Big Book of Science Fiction (29 page)

Greenbush came over to him,
pointed to Jed’s wristwatch and said, “Give me that, too.”

“I didn’t come for a loan,” Jed
said.

“Don’t be ass. You’ll get all
back.”

Greenbush sat behind his desk,
with the little pile of Jed’s possessions in front of him. He made little
mumbling sounds as he prodded and poked and pried. He seemed very interested in
the money. He listened to the watch tick and said, “Mmm. Spring mechanical.”

“No. It runs on atomic power,”
Jed said bitterly. Greenbush didn’t answer.

From the back of Jed’s wallet,
Greenbush took the picture of Helen. He touched the glossy surface, said, “Two-dimensional.”

After what seemed an interminable
period, Mr. Greenbush leaned back, put the tips of his fingers together and
said, “Amberson, you are fortunate that you contacted me.”

“I can visualize two schools of
thought on that,” Jed said stiffly.

Greenbush smiled. “You see,
Amberson, I am coin collector and also antiquarian. It is possible National
Museum might have material to equip you, but their stuff would be obviously
old. I am reasonable man, and I know there must be explanation for all things.”
He fixed Jed with his sharp bright eyes, leaned slowly forward and said, “How
did you get here?”

“Why, I walked through your front
door.” Jed suddenly frowned. “There was a strange jar when I did so. A
dislocation, a feeling of being violently twisted in here.” He tapped his
temple with a thin finger.

“That’s why I say you are
fortunate. Some other bank might have had you in deviate ward by now where they’d
be needling out slices of your frontal lobes.”

“Is it too much to ask down here
to get a small check cashed?”

“Not too much to ask in nineteen
forty-nine, I’m sure. And I am ready to believe you are product of nineteen
forty-nine. But, my dear Amberson, this is year eighty-three under Grad-zinger
calendar.”

“For a practical joke, Greenbush,
this is pretty ponderous.”

Greenbush shrugged, touched a
button on the desk. The wide draperies slithered slowly back from the huge
window. “Walk over and take look, Amberson. Is that your world?”

Jed stood at the window. His
stomach clamped into a small tight knot which slowly rose up into his throat.
His eyes widened until the lids hurt. He steadied himself with his fingertips
against the glass and took several deep, aching breaths. Then he turned somehow
and walked, with knees that threatened to bend both ways, back to the chair.
The draperies rustled back into position.

“No,” Jed said weakly, “this isn’t
my world.” He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand, finding there a
cold and faintly oily perspiration. “I had two classes this morning. I came
down to look up certain documents. Everything was fine. And then I came in . .
. how . . .”

Greenbush pursed his lips. “How?
Who can say? I’m banker, not temporal tech. Doubtless you’d like to return to
your own environment. I will signal Department of Temporal Technics at Columbia
where you were employed so many years ago…”

“That particular phraseology, Mr.
Greenbush, I find rather disturbing.”

“Sorry.” Greenbush stood up. “Wait
here. My communicator is deranged. I’ll have to use other office.”

“Can’t we go there? To the
University?”

“I wouldn’t advise it. In popular
shows I’ve seen on subject, point of entry is always important. I rather
postulate they’ll assist you back through front door.”

Greenbush was at the office door.
Jed said, “Have—have you people sent humans back and forth in time?”

“No. They send neutrons and
gravitons or something like those. Ten minutes in future or ten minutes in past.
Very intricate. Enormous energy problem. Way over my head.”

While Greenbush was gone, Jed
methodically collected his belongings from the desk and stowed them away in his
pockets. Greenbush bustled in and said, “They’ll be over in half hour with
necessary equipment. They think they can help you.”

Half an hour. Jed said, “As long
as I’m here, I wonder if I could impose? You see, I have attempted to predict
certain long-range trends in monetary procedures. Your currency would be—”

“Of course, my dear fellow! Of
course! Kindred interest, etc. What would you like to know?”

“Can I see some of your currency?”

Greenbush shoved some small
pellets of plastic across the desk. They were made from intricate molds. The
inscription was in a sort of shorthand English. “Those are universal, of
course,” Greenbush said.

Two of them were for twenty-five
cents and the other for fifty cents. Jed was surprised to see so little change
from the money of his own day.

“One hundred cents equals dollar,
just as in your times,” Greenbush said.

“Backed by gold, of course,” Jed
said.

Greenbush gasped and then
laughed. “What ludicrous idea! Any fool with public-school education has
learned enough about transmutation of elements to make five tons of gold in
afternoon, or of platinum or zinc or any other metal or alloy of metal you
desire.”

“Backed by a unit of power? An
erg or something?” Jed asked with false confidence.

“With power unlimited? With all
power anyone wants without charge? You’re not doing any better, Amberson.”

“By a unit share of national
resources maybe?” Jed asked hollowly.

“National is obsolete word. There
are no more nations. And world resources are limitless. We create enough for
our use. There is no depletion.”

“But currency, to have value,
must be backed by something,” Jed protested.

“Obviously!”

“Precious stones?”

“Children play with diamonds as
big as baseballs,” Green-bush said. “Speaking as economist, Amberson, why was
gold used in your day?”

“It was rare, and, where
obtainable, could not be obtained without a certain average fixed expenditure
of man hours. Thus it wasn’t really the metal itself, it was the man hours
involved that was the real basis. Look, now, you’ve got me talking in the past
tense.”

“And quite rightly. Now use your
head, Mr. Amberson. In world where power is free, resources are unlimited and
no metal or jewel is rare, what is one constant, one user of time, one external
fixity on which monetary systems could be based?”

Jed almost forgot his situation
as he labored with the problem. Finally he had an answer, and yet it seemed-so
incredible that he hardly dared express it. He said in a thin voice, “The
creation of a human being is something that probably cannot be shortened or
made easy. Is—is human life itself your basis?”

“Bravo!” Greenbush said. “One
hundred cents in dollar, and five thousand dollars in HUC. That’s brief for
Human Unit of Currency.”

“But that’s slavery! That’s—why,
that’s the height of inhumanity!”

“Don’t sputter, my boy, until you
know facts.”

Jed laughed wildly. “If I’d made
my check out for five thousand they’d have given me a—a person!”

“They’d have given you
certificate entitling you to HUC. Then you could spend that certificate, you
see.”

“But suppose I wanted the actual
person?”

“Then I suppose we could have obtained
one for you from World Reserve Bank. As matter of fact, we have one in our
vault now.” 

“In your vault!”

“Where else would we keep it?
Come along. We have time.”

The vault was refrigerated. The
two armed attendants stood by while Greenbush spun the knob of the inner
chamber, slid out the small box. It was of dull silver, and roughly the size of
a pound box of candy. Greenbush slid back the grooved lid and Jed, shuddering,
looked down through clear ice to the tiny, naked, perfect figure of an adult
male; complete even to the almost invisible wisp of hair on his chest.

“Alive?” Jed asked.

“Naturally. Pretty well
suspended, of course.” Greenbush slid the lid back, replaced the box in the
vault and led the way’ back to the office.

Once again in the warm clasp of
the chair, Jed asked, with a shaking voice, “Could you give me the background
on—this amazing currency?”

“Nothing amazing about it.
Technic advances made all too easily obtainable through lab methods except
living humans. There, due to growth problems and due to—certain amount of
nontechnic co-operation necessary, things could not be made easily. Full-sized
ones were too unwieldy, so lab garcons worked on size till they got them down
to what you see. Of course, they are never brought up to level of
consciousness. They go from birth bottle to suspension chambers and are held
there until adult and then refrigerated and boxed.”

Greenbush broke off suddenly and
said, “Are you ill?”

“No. No, I guess not.”

“Well, when I first went to work
for this bank, HUC was worth twenty thousand dollars. Then lab techs did some
growth acceleration work—age acceleration, more accurate— and that brought
price down and put us into rather severe inflationary period. Cup of java went
up to dollar and it stayed there ever since. So World Union stepped in and made
it against law to make any more refinements in HUC production. That froze it at
five thousand. Things have been stable ever since.”

“But they’re living, human
beings!”

“Now you sound like silly Anti-HUC
League. My boy, they wouldn’t exist were it not for our need for currency base.
They never achieve consciousness. We, in banking business, think of them just
as about only manufactured item left in world which cannot be produced in
afternoon. Time lag is what gives them their value. Besides, they are no longer
in production, of course. Being economist, you must realize overproduction of
HUC’s would put us back into inflationary period.”

At that moment the girl announced
that the temporal techs had arrived with their equipment. Jed was led from the
office out into the bank proper. The last few customers were let out as the
closing hour arrived.

The men from Columbia seemed to
have no interest in Jed as a human being. He said hesitantly to one, smiling
shyly, “I would think you people would want to keep me here so your historians
could do research on me.”

The tech gave him a look of
undisguised contempt. He said, “We know all to be known about your era. Very
dull period in world history.”

Jed retired, abashed, and watched
them set up the massive silvery coil on the inside of the bank door.

The youngest tech said quietly, “This
is third time we’ve had to do this. You people seem to wander into sort of
rhythm pattern. Very careless. We had one failure from your era. Garcon named
Crater. He wandered too far from point of entry. But you ought to be all opt.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Just walk through coil and out
door. Adjustment is complicated. If we don’t use care you might go back into
your own era embedded up to your eyes in pavement. Or again, you might come out
forty feet in air. Don’t get unbalanced.”

“I won’t,” Jed said fervently.

Greenbush came up and said, “Could
you give me that coin you have?”

The young technician turned
wearily and said, “Older, he has to leave with everything he brought and he can’t
take anything other with him. We’ve got to fit him into same vibratory rhythm.
You should know that.”