“That is sufficient. Now wrap it.”
Punching the second button with a feeling of secret exhilaration, Owen watched through the window as a sheet of transparent wrapping paper spewed up from below, wrapped itself around the rasher of bacon with an assist from a pair of mechanical fingers and tidied up the package for somebody’s breakfast.
“Dispatch it.”
He punched the third button and the package was whisked out of sight. An empty tray dropped into place and the machine waited for the young creator’s next visualization.
“Neat—very neat. I didn’t even say shazam!”
“Stop that noise. Talking isn't permitted here. Continue working until the shift has ended.”
“You mean this is all I have to do?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Well, I guess so,” he said.
“Then get at it. And keep your mouth shut.” She watched over his shoulder for the next several minutes, making certain he did a competent job.
Owen thought bacon, made bacon, wrapped bacon and sent bacon on its way to some mysterious place, five slices to the package.
All of his bacon was of the finest quality, prime meat, because it suddenly occurred to him that one of those packages might be his breakfast in the morning, and he would surely be hungry if the charming pink and blonde creature lived up to her enigmatic promise.
After a while the gray haired supervisor seemed satisfied with his output and left him, disappearing into the vast distance from which she had come. The production of bacon went on for nearly an hour.
And then Owen made a necktie.
It wasn’t a very good necktie. The colors were poor and the pattern awry, but it was his very first necktie and he was proud of it. He wondered if perhaps he could create a fad for neckties, something to remove the dun monotony of the coveralls. He made several neckties, each an improvement on the one before, wrapping each one in an individual gift package and sending them on their way.
Next he tried a loaf of bread but it was a dismal failure and had to be scrubbed—his visualization of the interior had been faulty. A handful of cigars came out better.
They looked so good he wished he could reach through the window and help himself. Then it occurred to him that a fine monkey wrench might please somebody, so he visualized that, wrapped it and sent it along to wherever the things were going.
Other tools followed, sometimes one to a package and sometimes several just for variety: screwdrivers, pliers, ball peen hammers, chisels, awls, saws, squares, files, everything a journeyman carpenter would want in his toolbox. The quality and abundance of his tools provoked a mild wonder. They were so well made, so meticulous in detail, so workmanlike. Perhaps he had been a carpenter before.
Before what?
Before he had ceased being twenty-eight. Before that fuzzy image of a moving automobile.
Owen stopped work to think about that.
Scrawny wisps of memory skittered about the barren places of his mind. Sometimes two or three wisps touched and thereafter clung together.
He had been sitting in an automobile. Sitting in the front seat. The automobile was moving very fast, almost too fast, hurtling along a road at breakneck speed. Perhaps he had been rushing to his carpenter’s job. Something happened next. Something very big happened.
Another shadowy image. The image crawled out of a worm hole at the bottom of his mind and crept forward to be examined. It touched another image. A large truck. There was a large truck on the same road and it was moving toward him. Toward his automobile.
Owen stepped back and stared up at his machine.
The machine was as big as a truck; when he used his imagination it was the size and shape of a large truck—that other truck which had appeared in front of his car.
There it was! He had been sitting in the front seat of his own automobile, hurrying along a road, and a truck had rushed at him from nowhere. Well, the truck might have been there all the time but he hadn’t been looking at it, hadn’t seen it. He remembered a toolbox resting on the seat beside him. Suddenly the box was open and tools were flying through the windshield. Some of them were even hitting him. His automobile stopped quite suddenly.
Owen was very certain, now, what happened to him.
The speeding car, the unexpected truck, the hurtling tools were too vivid, too substantial to be dismissed. That had happened to him.
Owen blinked at the unexpected mildness of that and wondered briefly why the experience hadn’t followed the book. There had been no sharp division, no definite period of transition between the tools striking him and that drunken woman thumping him on the back as she shoved him through a door. The one blow had followed the others without meaningful separation. No rest period.
Movement in the corner of his eye. Owen hastily returned to his machine when he caught a glimpse of the supervisor coming along the aisle.
Pink clothing was like a neon signboard in such drab surroundings. The gray woman paused for a sullen moment and looked over his shoulder while he dutifully manufactured packages of bacon; rich, tasty bacon.
When she continued on her way, Owen made a cucumber. He was fond of cucumbers.
IV
He was surprised at the shortness of the work day; it had union hours beat handily.
Owen guessed it wasn’t much beyond noon when the gray haired supervisor blew a piercing blast on a whistle and stopped the works. The shrill noise careened around the building. He was the only one to cover his ears. The lifeless creatures manning the machines trooped to the great door and departed, exhibiting neither surprise nor regret; they mounted the road, which was now rolling in the opposite direction, and rode away without emotion.
Owen followed them in like manner because the old gray eyes were watching him with frustration and suspicion. She seemed upset about something. Owen conquered a sudden impulse to turn around and waggle his fingers at her—she might see well enough to note where he held his thumb.
His return trip was uneventful. The old cemetery was dismissed with a casual glance because it no longer seemed important to him. He was preoccupied with a belated realization that no one at the factory, including himself, had made a trip to the drinking fountain or the men’s room all morning long. That was decidedly odd.
The little metal card in his pocket bore the pink blonde’s door number. Owen fished it out to read it again. He began watching doors. The numbers dwindled as the road carried him to the southwest. He found the proper dwelling after a while and swung off the road, looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching him.
They weren’t—they were busy seeking their doors.
Owen walked up the path and tried the door but it did not give under his hand. He put more strength into a second attempt but still it held fast. So he kicked the door open.
The apartment reminded him of the factory, but on a smaller scale of course. It consisted of one long room, having a number of opaque screens and other room dividers set here and there to break the vast, monotonous expanse of the whole. There were no pictures, no carpets, no useless dust-catchers. He located a lounging area, a dining area, a vaguely feminine place which would be the blonde’s bedroom (double bed), a cubbyhole alongside it which served as a bath and another, smaller cubbyhole which contained a single stainless steel cot and nothing more. Owen stared at the cot and shuddered.
The remainder of the apartment was a workshop, and here the suggestion of a factory was too broad to be ignored. The dominating structure in the room was the think and do machine—a scaled-down replica of that same machine he had used this morning to manufacture bacon. The only other discernable difference to this machine was that it contained a delivery door on one side, an opening exactly resembling an oven door. Owen pulled it open to peer inside. The oven was empty but for a smidgen of dust and an odor which caused him to wrinkle his nose and quickly close the door.
Three oblong boxes were stacked at the rear of the machine. Because he was nosy
, Owen lifted the lid of the topmost box and looked inside. He closed it fast.
A worn book caught his eye and he picked it up to riffle the pages. Owen guessed it to be a service manual. Several of the large inner pages folded out to resemble blueprints or schematic drawings or something. The text of the manual was written in a peculiar kind of English he failed to understand, but the illustrations were remarkably clear and comprehensible. They depicted men.
Owen slammed shut the book, suddenly ill at ease. He did not like to look at skeletons and at livid, man-like things with their skins off. It was indecent.
Owen found a jar of old coins tucked away in a corner of the workshop and was twisting off the lid when he heard a noise at the door. He put down the jar and went to investigate. The blonde had come home.
He said, “Nice little place you’ve got here.”
The blonde was staring at the shattered remains of her door. Her surprise on seeing him was equal to the dismay caused by the wreckage.
“What are you doing here?’’
“Unfair! Unfair! You invited me—now don’t try to wriggle out of it.”
“What happened to this door?”
“I kicked it open.”
“But why did you do that?”
“Because it was locked,” Owen said simply.
A sharp, penetrating frown. “Are you looped?”
“Not yet. I couldn’t find anything in the house.”
“Why did you leave your job?”
“The old woman—you know, Granny—stopped the works. She sent us home.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t ask. I’m not a company man.”
“Was there a breakdown?”
“I didn’t see any.”
“That is very unusual. Something must have gone wrong.”
“Too bad,” Owen said. “I liked the hours, too.”
She looked past him into the interior of the house. “What were you doing in there?”
“Casing the joint. It’s a square layout.”
“It isn’t square, it’s a trapezoid. Our buildings are planned.”
Owen shook his head. “Honey, do you have any idea what a dumb broad is? The slightest idea?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” He waved her forward. “You might as well hop over that kindling and come on in. You stand out there yakking all day, people will think you’re selling subscriptions or something.”
The blonde stepped over the wreckage of her door and entered the apartment in something of a daze. “I confess I don’t understand you at all. You are unlike any other man I have ever known. You are incomprehensible.”
“That makes two of us,” he retorted. “What did you do with Indiana?”
“I never had your Indiana. I don’t know what it is.”
“Indiana was the place I lived in, back there, back when. What time is it now— I mean, what year is it?”
“One Hundred Sixty-one.”
“One Hundred and Sixty-one what?”
“What do you mean by what?”
“There you are!” he shouted triumphantly. “What is A. D. or something like that.”
The blonde was bewildered. “What is A. D.?”
Owen muttered, “A rose is a rose is a rose.”
He seized her hand and pulled her into the workshop. As before, she seemed startled by his unfamiliar action but went along readily enough. Owen paused near the think and do machine and pointed dramatically to the stack of oblong crates stacked beside it.
“Poor old Yorick is stuffed in there, in that top box. Shame on you.”
There had not been sufficient time for the startled expression to leave her face. “Do you know him?” she asked incredulously.
“Never saw him before in my life. Either of my lives. Do you specialize in reconstituted orange juice?” Owen stepped close and peered into her eyes in what he hoped was an accusatory manner. “I've got your number, baby!”
“Of course you have. I gave it to you this morning.”
“Not that number!” Owen roared. “I mean, I know what’s going on here. In this house—this town. I know all about them zombies out there. They’re recon jobs!”
The pretty blonde stared at Owen for a long while as the shout died away and silence returned to the room. At last she said thoughtfully, “You are flawed.” Each word was given a careful enunciation to make it properly significant.
Owen shifted uncomfortably under her stare, looked away, took a backward step and searched for something to distract her attention. He felt like an ant under glass. The jar of old coins caught his eye and his imagination; he’d been about to examine them when the blonde came home. Now there was a handful of clues. Owen darted across the shop. He twisted off the lid and spilled the coins on a bench. Apparently she had tried to clean them.
“Come here—look at these things. Where did you get them?”
The blonde joined him at the bench, watching him carefully. “They turn up here and there, during excavations. The ancients used them in their religious ceremonies; they are called monies.”
“I know what they are,” he said shortly. “Look at the dates!”
Owen sorted the coins. There was a solitary penny, several dimes, a couple of quarters, a half dollar, and two other coins which were total strangers to his eye. The penny was dated 1948 and Owen grunted his satisfaction at the familiar date. Two of the dimes were of the Mercury type bearing the dates 1916 and 1945; the remainder were the later Roosevelt dimes and Owen inspected the date of each one with a concentrated interest. One dime was carefully put aside. The two quarters were of minimal interest because the dates were common. The half dollar was something else again and earned a careful scrutiny. Owen stared with disfavor at the man’s profile stamped on the coin and muttered an indistinct vilification; imagine that jackass winding up famous! It was put aside with the dime.
He hunched over the remaining, unfamiliar pieces.
“Look at these things,” he commanded the blonde. "Ten Shul. What is ten shul? What do you know about the AmerCan States? Does that mean what I think it means?”
“It is said that AmerCan was a most ancient land, supposedly the possession of a mythical deity. I know nothing more than that.” She studied his face, anticipating an expected ritual. “Do you know about it?”
“Never heard of the fool thing, but I can guess. Look here, they turned out these pieces in 2073 and 2109. Boy—talk about Buck Rogers stuff!” Owen dismissed the strange coins and returned his attention to the dime. He inspected it somberly, turned it over to read the mint mark and then rolled it in his fingers. It had the old feel of Indiana, the feel of home. After a moment he gave the dime to the girl.
“Read it.”
“Read what?” It was not what she was expecting.
“The date.”
“One nine six zero. Is that significant?”
“It sure as hell is, honey. 1960. That was minted just one year after I ... after the ... you know.” He groped for the proper expression to mark the event.
“After you ceased being twenty-eight?”
Owen nodded, knowing a melancholy mood. “It gives a guy a funny feeling at the bottom of his stomach. I mean, I didn’t get that far, but here it is in my hand. The date reads funny. It makes a guy think.”
She asked softly, “Do you want me to withdraw?”
“Withdraw? What for?”
“You might want to pray privately.”
Owen nearly hurled the dime across the room. “You don’t pray on it, dimwit, you spend it!”
“Spend? How do you spend it?”
“On beer—when you can find dime beer.”
“What is beer?”
“Booze,” he retorted.
The blonde brightened. “I know that term now. I have discovered that Booze was the name of a prehistoric god who manufactured alcoholic beverages for his people. The ancients drank it during their ceremonial orgies.”
“We sure as he
ll did, honey, with or without the orgies. And so did that crazy dame who had me last night. Where did she get the stuff?”
The young woman revealed her frustration. “I don’t know that. I have not been able to locate your fabricator; you haven’t been very helpful, you know. But I am certain that her unfortunate experiments with the alcohol was responsible for your flawed condition. It never happened before. There is no such thing as a faulted worker. That simply can’t be permitted, of course.”
“Of course. So what do we do now? Fly kites?”
The blonde folded her arms. The hesitation in answering was noticeable. “I admit to a certain curiosity.”
“About what?”
“About you, Owen Hall. The flaw may have been deliberate.”
Owen studied the pink coveralls. A lively rubber ball of exhilaration snapped up and down his spine.
“Do you suppose that babe had something in mind?”
“I intend to find out.”
“How?”
She only smiled and looked at him.
“Goody,” Owen said after a moment. “I like surprises.”
V
Owen Hall woke up at some unknown hour of the night. He peered around in the darkness, seeking orientation, and then turned over in bed to gently prod the shoulder of the sleeping mechanic. The absolute hush of an untenanted night enfolded the apartment and the city beyond it. Owen knew without looking that the road was motionless and empty, and the park benches—if they existed—would be folded away. Perhaps even the moon had deserted the earth lest its light cause a stirring among nightbirds. The silence on the other side of the door was total.
The blonde moved under his prodding. “What’s the matter?” she asked drowsily.
“I’m hungry.”
“Go to sleep. It isn’t time to eat.”
“But I’m hungry now,” Owen insisted.
She pulled herself awake and sat up in bed, obviously annoyed. “Can’t you wait until morning?”
Time Exposures Page 23
