by Various
The house detective arrived at that moment, but Sextus dismissed him with a wave of his hand. He went in alone.
"I'm the manager, madam," he assured her. He noted that despite her excited wails, her eyes drooped half shut. A bottle of sleeping pills on the table was uncapped.
"Thizz man, thizz man, thizz man!" she kept repeating and pointing her elbow at the bed. The man in question raised his eyebrows and shook his head.
"Damndest sensation I ever felt," he said. "I'm Johnathan P. Turner, attorney. Before I tell you my story, please check with the desk and verify that I was assigned this room."
Sextus took the phone from the woman's pudgy hand which darted to rescue the sagging pillow. The room-clerk reported that Mr. J. P. Turner was registered to room 408, but in "J" vector, not "H".
Sextus' eyes swept the room. It was an unexplainable mess. Two sets of luggage were jumbled on and around the baggage rack at the foot of the bed. Rinsed out nylons hung from the shower rod, but a man's shaving kit occupied the shelf over the lavatory. Despairing of ever arriving at a sensible explanation, Sextus went to work.
Although hampered somewhat without his shirt, coat and tie, Sextus managed to get Turner and his belongings transferred peaceably to another room and the woman quieted down in bed with another sleeping pill.
Then Turner was allowed to tell his story. "I had turned in early and was lying there on my back reading the paper when suddenly I got the most messy feeling all through me. It was like--oh, hell, I can't say it. Anyhow, in just about a second, something went thub!--and there she was in bed with me--naked!" he added with a shiver.
Sextus grasped at a straw. "How many did you have to drink this evening, Mr. Turner?"
The attorney squirmed uncomfortably. "Well, quite a few, maybe, but not enough to--"
Sextus shrugged one shoulder and turned to leave. "Understand, we don't blame you a bit, sir. You know how these middle-aged women can carry on when they get out on the town. You must have dozed off before she slipped in."
"But my door was locked! I think," he added uncertainly.
"We won't breathe a word of it, Mr. Turner. Rest well!"
* * * * *
Sextus padded silently back to his room in his stocking feet and took a long pull at the whiskey. Funny thing, this. People often got into the wrong hotel beds, but rarely with such impalpable excuses. He sighed and picked up the letter from his predecessor again. It read:
Welcome to the Phony-Plaza. (That name again.) You will be the fifth manager in 30 days. If you need the job as much as I thought I did you will probably ignore my advice, but here goes, anyway: RESIGN! BAIL OUT! SKIDOO! (The man was emphatic.) I can't tell you where they've got the 2600 rooms in this haunted ant-hill, but believe me, they are there, and you'll be sorry if you hang around long enough to prove it.
My predecessor left a garbled note about some hyperspace system that the owner, Dr. Bradford, has figured out. Actually, there are only 260 rooms, as you've probably surmised. But this Bradford, who is a nuclear physicist, by the way, has installed some sort of field generator in each elevator shaft that gives entry to these rooms at ten different locations in time. Room 500, for instance, in Vector A is 10 years from Vector B. So when you run to capacity with, say, two people to the room, you have 5200 guests in 260 rooms! They all live by the same calendar, but in their rooms they are actually centuries apart. How do you like those apples?
It's all quite neat and economical, what with the cost per front foot of this beach area zoned for business, and you'll find a dandy profit on the books, but start worrying, fellow! Things are beginning to happen. The maintenance engineer, who, incidentally, is quitting, too, says that the equipment in the shafts is wearing out, and the fields are pulsating or decaying or some damned thing. And we can't contact Dr. Bradford, who took the service manual with him.
Maybe you are more experienced in this hotel business than I am, but I couldn't stand the gaff. One more mess like I barely managed to clean up this week and someone's going to the pokey. It won't be me.
Good luck, if you insist on staying, but I warned you.
(signed) Thornton K. Patterson
P.S. The fire-marshall is on our necks because the windows are all sealed, but for God's sake, DON'T UNSEAL THEM!
* * * * *
Sextus tossed the fantastic communication aside in disgust, but his mind began to unreel a picture of the confusion he had witnessed down in the service quarters: Bellboys and room-service waiters fighting for service elevators; chambermaids trundling their little carts on the dead run; the overworked laundry staff, laboring in a veritable sweatshop of steamy chaos, swamped in a billowing backlog of sheets and towels. It all pointed to a large hotel operation.
If so, where were the rooms? Refusing to argue further with himself, he got undressed. Hyperspace or not, the people apparently were there, and it was his job to serve them. He got a bucket of ice from room-service, mixed an ice and whiskey highball and retreated into his private little world between crisp sheets and the pages of a twenty-five-cent mystery novel.
Arising early, he was girded for the summons from Miss Genevieve Hafner in room H-408. He went to her room. Fully dressed and in the daylight she was still a hollow-eyed mess. The only visible improvement was in the bleached bird's-nest, now a prim, rolled circle on her unlovely pate.
"What amends," she demanded, "do you intend to make for my terrible experience last night? Is that horrid creature in jail?"
"Experience? Jail?" Sextus asked innocent-eyed. He asked that she tell him about it. Exasperated, she went over the details. When she finished he patted her hand and pointed to the sleeping pills. "You should see your doctor."
"But my doctor prescribed those pills," she whimpered, looking down shyly at the hand which Sextus held gingerly. "They never made me dream--before."
He bent and kissed the revolting hand. "You are much too lovely a lady to have escaped from such a predicament as you describe without suffering--shall we say, a more romantic--fate?"
Miss Hafner blushed at the thought and wavered between outrage and ecstasy for a dangerous moment. With time-tested genius, Sextus withdrew quietly and left her to her thoughts.
He must get in touch with Dr. Bradford, atom business or not. This place could blow sky-high any minute.
He slipped the key into his own door and entered his suite. He took two brisk strides into his bedroom, tripped over a lady's overnight case and sprawled into his unmade bed. Even as he landed he realized it had an occupant, a gorgeous, strangely familiar blonde creature, touselled and asleep hugging her pillow with a creamy arm. A crash from the bathroom brought his head bouncing off the silken coverlet even as the girl awakened with a scream and tangled them both with the bed clothes.
Gary Gable charged from the bathroom, face dripping and a tuft of lather under each ear. "What in the Goddam hell--" He leaped for Sextus with his internationally famous shoulders knotted into bunches of muscular menace.
"I'm the hotel manager," Sextus blurted loudly. For once his self-assurance wavered under fire. Even to himself his words explained nothing.
Meanwhile, Gable tripped over one of Sextus' heavy suitcases and joined the pair in bed. Another male voice issued from the bathroom, and as they all thrashed about, Sextus became aware that a second female had somehow appeared between Gable and his brand new bride. They came up together, face to face, the beautiful, sleepy blonde and the very wide-awake, queenly brunette. Now a pot-bellied little man in shorts and undershirt emerged from the bathroom, his mouth a gaping hole in a fully lathered face.
Sextus wriggled free, made for the door and off down the hall. To his horror, the automatic signal light on the vector "H" elevator was flickering and fading. The whole H-vector must be collapsing. He dashed for the stairwell and then reconsidered. He moved to the end of the hall which overlooked the low roof of the adjacent building. He tried the window and remembered that it was sealed. Back in the alcove he seized one of the sand jars
and headed back for the window. A growing tide of commotion swelled from behind almost every door now. Grunts, screams and wrestling sounds came over the transoms.
He dashed the sand jar through the window, chipped off the jagged edges with his heel and climbed out. It was a twenty-foot drop to security, and he made it without hesitation. What could a man hope to do with a mess like--
Spang! His feet struck, not with a crunch on gravelled tar, but into a springy fabric that sagged under his 180 pounds, tossed him six feet in the air, caught him on the rebound and then juggled him down with diminishing bounces.
* * * * *
They were waiting for him, as he regained his feet on the quivering surface of a spring-loaded, canvas trampoline. The bright, mid-morning sun blinded him for an instant, but their voices assailed his ears in a mighty roar of approval as he squinted under his hand and peered around him.
"Attaboy, Sexy," a shrill female voice piped. The roof-top was jammed with a pressing throng of--nearly naked people. In the cleared semi-circle about him a cordon of male bodies-beautiful restrained the mob behind a rope from which a long streamer hung with letters reading:
"WELCOME, SEXTUS, TO 2153 A. D."
Reaching over the edge of the canvas platform with outstretched hand was a single, willowy, sun-baked oldster in a purple loin-cloth. His hair and beard were a dazzling white, and his face was wreathed in a silly smile, the kind officials always wear when presenting the keys to the city.
He shuffled his white kid sandals and spoke with an accent: "Welcome to 2153, Sextus Rollo Forsyte! California salutes you!"
Somewhere down on the street a raucous brass band broke into the Stars and Stripes Forever that quickly medlied into California, Here We Come!
Sextus shrank back against the wall and felt ancient bricks crumble into dust against his hands. The magnitude of his disaster crushed in upon shrinking soul, and as his nimble imagination grasped the stunning significance every molecule of his being vibrated with horror. He had been warned not to open a window.
"You have fulfilled the legend," the old man sang joyously. "You are a famous man." How famous, Sextus was forced to acknowledge as a television boom snaked over the heads of the crowd trailing a wisp of cable and cast its baleful, glassy eye full into his face.
"Two hundred years to the day, as my great-great-grandfather predicted. I am Clark Bradford, direct descendent of--"
Sextus stared wildly up at the open window. He bounced once experimentally. It was a fine trampoline, and he flipped a foot off the surface. Next bounce he flexed his knees a little and gained another foot. Now he doubled up purposefully.
The one-man-delegate in purple frowned. "Stop that. We are here to welcome you and start the celebration at the Hollywood Bowl and--Stop that, I say!" Now he sensed Sextus' incredible intent. "Officer, help out here, please!"
A bulgy, bronzed fellow clad mainly in an immaculately white brassard left the rope barrier and joined Bradford.
The Elder screamed, "You can't go back, Forsyte! Don't you understand? You disappeared two centuries ago when the vector field collapsed. You can't go back! You can't! This is your destiny!"
Sextus' heels soared five feet above the canvas and gained precious altitude with each spring, but it was a precarious business the higher he went. One slip and he'd glance off at a tangent and be captured by those reaching, grasping obscene hands in the crowd. The thought almost unseated his reason.
The police officer asked Bradford, "What would happen if he did go back?" Then he added, "Ain't he got a right to?"
Bradford shuffled nervously. "I don't quite know. We never considered such a--my God! Stop, man, stop. You'll change the whole course of history! Stop him!"
The barelegged minion tried, but as he climbed up on the edge of the trampoline Sextus bounced and kicked out with accuracy and determination. The policeman sprawled back clutching air, and the crowd roared.
One more bounce and a half twist, now. Sextus soared up, up, and his hands touched the sill.
With the agility of desperation he clawed up and through the paneless window.
"You don't know what you are doing," the old man screeched. "Stay here and you'll be famous. If you go back it is to oblivion. Oblivion! Very, well, go back! Go back, you--you nonentity!"
"You bet," Sextus panted to himself and tumbled onto the carpeted fourth floor hallway of the Mahoney-Plaza hotel.
Instantly, another voice, but without accent, accosted him shrilly from down the hall. "You, there. You mister manager." Sextus sighed mightily with relief. It was only Miss Genevieve Hafner holding a pimply-faced, red-haired youth by the ear.
True, Gary Gable and two hair-pulling, female starlets bore down right behind her, and rooms along both sides of the corridor were disgorging eddies of indignant displaced persons.
But these were things he understood. These were just beefs. Somewhat more involved than usual, but nothing much worse than a full-fledged convention at mid-night.
He adjusted his mashed carnation, brushed the crumbles of old brick dust from his morning coat and moved into the fray.
"Now, now, Miss Hafner! What are you up to this time?"
* * *
Contents
MATE IN TWO MOVES
By Winston Marks
Murt's Virus was catastrophically lethal, but it killed in a way no disease had ever thought of--it loved its victims to death!
Love came somewhat late to Dr. Sylvester Murt. In fact, it took the epidemic of 1961 to break down his resistance. A great many people fell in love that year--just about every other person you talked to--so no one thought much about Dr. Murt's particular distress, except a fellow victim who was directly involved in this case.
High Dawn Hospital, where 38-year-old Dr. Murt was resident pathologist, was not the first medical institution to take note of the "plague." The symptoms first came to the attention of the general practitioners, then to the little clinics where the G. P.s sent their patients. But long before anything medical was done about it, the plague was sweeping North and South America and infiltrating every continent and island in the world.
Murt's assistant, Dr. Phyllis Sutton, spotted the first irregularity in the Times one morning and mentioned it to him. They were having coffee in Murt's private office-lab, after completing reports on two rush biopsies.
She looked up from the editorial page and remarked, "You know, someone should do a research on the pathology of pantie raids."
* * * * *
Murt spooned sugar into his mug of coffee and stared at her. In their six months' association, it was the first facetious remark she had made in his presence. To this moment, he had held an increasing regard for her quiet efficiency, sobriety, professional dignity and decorum. True, she wore her white coat more tightly belted than was necessary and, likewise, she refused to wear the very low hospital heels that thickened feminine ankles. But she wore a minimum of come-hither in both her cosmetic and personality makeup. This startling remark, then, was most unexpected.
"Pantie raids?" he inquired. "Whatever would justify an inquiry into such a patently behavioristic problem?"
"The epidemic nature and its increasing virulence," she replied soberly. "This spring, the thing has gotten out of hand, according to this editorial. A harmless tradition at a few of the more uninhibited campuses has turned into a national collegiate phenomenon. And now secondary effects are turning up. Instructors say that intramural romance is turning the halls of ivy into amatory rendezvous."
Murt sipped his coffee and said, "Be thankful you aren't a psychiatrist. Bacterial mutations are enough of a problem, without pondering unpredictable emotional disturbances."
His assistant pursued it further. "It says the classrooms are emptying into the marriage bureaus, and graduation exercises this year will be a mockery if something isn't done. What's more, statistics show a startling increase in marriages at the high school level."
Murt shrugged broad shoulders that were slightly bent from
long hours over a microscope. "Then be thankful you aren't an overworked obstetrician," he offered as an amendment.
She glanced up from the paper, with annoyance showing in her dark, well-spaced eyes. "Is it of no interest to you that several hundred thousand youngsters are leaving high school and college prematurely because they can't control their glands?"
"Be glad, then," Murt said coldly, "that you aren't an endocrinologist--now drink your coffee. I hear the microtome working. We'll have some business in a minute."
Dr. Phyllis Sutton rustled the pages of the Times together, folded it up and threw it at the wastebasket with more vigor than was necessary. The subject was momentarily closed.
* * * * *
His staff position at High Dawn paid less, but the life suited Dr. Murt better than the hectic, though lucrative, private practices of many of his colleagues. He arrived at the hospital early, seven o'clock each day, to be on hand for quick tissue examinations during the morning operations. By ten, the biopsies were usually out of the way, and he spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon checking material from the bacteriology section and studying post-operative dissections of tumorous tissues and organs removed in surgery.
It was engrossing, important work, and it could be accomplished in a normal work-day, leaving the pathologist considerable leisure to study, read and relax. Shortly after the pantie-raid conversation with Phyllis Sutton, he found the evening paper attracting more than his usual quick perusal.
This emotional fuss in the young human animal was beginning to preoccupy the newspaper world. Writers were raising their eyebrows and a new crop of metaphors at the statistics, which they described variously as alarming, encouraging, disheartening, provocative, distressing, romantic or revolting, depending upon the mood and point of view.
