A Century of Progress

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Here it is,” said Holborn absently, recovering some papers. He put them into a briefcase, which he left atop his desk, as if to have it in readiness to pick up when he left the office. Then he sat down behind the desk, motioning Norlund to another comfortable chair.

  “By the way, Alan, something has just occurred to me. A possible difficulty. I know some people who are rather high up in one network and another. If you claim to be consulting for them, they’re going to think something funny’s going on.”

  “Ah, I see your point.” Norlund thought it over, meanwhile gazing out the window. “How’s this? The work I do for the networks is mostly confidential, so much so that not even all the higher-ups of the companies themselves know of it. And those who do know might not admit the fact if they were sounded out. So it would be hard for your friends, for anyone, to check up on me.”

  “Good idea. I think that’ll provide all the explanation that we could possibly really need. We’ll keep it in reserve. Cigar?”

  “Thanks, don’t mind if I do.” It was a long time since Norlund had had a really good cigar, and these looked and smelled like prime Havana.

  He was just lighting up when he heard the office door behind him opening. There had been no warning of any kind. Norlund turned . . .

  Lovely, was his first thought, as he put down the cigar and automatically got to his feet. He judged that the young lady was somewhere in her late twenties. She wore a red dress that accentuated her slim height; her hair was brown, tinged with auburn, and cut in an upcurling Greta Garbo bob.

  Her blue-green eyes flicked once at Norlund, as she stood in the doorway, one hand still holding the knob she had just turned. She seemed to dismiss him as of no importance, and went on to Holborn.

  Her voice was surprisingly husky. “Jeff, the damn fools over there just won’t listen to me.”

  “What damn fools this time? Oh, I know who you mean. Dear, this is Alan Norlund. We were in France together. Alan, my daughter Holly.”

  “How do you do?” said Norlund.

  His tentatively outstretched hand was pressed firmly, then dropped. He was again ignored. Holly was not smoking, but somehow her nervous gestures conveyed to Norlund the impression that she held a cigarette. She was wearing what appeared to be a diamond wedding ring. She was also perhaps a couple of years older than Norlund had first estimated.

  “Yes,” she was saying, “Damn fools.” Then she really looked at the visitor for the first time. “Hello, Mr. Norlund. Sorry to barge in on your meeting. Some of my father’s stuffy old friends, that’s who I’m talking about.”

  “Associates,” Jeff corrected her soothingly. “Not particularly friends. Important businessmen of the—”

  “Yes, well. Damn fools whatever else they are.” Holly focused on Norlund now, as if he were some kind of an appeals judge. “I’ve been trying to convince them that a port for seaplanes in downtown Manhattan would be a beautiful project on which to use some of this government make-work money when it starts to flow. But the idiots won’t hear of it.”

  “Holly is an aviatrix,” Jeff explained. “Sorry dear, I know you hate that word. You’re a pilot.”

  “I see.”

  Holborn showed amusement. “Holly, I don’t think it’s been demonstrated that there’s going to be any government money thrown around. Not for projects like that, anyway. Even if it would be fun for you to have a seaplane and be able to park it right downtown.”

  “I don’t have a seaplane, I’m not planning to get one. But why not a project like that? It would put people to work. It would stimulate aviation, which means more jobs. More business orders. You and your friends can swear at Roosevelt all you like, but he’s going to do things. He’s got the country behind him, and Congress will have to . . .”

  Something about Norlund was evidently distracting Holly, and she let the subject of the seaplane port drop for the time being. “You know, I rarely get to meet any of Dad’s old comrades-in-arms. Are you free for dinner tonight, Mr. Norlund?”

  “For several dinners, I’m afraid.” He reseated himself on the edge of Holborn’s desk, and relighted his cigar. Jeff had continued puffing on his.

  Holborn interrupted, with explanations. “Alan’s going to be staying with us for a while. I’ve invited him. He can move into the spare room.”

  “Oh, how nice.” It seemed that Holly might mean it. “For how long, Mr. Norlund?”

  “Call me Alan, please. Oh, that depends.”

  Jeff was on his feet now, picking up the briefcase into which he had put the papers from the desk. “Griffith is taking Alan’s bag over—are we ready to go?” This was addressed to Norlund.

  “Yes,” said Norlund. Then he hesitated. “I’m a trifle short on clothes, actually. How formal are we going to be, at dinner and so on?”

  “Generally not at all. But of course I can take you round to some shops if you like. Ah . . .”

  Norlund read the delicate hesitation. “Oh, I’m solvent enough, it’s just that I’m not all that familiar with New York. Exactly where do you live, by the way?”

  “Overlooking Central Park,” said Holly, smiling at him. “Most people are impressed.”

  “I’m sure I will be, too. Well then, no rush about visiting shops. I expect we can skip all that for now.”

  Holly continued to study him, and whatever she saw evidently intrigued her. “Mr. Norlund, do you fly?”

  “Call me Alan, please. I’ve been up, but I’m no pilot. Why, do I look like one?”

  “Yes. I’m not sure what a pilot ought to look like, but I think you do. But then, I’m quite good, and people tell me I don’t look the part. Anyway I admire you for flying; a lot of older people won’t consider trying anything new. Well, don’t look at me that way, Jeff. You’ve never been sensitive about age yourself, and I’m sure Alan already knows that he’s older than a lot of people—chronologically, that is.”

  “Thank you,” said Norlund, half-abstractedly. Then a moment later he had to make a conscious effort to recall just what he was thanking the young lady for.

  Sitting on the edge of Holborn’s desk, he had just seen something that distracted him from conversation. Being used as a paperweight on the desk was a small, nearly cylindrical object, made of what looked like dark ceramic, with slightly tapered ends and mounting flanges. It looked exactly like the devices that he and Jerry had worked for two days installing in Chicago.

  TO A YEAR UNKNOWN

  Jerry Rosen, on the morning that he agreed to work for Schiller, was given time for a shower, shave, and breakfast. Then he left Ginny Butler’s apartment in company with Andy Burns and other people. They went down in the elevator to the underground garage, and crossed its parking area to a different corner, where a small, unmarked van awaited them. Jerry and Andy got into the almost windowless rear of the van, along with a nameless young man who saw to it that the two of them were blindfolded as soon as the doors were closed. There followed a ride of what Jerry privately estimated as one to two miles, all in city traffic. Then the van pulled inside another building and stopped. Jerry could hear the large garage doors opening for them, and closing again behind them after they’d pulled in.

  Next he and Andy, still blindfolded, were helped to grope their way out of the van and into some other vehicle. Another van, or else some kind of a truck, Jerry couldn’t tell for sure.

  Their new transportation started up, and drove out when the doors opened again. Or maybe these were different doors. Because as soon as they were left behind, the sound and the feel of the unseen world around Jerry changed abruptly.

  This time the ride lasted for no more than a city block. Whatever carrier they were riding in stopped, and he and Andy, both of them with eyes still covered, were helped out of it. Jerry could feel that he was now standing on a comfortably soft surface, but he didn’t know if he was indoors or out. The silence around him was inappropriate for the middle of a big city. A hand rested lightly on his arm, and a voice murmured something common
place by way of reassurance as he listened to the truck that had brought him drive away.

  The hand fell free. “You can take off the blindfolds now,” said the young man who was their guide, speaking in a normal voice. Jerry was startled to see that this was a new guide, with an oriental face.

  The world as revealed by sight was now gray and timeless-looking. Underfoot, slightly yielding dark gray, like a smooth seamless carpet. An overcast sky above. Between ground and sky ran high gray walls like dark concrete, forming a smooth concave curve a hundred feet ahead of Jerry. The curve of those walls if carried on would have defined a circle perhaps half a mile in diameter. Directly ahead of Jerry as he faced the wall it was marked with a pattern of thin lines, like the sketch of a tall gate. He wondered if the van or truck had gone out that way.

  “This way, gentlemen, please.” Andy was still at his side, but their guide had moved behind them. Jerry turned to confront more curved gray walls. These were closer and convex, and given a more human scale by an almost ordinary door that now stood open at ground level. Jerry realized that the three of them were standing in a kind of courtyard, adjoining a large building. The shape of the building, perhaps two stories high, blurred almost indistinguishably into that of the higher wall surrounding; from where Jerry was standing, he could only guess at the full extent of either.

  He looked up again, at the gray sky overhead. Or was it a natural sky at all?

  “This way, please.”

  With Andy he walked forward, over the courtyard’s gray carpet—or was it pavement?—toward the open door.

  “Where are we?” Jerry asked the question urgently, but it wasn’t answered.

  Andy didn’t appear to be all that much impressed by his surroundings. “Ah been here before, when they was givin’ me mah new arm,” he told Jerry. Then Andy looked around. “Or was it here? It was a lot like this.”

  The inside of the building, white-walled and plain—at least in the first few rooms they entered—seemed a much more normal environment. In part, Jerry realized, this was because when they entered, normal background noise re-established itself: the sounds of a large building with people in it.

  Other people came to meet them, conduct them, talk about how they were going to be checked in. Everyone here except their oriental guide—who had now disappeared—wore some variation of gray garments, almost a uniform. Most people looked distinctly informal, nothing was tightly buttoned up. Along with the gray appeared brighter colors, but whether worn as insignia or simply decorations Jerry couldn’t tell.

  Getting the two newcomers checked in appeared to consist, for the time being at least, of issuing them their own uniforms of decorated gray, and leading them to the rooms in which they were going to live for some unspecified period of time.

  Jerry, hauling an armload of new clothes that he had been assured would fit him perfectly along a commonplace corridor, tried again: “What is this place?”

  A colored man with a dazzling smile and a wrestler’s build reassured him. “This place is a school—among other things. I’m sure you were told that you’d get some training. You’ll get the best that we can give you, until you’re ready to do your job.”

  “My job? What’s my job?”

  “You’ve agreed to do one, I’m sure. Else you wouldn’t be here. If they haven’t told you what it is yet, you’ll have to talk to someone else about it.”

  It was suggested that they change into some of their new clothes, and hang up the rest in their closets. Things like laundry were explained. Andy and Jerry had been assigned adjoining rooms on the long corridor that no longer looked quite commonplace. It was gently curved, making it impossible to see how long it really was.

  The two of them were left more or less alone. Andy Burns, leaning in the doorway of his newly assigned room, had pulled his own shirt off already. Across his thinly muscled right shoulder and the upper part of his right arm ran a line defined by two slightly but definitely different skin tones. Andy was frowning at this area, pinching and rubbing at the skin just below the line, like someone worried about sunburn. And now something that he had said earlier fully registered with Jerry for the first time:—when they was givin’ me mah new arm—

  When he saw Jerry looking at him, Andy said: “Mah new arm. Lost mah own in the war. Don’t know if Ah told you about that yet.”

  Jerry watched the fingers of the right arm flex. The whole arm looked good, natural. Yet when Jerry looked at it very closely he could see that there was a mismatch with the left arm. A slight one. He had to believe that Andy was perfectly serious, that the arm had been somehow grown or grafted on.

  “You know,” said Jerry with a sigh, “I think we aren’t even in nineteen eighty-four any longer.”

  “Ah think you’re right. Not that Ah know which year this is. Sometimes they just won’t say.”

  “Jeez,” said Jerry. He stood in the hallway, forgetting about putting his new clothes away. People going by looked at him in passing. Some of them smiled lightly, in a friendly way. All went on about their business. And here came, yes, it had to be, a robot, a metal shape rolling on swift wheels, threading its way among human traffic. No one gave it a second glance.

  After a while Jerry asked, “I wonder if, by now maybe, someone has got to the Moon?”

  Their first class, in what was called Weaponry, was scheduled not many hours after their arrival. Jerry was impressed with how well things were organized here. People evidently got to where they were supposed to be, and did what they were supposed to do, but nobody kept hounding you all the time. There was none of the continual nagging by authorities which was the thing he remembered best from the few schools he had attended. Maybe, he thought, this is the way a real college is always run. Jeez, me in college. You had to call it a college, didn’t you, if adults were here as students?

  The first class, at least, wasn’t conducted in a schoolroom, but at an indoor firing range. The instructor turned out to be a woman, and at first it struck Jerry as odd and humorous that she was going to teach the three of them—Andy was there too, and a third student, also a woman—how to shoot guns. But Jerry was not dumb enough to comment on the instructor’s sex, or to let his amusement show. From what he’d seen of what these people could do, he was willing to let them conduct classes in any way they wanted. Besides, here was Andy who had been in the army and had fired a good many guns, and he took this dame very seriously. Besides again, the weapons she had on display didn’t look like any firearms either of the men would have seen before.

  The first one up for consideration, what the teacher called a creaser, looked to Jerry more like a skeletal model of a flashlight, or the rings and spine left over from one of those snap-shut notebooks. There were variations of the creaser with pistol grips, and others that you just pointed, like magic wands or something. Again, having read some science fiction was a help in taking these things seriously.

  The instructor told them that the operation of the real guns, out in the field, would be almost soundless. The models used here on the range for training were harmless and emitted little signal beeps when triggered.

  “Point-blank range is always best, but this particular weapon can be used effectively up to one hundred meters—that’s a little over a hundred yards.”

  “What does it do?”

  “All you need to know, basically, is that the creaser here has an effect on the human mind, which usually results in a reversal of loyalties. It’s not a long-term effect, and it’s not very dependable either. But it could make you turn around and shoot your buddy, instead of the enemy.”

  “Who’s the enemy, anyway?” This was Jerry.

  The instructor faced him squarely. “Hitler. I think you’ve been told that much. You’ll get the rest in History. Hitler, and the people who are fighting for him, whether they realize they’re fighting for him or not. Imagine a world where Hitler is brought into the future, instead of being killed in nineteen forty-five or earlier. Brought forward in time, establis
hed in power, with everything that the people of the future know about maintaining power used to maintain him? Think about it.” And with scarcely a change of tone she turned back to the weapon under discussion. “A second creaser jolt will often reverse the effects of the first one, so you can try that if your partner starts after you some day. But a second jolt may well take the recipient out of action completely, perhaps fatally. A third jolt within a matter of an hour will almost certainly finish anyone off.”

  There were a couple of other weapons to be discussed today, and there was range-firing with several. Tomorrow would be Armed and Unarmed Tactics, and History. Next the three students were to be allowed a break, and were then to report to another room for Discipline. Jerry didn’t like the sound of that one especially. He wondered if they were going to be sent outdoors to march.

  On their way out of what passed for a coffee shop, Andy and Jerry rejoined the young woman who was their fellow student for the day. Her name was Agnes Michel, and she spoke English with a more pronounced accent, and a different one, than most of the people here had. In today’s Weapons class Agnes had impressed Jerry as being one tough gal, maybe almost as tough as the instructor herself.

  Now, as Jerry wondered how to go about opening some kind of a conversation, Agnes took the initiative. “This is the Legion of the Lost, guys. Nobody who’s sent to this place ever gets home again—did you know that?”

  Andy took it calmly. “Ah knew it ‘bout mahself,” he said. But he looked across at Jerry with concern.

  “I’m going home,” said Jerry, walking toward Discipline.

  “You think so,” said Agnes, keeping pace in her gray slacks. Agnes was small. She looked mousy, when she wasn’t looking tough, which was most of the time. Not bad-looking, with qualifications.

  “They told me I am.”

  Agnes didn’t seem to find that worth any direct comment. “This army is your home from now on. At least until you retire.”