“He’s here. Go outside and take him. Here’s expense money.” I shoved it at him and added, “Settle him, then I’ll pick you up.”
Hundred dollar bills have a hypnotic effect on a person not used to them. He was thumbing them unbelievingly as I eased him into the hall, locked him out. The next jump was easy, a small shift in era.
1700-V-10 March 1964-Cleveland-Apex Bldg.: There was a notice under the door saying that my lease expired next week; otherwise the room looked as it had a moment before. Outside, trees were bare and snow threatened; I hurried, stopping only for contemporary money and a coat, hat and topcoat I had left there when I leased the room. I hired a car, went to the hospital. It took twenty minutes to bore the nursery attendant to the point where I could swipe the baby without being noticed; we went back to the Apex Building. This dial setting was more involved as the building did not yet exist in 1945. But I had precalculated it.
0100-V-20 Sept 1945-Cleveland-Skyview Motel: Field kit, baby, and I arrived in a motel outside town. Earlier I had registered as “Gregory Johnson, Warren, Ohio,” so we arrived in a room with curtains closed, windows locked, and doors bolted, and the floor cleared to allow for waver as the machine hunts. You can get a nasty bruise from a chair where it shouldn’t be-not the chair of course, but backlash from the field.
No trouble. Jane was sleeping soundly; I carried her out, put her in a grocery box on the seat of a car I had provided earlier, drove to the orphanage, put her on the steps, drove two blocks to a “service station” (the petroleum products sort) and phoned the orphanage, drove back in time to see them taking the box inside, kept going and abandoned the car near the motel-walked to it and jumped forward to the Apex Building in 1963.
2200-V-24 April 1963-Cleveland-Apex Bldg.: I had cut the time rather fine-temporal accuracy depends on span, except on return to zero. If I had it right, Jane was discovering, out in the park this balmy spring night, that she wasn’t quite as “nice” a girl as she had thought. I grabbed a taxi to the home of those skinflints, had the hackie wait around a corner while I lurked in shadows.
Presently I spotted them down the street, arms around each other. He took her up on the porch and made a long job of kissing her good-night-longer than I had thought. Then she went in and he came down the walk, turned away. I slid into step and hooked an arm in his. “That’s all, son,” I announced quietly. “I’m back to pick you up.”
“You!” He gasped and caught his breath.
“Me. Now you know who he is-and after you think it over you’ll know who you are . . . and if you think hard enough, you’ll figure out who the baby is . . . and who I am.”
He didn’t answer, he was badly shaken. It’s a shock to have it proved to you that you can’t resist seducing yourself. I took him to the Apex Building and we jumped again.
2300-VII-12 Aug 1985-Sub Rockies Base: I woke the duty sergeant, showed my I.D., told the sergeant to bed him down with a happy pill and recruit him in the morning. The sergeant looked sour but rank is rank, regardless of era; he did what I said-thinking no doubt, that the next time we met he might be the colonel and I the sergeant. Which can happen in our corps. “What name?” he asked.
I wrote it out. He raised his eyebrows. “Like so, eh? Hmm-”
“You just do your job, Sergeant.” I turned to my companion. “Son, your troubles are over. You’re about to start the best job a man ever held-and you’ll do well. I know.”
“But-”
” ‘But’ nothing. Get a night’s sleep, then look over the proposition. You’ll like it.”
“That you will!” agreed the sergeant. “Look at me-born in 1917-still around, still young, still enjoying life.” I went back to the jump room, set everything on preselected zero.