Down in The Bottomlands

by Harry Turtledove

  He dialed CAnal 6-5700. Somebody said: "Department of Hospitals."

  "Huh? Isn't this CAnal 6-5700?"

  "Yes, this is the Department of Hospitals."

  "Well what's the District Attorney's office then?" Hell, I ought to know my own office phone.

  "The District Attorney's office is WOrth 2-2200."

  Park groggily called WOrth 2-2200. "Mr. Park's office, please."

  "What office did you ask for, please?"

  "The office of Assistant District Attorney Park!" Park's voice took on the metallic rasp. "Racket Bureau to you, sister."

  "I'm sorry, we have no such person."

  "Listen, young lady, have you got a Deputy Assistant DA named Frenczko? John Frenczko? You spell it with a z."

  Silence. "No, I'm sorry, we have no such person."

  Allister Park hung up.

  * * *

  The old building at 137 Center was still there. The Racket Bureau was still there. But they had never heard of Allister Park. They already had an Assistant DA of their own, a man named Hutchison, with whom they seemed quite well satisfied. There was no sign of Park's two deputies, Frenczko and Burt.

  As a last hope, Park went over to the Criminal Courts Building. If he wasn't utterly mad, the case of People v. Cassidy, extortion, ought to come up as soon after ten as it would take Judge Segal to read his calendar. Frenczko and Burt would be in there, after Cassidy's hide.

  But there was no Judge Segal, no Frenczko, no Burt, no Cassidy. . . .

  * * ** * *

  "Very interesting, Mr. Park," soothed the psychiatrist. "Very interesting indeed. The most hopeful feature is that you quite realize your difficulty, and come to me now—"

  "What I want to know," interrupted Park, "is: was I sane up to yesterday, and crazy since then, or was I crazy up to then and sane now?"

  "It seems hard to believe that one could suffer from a coherent set of illusions for thirty-six years," replied the psychiatrist. "Yet your present account of your perceptions seems rational enough. Perhaps your memory of what you saw and experienced today is at fault."

  "But I want to get straightened out! My whole political future depends on it! At least—" he stopped. Was there such an Antonini gang? Was there a nomination awaiting an Allister Park if they were convicted?

  "I know," said the psychiatrist gently. "But this case isn't like any I ever heard of. You go ahead and wire Denver for Allister Park's birth certificate. We'll see if there is such a person. Then come back tomorrow. . . ."

  * * *

  Park awoke, looked around, and groaned. The room had changed again. But he choked off his groan. He was occupying a twin bed. In its mate lay a fair-to-middling handsome woman of about his own age.

  His groan had roused her. She asked: "How are you feeling, Wally?"

  "I'm feeling fine," he mumbled. The significance of his position was soaking in. He had some trouble suppressing another groan. About marriage, he was an adherent of the why-buy-a-cow philosophy, as he had had occasion to make clear to many women by way of fair warning.

  "I hope you are," said the woman anxiously. "You acted so queer yesterday. Do you remember your appointment with Dr. Kerr?"

  "I certainly do," said Park. Kerr was not the name of the psychiatrist with whom he had made the appointment.

  The woman prepared to dress. Park gulped a little. For years he'd managed to get along without being mixed up with other men's wives, ever since . . .

  And he wished he knew her name. A well-mannered man, under those circumstances, wouldn't refer to the woman as "Hey, you."

  "What are we having for breakfast, sweetie-pie?" he asked with a sickly grin. She told him, adding: "You never called me that before, dear." When she started toward him with an expectant smile, he jumped out of bed and dressed with frantic haste.

  He ate silently. When the woman inquired why, he pointed to his mouth and mumbled: "Canker sore. It hurts to talk."

  He fled as soon as he decently could, without learning his "wife's" name. His wallet told him his name was Wallace Heineman, but little else about himself. If he wanted to badly enough, he could no doubt find out whom he worked for, who his friends were, which if any bank he had money in, etc. But if these daily changes were going to continue, it hardly seemed worthwhile. The first thing was to get back to that psychiatrist.

  Although the numbers of the streets were different, the general layout was the same. Half an hour's walking brought him to the block where the psychiatrist's office had been. The building had been on the southeast corner of Fifty-seventh and Eighth. Park could have sworn the building that now occupied that site was different.

  However, he went up anyway. He had made a careful note of the office number. His notebook had been missing that morning, like all the rest of his (or rather Arthur Vogel's) things. Still, he remembered the number.

  The number turned out to be that of a suite of offices occupied by Williamson, Ostendorff, Cohen, Burke, and Williamson, Attorneys. No, they had never heard of Park's brain-man. Yes, Williamson, Ostendorff, Cohen, Burke, and Williamson had occupied those offices for years.

  Park came out into the street and stood a long time, thinking. A phenomenon that he had hitherto noticed only vaguely now puzzled him: the extraordinary number of Union Jacks in sight.

  He asked the traffic cop about it. The cop looked at him. "King's buithday," he said.

  "What king?"

  "Why, our king of course. David the Fuist." The cop touched his finger to the peak of his cap.

  * * *

  Park settled himself on a park bench with a newspaper. The paper was full of things like references to the recent Anglo-Russian war, the launching of the Queen Victoria, His Majesty's visit to a soap factory ("Where he displayed a keen interest in the technical problems involved in . . ."), the victory of Massachusetts over Quebec in the Inter-Colonial football matches (Massachusetts a colony? And football in April?), the trial of one Diedrichs for murdering a man with a cross-cut saw. . . .

  All this was very interesting, especially the Diedrichs case. But Allister Park was more concerned with the whereabouts and probable fate of the Antonini gang. He also thought with gentle melancholy of Mary and Eunice and Dorothy and Martha and Joan and . . . But that was less important than the beautiful case he had dug up against such a slimy set of public enemies. Even Park, despite the cynical view of humanity that public prosecutors get, had felt a righteous glow when he tallied up the evidence and knew he had them.

  And the nomination was not to be sneezed at either. It just happened that he was available when it was a Protestant's turn at that nomination. If he missed out, he'd have to wait while a Catholic and a Jew took theirs. Since you had to be one or the other to get nominated at all, Park had become perforce a church member and regular if slightly hypocritical goer.

  His plan was, after a few terms as DA, to follow the incumbent DA onto the bench. You would never have guessed it, but inside Allister Park lingered enough of the idealism that as a young lawyer he had brought from Colorado to give the bench an attractiveness not entirely comprised of salary and social position.

  He looked in his pockets. There was enough there for one good bender.

  Of the rest of the day, he never could remember much afterwards. He did remember giving a pound note to an old woman selling shoelaces, leading a group of drunks in a song about one Columbo who knew the world was round-o (unexpurgated), and trying to take a fireman's hose away from him on the ground that the city was having a water shortage.

  * * *

  He awoke in another strange room, without a trace of a hangover. A quick look around assured him that he was alone.

  It was time, he thought, that he worked out a system for the investigation of his identity on each successive morning. He learned that his name was Wadsworth Noe. The pants of all the suits in his closet were baggy knee pants, plus fours.

  Something was going ping, ping, ping, like one of those tactful alarm clocks. Park located the sou
rce of the noise in a goose-necked gadget on the table, which he finally identified as a telephone. As the transmitter and receiver were built into a single unit on the end of the gooseneck, there was nothing to lift off the hook. He pressed a button in the base. A voice spoke: "Waddy?"

  "Oh—yeah. Who's this?"

  "This is your little bunnykins."

  Park swore under his breath. The voice sounded female and young; and had a slight indefinable accent. He stalled: "How are you this morning?"

  "Oh, I'm fine. How's my little butterball?"

  Park winced. Wadsworth Noe had a figure even more portly than Allister Park's. Park, with effort, infused syrup into his voice: "Oh, I'm fine too, sweetie-pie. Only I'm lonesome as all hell."

  "Oh, isn't that too bad! Oo poor little thing! Shall I come up and cook dinner for my precious?"

  "I'd love it." A plan was forming in Park's mind. Hitherto all these changes had taken place while he was asleep. If he could get somebody to sit around and watch him while he stayed up . . .

  The date was made. Park found he'd have to market.

  On the street, aside from the fact that all the men wore plus fours and wide-brimmed hats, the first thing that struck him was the sight of two dark men in uniform. They walked in step down the middle of the sidewalk. Their walk implied that they expected people to get out of their way. People got. As the soldiers passed him, Park caught a sentence in a foreign language, sounding like Spanish.

  At the market everyone spoke with that accent Park had heard over the phone. They fell silent when another pair of soldiers entered. These loudly demanded certain articles of food. A clerk scurried around and got the order. The soldiers took the things and departed without paying.

  Park thought of going to a library to learn about the world he was in. But if he were going to shift again, it would hardly be worthwhile. He bought a New York Record, noticing that the stand also carried a lot of papers in French and Spanish.

  Back in his apartment he read of His Majesty Napoleon V, apparently emperor of New York City and God knew what else!

  * * *

  His little bunnykins turned out to be a smallish dark girl, not bad-looking, who kissed him soundly. She said: "Where have you been the last few days, Waddy? I haven't heard from you for simply ages! I was beginning to think you'd forgotten me. Oo hasn't forgotten, has oo?"

  "Me forget? Why, sweetie-pie, I couldn't any more forget you than I could forget my own name." (And what the hell's that? he asked himself. Wordsworth—no, Wadsworth Noe. Thank God.) "Give us another kiss."

  . . . She looked at him. "What makes you talk so funny, Waddy?"

  "Canker sore," said Allister Park.

  "O-o-o, you poor angel. Let me see it."

  "It's all right. How about that famous dinner?"

  * * *

  At least Wadsworth Noe kept a good cellar. After dinner Park applied himself cautiously to this. It gave an excuse for just sitting. Park asked the girl about herself. She chattered on happily for some hours.

  Then her conversation began to run dry. There were long silences.

  She looked at him quizzically. "Are you worrying about something, Waddy? Somehow you seem like a different man."

  "No," he lied. "I'm not worrying."

  She looked at the clock. "I suppose I ought to go," she said hesitantly.

  Park sat up. "Oh, please don't!"

  She relaxed and smiled. "I didn't think you'd let me. Just wait." She disappeared into the bedroom and presently emerged in a filmy nightgown.

  Allister Park was not surprised. But he was concerned. Attractive as the girl was, the thought of solving his predicament was more so. Besides, he was already sleepy from the liquors he had drunk.

  "How about making some coffee, sweetie-pie?" he asked.

  She acquiesced. The making and drinking of the coffee took another hour. It was close to midnight. To keep the ball rolling, Park told some stories. Then the conversation died down again. The girl yawned. She seemed puzzled and a bit resentful.

  She asked: "Are you going to sit up all night?"

  That was just what Park intended to do. But while he cast about for a plausible reason to give, he stalled: "Ever tell you about that man Wugson I met last week? Funniest chap you ever saw. He has a big bunch of hairs growing out the end of his nose. . . ."

  He went on in detail about the oddities of the imaginary Mr. Wugson. The girl had an expression of what-did-I-do-to-deserve-this. She yawned again.

  Click! Allister Park rubbed his eyes and sat up. He was on a hard knobby thing that might, by gross misuse of the language, be called a mattress. His eyes focussed on a row of iron bars.

  He was in jail.

  * * *

  Allister Park's day in jail proved neither interesting nor informative. He was marched out for meals and for an hour of exercise. Nobody spoke to him except a guard who asked: "Hey there, chief, who ja think you are today, huh? Julius Caesar?"

  Park grinned. "Nope. I'm God, this time."

  This was getting to be a bore. If one could do this flitting about from existence to existence voluntarily, it might be fun. As it was, one didn't stay put long enough to adjust oneself to any of these worlds of—illusion?

  The next day he was a shabby fellow sleeping on a park bench. The city was still New York—no it wasn't; it was a different city built on the site of New York.

  He had money for nothing more than a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread. These he bought and consumed slowly, while reading somebody's discarded newspaper. Reading was difficult because of the queer spelling. And the people had an accent that required the closest attention to understand.

  He spent a couple of hours in an art museum. The guards looked at him as if he were something missed by the cleaners. When it closed he went back to his park bench and waited. Night came.

  A car—at least, a four-wheeled power vehicle—drew up and a couple of cops got out. Park guessed they were cops because of their rhinestone epaulets. One asked: "Are you John Gilby?" He pronounced it: "Air yew Thawn Gilbü?"

  But Allister Park caught his drift. "Damned if I know, brother. Am I?"

  The cops looked at each other. "He's him, all right," said one. To Park: "Come along."

  Park learned, little by little, that he was not wanted for anything more serious than disappearance. He kept his own counsel until they arrived at the stationhouse.

  Inside was a fat woman. She jumped up and pointed at him, crying raucously: "That's him! That's the dirty deserter, running off and leaving his poor wife to starve! The back of me hand to you, you dirty—"

  "Please, Mrs. Gilby!" said the desk sergeant.

  The woman was not to be silenced. "Heaven curse the day I met you! Sergeant darlin', what can I do to put the dirty loafer in jail where he belongs?"

  "Well," said the sergeant uncomfortably, "you can charge him with desertion, of course. But don't you think you'd better go home and talk it over? We don't want to—"

  "Hey!" cried Park. They looked at him. "I'll take jail, if you don't mind—"

  Click! Once again he was in bed. It was a real bed this time. He looked around. The place had the unmistakable air of a sanitarium or hospital.

  Oh, well. Park rolled over and went to sleep.

  The next day he was still in the same place. He began to have hopes. Then he remembered that, as the transitions happened at midnight, he had no reason for assuming that the next one would not happen the following midnight.

  He spent a very boring day. A physician came in, asked him how he was, and was gone almost before Park could say "Fine." People brought him his meals. If he'd been sure he was going to linger, he'd have made vigorous efforts to orient himself and to get out. But as it was, there didn't seem any point.

  The next morning he was still in bed. But when he tried to rub his eyes and sit up, he found that his wrists and ankles were firmly tied to the four posts. This wasn't the same bed, nor the same room; it looked like a room in somebody's private house.r />
  And at the foot of the bed sat the somebody: a small gray-haired man with piercing black eyes that gleamed over a sharp nose.

  For a few seconds Allister Park and the man looked at each other. Then the man's expression underwent a sudden and alarming change, as if internal pain had gripped him. He stared at his own clothes as if he had never seen them before. He screamed, jumped up, and dashed out of the room. Park heard his feet clattering down stairs, and the slam of a front door; then nothing.

  * * *

  Allister Park tried pulling at his bonds, but the harder he pulled, the tighter they gripped. So he tried not pulling, which brought no results either.

  He listened. There was a faint hiss and purr of traffic outside. He must be still in a city, though, it seemed, a fairly quiet one.

  A stair creaked. Park held his breath. Somebody was coming up, and without unnecessary noise. More than one man, Park thought, listening to the creaks.

  Somebody stumbled. From far below a voice called up a question that Park couldn't catch. There were several quick steps and the smack of a fist.

  The door of Park's room was ajar. Through the crack appeared a vertical strip of face, including an eye. The eye looked at Park and Park looked at the eye.

  The door jerked open and three men pounced into the room. They wore floppy trousers and loose blouses that might have come out of a Russian ballet. They had large, flat, pentagonal faces, red-brown skins and straight black hair. They peered behind the door and under the bed.

  "What the hell?" asked Allister Park.

  The largest of the three men looked at him. "You're not hurt, Hallow?"

  "No. But I'm damn sick of being tied up."

  The large man's face showed a flicker of surprise. The large man cut Park's lashings. Park sat up, rubbing his wrists, and learned that he was wearing a suit of coarse woolen underwear.

  "Where's the rascally Noggle?" asked the large brown man. Although he rolled his r's like a Scot, he did not look like a Scot. Park thought he might be an Asiatic or an American Indian.