The Time Hoppers

by Robert Silverberg

  ‘He’s – gone?’

  ‘Gone,’ Quellen said. ‘His destination was 2050. Lanoy wasn’t sure that they could hit the year exactly, but he said the odds were in favour. I want you to know, Helaine, that Norm was thinking of you right up until he left. You can listen to the tapes yourself. He said he loved you and the children. He was trying to arrange things so you and the children could follow him to 2050. Lanoy agreed to do it. It’s all on record.’

  ‘Gone. He just hopped like that.’

  ‘He was in bad shape, Helaine. The things he was saying this morning – he was practically insane.’

  ‘I know it. He’s been like that for days. I tried to get him to go to a frood, but – ’

  ‘Is there anything I can do, Helaine? Do you want me to come over and stay with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can have a registered consolation service come around.’

  ‘Don’t bother.’

  ‘Helaine, you’ve got to believe me, I did everything that was in my power to prevent this from happening. And if you choose to follow him the hopper way, I’ll see to it that you get the opportunity. That is, if the High Government permits further hopper operations, now that we’ve taken Lanoy into custody.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Helaine quietly. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do. Just let me alone now. Thanks for everything, anyway, Joe.’

  She opaqued the screen and broke the contact. Now that the worst had happened, Helaine felt oddly calm. Glacially calm. She would not go into the past hunting for her husband. She was the widow Pomrath, betrayed, abandoned.

  Joseph said, ‘Mommy, where’s Daddy?’

  ‘He’s gone away, son.’

  ‘Will he be coming back soon?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Helaine said.

  Marina looked up. ‘Does that mean that Daddy’s dead?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Helaine told her. ‘It’s too complicated. I’ll explain it some other time. Plug yourselves in and do your homework, children. It’s almost bedtime.’

  She went to the drawer where they kept the alcohol tubes. Withdrawing one quickly, she pressed the snout against her skin and took a quick, subcutaneous jolt. It left her feeling neither more animated nor more depressed. She was frozen, at an emotional constant of zero.

  The widow Pomrath. Beth Wisnack will be pleased to hear it. She can’t bear the thought that any other woman might still have a husband.

  Closing her eyes, she pictured Norm landing in 2050, a stranger and alone. He would make out, she knew. He had his medical skills. Dropped into the primitive past like that, he’d set up in business as a doctor, perhaps even concealing his hopper status – otherwise he’d have been on the roster of registered hoppers, wouldn’t he? He’d be rich and successful. Patients would flock to him, especially women patients. He would lose his look of bleak defeat, and take on the glow of prosperity. He’d stand taller, and smile more often. Helaine wondered what sort of woman he would marry. Had married. It was all done. That was the weird part of it. Norm had already lived and died, perishing about the year 2100, and his body had turned to dust centuries ago, along with the bodies of his other wife and his other children. Perhaps his descendants in today’s world were a numerous tribe. Perhaps I’m one of them myself, Helaine thought. And the book was sealed; his destiny had been written hundreds of years before their wedding day. Even then, it was fated that he would leave her and circle back into the past to die hundreds of years before he was born.

  Helaine’s mind reeled. She took a second alcohol tube, and it helped her, but not much. The children sat with their backs to her, plugged into their homework machine, assiduously pretending to study.

  I am lost, she thought.

  I am nothing.

  I am the widow Pomrath.

  On the third tube, a new thought occurred to her. I am fairly young. Given a few months to relax, I could even be attractive again. Joe can arrange it; there must be a special government pension for the deserted wives of hoppers. I’ll go away, fill out, put some meat on my bones. Then I’ll marry again. Of course, I’ll have used up my reproductive quota, but that won’t matter. I can find a man who’s willing to forego fatherhood. He’ll adopt Joseph and Marina. Someone tall and handsome, and high in slope. Can I catch a Class Six? A widower, maybe even a man whose wife turned hopper, if there are any.

  I’ll show Norm. I’ll catch myself a real prize.

  Already, she could feel her body blossoming, filling out, the sap rising in it. For months, years even, she had lived in a barren winter of terror, clinging to her husband and nurturing him through his mood of empty despair in the hope that she could prevent him from abandoning her. Now that he was gone, she no longer needed to fear that he would go. She was returning to life. She felt younger.

  I’ll fix Norm Pomrath, Helaine thought. I’ll make him sorry he ever went away!

  Thirteen

  It was morning. Quellen had deliberately allowed the captured slyster Lanoy to languish overnight in the custody tank, so that he could reflect on his crimes. Lanoy was in total sensory deprivation, floating in a warm bath of nutrients with all inputs plugged off, so that nothing would register on his mind but his own predicament. Such treatment often had a marked softening effect on the hardest of cases. And from what Brogg had said, Lanoy was the hardest case in a long while.

  Quellen had received the news at home, late in the evening, not long before Helaine’s call. He had given instructions for Lanoy’s treatment, but he had not actually gone down to headquarters to view the slyster. Leeward had brought him in, Brogg remaining behind at the hopper place itself.

  It had been a sombre night for Quellen. He knew, of course, that Norm Pomrath had gone to the past. He had been listening helplessly, jacked into the realtime circuit, while Pomrath and Lanoy discussed the project and came to an agreement. Then and there, Pomrath had paid over his money – virtually wiping out the family savings – and had stepped up on the platform to be thrust into the year 2050. Ear transmission had ceased at that point. The Ear was a sensitive device, but it had no way of broadcasting across a temporal gap.

  Helaine’s stony face had been unpleasant to behold. She blamed him for what had happened, Quellen knew; and she never would really forgive him. So his sister, his only relative, was lost to him. And Judith, too, was lost. Since the fiasco at the social regurgitation communion, she had refused to take any calls from him. He knew that he would never see her again. The slender bare form in the sprayon costume postured wantonly in Quellen’s dreams, waking him often.

  The only comfort in a generally bleak situation was the fact that Lanoy had been found and arrested. That meant the heat would be off the department soon. With the hopper ring smashed, life could revert to routine, and Quellen would be free to spend most of his time in Africa, once again. Unless, of course, Brogg had really betrayed him. Quellen had forgotten about that. Koll’s unfriendly tone of yesterday – did it mean that his own arrest was in the offing, as soon as the Lanoy affair was wrapped up?

  Quellen got his answer to that shortly before midnight, when Koll called. For Koll, office hours extended throughout the night and the day.

  ‘I’ve just checked with the office,’ Koll said. ‘They tell me you’ve got the slyster.’

  ‘Yes. He was brought in around eighteen, nineteen this evening. Brogg and Leeward traced him. They’ve put him in the custody tank. I’ll interrogate him in the morning.’

  ‘Good job,’ Koll said, and Quellen noticed the trace of an honest smile flickering on the small man’s lips. ‘This keys nicely into the status meeting Spanner and I had this afternoon. I’ve just put through a promotion form for you. It seems unfair to let the CrimeSec live in a Class Seven unit when he rates at least a Six, don’t you think? You’ll be joining Spanner and me in your higher grade quite soon. Of course, that won’t affect your slope in the office hierarchy, but I thought you’d be pleased.’

  Quellen was pleased. And relieved. So he d
oesn’t know about Africa after all. It was just my guilty conscience stirring up fears. Then a new worry came: how could he move the illegal stat to new quarters without being detected? It had been hard enough to get it installed here. Perhaps Koll was only leading him deeper into a trap. Quellen pressed his palms against his temples and shivered, waiting for morning – and Lanoy.

  ’You admit you’ve been sending people into the past?’ Quellen demanded.

  ‘Sure,’ said the little man flippantly. Quellen stared at him, feeling an irrational pulse of anger throbbing in his skull. How could the slyster be so calm? ‘Sure,’ Lanoy said. ‘I’ll send you back for two hundred units.’

  Leeward stood massively behind the little man, and Quellen faced him over the interrogation table. Brogg had not appeared at the office this morning. Koll and Spanner were listening from their own office next door. The slyster looked waxen-faced and limp from his night in the custody tank, and yet he held himself with dignity.

  ‘You’re Lanoy?’ Quellen jabbed.

  ‘That’s my name.’ He was a small, dark, intense, rabbity sort of man, with thin lips constantly moving. ‘Sure, I’m Lanoy.’ The little slyster radiated a confident warmth. He was gaining strength from moment to moment. Now he sat with his legs crossed and his head thrown back.

  ‘It was pretty nasty the way your boys tracked me down,’ Lanoy said. ‘It was bad enough that you fooled that poor dumb prolet into leading you to me, but you didn’t have to dump me in the tank like that. I spent a lousy night. I’m not doing anything illegal, you know. I ought to sue.’

  ‘Nothing illegal? You’re disturbing the past five hundred years!’

  ‘I am not,’ Lanoy said calmly. ‘Nothing of the sort. They’ve already been disturbed. It’s a matter of record, you know. I’m just seeing to it that past history gets to take place the way it took place, if you follow what I’m saying. I’m a public benefactor. What if I weren’t fulfilling the records?’

  Quellen glowered at the arrogant slyster. He turned to pace, found that he had no room to move in the tiny office, and sat down ineffectually at his desk. He felt strangely weak in the presence of the slyster. The man had power. Quellen said, ‘You admit that you’re sending prolets back as hoppers. Why?’

  Lanoy smiled. ‘To earn a living. Surely you understand that. I’m in possession of a very valuable process, and I want to make sure I get all I can out of it.’

  ‘Are you the inventor of the time-travel process?’

  ‘I don’t claim to be. But it doesn’t matter,’ said Lanoy. ‘I control it.’

  ‘If you want to exploit your machine for money, why don’t you simply go back in time and steal, or place bets on the arthropods, to make a living? Grab a quick killing on the outcome of a race that’s in the records, then come back here.’

  ‘I could do that.’ Lanoy admitted. ‘But the process is irreversible, and there’s no way of getting back to the present again with my winnings. Or my stealings. And I like it here, thank you.’

  Quellen scratched his head. He liked it here? It seemed incredible that anyone would, but apparently Lanoy meant just what he said. One of those perverse aestheticians, undoubtedly, who could find beauty in a dunghill.

  He said, ‘Look, Lanoy, I’ll be extremely frank with you: you’re subject to penalties for operating this enterprise without the consent of the High Government. Kloofman has ordered your arrest. I’m not prepared to say what sort of a sentence you’ll get, but it could be anything up to complete personality erasure, depending on your attitude. However, there’s one option for you. The High Government wants control of your time-travel gimmick. Turn it over to my men – not just the device, you understand, but the method. Your co-operation will win you a remission of your sentence to some degree.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Lanoy. ‘The machine’s private property. You haven’t got any right to it.’

  ‘The courts – ’

  ‘I’m not doing anything illegal, and so I don’t need to worry about what kind of sentence I’ll get. And I refuse to yield to your jurisdiction. The answer’s no.’

  Quellen thought of the pressures that were on him from Koll and Spanner and even Kloofman to solve this case, and he got angry and frightened at the same time. He blurted, ‘When I get through with you, Lanoy, you’ll wish you’d used your own machine and gone back a million years. We can induce co-operation. We can reduce you to jelly.’

  Lanoy’s cool smile did not waver. His voice was measured as he said, ‘Come now, CrimeSec. You’re starting to lose your temper, and that’s always illogical. Not to add dangerous.’ Quellen sensed the truth of Lanoy’s warning. He struggled to calm himself, and lost the struggle. The muscles of his throat seemed to be writhing in knots. ‘I’ll keep you in the tank until you rot,’ he snapped.

  ‘Now where will that get you? I’ll be so much mouldy flesh, and you still won’t be able to deliver the time process to the High Government.’ The slyster shrugged. ‘Would you mind giving me a little more oxy in here, please, by the way?

  I happen to be suffocating.’

  In his astonishment at the bold request, Quellen opened the vent wide. Leeward registered surprise at Lanoy’s breach of taste. No doubt the watchers in the next room were startled at Quellen’s abrupt capitulation, too.

  Lanoy said, ‘If you arrest me, I’ll break you, Quellen. I tell you there’s nothing illegal in what I’m doing. Look here – I’m a registered slyster.’ Lanoy produced a card, properly stamped.

  Quellen was stymied. Lanoy definitely had him off balance. Ordinarily, he was better equipped to deal with criminals, but the events of the last few trying days had weakened his fibres. Quellen chewed his lip, watched the little man closely, and fervently wished that he were back beside his Congo stream throwing rocks at the crocodiles.

  ‘I’m going to put a stop to your time-travel business, anyway,’ Quellen finally said.

  Lanoy chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t advise trying it, Quellen.’

  ‘CrimeSec to you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t advise making trouble for me, Quellen,’ Lanoy repeated. ‘If you cut off the flow of the hoppers now, you’ll turn the past topsy-turvy. Those people went back. It’s recorded in history. Some of them married and had children, and the descendants of those children are alive today.’

  ‘I know all that. We’ve discussed the theory in great detail.’

  ‘For all you know, Quellen, you may be the descendant of a hopper I’m scheduled to be sending back next week – and if that hopper never gets back, Quellen, you’ll pop out of existence like a snuffed candle. I guess it’s a pleasant way to die. But do you want to die?’

  Quellen stared glumly. Lanoy’s words chased round and round in his aching skull. It became apparent to him now that it was a plot to drive him insane. Marok, Koll, Spanner, Brogg, Judith, Helaine, and now Lanoy – they were all determined to see Quellen enmeshed. It was an unvoiced conspiracy. Silently he cursed the hundreds of millions of jostling inhabitants of Appalachia, and wondered if he would ever know a moment’s solitude again.

  He took a deep breath. ‘The past won’t be changed, Lanoy. We’ll lock you up, all right, and take away your machine, but we’ll see to it ourselves that the hoppers go back. We’re not fools, Lanoy. We’ll see to it that everything goes as it’s supposed to go.’

  Lanoy watched him almost with pity for a moment, as one might observe a particularly rare butterfly impaled on a mounting board.

  ‘Is that your game, CrimeSec? Do you really think you’ll learn to operate the machine?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll have to take steps to protect myself.’

  Quellen felt like hiding. ‘What could you possibly do?’

  ‘You’ll see. Suppose you put me back in the custody tank for the time being, while you figure out your own set of options. Then come and get me and talk to me again. Privately. I’ve got some interesting things to tell you. You won’t want anyone else to hear them, though.�
��

  An aperture yawned in the sky, as though a quick hand had unzipped it. Norm Pomrath dropped through. His stomach protested as he made a rapid descent, falling eight or nine feet without warning. Lanoy might have told me, he thought, that I’d come out in the middle of the air. At the last moment he twisted and landed on his hip and his left leg. His kneecap tapped the pavement. Pomrath gasped and lay in a huddled heap for a moment, throbbing where he had bruised himself.

  It wouldn’t do to lie here long, he knew. He pulled himself together and got unsteadily to his feet, brushing himself off. The street was remarkably filthy. Pomrath’s entire left side ached. He hobbled up against the wall of a building, clinging to it for a moment, and, clenching his teeth, performed one of the suggested neural exercises for enhancing the flow of blood. The pain began to ebb from him as the capillaries he had crushed emptied out.

  There. That was better. He’d ache for a few hours, but it wasn’t serious.

  Now he had his first chance to look about him at the world of AD 2050.

  He wasn’t impressed. The city looked cluttered, as it would look four and a half centuries hence, but the, clutter was a random, asymmetrical thing. Spiky buildings in an archaic style stuck up everywhere. There were no quickboat ramps and no bridges above the street levels. The pavement was cracked. The streets were crowded with pedestrians, not noticeably fewer than he was accustomed to seeing on the streets, although he knew that world population was only a third of what it would be in his rightful era. The styles of clothing interested him. Although it was springtime and the air was warm, everyone was dressed for maximum concealment, the women bundled up from ankles to chin, the men affecting loose capes that blurred the outlines of their body. So Pomrath knew that Lanoy had sent him approximately to the right time.

  Pomrath had done some homework. He knew that the middle of the twenty-first century had been a time of neo-puritan reaction against the fleshly excesses of the immediate past. He liked that. Nothing bored him more than an epoch of brazenly bare-breasted women and men in codpieces. True sensuality, he knew, thrived only in an era of erotic repression. Sensuality was one of the things he was looking for. After a decade as devoted father and faithful husband, Pomrath anticipated a fling.