File off the serial numbers, change the body lines a bit. give it a new paint job, switch it over the state line, and it’s yours!—that’s the secret of literary success. Editors always claim to be looking for new stories but they don’t buy them; they buy “mixture as before.” Because the cash customers want to be entertained, not amazed, not instructed, not frightened.
If people truly wanted novelty, baseball would have died out two centuries back…instead of being ever popular. What can possibly happen in a baseball game that everyone has not seen many times before? Yet people like to watch baseball—shucks, I’d enjoy seeing a baseball game right now, with hot dogs and beer.
“Hazel, do you enjoy baseball?”
“Never had a chance to find out. When the drugs against acceleration came along, I went dirtside for my law degree but never had time to watch baseball even in the idiot box. I worked my way through law school and was I busy! That was when I was Sadie Lipschitz.”
“Why were you? You said you didn’t like that name.”
“Sure you want to know? The answer to ‘Why’ is always ‘Money.’”
“If you want me to know, you’ll tell me.”
“Scoundrel. That was right after Slim Lemke Stone died and—What in the world is that racket?”
“That’s an automobile.” I glanced around for the source of the noise.
Starting about 2150 or a little earlier (I saw my first one the year I signed up) supreme swank for an Iowa fanner was to own and drive a working replica of a twentieth-century “automobile” personal transport vehicle. Of course not a vehicle moved by means of internal explosions of a derivative of rock oil: Even the People’s Republic of South Africa had laws against placing poisons in the air. But with its Shipstone concealed and a sound tape to supply the noise of a soi-disant “IC” engine, the difference between a working replica and a real “automobile” was not readily apparent.
This one was the swankest of all replicas, a Tin Lizzy, a “Ford touring car. Model T, 1914.” It was as dignified as Queen Victoria, whom it resembled. And it was Uncle Jock’s…as I had suspected when I heard that infernal banging.
I said to Hazel, “Here, you take Pixel and soothe him; he’s certainly never heard anything like this. And ease well off to the side of the road; these wagons are erratic.” We continued on down the road; the replica pulled alongside us and stopped.
“Need a lift, folks?” Uncle Jock asked. Up close the racket was horrible.
I turned and grinned at him, and answered, mouthing my words so that they couldn’t possibly be heard above the noise: “Four score and seven years ago did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”
“How’s that again?”
“Billiards will never replace sex, or even tomatoes.”
Uncle Jock reached down and switched off the sound effects. I said, “Thanks, Uncle. The noise was scaring our kitten. It’s mighty nice of you to turn it off. What were you saying? I couldn’t hear you over the engine noise.”
“I asked if you wanted a lift.”
“Why, thank you. Going into Grinnell?”
“I planned to take you back to the house. Why did you run away?”
“You know why. Did Dr. Hubert or Lazarus Long or whatever name he’s using this week put you up to it? If so, why?”
“Introduce me first, if you please, nephew. And pardon me for not getting down, ma’am; this steed is skittish.”
“Jock Campbell you old goat, don’t you dare pretend that you don’t know me! I’ll have your rocks for castanets. Believe!”
For the first time that I can remember. Uncle Jock seemed shocked and baffled. “Madam?”
Hazel saw his expression, said hastily, “Are we inverted? I’m sorry. I’m Major Sadie Lipschitz, Time Corps, DOL, assigned to Overlord. I met you first in Boondock about ten of my subjective years ago. You invited me to visit you here, and I did, in year 2186 as I recall. Click?”
“Click, a clear inversion. Major, I’m happy indeed to meet you. But I’m happier still to learn that I will meet you again. I’m looking forward to it.”
Hazel answered, “We had a good time, I promise you. I’m married to your nephew now…but you’re still an old goat. Get down out of that toy wagon and kiss me like you mean it.”
Hastily Uncle unclutched his rotor and got down; Hazel handed Pixel to me, which saved his life. After a while the old goat said, “No, I have not met you before; I could not possibly forget.”
Hazel answered, “Yes, I have met you before; I’ll never forget. God, it’s good to see you again. Jock. You haven’t changed. When was your last rejuvenation?”
“Five subjective years ago—just long enough to marinate. But I wouldn’t let them youthen my face. When was yours?”
“Same subjective, about. Wasn’t due for it yet but I needed cosmetic because I planned to marry your nephew. So I took a booster along with it. Turned out I needed it; he’s a goat, too.”
“I know. Dickie had to enlist because they were closing in on him from all sides.” (An outright lie!) “But are you sure your name is Sadie? That’s not the name Lazarus gave me as a test word.”
“My name is whatever I want it to be, just as it is with Lazarus. My, I’m glad they moved THQ to your place last night! Kiss me again.”
He did and finally I said mildly, “Not on a public road, folks, not in Poweshiek County. This is not Boondock.”
“Mind your own business, nephew. Sadie, headquarters was not moved here last night; that was three years ago.”
XXVIII
“The majority is never right.”
L. LONG 1912-
We rode back to the house, Hazel up front with Uncle Jock, Pixel and me back with the packages. As a favor to Pixel, the replica Model T moved as silently as a ghost. (Do ghosts really move silently? How do such clichés get started?) The gate opened to Uncle Jock’s voice and no lethal defenses were actuated. If there were any. Knowing Uncle Jock I suspect that there were—but not the ones posted.
We were met on the front veranda by Aunt Til and Aunt Cissy. While Uncle Jock went inside, my aunts welcomed my bride into the family with all the warmth of country manners. Then I passed the kitten to Hazel and I was greeted by them much as Hazel had greeted Uncle but with no time loop to confuse us. Golly, it was good to be home! Despite my sometimes stormy adolescence the happiest memories of my life were associated with this old house.
Aunt Cissy looked older today, in 2177, than I recalled her looking the last time I had seen her—2183, was it? Was this a clue as to why Aunt Til had always looked the same age? An occasional trip to Boondock could work wonders.
Were all three—no, all four, including Aunt Belden—serving fifty-year enlistments with the Fountain of Youth as one of the perks?
Was Uncle Jock metabolically about thirty while maintaining the face and neck and hands of an old man in order to support a charade? (None of your business, Richard!)
“Where’s Aunt Belden?”
“She’s gone to Des Moines for the day,” Aunt Til answered. “She’ll be home for supper. Richard, I thought you were on Mars?”
I consulted a calendar in my head. “Come to think about it, I am.”
Aunt Til looked at me keenly. “Are you looped?”
Uncle Jock came back out just in time to say, “Stop it! That sort of talk is forbidden. You all know it; you all are subject to the Code.”
I said quickly, “I’m not subject to the Code, whatever it is. Yes, Aunt Til, I’m looped. Back from 2188.”
Uncle Jock fixed me with a look that used to scare me when I was ten or twelve. “Richard Colin, what is this? Dr. Hubert gave me to understand that you were under orders to report to Time Headquarters. Just this minute I stepped inside and phoned him about your arrival. But no one goes to Headquarters who is not sworn in and ruled by the Code. Leastwise, if he did, he wouldn’t come out again. You said earlier that you weren’t in trouble but you can stop lying now and tell me about it. I’ll help you if I can; bloo
d is thicker than water. So let’s have it.”
“I’m not in any trouble that I know of. Uncle, but Dr. Hubert keeps trying to hand me some. Are you seriously suggesting that reporting to Time Headquarters could result in my not coming out alive? I’m not sworn into the Time Corps and I am not subject to its code. If you are serious, then I should not report to the Time Corps’ headquarters. Aunt Til, is it all right for us to spend the night here? Or would that embarrass you? Or Uncle Jock?”
Without consulting Uncle Jock even by eye. Aunt Til answered, “Of course you’ll stay here, Richard; you and your darling bride are welcome tonight and as long as you’ll stay and whenever you come back. This is your home and always has been.” Uncle shrugged, said nothing.
“Thanks! Where shall I drop these packages? My room? And I need to make arrangements for this fierce feline. Is there a sandbox around from the last litter? And, while Pixel has had his breakfast, I think he could use some milk.”
Aunt Cissy stepped forward. “Til, I’ll take care of the kitten. Isn’t he a pretty one!” She reached for Pixel; Hazel passed him over.
Aunt Til said, “Richard, your room has a guest in it, a Mr. Davis. Mmm, I think, this being July, that the north room on the third floor would be the most comfortable for you and Hazel—”
“‘Hazel’!” Uncle Jock interjected. “That was the test word Dr. Hubert gave me. Major Sadie, is that one of your names?”
“Yes. Hazel Davis Stone. Now Hazel Stone Campbell.”
“‘Hazel Davis Stone,’” Aunt Til put in. “Are you Mr. Davis’s little girl?”
My bride suddenly perked up. “Depends. A long time ago I was Hazel Davis. Is this ‘Manuel Davis’? Manuel Garcia O’Kelly Davis?”
“Yes.”
“My papa! He’s here?”
“He’ll be here for supper. I hope. But—Well, he has duties.”
“I know. I’ve been in the Corps forty-six years subjective and Papa about the same, I think. So we hardly ever see each other, the Corps being what it is. Oh, goodness! Richard, I’m going to cry. Make me stop!”
“Me? Lady, I’m just waiting for a bus. But you can use my handkerchief.” I offered it to her.
She accepted it, dabbed at her eyes. “Brute. Aunt Til, you should have spanked him oftener.”
“Wrong aunt, dear. That was Aunt Abigail, now gone to her reward.”
“Aunt Abby was brutal,” I commented. “Used a peach switch on me. And enjoyed it.”
“Should have used a club. Aunt Til, I can’t wait to see Papa Mannie. It’s been so long.”
“Hazel, you saw him right here—Right there,” I said, pointing at a spot halfway to the old barn, “only three days ago.” I hesitated. “Or was it thirty-seven days? Thirty-nine?”
“No, no, Richard! Neither. By my time, subjective, it’s over two years.” Hazel added, to the others, “It’s all still new to Richard. He was recruited, his subjective time, just last week.”
“But I wasn’t recruited,” I objected. “That’s why we’re here.”
“We’ll see, dear. Uncle Jock, that reminds me—I want to tell you something and I must bend the Code a bit to do so. That doesn’t worry me; I’m a Loonie and never obey laws I don’t like. But are you really so regulation that you won’t listen to ‘coming attractions’ talk?”
“Well—” Uncle Jock said slowly. Aunt Til snickered. Uncle Jock turned to her and said, “Woman, what are you laughing at?”
“Me? I wasn’t laughing.”
“Mmrrph. Major Sadie, my responsibilities and duties require a certain latitude in interpreting the Code. Is this something I need to know?”
“In my opinion, yes.”
“That’s your official opinion?”
“Well, if you put it that way—”
“Never mind. Perhaps you had better tell me and let me be the judge.”
“Yes, sir. On Saturday the fifth of July eleven years forward, 2188, THQ will transfer to New Harbor on time line five. You will go along. All your household, I think.”
Uncle Jock nodded. “That is exactly the sort of loop-derived information the Code is designed to suppress. Because it can so easily create positive feedback and result in heterodyning and possible panic. But I can take it calmly and make good use of it. Uh…may I ask why the move? As it seems unlikely that I would go along—and surely not my household. This is a working farm, no matter what it conceals.”
I interrupted. “Uncle, I’m not bound by any silly code. Those West Coast hotheads finally quit talking and seceded.”
His eyebrows shot up. “No—Really? I didn’t think they would ever get off the pot.”
“They did. May Day ’88. By the day Hazel and I were here, Saturday July the fifth, the Angeleno Phalanges had just captured Des Moines. Bombs were dropping all around here. You may think—today—that you wouldn’t pull out. But I know that you were about to do so then; I was there. Will be there. Ask Dr. Hubert-Lazarus Long. He thought this place was too dangerous to hang around any longer. Ask him.”
“Colonel Campbell!”
I knew that voice; I turned and said, “Hi, Lazarus.”
“That sort of talk is strictly forbidden. Understand me?”
I took a deep breath, then said to Hazel, “He’ll never learn”—then to Lazarus, “Doc, you’ve been trying to make me stand at attention ever since we first met. It won’t work. Can’t you get that through your head?”
Somewhere, somewhen, Lazarus Long had had some sort of formal training in emotional control. I could now see him calling on it to help him. It took him about three seconds to invoke whatever it was he used, then he spoke quietly, in a lower register:
“Let me try to explain. Such talk is dangerous to the person you talk to. Making predictions, I mean, from knowledge gained from a loop. It is an observed fact that, again and again, it turns out to be a disservice to the person you inform when you tell him something in his future that you have learned in your past.
“As to why this is true, I suggest that you consult one of the mathematicians who deal with time—Dr. Jacob Burroughs, or Dr. Elizabeth Long, or anyone from the Corps’ staff of mathematicians. And you should consult the council of historians for examples of the harm it does. Or you could look it up in our headquarters library—file ‘Cassandra’ and file ‘Ides of March,’ for starters, then see file ‘Nostradamus.’”
Long turned to Uncle Jock. “Jock, I’m sorry about this. I pray that you will not let the troubles of ’88 make your household gloomy during the forward years till then. I never planned to bring your nephew here not yet trained in the disciplines of Time—I never planned to bring your nephew here at all. We do need him, but we expected to recruit him at Boondock with no need to bring him to Headquarters. But he refused to enlist. Do you want to try to change his mind?”
“I’m not sure I have any influence over him, Lafe. How about it, Dickie? Want to hear what a good deal a career in the Time Corps can be? You could say that the Time Corps supported you throughout your childhood—you could say it because it’s true. The sheriff was about to auction this farm right out from under us…when I joined up. You were just a tad…but you may remember a time we ate corn bread and not much else. Then things got better and stayed better—do you remember? You were about six.”
I had some long thoughts. “Yes, I remember. I think I do. Uncle, I’m not against joining. You’re in it, my wife is in it, several of my friends are in it. But Lazarus has been trying to sell me a pig in a poke. I’ve got to know what it is they want me to do and why they want me to do it. They say they want me for a job with the chances only fifty-fifty that I get out of it alive. With those odds there is no point in talking about retirement benefits. I don’t want some chairwarmer in Headquarters being that casual about my neck. I must know that it makes sense before I’ll accept those odds.”
“Lafe, just what is this job you have for my boy?”
“It’s Task Adam Selene in Operation Galactic Overlord.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”
“And now you should forget it, as you don’t figure into it and it has not been mounted as of this year.”
“That makes it difficult for me to advise my nephew. Shouldn’t I be briefed?”
Hazel intervened. “Lazarus! Knock it off!”
“Major, I’m discussing official business with the THQ stationkeeper.”
“Pig whistle! You are again trying to chivvy Richard into risking his life without his knowing why. When I agreed to try to do so, I had not yet met Richard. Now that I know him—and admire him; he is sans peur et sans reproche—I’m ashamed that I ever tried. But I did try…and almost succeeded. But you barreled your way in…and mucked it up, as was predictable. I told you then that the Circle would have to convince him, I told you! Now you are trying to get Richard’s closest relative—his father in all that counts—to pressure him in your place. Shame on you! Take Richard to the Circle. Let them explain it…or let him go home! Quit stalling! Do it!”
What I had always thought of as a closet in Uncle’s den turned out to look like an elevator inside. Lazarus Long and I went into it together; he closed the door and I saw that, where an elevator usually has floor numbers with touchplates for each number, there was a display of lighted symbols—signs of the Zodiac I thought, then changed my mind, as there is no bat in the Zodiac, no black widow spider, certainly no stegosaurus.
At the bottom, by itself, was a snake eating its own tail—the world snake, Ouroboros. A disgusting symbol at best.
Lazarus placed his hand over it.
The closet, or elevator cage, or small room, changed. How, I am not certain. It simply blinked and was different. “Through here,” Lazarus said, and opened a door on the far side.
Stretching from that door was a long corridor that would never fit inside my uncle’s house. But views I could see through windows that lined that long passageway did not fit his farm, either. The land looked like Iowa, yes—but Iowa untouched by the plow, never cleared for farming.
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls Page 37