by James Blish
"That's right. Okay, let's march." Kirk rolled the clothing into a bundle and tucked it under his arm.
They made it back to the open street without incident. Kirk began to feel better. "You know," he said, "I rather like this century. Simpler, easier to manage. Why, I might even find I actually have a considerable talent for . . . wump!"
He had run squarely into the arms of a large, bulkily obvious Security-guard type. The blue-uniformed man looked them up and down, and then at the clothing bundle Kirk was shifting back and forth. At last he said pleasantly, "Well?"
"Uh, yes," Kirk said. "You are a police officer. I seem to remember . . ."
It seemed to be the wrong tack. Kirk let the sentence trail off and tried a friendly smile. The policeman smiled back, but he did not move. Behind Kirk, Spock said, "You were saying something about a considerable talent, sir?"
This was also a mistake, since it attracted the officer's attention to Spock, and especially to his pointed ears. Kirk said hurriedly, "My friend is, uh, Chinese, of course. The ears, ah, are actually easily explained. You see . . ."
The policeman remained absolutely silent. Kirk was stumped.
"Perhaps the unfortunate accident I had in childhood . . ." Spock prompted.
"In the fields, yes," Kirk said quickly. "Caught his head in a mechanical, uh, rice-picker. Fortunately . . . an American missionary living nearby, who happened to have been a skilled plastic surgeon in civilian life . . ."
"Sure an' t' God that's enough, now," the policeman said. "Drop the bundle, hands up against that wall. Phwat a story."
"Yes, sir," Kirk said. As he was about to turn, he stopped and stared at the policeman's shoulder. "Uh, careless of your wife to let you go out that way."
"What?" the policeman said, raising his nightstick.
"Quite untidy, sir," Spock said, picking up the cue. "If you will allow me . . ."
He pinched the policeman's shoulder gently, and, equally gently, the policeman sagged to the pavement.
"And now, Captain . . ." he said.
"Yes," Kirk said. "As I recall, the appropriate expression is—flog it!"
Police whistles—an eerie, unfamiliar sound—were shrilling behind them as they ducked into an open cellar door. The cellar was dismal: a coal bin, an old furnace, mountains of litter, a few mildewed trunks, all looking like monsters in the dimness. They changed clothes quickly. Kirk wore the jacket; Spock pulled the stocking cap down over his elegant, dangerous ears.
Spock got out his tricorder. Nothing came out of it but an unpleasant electronic squeal, like an echo of the fading police whistles.
The two men looked at each other over the coal pile. At last Kirk said, "Obviously this is not a game. Time we faced the unpleasant facts. Status, Mr. Spock?"
"First," Spock said precisely, "I believe we have about a week before Dr. McCoy arrives. But as far as being certain of that . . ."
"And arrives where? New York, Boise, Honolulu, Outer Mongolia?"
"Obviously, I do not know. There is a theory . . ." Spock hesitated. Then he shrugged and plowed on, "The theory is that time can be regarded as fluid, like a river, with currents, backwash, eddies. Like the solar-system analogies of atomic structure, it is more misleading than enlightening, but there may be a certain truth to it all the same."
"Mr. Spock, if I didn't know you better, I'd suspect you were trying to educate me."
"No, sir. I mean only to suggest that the same time current which swept McCoy to a certain place or event has taken us to the same place or event . . . Unless that is the case, I believe we have no hope."
"Odds?"
"Captain, in time there are no odds; you are pitting an infinite series of instants against an utterly improbable event. And yet . . ." Spock held up the tricorder. "Locked in here is the exact place, the exact moment, even exact images of what McCoy did back here. If I could hook this into the ship's computer for just a few moments . . ."
"Any chance that you could build a makeshift computer?"
"In this zinc-plated, vacuum-tube culture?" Spock said. "None at all. I have no tools, no parts, no supplies . . . I do not even know the line voltage."
"I see," Kirk said slowly. "Yes, it would pose a complex problem in logic. Forgive me, Mr. Spock. I do sometimes expect too much of you."
Spock's head turned sharply, but at the same time the overhead bulb in the basement went on yellowly and there was the sound of a door opening at the head of the stairs to the ground floor. A young woman's voice called strongly, "Who's there?"
Both men came to their feet as the girl came down the stairs. Despite the obvious savagery of the period, she seemed quite unafraid. She was simply dressed and not very pretty, but her voice was instantly arresting.
"We didn't want to trespass, miss," Kirk said. "But since it was getting cold out there . . ."
She looked at him with cool appraisal and said, "A lie is a bad way to say 'hello.' Was it really that cold?"
"Well," Kirk said, "no. We were being chased by a police officer."
"Because . . .?"
"Petty theft. These clothes. We had no money."
"I see." She looked both of them over. "It's the same story all over. I need some help. Sweeping up, washing dishes, general cleanup. Are you willing to work?"
"At what scale of payment?" Spock said. Kirk looked at him in astonishment. The first officer added, "I need radio tubes and so forth. Parts, wire . . . It is . . . a hobby."
"Fifteen cents an hour for ten hours a day," the girl said. "I'm not exactly wealthy, either. Will it do? Good. Your names?"
"I'm Jim Kirk. His name is Spock."
"I'm Edith Keeler," she said crisply, "and you can start by cleaning up down here."
She smiled pleasantly and went back up the stairs, leaving Kirk a little startled by her brisk, no-nonsense attitude and her utter fearlessness. At last he looked around, found a pair of brooms, and tossed one to Spock.
"Radio tubes and so on, eh?" he said. "Well, Mr. Spock, I approve. I think everyone should have a hobby. It keeps them off the streets."
The mission was a mixture of things which Kirk only vaguely recognized: part church, part dining room, part recreation area. It was furnished with tables and low benches, and there was a low dais at the front where workers dispensed soup and coffee. To one side, was a large tool box, fastened with an ungainly padlock with a dial on its face. Shabbily dressed men sat to either side of Kirk and Spock, waiting without enthusiasm. The nearest, a small man with thin features who looked remarkably like some sort of rodent, eyed the two of them.
"You'll be sorry," he said, with exaggerated boredom.
"Why?" Kirk said.
"You expect to eat free or something? Now you gotta listen to Miss Goodie Twoshoes."
"Good evening," Edith's voice said, on cue. She was already striding toward the dais; now she mounted it. The meagerness of the audience did not seem to discourage her. She was both casual and cheerful. "Now, as I'm sure at least someone out there has said, you've got to pay for the soup."
There was some laughter. "Not that she's a bad-lookin' broad," the rodent said, sotto voce. "But if she really wanted to give a guy somethin' . . ."
"Shut up," Kirk said. Then, noticing Spock's eye on him, he added, "I'd like to hear this."
"Of course," Spock said, noncommittally.
"Let's start as we always do—by getting something straight," Edith said. "Why do I work, connive, and maybe even cheat a little in order to keep feeding you? I don't know. It's something that I do. But I've got no patience with parasites. If you can't break off with booze, or you've gotten out of the habit of work, or you like being a bad risk, I don't want you and you're not welcome to the soup."
Kirk listened with astonishment. He did not know what he had expected, but surely not this.
"Of course," she went on, "I know that every day is a fight to survive. That's all you have time for. But I've no use for a man who uses free soup as an excuse to give up fighting. To sur
vive at all, you need more than soup. You need to know that your life is worth living, no matter what.
"Shadow and reality, my friends. That's the secret of getting through these bad times. Know what is, and what only seems to be. Hunger is real, and so is cold. But sadness is not.
"And it is the sadness that will ruin you—that will kill you. Sadness and hate. We all go to bed a little hungry every night, but it is possible to find peace in sleep, knowing you have lived another day, and hurt no one doing it."
"Bonner the Stochastic," Spock whispered.
"He won't be born for more than two hundred years. Listen."
"It's difficult not to hate a world that treats us all like this," Edith was saying. "I know that. Difficult, but not impossible. Somebody once said that hate is only the absence of love, but that's not a message that a man can absorb on an empty stomach. But there's something else that's true: Love is only the absence of hate. Empty the hatred from your hearts and you are ready for love. If you can go to bed tonight free of hatred, you have already won a major victory.
"And that's all of my sermon for today. Eat hearty, mates."
She stepped down and left the big, gloomy room.
"Most interesting," Spock said. "An uncommon insight."
"An uncommon woman," Kirk replied quietly; but Edith Keeler, coming up behind them, evidently overheard him.
"You two are uncommon workmen, Mr. Kirk," she said. "The basement looked like it had been scrubbed and polished."
Kirk thought about his days as a midshipman and at last saw some use for holystoning; but he said only, "Then we report back for more work?"
"At seven a.m. Do you have a flop for the night?"
"A what?"
Edith studied him curiously. "You're really new at this, aren't you? A 'flop' is a place to sleep. There's a vacant room where I live, two dollars a week. If you want it, I'll guide you there when we're through with these dishes."
"Indeed we do," Kirk said. "Thank you."
Like everything else, they had yet seen in this culture, the room was plain and depressing: a few pieces of scarred furniture, a sagging bed, limp and sooty curtains. Now, however, some of it was masked by the Medusa-head of wires, coils and banks of old vacuum tubes which Spock was attaching to his tricorder. As Kirk came in with a small paper sack of groceries, plus another small package of hardware, Spock said abstractedly, "Captain, I must have some sponge platinum, about a kilogram. Or a block of the pure metal, perhaps ten grams, would be even better."
Kirk shook his head. "I bring assorted vegetables for you, bologna and a hard roll for me. The other bag, I assure you, contains neither platinum, gold nor diamonds; nor is it likely to in the future. It has just a few second-hand pieces of equipment, and those took the other nine-tenths of our combined earnings for three days to fill your order for them."
"Captain, you're asking me to work with equipment which is hardly better than stone knives and bearskins."
"We have no choice," Kirk said. "McCoy may be here any day now. We've no guarantee that there's some current in time pulling us all together. This has to work—with or without platinum."
"Captain," Spock said glacially, "in three weeks at this, rate, perhaps a month, I might complete the first mnemonic circuits . . ."
There was a knock, and then Edith poked her head through the door.
"If you can go out now," she said, "I can get you both five hours' work at twenty-two cents an hour. What on earth is that?"
"I am endeavoring, Ma'am," Spock said with dignity, "to construct a mnemonic circuit out of stone knives and bearskins."
"I don't know what that means," she said, "but if you want the work you'd better hurry." She withdrew.
"She's right. Let's go, Mr. Spock."
"Yes, Captain, in just a moment . . . It seems to me that I saw some tools for finely detailed work in the mission."
"Yes, the man who was working on the, uh, cuckoo-clock was using them. That girl has more things going on around there than a TKL computer. Clock repair project, woodworking, the tailor shop in the back . . ."
"You were quite right, Captain," Spock said. "She is a fascinating study. Well, I am ready now. I doubt that twenty-two cents an hour will advance me far, but those tools . . ."
"Just be sure you return them."
"Believe me, Captain," the Science Officer said, "my first taste of petty theft was also my last"
The auxiliary rig to the tricorder now nearly filled the room. It looked like a robot squid constructed by a small child, but it clicked, whirred and hummed purposefully. Clearly, Spock did not like the noise—he was used to machines that made as little fuss as possible—but he wasted no time trying to eliminate it. He straightened abruptly.
"Captain, I may have stumbled onto something."
Kirk sniffed. "You've got a connection burning somewhere, too."
"I am loading these lines too heavily. But this may be a focal point in time. Watch the tricorder screen. I have slowed the recording it made from the time vortex."
Kirk peered at the small tricorder screen. It showed Edith Keeler's face; then the image sharpened, and he realized that it was a newspaper photo. The paper was dated February 23, 1936—six years from "now." Over the photo was a headline: FDR CONFERS WITH SLUM AREA 'ANGEL'. The caption read, The President and Edith Keeler today conferred for more than an hour on her proposal to . . .
There was a mean snap of sparks, a curl of smoke and the image collapsed. "Quick!" Kirk said. "Can you get it back?"
"Even if I could, it would not help us," Spock said. "Something was wrong even before the short circuit. On the same memory trace, I saw a 1930 newspaper article."
"What of it? Either way, we know her future, Spock. Within six years from now, she's going to become important, nationally recognized . . ."
"No, sir," Spock said quietly. After a pause, he began again. "No, Captain. What I saw was Edith Keeler's obituary. She never became famous. She will die this year in some kind of accident."
"You're mistaken! They can't both be true!"
"I'm afraid they can, Captain," Spock said. "She has two possible futures—depending upon what McCoy does."
"What . . .? Oh, I see. McCoy has something to do with her living or dying. And in his present state . . ." The shock of the notion halted Kirk for an instant, but he forced himself to go on. "Mr. Spock, did McCoy kill her? Is that how all of history was changed?"
"I cannot tell, Captain. Something still worse is possible."
"What, man?"
"That he might have changed history by preventing her from being killed."
"Get this thing fixed! We've got to find the answer before McCoy gets here!"
"And what then, Captain?" Spock said. "Suppose we find that to set things right, Edith Keeler must die? That to restore our future, we must prevent McCoy from saving her? What then?"
"I don't know," Kirk said fiercely. "But we've got to find out. Did you get the jewelers' tools all right? That box was closed with a combination lock."
"Not a proper lock, sir. A childish device in probability . . ."
". . . and he opened it like a real pro," Edith's voice said behind them. Both men spun. She spared the jury-rigged apparatus only one glance, and then turned back to Spock. "Question: Why? I want to hear only one answer. Please make it the honest one."
Spock pointed to the rig. "You have seen, this work going on before," he said. "I needed delicate tools. They would have been returned in the morning."
Edith eyed him. Perhaps his alien appearance gave her less than full confidence; or perhaps the very temper of the times was against him. She said, "Gadgetry doesn't impress me. Theft does. Out you go."
"Miss Keeler," Kirk said, "if Mr. Spock said they were important to have, and that you'd get them back in the morning, you may depend upon his word."
"I'll accept that," she said slowly, "on certain conditions. Chiefly, that Mr. Kirk answer my questions. And you needn't look so innocent, either. You know a
s well as I how out of place you both are here."
"Interesting," Spock said. "Where would you say we do belong, Miss Keeler?"
"You, Mr. Spock?" She nodded toward Kirk. "At his side. As if you've always been there, always will be. But where he belongs . . . well, I'll work it out eventually."
"I see," Spock said. "Well, I'll go on with this . . ."
"I'll go on with this—Captain," Edith Keeler said, smiling at Kirk. "Even when he doesn't say it, he does."
She led the way out. In the hall, she said, "By the way, why does he call you Captain? Were you in the war together?"
"We . . . served together."
"It shows. And you don't want to talk about it. Why? Is it something you think you've done wrong? Are you afraid of something? Whatever it is, let me help."
Kirk took her by the arms, and for a moment came very close to kissing her. He did not; but he did not release her, either.
" 'Let me help,' " he said. "A hundred years or so from now, I think it was, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He recommends those three words even over 'I love you.' "
"Your tenses are rather mixed," she said. "A hundred years from now? And where was he? Or, where will he be from?"
"A silly question, a silly answer," Kirk said roughly. He pointed at the ceiling. "From about there. A planet circling that far left star in Orion's belt."
She looked up involuntarily; and this time, he did kiss her. He was not a little surprised to find it returned.
Spock turned as Kirk came back into the room. He asked no questions, but it was clear that he would welcome some answers.
"All she said was, 'Let me help you,' " Kirk said painfully. "She's something of a saint, Mr. Spock."
"She may be martyred," Spock said. "To history. Look here."
He switched on his apparatus. "This is how history went after McCoy changed it. I picked up the thread just after you went out. See: in the late 1930's a growing pacifist movement, called World Peaceways. Its influence on the government delayed the United States' entry into the Second World War. Apparently very few people knew that World Peaceways was German-controlled. While peace negotiations dragged on, Germany had time to complete its heavy water experiments."
