The Future Is Ours

by Hoch Edward D.

  “Some of them. I can make calculations. If I can control some of the fractional events I can bring man and book, or man and automobile, together.”

  She looked so serious that I laughed a little. “With that sort of power, you can control destiny.”

  She didn’t laugh. “Yes, I suppose I could….”

  The conversation ended there. Going back to work, I pushed the incident to the back of my mind. We had to line up some strong sellers—five million copy sellers—for the big Christmas trade, and I was busy fighting with publishers for rights.

  * * * *

  It was one afternoon around four that Rosemary and Mason had their last big fight. It was over a policy matter concerning exactly what type of books we should concentrate on; and Mason, for once, wouldn’t listen to Rosemary.

  “I’m still in charge here,” he told her sharply. “You haven’t got my job yet. And if I have anything to do with it, you won’t get it either; I’ll keep it if I have to live to be a hundred.”

  Rosemary’s bony face looked frostbitten. She said nothing in return; she simply retreated to her tiny office. I thought that the whole thing had blown over until, a few days later, I happened to walk in and found her gazing out the window, making careful notes on a memo pad. When I asked her what she was doing, she was too absorbed to reply. But I had seen enough to know, anyway.

  Rosemary was timing the traffic light on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-Seventh Street and ticking off the number of cars that passed.

  In the days that followed, I caught her looking out the window several times, writing figures, timing automobiles as they rounded the corner. And she began watching Mason closely, too. He was the kind of punctual man you could set your watch by; he always walked down the two flights of stairs, rather than wait for the elevator.

  Rosemary began staying late at the office, until after Mason left. Then she would run to the window and time him as he left the building and crossed Forty-Seventh Street on his way to Grand Central Terminal.

  I told myself it was all sheer nonsense, but still….

  It was on a Friday night, just before five, that she stepped from her office, stood in the hall and called to Mason as he was leaving. He frowned and walked over to her, glancing at his watch; she started discussing some quite irrelevant matter about a wholesaler out in California.

  I glanced at the big wall clock as they talked, and I was aware that Rosemary was watching it, too. Finally when they’d been talking for exactly fifty-five seconds, she suddenly cut the conversation short and retreated to her office, closing the door. Hastily Mason went down the stairs to the street.

  I went to my own window and looked out. Slowly but surely an odd feeling crept over me. I wanted to shout out to Mason, to warn him—but I remained numb. What would I be trying to save him from?

  I watched him come out of the building and start across the street.

  He was halfway across when a taxi rushed around the corner and struck him head on….

  Well, shortly after Mason’s funeral, word came from the big boss that Rosemary was now vice president of Neptune Books. We were all happy for her, of course, but it wasn’t long after that that I left Neptune and went back to my old job on a true crime magazine.

  Oh, I know the whole thing is fantastic and that Mason’s death was just a coincidence, but still I felt a chill about staying around here, near Rosemary.

  Suppose I’d fallen hard for her and asked her to marry me. And she accepted. I’d spend the rest of my life wondering when she was going to stop me and talk to me for exactly fifty-five seconds!

  ABOUT “VERSUS”

  Will there still be corruption and racketeering when humankind has settled across the stars? Some things never change. This story has echoes of the tough-guy crime pulps and an interplanetary setting.

  First Publication—Fantastic Universe, June 1957.

  VERSUS

  Mr. Albert Zadig, president of the Interplanetary Betterment Association, finished reading the morning Telenews and pressed a button on his wide, gleaming desk.

  “I’m ready for the mail, Miss Ordo.”

  “Very well, Mr. Zadig… Ah, Mr. Heney is out here, waiting to see you.”

  “Send him in.”

  What could Heney want at nine o’clock in the morning? Al Zadig lit a cigarette and glanced through some papers on his desk. Presently the door was opened by Miss Ordo, closely followed by Heney.

  “Boss, I gotta see you right away.”

  Al Zadig looked up from the papers. “What’s up, Heney?”

  Miss Ordo deposited a small stack of letters on the desk and then withdrew.

  “Boss,” Heney was saying, “something awful’s happened.”

  “What?”

  “The Space Patrol knocked off three of our ships last night.”

  Al Zadig’s hand clenched into a fist. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. It must have been planned in advance. They moved in on all three ships exactly at midnight Rox time. They arrested seventy of our men. They got Morgo and Franco, too.”

  “Damn!” Al Zadig picked up the telephone. “Get me the General of Police at Rox.”

  He watched the screen before him until presently a familiar face appeared. “General, this is Al Zadig of the I.B.A.”

  “Oh yes, Mr. Zadig.”

  “What the hell’s the idea of raiding three of my ships last night?”

  “Mr. Zadig, your ships were carrying on illegal gambling activities. You have been warned before about these matters.”

  “What the hell are you trying to pull anyway?”

  “Mr. Zadig, I would advise you to seek another planet for your…business.”

  Al Zadig flipped off the switch and dropped the phone into its cradle.

  Heney was worried. “What does it mean, boss?”

  “I don’t know, Heney. I’ve been paying the General five percent for the last two years, and now he double-crosses me!”

  “What do we do now, boss?”

  “Get out of here and let me think.”

  He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. Three ships gone. Seventy men.

  But it wasn’t the ships or men that worried him. It was the fact that the General of Police was apparently no longer on his payroll.

  He opened his eyes and glanced at the stack of mail. Reports from agents on three planets, plans for a new space ship that could hold a thousand people and had a complete night club on board, in addition to three rooms for gambling…. A letter from a girl he’d known years before, back home. She wanted a job for her husband.… And then there were the usual threatening letters, from people who’d lost money on his ships, or who’d won money and then been robbed on the way back to their planet.… A letter from a politician who wanted his support.…

  And another letter, in a plain envelope, from a man named Mr. Snow. “I will visit you at ten o’clock on the morning you read this,” was all it said. Another letter from some nut! Al Zadig tossed it back on the desk.

  He walked over and watched the two teletype machines by the window.

  The odds on today’s races were coming in. He tore off a sheet of the figures and walked back to the telephone.

  “Miss Ordo, get me the space track.”

  Presently, the screen showed him a view of the space track office, where the finest rocket racers in the universe were gathered for the early meet. But there was no one to answer the call. The room was empty.

  “Where in hell is Vengo? Where.…?”

  Suddenly the teletype machines stopped their clatter and were silent. He ran over to them. They had stopped in the middle of listing the daily odds.

  He shook them and kicked them, but it did no good. He went back to the tele-screen and found it bla
nk.

  “Miss Ordo! Miss Ordo!”

  “Yes, Mr. Zadig.”

  “Where is everyone? Get me Cazan at Rox.”

  “Yes, Mr. Zadig.”

  Cazan’s wide face appeared on the screen.

  “Cazan, this is Zadig. What in hell’s the matter? There’s no one at the space track, and the teletypes have stopped.”

  “I was just going to call you, boss. The Space Patrol’s closing down everything. They knocked off the whole setup this morning.”

  “They can’t do that! Don’t they know they can’t do that? I’ve been paying the politicians and the police for years. What’s the matter with them all of a sudden?”

  “I don’t know, boss. It started last night.”

  Al Zadig flipped off the switch and sat in silence.

  He cursed the General of Police and all the rest of them.

  Presently one of the blue lights on his desk panel began to flash.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Zadig, there’s a man here to see you. He says his name is Mr. Snow.”

  Snow?

  “Snow?”

  Snow! The name on the letter! He glanced at the clock. It was two minutes to ten.

  “Send him in, Miss Ordo.”

  The door opened slowly, and a middle-aged man with white hair came in. He looked like money to Al Zadig. He looked like a banker or a lawyer.

  “You Mr. Snow?”

  “That is correct, Mr. Zadig.”

  “I got your note. What do you want?”

  “I felt obliged to call upon you this morning to explain things.”

  Al Zadig was getting impatient.

  “Who in hell are you, anyway?”

  “My name is Snow. I own various enterprises on the planet Mars and also on the planet Earth.”

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “On our way back to the planet Mars in the space taxi, we were attacked by another ship. They took the money, and…during the attack my wife was killed.…”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “You should be, Mr. Zadig, you should be.”

  Al Zadig glanced about the big desk, hoping for an interruption from one of the colored lights. But none came. Finally, he pulled open a drawer and took out a pile of bills.

  “Here. Here’s ten thousand Rox-dollars. That should take care of everything.”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t though, Mr. Zadig.”

  “Well, how much—”

  “I already have what I want, Mr. Zadig.…”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  Mr. Snow gestured toward the silent teletype machines. “Your empire has crumbled, Mr. Zadig. By nightfall all of your gambling ships will be in the hands of the Space Patrol. Your racing activities are already finished and your friends are being arrested at this very moment.”

  “You’re crazy!” Al Zadig stabbed wildly at the buttons on his desk. “You’re crazy!” But no answer came to his rings.…

  “Mr. Zadig, you have built an empire throughout the universe by being against people. You have been against law and justice and the common man. You have been against the rich and the poor, the Martian and the Earthman and the Roxman. And you rose to power because there are enough people in this universe who have a price—who value their own security above the common good. You bought everyone you needed for the success of your activities—the General of Police, the public officials of Rox and the neighboring planets, everyone who might interfere with you.”

  “That’s right,” Al Zadig shouted, “and you can’t destroy the work of years in a single day.”

  Mr. Snow smiled. “Oh, but I can. Because you see, I am for the people. I am for everything you are against. In my own way, I suppose I have built an empire comparable to yours. Only mine is an empire of good, of schools and hospitals and churches.”

  “What?”

  “I am, perhaps, the richest man in the universe, and after my wife’s death I had only one goal to devote my work toward.… I have devoted my life to your destruction.…”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “No, I am quite sane. It took a long time to discover your identity, and even longer to study your organization. It took me a year to do it, but now you’re finished.”

  “What did you do? What did you do to the General and the rest? Why have they turned against me?” Mr. Snow smiled, and his thoughts seemed to be far away. Far away… Somewhere where a woman waited…

  “I simply paid them more money than you did.…”

  “More money.…”

  And Al Zadig’s hand dropped and came up holding a machine-pistol.

  Mr. Snow turned and started for the door. “Good-bye, Mr. Zadig.…”

  “Wait a minute, Snow. I’ve got something for you.…” And Al Zadig aimed the machine-pistol at the man’s back.

  Mr. Snow paused at the door and turned for a second.

  “No, Mr. Zadig. I do hate to disappoint you, but I also paid Miss Ordo to remove the cartridges from your weapon.…”

  And then he was gone.

  Al Zadig watched the door slide shut and he felt the machine-pistol slip from his fingers and walked over to the silent machines and stood for a long time gazing sightlessly at them.…

  ABOUT “THE FUTURE IS OURS”

  In 1969, editor Hans Stefan Santesson compiled a collection of science fiction crime stories called Crime Prevention in the 30th Century. When he asked his friend Edward Hoch to contribute, Santesson received two stories. To avoid the appearance of duplication, this story was written under Ed’s frequently used penname “Stephen Dentinger.”It’s a story of time travel in which investigators try to learn what advancements in police work the future has to offer. What they discover is something else.

  First Publication—Crime Prevention in the 30th Century, ed. Hans Stefan Santesson; Walker, 1969.

  THE FUTURE IS OURS

  Stafford greeted Captain Felix at the door of Westcox Laboratories, holding out his hand in a gesture of greeting. “I’m glad you agreed to come, Captain. I believe you’ve made a wise choice.”

  Felix grunted and took the hand. “It was the only choice I could make, under the circumstances. Now suppose you show me this time machine of yours.”

  Stafford winced at the term. “I call it my Chronological Manipulator, or Chroma for short. Time machines belong to science fiction.”

  Captain Felix was a practical man. He could stand only so much scientific jargon. “But the fact remains that it is a time machine, is it not? I understand that it can transport me three hundred years in the future to study techniques of crime prevention and law enforcement.”

  “Chroma can do that, yes—by a method of manipulating the chronology of events and…”

  “Cut the talk and let’s get at it.”

  Stafford sighed and led the way into a vast room the size of an airplane hangar. In the exact center stood a machine of chrome and plastic, pointed toward the ceiling. Felix snorted. “This is it? Looks like a truck standing on end.”

  “It will do the job, I can assure you of that. In recent tests conducted secretly, some of our foremost scientists have journeyed as much as 75 years into the future and returned quite safely. It’s true they picked rural or isolated areas for their visits. You will be the first to journey ahead in time to New York City in the year 2259!”

  “Will I be able to use my findings? With crime on the increase in every community, it’s imperative that I bring back information and techniques for fighting it.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” Stafford said. He was busy at the dials and gauges. “One more successful trip and I’ll be ready to announce my invention to the world.”

  When the preparations were complete, Captain Felix st
epped into the tiny cabinet of the machine, keeping a firm grip on his camera and notebook and tape recorder. He had been chosen by lot at a police chiefs’ convention to make the trip, but the grim fact was that they had not even come to see him off. They did not believe in the time machine, or Chronological Manipulator, of Dr. Stafford. Perhaps he did not believe in it himself. But anything was worth trying, with the soaring crime rate and the seeming helplessness of the police.

  He stood inside of the Chroma and tensed his muscles as the machine came alive around him. There was a great rushing of air against his face, and then a warmth that flooded over his body.

  Some time passed. It might have been a minute or a year. Or incredibly longer.

  He stepped out of the machine and found himself on a street in midtown Manhattan. He thought he could see the Empire State Building in the distance, even though it had been dwarfed now by other, taller structures. The people he passed on the street glanced at his suit a bit oddly, but otherwise they took no notice of the camera and tape recorder he carried. The first thing he noticed was that they all dressed alike—men and women—in a sort of tunic garment that covered a tight-fitting suit of some kind. Above them, a form of rapid transit swished by in clear plastic tubes, carrying endless carloads of travelers.

  Yes, he thought, this is the year 2259. Stafford’s crazy machine really worked!

  He had walked some blocks along Fifth Avenue without finding the police officer he sought when suddenly three men burst forth from a plastic-walled bank on the corner ahead. There could be no doubt—they were robbers! One carried several bags while another waved a long, wand-like sort of weapon.

  Captain Felix felt his muscles tense, wondering what would happen next. But nothing did.

  The passersby continued on their way, barely seeming to notice the fleeing bandits. No police came running up to take them in custody.

  Finally, as the first two men scrambled into a waiting car of tubular steel, Felix dropped his equipment and tackled the last man. They went down together in the street as the others sped off. Felix clung to the man’s arms, yelling for more help. “I’ve got him!” he shouted at a group of passing businessmen. “Get his feet!”