“Get on that road. Follow those men. Go.”
He craned his neck to look again at the rolling road and found it thinly populated. Owen revealed his surprise. Men were beginning to appear from the southwest, singly and in small groups, riding past him toward some unknown destination to the east. They did not look at him or the swaying woman as they went by, but instead contented themselves with studying their shoes or the haircuts of the men in front. They traveled like zombies.
“What’s wrong with those guys?” Owen came around again to question the woman, but found that she had deserted him and was staggering up the path to her door. He held his breath until she made it. The door slammed.
Owen hesitated with indecision and then realized he just couldn’t stand there all day. He joined the other men on the rolling road, swinging onto it awkwardly and very nearly losing his balance.
That trick certainly wasn’t familiar. Owen braced his feet apart to keep his balance and noted with a small envy that the other riders were having no trouble. Maybe he could do better tomorrow. Unless he skipped out to go fishing tomorrow.
Owen looked away from the city, staring across the road at the open countryside in hopes of finding a stream or even a promising gravel pit. Little more than a vast, uninhabited prairie met his searching eye. In the distance, already fading behind him, he discovered a small stand of timber but there were no birds or grazing animals to suggest water there.
Perhaps twenty minutes later the moving road carried him past a square mile of broken monuments and tumbled tombstones, but he wasn’t interested in finding a fishing hole in an ancient cemetery. The prairie remained vacant. It revealed no farmhouses or cattle or people. The road carried him eastward around the rim of the city as the sun climbed higher into the sky.
There were no individual houses along the road, as Owen discovered after a while. He saw nothing but an unbroken row of buildings monotonously stacked side by side, their walls touching or clinging to each other. Men came out of countless doorways, came from hundreds of apartments or rooms or even warrens along the way to join the other hundreds already on the road. They did not speak, did not gang together to gossip about this or that. The men simply stood in one place, waiting stolidly.
Owen thought that was pretty stupid. He walked across the road and stared into the face of a rider.
“What’s the name of this here town, sport?”
The fellow returned his stare for a fraction of a second and then dropped his gaze, pretending to study his feet.
Owen bent down, craned his neck and peered up into the man’s face. “D’ya think the Senators will ever win a pennant?”
The man turned around and rode backward to avoid him.
Owen said aloud that was a hell of a thing for a grown man to do, and lost interest in the clod. On an impulse, and in an attempt to create a diversion, he trotted here and there along the road, staring impudently into faces, saying nonsensical things to provoke a reply, deliberately sliding between a pair who appeared to be traveling together, stepping on toes and jabbing with his elbows.
He was ignored. His co-riders would not respond in any way nor even acknowledge his presence except to turn away when he thrust his face into theirs. Owen told them loudly they might as well be a pack of zombies.
Still curious, he decided to examine the mechanism of the road. Moving carefully to the edge of the rolling surface, he dropped to his knees and searched for a crack in the construction materials, seeking a space between the road itself and whatever bed it rested on. There was none. Owen thought that failed to make sense. There had to be a separation between the two bodies. If the road was suspended on jets of air there ought to be little wheels of some kind to implant forward movement, or so it seemed to his unmechanistic mind. And of course there should be a nameplate or something giving Heinlein credit—or revealing his protective patent number.
Owen was sitting there, puzzling it, when somebody tapped his shoulder. A side glance revealed a pair of feminine legs clad in pink coveralls.
She was back.
II
Owen realized his mistake when he jumped up and said, ‘‘Hi, Mother! Did you bring the jug?”
This woman was dressed in the same fashion, the same garment, but most decidedly she was not the same female he had last seen staggering up the path. This new one was a bit taller, a trifle less mature about the bust and hips, and easily ten years younger. Her hair was sandy blonde and she had a minute brown spot on the tip of her nose.
She asked, reasonably enough, “What were you doing down there?”
“Looking for the little wheels.”
“What little wheels?”
“The little wheels this road runs on.”
“Did you find them?”
“No.”
“Do you feel all right? Are you well?”
“Of course I am. Want to dance?”
“Is your equilibrium satisfactory?”
“Why do you people keep asking that?” Owen retorted with some heat. “There’s nothing wrong with me—except that I don’t remember last night. Or yesterday.”
The young woman peered at him with speculation.
“What is a jug?”
“Booze.”
“What is booze?”
“Stuff that comes in a jug. You drink it.”
“Why?”
Owen said, “Oh, fudge! Go ask your sister.”
“I have no sister. Where did you originate?”
“I don’t know—back there, somewhere.” Owen waved a negligent hand to indicate some vague distance behind him and almost struck a man standing there. He hadn’t been aware that anyone else was so near. The man blinked at his passing hand but did nothing else.
To the waiting woman, Owen said dryly, ‘‘Here, watch this.” And he deliberately thrust a finger against the man’s nose, pushing it off center. At the same time he emitted a throaty, “Beep!”
The man turned his back.
“See that?” Owen demanded of the woman. “No guts.”
“Why did you do that?” she wanted to know.
“For the hell of it.”
“Your behavior is certainly unusual,” the pink woman admitted. “I suspect you are incomplete. Are you sure you don’t remember your point of origin?”
“I wouldn’t go back there again if I did remember,” Owen said. “That dame was loaded but she wouldn’t share it.” He stared at the back of the man standing near them and suspected the fellow was listening. Nosy zombie. Owen grasped the young woman’s hand and pulled her to the middle of the street.
“Now we can talk,” he explained. “These guys give me the creeps.”
The woman was startled by his action.
“You touched me.”
Owen looked at her chest. “Want an encore?”
“No.” And then she did something which startled him. Reaching for the breast pocket in his coveralls she pushed her fingers down inside, rummaging around for something.
Owen looked down and discovered he was wearing dun-colored coveralls. His garment wasn’t nearly so well tailored as hers, and of course he didn’t fill it in the same manner. All the men on the street were dressed as he was.
“What are you looking for, lint?”
She did not answer but instead searched the other of the two identical pockets in his garment. Both were empty. Pulling the collar away from his neck she ran her fingers around the neckband without finding anything, and then frisked him by moving her hands down each sleeve of the coveralls.
A small oblong bar of stainless steel was fastened inside one sleeve, above the wrist. The woman removed it with an exclamation of annoyance and pinned the bar in its proper place, under the flap of one pocket. She then placed the flat of her thumb against the bar and gently pressed it to his chest.
For the sheer fun of it, Owen did the same to her. The young woman was taken aback by the gesture but stood firm when she realized what he was doing. An identical bar of stainless
steel was pinned beneath a pink flap, riding high on her breast. It gave softly as Owen pushed.
A sensation was transmitted to his thumb, a peculiar sensation he did not immediately recognize. He pushed again. His thumb felt or read numbers, and then he knew he was reading a message imprinted on the bar. The thumb transmitted a legend:
LH-702260-b02-136
“That is enough,” she told him, and removed his hand from her body.
Fascinated, Owen put a thumb to his own pocket bar.
Recon /H-478318-30?
“Hey,” he cried, “dig those crazy bug numbers! What’s that question mark for?”
“Your original age is uncertain.”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
The pink and blonde doll zeroed in on that. “How do you know?”
Owen blinked, parted his lips to attempt a rational explanation, and then paused, hung on a dilemma. He didn’t know how he knew. “Well, I just am, that’s all.” His thumb lingered over the identification bar a second time. “What does Recon/H mean?”
She ignored the question. “Were you given instructions?”
“I was told to follow these creeps to work.”
“Nothing else?” The doll again betrayed annoyance. “Weren’t you told to return, afterward? Don’t you recall your point of origin? What was the number on the door? Do you remember the woman there?”
Owen shuddered. “I remember she was loaded.”
“Loaded? She was weighted down?”
“She was loaded with booze. You know, looped.”
“I don't know. What is looped? Where did she obtain the booze?”
“How should I know?” Owen demanded with irritation. “Maybe she had a still in there.”
“A still what?”
“Honey, you’re a dull cat. Don’t you know anything? How’d you ever get to be straw boss around here without knowing anything? You pink babes are running this crazy place, aren’t you?” He examined the cute little brown spot on the tip of her nose. “Where did I come from, anyway? How’d I get into this zombie business?”
“There is something terribly wrong here.”
“You can say that again.”
“But why should I repeat it?”
“Oh, go fly a kite. I know, I know, what is a kite?” Owen shook his head with bewilderment. “No organization all the way down the line. Let’s start over.” And so reached for the bar on her breast.
She stepped back. “Stop that. Do you remember your name?”
“Owen Hall.”
“And you are twenty-eight?”
“Yes.”
“When did you cease being twenty-eight?”
Owen said, “When the—” and came up short, astonished at her question and his own attempt at an answer.
He had almost answered. When the—what? Owen poked about the huge and nearly empty cavern which substituted for a memory. Something was moving in there.
He focused on the object. An automobile. The was a vague image and wondered what it had to do with him.
“Do you remember anything prior to that door?”
“No. She just shoved me through.”
“You don’t recall the location? The number?”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea.”
“But where will you spend the night?”
That gave him pause. “I don’t know. I hadn’t even thought about it. Any park benches around here?”
“What is a park bench?”
“That’s what I thought,” he said gloomily. “Honey, whatever happened to the Indiana I lived in?”
“Is Indiana a town? I don’t know that name. But I think you should come to my place tonight. You simply can’t go roaming around.”
Owen’s jaw dropped. “Do you mean that?”
“Certainly. You have to sleep somewhere indoors.”
He stole a glance at the nearby men. “Won’t people talk?”
“Talk about what?”
“This sure as hell ain’t Indiana.”
The blonde charmer gave him a small metallic plate about the size of a calling card. Owen moved his thumb over it, inwardly pleased at his new-found skill. The plate repeated the legend he had already read on her bar, while immediately below that identification was another number he supposed to be a house number, or at least a door number to one of the warrens along the road. Owen allowed his thumb to tarry over the plate and his imagination to play in the blonde hair. It was difficult to accept.
“You want me to spend the night with you?”
“I certainly do. I want to look into you; there is more than a suspicion that you are incomplete. Your present behavior isn’t normal, you know. It needs correcting.”
“So what’s in it for me?”
“The works,” she replied enigmatically. “Obey your previous instructions and then obey mine. When you are dismissed from your job report to this address.” And she left him as abruptly as she had come.
Owen watched her swing off the road in expert fashion. He even turned around to watch her exciting figure until it vanished in the distance behind him. Owen pulled himself from an erotic dream to find himself looking into the blank face of a blank man standing several feet away.
“You poor sap! The trouble with you is, you’re all there. Know what I mean?”
III
The rolling road eventually delivered its human cargo to some large building Owen took to be a factory, or possibly a warehouse. There were no signs to indicate the nature of the place. For once he sorely missed the ubiquitous billboard. The men ahead of Owen were leaving the road and entering the building in their listless fashion, behaving like so many stereotypes on their way to another boring day at the office. Owen followed them, knowing curiosity. A great doorway engulfed him.
A factory, Owen decided. In that first quick glance around, he saw what appeared to be hundreds of machines of totally alien design, geared to produce something equally alien. There were no scraps of anything on the floor to lend a hint of the product, no stockpiles of raw material waiting to be fashioned. The incoming men pushed past him, scattering through the building and each choosing a machine with practiced familiarity.
Still led by curiosity, Owen walked perhaps a hundred feet along the most convenient aisle and stopped again. After a moment he bellowed aloud.
“Hey! What the hell is going on here? Anybody home?” The far reaches of the building echoed his shout.
The soulless factory workers did not pause in their tasks, did not look up or even peek around at him, did not cover their ears as his hoarse bellow beat around the great building. Owen considered yelling fire!
The yell was unnecessary; he caught a sudden flash of pink in the distance and concentrated on that. Someone had heard him. Another one of those pink women came along the aisle on the run, panting from the unusual exertion.
“Who did that?”
“Who did what?”
“What is the matter here! Why did you raise your voice?”
Owen inspected her. This newest specimen was a distinct disappointment and he didn’t try to conceal that fact. She was a much older woman than any he had seen thus far: gray haired, gray eyed, gray skinned, singularly straight up and down, and utterly without a sense of humor.
“We don’t raise our voices in here, man.” Her enunciation of man contained a built-in gibe.
“Grandma, except for you and me, nobody has voices in here,” he retorted.
That brought a titanic frown to the gray forehead. She opened her palm as if to slap him but changed her mind as the hand was traveling toward him. Instead, she quickly flipped open his pocket flap and jabbed an angry thumb down on his identification bar. The gray lips curled.
“I might have known it. A brand new one. Didn’t they teach you manners?”
“What are manners?” Owen asked with secret delight.
Grandmother managed a double take. She snapped at Owen. “Who was your fabricator?”
“Do you mean that crazy d
oll who kicked me out of the house? She didn’t introduce herself. Hitting the jug, you know. One of those women who booze up and then want to fight.” Owen clucked with disapprobation. “But don’t worry, Granny, I've got another date for tonight.”
“I should hope so,” the gray lady retorted. “Now behave yourself and come with me.”
Owen followed the woman to an unmanned machine. In four minutes time she introduced him to the production line, and it was the most confounding thing he’s ever seen.
The machine itself was a monstrous affair the size of an overland truck. Almost all of its working parts were concealed from view behind a casing, hiding the wheels and gears from curious eyes but at the same time preventing him or those mindless operators from sticking their fingers into the works. The nearby face of the machine contained a window perhaps two square feet in area, with a short stainless steel bar above the window and a row of push buttons beneath. The bar was about five inches wide and two inches high, of concave design, and set into the machine wall at about the height of a man’s head.
Owen discovered it was intended to receive a man’s forehead.
Following the gray dame’s explicit instructions he bellied up to the machine, placed his forehead against the bar and visualized a slice of bacon.
He just stood there and thought about a slice of bacon. When he had formed a complete image in his mind, the full, rounded picture of a succulent strip of bacon fairly oozing with vitamins and goodness, he pushed the first button as he had been told to do and the machine began operating. A light went on behind the window.
A strip of bacon—the one he had visualized—dropped from somewhere overhead onto a paper tray.
Owen stepped back to stare at it. “Well, how about that!”
“Continue!” the gray grandmotherly type snapped in his ear. “Yon haven’t completed the ration. Follow my instructions.”
“Say, that’s a damned good trick. How’d I do it?”
“It is reconstituted pork. Complete the ration.”
Again he bellied up to the machine, placed his head against the think-bar, pressed the button and produced a second slice of bacon. It dropped down to rest on the tray alongside the first slice. Owen kept at it until he had five slices in all.
Time Exposures Page 22
