Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule (7 page)

Just like the comic books. A prop.

Forgetting that he didn’t do crazy, he said aloud: "Jetz!
Timeless Town is just one big prop
." He remembered the tiny plastic village next to the tracks of his electric train set, soon retired in deference to slot-riding race cars.

He heard Tom advise him to avoid jumping to conclusions, even if they jumped at him first.

He stood and tapped one of the big bottles, glass-sided canisters. The green stuff shuddered in response. It wasn’t plastic. It moved.
If it hadn’t
, he thought,
I think I’d spend an hour lying on the floor next to the pseudo-hair.

He went back outside and crunched a few dead leaves under one of the trees. Real. He gouged a fingernail into the tree trunk. Real. He pinched his own arm. Real.

Then he jumped back, startled, as a human voice erupted through the barbershop door!

"
And that was the Sonny Vallis Strings with this year’s big hit,
‘I Surrender.’
In the news, General MacArthur will be meeting with Secretary Dulles to clarify some remarks...
"

Bud walked away rapidly. He didn’t want to hear any more. He didn’t want to listen to a human voice without a human mouth behind it.

He realized his heart was starting to pound. It was one thing to be thrown out a window by the Black Cobra, but this—
this
was messing with Reality!

"Let’s say no one shows, no one. I can hotwire any of these cars. I can drive out of town to—to wherever. To Shopton! It’s not like I’m fenced in," he reasoned. But how far away was Shopton?

What if the cars were props, too?

A thought suddenly struck him. He chuckled at himself for overlooking the obvious. License plates!

He went down one side of the street, then back the other side, looking at the plates on the parked cars. It was, again, disappointingly unhelpful—so prosaically normal in some ways, so off-center in others. The plates looked authentic. But the renewal stickers all read 1953 or 1954. And as to the states—many states. A dozen different states, at least. No majority. Timeless Town seemed to be located in a
generic
state of the United States.

Most of the car doors were unlocked. The seats inside were worn, sometimes ripping; a few looked new, though. He looked at the steering columns and found, as he expected, flat plastic pouches strapped on several of them with registration cards inside. The cards looked new—as they
would
be if they were current and valid in this year of 1953. They bore names like James Hylman Heyes and Bonnie Sue Devlin and Carl Norris Winters. Very normal names.

"So where are you James, Bonnie Sue, Carl?"

And, as a matter of fact, Rose Reb?

And indeed, as a matter of fact, Bud Barclay?

"Okay. Good grief, maybe I
do
do crazy!"

He glanced at the shadows, then at his watch. In the press of the moment, when he had awakened, he had only verified that he still had it on his arm. He hadn’t looked at the display panel. Now he did. It read:

– – – –

The incognito time, the anonymity, was blinking. He pressed a button. There was no date, no year.

Whoever had landed Bud in Timeless Town had thoughtfully and deliberately pressed the reset button. All the young Californian could do was start the timer function. The display read:

H 00 M 00 S 01.8 PM

The seconds continued to count off, and Bud thought:
At least time hasn’t stopped dead. Not for
me
, at least...

His panic had turned flat and dull. He had nothing to fight against. He wandered down Newharvest Avenue, turned a corner, and yelped in surprise.

Someone was standing on the sidewalk halfway down the block!

But his yell froze in his throat. He had never seen a cigar store Indian before. Did even small towns still have them? But there it stood, tobacco rolls clutched in hand like a bouquet. "Howya doin’, Chief?" Bud muttered in great disappointment.

And then he noticed, further down, something that brought him hope anew. A telephone booth! An honest-to-God Superman type,
Mavis-put-me-through-to-Barney
type telephone booth.

Of course it probably wasn’t real.

Then again, the comic books had been real. Enough.

He trotted up to it, entered, folded the door closed behind him as if it mattered, and looked up at the placard over the box and hanging receiver. He no longer boggled at the prices, in this case 5 cents. He studied the instructions. No area code, of course. He noted with relief that the booth’s own phone number did not start with "555", the famous bogus exchange dummy-number.

Fishing out a nickel, he lifted the receiver.

"
Dial tone!
" he cried. It was as if he had said
Bullseye
!

And then a human voice, a woman’s. "Operator."

"Hi operator!"

"Number, please."

"Oh, I—well, could you just—"

"Number, please."

"S-sorry, I don’t know—"

"Operator."

"Listen, I’m in a phone booth and—"

"Number, please."

Bud slammed down the receiver, violently. He had been wrong. It was
once
a human voice. Now it was a formerly human voice. A recording. A prop.

Still, there had been a dial tone. What if he dropped in a nickel and actually dialed a number? But it would have to be the number of something real, a Somewhere, not a Nowhere.

He looked down. The hanging phone directory had been ripped off.
That
was probably as realistic in 1953 as today.

Then he looked again at the placard.

POLICE DEPARTMENT GA-61734

What kind of phone number started with
GA?
Had phone numbers once started with
letters
? Was he in Georgia, maybe?

He fed the phone, dismally keeping hope in check to forestall a crash of disappointment.

The other end was ringing.

Bud held his breath.

Rrring.

Rrring.

Rrring.

Hadn’t someone once told him that after three unanswered rings, the odds of someone picking up diminished to—

"FV Police. This is Jesperson."

Bud struggled to force his voice to work.

"Police," repeated Jesperson. "Someone there?"

"I—I—you don’t know how
glad
I am to reach you, Mr. Jesperson!" gasped the Shoptonian.

"Chief Jesperson. So what can I do ya for?"

Bud forced himself toward calm. "I—this is really weird. I don’t even know how to say it."

"Police business?"

"Oh man. Yeah! I guess."

"Cool off, son," said Jesperson. "What’s going on?"

"Jetz, don’t ask
me
! I’m here at a phone booth on—on some street—it’s by a hardware store—"

"In town? Wooldridge Hardware and Plumbing?"

Bud looked through the wire-crisscrossed glass. "Uh-huh."

"So what’s the problem? Somebody rob the place?"

"I dunno. No. It’s just... Look, Chief, I can’t find anyone—the whole place is deserted. Not a soul. Nobody anywhere!"

"Are they open? Is the door open?"

"I don’t mean just in the hardware store."

"What
do
you mean? ...Okay, who is this? What’s your name?"

"Bud Barclay, sir. I’ve been here—I don’t know how I even got here—I don’t know what happened to my car—"

"You have an accident?"

"I—not exactly. I’ve been all over, up and down the street—the shops are wide open, but there aren’t any people, Chief. Nobody driving, no one on the sidewalk—"

Jesperson chuckled pleasantly. "Yeah, Friendly Village is a mighty sleepy little place."

So Timeless Town had a name.

Bud rushed on. "And—the barber shop—the hair on the floor—it’s, like, plastic or something—"

"Listen, Bud," interrupted Jesperson. "If this is a prank, tell me now. I’m here by myself right now. You’re tying up the line. That’s a crime. It’ll go hard on you, kid."

Kid
, Bud thought.
Here I thought my voice was all grown up
. "I’m not kidding, Chief. I need—" He paused, thinking strategically. "Yeah, I was in an accident. I’m okay, but—I need to come to the Station. Okay?"

"Yep, I think you do." Now Jesperson sounded warm and concerned. "All right. Stay where you are. Sit down or something. Got it? Kintley’s out on duty. I’ll send Kintley around in the car. Stay put, all right?"

"Sure," Bud said gratefully. "Er—about how long before he gets here, sir? A half hour, maybe?"

The Chief laughed. "Son, you can get to anyplace in town in five minutes, even if you walk! Nelson will be there in three."

"Thanks. Er—didn’t you say his name was—"

A tiny hesitation. "The officer’s name is Nelson Kintley. Wait for him. Right there." The line clicked.

Bud hung up the phone. He suddenly realized, with a silent laugh at himself, that he probably could have used the phone in any of the stores.
Who’s to stop me?
"Oh well, guess it was worth a nickel."

He folded open the door. As he stepped forward, his head suddenly fuzzed out. He quickly sank down on the floor of the booth, propping the door open, legs outstretched onto the walk.
It’s what they injected me with,
he thought.
Still haven’t thrown it off. Not completely.

He leaned against the side of the door.

And suddenly he was waking up from sleep. "Jetz!" he mumbled. "Where’d that come from? The cop car’ll be here any sec."

But even before he pulled his eyes open, he knew that more than a few minutes had past. It was night. The street was still deserted. But the ornate streetlamps were on, not bright but still friendly in a yellow way. As in Friendly Village.

Bud looked up. The moon was quartered and crisp. Stars glittered everywhere. It wasn’t cold, wasn’t warm. It was just all right. Perfectly all right.

He looked down the street. Lights were on in several shops, and especially in a number of second-story windows, probably apartments. He thought he could hear a TV somewhere—laughter at a comedy—probably an ancient comedy.

Signs of living, but no signs of life.

"Gosh, did ol’ Nelse overlook me?" Bud speculated. "I mean, the Chief said to sit down—"
Anywhere in five minutes...

Hadn’t it been morning? Had he really slept through the entire day and on into the night? He glanced at his watch display.

H 02 M 35 S 14.6 PM

In two and one-half hours, a beautiful bright day had become a beautiful dark night. "The times they are a-changin’," Bud said. But the gibe didn’t lift his spirits. Night had fallen like a curtain, like the end of a play. Time in Friendly Village made no sense.

Or—

Had he
just
arrived?

Was his awakening, this awakening, actually his
first
awakening? Had he only dreamed everything else? Comic books, hair, the policeman...

Except it was he who had set his watch to function as a timer. Right?

Suddenly he emptied out his pocket into his hand. When he had left the motel, he had counted change into it. And now—

Now he was exactly one nickel short.

THE SHOPS on the street—apparently all of them—were still unlocked and still deserted. He discovered, to great satisfaction, that the plumbing in Friendly Village was not merely a prop.

Bud was hungry, thirsty. He was also still woozy, unsteady on his feet, exhausted.

He entered a tiny furniture store, the crowded interior greenly visible and grotesque under the perpetually lit EXIT sign over the door. There was a bed with a bare mattress. He took off his shoes and socks, unbuckled his belt, and lay back. And then it was morning.

He checked his watch.

H 08 M 49 S 54.1 AM

Of course the PM/AM meant nothing. But the amount of time passed made sense, at least. This was the morning of the day following his arrival.

He glanced out the plate glass window. The sky was thick with white and gray clouds. Day; but he couldn’t make out the sun, and the shadows were wan. A dull morning. He couldn’t quite put together, in his mind, what time it was, where the sun ought to be. The Barclay brain just didn’t want to deal with the question of time.

He went into the street, hoping that things had managed to change overnight. But no. Everything was exactly the same, including the Indian. Including the great silent vacancy that had settled over the town of Friendly Village.

In the middle of the next block Bud found a cafe. It looked like a clean, cheerful place. To call it a greasy spoon would be unfair. It was called the Happy Corner Munch-In.
If only!
he thought.

No one inside, and the posted prices were laughable, naturally. He went back into the kitchen, looked in a refrigerator, in a big freezer. Both were running, but the meat inside was phony. He found oversized cans of fruit, and picked out one that promised quartered apples. With some effort he found a can opener.

The apples were real, and tasty.

He found a big unopened box of cornflakes, ripped it apart, filled a big bowl, and ate it dry with peaches on top.

He turned on a very wide electric range. It worked.

"Soup later," he promised himself.

He had thought food would have a calming effect, but it mainly fed his fears. He kept telling himself how absurd was the predicament he found himself in. He kept making up stories to explain matters plausibly.

"Some kind of sudden outbreak," he said. "An epidemic. Germ warfare. A drum fell off a truck and broke open. Gas—toxic fumes. Everyone had to run. No warning. No time to even lock the doors." And then Bud remembered the phony hair, the props, the dates on the magazines. Chief Jesperson would have told him if something were going on...

Assuming, of course, Chief Jesperson really existed.

Because if Chief Jesperson really existed, where was his promised patrolman Nelson Kintley?

Had they become victims of a plague, both of them?

Then it struck Bud that he didn’t really know that what he had told the Chief, about where he was, was true. Perhaps Bud had reached the real Friendly Village PD—but
this
place was not, in fact, the real Friendly Village. He might have placed a call from the Unreal to the Real.