by Fritz Leiber
Their relationship was that of crocodile and crocodile bird, or—more accurately—shark and pilot fish.
The most arresting difference between them and the Whitlow person related to clothing. Although superficially similar, there was the suggestion of different epochs of fashion—or of some even wider gulf.
They watched him as a fat torn and a brainy kitten watch a mouse just out of reach.
Whitlow said, “I repeat, the means whereby I came here are immaterial to our discussion. Suffice it to say that alternate time streams exist, resulting from time bifurcations in the not-too-distant past, and that I possess the means of traveling between them.”
Saturnly extended his great paws soothingly. He said, “Now, now, Mr. Whitlow, don’t excite yourself—”
He choked off. Neddar’s fingers flickered, although no other part of his anatomy moved, and there glowed up at Saturnly the following warning: “WATCH YOUR STEP! It’s probably true. Remember, he turned up where he couldn’t have.”
Neddar said, “Mr. Saturnly is concerned that you don’t overtax yourself after your strenuous ordeal.”
Mollified, Whitlow continued in his unpleasantly high-pitched and mincing voice, “I am, among other things, a pacifist. I am visiting the alternate worlds in search of one that has learned how to do away with the horrid scourge of war, in order to bring back the precious knowledge to my erring co-timers. I see in yours no uniforms, no headlines detailing carnage, no posters blaring propaganda, nor any of the subtler indications that war is just over or will soon break out. I assume, therefore, that you have been able to eliminate this dreadful business of killing—”
During this speech a stifled inward churning had been apparent in Saturnly. Now he exploded, “Just who do you think you are, anyway? Coming here and insulting me—John Saturnly—this way! Why, you dirty Red—”
He chewed air furiously. A new message glowed on the panel: “You big ape! This guy’s got something. If we offend him, we may not get it.”
To Whitlow, Neddar said, “Mr. Saturnly misunderstood you. He is a businessman and has a very keen sense of the dignity and worth of his work. He thought you were referring specifically to business, whereas, of course, you were only using the words in a figurative sense.”
At the same time he made furtive motions indicating that Saturnly, though well intentioned, was rather slow of understanding.
Whitlow inquired, “Just what is the nature of Mr. Saturnly’s business?”
A grumble of explosions shook the night.
“Blasting operations,” said Neddar. “I don’t mean his business—that comprises a variety of enterprises and has many ramifications. It happens, moreover, to be very closely concerned with that matter on which you are desirous of obtaining information.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” said Whitlow. “I appreciate the attention you’ve shown in bringing me here. But I could just as well follow my usual procedure of drifting around and taking things in gradually.”
“A needless waste of your time, which I am sure must be valuable. In Mr. Saturnly you have found the fountainhead. It is his enterprises that have eliminated from this world the terrible and chaotic socio-political upheavals of war.”
The explosions continued. There came the vindictive drone of high-speed aircraft. Eagerness and doubt fought in Whitlow’s face.
“The night freight,” said Neddar. “We are a very industrious people—very businesslike in all matters. And that leads me to another consideration. Mr. Saturnly and I are in a position to provide you with information which you greatly desire. You, on the other hand, possess a very fascinating power—that of passing between time streams.”
“Follow my lead,” glowed on the panel, but it was unnecessary. Saturnly understood things like this without thinking.
He said, “Yes, how about a little deal, Mr. Whitlow? We tell you how to prevent… uh… war. You tell us how to cross time.”
Whitlow rolled the idea on his tongue, as if it were a new but not necessarily unpleasant kind of cough syrup. “An interesting proposal. I could, of course, ultimately obtain the same information independently—”
“But not so adequately,” said Neddar quickly, his eyes flashing. “And not soon enough. I take it that there is some particular war which you desire to stop or prevent.” A tiny green light began to blink on Saturnly’s desk. Neddar thumbed a square marked “No.” It continued to blink. He thumbed the square once more, then resumed. “So speed must be your paramount consideration, Mr. Whitlow.”
“Yes… ah… perhaps. And if I decide to impart my power to you, I would require assurances that it be used only for the most high-minded purposes.”
“Absolutely,” said Saturnly, bringing down his palm as if it were a seal and his desk the document.
A door flicked open and a blonde young lady catapulted in. She squealed, “I know you’re in conference, J.S., but this is a crisis!”
Saturnly made frantic gestures of warning. Neddar, after one appraising glance, wasted no time in such maneuvers.
She struck the pose of one announcing catastrophe. “There’s been a strike of front-line operatives!” she managed to wail—then Neddar was rushing her out. The slamming door punctuated her woeful: “And just when you’d come down to supervise the big push, J.S.!”
“A lovely girl, Mr. Whitlow, but hysterical,” said Saturnly. “She talks… what’s that word?.. figuratively.”
His blandness was lost on Whitlow. “Just what is the nature of your business, Mr. Saturnly?” The voice had acquired an inquisitorial edge.
Saturnly groped for a reply, looking around for Neddar as a dripping man looks for a towel.
“Of course,” Whitlow continued, a puzzled note creeping in, “I assumed that there was no war here, because of the absence of war atmosphere, to which I am very sensitive. But—”
“You took the words out of my mouth,” said Saturnly, clutching at the straw. “No war atmosphere—no war. You proved it yourself.”
But another door flicked open, and it is doubtful if even Neddar could have stemmed the agitated tide of the small crowd that poured through it.
Of individuals of major importance—the rest wore badges—there seemed to be three. The first was tall and had been, at some prior date, dapper and competent.
He said, “I’m through, J.S. I can’t do anything with them. They’ve gotten beyond reason.” He threw himself down in a chair.
The second was short and bristling. He said, “Just let me turn the artillery on them, J.S., and I’ll blast them out of their sit-down!”
“You and who else?” inquired the third, who was of medium height, lumpy, and wearing a dirty raincoat. “Just try that, and you’ll see the biggest sympathetic walkout you ever tried to toss tear gas at.”
They disregarded Saturnly’s herculean efforts to shush them as completely as they did the presence of Whitlow.
“J.S., their demands are impossible!” the second man barked over the babbling.
The third man planted himself in front of Saturnly’s desk. He stated, “Twenty cents more an hour and time-and-a-half in the mud, with pay retroactive to day before yesterday’s rainstorm.”
“It isn’t mud!” the second man rebutted fiercely. “It isn’t sufficiently gelatinous. I’ve had it analyzed.”
Two studious-looking men in the background bobbed their heads in affirmation.
The third man dug his hand in his raincoat pocket, stepped forward, and slapped down a black, gooey handful in the middle of Saturnly’s desk.
“No mud, eh?” he said, watching it ooze. “What do you say, Saturnly?”
The first man shuddered and cringed in his chair.
With a sweep of his bearlike arm, Saturnly sent the mud splattering off his desk as he came around it.
“You dirty gutter stooge!” he roared. “So two dollars an hour isn’t good enough for your good-for-nothing front-liners?” He waved his muddied fist.
The third man stood his groun
d. He said, “And there are complaints about the absence of adequate safety engineering.”
“Safety engineering!” Saturnly blew up. “Why, when I was a front-line operative—and I knew the business, I can tell you, because I worked up to it from a low-down factory job—we kicked out any safety engineers that had the nerve to come sniffing around our trenches!”
“Care to join the union at this late date?” asked the third man imperturbably.
Neddar’s return coincided with the outburst of fresh pandemonium. He gave one apprehensive look. Three skipping strides carried him to Whitlow and put his bearded mouth two inches from the pacifist’s ear.
“We did deceive you,” he said rapidly, “but it was only to avoid giving you an even more false impression. Let me clear out this rabble. Don’t come to a decision until we’ve talked to you.”
Without waiting for a reply, he darted to Saturnly and drew him toward the door, pulling the rest of the crowd after him like planets after a sun.
Fifteen minutes later Neddar was still trying to pry Saturnly away. The second and third man had departed with their satellites, but Saturnly was hanging onto the first man and giving him certain instructions that caused him to lose his defeated look and finally hurry off excitedly.
Neddar redoubled his tugging. Saturnly did not at once yield to it. He turned his head. His broad face wore a beamy, glazed smile. “Wait a minute, Neddy,” he said. “I see it all now. Of course, when you first brought the guy in and tipped me off about time streams, I got the idea they were something we should go for. But you know how it is with me—I can only think when there’s no opportunity to. It was only when those boobs came in and started to yammer at me that I really began to see the possibilities.”
“Yes, yes,” said Neddar. “And while you gloat, he slips through our fingers. Come on.”
But in his exultation Saturnly was imperturbable. “Just think, Neddy, worlds like ours—maybe dozens of them—and we got a monopoly on the trade. A real open-door policy—nobody but us can open it. We got a surplus—we know where to unload it. There’s a scarcity—we know where we can get some. We got critical materials by the tail. We set up secret branch offices—Oh, Neddy!”
Only then did he allow himself to be led off.
They passed through three rooms. All had the stripped look of Saturnly’s office, yet there was still not enough space for the new installations and occupants. A battery of nimble-fingered girls tended transmitters of some sort. Others typed and lightwrote. Wall maps glowed vital information. Table maps had chess played on them by delicate logistic machines. Rakish young men in windbreakers lounged against the walls. Occasionally one of them would snatch up a packet and dart out into the night.
Various individuals, badgeless and badged, assailed and importuned Saturnly.
“Sign this, J.S.!”
“Those front-liners won’t let us bring up reinforcements, J.S. They’re picketing the communication trenches!”
“J.S., the aircrafters’ brotherhood has offered to take disciplinary measures against the front-liners. Can I give them the go ahead?”
But Neddar did not look to either side, and Saturnly’s tranced, Buddha-like smile said nothing.
Only when they came to the blonde secretary’s desk, beside the door with the motto over it, did Neddar pause grudgingly.
“If there are any important calls, you might as well let them come through,” he said bitterly. “There’s no longer any use in trying to keep our visitor in the dark.”
She favored him with a poisonous smile.
“We’re all set, then?” he asked Saturnly. “We admit everything and try to sell him on it?”
“We sell him,” Saturnly echoed positively.
Neddar hesitated. “There’s only one thing worries me,” he said darkly. “Your unfortunate tendency to tell the truth in crises.”
“Ha—a liar like me!” Saturnly laughed, but a shadow of uneasiness flickered across his face.
Mr. Whitlow had obviously used the fifteen minutes for thinking. Lingering puzzlement and cold anger were the apparent results. The latter predominated.
“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” he said, “but there’s no longer any possibility of an understanding between us. Your world is a war world like all the rest, except that it masks it in a peculiarly repellent fashion.”
“That ain’t war,” said Saturnly gaily. His exuberance in situations like this perpetually amazed Neddar. “Sit down, Mr. Whitlow. That’s just Coldefinc conducting its legitimate business enterprises.”
“Coldefinc?”
“Sure. Columbian Defense, Inc.”
“Don’t think to deceive me by any such ridiculous rigmarole,” said Whitlow venomously. “It’s obvious that, whatever you call yourself, you’ve seized supreme political power in your country.”
“Mr. Whitlow, you make me angry,” said Saturnly genially. “I’m sorry, but you do. I’m a respectable businessman.”
“But you conduct wars. Only governments can maintain an army and navy.”
“That’s right,” said Saturnly genially. “Come to think of it, they did maintain an army and navy—until we bought ‘em up.”
“But it’s impossible!” Whitlow was beginning to argue. “In all worlds I have visited, it is the governments and the governments alone that conduct wars.”
“You amaze me,” Neddar interjected. “Government is the older form of social organization, business the newer. According to all natural expectations, the newer form should gradually absorb all or most of the activities of the older form.”
“Primitive,” Saturnly confirmed.
“But don’t you have any government at all?” Whitlow demanded.
“Sure,” said Saturnly. “Only it doesn’t do anything except make things legal.”
“An empty sham!” said Whitlow. “How, without armed forces, can government enforce the laws it makes?”
“By prestige alone,” Neddar answered. “There was a time when religion clubbed people into becoming converts. When the center of social organization shifted elsewhere, religion had to change its methods—rather to its advantage, I believe.
“Moreover,” he added gravely, “I thought you were an enemy of the exercise of force by government, as in war.”
Whitlow sat back. For a moment he had nothing to say.
“Government incorporates us, we do the rest,” Saturnly concluded. “The point is, Mr. Whitlow, as I’ve been trying to tell you, that Coldefinc is a legitimate business enterprise, working hard every minute to satisfy its customers, to make money for its stockholders, and to pay its ungrateful employees a lot higher wage than they deserve.”
“Customers?” Whitlow mumbled. “Stock—?”
“Sure, customers. We sell ‘em defense. That’s how we got started. Government was slipping. Crime was on the up. There were lots of disorders. There had just been a big, inconclusive war and everybody was dissatisfied. They didn’t want any army or navy, but they did want protection. O.K., we sold it to ‘em.”
“Now I understand!” Whitlow interjected, a whiplash quality to his voice, his eyes burning. “We had it in our world. You’re just the same thing, grown to monstrous proportions. Racketeers!”
“Mr. Whitlow!” Saturnly was on his feet. Neddar lightwrote, “Watch yourself!” but Saturnly didn’t even see it. “You will make me mad. Every step of the way Coldefinc has conformed to law. Should I read you the Supreme Court decision that because it’s any man’s right to carry arms, it’s all right for him to hire somebody to do it for him? Why, we’re so clean we haven’t done any strikebreaking—at least for outsiders. How can anything be a racket if it’s completely legal?”
Neddar lightwrote, “Excuse me. I thought you were going to say something else. That was perfect.”
Saturnly sat down. “To continue where I left off at. We sold ‘em defense. First, private individuals and other businesses, especially those with racketeers—we had ‘em here too, Mr. Whitlow—on their nec
ks. Then small communities that were tired of police departments that did nothing but graft. We advertised—dignified. We expanded—and so we could sell our product cheaper. Then came a war scare.”
To give him a breather, Neddar chipped in with, “Meanwhile, similar developments were taking place in all fields of social activity. Forrelinc—Foreign Relations, Inc.—absorbed all but the purely formal activities of the diplomatic service. Social-service companies vied as to which could sell its customers the cheapest and happiest ways of life.”
“Then came a war scare,” Saturnly resumed determinedly. “People howled for our product. Our stocks boomed. We increased our plant—for years we’d been hiring away the best army and navy officers; now we bought the entire personnel and equipment from the government dirt cheap and used what we could of it. We started a monster sales campaign—this time to include neighboring countries. We—”
Whitlow nervously waved for time to ask a question. His face was a study in confusions and uncertainties.
“Do I understand you right,” he faltered incredulously. “You’ve really organized war—”
“Defense.”
“—on a business basis? You sell it like any other product? You issue stock that fluctuates in value according to the failure or success of your activities?”
“Correct, Mr. Whitlow. That’s why you didn’t see any war headlines. It’s all on the financial page.”
“And you don’t draft soldiers—”
“Operatives.”
“—but hire them just like any other business?”
“Absolutely. Though a front-liner usually has to work his way up through other jobs. First in a munitions factory, so he learns all about our weapons. Next, transport and distribution, so he gets that end of it. Then maybe he gets a chance at a front-line job and the big money.”
“You mean to say you pay your front-line soldiers—”
“Operatives.”
“—more than anyone else?”
“Naturally.”