He had planned well in taking the lifebelts. It gave him confidence for the rest of the journey. Now he would just have to float for half an hour, to avoid cancellation.
He leaned back, supported by his lifebelts, and admired the cloud formations in the sky.
Something brushed against him.
Eldridge looked down and saw a long black shape glide under his feet. Another joined it and they began to move hungrily toward him.
Sharks!
He fumbled wildly with the sack, spilling out the mirrors in his hurry, and found a can of shark repellent. He opened it, spilled it overboard, and an orange blotch began to spread on the blue-black water.
There were three sharks now. They swam warily around the spreading circle of repellent. A fourth joined them, lunged into the orange smear, and retreated quickly to clean water.
Eldridge was glad the future had produced a shark repellent that really worked.
In five minutes, some of the orange had dissipated. He opened another can. The sharks didn’t give up hope, but they wouldn’t swim into the tainted water. He emptied the cans every five minutes. The stalemate held through Eldridge’s half hour wait.
He checked his settings and tightened his grip on the sack. He didn’t know what the mirrors or potatoes were for, or why carrot seeds were critical. He would just have to take his chances.
He pressed the button and went into the familiar darkness.
He found himself ankle-deep in a thick, evil-smelling bog. The heat was stifling and a cloud of huge gnats buzzed around his head.
Pulling himself out of the gluey mud, accompanied by the hiss and click of unseen life, Eldridge found firmer footing under a small tree. Around him was green jungle, shot through with riotous purples and reds.
Eldridge settled against the tree to wait out his half hour. In this future, apparently, the ocean waters had receded and the primeval jungle had sprung up. Were there any humans here? Were there any left on Earth? He wasn’t at all sure. It looked as though the world was starting over.
Eldridge heard a bleating noise and saw a dull green shape move against the brighter green of the foliage. Something was coming toward him.
He watched. It was about twelve feet tall, with a lizard’s wrinkled hide and wide splay feet. It looked amazingly like a small dinosaur.
Eldridge watched the big reptile warily. Most dinosaurs were herbivorous, he reminded himself, especially the ones that lived in swamps. This one probably just wanted to sniff him. Then it would return to cropping grass.
The dinosaur yawned, revealing a magnificent set of pointed teeth, and began to approach Eldridge with an air of determination.
Eldridge dipped into the sack, pushed irrelevant items out of the way, and grabbed a megacharge hand pistol.
This had better be it, he prayed, and fired.
The dinosaur vanished in a spray of smoke. There were only a few shreds of flesh and a smell of ozone to show where it had been. Eldridge looked at the megacharge hand pistol with new respect. Now he understood why it was so expensive.
During the next half hour, a number of jungle inhabitants took a lively interest in him. Each pistol was good for only a few firings—no surprise, considering their destructiveness. His last one began to lose its charge; he had to club off a pterodactyl with the butt.
When the half hour was over, he set the dial again, wishing he knew what lay ahead. He wondered how he was supposed to face new dangers with some books, potatoes, carrot seeds, and mirrors.
Perhaps there were no dangers ahead.
There was only one way to find out. He pressed the button.
He was on a grassy hillside. The dense jungle had disappeared. Now there was a breeze-swept pine forest stretching before him, solid ground underfoot, and a temperate sun in the sky.
Eldridge’s pulse quickened at the thought that this might be his goal. He had always had an atavistic streak, a desire to find a place untouched by civilization. The embittered Eldridge I, robbed and betrayed, must have felt it even more strongly.
It was a little disappointing. Still, it wasn’t too bad, he decided. Except for the loneliness. If only there were people—
A man stepped out of the forest. He was less than five feet tall, thick-set, muscled like a wrestler and wearing a fur kilt. His skin was colored a medium gray. He carried a ragged tree limb, roughly shaped into a club.
Two dozen others came through the forest behind him. They marched directly up to Eldridge.
“Hello, fellows,” Eldridge said pleasantly.
The leader replied in a gutteral language and made a gesture with his open palm.
“I bring your crops blessings,” Eldridge said promptly. “I’ve got just what you need.” He reached into his sack and held up a package of carrot seeds. “Seeds! You’ll advance a thousand years in civilization—”
The leader grunted angrily and his followers began to circle Eldridge. They held out their hands, palms up, grunting excitedly.
They didn’t want the sack and they refused the discharged hand pistol. They had him almost completely circled now. Clubs were being hefted and he still had no idea what they wanted.
“Potato?” he asked in desperation.
They didn’t want potatoes either.
His time machine had two minutes more to wait. He turned and ran.
The savages were after him at once. Eldridge sprinted into the forest like a greyhound, dodging through the closely packed trees. Several clubs whizzed past him.
One minute to go.
He tripped over a root, scrambled to his feet and kept on running. The savages were close on his heels.
Ten seconds. Five seconds. A club glanced off his shoulder.
Time! He reached for the button—and a club thudded against his head, knocking him to the ground. When he could focus again, the leader of the savages was standing over his Time Traveler, club raised.
“Don’t!” Eldridge yelled in panic.
But the leader grinned wildly and brought down the club. In a few seconds, he had reduced the machine to scrap metal.
Eldridge was dragged into a cave, cursing hopelessly. Two savages guarded the entrance. Outside, he could see a gang of men gathering wood. Women and children were scampering back and forth, laden down with clay containers. To judge by their laughter, they were planning a feast.
Eldridge realized, with a sinking sensation, that he would be the main dish.
Not that it mattered. They had destroyed his Traveler. No Viglin would rescue him this time. He was at the end of his road.
Eldridge didn’t want to die. But what made it worse was the thought of dying without ever finding out what Eldridge I had planned.
It seemed unfair, somehow.
For several minutes, he sat in abject self-pity. Then he crawled farther back into the cave, hoping to find another way out.
The cave ended abruptly against a wall of granite. But he found something else.
An old shoe.
He picked it up and stared at it. For some reason, it bothered him, although it was a perfectly ordinary brown leather shoe, just like the ones he had on.
Then the anachronism struck him.
What was a manufactured article like a shoe doing back in this dawn age?
He looked at the size and quickly tried it on. It fitted him exactly, which made the answer obvious—he must have passed through here on his first trip.
But why had he left a shoe?
There was something inside, too soft to be a pebble, too stiff to be a piece of torn lining. He took off the shoe and found a piece of paper wadded in the toe. He unfolded it and read in his own handwriting:
Silliest damn business—how do you address yourself? “Dear Eldridge”? All right, let’s forget the salutation; you’ll read this because I already have, and so, naturally, I’m writing it, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to read it, nor would I have been.
Look, you ’re in a rough spot. Don’t worry about it, though. You’ll com
e out of it in one piece. I’m leaving you a Time Traveler to take you where you have to go next.
The question is: where do I go? I’m deliberately setting the Traveler before the half hour lag it needs, knowing there will be a cancellation effect. That means the Traveler will stay here for you to use. But what happens to me?
I think I know. Still, it scares me—this is the first cancellation I’ll have experienced. But worrying about it is nonsensical; I know it has to turn out right because there are no time paradoxes.
Well, here goes. I’ll push the button and cancel. Then the machine is yours.
Wish me luck.
Wish him luck! Eldridge savagely tore up the note and threw it away.
But Eldridge I had purposely canceled and been swept back to the future, which meant that the Traveler hadn’t gone back with him! It must still be here!
Eldridge began a frantic search of the cave. If he could just find it and push the button, he could go on ahead. It had to be here!
Several hours later, when the guards dragged him out, he still hadn’t found it.
The entire village had gathered and they were in a festive mood. The clay containers were being passed freely and two or three men had already passed out. But the guards who led Eldridge forward were sober enough.
They carried him to a wide, shallow pit. In the center of it was what looked like a sacrificial altar. It was decorated with wild colors and heaped around it was an enormous pile of dried branches.
Eldridge was pushed in and the dancing began.
He tried several times to scramble out, but was prodded back each time. The dancing continued for hours, until the last dancer had collapsed, exhausted.
An old man approached the rim of the pit, holding a lighted torch. He gestured with it and threw it into the pit.
Eldridge stamped it out. But more torches rained down, lighting the outermost branches. They flared brightly and he was forced to retreat inward, toward the altar.
The flaming circle closed, driving him back. At last, panting, eyes burning, legs buckling, he fell across the altar as the flames licked at him.
His eyes were closed and he gripped the knobs tightly—
Knobs?
He looked. Under its gaudy decoration, the altar was a Time Traveler—the same Traveler, past a doubt, that Eldridge I had brought here and left for him. When Eldridge I vanished, they must have venerated it as a sacred object.
And it did have magical qualities.
The fire was singeing his feet when he adjusted the regulator. With his finger against the button, he hesitated.
What would the future hold for him? All he had in the way of equipment was a sack of carrot seeds, potatoes, the symphonic runs, the microfilm volumes of world literature, and small mirrors.
But he had come this far. He would see the end.
He pressed the button.
Opening his eyes, Eldridge found that he was standing on a beach. Water was lapping at his toes and he could hear the boom of breakers.
The beach was long and narrow and dazzlingly white. In front of him, a blue ocean stretched to infinity. Behind him, at the edge of the beach, was a row of palms. Growing among them was the brilliant vegetation of a tropical island.
He heard a shout.
Eldridge looked around for something to defend himself with. He had nothing, nothing at all. He was defenseless.
Men came running from the jungle toward him. They were shouting something strange. He listened carefully.
“Welcome! Welcome back!” they called out.
A gigantic brown man enclosed him in a bearlike hug. “You have returned!” he exclaimed.
“Why—yes,” Eldridge said.
More people were running down to the beach. They were a comely race. The men were tall and tanned, and the women, for the most part, were slim and pretty. They looked like the sort of people one would like to have for neighbors.
“Did you bring them?” a thin old man asked, panting from his run to the beach.
“Bring what?”
“The carrot seeds. You promised to bring them. And the potatoes.”
Eldridge dug them out of his pockets. “Here they are,” he said.
“Thank you. Do you really think they’ll grow in this climate? I suppose we could construct a—”
“Later, later,” the big man interrupted. “You must be tired.”
Eldridge thought back to what had happened since he had last awakened, back in 1954. Subjectively, it was only a day or so, but it had covered thousands of years back and forth and was crammed with arrests, escapes, dangers, and bewildering puzzles.
“Tired,” he said. “Very.”
“Perhaps you’d like to return to your own home?”
“My own?”
“Certainly. The house you built facing the lagoon. Don’t you remember?”
Eldridge smiled feebly and shook his head.
“He doesn’t remember!” the man cried.
“You don’t remember our chess games?” another man asked.
“And the fishing parties?” a boy put in.
“Or the picnics and celebrations?”
“The dances?”
“And the sailing?”
Eldridge shook his head at each eager, worried question.
“All this was before you went back to your own time,” the big man told him.
“Went back?” asked Eldridge. Here was everything he had always wanted. Peace, contentment, warm climate, good neighbors. He felt inside the sack and his shirt. And books and music, he mentally added to the list Good Lord, no one in his right mind would leave a place like this! And that brought up an important question. “Why did I leave here?”
“Surely you remember that!” the big man said.
“I’m afraid not.”
A slim, light-haired girl stepped forward. “You really don’t remember coming back for me?”
Eldridge stared at her. “You must be Becker’s daughter. The girl who was engaged to Morgel. The one I kidnapped.”
“Morgel only thought he was engaged to me,” she said. “And you didn’t kidnap me. I came of my own free will.”
“Oh, I see,” Eldridge answered, feeling like an idiot. “I mean I think I see. That is—pleased to meet you,” he finished inanely.
“You needn’t be so formal,” she said. “After all, we are married. And you did bring me a mirror, didn’t you?”
It was complete now. Eldridge grinned, took out a mirror, gave it to her, and handed the sack to the big man. Delighted, she did the things with her eyebrows and hair that women always do whenever they see their reflections.
“Let’s go home, dear,” she said.
He didn’t know her name, but he liked her looks. He liked her very much. But that was only natural.
“I’m afraid I can’t right now,” he replied, looking at his watch. The half hour was almost up. “I have something to do first. But I should be back in a very little while.”
She smiled sunnily. “I won’t worry. You said you would return and you did. And you brought back the mirrors and seed and potatoes that you told us you’d bring.”
She kissed him. He shook hands all around. In a way, that symbolized the full cycle Alfredex had used to demolish the foolish concept of temporal paradoxes.
The familiar darkness swallowed Eldridge as he pushed the button on the Traveler.
He had ceased being Eldridge II.
From this point on, he was Eldridge I and he knew precisely where he was going, what he would do and the things he needed to do them. They all led to this goal and this girl, for there was no question that he would come back here and live out his life with her, their good neighbors, books and music, in peace and contentment.
It was wonderful, knowing that everything would turn out just as he had always dreamed.
He even had a feeling of affection and gratitude for Viglin and Alfredex.
The Luckiest Man in the World
I’m really amazi
ngly well off down here. But you’ve got to remember that I’m a fortunate person. It was sheer good luck that sent me to Patagonia. Not pull, understand—no, nor ability. I’m a pretty good meteorologist, but they could have sent a better one. I’ve just been extremely lucky to be in the right places at the right times.
It takes on an aspect of the fabulous when you consider that the army equipped my weather station with just about every gadget known to man. Not entirely for me, of course. The army had planned on setting up a base here. They got all the equipment in, and then had to abandon the project.
I kept sending in my weather reports, though, as long as they wanted them.
But the gadgets! Science has always amazed me. I’m something of a scientist myself, I suppose, but not a creative scientist, and that makes all the difference. You tell a creative scientist to do something impossible, and he goes right ahead and does it every time. It’s awe-inspiring.
The way I see it, some general must have said to the scientists, “Boys, we’ve got a great shortage of specialists, and no chance of replacing them. Their duties must be performed by men who may often be completely unskilled. Sounds impossible, but what can you do about it?” And the scientists started to work in earnest, on all these incredible books and gadgets.
For example, last week I had a toothache. At first I thought it was just the cold, for it’s still pretty cold down here, even with the volcanoes acting up. But sure enough, it was a toothache. So I took out the dental apparatus, set it up, and read what I was supposed to read. I examined myself and classified the tooth, the ache, the cavity. Then I injected myself, cleaned the tooth out, and filled it. And dentists spent years in school learning to do what I accomplished under pressure in five hours.
Take food now. I’d been getting disgustingly fat, because I had nothing to do but send in the weather reports. But when I stopped doing that I started turning out meals that the finest chefs in the world might well have envied. Cooking used to be an art, but once the scientists tackled it, they made an exact science out of it
I could go on for pages. A lot of the stuff they gave me I have no further use for, because I’m all alone now. But anyone could be a competent, practicing lawyer with the guides they give you. They’re so arranged that anyone with average intelligence can find the sections you have to master to successfully defend a case, and learn what they mean in plain English.
Citizen in Space Page 7
