I tried just once more. “Uh, when did you first see this Mr. Oyster?”
“Never saw him before in my life,” she said. “Not until he came in this morning.”
“This morning,” I said weakly.
While Betty stared at me as though it was me that needed candling by a head shrinker preparatory to being sent off to a pressure cooker, I fished in my pocket for my wallet, counted the contents and winced at the pathetic remains of the thousand. I said pleadingly, “Betty, listen, how long ago did I go out that door—on the way to the airport?”
“You’ve been acting sick all morning. You went out that door about ten minutes ago, were gone about three minutes, and then came back.”
* * * *
“See here,” Mr. Oyster said (interrupting Simon’s story), “did you say this was supposed to be amusing, young man? I don’t find it so. In fact, I believe I am being ridiculed.”
Simon shrugged, put one hand to his forehead and said, “That’s only the first chapter. There are two more.”
“I’m not interested in more,” Mr. Oyster said. “I suppose your point was to show me how ridiculous the whole idea actually is. Very well, you’ve done it. Confound it. However, I suppose your time, even when spent in this manner, has some value. Here is fifty dollars. And good day, sir!”
He slammed the door after him as he left.
Simon winced at the noise, took the aspirin bottle from its drawer, took two, washed them down with water from the desk carafe.
Betty looked at him admiringly. Came to her feet, crossed over and took up the fifty dollars. “Week’s wages,” she said. “I suppose that’s one way of taking care of a crackpot. But I’m surprised you didn’t take his money and enjoy that vacation you’ve been yearning about.”
“I did,” Simon groaned. “Three times.”
Betty stared at him. “You mean—”
Simon nodded, miserably.
She said, “But Simon. Fifty thousand dollars bonus. If that story was true, you should have gone back again to Munich. If there was one time traveler, there might have been—”
“I keep telling you,” Simon said bitterly, “I went back there three times. There were hundreds of them. Probably thousands.” He took a deep breath. “Listen, we’re just going to have to forget about it. They’re not going to stand for the space-time continuum track being altered. If something comes up that looks like it might result in the track being changed, they set you right back at the beginning and let things start—for you—all over again. They just can’t allow anything to come back from the future and change the past.”
“You mean,” Betty was suddenly furious at him, “you’ve given up! Why this is the biggest thing— Why the fifty thousand dollars is nothing. The future! Just think!”
Simon said wearily, “There’s just one thing you can bring back with you from the future, a hangover compounded of a gallon or so of Marzenbräu. What’s more you can pile one on top of the other, and another on top of that!”
He shuddered. “If you think I’m going to take another crack at this merry-go-round and pile a fourth hangover on the three I’m already nursing, all at once, you can think again.”
SUMMIT
Two lines of troops, surfacely differing in uniforms and in weapons, but basically so very the same, so evenly matched, came to attention. A thousand hands slapped a thousand submachine gun stocks.
Marshal Vladimir Ignatov strode stiff-kneed down the long march, the stride of a man for years used to cavalry boots. He was flanked by frozen visaged subordinates, but none so cold of face as he himself.
At the entrance to the conference hall he stopped, turned and waited.
At the end of the corridor of troops a car stopped and several figures emerged, most of them in civilian dress, several bearing brief cases. They in their turn ran the gantlet.
At their fore walked James Warren Donlevy, spritely, his eyes darting here, there, politician-like. A half smile on his face, as though afraid he might forget to greet a voter he knew, or was supposed to know.
His hand was out before that of Vladimir Ignatov’s.
“Your Excellency,” he said.
Ignatov shook hands stiffly. Dropped that of the other’s as soon as protocol would permit.
The field marshal indicated the door of the conference hall. “There is little reason to waste time, Mr. President.”
“Exactly,” Donlevy snapped.
* * * *
The door closed behind them and the two men, one uniformed and bemedaled, the other nattily attired in his business suit, turned to each other.
“Nice to see you again, Vovo. How’re Olga and the baby?”
The soldier grinned back in response. “Two babies now—you don’t keep up on the real news, Jim. How’s Martha?” They shook hands.
“Not so good,” Jim said, scowling. “I’m worried. It’s that new cancer. As soon as we conquer one type two more rear up. How are you people doing on cancer research?”
Vovo was stripping off his tunic. He hung it over the back of one of the chairs, began to unbutton his high, tight military collar. “I’m not really up on it, Jim, but I think that’s one field where you can trust anything we know to be in the regular scientific journals our people exchange with yours. I’ll make some inquiries when I get back home, though. You never know, this new strain—I guess you’d call it—might be one that we’re up on and you aren’t.”
“Yeah,” Jim said. “Thanks a lot.” He crossed to the small portable bar. “How about a drink? Whisky, vodka, rum—there’s ice.”
Vovo slumped into one of the heavy chairs that were arranged around the table. He grimaced, “No vodka, I don’t feel patriotic today. How about one of those long cold drinks, with the cola stuff?”
“Cuba libra,” Jim said. “Coming up. Look, would you rather speak Russian?”
“No,” Vovo said, “my English is getting rusty. I need the practice.”
Jim brought the glasses over and put them on the table. He began stripping off his own coat, loosening his tie. “God, I’m tired,” he said. “This sort of thing wears me down.”
Vovo sipped his drink. “Now there’s as good a thing to discuss as any, in the way of killing time. The truth now, Jim, do you really believe in a God? After all that’s happened to this human race of ours, do you really believe in divine guidance?” He twisted his mouth sarcastically.
The other relaxed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose so. I was raised in a family that believed in God. Just as, I suppose, you were raised in one that didn’t.” He lifted his shoulders slightly in a shrug. “Neither of us seems to be particularly brilliant in establishing a position of our own.”
Vovo snorted. “Never thought of it that way,” he admitted. “We’re usually contemptuous of anyone still holding to the old beliefs. There aren’t many left.”
“More than you people admit, I understand.”
Vovo shook his heavy head. “No, not really. Mostly crackpots. Have you ever noticed how it is that the nonconformists in any society are usually crackpots? The people on your side that admit belonging to our organizations, are usually on the wild eyed and uncombed hair side—I admit it. On the other hand, the people in our citizenry who subscribe to your system, your religion, that sort of thing, are crackpots, too. Applies to religion as well as politics. An atheist in your country is a nonconformist—in mine, a Christian is. Both crackpots.”
Jim laughed and took a sip of his drink.
Vovo yawned and said, “How long are we going to be in here?”
“I don’t know. Up to us, I suppose.”
“Yes. How about another drink? I’ll make it. How much of that cola stuff do you put in?”
Jim told him, and while the other was on his feet mixing the drinks, said, “You figure on sticking to the same line this year?”
“Have to,” Vovo said over his shoulder. “What’s the alternative?”
“I don’t know. We’re building up to a w
hale of a depression as it is, even with half the economy running full blast producing defense materials.”
Vovo chuckled, “Defense materials. I wonder if ever in the history of the human race anyone ever admitted to producing offense materials.”
“Well, you call it the same thing. All your military equipment is for defense. And, of course, according to your press, all ours is for offense.”
“Of course,” Vovo said.
He brought the glasses back and handed one to the other. He slumped back into his chair again, loosened two buttons of his trousers.
“Jim,” Vovo said, “why don’t you divert more of your economy to public works, better roads, reforestation, dams—that sort of thing.”
Jim said wearily, “You’re a better economist than that. Didn’t your boy Marx, or was it Engels, write a small book on the subject? We’re already overproducing—turning out more products than we can sell.”
“I wasn’t talking about your government building new steel mills. But dams, roads, that sort of thing. You could plow billions into such items and get some real use out of them. We both know that our weapons will never be used—they can’t be.”
Jim ticked them off on his fingers. “We already are producing more farm products than we know what to do with; if we build more dams it’ll open up new farm lands and increase the glut. If we build more and better roads, it will improve transportation, which will mean fewer men will be able to move greater tonnage—and throw transportation employees into the unemployed. If we go all out for reforestation, it will eventually bring down the price of lumber and the lumber people are howling already. No,” he shook his head, “there’s just one really foolproof way of disposing of surpluses and using up labor power and that’s war—hot or cold.”
Vovo shrugged, “I suppose so.”
“It amounts to building pyramids, of course.” Jim twisted his mouth sourly. “And since we’re asking questions about each other’s way of life, when is your State going to begin to wither away?”
“How was that?” Vovo asked.
“According to your sainted founder, once you people came to power the State was going to wither away, class rule would be over, and Utopia be on hand. That was a long time ago, and your State is stronger than ours.”
Vovo snorted. “How can we wither away the State as long as we are threatened by capitalist aggression?”
Jim said, “Ha!”
Vovo went on. “You know better than that, Jim. The only way my organization can keep in power is by continually beating the drums, keeping our people stirred up to greater and greater sacrifices by using you as a threat. Didn’t the old Romans have some sort of maxim to the effect that when you’re threatened with unease at home stir up trouble abroad?”
“You’re being even more frank than usual,” Jim said. “But that’s one of the pleasures of these get-togethers, neither of us resorts to hypocrisy. But you can’t keep up these tensions forever.”
“You mean we can’t keep up these tensions forever, Jim. And when they end? Well, personally I can’t see my organization going out without a blood bath.” He grimaced sourly, “And since I’d probably be one of the first to be bathed, I’d like to postpone the time. It’s like having a tiger by the tail, Jim. We can’t let go.”
“Happily, I don’t feel in the same spot,” Jim said. He got up and went to the picture window that took up one entire wall. It faced out over a mountain vista. He looked soberly into the sky.
Vovo joined him, glass in hand.
“Possibly your position isn’t exactly the same as ours but there’ll be some awfully great changes if that military based economy of yours suddenly had peace thrust upon it. You’d have a depression such as you’ve never dreamed of. Let’s face reality, Jim, neither of us can afford peace.”
“Well, we’ve both known that for a long time.”
* * * *
They both considered somberly, the planet Earth blazing away, a small sun there in the sky.
Jim said, “I sometimes think that the race would have been better off, when man was colonizing Venus and Mars, if it had been a joint enterprise rather than you people doing one, and we the other. If it had all been in the hands of that organization …”
“The United Nations?” Vovo supplied.
“… Then when Bomb Day hit, perhaps these new worlds could have gone on to, well, better things.”
“Perhaps,” Vovo shrugged. “I’ve often wondered how Bomb Day started. Who struck the spark.”
“Happily there were enough colonists on both planets to start the race all over again,” Jim said. “What difference does it make, who struck the spark?”
“None, I suppose.” Vovo began to button his collar, readjust his clothes. “Well, shall we emerge and let the quaking multitudes know that once again we have made a shaky agreement? One that will last until the next summit meeting.”
FREEDOM
Colonel Ilya Simonov tooled his Zil aircushion convertible along the edge of Red Square, turned right immediately beyond St. Basil’s Cathedral, crossed the Moscow River by the Moskvocetski Bridge and debouched into the heavy, and largely automated traffic of Pyarnikskaya. At Dobryninskaya Square he turned west to Gorki Park which he paralleled on Kaluga until he reached the old baroque palace which housed the Ministry.
There were no flags, no signs, nothing to indicate the present nature of the aged Czarist building.
He left the car at the curb, slamming its door behind him and walking briskly to the entrance. Hard, handsome in the Slavic tradition, dedicated, Ilya Simonov was young for his rank. A plainclothes man, idling a hundred feet down the street, eyed him briefly then turned his attention elsewhere. The two guards at the gate snapped to attention, their eyes straight ahead. Colonel Simonov was in mufti and didn’t answer the salute.
The inside of the old building was well known to him. He went along marble halls which contained antique statuary and other relics of the past which, for unknown reason, no one had ever bothered to remove. At the heavy door which entered upon the office of his destination he came to a halt and spoke briefly to the lieutenant at the desk there.
“The Minister is expecting me,” Simonov clipped.
The lieutenant did the things receptionists do everywhere and looked up in a moment to say, “Go right in, Colonel Simonov.”
Minister Kliment Blagonravov looked up from his desk at Simonov’s entrance. He was a heavy-set man, heavy of face and he still affected the shaven head, now rapidly disappearing among upper-echelons of the Party. His jacket had been thrown over the back of a chair and his collar loosened; even so there was a sheen of sweat on his face.
He looked up at his most trusted field man, said in the way of greeting, “Ilya,” and twisted in his swivel chair to a portable bar. He swung open the door of the small refrigerator and emerged with a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka. He plucked two three-ounce glasses from a shelf and pulled the bottle’s cork with his teeth. “Sit down, sit down, Ilya,” he grunted as he filled the glasses. “How was Magnitogorsk?”
Ilya Simonov secured his glass before seating himself in one of the room’s heavy leathern chairs. He sighed, relaxed, and said, “Terrible, I loath those ultra-industrialized cities. I wonder if the Americans do any better with Pittsburgh or the British with Birmingham.”
“I know what you mean,” the security head rumbled. “How did you make out with you assignment, Ilya?”
Colonel Simonov frowned down into the colorlessness of the vodka before dashing it back over his palate. “It’s all in my report, Kliment.” He was the only man in the organization who called Blagonravov by his first name.
His chief grunted again and reached forward to refill the glass. “I’m sure it is. Do you know how many reports go across this desk daily? And did you know that Ilya Simonov is the most long-winded, as the Americans say, of my some two hundred first-line operatives?”
The colonel shifted in his chair. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll keep that in m
ind.”
His chief rumbled his sour version of a chuckle. “Nothing, nothing, Ilya. I was jesting. However, give me a brief of your mission.”
Ilya Simonov frowned again at his refilled vodka glass but didn’t take it up for a moment. “A routine matter,” he said. “A dozen or so engineers and technicians, two or three fairly high-ranking scientists, and three or four of the local intelligentsia had formed some sort of informal club. They were discussing national and international affairs.”
Kliment Blagonravov’s thin eyebrows went up but he waited for the other to go on.
Ilya said impatiently, “It was the ordinary. They featured complete freedom of opinion and expression in their weekly get-togethers. They began by criticizing without extremism, local affairs, matters concerned with their duties, that sort of thing. In the beginning, they even sent a few letters of protest to the local press, signing the name of the club. After their ideas went further out, they didn’t dare do that, of course.”
He took up his second drink and belted it back, not wanting to give it time to lose its chill.
His chief filled in. “And they delved further and further into matters that should be discussed only within the party—if even there—until they arrived at what point?”
Colonel Simonov shrugged. “Until they finally got to the point of discussing how best to overthrow the Soviet State and what socio-economic system should follow it. The usual thing. I’ve run into possible two dozen such outfits in the past five years.”
His chief grunted and tossed back his own drink. “My dear Ilya,” he rumbled sourly, “I’ve run into, as you say, more than two hundred.”
Simonov was taken back by the figure but he only looked at the other.
Blagonravov said, “What did you do about it?”
“Several of them were popular locally. In view of Comrade Zverev’s recent pronouncements of increased freedom of press and speech, I thought it best not to make a public display. Instead, I took measures to charge individual members with inefficiency in their work, with corruption or graft, or with other crimes having nothing to do with the reality of the situation. Six or seven in all were imprisoned, others demoted. Ten or twelve I had switched to other cities, principally into more backward areas in the virgin lands.”
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