The Time Travel Megapack: 26 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

by Edward M. Lerner

  “Very good. Quite like—”

  The word, Walter and Betty later agreed, was see-mon-joe. They were able to agree quite early in the evening, because Clurg got up after eating the cheese, said warmly, “Thank you so much!” and walked out of the house.

  Betty said, “What—on—Earth!”

  Walter said uneasily, “I’m sorry, doll. I didn’t think he’d be quite that peculiar—”

  “—But after all!”

  “—Of course he’s a foreigner. What was that word?”

  He jotted it down.

  While they were doing the dishes, Betty said, “I think he was drunk. Falling-down drunk.”

  “No,” Walter said. “It’s exactly the same thing he did in my office. As though he expected a chair to come to him instead of him going to a chair.” He laughed and said uncertainly, “Or maybe he’s royalty. I read once about Queen Victoria never looking around before she sat down, she was so sure there’d be a chair there.”

  “Well, there isn’t any more royalty, not to speak of,” she said angrily, hanging up the dish towel. “What’s on TV tonight?”

  “Uncle Miltie. But…uh…I think I’ll read. Uh…where do you keep those magazines of yours, doll? Believe I’ll give them a try.”

  She gave him a look that he wouldn’t meet, and she went to get him some of her magazines. She also got a slim green book which she hadn’t looked at for years. While Walter flipped uneasily through the magazines, she studied the book. After about ten minutes she said: “Walter. Seemonjoe. I think I know what language it is!”

  He was instantly alert. “Yeah? What?”

  “It should be spelled c-i-m-a-n-g-o, with little jiggers over the C and G. It means ‘Universal food’ in Esperanto.”

  “Where’s Esperanto?” he demanded.

  “Esperanto isn’t anywhere. It’s an artificial language. I played around with it a little once. It was supposed to end war and all sorts of things. Some people called it the language of the future.” Her voice was tremulous.

  Walter said, “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

  * * * *

  He saw Clurg go into the neighborhood movie for the matinee. That gave him about three hours.

  Walter hurried to the Curran bungalow, remembered to slow down, and tried hard to look casual as he unlocked the door and went in. There wouldn’t be any trouble—he was a good citizen, known and respected—he could let himself into a tenant’s house and wait for him to talk about business if he wanted to.

  He tried not to think of what people would think if he should be caught rifling Clurg’s luggage, as he intended to do. He had brought along an assortment of luggage keys. Surprised by his own ingenuity, he had got them at a locksmith’s by saying his own key was lost and he didn’t want to haul a heavy packed bag downtown.

  But he didn’t need the keys. In the bedroom closet the two suitcases stood, unlocked.

  There was nothing in the first except uniformly new clothes, bought locally at good shops.

  The second was full of the same. Going through a rather extreme sports jacket, Walter found a wad of paper in the breast pocket. It was a newspaper page. A number had been penciled on a margin; apparently the sheet had been torn out and stuck into the pocket and forgotten. The dateline on the paper was July 18th, 2403.

  Walter had some trouble reading the stories at first, but found it was easy enough if he read them aloud and listened to his voice.

  One said:

  TAIM KOP NABD: PROSKYOOTR ASKS DETH

  Patrolm’n Oskr Garth V thi Taim Polis w’z arest’d toodei at hiz hom, 4365 9863th Suit, and bookd at 9768th Prisint on m——. tchardg’z ’v Polis-Ekspozh’r. Thi aledjd Ekspozh’r okurd hwaile Garth w’z on dooti in thi Twenti-Furst Sentch’ri. It konsist’d ’v hiz admish’n too a sit’zen ’v thi Twenti-Furst Sentch’ri that thi Taim Polis ekzisted and woz op’rated fr’m thi Twenti-Fifth Sentch’ri. Thi Proskypot’rz Ofis sed thi deth pen’lti wil be askt in vyoo ’v thi heinus neitch’r ’v thi ofens, hwitch thret’nz thi hwol fabrik ’v Twenti-Fifth-Sentch’ri eksiz-tens.

  There was an advertisement on the other side:

  BOIZ AND YUNG MEN!

  SERV EUR SENTCH’RI!

  ENLIST IN THI TAIM POLIS RSURV NOW!

  RIMEMB’R—’V THI AJEZ! ONLY IN THI TAIM POLIS KAN EU PROTEKT EUR SIVILIZASHON FR’M VARENS! THEIR IZ NO HAIER SERVIS TOO AR KULTCH’R! THEIR IZ NO K’REER SO FAS’NATING AZ A K’REER IN THI TAIM POLIS!

  Underneath it another ad asked:

  HWAI BI ASHEEMPD UV EUR TCHAIRZ?

  GET ROLFASTS!

  No uth’r tcheir haz thi immidjit respons uv a Rolfast. Sit enihweir—eur Rolfast iz ther! Eur Rolfast metl partz ar solid gold to avoid tairsum polishing. Eur Rolfast beirings are thi fain’st six-intch dupliks di’mondz for long wair.

  * * * *

  Walter’s heart pounded. Gold—to avoid tiresome polishing! Six-inch diamonds—for long wear!

  And Clurg must be a time policeman. “Only in the time police can you see the pageant of the ages!” What did a time policeman do? He wasn’t quite clear about that. But what they didn’t do was let anybody else—anybody earlier—know that the Time Police existed. He, Walter Lachlan of the Twentieth Century, held in the palm of his hand Time Policeman Clurg of the Twenty-Fifth Century—the Twenty-Fifth Century where gold and diamonds were common as steel and glass in this!

  * * * *

  He was there when Clurg came back from the matinee. Mutely, Walter extended the page of newsprint. Clurg snatched it incredulously, stared at it, and crumpled it in his fist. He collapsed on the floor with a groan.

  “I’m done for!” Walter heard him say.

  “Listen, Clurg,” Walter said. “Nobody ever needs to know about this—nobody.”

  Clurg looked up with sudden hope in his eyes. “You will keep silent?” he asked wildly. “It is my life!”

  “What’s it worth to you?” Walter demanded with brutal directness. “I can use some of those diamonds and some of that gold. Can you get it into this century?”

  “It would be missed. It would be over my mass-balance,” Clurg said. “But I have a Duplix. I can copy diamonds and gold for you; that was how I made my feoff money.”

  He snatched an instrument from his pocket—a fountain pen, Walter thought.

  “It is low in charge. It would Duplix about five kilograms in one operation—”

  “You mean,” Walter demanded, “that if I brought you five kilograms of diamonds and gold you could duplicate it? And the originals wouldn’t be harmed? Let me see that thing. Can I work it?”

  Clurg passed over the “fountain pen.” Walter saw that within the case was a tangle of wires, tiny tubes, lenses—he passed it back hastily.

  Clurg said, “That is correct. You could buy or borrow jewelry and I could duplix it. Then you could return the originals and retain the copies. You swear by your contemporary God that you would say nothing?”

  Walter was thinking. He could scrape together a good thirty thousand dollars by pledging the house, the business, his own real estate, the bank account, the life insurance, the securities. Put it all into diamonds, of course and then—doubled! Overnight!

  “I’ll say nothing,” he told Clurg. “If you come through.” He took the sheet from the twenty-fifth-century newspaper from Clurg’s hands and put it securely in his own pocket. “When I get those diamonds duplicated,” he said, “I’ll burn this paper and forget the rest. Until then, I want you to stay close to home. I’ll come around in a day or so with the stuff for you to duplicate.”

  Clurg nervously promised.

  * * * *

  The secrecy, of course, didn’t include Betty. He told her when he got home, and she let out a yell of delight. She demanded the newspaper, read it avidly, and then demanded to see Clurg.

  “I don’t think he’ll talk,” Walter said doubtfully. “But if you really want to…”

  She did, and they walked to the Curran bungalow. Clurg was gone
, lock, stock and barrel, leaving not a trace behind. They waited for hours, nervously.

  At last Betty said, “He’s gone back.”

  Walter nodded. “He wouldn’t keep his bargain, but by God I’m going to keep mine. Come along. We’re going to the Enterprise.”

  “Walter,” she said. “You wouldn’t—would you?”

  * * * *

  He went alone, after a bitter quarrel.

  At the Enterprise office, he was wearily listened to by a reporter, who wearily looked over the twenty-fifth-century newspaper. “I don’t know what you’re peddling, Mr. Lachlan,” he said, “but we like people to buy their ads in the Enterprise. This is a pretty bare-faced publicity grab.”

  “But—” Walter sputtered.

  “Sam, would you please ask Mr. Morris to come up here if he can?” the reporter was saying into the phone. To Walter he explained, “Mr. Morris is our press-room foreman.”

  The foreman was a huge, white-haired old fellow, partly deaf. The reporter showed him the newspaper from the twenty-fifth century and said, “How about this?”

  Mr. Morris looked at it and smelled it and said, showing no interest in the reading matter: “American Type Foundry Futura number nine, discontinued about ten years ago. It’s been hand-set. The ink—hard to say. Expensive stuff, not a news ink. A book ink, a job-printing ink. The paper, now, I know. A nice linen rag that Benziger jobs in Philadelphia.”

  “You see, Mr. Lachlan? It’s a fake.” The reporter shrugged.

  Walter walked slowly from the city room. The press-room foreman knew. It was a fake. And Clurg was a faker. Suddenly Walter’s heels touched the ground after twenty-four hours and stayed there. Good God, the diamonds! Clurg was a conman! He would have worked a package switch! He would have had thirty thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds for less than a month’s work!

  He told Betty about it when he got home, and she laughed unmercifully. “Time Policeman” was to become a family joke between the Lachlans.

  * * * *

  Harry Twenty-Third Street stood, blinking, in a very peculiar place. Peculiarly, his feet were firmly encased, up to the ankles, in a block of clear plastic.

  There were odd-looking people, and a big voice was saying: “May it please the court. The People of the Twenty-Fifth Century versus Harold Parish, alias Harry Twenty-Third Street, alias Clurg, of the Twentieth Century. The charge is impersonating an officer of the Time Police. The Prosecutor’s Office will ask the death penalty in view of the heinous nature of the offense, which threatens the whole fabric—”

  NEBOGIPFEL AT THE END OF TIME, by Richard A. Lupoff

  The first of them to appear came from the sky. There was a flash like ball lightening, there was a clap of thunder, there was the rush and flutter of great heavy wings, and he was there—a gleaming, godlike figure with streaming golden hair, perfect features, a torso all sinew and strength.

  With his wings he pressed himself upward through the thick, weary air, surveying the water and its gray, ragged rocks, the black graveled beach, and dun mazy dunes. A few horrid creatures slid through the dark oily waters, their sharp senses tuned, their quick brains devoted to the endless quest of nourishment gained ultimately at one another’s expense.

  The gleaming newcomer tilted his pinions, banked, swept lower over the face of the water. Behind him, sunk perpetually half below the horizon, a fat misty sun glared redly across dim, dispirited ripples. Greedy tentacles whipped upward from beneath the surface of the sea. The tentacles were as thin as wires, as agile as wolf eels, as powerful as woven steel. The great winged man eluded them with casual ease, rose a short distance above the dark, coarse beach, and dropped softly onto the cinder-like gravel.

  At once a spider crab the size of a man’s doubled hands sprang from its lair and shot at his softest parts, black pebbles clattering back against the beach. The man seemed not to notice the predator. Carelessly, he turned to stare in moody silence across the dull dunes, his shadow long and black before him outlined by the dim red glare of the dying sun. The man’s turning, easy and nonchalant, seemed somehow to disconcert the leaping predator. The man’s hand caught it an almost accidental blow and sent it skittering back onto the gravelish beach, where it landed with a clatter on its back and began at once to struggle frantically. Even so the crab had not righted itself before a dozen rival predators had attacked it from all sides, tearing away its waving claws and then boring through the exposed opening in its carapace to find the soft nourishment inside.

  A hundred strides down the beach, there was a sudden pop as a globe like a shimmering great soap bubble appeared just over the black cinders, hovered and shook briefly, then exploded softly. From within it a couple set foot upon the strand. They stood, gazing tentatively for a while at the winged man, then began carefully on quivering pipestem legs to make their way toward him.

  The winged man advanced to meet the newcomers, his great muscular strides devouring the distance that their tiny thin legs could barely nibble at. The couple seemed to be man and woman, but each showed only vestigial characteristics of gender— or of their animal nature at all. Their heads were huge and domelike, with only the lightest suggestion of down above the ears. Their ears were huge and moved as if of their own will; their eyes were tiny and deep sunken, but still they blinked and squinted in the dim red sunlight.

  Above there was a screaming roar as a great black ellipsoid half-appeared, circling over the beach, growing alternately more and less solid in appearance. The noise that the object made faded and grew in concert with its growing and lessening solidity. Great aerial screws held the thing above the beach, and multi-faceted gemlike surfaces slowed and dimmed as it moved this way and that through the heavy air.

  Slowly the machine seemed to stabilize in the air, then to lower itself carefully until it had come to rest on the strand. One of the jewels in its skin revolved slowly then, rolled away from the ellipsoid and lay against the black, dull surface of the machine.

  A small party of people slowly emerged from the machine. They wore dark, form-fitting garments marked with red hexagonal insignia. Their outfits included black pointed hoods that largely concealed their faces; what could be seen of these showed them to be as black and dull as the clothing and the ship in which they had arrived.

  For what seemed like hour upon hour they arrived. Some by strange, grotesque vehicles. Some by spectacularly announced projection. Some by chronion gas, or drugs, or spiritual exercise, or by sheer mental power. Some involuntarily. Some unknowingly. At one point not far inland from the beach, across the first row of dim, ugly dunes, there suddenly appeared an entire city. Its towers were of white marble and shining glass, its gates were of yellow horn and blackened teak. Its people had pale yellow skin and wore robes of indigo and gold.

  When it appeared inland of the beach, the city’s rulers climbed to the highest point of its highest tower and gazed into the center of the glowing, half-hidden sun, and sent his chief advisor to have himself let out through the yellow horn and teakwood gates, and make his way to join the others on the beach, and confer with them.

  * * * *

  We are here, the man from the city of towers said as he approached the others standing on the beach. It seemed a pointless comment; he did not himself know what he meant.

  The nearest to him, a woman of the black ellipsoid, turned her black-hooded face toward him. She nodded. All, we are all here. Your master and your people will not leave their city?

  The other shook his head in the universal sign, his indigo robes rustling.

  It is time that he arrive, another voice said. The two turned to see whose it was. The speaker was one of the wizened couple. It is time, the speaker’s companion added. Time, the first said. They nodded.

  He is coming, a voice asserted. There was a rustling all up and down the beach. He is coming, is coming, is coming, voices echoed, whispered, shivered back to silence.

  It is time, the golden, winged man said. He raised a muscled arm, pointed acro
ss the oily sea. Where half the sun’s blood-red disk stood in changeless demi-sunset, a black circle had rolled along the horizon and now stood in the center of the sun like a black hole punctured in a red bull’s-eye target.

  A chorus of intaken breaths were drawn.

  The travelers on the beach— there were scores now— drew themselves into a great half-ring. The tiny, spindly-legged couple from the shimmering bubble stationed themselves facing each other, forty paces apart at the edge of the sea. Tiny wavelets lapped at the edges of their soft-shod feet, leaving a residue of pinkish foam on the pliant, leathery slippers that the wore.

  Between them, strung in a gentle curve, were all the others. The black-clad, hooded figures from the gem-doored ellipsoid, the men and the women who had arrived by time-gas and by time-drug, by time-quake, and by time-slip, those who had arrived by machine, those who had arrived by mind, one who had risen naked and weeping from a great glass coffin of cushions and of blossoms, and one who had struggled wild-eyed and screaming from a barrow beneath the black cindery beach itself, the indigo-robed seer from the city of towers, and the winged godling from the sky above the water.

  There was a hush as they all stared at the black disk upon the red disk, the stripes of color reflecting from them across the face of the oily sea to the edge of the black cindery beach. Then a voice broke the silence. How will we know him, the voice asked.

  By his face, one replied. By his haggard face, his bruised face, his face of despair.

  By his clothing another said. By his quaint clothing, his rough cloth trousers and oddly buttoned jacket and the strange cloth cap he wears on his head and the stranger cloth streamer that he ties about his throat.

  By his machine, a third claimed. By his strange, squat, ugly machine that looks all askew with its ivory bars and its brass railings, its shining rod of quartz and its odd ugly saddle.

  And how will he know us, the seer from the city of towers asked to know.

  We will call him by name. We will call him Nebogipfel.

  Nebogipfel.

  It was as if the name had summoned the man from out of time’s grasp. In the center of their half-circle he appeared. The time traveler and the time machine. The machine was truly squat and ugly and askew. The traveler bore his face of despair.