2301-V-7 Nov 1970-NYC-“Pop’s Place”: I came out of the storeroom carrying a fifth of Drambuie to account for the minute I had been gone. My assistant was arguing with the customer who had been playing “I’m My Own Granpaw!” I said, “Oh, let him play it, then unplug it.” I was very tired.
It’s rough, but somebody must do it and it’s very hard to recruit anyone in the later years, since the Mistake of 1972. Can you think of a better source than to pick people all fouled up where they are and give them well-paid, interesting (even though dangerous) work in a necessary cause? Everybody knows now why the Fizzle War of 1963 fizzled. The bomb with New York’s number on it didn’t go off, a hundred other things didn’t go as planned-all arranged by the likes of me.
But not the Mistake of ’72; that one is not our fault-and can’t be undone; there’s no paradox to resolve. A thing either is, or it isn’t, now and forever amen. But there won’t be another like it; an order dated “1992” takes precedence any year.
I closed five minutes early, leaving a letter in the cash register telling my day manager that I was accepting his offer, so see my lawyer as I was leaving on a long vacation. The Bureau might or might not pick up his payments, but they want things left tidy. I went to the room back of the storeroom and forward to 1993.
2200-VII-12 Jan 1993-Sub Rockies Annex-HQ Temporal DOL: I checked in with the duty officer and went to my quarters, intending to sleep for a week. I had fetched the bottle we bet (after all, I won it) and took a drink before I wrote my report. It tasted foul and I wondered why I had ever liked Old Underwear. But it was better than nothing; I don’t like to be cold sober, I think too much. But I don’t really hit the bottle either; other people have snakes-I have people.
I dictated my report: forty recruitments all okayed by the Psych Bureau-counting my own, which I knew would be okayed. I was here, wasn’t I? Then I taped a request for assignment to operations; I was sick of recruiting. I dropped both in the slot and headed for bed.
My eye fell on “The By-Laws of Time,” over my bed:
Never Do Yesterday What Should be Done Tomorrow.
If At Last You Do Succeed, Never Try Again.
A Stitch in Time Saves Nine Billion.
A Paradox May be Paradoctored.
It is Earlier When You Think.
Ancestors Are Just People.
Even Jove Nods.
They didn’t inspire me the way they had when I was a recruit; thirty subjective years of time-jumping wears you down. I undressed and when I got down to the hide I looked at my belly. A Caesarian leaves a big scar but I’m so hairy now that I don’t notice it unless I look for it.
Then I glanced at the ring on my finger.
The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever . . . I know where I came from-but where did all you zombies come from?
I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did it once-and you all went away.
So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.
You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me-Jane-here alone in the dark.
I miss you dreadfully!
THEY
They would not let him alone.
They would never let him alone. He realized that that was part of the plot against him-never to leave him in peace, never to give him a chance to mull over the lies they had told him, time enough to pick out the flaws, and to figure out the truth for himself.
That damned attendant this morning! He had come busting in with his breakfast tray, waking him, and causing him to forget his dream. If only he could remember that dream-
Someone was unlocking the door. He ignored it. “Howdy, old boy. They tell me you refused your breakfast?” Dr. Hayward’s professionally kindly mask hung over his bed.