Now Wait for Last Year (23 page)

Taubman said, 'God, how the Betels love to be psychologists. It must come natural to telepaths; I don't think they can even help it.' He loitered nearby, evidently interested in Willy K's probing.

'Can I take the antidote back to Kathy?'

'No, but you can memorize the formula,' Willy K said. 'So that Hazeltine Corporation, in your time, can reproduce it. But I don't think you want to. I'm not going to urge you to ... and I can't force you to.'

'You mean his wife's hooked on JJ-180, too,' Taubman said, 'and he isn't going to try to help her?'

'You're not married,' Willy K said. 'In marriage the greatest hatred that is possible between two human beings can be generated, perhaps because of the constant proximity, perhaps because once there was love. The intimacy is still there, even though the love element has disappeared. So a will to power, a struggle for domination, comes into being.' To Taubman he explained, 'It was his wife Kathy who addicted him in the first place, so it is easy to understand his sentiments.'

'I hope I never get in a fix like that,' Taubman said. 'Hating someone I once loved.'

The female reeg had clacked up to listen, watching the conversation as it was reproduced on the surface of her translating box. Now she added her own comment.

HATE AND LOVE ARE CLOSELY LINKED, MUCH MORE SO THAN MOST TERRANS REALIZE

'Do you have another cigarette?' Eric asked Taubman.

'Sure.' Taubman passed him the pack.

'What I find most interesting of all,' Willy K said, 'is that Dr Sweetscent comes from a universe in which a pact exists between Terra and Lilistar. And that in his year, 2055, a war is being fought in which they are slowly but steadily losing. Clearly this is not our past but another past entirely. And, in his mind, I find the excruciatingly interesting thought that Terra's quondam warlord, Gino Molinari, has already discovered this rank of parallel universes and has made use of it for his immediate political advantage.' Willy K was silent a moment and then declared, 'No, Dr Sweetscent, after having visualized your memory of the Molinari corpse I am fairly certain that it was not obtained from our world; true, Molinari died by assassination, but I recall pics of his corpse and there is a small but crucial difference. In our world the Secretary was hit repeatedly in the facial area; his features were destroyed. The corpse you saw was not so damaged and I would assume it comes from another world in which he was assassinated, similar to ours but not identical.'

'This must be why so few time travelers have shown up here,' Taubman said. They're scattered through all the different possible futures.'

'As to the virile Molinari,' Willy K said thoughtfully. 'I suppose that, too, is an alternate configuration. You realize of course, doctor, that all this indicates that your Secretary has taken JJ-180 himself; there is therefore an element of cruel hypocrisy in his threatening you with death if you became addicted. But I would guess, by several clues in your mind, that he also possesses the 'Star manufactured antidote which you just now took. So he has no fears and can move freely about among the worlds.'

The Mole, Eric realized, could have given me and Kathy the antidote any time.

It was hard for him to accept that about Gino Molinari; he had seemed more humane than this. He was just playing with us, Eric realized. As Willy K said, with an element of cruel hypocrisy.

'But wait,' Willy K cautioned. 'We don't know what he intended to do; he had just found out about your addiction, and he was as usual suffering from a spasm of his chronic illness pattern. He might have given it to you in time. Before it ceased to matter.'

COULD YOU EXPLAIN THIS DISCUSSION?

The reeg receptionist, and also Taubman, had lost the thread of the discourse.

'Would you care to begin the laborious process of memorizing the formula?' Willy K said to Eric. 'It will take all the time you have left.'

All right,' Eric said, and listened intently.

Willy K ceased, rotated his supporting mechanism inquiringly.

THE DOCTOR HAS LEARNED SOMETHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY CHEMICAL FORMULA

'What is it?' Eric asked her.'

IN YOUR UNIVERSE WE ARE YOUR ENEMY BUT HERE YOU HAVE SEEN TERRANS AND OURSELVES LIVE TOGETHER. YOU KNOW THAT WAR AGAINST US IS UNNECESSARY. AND WHAT IS MORE IMPORTANT, SO DOES YOUR LEADER.

That was so. No wonder Molinari had no heart for the war; it was not merely a suspicion on his part that this was the wrong war with the wrong enemy and the wrong ally; it was a fact which he had experienced for himself, perhaps many times. And all due to JJ-180.

But not only that. There was something more, something so ominous that he wondered why the inhibition barriers of his mind had permitted the thought to rise from his unconscious. JJ-180 had reached Lilistar – and in quantity. 'Starmen had certainly been experimenting with it. So they, too, knew the alternate possibility, knew that Terra's better hope lay in cooperation with the reegs. Had witnessed it for themselves.

In both branches of possibility Lilistar had lost the war. With or without Terra on her side. Or—

Was there a third alternative, one in which Lilistar and the reegs joined against Terra?

'A pact between Lilistar and the reegs is unlikely,' Willy K said. They have been antagonists for too many years. I feel that it is only your planet, on which we now stand, that hangs in the balance; Lilistar will be defeated by the reeg power in any eventuality.'

'But that means,' Eric said, 'that the 'Starmen have nothing to lose; if they know they can't win—' He could imagine Freneksy's reaction to this information. The nihilism, the destructive violence of the 'Starmen, would be inconceivable.

'True,' Willy K agreed. 'So your Secretary is wise to walk softly. Now perhaps you can comprehend why his illness pattern must be so vast, why he must push himself actually over the brink, into repeated death, to serve his people. And why he would hesitate to provide you with the antidote to JJ-180; if 'Star intelligence agents – and your wife may be one – learned that he possessed it, they might—' Willy K was silent. 'It is hard, as you yourself might observe, to predict the behavior of psychotics. But this much is clear: they would not ignore the situation.'

'They'd find a way to get it away from him,' Eric said.

'You've missed the point. Their attitude would be punitive; they would know that Molinari possesses too much power, that by having unhindered use of JJ-180, without the possibility of addiction, of neural deterioration, he can't be controlled by them. This is why, on a deep, psychosomatic basis, Molinari can defy Minister Freneksy. He is not entirely helpless.'

'This is all over my head,' Taubman said. 'Excuse me.' He walked off.

The reeg receptionist remained.

URGE YOUR SECRETARY TO CONTACT THE REEG AUTHORITY. WE WOULD ASSIST IN PROTECTING TERRA FROM STAR VENGEANCE, I AM SURE.

It was, Eric thought, a rather wistful message which the multi-armed creature had flashed at him with her translation box. The reegs might want to assist, but 'Starmen were already on Terra, holding key positions. At the first hint that Terra was negotiating with the reegs the 'Starmen would move in prearranged order; they would seize the planet overnight.

A tiny Terran-controlled state might function for a limited time in the Cheyenne vicinity, shelled and bombed day and night by the 'Starmen. But then it, too, would capitulate. Its shield of Jupiter-obtained rexeroid compounds would not protect it forever – and Molinari knew that. Terra would become a conquered state, supplying war materiel and slave labor to Lilistar. And the war would go on.

And the irony was this: as a slave planet Terra would be able to contribute more to the war effort than she did now as a quasi-independent entity. And no one recognized this more than did the Mole. Hence his entire foreign policy; this explained everything that he did.

'By the way,' Willy K said, and there was a trace of amusement in his voice. 'Your former employer, Virgil Ackerman, is still alive; he still governs Tijuana Fur & Dye. He is two hundred and thirty years old and retains twenty org-trans surgeons within call. I believe I have read that he has gone through four matched sets of kidneys, five livers, spleens, and undetermined numbers of hearts—'

'I feel sick,' Eric said, and rocked back and forth.

The drug is wearing off.' Willy K floated toward a chair. 'Miss Ceeg, assist him, please!'

'I'm okay,' Eric said thickly. His head ached and nausea staggered him. All the lines, the surfaces around him, had become astigmatic; under him the chair felt unreal and then, abruptly, he fell, lay on his side.

'The transition is difficult,' Willy K said. 'Apparently we can't help him, Miss Ceeg. Good luck to your Secretary, doctor. I can appreciate what a great service he performed for your people. Perhaps I will write a letter to the New York Times, conveying this knowledge.'

A prism of primal colors tapped at Eric like an illuminated wind; it was, he thought, the wind of life blowing over him, sweeping him where it desired without regard for his small wishes. And then the winds became black; they were no longer the winds of life but the opaque smoke of death.

He saw, projected as a pseudo environment around him, a travesty of his injured nervous system; the multitudes of conduits were visibly corrupted, had turned inky as the drug's damage spread throughout him and established its grim self. A voiceless bird, some carrion eater of the storm, sat on his chest, croaking in the silence left behind as the winds receded from him. The bird remained and he felt its dunglike claws penetrate his lungs, his chest cavity, and then his abdominal cavity. Nothing within him remained untouched; it had all been disfigured and even the antidote had not stopped this. As long as he lived he would never regain the purity of the original organism.

This was the price exacted from him by the deciding forces.

Dragging himself to a crouched position, he saw that he inhabited an empty waiting room. No one had seen him and he was free to get up and go. He rose to his feet, steadied himself by means of a chrome and leather chair.

The magazines, in the nearby rack, were in English. And on their covers, laughing Terrans. Not reegs.

'Did you want something?' A male voice, lisping slightly. A Hazeltine employee wearing florid, fashionable robes.

'No,' Eric said. This was his own time; he recognized the trappings of 2055. Thanks just the same.'

A moment later he had made his way painfully outdoors in the direction of the sidewalk, down the path of redwood-rounds.

What he wanted was a cab, a place to sit down and rest. As he made his trip back to Cheyenne. He had gotten what he wanted; presumably he was no longer an addict and if he cared to he could also free his wife. And in addition he had viewed a world over which the shadow of Lilistar did not obtain.

'Ferry you somewhere, sir?' An autonomic cab drifted toward him.

'Yes,' he said, and walked toward it.

Suppose an entire planet took the drug, he thought as he boarded. A mass fugue away from our dismal, ever narrowing world of reality. Suppose Tijuana Fur & Dye gave the order to produce it in enormous quantity, distributed it, through the government's help, to everyone. Would that be a moral solution? Are we entitled to that?

Anyhow it couldn't be done. The 'Starmen would move in first.

'Where to sir?' the cab's circuit inquired.

He decided to use it for the entire trip; it would take only a few minutes longer. To Cheyenne.'

'I can't, sir. Not there.' It sounded nervous. 'Request another—'

'Why not?' He came awake instantly.

'Because as is well known all Cheyenne belongs to them. To the enemy.' It added, 'And traffic into enemy areas is illegal, as you know.'

'What enemy?'

'The traitor Gino Molinari,' the cab answered. 'Who sought to betray the war effort; you know, sir. The former UN Secretary who conspired with reeg agents to—'

'What is the date?' Eric demanded.

'June 15, 2056.'

He had – possibly through the action of the antidote – failed to make it to his own time; it was one year later and there was nothing he could do about it. And he had saved no more of the drug; the rest had been given to Kathy at the Airfield, and so he was stuck here in what obviously was 'Star-dominated territory. Like most of Terra.

And yet Gino Molinari was alive! He still hung on; Cheyenne had not fallen in a day or a week – perhaps the reegs had been able to bring in reinforcements to assist the Secret Service.

He could find out from the cab. As they flew along.

And Don Festenburg could have told me this, he realized, because this is precisely the time period at which I encountered him there in his office with the phony homeopape and mock-up UN Secretary uniform.

'Just head west,' he told the cab. I've got to get back to Cheyenne, he realized. Somehow, by some route.

'Yes sir,' the cab said. 'And by the way, sir, you failed to show me your travel permit. May I see it now? Just a formality, of course.'

'What travel permit?' But he knew; it would be an issue of the governing 'Star occupation agency, and without their permission Terrans could not come and go. This was a conquered planet and very much still at war.

'Please, sir,' the cab said. It had begun to descend once more. 'Otherwise I am required to carry you to the nearest 'Star military police barracks; that is one mile east. A short trip from here.'

'I'll bet it is,' Eric agreed. 'From any point, not just from here. I'll bet they're all over.'

The cab dropped lower and lower. 'Right you are, sir. They're very convenient.' It clicked off its engine and coasted.

'I'll tell you what,' Eric said as the cab's wheels touched the ground; it slid to a gradual halt at the curb and he saw, just ahead, an ominous structure with armed guards at the entrance. The guards wore the gray of Lilistar. 'I'll make a deal with you.'