disorganizer beam back on him, quick!” she cried. “He’s a spy! He’s been reading my mind!”
Roger came to his feet with a leap, staring at the newcomer. “Y-y-y-you!” he stuttered.
It was the girl he had left for dead beside the crashed motorcycle.
CHAPTER SIX
1
“I’m no spy!” Roger shouted over the hubbub that greeted the girl’s dramatic charge. “I was just an ordinary citizen, going about my business, until she came along!”
“I’ve never seen this person before in my life,” his accuser stated coldly.
“You gave me the message!” Roger countered. “You said it was of vast importance, and that—”
“What message?” she demanded.
“The one you gave me after you were dead! You made me steal that vegetable’s motorcycle and go into the men’s room!”
“He’s raving,” Q’nell said. “S’lunt, you’d better disassociate him at once! I’m sure he’s part of some sort of plot to abort our probe!”
“Just a moment,” S’lunt said. “What was that about a message?”
“S’lunt! Technor S’lunt? It was addressed to you!” Roger blurted. “I remember now!”
“What was the substance of this message?”
“She said she’d been, ah, partially successful, that was it!”
“Yes—go on?”
“I, ah, don’t exactly remember the rest, but . . . ”
“How unfortunate,” S’lunt said grimly. “Just where is it you claim to have met Q’nell?”
“A few miles outside of the town of Mongoose, Ohio! In a rainstorm! At one o’clock in the morning!”
“Highly circumstantial,” Q’nell conceded. “However, inasmuch as I have never been near Mongoose, Ohio, particularly in a rainstorm, your story doesn’t hold up.”
“There was an accident!” Roger insisted. “You, er, fell off your machine, and I rushed forward to render aid!”