Time in Advance

by William Tenn

  “Sorry,” the other man said. “Klap-Lillth and I will have to be back on Ganymede in a half-hour. We’re late for an appointment as is. Why don’t you call a government machine?”

  “Who is he?” the orange hedge inquired as they began to move swiftly to the entrance of a building, the sidewalk under them flowing like a happy river. “He doesn’t narga to me like one of you.”

  “Time traveler,” his companion explained. “From the past. one of the exchange tourists who came in two weeks ago.”

  “Aha!” said the hedge. “From the past. No wonder I couldn’t narga him. It’s just as well. You know, on Ganymede we don’t believe in time travel. It’s against our religion.”

  The Earthman chuckled and dug the hedge in the twigs. “Volt and your religion! You’re as much an atheist as I am, Kalp-Lillth. When was the last time you attended a shkoot‑seem ceremony?”

  “Not since the last syzygy of Jupiter and the Sun,” the hedge admitted. “But that’s not the point. I’m still in good standing. What all you humans fail to understand about the Ganymedan religion ...”

  His voice trailed off as they disappeared inside the building. Mead almost spat after them. Then he recollected himself. They didn’t have much time to fool around—and, besides, he was in a strange world with customs insanely different from his own. Who knew what the penalties were for spitting?

  “Government machine,” he said resignedly to the empty air. “I want a government machine.”

  He felt a little foolish, but that was what they had been told to do in any emergency. And, sure enough, a gleaming affair of wires and coils and multicolored plates appeared from nothingness beside him.

  “Yes?” a toneless voice inquired. “Service needed?”

  “I’m on my way to see Mr. Storku at your Department of State,” Mr. Mead explained, staring suspiciously at the largest coil nearest him. “And I’m having trouble walking on the sidewalk. I’m liable to fall and kill myself if it doesn’t stop moving under me.”

  “Sorry, sir, but no one has fallen on a sidewalk for at least two hundred years, and that was a highly neurotic side-walk whose difficulties had unfortunately escaped our attention in the weekly psychological checkup. May I suggest you take a jumper? I’ll call one for you.”

  “I don’t want to take a jumper. I want to walk. All you have to do is tell this damn sidewalk to relax and be quiet.”

  “Sorry, sir,” the machine replied, “but the sidewalk has its job to do. Besides, Mr. Storku is not at his office. He is taking some spiritual exercise at either Shriek Field or Panic Stadium.”

  “Oh, no,” Mr. Mead moaned. His worst fears had been realized. He didn’t want to go to those places again.

  “Sorry, sir, but he is. Just a moment, while I check.” There were bright blue flashes amongst the coils. “Mr. Storku is doing a shriek today. He feels he has been over-aggressive recently. He invites you to join him.”

  Mr. Mead considered. He was not the slightest bit interested in going to one of those places where sane people became madmen for a couple of hours; on the other hand, time was short, Winthrop was still stubborn.

  “All right,” he said unhappily. “I’ll join him.”

  “Shall I call a jumper, sir?”

  The portly man stepped back. “No! I’ll I’ll walk.”

  “Sorry, sir, but you would never get there before the shriek has begun.”

  Sweetbottom’s vice-president in charge of public relations put the moist palms of his hands against his face and gently massged it, to calm himself. He must remember that this wasno bellhop you could complain to the management about, no stupid policeman you could write to the newspapers about, no bungling secretary you could fire or nervous wife you could tell off—this was just a machine into whose circuits a given set of vocal reactions had been built. If he had art apoplectic fit in front of it, it would not be the slightest tat concerned: it would merely summon another machine, a medical one. All you could do was give it information or receive information from it.

  “I don’t-like-jumpers,“ he said between his teeth.

  “Sorry, sir, but you expressed a desire to see Mr. Storku. If you are willing to wait until the shriek is over, there is no problem, except that you would be well advised to start for the Odor Festival on Venus where he is going next. If you wish to see him immediately, however, you must take a jumper. There are no other possibilities, sir, unless you feel that my memory circuits are inadequate or you’d like to add a new factor to the discussion.”

  “I’d like to add a— Oh, I give up.” Mr. Mead sagged where he stood. “Call a jumper, call a jumper.”

  “Yes, sir. Here you are, sir.” The empty cylinder that suddenly materialized immediately over Mr. Mead’s head caused him to start, but while he was opening his mouth to say, “Hey! I changed—” it slid down over him.

  There was darkness. He felt as if his stomach were being gently but insistently pulled out through his mouth. His liver, spleen and lungs seemed to follow suit. Then the bones of his body all fell inward to the center of his now-empty abdomen and dwindled in size until they disappeared. He collapsed upon himself.

  Suddenly he was whole and solid again, and standing in a large; green meadow, with dozens of people around him. His stomach returned to its proper place and squirmed back into position. “—anged my mind. I’ll walk after all,” he said, and threw up.

  Storku, a tall, genial, yellow-haired young man, was standing in front of him when the spasms had subsided and the tears ceased to leak from his eyes. “It’s such a simple thing really, Mr.Mead. Just a matter of being intently placid during the jump.”

  “Easy—easy to say,” Mr. Mead gasped, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief. What was the reason Storku always exuded such patronizing contempt toward him? “Why don’t you people—why don’t you people find another way to travel? In my time, comfort in transportation is the keystone, the very keystone of the industry. Any busline, any airline, which doesn’t see to it that their passengers enjoy the maximum comfort en route to their destination is out of business before you can bat an eye. Either that, or they have a new board of directors.”

  “Isn’t he intriguing?” a girl near him commented to her escort. “He talks just like one of those historical romances.”

  Mr. Mead glanced at her sourly. He gulped. She was nude. For that matter, so was everyone else around him, including Mr. Storku. Who knew what went on at these Shriek Field affairs, he wondered nervously? After all, he had only seen them before from a distance in the grandstand. And now he was right in the middle of these deliberate lunatics.

  “Surely you’re being a bit unjust,” Mr. Storku suggested. “After all, if an Elizabethan or a man from the Classic Greek period were to go for a ride in one of your homeless carriages or iron horses—to use your vernacular—he would be extremely uncomfortable and exhibit much more physical strain than you have. It’s purely a matter of adjustment to the unfamiliar. Some adjust, like your contemporary, Winthrop; some don’t, like yourself.”

  “Speaking of Winthrop—” Mr. Mead began hurriedly, glad both of the opening and the chance to change the subject.

  “Everybody here?” An athletic young man inquired as he bounded up. “I’m your leader for this Shriek. On your feet, everybody, come on, let’s get those kinks out of our muscles. We’re going to have a real fine shriek.”

  “Take your clothes off,” the government man told Mr. Mead. “You can’t run a shriek dressed. Especially dressed like that.”

  Mr. Mead shrank back. “I’m not going to— I just came here to talk to you. I’ll watch.”

  A rich, roaring laugh. “You can’t watch from the middle of Shriek Field! And besides, the moment you joined us, you were automatically registered for the shriek. If you withdraw now, you’ll throw everything off.”

  “I will?”

  Storku nodded. “Of course. A different quantity of stimuli has to be applied to any different quantity of people, if you want to deve
lop the desired shriek-intensity in each one of them. Take your clothes off, man, and get into the thing. A little exercise of this sort will tone up your psyche magnificently.”

  Mr. Mead thought it over, then began to undress. He was embarrassed, miserable and more than a little frightened at the prospect, but he had an urgent job of public relations to do on the yellow-haired young man.

  In his time, he had gurgled pleasurably over rope-like cigars given him by politicians, gotten drunk in incredible little stinking bars with important newspapermen and suffered the slings and the arrows of outrageous television quiz shows—all in the interests of Sweetbottom Septic Tanks, Inc. The motto of the Public Relations Man was strictly When in Rome ...

  And obviously the crowd he had made this trip with from 1958 was composed of barely-employables and bunglers. They’d never get themselves and him back to their own time, back to a world where there was a supply-and-demand distributive system that made sense instead of something that seemed absolutely unholy in the few areas where it was visible and understandable. A world where an important business executive was treated like somebody instead of like a willful two-year-old. A world where inanimate objects stayed inanimate, where the walls didn’t ripple around you, the furniture didn’t adjust constantly under you, where the very clothes on a person’s back didn’t change from moment to moment as if it were being revolved in a kaleidoscope.

  No, it was up to him to get everybody back to that world, and his only channel of effective operation lay through Storku. Therefore, Storku had to be placated and made to feel that Oliver T. Mead was one of the boys.

  Besides, it occurred to him as he began slipping out of his clothes, some of these girls looked real cute. They reminded him of the Septic Tank Convention at Des Moines back in July. If only they didn’t shave their heads!

  “All together, now,” the shriek leader sang out. “Let’s hunch up. All together in a tight little group, all bunched up and milling around.”

  Mr. Mead was pushed and jostled into the crowd. It surged forward, back, right, left, being maneuvered into a smaller and smaller group under the instructions and shoving of the Shriek leader. Music sprang up around them, more noise than music, actually, since it had no discernible harmonic relationships, and grew louder and louder until it was almost deafening.

  Someone striving for balance in the mass of naked bodies hit Mr. Mead in the stomach with an outflung arm. He said “Oof!” and then “Oof!” again as someone behind him tripped and piled into his back. “Watch out!” a girl near him moaned as he trod on her foot. “Sorry,” he told her, “I just couldn’t—” and then an elbow hit him in the eye and he went tottering away a few steps, until, the group changing its direction again, he was pushed forward.

  Round and round he went on the grass, being pushed and pushing, the horrible noise almost tearing his eardrums apart. From what seemed a greater and greater distance he could hear the shriek leader chanting: “Come on, this way, hurry up! No, that way, around that tree. Back into the bunch, you: everybody together. Stay together. Now, backwards, that’s right, backwards. Faster, faster.”

  They went backwards, a great mass of people pushing on Mead, jamming him into the great mass of people immediately behind him. Then, abruptly, they went forwards again, a dozen little cross-currents of humanity at work against each other in the crowd, so that as well as moving forward, he was also being hurled a few feet to the right and then turned around and being sucked back diagonally to his left. Once or twice, he was shot to the outskirts of the group, but, much to his surprise when be considered it later, all he did was claw his way back into the jam-packed surging middle.

  It was as if he belonged nowhere else by this time, but in this mob of hurrying madmen. A shaved female head crashing into his chest as the only hint that the group had changed its direction was what he had come to expect. He threw himself backwards and disregarded the grunts and yelps he helped create. He was part of this—this—whatever it was. He was hysterical, bruised and slippery with sweat, but he no longer thought about anything but staying on his feet in the mob.

  He was part of it, and that was all he knew.

  Suddenly, somewhere outside the maelstrom of running, jostling naked bodies, there was a yell. It was a long yell, in a powerful male voice, and it went on and on, almost drowning out the noise-music. A woman in front of Mr. Mead picked it up in a head-rattling scream. The man who had been yelling stopped, and, after a while, so did the woman.

  Then Mr. Mead heard the yell again, beard the woman join in, and was not even remotely surprised to bear his own voice add to the din. He threw all the frustration of the past two weeks into that yell, all the pounding, shoving and bruises of the past few minutes, all the frustrations and hatreds of his lifetime. Again and again the yell started up, and each time Mr. Mead joined it. All around him others were joining it, too, until at last there was a steady, unanimous shriek from the tight mob that slipped and fell and chased itself all over the enormous meadow. Mr. Mead, in the back of his mind, experienced a child-like satisfaction in getting on to the rhythm they were working out—and in being part of working it out.

  It went pulse-beat, pulse-beat, shriek-k-k-k, pulse-beat, pulse-beat, shriek-k-k-k, pulse-beat, pulse-beat, shriek-k-k-k.

  All together. All around him, all together. It was good!

  He was never able to figure out later how long they had been running and yelling, when he noticed that he was no longer in the middle of a tight group. They had thinned out somehow and were spread out over the meadow in a long, wavering, yelling line.

  He felt a little confused. Without losing a beat in the shriek‑rhythm, he made an effort to get closer to a man and woman on his right.

  The yells stopped abruptly. The noise-music stopped abruptly. He stared straight ahead where everybody else was staring. He saw it.

  A brown, furry animal about the size of a sheep. It had turned its head and thrown one obviously startled, obviously frightened look at them, then it had bent its legs and begun running madly away across the meadow.

  “Let’s get it!” the shriek leader’s voice sounded from what seemed all about them. “Let’s get it! All of us, together! Let’s get it!”

  Somebody moved forward, and Mr. Mead followed. The shriek started again, a continuous, unceasing shriek, and he twined in. Then he was running across the meadow after the furry brown animal, screaming his head off, dimly and proudly conscious of fellow human beings doing the same on both sides of him.

  Let’s get it! his mind howled. Let’s get it, let’s get it!

  Almost caught up with, the animal doubled on its tracks abruptly, and dodged back through the line of people. Mr. Mead flung himself at it and made a grab. He got a handful of fur and fell painfully to his knees as the animal galloped away.

  He was on his feet without abating a single note of the shriek, and after it in a moment. Everyone else had turned around and was running with him.

  Let’s get it! Let’s get it! Let‘s get it!

  Back and forth across the meadow, the animal ran and they pursued. It dodged and twisted and jerked itself free from converging groups.

  Mr. Mead ran with them, ran in the very forefront. Shrieking.

  No matter how the furry brown animal turned, they turned too. They kept getting closer and closer to it.

  Finally, they caught it.

  The entire mob trapped it in a great, uneven circle and closed in. Mr. Mead was the first one to reach it. He smashed his fist into it and knocked it down with a single blow. A girl leaped onto the prostrate figure, her face contorted, and began tearing at it with her fingernails. Just before everyone piled on, Mr. Mead managed to close his hand on a furry brown leg. He gave the leg a tremendous yank and it came off in his band. He was remotely astonished at the loose wires and gear mechanisms that trailed out of the torn-off leg.

  “We got it!” he mumbled, staring at the leg. We got it, his mind danced madly. We got it, we got it!

  He was
suddenly very tired, almost faint. He dragged himself away from the crowd and sat down heavily on the grass. He continued to stare at the loose wires that came out of the leg.

  Mr. Storku came up to him, breathing hard. “Well,” said Mr. Storku. “Did you have a nice shriek?”

  Mr. Mead held up the furry brown leg. “We got it,” he said bewilderedly.

  The yellow-haired young man laughed. “You need a good shower and a good sedative. Come on.” He helped Mr. Mead to his feet and, holding on to his arm, crossed the meadow to a dilated yellow square under the grandstand. All around them the other participants in the shriek chattered gaily to each other as they cleansed themselves and readjusted their metabolism.

  After his turn inside one of the many booths which filled the interior of the grandstand, Mr. Mead felt more like himself. Which was not to say he felt better.

  Something had come out of him in those last few moments as he tore at the mechanical quarry, something he wished infinitely had stayed at the dank bottom of his soul. He’d rather never have known it existed.

  He felt vaguely, dismally, like a man who, flipping the pages of a textbook of sexual aberrations, comes upon a particularly ugly case history which parallels his life history in every respect, and understands—in a single, horrified flash—exactly what all those seemingly innocent quirks and nuances of his personality mean.

  He tried to remind himself that be was still Oliver T. Mead, a good husband and father, a respected business executive, a substantial pillar of the community and the local church—but it was no good. Now, and for the rest of his life, he was also ... this other thing.

  He had to get into some clothes. Fast.

  Mr. Storku nodded when the driving need was explained. “You probably had a lot saved up. About time you began discharging it. I wouldn’t worry: you’re as sane as anyone in your period. But your clothes have been cleaned off the field along with all the rubbish of our shriek; the officials are already preparing for the next one.”

  “What do I do?” Mr. Mead wailed. “I can’t go home like this.”