by Earl
Still moaning around, the farmer snaps on something in the corner and they comes images on a big glass screen. A guy’s face talks and then a orchestra appears and makes nice music.
“Television in the home!” chortled Doc triumphantly. “Even farmers—”
“Still owe two hundred on this!” bleats the farmer again. “Hockuna meet ma bills? Top Of that, strangers come and WPA me—”
“Come on. Doc,” I says, feeling sorry. “This feller has his own troubles. We’ll go to the city. Thanks much, pardner.” And we scoots.
“WHAT WE going to do when we git to the city?” I axes, out on the highway, thinking about it seriously for the first time. “If that farmer didn’t cotton to our explanation, who will in New York? City folks is powerful hard-boiled.”
“You leave that to me!” returns Doc confidently. “I’m not as dumb as you look, you know.”
Which satisfies me. A hour later a traveling salesman taken us to New York, driving no faster than 200 miles a hour on straight stretches. Right off the bat he begins springing the latest jokes, and I looks at Doc and Doc looks at me. We heard all them jokes a hundred years before, every consarn one!
The driver pays a dollar toll and we taken the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge acrost the Hudson River. On the other side we see two big boats docked, one twice as big as the other.
“First time in New York?” inquore the driver, in yore hot-potato accent which I gives up trying to reperduce any further on paper. “That’s the Columbia. The smaller one beside it is the Queen Mary Second.”
“Oh,” gasps Doc Meade. He looks ahead. “Where’s the Empire State Building?”
“Why, want to buy it?” grins the salesman, sourcastic, like they all is anyhow. “Can’t see it from here. It’s just behind the Everest Building, tallest in the world, two hundred fifty stories.”
“Uh!” gulps Doc. “Glory, how things change! Now in 193—ulk!”
That last is the kind of noise Doc makes when I squeeze his leg till my fingers meet. I figgered no use letting everybody think we’re loco. We look at the city. New York don’t look like the pitchers I seen of it, eggzackly, in 1939. It’s got a lot of extry junk, like a steel spider web, all over it.
“Elevated traffic spans!” says Doc, ecstaticlike. “And pedestrian-walks in the air. And look there, Breck, a regular sky-harbor for aircraft!”
I never seen so many airyplanes before, settling and rising from a big platform hooked onto a dozen big buildings.
“The wonder-city of the future—our future!” Doc was murmuring, like he does most of the time in an undertone. “It’s magnificent, glorious, breath-taking—” He run out of sech ajectives a few minutes later.
I dunno. It all looks kind of mixed up, yore 2039 New York. I bet you don’t know what yore doing half the time, with all them things going on to oncst. Now in 1939, things was all orderly and efficient. Back in them days, a body didn’t have to keep looking up in case one of them airyplanes flopped down onto yore head, or whatever.
And yore loco system of tiers. It’s plumb disgusting. The salesman left us off, and we find we’re on Tier 6. So we taken a elevator down and get out and find we’re still in the air, on Tier 5. We taken more elevators, till I calkalate we’re about at the center of earth by now. But it’s the ground level with trades and taxis skittering by like mad.
“Where to?” I axes Doc. “We don’t want to git too deep into this mess, or we’ll never git out again.”
“To the nearest policeman for directions—” Doc lights out for a traffic cop at a intersection. We like to got killed before we squoze through the cars to where he was.
“Can you direct us to the Midcity Trust and Bank Co.?” Doc wants to know. “Is it still at Seventh and 53rd?” The cop answers only after he gives us the once-over and grins at our hayseed riggings. “It was there this morning. Going to walk? Take the shortcut—Tier 3, P.W. 4, turn to your right.” He turns. “Hey, you Charlie McCarthy—you in the blue sedan—where do you think you’re going—” Traffic cops is all alike, today and in my time. Always perlite. And always giving you the wrong directions. After walking our legs nigh off, and risking our necks on those perdestrian-walks forty miles above earth, we find we’re further away than when we started. So we taken a taxi. That was Doc’s idea.
“Wait here,” commands Doc to the taxi driver when we stop in front of the right building. We. go in and the place is like a fairyland, much cooler than outside, and with fountains, shrubs, and pretty pictures all over. They is perfume and soft music in the air, much to my disgust. Sech things is only for dudes, not for a man from my vigorous times.
It turns out that Doc demands to see the president of the bank! After a hour argying with numerous and sundry hombres, with him shoving me back ten times when I would of cracked a few sassy heads together, Doc wins his point, but we still has to wait two hours more outside the prexy’s office.
I give a convulsive start suddenly, while we’re waiting. “Hey, Doc,” I reminds him, “that taxi man’s still outside. The bill must be higher than blazes by now. And us with no money!”
“Never you mind,” retorts Doc confidently, patting his bald head like he was complimenting hisself. “When we walk out of here, we can buy out the taxi and the company that owns it!” Which don’t make sense to me.
WE GO in the prexy’s office finally. Mr. Henshaw, the president of the bank, is a runt with a waxed mustache. “I’m a busy man,” he snaps. “Come to the point.”
“There’s an account in this bank, deposited in 1939 by one Dr. Amos Meade,” begins Doc. “The original amount was ten thousand dollars, in gold bonds. Certain legal attachments specified that it was to be left to accumulate, at 7% compound interest, for a hundred years, unless claimed by direct descendants of Dr. Meade, or Dr. Meade himself.”
“How do you know all that?” axes the president, glaring in amazement. “Who are you?”
Doc Meade drew himself up pompously, farmer clothes and all. “I’m Dr. Amos Meade!” he declares. “Through a method of suspended animation I, and my friend Breckenridge Wacker here, survived a hundred years. Since I was unmarried and have no direct descendants, the money reverts to me!”
“You . . . Dr. Meade . . . suspended animation!” gasps the prexy. “Preposterous! Ridiculous! Practical jokers, eh? Get out.” He looks us up and down like we’re a couple of vermin. “Crazy mad!” he finishes.
I taken a step forward to wipe the leer off his face, which I don’t cotton to, but Doc drags me back. “No rough-house, Breck. I’ll take care of this matter. Now look, Henshaw——”
Jest then the desk phone rings. Henshaw listens a while, and a peculiar look comes onto his face. Then he hangs up and smiled friendly—too dern friendly.
“Sit down, gentlemen!” he invites graciously. “I’ll take care of you in a moment. In a moment!”
We sit down. Doc is happy. “Just a little provision of mine, Breck,” he purs, proud of hisself, “to assure us of a tidy little sum to live on in this future age. That ten thousand dollars has grown to at least seven million eight hundred thousand dollars!”
WE LOOKS UP as the door opens and in busts a bank official and with him is a dozen men in uniform. Cops! “There they are!” points the official accusingly.
The police captain nodded. “They’re the same two described by the farmer, robbing him of clothes this morning, under threat of assault.” Henshaw then pipes up and tells his story, and the captain shaken his head. “Trying some new kind of racket, or else they’re phobiacs. Come along quietly, you two.”
“Wait!” shrieked Doc Meade as a cop lays a hand on his arm. “You’re making a mistake. I have proof that I am, who I say I am. Henshaw, lock-box 44-b-1888 contains my fingerprint records. All you have to do is match them and——”
“Oh, take the lunatic away!” snapped Henshaw.
The cops advance on us, and at this point my dander riz up something fierce. I decided to stop all this foolishness. I shoved
the cops back. “Listen here!” I roars. “We’re telling the truth. You has to believe we’re from 1939. I serves warning here and now that if—” Well, I’m a plumb peaceful man, but when one of the cops snuck up behind me and broke his stick over my head, I see red. I rammed my elbow back onto his jaw, knocking him out. Then I go for the other cops, determined to prove we air two peaceable and honest gents and not lunatics.
Then all to oncst I felt all my bones turn to jelly and I folded up on the floor like a empty sack. The captain was pointing a affair at me like a big-barreled six-gun that sparkled. Later I found out it was one of them shock-guns the cops is armed with, which sprays out electricity and paralyzes most of a man’s muscles.
They carry me out, and drag Doc Meade along. I’m still plumb mad, but helpless. All I remember distinctly is that taxi driver outside the bank, yelling for his fare, which the captain tells him to forget it. Then they is the ride in a barred paddy-wagon, with me fuming, and Doc Meade looking at me sad and dispirited. We air in some almighty Dutch.
And it is about this time we realize it ain’t so easy to come from a past age—and prove it. Like I told Doc later, supposing in our day someone had appeared and claimed to be from 1839, would we of believed him? Especially if he ran in a bank in farmer clothes and demanded eight million dollars! They is jest natchally a limit to things.
I SKIP OVER the lurid details of what went on at court. That dern paralysis finally left me, but I was stiff and sore. We was booked for petty larceny, disturbing the public peace, and resisting arrest. The judge said, “Sixty days!”
“Same old world,” says I to Doc, having been in 1939 jails for sechlike trivial doings before. Like they was the time—well, never mind.
“It’s all your fault,” says Doc bitterly. “With your caveman tactics. I wish I’d left you back in 1939. Now we’ll cool our heels in a jail for two months. What a disgraceful debut into this age!”
I was remorseful, but it was too late, and that was our first day in 2039. I ain’t got much to say about it now, but you people had ought to hang yore heads in shame. We gets throwed into jail first off, jest for telling the truth and sticking to it. That ain’t justice like we had in 1939.
The jail had me plumb perplexed. It was more like a big hotel, with no bars on the windows and all the comforts of home. Our rooms was big and airy and the food tolerably good, though the portions was small. They was a swimming pool, library, and you wore regular clothes, no striped outfit. They didn’t shave our heads, either, but we finally got our beards clean off and felt more human. The guards had no guns and treated all us prisoners perlitely. They was even movies in the evening. “Three-dimensional,” Doc called them. It was like seeing real things, instead of images.
Me and Doc learnt a lot about 2039 from the movies, which was mostly of a educational type. We see yore big atomic-power generators, stratosphere ships, and how you get gold and other metals out of sea water. Doc has fits as per usual, over them things, especially when they shows how sech diseases as tuberculosis, cancer, and syphilis has been practically wiped out.
“Breck, science has advanced a lot since our day!” says Doc,” rapturouslike. “All the things we dreamed of in 1939 have come true!”
“Aw, it ain’t so hot,” I snarls. “These times may have a few things over our times, but they ain’t no justice. For instance, what air you and me doing in jail? Now—”
“Why, this jail is an example alone!” pursues Doc. “You’ve noticed that the prisoners are not treated like culprits, but like men who have just made human errors. The whole atmosphere here is psychologically uplifting. The criminal warp is straightened out, by good treatment. The movies they see, giving an inspiring view of civilization, tend to make the prisoners see it as a wonderful world to live in if they only conform to its laws and letters. I’ll bet the majority of men who go out here lead decent lives from then on!”
Then he sighs. “Still, nice as it is, I don’t care to be here. It’s the ignominy of it.” He begins pacing up and down, restlessly. “They wouldn’t keep us here if they knew who we were. If I could once get among my own kind, among biologists, they’d believe me. I used to do research up at Medical Center—”
“Consarn it, let me get a word in edgeways,” says I. I looks around carefully, to see no one else can hear, and whispers, “I was jest going to tell you that I noticed something. They ain’t no barred gate to this jail. And no guards on the grounds, outside!”
“The honor system,” Doc explains. “Prisoners are shown that they aren’t under eagle-eyed surveillance. It tends to build up their self-respect and—”
“So what,” I seggests, “is to prevent us walking out, jest like that?”
“But, Breck—”
“You wants to git to Medical Center and prove who we air, don’t you? We been here three days, that’s enough. Come on, Doc, I got it all figgered out—”
HE LOOKS kind of dubious, but finally agrees. It was a easier jailbreak than the time I busted through the side wall of the Hoss Creek clinker. We jest strolled in the shadow of a wall till we come to the gate and kep on strolling. I heard a kind of click behind us but didn’t pay any attention. It was broad daylight and we mingled with the crowd on P.W. 5G, laughing up our sleeves.
“That was so easy I’m ashamed of myself,” I chuckles.
“Maybe it was too easy,” murmurs Doc.
When we come to the intersection where P.W. 5G runs into a lot of other walks going all whichaway, we hears a public newscast going full blast. The screen shows shots of armies marching and the commentator’s voice blares out.
“Unrest in Europe over troop movements. All the Big Powers, rearmed to the teeth, watch each other like cat and mouse. A war, if it came, would be more fearful and destructive than the All-Nations War of 20 years ago. War clouds hang over Europe—”
“I’ll be darned, are they still going at it over there?” I comments, plumb disgusted with them foreigners and their goings-on.
“And now the latest sports results,” says the announcer’s voice as we walk under the screen. “One moment, please,” he adds. “Flash! Two prisoners just escaped from the Midtown Detentarium. Dr. Amos Meade and Breckenridge Wacker, attention! The warden requests that you return. If not, you will be apprehended.”
And derned if that screen don’t suddenly flash out in a still, showing me and Doc as plain as the nose on yore face to all the people around. It was too easy, at that. They’re pretty slick, all right, with that photoelectric gadget at the gate that snaps you leaving and sounds the alarm.
Doc give a start, turned pale, and made a break to run like a wild rabbit. I grab his arm. “Stay put, you fool!” I whispers. “That’d give us away. Jest saunter along like we don’t know what it’s all about. Them’s bad pitchers of us anyhow.”
All’s well and good except that they is more to their tricks. A figger that has been standing quiet under the screen comes to life all at oncst and makes a beeline for us. I see it’s a robot, clanking and jingling like a cement mixer.
“Halt!” it grinds out, “in the name of the law!”
That give us away and all the people turn and stare at us, backing away, and three cops run out of their booths and converge on us. And danged if that robot thing don’t grab my arm, while I’m looking the situation over. Impulsively, I turns and cracks the robot in the head, but it don’t register, except to make my hand numb to the elbow.
“We’re caught!” moans Doc Meade, shivering and cowering.
“Like h—we air!” I cries, seeing red. “Look here,” I says to the robot, “unhand me or else!” The thing only looks at me like a dummy and squeezes my arm tighter.
Well, I goes into action and I ain’t seen the man, beast or robot yet could stand up agin’ my righteous anger. I wrenched that robot’s hand loose and taken his arm in’ my two hands and twisted it in a loop. I did the same to the other arm.
“Think yore as good as a man, hey?” I taunts. Then I grab him aroun
d the head and throwed him over my back, down onto the sidewalk. It was like ten tons of junk landing, and all kinds of wheels and springs bust outen his sides and roll around. All the people watching gasped and look at me like they don’t believe it.
I give it a extra kick in the side—I hate vermin and robots—grabbed Doc’s hand and we run down the nearest P. W. and get onto a elevator, six jumps ahead of the cops. I taken that elevator down myself, when the operator sassed back. I git out at Tier 2 to fool the cops, where cars is scooting by like comets.
“Medical Center!” pants Doc. “We must get there . . . only chance . . . ohhh . . . the police again—”
THEY was streaming out of the elevator, a dozen of them. It was a blind coulee, blast it, with no way to retreat. They wa’n’t no taxis on this tier, only private cars, so I dragged Doc to the parking lane. Some people is jest fixing to git into their car, but I shoulders them aside.
“Excuse us, pardner!” I yells perlitely as I yank Doc in. I’m in the driver’s seat but don’t see no driving gear except one stick like a gearshift.
“You don’t know how to work one of these things!” groans Doc, scrambling to git out.
I grabbed him back. “I watched that there salesman,” I says. “Hang on!”
I press the button at the top of that lever which starts the powerful engine. Then I push the stick forard and the car jumps forard, ramming the next parked car out of the way. I pull the stick to the left and the car goes that way, out into the slow lane.
“That’s all they is to driving one of these here contraptions,” I informs Doc confidently. “Whichever way you pull the stick, the car goes. And the farther you pull, the faster.”
To demonstrate, I shove the stick forard and the car jumps ahead like a bullet. I whisk into the fast lane and let her rip. We has slipped away from the cops, and at the next intersection, I turn right. For a minute I was plumb scared, feeling with my foot for a brake pedal that wa’n’t there. Then I recall the brakes come on automatic when you return the stick to neutral. Still, we went around that turn on lessen three wheels.
