by Fritz Leiber
“Oh no! You weren’t thinking of going back—of leaving the fighting?” Mrs. Johns-Hayes demanded.
The Colonel shifted his wad of tobacco and looked at the woman carefully as though he couldn’t quite believe the evidence of his eyes. “No, ma’am, I don’t reckon I am. I don’t exactly look on it the same as the other boys do. I kind of feel like if we’re ever going to have a country, it’s worth fighting for.”
Mrs. Johns-Hayes beamed, as did all the other officers of the Daughters. “Well, your faith and heroism have been rewarded, great-great-great-great-grandfather. I know you’ll be proud to know that these ladies whom you see before you are the present guardians of the ideals that you fought for.”
“Well, now, is that so, ma’am? Is that so?” Peter Johns looked around the convention hall in amazement.
“And that I, your descendant, have just been elected their President!”
“Well, what do you know about that! Maybe all the hard times and the danger we been going through is worth it if you folks still remember the way we felt about things.”
“It’s too bad,” Decker whispered to MacCulloch, “that we can’t let him see what the country is really like. I’m not sure these ladies are representative.”
There was a worried look on the Professor’s face. “That’s impossible. The reintegration is good for only an hour or so. I hope nothing goes wrong here.”
Mrs. Appleby-Simpkin took charge of the Colonel and ushered him to a seat of honor near the podium while the new President prepared to deliver her speech. Decker and the professor managed to obtain seats on either side of Johns just as Rebecca started. He managed to whisper to them, “I’m sure amazed! I’m sure amazed! All these nice old ladies feeling the same way about things as we do.”
* * * *999
Decker had a premonition of trouble as Mrs. Hayes’ words poured forth. He had hoped for a cut and dried acceptance speech with nothing but the usual patriotic platitudes, but, as she went on his worst fears were realized. Inspired by the presence of her ancestor, the woman was going into superlatives about the purposes and aims of the Patriot Daughters. She covered everything from the glories of her ancestry to the morals of the younger generation and women in politics.
Decker watched the Colonel’s face, saw it changed from puzzlement to painful boredom as word after word floated from the battery of speakers overhead.
MacCulloch was whispering in Johns’ ear in an attempt to draw his attention from the woman’s booming voice but the man disregarded him. “Am I really responsible for that?” The Colonel jerked his head in the direction of Mrs. Johns-Hayes.
“I’m afraid, Colonel, that you’re getting a distorted idea of what America is like in our time,” Decker said. The Colonel didn’t even turn to look at him. He was scowling at his Amazonian descendant as her screeching reached new heights.
“…and we hold that this is true! Our simple motto, as you all know, is: One race, one creed, one way of thinking!”
Colonel Johns began to squirm violently in his seat. The professor found it necessary to grasp him firmly by one arm while Decker held him by the other.
The president of the Patriot Daughters had finished her speech amidst thunderous applause and started to present suggestions for the formation of new committees, for the passing of new by-laws and for resolutions.
“A committee should be formed to see that the public parks are properly policed to prevent so-called ‘spooners’ from pursuing their immoral behaviour.
“A new by-law is needed,” and here Mrs. Hayes glanced aside at Mrs. Tolman, “to prevent members being accepted unless their forebears were lieutenants or of higher rank in the glorious Continental army.”
The Colonel was a strong man and both Decker and MacCulloch were older than he. With something between a snort and a roar he shook them loose and started for the exit.
“Oh my,” MacCulloch moaned, “I was afraid that this whole thing was a mistake.”
Colonel Johns had taken only two steps toward the door when he seemed to stagger. MacCulloch leaped to his side and caught him by the arm. There was an uproar in the auditorium as the Colonel faded slightly and the professor hurried him down the steps toward the Reintegrator.
“I’m afraid the Colonel isn’t going to be with us much longer,” the professor explained.
Thank goodness, Decker thought, I don’t believe the poor man could have stood it much longer.
“I’m afraid the reintegration time of Colonel Johns is running out and he must return to his own time,” the professor went on.
The grim-faced Colonel said nothing as MacCulloch led him up to the machine.
“Goodbye, great-great-great-great-grandfather,” Mrs. Johns-Hayes called from the platform. “It has been so nice having you with us.”
“Goodbye, Rebecca,” the Colonel said as he began to fade away.
“Give my regards to great-great-great-great-grandmother.”
The figure in the dirty, faded blue uniform was gone but Decker and MacCulloch heard him mutter just before he disappeared altogether, “I will, if I ever see her again!”
MacCulloch turned to stare at the platform and Decker turned to follow his gaze. A sudden dizziness overcame them both and there was a slight haze about the auditorium. When it cleared, the podium was empty. Mrs. Johns-Hayes was gone as if she had never been.
“My God!,” the professor gasped. “I was afraid something like this might happen. He must have married the other girl.”
“I suppose,” Decker said quietly, “that we should consider ourselves lucky that he didn’t decide to go back to Pennsylvania.” His voice broke off and he wondered what he had been saying. He looked up at the speakers’ platform trying to remember why he should think it strange that it was draped in Union Jacks and that Lady Appleby-Simpkin should be saying, “And now, my dears, I know that all of you, as Loyal Daughters of the British Empire will be happy to know.…”
PICTURE BRIDE, by William Morrison
Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1955.
My brother, Perry, always was a bit cracked. As a kid, he almost blew up our house doing experiments. When he was eighteen, he wrote poetry, but fortunately that didn’t last long and he went back to science.
Now, when he showed me this picture, I figured he’d had a relapse of some kind. “This is the girl I’m in love with,” he said.
She wasn’t bad. Not bad at all, even if her clothes were crazy. She wasn’t my type—too brainy-looking—although I could see how some guys would go for her. “I thought you liked blondes.”
“I wouldn’t give you two cents for all the blondes in Hollywood,” he answered. “This is the only girl for me.”
“You sound as if you’ve got it bad,” I said. “You going to marry her?”
His face dropped about a mile. “I can’t.”
“You mean she’s married already?” I was surprised. This wasn’t like Perry at all.
He sort of hesitated, as if he was afraid of saying too much. “No, she isn’t married. I asked her about that. But I can’t marry her because—well, I’ve never met her. All I’ve seen of her is this picture and a few more. She doesn’t live here.”
“You mean she’s in Europe?” I’ve heard of these love affairs by mail, and they never made much sense to me. I said to Perry, “Why can’t she come to this country?”
“Oh, there are a lot of things in the way.”
It sounded worse and worse. I said, “Look, Perry, this smells like a racket to me. It’s the kind of thing a couple of shrewd operators cook up to take some hick for a ride. I’m surprised at you falling for it. How do you know there really is a dame like that in Europe? Anybody can send pictures—”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” he said. “I’ve spoken to her.”
“By phone? How do you know who’s on the other end? You hear a dame’s voice you never heard before. What makes you think it’s hers?”
Again he didn’t seem to want to talk, as if he had some secret to hide. But I guess he felt like getting things off his chest, too, or he wouldn’t have opened up in the first place. And he had already told me enough so that if he didn’t tell me more he’d sound like a dope.
So after hesitating even longer than before, he said, “Let’s get this straight, George. This is no racket. I’ve seen and talked to her at the same time. And the things she talked about, no con man would know.”
“You’ve seen and talked to her at the same time? You mean by TV? I don’t believe it. They can’t send TV to Europe.”
“I didn’t say it was TV. And I didn’t say she lived in Europe.”
“That’s exactly what you did say. Or maybe you meant she lived on Mars?”
“No. She’s an American.”
“This makes less and less sense to me. Where did you meet her?”
He turned red, and squirmed all over the place. Finally he said, “Right here in my own laboratory.”
“In your own laboratory! But you said you never met her in the flesh!”
“I didn’t. Not really by TV either. The fact is—she isn’t born yet.”
I backed away from him. When he was a kid and blew up our kitchen, I didn’t like it. When he wrote poetry, I was kind of ashamed and didn’t want my pals to know he was my brother. Now, I was really scared. Everything he had been saying in the last ten minutes began to make sense, but a screwy kind of sense.
He saw how I felt. “Don’t worry, George, I haven’t gone crazy. Her time is 2973, more than a thousand years from now. The only way I’ve seen and talked to her is on a time-contact machine.”
“Come again?”
“A kind of time machine. It can’t send material objects back and forth across time, as far as I know, but it can send certain waves, especially the kind we use to transmit signals. That’s how she and I could talk to each other and see each other.”
“Perry, I think you ought to see a good doctor.”
“It’s a remarkable device,” he said, paying no attention to how I was trying to help him. “She’s the one who first constructed it and contacted me. It’s based on an extension of Einstein’s equations—”
“You think you can explain so much,” I said. “Okay, then, explain this. This dame isn’t going to be born for a thousand years. And yet you tell me you’re in love with her. What’s the difference between you and somebody that’s nuts?” I asked, as if anybody knew the answer.
He certainly didn’t. In fact, he went ahead and proved to me that they were the same thing. Because for the next couple of weeks, the only thing he’d talk about, outside of equations I couldn’t understand, was this dame. How smart she was, and how beautiful she was, and how wonderful she was in every way that a dame can be wonderful, and how she loved him. For a time he had me convinced that she actually existed.
“Compared with you,” I said, “Romeo had a mild case.”
“There are some quantities so great that you can’t measure them,” he said. “That will give you some idea of our love for each other.”
There it went, the old poetry, cropping out in him just like before. And all the time I’d been thinking it was like measles, something that you get once and it builds up your resistance so you don’t get it again, at least not bad. It just goes to show how wrong I could be.
“What preacher are you going to get to marry you?” I asked. “A guy born five hundred years from now?”
“I don’t think that’s funny,” he said.
“You’re telling me. Look, Perry, you’re smart enough to know what I’m thinking—”
“You still think I’m crazy.”
“I got an open mind on the subject. Now, if you won’t see a doctor—then how about letting me take a look at this dame, so I can convince myself?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve considered doing that, and decided against it. Her voice and image come through for only about five minutes a day, sometimes less. And those minutes are very precious to us. We don’t want any one else present, any one at all.”
“Not even to convince me she actually exists?”
“You wouldn’t be convinced anyway,” he said very shrewdly. “No matter what I showed you, you’d still find a reason to call it a fraud.”
He was right at that. It would take a lot of convincing to make me believe that a babe who wasn’t going to get born for a thousand years was in love with him.
By this time, though, I was sure of one thing—there was something screwy going on in that laboratory of his. For five minutes a day he was watching some dame’s picture, listening to her voice. If I had an idea what she was like, I might figure out where to go from there.
I began keeping an eye on Perry, dropping in at the laboratory to pay him visits. There was what looked like a ten-inch TV tube in one corner of his place, not housed in a cabinet, but lying on the table among dozens of other tubes and rheostats and meters and other things I didn’t know about. Along the wall that led from this corner was a lot of stuff which Perry said was high voltage, and warned me not to touch.
I kept away. I wasn’t trying to figure out how to get myself killed. All I wanted to know was when he saw this girl.
Finally I managed to pin the time down to between three and four in the afternoon. For five minutes every day, during that hour, he locked the door and didn’t answer phone calls. I figured that if I dropped in then I might get a glimpse of her.
And that’s what I did.
At first, when I knocked on the door, there was no answer. In a minute, though, I heard Perry’s voice, but he wasn’t talking to me. He was saying, “Darling,” and he sounded kind of sick, which I figured was due to love. Come to think of it, he might have been scared a little. I heard him say, “Don’t be afraid,” and it was quiet for about fifteen seconds.
Then I heard a terrific crash, like lightning striking. The door shook, and I smelled something sharp, and the first thing I wanted to do was get out of that place. But I couldn’t leave my brother in there.
I put my shoulder to the door and had no trouble at all. The explosion, or whatever it was, must have weakened the hinges. As the door crashed in, I looked for Perry.
There was no sign of him. But I could see his shoes, on the floor in front of that TV tube, where he must have been standing. No feet in them, though, just his socks. All the high-voltage stuff was smoking. The TV screen was all lit up, and on it I could see a girl’s face, the same girl whose picture Perry had shown me. She was wearing one of those funny costumes, and she looked scared. It was a clear picture, and I could even see the way she gulped.
Then she broke out into a happy smile and, for about half a second, before the second explosion, I could see Perry on the screen. After that second explosion—even though it wasn’t near as big as the first—that TV set was nothing but a mess of twisted junk, and there was no screen left to see anything on.
Perry liked to have everything just so, and he’d never think of going anyplace without his tie being knotted just right, and his socks matching, and so on. And here he’d traveled a thousand years into the future in bare feet. I felt kind of embarrassed for him.
Anyway, they were engaged, and now they must be married, so I guess she had slippers waiting for him. I’m just sorry I missed the wedding.
SERVICE ELEVATOR, by Sam Merwin, Jr.
Originally published in Amazing Stories, November 1958.
There were times when Jerry Hale wondered how he had ever managed to work himself into such a job—and this was one of those times. Essentially, Jerry was a contact man, a salesman, a promoter, a man who used an office only as a mail-drop and a
place to take an occasional telephone call. So here he was, as he had been for the past two years, chained to a desk in an office of Research Development, Inc. The fact that it was a magnificent blond-mahogany desk in a magnificent blond-mahogany office fitted with every conceivable gadget for modern material comfort, from soundproofed ceiling to built-in bar, didn’t alter the basic harsh truth of incarceration.
“I’m only a prisoner in a blond-mahogany cage, an unbeautiful thing to see…”
He hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but he must have. Rhoda Carlin’s sleek strawberry-blonde head came up from contemplation of the stenographer’s pad on her knee, and her lush, vermillion lips said with only the faintest trace of mockery, “You want me to put that in the letter to Mr. Finkelberg, Jerry?”
“If I told you where I’d like you to put it, the crash of your illusions would shatter the silence of this mausoleum,” he told her.
“You worry about Mr. Finkelberg, and I’ll worry about my illusions—what’s left of them,” was the devastating retort.
As he resumed dictation, Jerry realized with a slight taste of ashes that Rhoda was one reason for his self-incarceration. Rhoda was a looker, all the way down. She was prompt, reliable, level headed and efficient. She was also insolent, overbearing, and possessed of a remarkably even disposition—as far as Jerry had been able to discern in the course of their two-year association, it was always bad.
The only times he had seen her smile were when something went wrong—preferably painfully for him, like the occasion when he had been bushwhacked by the wastebasket and removed a strip of veneer from his desk with the bridge on his nose. That time, he had actually heard through dazed ears, the peal of her silvery laughter.
It had become a game with him to make her laugh again—preferably without agony for himself. But he had thus far failed. His most carefully thought-out efforts to win her approval were received with sublime indifference. He had wanted to date her from the first moment she walked into R-D, Inc.—but how did you go about dating a girl who obviously zoned you somewhere between a square and a moldy fig? There were moments when he almost wished he weren’t in love with Rhoda.