Time Waits for Winthrop (6 page)

Mr. Mead waggled a frantic hand at him. “That’s enough! That’s plenty to go on for a while! We only have two hours—remember?”

“I certainly do. And since it’s very unlikely that you can do anything about it in so short a time, may I suggest that you drop the whole matter and take this jumper with me to Venus? There won’t be another Odor Festival there for sixty-six years. It’s an experience, my friend, that should not be missed. Venus always does these things right: the greatest odor-emitters in the Universe will be there. And I’ll be very happy to explain all the fine points to you. Coming?”

Mr. Mead dodged out of the way of the jumper which Mr. Storku was gesturing down invitingly. “No,
thank
you! Why is it,” he complained when he had retreated to a safe distance, “that you people are always taking vacations, always going off somewhere to relax and enjoy yourselves? How the hell does any work ever get done in this cockeyed world?”

“Oh, it gets done,” the yellow-haired young man laughed as the cylinder began to slide down over him. “Whenever there’s something that only a human being can do, one of us—the nearest responsible individual with the appropriate training—takes care of it. But our personality goals are different from yours. In the words of the proverb: All play and no work makes Jack a full boy.”

And he was gone.

So Mr. Mead went back to Mrs. Brucks’ room and told the others that the Department of State, represented by Mr. Storku, couldn’t help them with Winthrop’s stubbornness.

M
ary Ann Carthington tightened the curl of her blonde hair with a business-like forefinger while she considered the matter. “You told him all that you told us, and he still wouldn’t do anything, Mr. Mead? Are you sure he knows who you are?”

Mr. Mead didn’t bother to answer her. He had other problems. Not only was his spirit badly bruised and scratched by his recent experiences, but his golf knickers had just woken into sentiency. And whereas the jacket merely had attempted to express its affection by trying to cuddle under his chin, the knickers went in more for a kind of patrolling action. Up and down on his thighs they rippled; back and forth across his rear they marched.

“Sure Storku knows who he is,” Dave Pollock told her. “Ollie waved his vice-presidency in his face, but Storku heard that Sweet-bottom Septic Tanks Preferred fell to the bottom of the stock market just 481 years ago today, so he wasn’t afraid of him or much impressed.”

“I don’t think that’s funny,” Mary Ann Carthington said, and shook her head at him once in a “so there!” gesture. She knew that old beanpole of a school-teacher was just jealous of Mr. Mead, but she wasn’t sure whether it was because he didn’t make as much money or because he wasn’t nearly as distinguished-looking. But if a big executive like Mr. Mead couldn’t get them out of this jam, then nobody could. And that would be awful, positively awful.

She would never get back to San Francisco and Edgar Rapp And while Edgar might not be everything a girl like Mary Ann wanted, she was quite willing to settle for him at this point. He worked hard and made a good living. His compliments were nothing much, true, but at least he could be counted on not to say anything that tore a person into worthless bits right before their very eyes, like somebody she could mention. And the sooner she could leave the twenty-fifth century and be forever away from that somebody, the better.

“Now, Mr. Mead,” she cooed insistently, “I’m sure he told you
something
we could do. He didn’t tell you to give up hope completely and absolutely, did he?”

T
he executive caught the strap end of his knickers as it came unbuckled and started rolling exultantly up his leg. He glared at her out of eyes that bad seen just too damn much, that felt things had gone just too damn far.

“He told me something we could do,” he said with careful viciousness. “He said the Temporal Embassy could help us. All we need is somebody with puff in the Temporal Embassy.”

Mary Ann Carthington almost bit the end off the lipstick she was applying at that moment. Mrs. Brucks and Dave Pollock had both turned to stare at her. And she knew just exactly what they were thinking.

“Well, I certainly don’t—” she started to protest.

“Don’t be modest Mary Ann,” Dave Pollock interrupted. “This is your big chance—and right now, it looks like our only chance. We’ve got about an hour and a half left. Get yourself into a jumper skedaddle out there and turn on the charm!”

Mrs. Brucks sat down beside her and gave her shoulders the benefit of a heavy maternal arm, “Listen, Miss Carthington, sometimes we have to do things, it’s not so easy. But stuck here is better?
That
you like? So—” she spread her hands—“a touch here with the powder puff, a touch there with the lipstick, a this, a that, and believe me, he won’t know what to do first for you. Crazy about you he is already—you mean to say a little favor he wouldn’t do, if you asked him?”

“You really think so?” The girl began to preen. “Well, maybe—”

“A pretty girl like you, a fellow like him, nothing to maybe about. What a man like Mr. Mead can’t accomplish, a woman has to do all the time. And a pretty girl like you can do it without lifting her little finger.”

Mary Ann Carthington gave a nod of agreement to this female view of history and stood up with determination. Dave Pollock immediately called for a jumper. She stepped back as the great cylinder materialized in the room.

“Do I
have
to?” she asked. “Those awful things, they’re so
upsetting
.”

H
e took her arm and began working her under the jumper with a series of gentle, urging tugs. “You can’t walk; we don’t have the time any more. Take my word, Mary Ann, this is D-day and H-hour. So be a good girl and get under there and—Hey, listen. A smart angle with the temporal supervisor might be about how his people will be stuck in our period if Winthrop goes on being stubborn. If anyone around here is responsible for them, he is. So as soon as you get there—”

“I don’t need you to tell me how to handle the temporal supervisor, Dave Pollock!” she said haughtily, flouncing under the jumper. “After all, he happens to be a friend of mine, not yours—a very
good
friend of mine!”

“Sure,” Pollock groaned, “but you still have to convince the man. And all I’m suggesting—” He broke off as the cylinder slid the final distance down to the floor and disappeared with the girl inside.

He turned back to the others who had been watching anxiously. “Well, that’s it,” he announced, flapping his arms with a broad, hopeless gesture. “That’s our very last hope. Her!”

Mary Ann Carthington felt exactly like a Last Hope as she materialized in the Temporal Embassy.

She fought down the swimming nausea which always seemed to accompany jumper transportation and, shaking her head quickly, managed to draw a deep breath.

As a means of getting places, the jumper certainly beat Edgar Rapp’s old Buick—if only it didn’t make you feel like a chocolate malted. That was the trouble with this era: every halfway nice thing in it had such unpleasant after-effects!

The ceiling undulated over her head in the great rotunda where she was now standing and bulged a huge purplish lump down at her. It still looked, she decided nervously, like a movie house chandelier about to fall.

“Yes?” inquired the purplish lump politely “Whom did you wish to see?”

She moistened her lipstick, then squared her shoulders. You had to carry these things off with a certain amount of poise; it just did not do to show nervousness before a ceiling.

“I came to see Gygyo—I mean is Mr. Gygyo Rablin in?”

“Mr. Rablin is not at size at the moment. He will return in fifteen minutes. Would you like to wait in his office? He has another visitor there.”

M
ary Ann Carthington thought swiftly. She didn’t entirely like the idea of another visitor, but maybe it would be for the best The presence of a third party would be a restraining influence for both of them and would take a little of the inevitable edge off her coming back to Gygyo as a suppliant after what had happened between them.

But what was this about his not being “at size”? These twenty-fifth-century people did so many positively weird things with themselves!

“Yes, I’ll wait in his office,” she told the ceiling. “Oh, you needn’t bother,” she said to the floor as it began to ripple under her feet. “I know the way.”

“No bother at all, miss,” the floor replied cheerfully, and continued to carry her across the rotunda to Rablin’s private office. “It’s a pleasure.”

Mary Ann sighed and shook her head. Some of these fixtures were so
opinionated!
She relaxed and let herself be carried along, taking out her compact on the way for a last quick check of her hair and face.

But the glance at herself in the mirror evoked the memory again. She flushed and almost called for a jumper to take her back to Mrs. Brucks’ room. No, she couldn’t—this was their last chance to get out of this world and back to their own. But
damn
Gygyo Rablin, anyway!

A yellow square in the wall having dilated sufficiently, the floor carried her into Rablin’s private office and lay flat again. She looked around at the familiar surroundings.

There was Gygyo’s desk, if you could call that odd, purring thing a desk. There was that peculiar squirmy couch that—

She caught her breath. A young woman was lying on the couch, one of those horrible bald-headed women they had here.

“Excuse me,” Mary Ann said in one fast breath. “I had no idea—I didn’t mean to—”

“That’s perfectly all right,” the young woman said, still apparently staring up at the ceiling. “You’re not intruding. I just dropped in on Gygyo myself. Have a seat.”

The floor shot up a section of itself under Mary Ann and, when she was securely cradled in it, lowered itself slowly to sitting height.

“You must be that twentieth century—” the young woman paused, then amended rapidly, “the
visitor
whom Gygyo has been seeing lately. My name’s Flureet. I’m just an old childhood friend—way back from Responsibility Group Three.”

Mary Ann nodded primly. “How nice, I’m sure. My name is Mary Ann Carthington. And really, if in any way I’m—”

“I told you it’s all right. Gygyo and I don’t mean a thing to each other. This Temporal Embassy work has dulled his taste for the everyday female; they’ve either got to be atavisms or precursors. I’m awaiting transformation—
major
transformation—so you couldn’t expect very strong feelings from my side, now could you? So let’s just say hello and go on from there.”

F
lureet flexed her arm in what Mary Ann recognized disdainfully as the standard greeting gesture. Such women! It made them look like a man showing off his muscle.

“The ceiling said,” Mary Ann began uncertainly, “that Gyg—Mr. Rablin isn’t at size at the moment. Is that like what we call not being at home?”

“In a sense,” said the bald girl. “He’s in this room, but he’s hardly large enough to talk to. Gygyo’s size right now is—let me think, what did he say he was setting it for?—oh, yes, 35 microns. He’s inside a drop of water in the field of that microscope to your left.”

Mary Ann swung around and considered the spherical black object resting on a table against the wall. Outside of the two eyepieces set flush with the surface, it had little in common with pictures of microscopes she had seen in magazines.

“In—in
there
? What’s he doing in there?”

“He’s on a micro-hunt. You should know your Gygyo by now. An absolutely incurable romantic. Who goes on micro-hunts any more? And in a culture of intestinal amebae, of all things. Killing the beasties by hand instead of by routine psycho- or even chemo-therapy appeals to his dashing soul. ‘Grow up, Gygyo,’ I said to him. ‘These games are for children and for Responsibility Group Four children at that.’ Well, that hurt his pride and he said he was going in with a fifteen-minute lock. A fifteen-minute
lock!
When I heard that, I decided to come here and watch the battle, just in case.”

“Why? Is a fifteen-minute lock dangerous?” Mary Ann asked. Her face was tightly set, however; she was still thinking of that “you should know your Gygyo” remark. That was another thing about this world she didn’t like. With all their talk of privacy and the sacred rights of the individual, men like Gygyo didn’t think twice of telling the most intimate matters about people to—to other people.

“Figure it out for yourself. Gygyo’s set himself for 35 microns. That’s about twice the size of most of the intestinal parasites he’ll have to fight—amebae like
Endolimax nana, lodamoeba butschlii
and
Dientamoeba fragilis
. But suppose he runs into a crowd of
Endamoeba colii
, to say nothing of our tropical dysentery friend,
Endamoeba hystolytica
—what then?”

“What then?” the blonde girl echoed. She had not the slightest idea. One did not face problems like this in San Francisco.

“Trouble, that’s what. Serious trouble. The
colii
might be as large as he is, and
hystolyticae
run even bigger—36, 37 microns, sometimes more. Now the most important factor on a micro-hunt is size, especially if you’re fool enough to limit your arsenal to a conventional sword and won’t be seen carrying an automatic weapon even as insurance. Well, under those circumstances, if you lock yourself down to smallness so that you can’t get out and nobody can
take
you out for a full fifteen minutes, you’re just asking for trouble. And trouble is exactly what our boy is having!”

“He is? I mean is it bad?”

T
he other girl gestured at the microscope. “Have a look. I’ve adjusted my retina to the magnification, but you people aren’t up to that yet, I believe. You need mechanical aids for every little thing. Go ahead, have a look. That’s
Dientamoeba fragilis
he’s fighting now. Small, but fast. And very, very vicious.”

Mary Ann hurried to the spherical microscope and stared intently through the eyepieces.