Holding up her voluminous skirts and swaying slightly from side to side so that her elaborate headdress trembled a bit, she headed for the door as if she had done this a hundred times before. Hank held out a hand and said, “Uhnk.” She ignored this barbaric monosyllable—reminiscent though it is to students of classical Algonkian (who shudder, to a man, at the common mistransliteration: “Ugh”)—and evaded his touch, with a comment he (owing to a curious ringing in his ears) did not clearly comprehend. He was able to note only that it had contained the barest hint of a Gallic accent; and pouf! she was gone.
The button on her bosom had read, Mme. Pompadour.
Thrilled almost beyond his power of containment, baffled and vexed, excited and unfulfilled, Hank stood in the middle of the room, wondering What the hell? to beat the band. When he reflected on the beauty of the ladies he had just seen, his heart beat fast. But as he considered the mystery of it all, plus his youth and inexperience, he fell a prey to every variety of despair.
Reader, if you have smiles, prepare to exhibit them now. Hank is at the very nadir; we have nowhere to go but up. At this very moment the door opened—not the closet door: no. The bedroom door—and in galloped a well-developed cutie dressed in still another variety of ancient mode. On one arm she held a basket of oranges, and so sudden was her entrance that she had made it to the closet door, plucked up from the shelf a button labeled Nell Gwynn, and pinned it to her half-laced upper torso before Hank was able to switch on the ignition.
Then, accumulated repressions bursting like overfilled balloons, H. Gordon leaped between Nell and the cross-bar and spread his arms wide. “You aren’t going in—not until you tell me what this is all about!”
Nell gave an enchanting little giggle. “Ow, come awn, Ducks,” she protested, pushing with her free hand against his chest—or, conceivably, just a bit below it As Hank—whose ticklishness had been a byword on the local basketball circuit—guffawed and involuntarily relaxed his stance, she lowered her head and charged beneath his left armpit Instinctively, he seized her by the panniers and swung her about.
The session of free-style wrestling which ensued was not disagreeable to Hank, and Nell’s own small squeals of laughter hinted at least a modicum of amusement on her part.
“Coo, my horanges!” she exclaimed at last “You ’aven’t arf spilled them!”
Reluctantly, Hank returned to the matter at issue. “Say, listen here,” he said, with that keen mastery of repartee which characterizes the youth of this great republic. There was an annoyed and unappreciative cough, such as could have proceeded only from a throat masculine (lady Soviet athletes perhaps excepted), and, by its sound, at the closet door. Not letting go for a second of the little orange-girl’s hand, Hank swiveled.
The man who stepped into his field of vision was undeniably looking harassed. But it was not that which caused Hank’s lower jaw to dangle, his brows to rise. Not to keep the facts stored up in our bosoms, the new visitor was wearing a plaid breechclout heavy side-whiskers, and a thick fur boa. Hank, into whose mind had darted, at the first cough, thoughts of janitors and house detectives and deans, was forced to reconsider. Dark though the ways of deans may be, and equally obscure the mores of janitors and house-dicks, young Gordon was reasonably certain that none of these classes were represented in his room. Which did not, of course, bring him any closer to the category which was represented. Reader, let us steal a march on our man, Gordon. The man in the quasi-Caledonian Bikini was a temporal expediter.
He was also pointing a beringed finger. “What by Hell goes on here?” he demanded, voice thundering from massy chest.
“ ’Elio, hAngstrom,” Nell greeted. “Harsk ’im—” indicating Hank.
Vainly trying to reassure himself that the visitor was doubtless musclebound, Hank gathered himself for battle behind a thrust-out chin and lower lip. After all there had been Gordons at Drummossie Moor (known to the Sassenachs as Culloden—and may the sod rest heavy on the heavy Duke of Cumberland.) “It’s my room,” said this heir of the lawless and turbulent gillies of Gight, with no little truculence—an effect slightly impaired by his next words: “Well, isn’t it?” ending in a squeak.
Breechclout tugged at a side-whisker. “True,” he conceded; adding, with the air of one quoting, “Occupanc-ing is nine snurgs—as indefinite-you said. Have saying? Unperfect tensed He waved an impatient and glittering hand at synthetic niceties and pushed on. “Still, we have were first here. Previous tenantry, and all thus.”
The shredded English had Hank gaping again, then a dim light seemed to flicker and he headed for it like a glowworm in sore need of refueling.
“You a Kappa Nu?” he asked, eagerly. It was all so clear to him so suddenly. His frat-brothers-to-be. What a bunch of cards!
Breechclout scowled, and with a large hand pulled his fur-piece tight. Hank noted that the head on it had three eyes. Somewhere in the far reaches of his mind a feverish censor promptly disposed of the notation. “I!” said Fur Boa, loudly. “Me, that are, is Angstrom IV—latelish up-leveled from III—and none of your barbaric epithets!” He thrust his ring-encrusted fist under Hank’s nose. “See?
Saw? Pleasure to count? Me, that are, is Expediter for Marfe-TiME, Incorporealated.”
Hank took a step back, colliding with Nell, who at once pinched him and guffawed at his leap. All he could find to say was, “How, how about that?”
Angstrom IV—for so, it would seem, he of breechclout and fur boa was officially known—clutched Hank by the arm and led him gently to the bed; Nell, to whom a bed was as the magnetic pole to a lodestone, followed. “I have—will to explain how. But first utter promisory. Hele, conceal, and never more reveal. Honor word?”
Gulping somewhat, Hank held up three fingers. “Honor word,” he said.
Happily, we are not bound by H. Gordon’s oath. Unhappily, we are as birdlimed as you are by Angstrom’s garbled grammar. If we have it right what emerged from his brief lecture was the stuff of dreams itself. He was, he instructed Hank, from the year 831 S.M.—roughly 1,200 years from our time, a closer approximation being difficult owing to the Great Timequake—and he expedited diligently for Mark-Time, Incorporealated, an inter-eon freight and messenger service chartered under the nids of the Freemanship of Delaware. The Ninth Century, S.M., it would appear, is going to be an exciting and richly rewarding time to be alive in, if the fact that Mark-Time was (will be) under contract to Planetary Panderers, Limitless, is any criterion.
“The motto of PP, me young cock-sparrer,” interjected Little Nell, deftly peeling an orange and offering it to Hank, “is, ‘Femyles, hany plyce, hany time.’ hAnd the motto of hold hAngstrom’s company is, ‘We got the right time.’ One ’and washes the hother, see-wot-I-means?” she demanded, and, with a pretty trill of laughter, dug her pretty elbow into Hank’s ribs. The skinless citrus fell from his fingers and landed on the floor with a soggy plunk.
“Uh, yuh!” said Hank. “I mean—no! You mean, these—uh—panderers supply famous beauties to the future from the past? And you really are Nell Gwynn, and you’re a . . . a . . . that is—” He tried to swallow, it turned into a gulp which almost choked him.
“Ow, yus,” said the orange girl, complacently. “Read abaht me in the books, ’ave you? ‘Ow the mob thought h’ was the King’s French doxie, and hi said ‘Prithee, good people, hl’m ’is Protestant ’ore,’ hand all that clobber.” She pushed a stray wisp of hair at the back of her neck, and in a tone of infinite boredom added, “No popery.’”
Hank ran a distracted hand over his face. That this was no mere jape or masquerade, he was by now well-convinced: Had he not seen them appear from—and vanish into—apparently nothing? Still . . .
“But—you, and all the others—the women and Angstrom IV—were you born in the past, or in the future?”
Nell clapped her hands and kicked her feet in the air. “Stone the crows, Duckie—hyn’t you the flipping limit? We was born in bofe, hof course! Forgot your Gundslag’s Laws of Tim
e Paradox, didn’t you, love?” She waggled a playful finger under his eagerly twitching nose. “The Union mykes it required reading—” She sat up, suddenly, putting her finger in her rosebud mouth. “Ow! hi was forgetting, wasn’t hi? You’re not him the Union, cockie—”
“No!” burst out Angstrom IV, jumping to his feet, allowing his boa to flap free in this excitement, “But you (vocative positively) are in Union, so getting to work? You wish to be wharfed. Piered?” He seemed suddenly uncertain. “Jettied?”
Nell curled her lips at him in splendid Restoration disdain. “Stow it, myte!” she tapped the big insigne on her bosom with triumph. “Long’s the Union button’s on, hofficially, hi ham working. Read the contract. And pippin, ’ere,” thumb over her half-bare shoulder (milky white, it was, and void of spots) into Hank’s face; “e’s the gallant wot ’eld me hup. So you can just dock ‘im, see?” Angstrom danced wildly on one leg, for so urgent was his desire to express himself that he required the aid of both hands and one foot.
“But you admits he is not in Union! Time wastes, midwhile—Charlie Two is making clamor for you, and if we don’t clear this nexus, Mary Antonetta will got her head cat—cat? cut—for true-blue this time around. The San Kulaks—” he gabbled, neatly confusing two (or perhaps even three) Revolutions in his haste.
Miss Sunkist of 1665 smoothed her skirts complacently, and twitched her panniered hips. “Now you just leave Charlie to me, hAngstrom,” she smiled.
“And if he refuses to give us his head, ah, what?”
Hank, who had picked up some motes of European History on the run between basketball and bathing, said, with a touch of proud severity, “Now, just hold on. It was Charles the First whose head was cut off, not—”
But Angstrom waved away this erudition impatiently. “Customer is Arcturus Territory with collective of King Charles’s heads. Don’t make troubles! Supposed you think the librarian of Alexandria was will burned up, eh. Business, little shot, business: I of the four rings expediting into your past, so—pleasure to get out of way.”
Nellie winked. Lust and rage struggled, in Hank, for mastery. The choleric Celtic chromosomes, for the instant, won. He doubled his fists. “Whaddaya mean, ‘Get out of way’ ?” he shrieked. “It’s my room!”
The man in the plaid breechclout calmed at once, and looked sly. “Cannot, you knew,” he whispered, conspiratorially, with a finger alongside his nose. “Cannot, that be, go elsewhere. This room, from closet to door, is best nexus between past-future and future-past to be found. Quick, direct, economicful. Also, safe. Copper-bobbies cannot dast disturb this nexus—see case of Ginsbury vs Oligarcny. We go elsewhere and get clapped in vile durance; also, expensic. Further—” He looked at Hank in mild reproach. “—it were our room both before and after it were your room.”
Hank considered this surprise bit of intelligence. “You mean, this room—the house?—used to belong to one of your agents before the frat got it? Well, where is he?” Angstrom sighed, with evident embarrassment. “This one, myself,” he said, “has the greatest respectful to all religionry—Brotherness Bond, Thou Art, Gourmandizing, All One, and even have best friend member Sons of Pincus—but moderating in all things, not? We pat—putted:—
Fletchworth IV here, and he has oiled to become a placed minister of the Auld Licht Kirk in Echlefauchen, Scotia, of your 1823! Damn chap has gone native!”
Nellie, on the bed, had begun to pout Though not a beauty, Hank (her expression seemed to say) certainly promised well after all those gouty old kings and flatulent magnates; but if all he was going to do was talk, well . . . Then the pout gave away to smile which was almost a grin, and she leaped to her feet letting fall her fruit “hl’ve gott it!” she shrilled. “Wot abaht myking ’im—” she gestured at Hank—the nexus hagent?”
The temporal expediter pulled at a side whisker thoughtfully. “Mmmm—forhaps,” he said, half-conceding, half-dubious. “But with what we paid? No good to he, Arcurian script, Galactic gumpkins, Delaware nidsdollars . . .” Nell cast a modest glance downward at the basket of tumbled navels. “Well, naow . . . there’s me . . . there’s the hother gels . . .” She looked up, winked at Hank, whose eyes were getting rounder and rounder and rounder. “We do ’ave to pass through ’is room to ’n’ from work, can’t avoid that: the nexus. Well, I meantersay—honly polite to stop and natter a bit wif the tenant, wot?”
“Well, and so?” Angie was earnestly considering. “PP Company warrantees the merchandise—”
A loud and irritated pounding at the door interrupted the three of them. It had escaped all their minds that they were not alone in the house, and an annoyed and puzzled committee was now demanding admittance.
“Either he goes or I go!” Sam Swack was heard threatening. “It’d better to have no pledge at all than a sleepwalker who talks to himself a whole damn night—and In three different voices, too!”
“Come on, Gordon!” Thorwald shouted. “Open wide this pearly gate!”
And then it was that inspiration of a rare and radiant sort came to Hank Gordon. “Just a minute, guys!” he yelled, doorwards. He clutched at Angstrom IV’s boa.
“What about the rest of the fraternity?” he demanded, in argent whisper. “I means, can I let them in on The Deal? I mean, it’s my room, but it’s their house—
The noise at the door subsided to a low, spasmodic thumping. Angstrom IV smoothed his fur boa. He consulted his earring watch and listened to it announce the hour and minute in four spatial and four temporal terms. Finally, he capitulated. After all, the business of an expediter is to expedite; Coolidge could have agreed to that.
“All rights,” he mumbled. “Girls to visit boys as they are passes through nexus. And we shall make it part of portage and portal pay, so no charge. But!” He shook a ringed finger at Hank. “Nobodies else learns where and how and which and whether. Honor word?”
“Honor word,” whispered Hank, exchanging a long look with Our Nell. And it is here that we shall leave him.
True enough, because of this brief transaction, the entire football team was to become pledged to Kappa Nu in the course of a single spectacular day and night—and would go on to achieve such fabulous upset victories over Pershing Military Academy, Lake Hopatcong Teacher’s Normal, Mizpah Baptist and Lubavitcher Rabbinical, as very shortly resulted in their being invited to play in a far superior conference. After that the Big 3 was nothing, and Kappa Nu everything. Soon there would be no happier, healthier, or more popular Big Man On Campus (and expert on Restoration Drama)—beloved of student faculty member, and even trustee—than Hank Gordon; and as a result of endeavors to be made on his behalf by various Kappa Nu Old Grads anxious to participate in certain undergraduate extracurricular activities, he will be tendered lucrative offers of postgraduation employment by our largest corporations.
But all this lies, narrationwise, in the not-as-yet and will not detain us now. Better far to take leave of Hank as he strides towards the reverberating door, a light of pure joy in his heart and eyes, and news—such news—all of a tremble on his lips. He opens the door . . .
IDIOT SOLVANT
Gordon R. Dickson
What could be worse than an adolescent Superman?
A grown-up one, perhaps; but we will never know from this story. All we can do is imagine. And to tell you the truth, I think that the grown-up guy that Art may become will be quite wonderful.
Maybe he will even be good enough to Save the World, which, at the time of writing this note, seemed to be in need of saving. Of course, supermen develop more slowly than men, so that Art, even though well on in his peculiar college career, is still really just an emotional teen-ager as this story opens.
THE AFTERNOON SUN, SHOOTING THE GAP OF THE missing slat in the Venetian blind on the window of Art Willoughby’s small rented room, splashed fair in Art’s eyes, blinding him.
“Blast!” muttered Art. “Got to do something about that sun.”
He flipped one long, lean hand up as an eyeshield a
nd leaned forward once more over the University newssheet, unaware that he had reacted with his usual gesture and litany to the sun in his eyes. His mouth watered. He spread out his sharp elbows mi the experiment-scarred surface of his desk and reread the ad.
Volunteers for medical research testing. $1.60 hr., rm., board. Dr. Henry Rapp, Room 432, A Bldg., University Hospitals.
“Board—” echoed Art aloud, once more unaware he had spoken. He licked his lips hungrily. Food, he thought. Plus wages. And hospital food was supposed to be good. If they would just let him have all he wanted . . .
Of course, it would be worth it for the $1.60 an hour alone.
“I’ll be sensible,” thought Art. “I’ll put it in the bank and just draw out what I need. Let’s see—one week’s work, say—seven times twenty-four times sixteen. Two-six-eight-eight—to the tenth. Two hundred sixty-eight dollars and eighty cents . . .”
That much would support him for—mentally, he totted up his daily expenses. Ordinary expenses, that was. Room, a dollar-fifty. One-and-a-half-pound loaf of day old bread at half price—thirteen cents. Half a pound of peanut butter, at ninety-eight cents for the three-pound economy-size jar—seventeen cents roughly. One all-purpose vitamin capsule—ten cents. Half a head of cabbage, or whatever was in season and cheap—approximately twelve cents. Total, for shelter with all utilities paid and a change of sheets on the bed once a week, plus thirty-two hundred calories a day—two dollars and two cents.
Two dollars and two cents. Art sighed. Sixty dollars and sixty cents a month for mere existence. It was heartbreaking. When sixty dollars would buy a fine double magnum of imported champagne at a half a dozen of the better restaurants in town, or a 1954 used set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, or the parts from a mail-order house so that he could build himself a little ocean-hopper shortwave receiver so that he could tune in on foreign-language broadcasts and practice understanding German, French, and Italian.
13 Above the Night Page 24