The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories (43 page)

“I’m looking for the library,” Poul said, not coming too close to the vehicle which was a bed with motor and wheels, a tiller for steering.

The woman said, “The library is one bight from here.”

“Um,” Poul said, “what’s a ‘bight’?”

“Obviously, you’re wanging me,” the woman said. All visible parts of her flushed a dark red. “It’s not funny. Any more than your disgustingly hairy head is. Really, both your wanging and your head are not amusing, at least not to me.” And yet she did not go on; she remained where she was, regarding him somberly. “Perhaps you need help,” she decided. “Perhaps I should pity you. You know of course that the polpol could pick you up any time they want.”

Poul said, “Could I, um, buy you a cup of coffee somewhere and we could talk? I’m really anxious to find the library.”

“I’ll go with you,” the woman agreed. “Although I have no idea what ‘coffee’ is. If you touch me I’ll nilp at once.”

“Don’t do that,” Poul said, “it’s unnecessary; all I want to do is look up some historical material.” And then it occurred to him that he could make good use of any technical data he could get his hands on.

What one volume might he smuggle back to 1954 which would be of great value? He racked his brains. An almanac. A dictionary… a school text on science which surveyed all the fields for laymen; yes, that would do it. A seventh grade text or a high school text. He could rip the covers off, throw them away, put the pages inside his coat.

Poul said, “Where’s a school? The closest school.” He felt the urgency of it, now. He had no doubt that they were after him, close behind.

“What is a ‘school’?” the woman asked.

“Where your children go,” Poul said.

The woman said quietly, “You poor sick man.”

For a time Tozzo and Fermeti and Gilly stood in silence. And then Tozzo said in a carefully controlled voice, “You know what’s going to happen to him, of course. Polpol will pick him up and mono-express him to Nachbaren Slager. Because of his appearance. He may even be there already.”

Fermeti sprinted at once for the nearest vidphone. “I’m going to contact the authorities at Nachbaren Slager. I’ll talk to Potter; we can trust him, I think.”

Presently Major Potter’s heavy, dark features formed on the vidscreen. “Oh, hello, Fermeti. You want more convicts, do you?” He chuckled. “You use them up even faster than we do.”

Behind Potter, Fermeti caught a glimpse of the open recreation area of the giant internment camp. Criminals, both political and nonpol, could be seen roaming about, stretching their legs, some of them playing dull, pointless games which, he knew, went on and on, sometimes for months, each time they were out of their work-cells.

“What we want,” Fermeti said, “is to prevent an individual being brought to you at all.” He described Poul Anderson. “If he’s monoed there, call me at once. And don’t harm him. You understand? We want him back safe.”

“Sure,” Potter said easily. “Just a minute; I’ll have a scan put on our new admissions.” He touched a button to his right and a 315—R computer came on; Fermeti heard its low hum. Potter touched buttons and then said, “This’ll pick him out if he’s monoed here. Our admissions-circuit is prepared to reject him.”

“No sign yet?” Fermeti asked tensely.

“Nope,” Potter said, and purposefully yawned.

Fermeti broke the connection.

“Now what?” Tozzo said. “We could possibly trace him by means of a Ganymedean sniffer-sponge.” They were a repellent life form, though; if one managed to find its quarry it fastened at once to its blood system leech-wise. “Or do it mechanically,” he added. “With a detec beam. We have a print of Anderson’s EEG pattern, don’t we? But that would really bring in the polpol.” The detec beam by law belonged only to the polpol; after all, it was the artifact which had, at last, tracked down Gutman himself.

Fermeti said bluntly, “I’m for broadcasting a planet-wide Type II alert. That’ll activate the citizenry, the average informer. They’ll know there’s an automatic reward for any Type II found.”

“But he could be manhandled that way,” Gilly pointed out. “By a mob. Let’s think this through.”

After a pause Tozzo said, “How about trying it from a purely cerebral standpoint? If you had been transported from the mid twentieth century to our continuum, what would you want to do?
Where would you go?”

Quietly, Fermeti said, “To the nearest spaceport, of course. To buy a ticket to Mars or the outplanets—routine in our age but utterly out of the question at mid twentieth century.” They looked at one another.

“But Anderson doesn’t know where the spaceport is,” Gilly said. “It’ll take him valuable time to orient himself. We can go there directly by express subsurface mono.”

A moment later the three Bureau of Emigration men were on their way. “A fascinating situation,” Gilly said, as they rode along, jiggling up and down, facing one another in the monorail first-class compartment. “We totally misjudged the mid twentieth century mind; it should be a lesson to us. Once we’ve regained possession of Anderson we should make further inquiries. For instance, the Poltergeist Effect. What was their interpretation of it? And table-tapping—did they recognize it for what it was? Or did they merely consign it to the realm of the so-called ‘occult’ and let it go at that?”

“Anderson may hold the clue to these questions and many others,” Fermeti said. “But our central problem remains the same. We must induce him to complete the mass-restoration formula in precise mathematical terms, rather than vague, poetic allusions.”

Thoughtfully, Tozzo said, “He’s a brilliant man, that Anderson. Look at the ease by which he eluded us.”

“Yes,” Fermeti agreed. “We mustn’t underestimate him. We did that, and it’s rebounded.” His face was grim.

Hurrying up the almost-deserted sidestreet, Poul Anderson wondered why the woman had regarded him as sick. And the mention of children had set off the clerk in the store, too. Was birth illegal now? Or was it regarded as sex had been once, as something too private to speak of in public?

In any case, he realized, if I plan to stay here I’ve got to shave my head. And, if possible, acquire different clothing.

There must be barbershops.
And, he thought, the coins in my pockets; they’re probably worth a lot to collectors.

He glanced about, hopefully. But all he saw were tall, luminous plastic and metal buildings which made up the city, structures in which incomprehensible transactions took place. They were as alien to him as—

Alien, he thought, and the word lodged chokingly in his mind. Because something had oozed from a doorway ahead of him. And now his way was blocked—deliberately, it seemed—by a slime mold, dark yellow in color, as large as a human being, palpitating visibly on the sidewalk. After a pause the slime mold undulated toward at him at a regular, slow rate. A human evolutionary development? Poul Anderson wondered, recoiling from it. Good Lord … and then he realized what he was seeing.

This era had space travel. He was seeing a creature from another planet.

“Um,” Poul said, to the enormous mass of slime mold, “can I bother you a second to ask a question?”

The slime mold ceased to undulate forward. And in Poul’s brain a thought formed which was not his own. “I catch your query. In answer: I arrived yesterday from Callisto. But I also catch a number of unusual and highly interesting thoughts in addition… you are a time traveler from the past.” The tone of the creature’s emanations was one of considerate, polite amusement—and interest.

“Yes,” Poul said. “From 1954.”

“And you wish to find a barbershop, a library and a school. All at once, in the precious time remaining before they capture you.” The slime mold seemed solicitous. “What can I do to help you? I could absorb you, but it would be a permanent symbiosis, and you would not like that. You are thinking of your wife and child. Allow me to inform you as to the problem regarding your unfortunate mention of children. Terrans of this period are experiencing a mandatory moratorium on childbirth, because of the almost infinite sporting of the previous decades. There was a war, you see. Between Gutman’s fanatical followers and the more liberal legions of General McKinley. The latter won.”

Poul said, “Where should I go? I’m confused.” His head throbbed and he felt tired. Too much had happened. Just a short while ago he had been standing with Tony Boucher in the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, drinking and chatting… and now this. Facing this great slime mold from Callisto. It was difficult—to say the least—to make such an adjustment.

The slime mold was transmitting to him. “I am accepted here while you, their ancestor, are regarded as odd. Ironic. To me, you look quite like them, except for your curly brown hair and of course your silly clothing.” The creature from Callisto pondered. “My friend, the polpol are the political police, and they search for deviants, followers of the defeated Gutman, who are terrorists now, and hated. Many of these followers are drawn from the potentially criminal classes. That is, the non-conformists, the so-called introves. Individuals who set their own subjective value-system up in place of the objective system in vogue. It is a matter of life and death to the Terrans, since Gutman almost won.”

“I’m going to hide,” Poul decided.

“But where? You can’t really. Not unless you wish to go underground and join the Gutmanites, the criminal class of bomb-throwers… and you won’t want to do that. Let us stroll together, and if anyone challenges you, I will say you’re my servant. You have manual extensors and I have not. And I have, by a quirk, decided to dress you oddly and to have you retain your head-hair. The responsibility then becomes mine. It is actually not unusual for higher out-world organisms to employ Terran help.”

“Thanks,” Poul said tautly, as the slime mold resumed its slow forward motion along the sidewalk. “But there are things I want to do—”

“I am on my way to the zoo,” the slime mold continued. An unkind thought came to Poul.

“Please,” the slime mold said. “Your anachronistic twentieth century humor is not appreciated. I am not an inhabitant of the zoo; it is for life forms of low mental order such as Martian glebs and trawns. Since the initiation of interplanetary travel, zoos have become the center of—”

Poul said, “Could you lead me to the space terminal?” He tried to make his request sound casual.

“You take a dreadful risk,” the slime mold said, “in going to any public place. The polpol watch constantly.”

“I still want to go.” If he could board an interplanetary ship, if he could leave Earth, see other worlds—

But they would erase his memory; all at once he realized that, in a rush of horror.
I’ve got to make notes,
he told himself. At once!

“Do, um, you have a pencil?” he asked the slime mold. “Oh, wait; I have one. Pardon me.” Obviously the slime mold didn’t.

On a piece of paper from his coat pocket—it was convention material of some sort—he wrote hurriedly, in brief, disjointed phrases, what had happened to him, what he had seen in the twenty-first century. Then he quickly stuck the paper back in his pocket.

“A wise move,” the slime mold said. “And now to the spaceport, if you will accompany me at my slow pace. And, as we go, I will give you details of Terra’s history from your period on.” The slime mold moved down the sidewalk. Poul accompanied it eagerly; after all, what choice did he have? “The Soviet Union. That was tragic. Their war with Red China in 1983 which finally involved Israel and France… regrettable, but it did solve the problem of what to do with France—a most difficult nation to deal with in the latter half of the twentieth century.”

On his piece of paper Poul jotted that down, too.

“After France had been defeated—” The slime mold went on, as Poul scratched against time.

Fermeti said, “We must glin, if we’re to catch Anderson before he boards a ship.” And by “glin” he did not mean glinning a little; he meant a full search with the cooperation of the polpol. He hated to bring them in, and yet their help now seemed vital. Too much time had passed and Anderson had not yet been found.

The spaceport lay ahead, a great disk miles in diameter, with no vertical obstructions. In the center was the Burned Spot, seared by years of tail-exhausts from landing and departing ships. Fermeti liked the spaceport, because here the denseness of the close-packed buildings of the city abruptly ceased. Here was
openness,
such as he recalled from childhood… if one dared to think openly of childhood.

The terminal building was set hundreds of feet beneath the rexeroid layer built to protect the waiting people in case of an accident above. Fermeti reached the entrance of the descent ramp, then halted impatiently to wait for Tozzo and Gilly to catch up with him.

“I’ll nilp,” Tozzo said, but without enthusiasm. And he broke the band on his wrist with a single decisive motion.

The polpol ship hovered overhead at once.

“We’re from the Emigration Bureau,” Fermeti explained to the polpol lieutenant. He outlined their Project, described—reluctantly—their bringing Poul Anderson from his time-period to their own.

“Hair on head,” the polpol lieutenant nodded. “Quaint duds. Okay, Mr. Fermeti; we’ll glin until we find him.” He nodded, and his small ship shot off.

“They’re efficient,” Tozzo admitted.

“But not likeable,” Fermeti said, finishing Tozzo’s thought.

“They make me uncomfortable,” Tozzo agreed. “But I suppose they’re supposed to.”

The three of them stepped onto the descent ramp—and dropped at breathtaking speed to level one below. Fermeti shut his eyes, wincing at the loss of weight. It was almost as bad as takeoff itself. Why did everything have to be so rapid, these days? It certainly was not like the previous decade, when things had gone leisurely.

They stepped from the ramp, shook themselves, and were approached instantly by the building’s polpol chief.