Farewell to Yesterday's Tomorrow

by Alexei Panshin

  But suddenly, on this day when the vertical world was turning horizontal—enough people being ready for that to happen—he had been struck with a crucial insight as he was standing with a demodulator in his hand. He suddenly saw that you could turn things around. The answer was not many gateways to many strange dimensions. It was one gateway. One gateway into this world.

  He knew how to build it, too.

  “I’ll need a 28K-916 Hersh.,” he said. That was a vacuum tube with special rhodomagnetic properties that had been out of stock for forty-two years.

  There was only one place in New York, perhaps in all the world, where such a tube might be found—Stewart’s Out-of-Stock Supply. Stewart’s has everything that is out of stock. Mr. Asenion had seen a 28K-916 Hersh. there in 1934. However, he had no need of it then.

  Stewart’s has everything out of stock that an out-of-date inventor might need, but they may not sell it to you if they disapprove of you. Mr. Asenion had not been welcome in Stewart’s since the fall of 1937 when he had incautiously announced his intentions under stern cross-questioning.

  “Woodrow,” Mr. Asenion said, “you must go to Stewart’s in Brooklyn. They will have a 28K-916 Hersh. It’s all I need to finish my machine. Then I will rule the world.”

  “Brooklyn?” said Woody. “I’ve never been to Brooklyn, Papa.”

  He had heard of Brooklyn from the lips of his dead mother. She said she had been to Brooklyn once.

  Sometimes he had thought of Brooklyn as of some strange wonderland when his father was out experimenting in the apartment and he was alone in the closet.

  He had seen the Heights of Brooklyn once, the great towering wall of rock that conceals all but the spires of the land beyond. Or he believed that he had. Sometimes he thought that he must have imagined it when he was small. He would know if he should ever see it again.

  But to go to Brooklyn? “It’s farther than I’ve ever been. Why don’t you go, Papa?”

  “There are reasons,” said Mr. Asenion with dignity. “You wouldn’t understand. At this special moment I must stay with my machine. Further inspiration may come to me at any moment. I must be ready.”

  He had a point. Lack of success in the vertical world is no index of lack of skill in invention. He had something in the Dimensional Redistributor. What’s more, his insight on this day when the vertical world was turning horizontal was valid: With the particular representing the general, one reversed (and modified) gateway, and a 28K-916 Hersh., his Dimensional Redistributor would work. And there are even alternatives to the 28K-916 Hersh., if you want to know, which inspiration could reveal and ingenuity confirm.

  Woody shook his head in fear and excitement. “I can’t do it.”

  Mr. Asenion heard only the fear and reacted to that. “There’s no need to be afraid, just because it’s Brooklyn. I’ll write out the way, just as I always do. And I’ll send the robot along to keep you company. You will be safe as long as you stick to the path and carry your umbrella.”

  The robot nodded dumbly from behind Mr. Asenion. When Woody ran errands in the neighborhood, the robot always kept him silent company.

  “I don’t want to,” said Woody.

  “I command you to go. You owe it to me, your father, for all the many years I’ve fed you and kept a roof over your head and let you sleep at my feet.”

  He was right if you look at things vertically.

  “All right,” said Woody. “I’ll go.”

  Mr. Asenion patted Woody on the head. “Good boy,” he said.

  When the Dimensional Redistributor was in operation, he meant to pat the whole world on the head, when it did what he said. “Good boy,” he would say.

  As soon as Mr. Asenion turned away, Woody kicked the robot. It could not complain, but it did look reproachful.

  So there you have Woody Asenion—raised in a closet, lower than the lowest in the vertical world, somebody who knows even less than you do about what is going on. He is even more limited than you know. Last birthday, Woody was thirty-seven years old.

  Woody gave the robot one of his hands and held his map and directions tight in the other so as not to lose his way, said good-bye to his father, who turned away to putter with his machine, and with one deep breath cleared the first three thresholds—the door of the closet, the door of the apartment, and the door of the building at 206 W. 104th St. in Manhattan—and stood blinking in the sun, heat, and sidewalk traffic. There were threats, noise, and distraction all about him. Cars clawed and roared at each other, seeking advantage. Signs in bright colors loomed at Woody yelling, “Number *1* in Quantity” and “Do As You’re Told, Son” and “Step Backward.” It was confusing to Woody, but he knew that if he did not panic, if he followed his instructions and stayed on the path and did not lose his umbrella, he could pass through the danger unscathed.

  He let his breath out. The air in the street was wet and sticky. The sunlight was oppressive. He seized the robot’s hand all the tighter, and they set off down the street. It was the robot who carried the rolled umbrella.

  The people they threaded through were these:

  Three white men—one in a business suit, one old, one a bum.

  Two black men—one grateful, one not.

  A student.

  Three old women.

  Five Puerto Ricans of both sexes and various ages.

  Two young women—one bitter, one not.

  A Minister of the Church of God.

  A group of snazzy black buccaneers talking bad.

  And a little girl who also lived at 206 W. 104th St. in Manhattan.

  “Hi, Woody,” she said. “Hi, It.”

  Five of these twenty-five saw Woody Asenion walking along the street with his hand in the hand of a tall skinny cuproberyl robot that carried an umbrella, and knew him instantly to be their inferior. All the others weren’t sure, or else they didn’t care about things like that anymore.

  That’s how close the vertical world was to turning horizontal. But it hadn’t happened yet.

  The map led Woody directly to the subway station. There was a hooded green pit, an orange railing, and stairs leading down.

  In the old closet, when Woody was small, he could feel the force of the subway train. When it prowled, the building would shudder. His mother had told him not to be afraid.

  Woody and the robot, on their errands in the neighborhood, had twice walked past the stairpit into the subway. Once Woody had stepped three steps down and then back up again quickly. That was like a quarter-turn of the doorknob to the closet, but more daring. And now their directions led them down the stairs.

  Woody looked to the robot for assurance. The robot nodded and took each stair first, to show him how possible it was.

  It was cooler in the dark cavern under the street. Only one light was visible, a yellow light in a huddled token booth. Woody and the robot walked between dim pillars to that booth in the distance.

  Sitting on a stool in the booth was a blue extraterrestrial being. It looked something like a hound, something like Fred MacMurray. It was dressed in a blue Friends of the New York Subway System uniform.

  Woody looked at his directions. They advised him to ask for tokens.

  “Four toll tokens,” he said to the alien in the tollbooth. “Please.”

  The alien said, “Are you Woody Asenion?”

  Woody ducked behind the robot in surprise. “How do you know my name?”

  The alien waved it away, and turned for the telephone. “Just forget I asked. It really isn’t important, Woody. Forget the whole thing.”

  He dialed a number. While he waited for the ring, he said, “I’d only buy two toll tokens, if I were you. You’ll only need two. Oh, hello, Clishnor. Listen—‘It’s about to rain.’ Right.”

  Woody looked at his directions. They said to buy four toll tokens. He set his jaw.

  “Four toll tokens, please,” he said bravely. “And how did you know me?”

  “I was set here to ask,” said the blue alien in the
blue Friends of the New York Subway System uniform. “I ask everybody if they’re you. We’re here for the rain, and we wanted to have warning.”

  “Rain?” said Woody.

  “The weather forecast says that when Woody Asenion goes to Brooklyn, it’s going to rain.” The alien passed four tokens under the grill of the booth. “Now, you just see if it doesn’t.”

  “Oh, is that how it is,” said Woody, who wasn’t sure how weather forecasts were made. He hadn’t thought he was that important, though of course he was. Well, he was safe. The robot had the umbrella.

  Woody and the robot turned away. There was a white electric sign on the other side of the booth. It had a black arrow and black letters that blinked and said: “To the Subway.”

  They followed the arrow. Behind them the tollbooth quietly closed and the yellow light went off.

  The directions and map mentioned the black arrow and the sign. They walked through the darkness between the metal pillars until they came to another stair. An automatic machine guarded the top of the stair. It held out a hand until Woody gave it two toll tokens, and then it let them pass.

  There was light at the bottom of the stairs and the stairs were very tall. Down they walked, down and down, until Woody was not at all sure that he wanted to go to Brooklyn at all, even to buy his father a 28K-916 Hersh. so that he could finish his Dimensional Redistributor and control the world.

  The station was a great vaulted catacomb. The walls were covered with grime-coated mosaics celebrating the muses of Science and Industry. Woody and the robot were all alone on the echoing platform.

  Then suddenly a wind blew through the station, fluttering the map and directions in Woody’s hand. A chill wind. Following the wind, the squealing, clashing, and roaring of the great behemoth. Following the noise, the subway train itself. It hurtled into the station under the tight command of the pilot, whom Woody could see seated in the front window, and came to a stop with a tortured screech of metal. A voice more commanding than Mr. Asenion’s said, “Passengers will stand clear of the moving platform as trains enter and leave the station!” A shelf of metal moved silently out to the train as a pair of doors opened in front of them. Woody squeezed the robot’s hand hard.

  The robot nodded reassuringly and led Woody onto the metal shelf and then aboard the train. One last look. The shelf began to withdraw and the doors closed like a trap, and Woody was committed.

  Woody was afraid, as you can well imagine. He sat, uneasy as a cricket, on the seat next to the robot. Blackness hurtled by the window behind his head. There was great constantly modulating noise. All the passengers stared straight ahead and pretended they were alone.

  But this was no ordinary subway train, even though it now ran on an obscure local line. There was a plaque on the wall across from Woody. It said, “This train, the Lyman R. Long, was dedicated at the New York World’s Fair, July 7, 1939, as the Subway Train of the Future.”

  Then, in no time at all, they were in the great gleaming Central Station of the New York Subway System. They left the Subway Train of the Future and ventured out into the echoing bustle of the bright high-ceilinged underground world. The walls were alive with texture and color. High overhead, dominating Central Station, was a great stained-glass window lit like a neon sign. It, too, celebrated the muses of Science and Industry, but it was much grander.

  Woody took no notice of the wonder around him. He ignored the people. He ignored the color. He ignored the light. He ignored the shops that filled the caverns of the Central Station. He held tight to the robot’s hand and looked resolutely straight ahead. All this around him was distraction. He was going to Brooklyn to buy his father a 28K-916 Hersh. so that he could finish his Dimensional Redistributor and control the world. If he were distracted and left the path, he would not dare to guess his fate.

  His directions said…but there it was, directly before him, the sign that said, “To Brooklyn.” Under it sat a new modern plasteel train, doors open wide, waiting patiently. The Lyman R. Long was 1939’s vision of the future, now relegated to a local line. This was the future made present. This was tomorrow now.

  It was far more frightening somehow as it sat, quietly waiting. This open door was the last threshold. If Woody passed beyond it, he would be swallowed whole and carried to Brooklyn. He would not be able to help himself.

  But he had no choice. He could not help himself now. He must stay on the path, and the path led to Brooklyn. Stepping aboard the train had the same disconcerting finality as the bursting of a soap bubble.

  There were but two seats left together in the car, and Woody and his robot companion sat down. As soon as they sat, as though on signal, the doors of the car slid shut automatically and silently, and automatically and silently the subway train slid out of the Central Station of the New York Subway System, bound for Brooklyn. It plunged immediately into the cold dark earth tunnel under the East River, and down down it went without consideration of what it might discover. Down. Noiselessly down. Relentlessly down.

  One instant they were in the station. One instant there was still connection to the familiar world. One instant they were still in Manhattan. The next moment they were hurtling into an unknown nether world. It was all too sudden. Woody was paralyzed with fear.

  It felt to him as though a hand were wringing his brain, and another hand was squeezing his throat, and another hand was tickling his heart, toying with his life and certainty. And the only hand that was really there was the strong cuproberyl hand of the robot Woody Asenion’s father had made to keep Woody in the closet and safe from other harm. Woody held that familiar hand tight. He looked at the map and directions that he held. That was his talisman. He had not left the path. As long as he did not leave the path, he would be safe.

  The train bumped a bottom bump and the lights in the car dimmed and then came up. The door between cars at Woody’s left slammed open, allowing a brief snatch of the whirring whine of the rubberite wheels on the tracks, and three young people burst threateningly in. They were very dangerous because no one in the subway car had ever seen anything like them. They were not apprentices. They were not secretaries. They were not management trainees. They were neither soldiers nor students. They were not hip, but then neither were they straight.

  One was a boy, narrow, tall, ugly and graceful as a hatchet. He wore an extravagant white suit, dandy and neat, and carried a yellow chrysanthemum to play with. The other boy was short, dark, curly, and cute. He wore a casual brown doublet over an orange shirt. He bounced and bubbled. The girl wore cheerfully vulgar purple to her ankle with a slit to the thigh. She was pale and her black hair was severe and dramatic.

  The girl was the first into the car. She swung around and around the pole in front of Woody, laughing. The bouncy boy galloped in after her, swung with her around the pole, and then stopped her with a sudden kiss, even though Amy Vanderbilt in an ad overhead suggested that public emotion is not good manners. The ugly one strolled in gracefully, shut the door to the car, and blessed the two with his yellow mum, tapping them each on the head, saying nothing.

  Then he turned and waved his flower menacingly at the rest of the car. He danced. This was too much for one still-vertical soul, who leaped to his feet and said authoritatively: “We are all good citizens here on our way to Brooklyn. What do you mean by this intrusion?”

  “Don’t you feel it?” the bouncy one asked. “The world has changed. The Great Common Dream is changing, and so is the world. We’re going to Brooklyn to dance in the rain and celebrate. Come on along.”

  The girl looked directly at the questioning man. “Listen with your skin,” she said. “Don’t you feel it? Don’t you want to be dancing?”

  The man looked puzzled. But he listened with his skin and he knew they were right, even if they were a little early. He was horizontal in his heart, which is why he was so quick to seem vertical. He still thought it might be noticed if he wasn’t.

  But now he said, with joy in his voice, “I do feel it!
I do feel it! You’re right. You’re right!” He howled a joyous howl of celebration.

  And he began to dance in the aisles.

  “I feel it too!” someone else yelled. “I do.”

  Who? It might have been any of the first six people to join him in the aisles.

  Now that’s how close the vertical world was to turning horizontal. All that was necessary was the suggestion. People were ready to go multiform as soon as they knew it was time. Woody tugged at the sleeve of the tall boy in the extravagant white suit.

  “Yes, sir, may I be of practical assistance?” said he, and winked.

  “Is it raining now?” asked Woody. It seemed important that he should ask, since the strange blue toll-token seller had suggested that it was going to rain and he wanted to be prepared. The robot carried Woody’s umbrella in his capable cuproberyl hand. Woody would be all right. If it did rain, Woody would stay dry.

  “Raining,” said the ugly one. “Raining? How would I know if it’s raining? We’re in a subway train under the East River.”

  “Oh, hey now, it’s Woody,” said the girl. “Go easy on Woody. It’s going to rain, Woody. Don’t you want to come along with us and dance in the rain?”

  But she was too insistent for poor Woody. He didn’t know enough of the world to be sure what it was that she intended, but he suspected the world too much to want to learn. She was a distraction. The whole car was a distraction, dancing, gadding, and larking. He stared fixedly up at the subway ad for Amy Vanderbilt’s new etiquette book. “Know Your Place in the Space Age,” the ad whispered to him when it knew it had his full attention. And that was another distraction.

  “Hey, dance with us, Woody,” said the curly one in orange. “You can do any step you like. You can do a step no one else has ever done.”

  Woody explained: “I have this map and these directions.” He pointed to them. “I’m very busy now. I’m running an errand for my father. I’m going to buy a 28K-916 Hersh. so that he can finish his Dimensional Redistributor and control the world.”