"But …" Connor incautiously leaned within range of Angela's perfume and it took his mind. "You realize," he said in a weak voice, "that all your new toys come from the future? There's something fantastically wrong about the whole set-up."
"I've missed you, Philip."
"That perfume you're wearing—did it come from Mr. Smith, too?"
"I tried not to miss you, but I did." Angela pressed her face against his, and he felt the coolness of tears on her cheek. He kissed her hungrily as she moved down from the chair to kneel against him. Connor spun towards the center of a whirlpool of ecstasy.
"Life's going to be so good when we're married," he heard himself saying after a time. "Better than we could ever have dreamed. There's so much for us to share and …"
Angela's body stiffened, and she thrust herself away from him. "You'd better go now, Philip."
"What is it? What did I say?"
"You gave yourself away, that's all."
Connor thought back. "Was it what I said about sharing? I didn't mean your money—I was talking about life … the years … the experiences."
"Did you?"
"I loved you before you even knew you would inherit a cent."
"You never mentioned marriage before."
"I thought that was understood," he said desperately. "I thought you …" He stopped speaking as he saw the look in Angela's eyes. Cool, suspicious, disdainful. The look that the very rich had always given to outsiders who tried to get into their club without the vital qualification of wealth.
She touched a bellpush and continued standing with her back to him until he was shown out of the room.
The ensuing days were bad ones for Connor. He drank a lot, realized that alcohol was no answer, and went on drinking. For a while he tried getting in touch with Angela and once even drove down to Avalon. The brickwork had been repaired at the point where he had made his entry, and a close inspection revealed that the entire wall was now covered with a fine mesh. He had no doubt that tampering with it in any way would trigger off an alarm system.
When he awoke during the night, he was kept awake by hammering questions. What was it all about? Why did Angela have to make such odd payments, and at such odd intervals? What would men from the future want with Twentieth Century currency?
On several occasions the thought occurred that, instead of concentrating on Angela, he would do better to find the mysterious Mr. Smith of Trenton. The flicker of optimism the idea produced was quenched almost immediately by the realization that he simply did not have enough information to provide a lead. It was a certainty that the man was not even known as Smith to anybody but his clients. If only Angela had revealed something more—like Smith's business address …
Connor returned each time to brooding and drinking, aware but uncaring that his behavior was becoming completely obsessive. Then he awoke one morning to the discovery that he already knew Smith's business address, had known it for a long time, almost from childhood.
Undecided as to whether his intake of white rum had hastened or delayed the revelation, he breakfasted on strong coffee and was too busy with his thoughts to fret about the black liquid being more tasteless than ever. He formulated a plan of action during the next hour, twice lighting his pipe—out of sheer habit—before remembering he was finished with ordinary tobacco forever. As a first step in the plan, he went out, bought a five-inch cube of ruby-colored plastic, and paid the owner of a jobbing shop an exorbitant sum to have the block machined down to a polished ovoid. It was late in the afternoon before the work was finished, but the end product sufficiently resembled a P-brand table lighter to fool anyone who was not looking too closely at it.
Pleased with his progress thus far, Connor went back to his apartment and dug out the .38 pistol he had bought a few years earlier following an attempted burglary. Common sense told him it was rather late to leave for Trenton and that he would be better waiting until morning, but he was in a warmly reckless mood. With the plastic egg bumping on one hip and the gun on the other, he drove westward out of town.
Connor reached the center of Trenton just as the stores were showing signs of closing for the day. His sudden fear of being too late and of having to wait another day after all was strengthened by the discovery that he was no longer so certain about locating Mr. Smith.
In the freshness of the morning, with an alcoholic incense lingering in his head, it had all seemed simple and straightforward. For much of his life he had been peripherally aware that in almost every big city there are stores which have no right to be in existence. They were always small and discreet, positioned some way off the main shopping thoroughfares, and their signs usually bore legends—like "Johnston Bros." or "H&L"—which seemed designed to convey a minimum of information. If they had a window display at all it tended to be nothing more than an undistinguished and slightly out-of-style sport jacket priced three times above what it had any chance of fetching. Connor knew the stores were not viable propositions in the ordinary way because, not surprisingly, nobody ever went into them. Yet in his mind they were in some indefinable way associated with money.
Setting out for Trenton he had been quite sure of the city block he wanted—now at least three locations and images of three unremarkable store fronts were merging and blurring in his memory. That's how they avoid attention, he thought, refusing to be disheartened, and began cruising the general area he had selected. The rush of home-going traffic hampered every movement, and finally he decided he would do better on foot. He parked in a sidestreet and began hurrying from corner to corner, each time convincing himself he was about to look along a remembered block and see the place he so desperately wanted to find, each time being disappointed. Virtually all the stores were closed by now, the crowds had thinned away, and the reddish evening sunlight made the quiet, dusty façades look unreal. Connor ran out of steam, physical and mental.
He swore dejectedly, shrugged, and started limping back to his car, choosing—as a token act of defiance—a route which took him a block further south than he had originally intended going. His feet were hot and so painful that he was unable to think of anything but his own discomfort. Consequently he did a genuine doubletake when he reached an intersection, glanced sideways and saw a half-familiar, half-forgotten vista of commonplace stores, wholesalers' depots, and anonymous doorways. His heart began a slow pounding as he picked out, midway on the block, a plain storefront whose complete lack of character would have rendered it invisible to eyes other than his own.
He walked towards it, suddenly nervous, until he could read the sign which said GENERAL AGENCIES in tarnished gold lettering. The window contained three pieces of glazed earthernware sewer pipe, beyond which were screens to prevent anyone seeing the store's interior. Connor expected to find the door locked, but it opened at his touch and he was inside without even having had time to prepare himself. He blinked at a tall gaunt man who was standing motionless behind a counter. The man had a down-curving mouth, ice-smooth gray hair, and something about him gave Connor the impression that he had been standing there, unmoving, for hours. He was dressed in funeral director black, with a silver tie, and the collar of his white shirt was perfect as the petals of a newly opened flower.
The man leaned forward slightly and said, "Was there something, sir?"
Connor was taken aback by the quaintness of the greeting, but he strode to the counter, brought the ruby egg from his pocket and banged it down.
"Tell Mr. Smith I'm not satisfied with this thing," he said in an angry voice. "And tell him I demand a repayment."
The tall man's composure seemed to shatter. He picked up the egg, half-turned toward an inner door, then paused and examined the egg more closely.
"Just a minute," he said. "This isn't …"
"Isn't what?"
The man looked accusingly at Connor. "I've no idea what this object is, and we haven't got a Mr. Smith."
"Know what this object is?" Connor produced his revolver. He had seen and heard enoug
h.
"You wouldn't dare."
"No?" Connor aimed the revolver at the other man's face and, aware that the safety catch was on, gave the trigger an obvious squeeze. The tall man shrank against the wall. Connor muttered furiously, clicked the safety off, and raised the gun again.
"Don't!" The man shook his head. "I beseech you."
Connor had never been beseeched in his life, but he did not allow the curious turn of speech to distract him. He said, "I want to see Mr. Smith."
"I'll take you to him. If you will follow me …"
They went through to the rear of the premises and down a flight of stairs which had inconveniently high risers and narrow treads. Noting that his guide was descending with ease, Connor glanced down and saw that the tall man had abnormally small feet. There was another peculiarity about his gait, but it was not until they had reached the basement floor and were moving along a corridor that Connor realized what it was. Within the chalk-stripe trousers, the tall man's knees appeared to be a good two-thirds of the way down his legs. Cool fingers of unease touched Connor's brow.
"Here we are, sir." The black-clad figure before him pushed open a door.
Beyond it was a large, brightly lit room, and at one side was another tall, cadaverous man dressed like a funeral director. He too had ice-smooth gray hair, and he was carefully putting an antique oil painting into the dark rectangular opening of a wall safe.
Without turning his head, he said, "What is it, Toynbee?"
Connor slammed the door shut behind himself. "I want to talk to you, Smith."
Smith gave a violent start but continued gently sliding the gold-framed painting into the wall. When it had disappeared, he turned to face Connor. He had a down-curved mouth and—even more disturbingly—his knees, also, seemed to be in the wrong place. If these people come from the future, Connor thought, why are they made differently from us? His mind shied away from the new thought and plunged into irrelevant speculations about the kind of chairs Smith and Toynbee must use … if any. He realized he had seen no seats or stools about the place. With a growing coldness in his veins, Connor recalled his earlier impression that Toynbee had been standing behind the counter for hours, without moving.
"… welcome to what money we have," Smith was saying, "but there's nothing else here worth taking."
"I don't think he's a thief." Toynbee went and stood beside him.
"Not a thief! Then what does he want? What is …?"
"Just for starters," Connor put in, "I want an explanation."
"Of what?"
"Of your entire operation here."
Smith looked mildly exasperated. He gestured at the wooden crates which filled much of the room. "It's a perfectly normal agency set-up handling various industrial products on a …"
"I mean the operation whereby you supply rich people with cigarette lighters that nobody on this Earth could manufacture."
"Cigarette lighters—"
"The red, egg-shaped ones which have no works but light when they're wet and stand upright without support."
Smith shook his head. "I wish I could get into something like that."
"And the television sets which are too good. And the clocks and cigars and all the other things which are so perfect that people who can afford it are willing to pay eight hundred sixty-four thousand dollars every forty-three days for them—even though the goodies are charged with an essence field which fades out and converts them to junk if they fall into the hands of anybody who isn't in the club."
"I don't understand a word of this."
"It's no use, Mr. Smith," Toynbee said. "Somebody has talked."
Smith gave him a venomous stare. "You just did, you fool!" In his anger, Smith moved closer to Toynbee, so that his body was no longer shielding the wall safe. Connor noticed for the first time that it was exceptionally large, and it occurred to him that a basement storeroom was an odd place for that particular type of safe. He looked at it more closely. The darkness of the interior revealed no trace of the oil painting he had just seen loaded into it. And, far into the tunnel-like blackness, a bright green star was throwing off expanding rings of light, rings which faded as they grew.
Connor made a new effort to retain his grasp of the situation. He pointed to the safe and said, casually, "I assume that's a two-way transporter."
Smith was visibly shaken. "All right," he said, after a tense silence, "who talked to you?"
"Nobody." Connor felt he could get Angela into trouble of some kind by mentioning her name.
Toynbee cleared his throat. "I'll bet it was that Miss Lomond. I've always said you can't trust the nouveau riche—the proper instincts aren't sufficiently ingrained."
Smith nodded agreement. "You are right. She got a replacement table lighter, television and clock—the things this … person has just mentioned. She said they had been detuned by someone who broke into her house."
"She must have told him everything she knew."
"And broken her contract—make a note of that, Mr. Toynbee."
"Hold on a minute," Connor said loudly, brandishing the revolver to remind them he was in control. "Nobody's going to make a note of anything till I get the answers I want. These products you deal in—do they come from the future or—somewhere?"
"From somewhere," Smith told him. "Actually, they come from a short distance in the future as well, but—as far as you are concerned—the important thing is that they are transported over many light years. The time difference is incidental, and quite difficult to prove."
"They're from another planet?"
"Yes."
"You, too?"
"Of course."
"You bring advanced products to Earth in secret and sell or rent them to rich people?"
"Yes. Only smaller stuff comes here, of course—larger items, like the television sets, come in at main receivers in other cities. The details of the operation may be surprising, but surely the general principles of commerce are well known to you."
"That's exactly what's bothering me," Connor said. "I don't give a damn about other worlds and matter transmitters, but I can't see why you go to all this trouble. Earth currency would be of no value on … wherever you come from. You're ahead on technology, so there is nothing …" Connor stopped talking as he remembered what Smith had been feeding into the black rectangle. An old oil painting.
Smith nodded, looking more relaxed. "You are right about your currency being useless on another world. We spend it here. Humanity is primitive in many respects, but the race's artistic genius is quite remarkable. Our organization makes a good trading surplus by exporting paintings and sculptures. You see, the goods we import are comparatively worthless."
"They seem valuable to me."
"They would seem that way to you—that's the whole point. We don't bother bringing in the things that Earth can produce reasonably well. Your wines and other drinks aren't too bad, so we don't touch them. But your coffee!" Smith's mouth curved even further downward.
"That means you're spending millions. Somebody should have noticed one outfit buying up so much stuff."
"Not really. We do quite a bit of direct buying at auctions and galleries, but often our clients buy on our behalf and we credit their accounts."
"Oh, no," Connor breathed as the ramifications of what Smith was saying unfolded new vistas in his mind. Was this why millionaires, even the most unlikely types of men, so often became art collectors? Was this the raison d'etre for that curious phenomenon, the private collection? In a society where the rich derived so much pleasure from showing off their possessions, why did so many art treasures disappear from the public view? Was it because their owners were trading them in against P-brand products? If that was the case, the organization concerned must be huge, and it must have been around for a long time. Connor's legs suddenly felt tired.
He said, "Let's sit down and talk about this."
Smith looked slightly uncomfortable. "We don't sit. Why don't you use one of those crates if you ar
en't feeling well?"
"There's nothing wrong with me, so don't try anything," Connor said sharply, but he sat on the edge of a box while his brain worked to assimilate shocking new concepts. "What does the P stand for on your products?"
"Can't you guess?"
"Perfect?"
"That is correct."
The readiness with which Smith was now giving information made Connor a little wary, but he pressed on with other questions which had been gnawing at him. "Miss Lomond told me her installments were eight hundred and sixty-four thousand dollars—why that particular figure? Why not a million?"
"That is a million—in our money. A rough equivalent, of course."
"I see. And the forty-three days."
"One revolution of our primary moon. It's a natural accounting period."
Connor almost began to wish the flow of information would slow down. "I still don't see the need for all this secrecy. Why not come out in the open, reduce your unit prices and multiply the volume? You could make a hundred times as much."
"We have to work underground for a number of reasons. In all probability the various Earth governments would object to the loss of art treasures, and there are certain difficulties at the other end."
"Such as?"
"There's a law against influencing events on worlds which are at a sensitive stage of their development. This limits our supply of trade goods very sharply."
"In other words, you are crooks on your own world and crooks on this one."
"I don't agree. What harm do we do on Earth?"
"You've already named it—you are depriving the people of this planet of …"
"Of their artistic heritage?" Smith gave a thin sneer. "How many people do you know who would give up a Perfect television set to keep a da Vinci cartoon in a public art gallery five or ten thousand miles away?"
"You've got a point there," Connor admitted. "What have you got up your sleeve, Smith?"
"I don't understand."
"Don't play innocent. You would not have talked so freely unless you were certain I wouldn't get out of here with the information. What are you planning to do about me?"
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 3 Page 9
