“Touch-up,” piped the little man. “The actor in the third floor front has a nail in his right heel. He came in late Tuesday night and cut the wood here. I have to get it ready for Wednesday.”
“This is Wednesday,” Harry pointed out.
“Of course. Always has been. Always will be.”
Harry let that pass, started on down the stairs. He had achieved his amazing bovinity by making a practice of ignoring things he could not understand. But one thing bothered him—
“Did you say that feller in the third floor front was an actor?”
“Yes. They’re all actors, you know.”
“You’re nuts, friend,” said Harry bluntly. “That guy works on the docks.”
“Oh yes—that’s his part. That’s what he acts.”
“No kiddin’. An’ what does he do when he isn’t acting?”
“But he—Well, that’s all he does do! That’s all any of the actors do!”
“Gee— I thought he looked like a reg’lar guy, too,” said Harry. “An actor? ’Magine!”
“Excuse me,” said the little man, “but I’ve got to get back to work. We mustn’t let anything get by us, you know. They’ll be through Tuesday before long, and everything must be ready for them.”
Harry thought: this guy’s crazy nuts. He smiled uncertainly and went down to the landing below. When he looked back the man was cutting skillfully into the stair, making a neat little nail scratch. Harry shook his head. This was a screwy morning. He’d be glad to get back to the shop. There was a ’39 sedan down there with a busted rear spring. Once he got his mind on that he could forget this nonsense. That’s all that matters to a man in a rut. Work, eat, sleep, pay day. Why even try to think anything else out?
The street was a riot of activity, but then it always was. But not quite this way. There were automobiles and trucks and buses around, aplenty, but none of them were moving. And none of them were quite complete. This was Harry’s own field; if there was anything he didn’t know about motor vehicles, it wasn’t very important. And through that medium he began to get the general idea of what was going on.
Swarms of little men who might have been twins of the one he had spoken to were crowding around the cars, the sidewalks, the stores and buildings. All were working like mad with every tool imaginable. Some were touching up the finish of the cars with fine wire brushes, laying on networks of microscopic cracks and scratches. Some, with ball peens and mallets, were denting fenders skillfully, bending bumpers in an artful crash pattern, spider-webbing safety-glass windshields. Others were aging top dressing with high-pressure, needlepoint sandblasters. Still others were pumping dust into upholstery, sandpapering the dashboard finish around light switches, throttles, chokes, to give a finger-worn appearance. Harry stood aside as a half dozen of the workers scampered down the street bearing a fender which they riveted to a 1930 coupé. It was freshly bloodstained.
Once awakened to this highly unusual activity, Harry stopped, slightly open-mouthed, to watch what else was going on. He saw the same process being industriously accomplished with the houses and stores. Dirt was being laid on plate-glass windows over a coat of clear sizing. Woodwork was being cleverly scored and the paint peeled to make it look correctly weather-beaten, and dozens of leather-clad laborers were on their hands and knees, poking dust and dirt into the cracks between the paving blocks. A line of them went down the sidewalk, busily chewing gum and spitting it out; they were followed by another crew who carefully placed the wads according to diagrams they carried, and stamped them flat.
Harry set his teeth and muscled his rocking brain into something like its normal position. “I ain’t never seen a day like this or crazy people like this,” he said, “but I ain’t gonna let it be any of my affair. I got my job to go to.” And trying vainly to ignore the hundreds of little, hard-working figures, he went grimly on down the street.
When he got to the garage he found no one there but more swarms of stereotyped little people climbing over the place, dulling the paint work, cracking the cement flooring, doing their hurried, efficient little tasks of aging. He noticed, only because he was so familiar with the garage, that they were actually making the marks that had been there as long as he had known the place. “Hell with it,” he gritted, anxious to submerge himself into his own world of wrenches and grease guns. “I got my job; this is none o’ my affair.”
He looked about him, wondering if he should clean these interlopers out of the garage. Naw—not his affair, He was hired to repair cars, not to police the joint. Long as they kept away from him—and, of course, animal caution told him that he was far, far outnumbered. The absence of the boss and the other mechanics was no surprise to Harry; he always opened the place.
He climbed out of his street clothes and into coveralls, picked up a tool case and walked over to the sedan, which he had left up on the hydraulic rack yester—that is, Monday night. And that is when Harry Wright lost his temper. After all, the car was his job, and he didn’t like having anyone else mess with a job he had started. So when he saw his job—his ’39 sedan—resting steadily on its wheels over the rack, which was down under the floor, and when he saw that the rear spring was repaired, he began to burn. He dived under the car and ran deft fingers over the rear wheel suspensions. In spite of his anger at this unprecedented occurrence, he had to admit to himself that the job had been done well. “Might have done it myself,” he muttered.
A soft clank and a gentle movement caught his attention. With a roar he reached out and grabbed the leg of one of the ubiquitous little men, wriggled out from under the car, caught his culprit by his leather collar, and dangled him at arm’s length.
“What are you doing to my job?” Harry bellowed.
The little man tucked his chin into the front of his shirt to give his windpipe a chance, and said, “Why, I was just finishing up that spring job.”
“Oh. So you were just finishing up on that spring job,” Harry whispered, choked with rage. Then, at the top of his voice, “Who told you to touch that car?”
“Who told me? What do you— Well, it just had to be done, that’s all. You’ll have to let me go. I must tighten up those two bolts and lay some dust on the whole thing.”
“You must what? You get within six feet o’ that car and I’ll twist your head offn your neck with a Stillson!”
“But— It has to be done!”
“You won’t do it! Why, I oughta—”
“Please let me go! If I don’t leave that car the way it was Tuesday night—”
“When was Tuesday night?”
“The last act, of course. Let me go, or I’ll call the district supervisor!”
“Call the devil himself. I’m going to spread you on the sidewalk outside; and heaven help you if I catch you near here again!”
The little man’s jaw set, his eyes narrowed, and he whipped his feet upward. They crashed into Wright’s jaw; Harry dropped him and staggered back. The little man began squealing, “Supervisor! Supervisor! Emergency!”
Harry growled and started after him; but suddenly, in the air between him and the midget workman, a long white hand appeared. The empty air was swept back, showing an aperture from the garage to blank, blind nothingness. Out of it stepped a tall man in a single loose-fitting garment literally studded with pockets. The opening closed behind the man.
Harry cowered before him. Never in his life had he seen such noble, powerful features, such strength of purpose, such broad shoulders, such a deep chest. The man stood with the backs of his hands on his hips, staring at Harry as if he were something somebody forgot to sweep up.
“That’s him,” said the little man shrilly. “He is trying to stop me from doing the work!”
“Who are you?” asked the beautiful man, down his nose.
“I’m the m-mechanic on this j-j— Who wants to know?”
“Iridel, supervisor of the district of Futura, wants to know.”
“Where in hell did you come from?”
&
nbsp; “I did not come from hell. I came from Thursday.”
Harry held his head. “What is all this?” he wailed. “Why is today Wednesday? Who are all these crazy little guys? What happened to Tuesday?”
Iridel made a slight motion with his finger, and the little man scurried back under the car. Harry was frenzied to hear the wrench busily tightening bolts. He half started to dive under after the little fellow, but Iridel said, “Stop!” and when Iridel said, “Stop!” Harry stopped.
“This,” said Iridel calmly, “is an amazing occurrence.” He regarded Harry with unemotional curiosity. “An actor on stage before the sets are finished. Extraordinary.”
“What stage?” asked Harry. “What are you doing here anyhow, and what’s the idea of all these little guys working around here?”
“You ask a great many questions, actor,” said Iridel. “I shall answer them, and then I shall have a few to ask you. These little men are stage hands— I am surprised that you didn’t realize that. They are setting the stage for Wednesday. Tuesday? That’s going on now.”
“Arrgh!” Harry snorted. “How can Tuesday be going on when today’s Wednesday?”
“Today isn’t Wednesday, actor.”
“Huh?”
“Today is Tuesday.”
Harry scratched his head. “Met a feller on the steps this mornin’—one of these here stage hands of yours. He said this was Wednesday.”
“It is Wednesday. Today is Tuesday. Tuesday is today. ‘Today’ is simply the name for the stage set which happens to be in use. ‘Yesterday’ means the set that has just been used; ‘Tomorrow’ is the set that will be used after the actors have finished with ‘today.’ This is Wednesday. Yesterday was Monday; today is Tuesday. See?”
Harry said, “No.”
Iridel threw up his long hands. “My, you actors are stupid. Now listen carefully. This is Act Wednesday, Scene 6:22. That means that everything you see around you here is being readied for 6:22 a.m. on Wednesday. Wednesday isn’t a time; it’s a place. The actors are moving along toward it now. I see you still don’t get the idea. Let’s see . . . ah. Look at that clock. What does it say?”
Harry Wright looked at the big electric clock on the wall over the compressor. It was corrected hourly and highly accurate, and it said 6:22. Harry looked at it amazed. “Six tw— but my gosh, man, that’s what time I left the house. I walked here, an’ I been here ten minutes already!”
Iridel shook his head. “You’ve been here no time at all, because there is no time until the actors make their entrances.”
Harry sat down on a grease drum and wrinkled up his brains with the effort he was making. “You mean that this time proposition ain’t something that moves along all the time? Sorta—well, like a road. A road don’t go no place— You just go places along it. Is that it?”
“That’s the general idea. In fact, that’s a pretty good example. Suppose we say that it’s a road; a highway built of paving blocks. Each block is a day; the actors move along it, and go through day after day. And our job here—mine and the little men—is to . . . well, pave that road. This is the clean-up gang here. They are fixing up the last little details, so that everything will be ready for the actors.”
Harry sat still, his mind creaking with the effects of this information. He felt as if he had been hit with a lead pipe, and the shock of it was being drawn out infinitely. This was the craziest-sounding thing he had ever run into. For no reason at all he remembered a talk he had had once with a drunken aviation mechanic who had tried to explain to him how the air flowing over an airplane’s wings makes the machine go up in the air. He hadn’t understood a word of the man’s discourse, which was all about eddies and chords and cambers and foils, dihedrals and the Bernoulli effect. That didn’t make any difference; the things flew whether he understood how or not; he knew that because he had seen them. This guy Iridel’s lecture was the same sort of thing. If there was nothing in all he said, how come all these little guys were working around here? Why wasn’t the clock telling time? Where was Tuesday?
He thought he’d get that straight for good and all. “Just where is Tuesday?” he asked.
“Over there,” said Iridel, and pointed. Harry recoiled and fell off the drum; for when the man extended his hand, it disappeared!
Harry got up off the floor and said tautly, “Do that again.”
“What? Oh— Point toward Tuesday? Certainly.” And he pointed. His hand appeared again when he withdrew it.
Harry said, “My gosh!” and sat down again on the drum, sweating and staring at the supervisor of the district of Futura. “You point, an’ your hand—ain’t,” he breathed. “What direction is that?”
“It is a direction like any other direction,” said Iridel. “You know yourself there are four directions—forward, sideward, upward, and”—he pointed again, and again his hand vanished—“that way!”
“They never tole me that in school,” said Harry. “Course, I was just a kid then, but—”
Iridel laughed. “It is the fourth dimension—it is duration. The actors move through length, breadth, and height, anywhere they choose to within the set. But there is another movement—one they can’t control—and that is duration.”
“How soon will they come . . . eh . . . here?” asked Harry, waving an arm. Iridel dipped into one of his numberless pockets and pulled out a watch. “lt is now eight thirty-seven Tuesday morning,” he said. “They’ll be here as soon as they finish the act, and the scenes in Wednesday that have already been prepared.”
Harry thought again for a moment, while Iridel waited patiently, smiling a little. Then he looked up at the supervisor and asked, “Hey—this ‘actor’ business—what’s that all about?”
“Oh—that. Well, it’s a play, that’s all. Just like any play—put on for the amusement of an audience.”
“I was to a play once,” said Harry. “Who’s the audience?”
Iridel stopped smiling. “Certain— Ones who may be amused,” he said. “And now I’m going to ask you some questions. How did you get here?”
“Walked.”
“You walked from Monday night to Wednesday morning?”
“Naw— From the house to here.”
“Ah— But how did you get to Wednesday, six twenty-two?”
“Well I— Damfino. I just woke up an’ came to work as usual.”
“This is an extraordinary occurrence,” said Iridel, shaking his head in puzzlement. “You’ll have to see the producer.”
“Producer? Who’s he?”
“You’ll find out. In the meantime, come along with me. I can’t leave you here; you’re too close to the play. I have to make my rounds anyway.”
Iridel walked toward the door. Harry was tempted to stay and find himself some more work to do, but when Iridel glanced back at him and motioned him out, Harry followed. It was suddenly impossible to do anything else.
Just as he caught up with the supervisor, a little worker ran up, whipping off his cap.
“Iridel, sir,” he piped, “the weather makers put .006 of one percent too little moisture in the air on this set. There’s three sevenths of an ounce too little gasoline in the storage tanks under here.”
“How much is in the tanks?”
“Four thousand two hundred and seventy-three gallons, three pints, seven and twenty-one thirty-fourths ounces.”
Iridel grunted. “Let it go this time. That was very sloppy work. Someone’s going to get transferred to Limbo for this.”
“Very good, sir,” said the little man. “Long as you know we’re not responsible.” He put on his cap, spun around three times and rushed off.
“Lucky for the weather makers that the amount of gas in that tank doesn’t come into Wednesday’s script,” said Iridel. “If anything interferes with the continuity of the play, there’s the devil to pay. Actors haven’t sense enough to cover up, either. They are liable to start whole series of miscues because of a little thing like that. The play might flop and the
n we’d all be out of work.”
“Oh,” Harry oh-ed. “Hey, Iridel—what’s the idea of that patchy-looking place over there?”
Iridel followed his eyes. Harry was looking at a corner lot. It was tree-lined and overgrown with weeds and small saplings. The vegetation was true to form around the edges of the lot, and around the path that ran diagonally through it; but the spaces in between were a plain surface. Not a leaf nor a blade of grass grew there; it was naked-looking, blank, and absolutely without any color whatever.
“Oh, that,” answered Iridel. “There are only two characters in Act Wednesday who will use that path. Therefore it is as grown-over as it should be. The rest of the lot doesn’t enter into the play, so we don’t have to do anything with it.”
“But— Suppose someone wandered off the path on Wednesday,” Harry offered.
“He’d be due for a surprise, I guess. But it could hardly happen. Special prompters are always detailed to spots like that, to keep the actors from going astray or missing any cues.”
“Who are they—the prompters, I mean?”
“Prompters? G.A.’s—Guardian Angels. That’s what the script writers call them.”
“I heard o’ them,” said Harry.
“Yes, they have their work cut out for them,” said the supervisor. “Actors are always forgetting their lines when they shouldn’t, or remembering them when the script calls for a lapse. Well, it looks pretty good here. Let’s have a look at Friday.”
“Friday? You mean to tell me you’re working on Friday already?”
“Of course! Why, we work years in advance! How on earth do you think we could get our trees grown otherwise? Here—step in!” Iridel put out his hand, seized empty air, drew it aside to show the kind of absolute nothingness he had first appeared from, and waved Harry on.
“Y-you want me to go in there?” asked Harry diffidently.
“Certainly. Hurry, now!”
Harry looked at the section of void with a rather weak-kneed look, but could not withstand the supervisor’s strange compulsion. He stepped through.
And it wasn’t so bad. There were no whirling lights, no sensations of falling, no falling unconscious. It was just like stepping into another room—which is what had happened. He found himself in a great round chamber, whose roundness was touched a bit with the indistinct. That is, it had curved walls and a domed roof, but there was something else about it. It seemed to stretch off in that direction toward which Iridel had so astonishingly pointed. The walls were lined with an amazing array of control machinery—switches and ground-glass screens, indicators and dials, knurled knobs, and levers. Moving deftly before them was a crew of men, each looking exactly like Iridel except that their garments had no pockets. Harry stood wide-eyed, hypnotized by the enormous complexity of the controls and the ease with which the men worked among them. Iridel touched his shoulder. “Come with me,” he said. “The producer is in now; we’ll find out what is to be done with you.”
Harry Turtledove Page 2
