Now Wait for Last Year (22 page)

'Wait,' he instructed the cab. 'Do you have a glass of water?'

'Certainly.' From the slot facing Eric a paper cup of water slid forward, teetered on the lip of the slot, and then halted.

Seated in the cab Eric swallowed the capsule of JJ-180 which he had brought with him. Purloined from Kathy's stock.

Several minutes passed.

'Why aren't you getting out, sir?' the cab inquired. 'Have I done something wrong?'

Eric waited. When he felt the drug begin to reach him he paid the cab, got out and walked slowly up the redwood-round path toward the Office of Hazeltine Corporation.

The building flashed as if caught by a whip of lightning. And, overhead, the blue sky twisted laterally. He saw, gazing up, the clear blue of day dawdle as if attempting to remain and then collapse; he shut his eyes because the dizziness was too great, the reference point of outside objects had become too tenuous, and he walked, step by step, feeling his way ahead, bent down, for some reason motivated to continue in motion, however slow.

It hurt. This, unlike the initial exposure, was a major readjustment of the reality structure impinging on him. His steps made no sound, he noticed; he had strayed onto the lawn, but he still kept his eyes shut. Hallucination, he thought, of another world. Is Hazeltine right? By a paradox perhaps I can answer that within the hallucination itself... if that is what it is. He did not think so; Hazeltine was wrong.

When a heather branch brushed his arm he let his eyes open. One of his feet had penetrated the soft black soil of a flower bed; he rested on a half-crushed tuberous begonia. Past the heather hedge the gray side of Hazeltine Corporation rose, exactly as before, and above it the sky was a washed-out blue with irregular clouds sweeping toward the north, the same sky, as nearly as he could tell. What had changed? He returned to the redwood-round path. Shall I go in? he asked himself. He looked back toward the street. The cab had gone. Detroit, the buildings and ramps of the city, seemed somehow elaborate. But he did not know this area.

When he reached the porch the door flew open automatically for him and he looked in on a neat office, with relaxing, leather-covered chairs, magazines, a deep-pile carpet whose design changed continuously... he saw, , through an open doorway, a business area: accounting machines and a computer of some ordinary kind, and at the same time he heard the buzz of activity beyond that, from the labs themselves.

As he started to sit down, a four-armed reeg walked into the office, its blue, chitinous face inexpressive, its embryonic wings pressed tightly to its sloping, bullet-shiny back. It whistled a greeting to him – he had not heard that about them – and passed on out through the doorway. Another reeg, manipulating its extensive network of double-jointed arms vigorously, made its appearance, traveled up to Eric Sweet-scent, halted, and produced a small square box.

Scudding across the side of the box, words in English took shape and departed; he woke to the fact that he had to pay attention to them. The reeg was communicating with him.

WELCOME TO HAZELTINE CORPORATION

He read the words but did not know what to do with them. This was a receptionist; he saw that the reeg was a female. How did he reply? The reeg waited, buzzing; its structure was so convoluted that it seemed unable to remain entirely still; its multilensed eyes shrank and grew as they were partially absorbed back into the skull, then pushed out like flattened corks. If he hadn't known better he would have said it was blind. And then he realized that these were its false eyes; the genuine ones, compound, were at its top-arm elbows.

He said, 'May I speak to one of your chemists?' And he thought, So we did lose the war. To these things. And now Terra is occupied. And its industries are run by these. But, he thought, human beings still exist, because this reeg was not dumbfounded to see me; it has accepted my presence as natural. So we can't be mere slaves, either.

REGARDING WHAT MATTER?

Hesitating, he said, 'A drug. Produced here in the past. Called either Frohedadrine or JJ-180; both names refer to the same product.'

JUST A MOMENT PLEASE

The female reeg scuttled through the inner doorway to the business office, then disappeared entirely. He stood waiting, thinking to himself that if this was an hallucination it certainly was not a voluntary one.

A larger reeg, a male, appeared; its joints seemed stiff and Eric realized that it was old. They had a short life span, measured in terms of months, not years. This one had almost come to the end of his.

Utilizing the translating box, the elderly male reeg said:

WHAT IS YOUR INQUIRY ABOUT JJ-180? PLEASE BE BRIEF

Eric bent, picked up a magazine that lay on a table nearby. It was not in English; the cover bore a picture of two reegs and the writing consisted of the crabbed, pictorial reegian script. Startled, he stared at it. The magazine was Life. Somehow it shocked him more than the actual sight of the enemy itself.

The elderly reeg rattled with impatience.

Eric said, 'I want to purchase an antidote to the addictive drug JJ-180. In order to break my addiction.'

YOU DID NOT NEED ME FOR THAT; THE RECEPTIONIST COULD HAVE TAKEN CARE OF YOU

Turning, the elderly reeg scrabbled haltingly off, eager to return to his work. Eric was left alone.

The receptionist returned with a small brown paper bag; she held it out to him, not with a jointed arm but with a mandible. Eric accepted it, opened it and looked inside. A bottle of pills. This was it; there was nothing more to be done.

THAT WILL BE FOUR THIRTY-FIVE SIR

The receptionist watched as he got his wallet; he took a five-dollar bill from it and passed it to her.

I AM SORRY SIR; THIS IS OUTDATED WARTIME CURRENCY NO LONGER IN USE

'You can't take it?' he said.

WE HAVE A RULE FORBIDDING US TO

'I see,' he said numbly, and wondered what to do. He could gulp down the contents of the bottle before she could stop him. But then he would probably be arrested, and the rest could be visualized in an instant; once their police had examined his identification they would know that he came from the past. And they would be aware that he might carry back information affecting the outcome – which had obviously been favorable for them – of the war. And they couldn't afford that. They would have to murder him. Even if the two races now lived in concert.

'My watch,' he said. He unfastened it from his wrist, passed it to the female reeg. 'Seventeen jewel, seventy-year battery.' On inspiration he added, 'An antique, perfectly preserved. From prewar days.'

JUST A MOMENT SIR

Accepting the watch, the receptionist made her way on her long yielding legs to the business office, conferred with someone invisible to Eric; he waited, making no attempt to devour the pills – he felt trapped in a membrane of crushing density, unable to act or escape from action, caught in a halfway land between.

From the business office something emerged. He looked up.

It was a human. A man, young, with close-cropped hair, wearing a work smock that was stained and rumpled. 'What's the trouble, buddy?' the man asked. Behind him the reeg receptionist followed, her points clacking.

Eric said, 'Sorry to bother you. Could you and I talk in private?'

The man shrugged. 'Sure.' He led Eric from the room and into what appeared to be a storage chamber; shutting the door, the man turned to him placidly and said. That watch is worth three hundred dollars; she doesn't know what to do with it – she's only got a 600-type brain; you know how the D-class is.' He lit a cigarette, offered the pack – Camels – to Eric.

'I'm a time traveler,' Eric said as he took a cigarette.

'Sure you are.' The man laughed. He extended his match to Eric.

'Don't you know the action of JJ-180? It was made right here.'

After a thoughtful pause the man said, 'But not for years. Because of its addictive qualities and its toxicity. In fact there hasn't been any since the war.'

'They won the war?'

'"They"? Who's that?'

'The reegs,' Eric said.

'The reegs,' the man said, 'is us. Not they. They was Lilistar. If you're a time traveler you ought to know that even better than I.'

'The Pact of Peace—'

'There was no "Pact of Peace." Listen, buddy, I minored in world history in college; I was going to teach. I know all about the last war; it was my specialty. Gino Molinari – he was UN Secretary then, just before hostilities broke out – signed the Era of Common Understanding Protocols with the reegs and then the reegs and the 'Starmen started fighting and Molinari brought us in, on the reeg side, because of the protocols, and we won.' He smiled. 'And this stuff you say you're hooked on, it was a weapon that Hazeltine Corp. developed in 2055, during the war, for use against Lilistar, and it didn't work out because the Freneksytes were advanced even over us in pharmacology and quickly worked out an antidote – which antidote you're attempting to buy. God, they had to be to develop it; we got the snunk into their drinking water; that was the Mole's idea himself.' He explained, 'That was Molinari's nickname.'

'All right,' Eric said. 'Let's just leave it at this. I want to buy the antidote. I want to trade that watch. Is it satisfactory?' He still held the brown paper bag; reaching into it, he lifted out the bottle. 'Get me some water and let me take it and then let me get out of here; I don't know how long it'll be before I go back to my own time. Is there any objection to that?' He had difficulty controlling his voice; it tried to rise and escape. And he was shaking, but he did not know with what. Anger, possibly fear – more likely bewilderment. At this point he did not even know if he were bewildered.

'Calm down.' Cigarette jutting from his lips, the man walked off, evidently in search of water. 'Can you take them with a Coke

'Yes,' Eric said.

The man returned with a half-empty bottle of Coca-Cola and watched as Eric struggled to get the pills down one after another.

At the door the female reeg receptionist appeared.

IS HE ALL RIGHT?

'Yes,' the man said, as Eric managed to wash down the last pill.

WILL YOU TAKE CHARGE OF THE WATCH

Accepting it from her, the man said, 'Of course it's company property; that goes without saying.' He started out of the storeroom.

'Was there ever a UN Secretary near the end of the war named Donald Festenburg?' Eric said.

'No,' the man said.

HE SHOULD RECEIVE SOME CASH SETTLEMENT FOR THE WATCH IN ADDITION TO THE MEDICATION

The flashing box, declaring its message, was extended by the female reeg toward the man; he halted, frowning, then shrugged. 'One hundred in cash,' he said to Eric. Take it or leave it; it's all the same to me.'

'I'll take it,' Eric said, and followed him to the business office. As the man counted out the money – in odd, unfamiliar bills which Eric had never seen the like of – he thought of another question. 'How did Gino Molinari end his term in office?'

The man glanced up. 'Assassinated.'

'Shot?'

'Yes, by old-fashioned lead slugs. A fanatic got him. Because of his lenient immigration policy, his letting the reegs settle here on Terra. There was a racist faction, scared about polluting the blood ... as if reegs and humans could interbreed.' He laughed.

This, then, Eric thought, may be the world from which Molinari got that bullet-riddled corpse which Festenburg showed me. The dead Gino Molinari lying mangled and blood-spattered in his helium-filled casket.

From behind him a dry, matter-of-fact voice said, 'Are you not going to make the attempt, Dr Sweetscent, to take the antidote for JJ-180 back to your wife?'

It was an organism without eyes entirely, and he thought, seeing it, of fruit he had come onto as a child, overripe pears lying in the weedy grass, covered by a crawling layer of yellow jackets attracted by the sweet odor of rot. The creature was vaguely spherical. It had fitted itself into a harness, however, which had squeezed its soft body tortuously; no doubt it needed this in order to get around in the Terran environment. But he wondered why it was worth it to the thing.

'Is he really a time traveler?' the man at the cash register asked, jerking his head at Eric.

The spherical organism, wedged within its plastic harness, said by means of its mechanical audio system, 'Yes, Mr Taubman, he is.' It floated toward Eric, then halted, a foot above the ground, making an indistinct sucking noise, as if pulling fluids through its artificial tubes.

'This guy,' Taubman said to Eric, indicating the spherical organism, 'is from Betelgeuse. His name is Willy K. He's one of our best chemists.' He shut the register. 'He's a telepath; they all are. They get a kick out of prying into our minds and the reegs' but they're harmless. We like them.' He walked over to Willy K, bent toward him, and said, 'Listen, if he's a time traveler – I mean, we can't let him just walk out of here; isn't he dangerous or worth something? Shouldn't we at least call in the city police? I thought he was nuts or kidding me.'

Willy K floated a little closer to Eric, then withdrew. There is no way we can keep him here, Mr Taubman. When the drug wears off he will go back to his own period. However, I would like to interrogate him to a certain extent while he's here.' To Eric he said, 'Unless you object, sir.'

'I don't know,' Eric said, rubbing his forehead. It had been too much of the unexpected, hearing Willy K ask about Kathy; it had disorientated him entirely and all he wanted to do now was to leave – he had no curiosity, no interest in the situation.

'I sympathize with your situation,' Willy K said. 'In any case to question you formally is sham; I am getting everything I want from you as it is. What I had hoped to do was answer, if I could, some of your questions by the way I phrased mine. Your wife, for example. You have great conflicting emotions about her, fear for the most part, then hatred, and also a good deal of undistorted love.'