Los Angeles

by Philip Wylie

  He was being given a suitable reception, he knew.

  Everything would soon be straightened out.

  The car—electric; a sort of bus—stopped. There was an ornat e doorway. Inside, in a marble-walled hall, an elevator portal. The cage took Glenn and two others, one, the doctor, up for a storey or so. The automatic doors opened. A blue-walled, blue-carpeted hall. A white arch and doors that opened by themselves when somebody made chimes ring, inside. Beyond, was a fair sized room, with blue upholstered furniture, white walls and a blue and white, wall-to-wall carpet, quite deep. Nothing excessively elegant but, in all, a neat and decent place compared to the part of the region he’d seen.

  There was a receptionist. When Glenn saw her, which was not instantly because she’d left her post, a glass-topped desk with a shaded lamp, to come toward the three, he quit looking at anything or anybody else.

  “Welcome to L.A.,” this girl or woman said.

  Lights in the reception room rose with a golden tint as she spoke.

  “Thank you,” he said. And he still stared.

  A brown-eyed girl with blond hair that fell below her shoulders. An almost completely see-through costume. A figure that was not quite full, save for the breasts, which were larger than her height and her rather boyish body indicated—lovely, aureoles as pink as a pomade he’s seen in France and bright, strawberry nipples. A lovely girl whose eyes were slanted like another’s, Bessie’s, but so brown, so direct, so intimate—not Bessie’s blue-blue and changing eyes.

  She moved quite near, hand out, and he took it and pulled a little. The mouth smiled and its pretty shape became another, but one not less attractive. He couldn’t quite get the feelings her voice gave him, not instantly, but in it there was a gentleness, a compassion, warmth, maybe passion, and something else, restrained, sad, maybe. She was stunning and he said so.

  “You are perfectly gorgeous! I’d like to kiss you!”

  She said, “You may kiss me. If you like. But not too much—too soon, Mr. Howard. I’m Leandra Smith. Mayor Baker’s special secretary and personal aide.” She turned away. “What?”

  “He has had two milligrams of Aphron, Miss Smith. Perhaps he should have something to counteract it?”

  The girl—perhaps she was twenty-five, Glenn thought, but her body was about eighteen—looked at him a moment and laughed. “I think not, Doctor. The Mayor won’t be ready till the commissioners and the others are all here. That’ll take twenty minutes. I think Mr. Howard and I will be … all right.”

  “I’ll stand by, then?”

  She nodded. He and the others left.

  Glenn was now aware that a vestige of his normal self was returning. He was ashamed of what had happened. He followed Miss Smith across the room and sat where she showed he should, by a smooth arm-wave. He found it was a divan and stared as she sat beside him, quite close. They studied each other in the again-dimming light and for a few breaths.

  “You liked me,” she finally said, deep in voice, gentle in its volume, pleased, he was sure.

  “I am totally confused,” he answered finally. “Yes. That was clear, embarrassingly so.”

  “Not at all! Quite gorgeously.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Los Angeles, Mr. Howard. But what you must realize is, that a very strange thing has happened to you—and so to us.”

  Glenn laughed quite jubilantly. “That, Miss Smith, will be your lifetime record for understatement!”

  “In some twenty minutes,” she said, after smiling with his mirth and nodding her swinging tresses to agree with him, “the Mayor and some city officials will meet you. I was asked, in the interval, to put myself at your disposal.” She saw his baffled look. “Exactly. You have been tortured and we are very apologetic about it. Afterward, you were drugged to speed your recovery. You had, for one thing, a fairly large dose of Aphron. It’s a sexual stimulant. That’s why—your erection on seeing me was—complementary, of course, if embarrassing to you. You’ll get over that sort of embarrassment, we hope. If your—erotic appetite is—well—overriding, we can make love, to tone it down for the while, or I can get you a counteractive shot, which will be equally effective.”

  Glenn, following but staggered, finally decided she meant what she said. Certainly his sensations en route to this place, and on arrival in this room were evidence of her honesty. He couldn’t understand her willing, even eager—if he judged her expression rightly—offer to be the agent of his tension-reduction. It was so open and so meant and yet, in any woman he’d known before, it couldn’t have been done that way, directly, and at once, unless the offer were motivated by some other purpose. He gazed at her and she smiled and he decided he didn’t understand anything.

  She seemed to have meant what she said and that meaning was not guileful but open and simple, as if she’d known he’d been given a hunger-drug and so, had presented him with a basket of fruit, with the finest and fanciest pastries ever baked, something superlative. She was waiting, he finally perceived, for an answer.

  “I’m ashamed to say that you, more than any drug, make any noble effort on my part seem silly. However, if you promise to make a later date, I think, for now, I can—well—manage.”

  She nodded with a different smile—admiration? It looked to be.

  “Fine. Later then. As a matter of fact, I’m to escort you, or vice versa, in old-fashioned terms, to the Mayor’s home for dinner, tonight. Very well. My next assignment, which is nothing like that first one—and that, indeed, wasn’t exactly assigned, but left to me—is very difficult.”

  “I hope not,” he said quickly.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “I don’t want to cause you any difficulty of any sort, Miss Smith.” That cleared her puzzled look.

  “Leandra. First names, here, are the rule.”

  “Glenn, then.”

  “Yes, Glenn. You see, I know a good deal about you.”

  “That’s hardly fair.”

  “I’ll explain how, later. It’s only—say—what you learn of people from reading.”

  “I suppose. Well? Suppose you try your ‘difficult’ task and give me a chance to make it easy?”

  “You’re very nice. But I’m scared, a little. It’s going to be a shock for you.”

  “In the last—whatever—hours or days—I’ve had plenty of shocks—”

  Her face was briefly torn by emotion. “That electronic chair! I know! I’ve heard!” She shuddered.

  He patted her shoulder. “It was a mistake. I survived. So let’s forget it.”

  She looked at him while she pinned her thoughts in place. “Well, look, Glenn. You think you were on a feeder road to Route 15 to Los Angeles and it was Friday, October 15, 1971. Correct?”

  “I know I was. Earlier today. Or else yesterday.”

  “But you fell asleep? Passed out? Someone hit you? Drugged you? Took you away in your car?”

  He listened thoughtfully. “I was in a rest area. Parked. Dictating. I dozed off, is all.”

  “But when you woke—there had been—changes?”

  “There sure had been! Looked as if I’d slept a half a century!”

  It was only a figure of speech and unconsciously derived, at that. He hadn’t yet clearly faced that look of lapsed time. But she was nodding, slowly, over and over. She said, “Yes. Nearly.”

  “What?” His voice cracked on that one word.

  “Now, take it easy, Glenn. That is the fact. I realize you haven’t thought of it or your—behavior, here—would have been—different.”

  “I certainly had not—thought—of that!” His head had fallen forward. He turned it without lifting it. “Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did it happen?”

  She rose and walked about the room as she went on—looking at him with expressions of sympathy from time to time. “That, we don’t know. Of course, our top scientists will be on it. Suspended animation? Perhaps. There was a bad sandstorm the night of October 15, 1971. It ma
y be your car was buried. At least, records indicate that was possible: three days of sand flying and that ‘rest area’ was under a dune. Then, later, the sand blew away to form other dunes across the road. We have traced that event, those events. Your car wasn’t where it had been ‘lost’—that’s what was assumed. Not in that area, it seems. Blew on? Hidden by a next dune? Blew back—all these years later?”

  “How many? Exactly?”

  “Exactly forty-six, to the day and hour, when you were discovered by the exterior patrol.”

  Glenn couldn’t accept any of it, really. But, he thought with a sort of wildness, he should pretend to believe it, provisionally. “I vanished? And reappeared, same spot, forty-six years later, alive, in good shape, in fact? Or fair shape. Then—”

  She sat beside him once more. “Then, we started to blunder.” She smiled uncomfortably and he grinned encouragement. “Your papers, driver’s license, I think you called it, the papers for that ancient car, your clothes, all made sense—if one accepted the idea that they were real. Hard to. On the other hand, the corporation—government, your word for that—has reason to be suspicious of—well—absolute strangers with phoney stories, who reach or approach LA from outside, from no known take-off point. People who won’t or don’t explain themselves—except—under tortu—” she broke off. “I can’t bear to think you went through that! And so far! It’s hideous.”

  “It’s over,” he answered calmly, and let his arm cover her assenting shoulders. “Go on, Leandra.”

  “I’ll try. There’s not much more I know to tell. You had a taperecorder.”

  “I sure did. And—?”

  “It’s being read. Will it matter? You seem anxious! Will it matter, whatever you dictated—forty-six years ago?”

  “No. Guess not.” He began to think perhaps she was telling the truth. Or what seemed to be the truth. Still—forty-six years! Suspended animation—how? Nuts! Something here needed explaining, still. But, his mind said, suppose that is the fact? Everything falls in place, then, right?

  Take that under reservation. Everything, then, would seem to fall in place—but what clarity would that lend? Even Rip Van Winkle, he thought, with characteristic mirth and irony, had only managed twenty or so years.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “Ever hear of Rip Van Winkle?”

  “I don’t believe I—” She was so serious, he felt.

  “Never mind. A joke. So?”

  “So—it’s what you’d have called ‘A.D.’ 2017.”

  Glenn’s mind threw up an image, that of the lettering and numerals he’d caught sight of as the first van stopped to enter something marked “East Gate” and dated—that was it!—dated “2013.” So the gate had been finished four years ago! Somehow that trivial recollection did more than all his other memories, so far, to make him begin to believe he had, in some way not they or he yet was close to understanding, managed that “suspended animation”—or whatever—and leaped to this later age, alive, unchanged and—normal, even. Maybe.

  He repeated what she’d said. “Anno Domini twenty seventeen. October—what?”

  “Fifteenth, still. Five to three o’clock, P.M.”

  His mind swirled and spattered again, “You mean, I’ve only been—alive, recovered, awake, for a couple of hours, or less! That—just isn’t possible!”

  “I guess it seems impossible. You were—well—drugged, most of that time. You’ve been in LA for just about two hours, maybe fifteen minutes more.”

  “Fantastic! Why—I spent hours in that—chair—”

  Again, she was shaken. “Thirty-one minutes,” she said, brokenly. “A record—most would have—disintegrated—much sooner—ten minutes—fifteen—”

  “Let’s skip that thing for good, okay?” She had covered her face with her hands. She nodded silently and drew a breath before going on.

  “Fine with me. Very well!” She glanced at a wrist watch he hadn’t noticed because it was largely transparent, glass and plastic, with minute, though readable, crimson hands.

  “You’re pretty wonderful—making it as easy for me as you can!” Her smile was near to blinding, to breathtaking, as few actual smiles are, yet so many are said to be. It told him she was irresistible. Or did the drug “talk” still? She went on rapidly, and he concentrated.

  “You have accepted the facts about time. That was my main assignment: to get you to realize the strange fact of time-lapse. There’s not much more I can add before the Mayor will be ready. But maybe this will help. After your disappearance—there was a terrific search, of course—the whole environment of the world began to deteriorate.”

  “As predicted by nine bright scientists—” he said to himself.

  “Let me finish. It may be useful—in the Mayor’s session. Mayor Robert Baker, by the way. You’ll meet the rest and get their names. Anyhow. A time came when some people, at least, realized that, soon, or in due course, anyhow, the air was actually going to be too poisonous for breathing.”

  “Everywhere?”

  She gestured him not to interrupt while she said, “Yes. The whole earth. So people, some, began to plan to go underground, to dig enormous subterranean areas where masses could live, with regenerated air, water, and so on. Now, please, don’t comment. This is one such city-shelter. It was done in the teeth of public opposition here, and, in many places, as covertly as possible. Disguised as ‘defense work’ and so on. The end came abruptly—and those areas that were ready, or near enough, were occupied as fast as possible. People had been secretly tagged to go underground in some such emergency but they often failed to make it. Others were then accepted. There was only an hour’s warning, about—in Los Angeles—”

  He was stunned. He asked, “And that happened—?”

  Her answer was muffled. Obviously, this account was painful for her. He thought she said, “Nineteen ninety-one,” but wasn’t sure.

  “How many—here—underground—?”

  “Under twelve thousand.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “For Los Angeles, and around that part of California—yes. That’s all. Now. There were hardly half that many, at first. We’re building up population as we increase facilities. And, of course, eugenically. Many of the people who got here safely were—damaged. So were some of their children. Me, for one. I probably can’t have babies. But I’m a Useful Person, so—”

  She was weeping!

  She’d said, “Useful Person” as if the words were capitalized or in quotes. The inference he drew was too shocking to accept. While he tried to reject it, chimes sounded, soft and melodious: four notes.

  She made a strangled effort to speak. He took her in his arms as if she were a hurt child. “Mayor’s summons,” she whispered.

  Then, with tremendous will and great skill at control, she pulled herself together to become the calm, polite, if that was still acceptable as a definition—the alluring and strangely ready damsel who’d caused his embarrassing response. “I’ll take you in.”

  They crossed the room and a large, ornamented door opened.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE BIG WELCOME

  There were about fifteen people in the room—all, at the far end. As he followed Leandra through the door, they rose. Most of the group had been seated behind a large, monocolored table, green, in a green-and-off-white, official-looking chamber. Four doorways, in all. Extra, comfortably-soft-seeming chairs, but of a single material, stood along the walls.

  The people were middle-aged but on the young side mostly. One man had white hair. One of the four women seemed elderly. They were of differing heights and faces but, in all, of typically “American” sorts. Businesslike in aspect, Glenn thought, walking down the long, green carpet toward the group. The Mayor in the center, on the arm chair; rather, standing in front of it. Looking forty, about, with black hair and greenish grey eyes, smiling, composed, intelligent in every seeming way, courteous in expression, and something more. But that, not guessable.

>   As Glenn moved toward them the Mayor’s eyes shifted and he raised his brows.

  Behind him, Leandra said, “Mission accomplished, Bob.”

  “Thank you, m’dear.” The Mayor’s attention returned to Glenn. “Welcome to Los Angeles, Mr. Howard!”

  “Thank you, Mr. Mayor.”

  They shook hands.

  For some minutes there were introductions, pleasant sounds of greeting, congratulations, expressions of marvel and of intense curiosity, too.

  Glenn was not good at names, ranks, even at remembering faces. It was, he’d often thought, his most conspicuous and certainly most embarrassing fault. He had others, he was human, but his inability to take note of names, remember them, to file faces in his mind quickly, often surprised others and often made people indignant. Glenn could never be a politician. He would fail to identify so many people of importance in any campaign that the resulting injured feelings would lose him his best advocates in any election.

  Now, he hardly tried.

  They were, he realized, dressed like himself. The Mayor’s pubic hair, for example, matched his black, wavy locks and his small moustache. Offices registered better in Glenn’s brain. He met a District Delegate from Washington. (So there was an underground Capital!) Five or six commissioners were next—of usual sorts: transport, finance, taxation, engineering, the waste department (not very efficient, Glenn had noted) and a secretary of health—a woman, brown-haired, attractive and—a woman showing her enticements through her light and shining garb. She clearly approved of what she saw of Glenn in the same category. Her glance of search and then her raised eyes were two hazel invitations. They said, later.

  That sort of thing intruded into what should have been his concentrated effort to remember who was who—and what. Granting his situation was the one he now nearly accepted, he was forced to note, perhaps first, that some immense change had taken place in—sex, sex relations, sex exhibited, sexuality flaunted precisely, at least, where quality warranted. And these garments were, plainly, everyday sorts, street clothes. He found he was wondering more what evening dress—if any—would be, than giving attention to the faces, queries, comments.