A Century of Progress

by Fred Saberhagen

  It wasn’t so much the shaking hands that had forced him to stop, though that was bad enough. It felt as if his mind were shaking too, in danger of giving up on the effort to keep track of swiftly altering reality. Reality was what could kill you, and he feared that if he went on driving he ran a risk of careening head-on into a truck, like that big square-nosed whatever-it-was approaching now. A sanely fearful part of Norlund’s mind knew that he had no seat belt, and wasn’t even sure that the big flat windshield in front of him was safety glass. But the demonstrated mushiness of reality had evoked another component of his mind, and with it he felt no more apprehension about crashing into the truck than if he had been watching a movie or playing some damn video game.

  Jesus. Jesus Christ. He didn’t know if he was praying or swearing, but he did know that he had to rest for just a minute. He clenched his eyes shut against his knuckles. He had to think.

  I think you’ll fit right in when you get there. With just a minimum of preparation before you go.

  Sounds foreign to me.

  To me it would be.

  But to him, to Alan Norlund, it wasn’t foreign at all. He clung to the thought that he had lived in this strange country as a child, that he was—or ought to be—acquainted with its natives. This fact of his origin was, he supposed, one of those important qualifications that Ginny Butler had been so sure he had.

  The truck naturally had no air conditioner, and it was growing hot inside. Norlund moved mechanically to crank down both side windows. After that he felt a little better, a little more in control. He looked around.

  Everything around him was still nineteen thirty-three. And, somewhat to his own surprise, he found himself already beginning to cope with and accept that fact. The sudden fancy came to him that the half-century he had lived through following this year had been one vast dream . . . but judging from the appearance of his hands, still locked on the steering wheel, it was a dream that had aged him pretty severely.

  Norlund drew a deep breath. He was still a long way from calm, but ready to drive again. This time he didn’t even fumble for the non-existent seatbelt. Did he need to consult his map? No, not yet, he decided. It had been fixed quite firmly in his memory.

  Half a mile or so ahead of where he had pulled over, he could see some buildings clustered among trees. It looked like, and probably was, the tail end of some suburban residential street. He was heading east, toward the city, and the countryside would soon come to an end.

  Norlund got the truck going again, proceeding with what seemed to him more or less normal care. Here was another gas station. But he had almost a full tank.

  He had been warned that one of the first things he must do upon arrival was to check the date, make sure that he’d reached the target day or was at least within the window extending a few days on either side. A newspaper was the recommended way. He was coming in among the houses now. Here the streets were decorated with someone’s collection of old cars, many of the specimens not very well kept up. The houses were a little strange also—that one, good God, had an outhouse behind it. There were no television antennas to be seen. Paint tended to be peeling and fading. Still, not counting the outhouse and the old cars, Norlund might have accepted this scene as current if he had run into it in nineteen eighty-four.

  At the first stop sign he came to, he turned left onto a larger street, not forgetting to hand-signal for the turn. Now, a couple of blocks ahead, there appeared a block of stores, a modest business district; Norlund saw it first framed through a gothic cathedral arch of elm trees, and somewhere in one of the trees a mourning dove was moaning a soft lament.

  At the block of stores the street was wider, painted into diagonal parking spaces along each curb. Norlund pulled into an empty space—there were a lot to choose from, and no parking meters. Slowly he disengaged his fingers from the wheel—his hands were cramped from the way he had been gripping it. He turned off the ignition.

  No one in nineteen thirty-three appeared to be taking any notice of his arrival.

  On the side of the street that he was facing from his driver’s seat, two of the stores were empty, and their for rent signs appeared to have been up for a considerable time. The next thing that caught Norlund’s eye was the small movie theater halfway down the block from where he’d parked. The theater was open this summer afternoon, and there were black letters on the white marquee:

  SHE DONE HIM WRONG

  MAE WEST

  Turning to the other side of the street, Norlund spotted a small newspaper and magazine stand opposite the theater—and, sure enough, next to the newsstand was a barber’s painted pole.

  He got out of the truck, setting foot in territory that, he kept telling himself, ought to be basically familiar to him. He crossed the street and entered the barber shop, interrupting a conversation between two old cronies. One of them, in a white coat—Norlund kept trying to see the elderly man as Dr. Harbin—came to help Norlund off with his jacket.

  “Yessir. What’ll it be?”

  “Trim it all the way around.”

  He heard talk about baseball. The Cubs were in second place. He saw brass spittoons, and lazy flies. The calendar on the wall, as it should, said July of nineteen thirty-three. He checked the time on the majestically ticking wall clock, and reminded himself to reset his wristwatch later.

  He also looked over the list of prices posted on the wall. And presently, trimmed, brushed, and redolent of bay rum, he gave the barber a quarter and told him to keep the change.

  From the barber shop Norlund stepped next door to the newsstand and picked up a paper off a pile, meanwhile handing another quarter to the old man tending the stand. The old fingers trembled back his change, two silver dimes, two pennies. Norlund, struck by a sudden thought, delayed, staring impolitely at those fingers and their owner. He couldn’t help himself. The man he was looking at had perhaps been born in eighteen sixty. As a child he might well have seen

  Lincoln, and his father had as likely as not fought in the Civil War . . .

  Norlund got hold of himself, and made himself walk away, giving his attention to the paper he had just purchased. Yes, right on the money, Saturday, July 22, nineteen thirty-three.

  WORLD FLYER ON HOMEWARD LAP

  Wiley Post Hops off for Edmonton

  STAGE SET FOR ROOSEVELT SON

  TO WED TODAY

  He’d read more of it later. He returned to his truck and got into the rear seat, taking off his coat and loosening his tie. It was time to get some of the electronics up and running on battery power. With the equipment running, he calibrated it according to instructions, and took some preliminary readings. Curiosity about what he was really doing began to nag him. The readings he took were recorded somewhere, he was sure, perhaps also transmitted somewhere. They hadn’t told him anything about that, or even explained to him exactly what it was that the machinery was supposed to be recording. Well, as long as he got paid . . .

  The preliminary session completed, Norlund turned the electronics off and went back to the driver’s seat. There he got out his map and spread it on his knees. The areas where he was to install recording units were not marked on this map, or anywhere but in his newly strengthened memory. But having the map in front of him helped Norlund to visualize the pattern that those areas made. They formed two lines, with ten units in each, each line several miles long and not quite straight. The fines converged upon a point of intersection on the Lake Michigan shoreline, right next to downtown Chicago. Ginny Butler in her teaching had never mentioned the existence of any such convergence point. Nor was it marked on the map. But it obviously had to be right on the peninsula called Northerly Island, that had been built out into the lake by landfill as a site for the Century of Progress—the site shown in the photographic blowup that Ginny had on the wall of her conference room fifty years in the future.

  It was a job, and the thing to do was get on with it and finish it. Looking up and down the quiet elm-arched street, Norlund could see no ro
aring black sedans, no men staggering with the burden of wounded comrades. Well, most of war was always dull. If Ginny hadn’t issued him a gun she must have figured that he wasn’t likely to need one. He was an important man—at least until he finished his job for her.

  His next step was to pick out someone suitable and hire him as temporary helper. The choice could not be very long delayed. Fanning himself with his hat, Norlund again looked up and down the street, but saw no one at the moment who looked like a likely prospect. But after all this was nineteen thirty-three. He didn’t think for a moment that he’d have a hard time finding someone to take a job.

  Jerry Rosen, trudging eastward through the weeds lining the highway slab, thought he could feel at least two blisters starting to develop, one on his right foot, one on his left. He was heading back for the big city, slowly making his way home. With every step, another drop of sweat trickled down from under his cap. What a day for hiking. Still, he kept trying not to think about the heat and the blisters. It was Jerry’s firm conviction that if your willpower was great enough you could do anything. Well, almost anything. Maybe anything at all except find a job. Each time he heard another eastbound car approaching, overtaking him from behind, Jerry paused, smiled and turned, sticking out his thumb. So far he was striking out every time. Each car’s passage hit him with a blast of hot air, momentarily cooling, as he faced east again and prepared to trudge some more. If no one gave him a ride, eventually he would walk all the way to the western edge of Chicago, where the streetcar lines started, and there he would spend seven cents and be able to ride most of the rest of the way home. Maybe he’d spend a whole dime and get a transfer. Hell, he knew he would, if he had to walk that far.

  What a goddamned waste of a day, not to mention the carfare coming and going. Not that Jerry really had anything better to do with his days than waste them, and it had got him out of the house, at least. Maybe Judy and her mother could sit there in the heat listening to the baby crying, and the radio, all the goddam day when they weren’t doing housework, but he couldn’t. And then in the evening when Judy’s dad came home from the factory . . .

  Jerry could and did feel guilty about wanting to get out and away from his own wife and kid, sometimes telling them he’d been looking for work when he’d just been going through the motions, or just sitting somewhere doing nothing. But what else could a guy do? And today he really had been looking. He’d packed a sandwich, and had eaten it for lunch in an opportunely discovered suburban park, washing it down with water from a drinking fountain there. He could tell old man Monahan that he’d really tried hard today, and look him right in the eye when he said it. And old Mike would believe him; he nearly always did. He pretty well had to. Everyone knew that there were no jobs.

  If Jerry couldn’t really believe in the possibility of finding work any more, after a year and a half of trying, well, he couldn’t really stop believing in it either. Some guys, like Judy’s dad, were working. If one out of four workers were unemployed, like they said, well, that meant that there were still jobs for three of four. And once in a while one of those jobs just had to open up.

  Even this morning Jerry had felt real hope when a friend had suggested to him that chances in the suburbs might be a little better than in the city. His friend had been able to get a couple of days’ work landscaping, that kind of thing, at a cemetery out in Westchester. It was certainly worth a try, Jerry had thought this morning, and even worth the investment of a couple of dimes in carfare. Even if things in the suburbs really weren’t any better they sure as hell couldn’t be any worse, and at least they ought to be somehow different.

  Another car was approaching him from behind, this one not coming very fast. No, judging from the sound of it, a small truck. Jerry turned, with automatically extended thumb and created smile. Clipping along toward him was a black panel truck, what looked to Jerry like about a ‘27 Dodge. The truck started to slow down. The sign painted on the side was poorly contrasting and hard to read, but Jerry made out RADIO SURVEY CORPORATION.

  Gratefully he grabbed at the sun-hot doorhandle as soon as the truck stopped. He yanked the door open and climbed aboard. The truck pulled back onto the narrow highway, a cooling breeze generated through its open windows as soon as it got moving.

  “Thanks,” said Jerry.

  The gray-haired driver nodded. He was compactly built and sort of intense-looking, one of those lively little old geezer types. The coat of his gray suit was draped over the back of his seat, and his tie was loosened as you’d expect on a day like this. Obviously a businessman of some kind; he was too well dressed to be simply making deliveries.

  “Welcome,” the driver replied, not wasting words. And that was all the old guy had to say for a little while, though he kept shooting glances over at Jerry every few seconds as he drove. Jerry soon got the feeling that he was being sized up with a more than casual interest, for what purpose he couldn’t tell.

  “How far you going?” the driver asked him at last.

  “All the way into the city. If you’re going that far.” And meanwhile Jerry’s attention had been captured by all the equipment that was racked in the body of the truck. “Radio survey, huh? I bet your tubes jar loose a lot.”

  “Not so often as you might think. We use special locking sockets in a rig like this. Know anything about radio?”

  “Not much. Hell, really nothing, I guess. My wife’s folks have one. I’d like to have one myself.”

  “What d’you do for a living? My name’s Alan Norlund, by the way.”

  “Jerry Rosen.” They shook hands, Norlund sparing one hand from the wheel for a quick grip. Jerry went on. “What do I do—I look for work. Today I been out around here, looking at golf courses, cemeteries, any place I could think of that might have work. Until my feet started giving out. A guy told me there might be jobs out this way, but . . . it’s the same as in the city. Not even any cooler. Farther from the lake, I guess.”

  Jerry leaned back in the high truck seat and closed his eyes.

  “You live with your wife’s folks, do you? I guess it saves a little bit financially if you can do that.”

  Jerry opened his eyes. He watched the alien suburban treetops pass between him and the sky, making the sun blink. “It don’t help. There’s just nothing else we can do. And now we got a kid. And . . . I dunno. My wife’s family’s Irish.” He glanced toward Norlund. “Not that I got anything against the Irish. Or anyone else. It’s just . . .”

  “And you’re Jewish? Rosen, you said?”

  “My family is.” Jerry’s tone added: If it’s any of your business. “I don’t work at being anything.”

  The old man drove on for a little while in silence. He appeared to be thinking. Then he asked: “Got a driver’s license?”

  Jerry looked over at him, blinking. “Yeah. I used to drive a delivery truck sometimes. Why?”

  “Want a job?”

  Jerry’s eyes popped wide open, even before, it seemed to him, his brain had had time to fully understand the words. In a moment he had completely forgotten his sweaty hike, his blistered feet. During the couple of seconds before he could answer, the old man glanced his way again, continuing the process of sizing him up.

  “You’re not kiddin’, are you mister?”

  “Hell no, I wouldn’t kid about a thing like a job. It starts right now. Thing is, my regular partner’s not available. I got to tell you it would be just temporary, for no more than a day or two.”

  “Hell yes, I’ll take a job. What do I have to do?” Even as Jerry spoke an idea struck him, and he glanced back at the racks of radio equipment. Something about the way the setup looked suggested fake to him. Maybe just because there was so damn much of the radio stuff. He lowered his voice slightly. “I already done a little bootlegging in my time. It wouldn’t bother me at all.”

  “No.” The old man calmly shook his head. “Nothing like that. This is completely legit, just like it says on the side of the truck. We’re taking a survey. Me
asuring how strong the broadcast signal is from certain radio stations, at different points on the map. That helps the companies judge how many people are listening to ‘em, that kind of thing. I’ll pay you a dollar an hour.”

  For a few seconds Jerry’s breathing was reverently suspended. Then: “What do I have to do?” he repeated.

  “I’ll show you. It’s not that hard. We’re mounting little gadgets, call ‘em radio markers, in certain places. Little units I got in a bin back there. You’ll climb up a wall or tree or something and attach ‘em, while I take readings on this equipment in the back of the truck, and tell you exactly where they have to go. I suppose you can use a hammer and a screwdriver?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “That’s about all it takes. I got all the tools and fasteners we’ll need. Our first installation ought to be about a mile up this road.” The old man briefly concentrated on his driving, meanwhile humming under his breath some tune that Jerry didn’t recognize.

  Then he looked across at Jerry again, more sharply this time. “Oh, and one more thing. I expect you to keep quiet about what we’re doing. I mean, you can tell your family you got a job. But don’t tell anyone any details, not even your wife. There’s a lot of competition, you know. Other companies would give a lot to know about signal strength and so on. I mean the methods of how we measure it.”

  “Jeez, yeah, I will. I can keep quiet about anything.”

  “Good. Why don’t you just reach back there and we’ll see what we can get on the radio now? See that first brown knob? Then the second one over is the tuner.”

  Jerry twiddled knobs. A speaker right over his head came to life. First he got some dame singing, with piano music in the background. It was right at the end of the song, and now some man’s voice came on telling everyone how healthy their skins would be if they used this soap. Jerry estimated Norlund’s expression, and turned the dial for another station. This one had two women’s voices, engaged in a fake-sounding argument with stagy pauses, over whether someone’s long-lost daughter was ever going to come home.