Nine Men in Time Part 2

"How do you feel?" asked Dr. Hudson.

"Excellent," boomed High-Pockets, straightening up.

The physicist went around to the other side, and though I had been watching these experiments for some time, I give you my word I very nearly choked on my own tongue when I saw High-Pockets Jones walk out of the second compartment.

The second High-Pockets produced a worn bill-fold and extracted a pink union permit.

"I protest this inhuman manipulation of a man's individuality," said the chairman indignantly; "this is outrageous."

I felt better now. I'd been waiting for that. "Let him go to work," I said. "We need an operator today, anyway; Bill Smith has the flu. I will guarantee to pay a man's wages to whomever you say, if this is found to be illegal."

Under the law, there wasn't much they could do. And I had already taken the precaution of retaining the best legal counsel in the city.

I was elated when they went to work. I pumped Dr. Hudson's hand and a.s.sured him that we had indeed made spectacular history, and together we could make millions.

The first trouble came an hour later. One of the High-Pocketses--I couldn't tell which one--came into the office. "The foreman sent me up to get some work," he said in his booming voice.

I frowned. What was going on back there? I went back, High-Pockets Jones was working on his own machine. High-Pockets Jones was also working on Bill Smith's machine. I looked up quickly. High-Pockets Jones was also standing beside me.

He smiled. "Catching, isn't it?"

I swallowed, but I knew they were playing tricks. High-Pockets Jones had walked into the cabinet a second time, and his double had worked the controls and produced a third. Well, this could get confusing, but I stayed calm. "You're a floor-man, too, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Okay. You go back to the Monotype room and get a bunch of slugs and leads and saw them up to fill the cases. They're getting pretty low."

"Yes, sir." He turned and went away.

When I got back to the office I thought I'd just turn on the lucite and see what they might be up to next. I had an uneasy feeling.

Sure enough, a High-Pockets Jones was stepping out of the second compartment of the cabinet. I gulped and quickly checked the others.

This was the fourth one.

I went back to raise h.e.l.l, but High-Pockets--well, one of them--was quite calm about it. "Two men can do it faster than one," he said.

I licked my lips and beat my brains, but I didn't know the answer. I went back to think it over. I had just decided to laugh it off when three High-Pockets Joneses came into the office.

"We need something to do," they said, all in that great booming voice that seemed to come from the ceiling.

"See the foreman. Tell him to give you all the standing type that needs to be distributed."

They left. I breathed a sigh of relief and sent out for a padlock to put on the cabinet.

An hour later, with a nice, shiny new padlock, I went back to the composing-room. But I very nearly fainted when I saw the activity going on back there. The composing-room was filled with High-Pockets Joneses.

Two still were at the linecasting machines, and a whole crew of others were running around the floor.

"Where's the foreman?" I barked.

High-Pockets Jones--one of them--came to attention. "He went home. He was quite discouraged; he told us to throw in all the standing type we could find."

It didn't look good. I had the feeling that High-Pockets was laughing at me--this High-Pockets, anyway.

That reminded me. I gathered up all the High-Pocketses in the composing-room and lined them up. There were nine--exactly nine--every one of them over seven feet tall and thin as a sidestick, every one of them with a gentle, booming voice.

I wanted to tell the original High-Pockets to gather them all up and put them back together, but I didn't know how to find the original.

Well, they couldn't get me down. I fooled them. I told them all to take the rest of the day off--at full pay.

All nine of them washed up together and left together. It was the d.a.m.nedest thing I ever saw offstage. Nine identical High-Pocketses--all so tall they had to weave around the neon lights instead of ducking under them. It was enough to give a man nightmares, to watch that line of High-Pockets Joneses advancing across an open composing-room.

This kind of thing went on the next day, and the next. Every day there were nine High-Pockets Joneses in the composing-room. Everybody was falling over everybody else, when they weren't standing around laughing up their sleeves.

There was nothing I could do. I had been forced to turn over all of my house to eight of the High-Pocketses, because they had to have a place to stay, and after all, I was responsible for them.

Our production went up a little, but the Legal Printing Company job was hardly touched. There was too much of that sort of festive spirit in the air; everybody was watching the High-Pocketses and waiting to see what would happen next--and hoping for something extravagant. In other words, they refused to take it seriously; to them, it was a circus.

I didn't have the nerve to ask anybody else to split. After all, High-Pockets was in nine places at once; that should have been enough.

It was apparent by that time that the extender would never be anything in a printing office but a psychological monstrosity.

I had to admit I was stymied, and I got so I didn't give a whoop. I was sunk anyway. That is the way it went that week. On Sat.u.r.day night Dr.

Hudson and I got beautifully soused.

On Monday morning I didn't care. The Legal Printing Company called up and said they could give us a few more days; if they could have it by Friday, they could still make the filing date. I said we'd do everything possible, and then I hung up and laughed bitterly and aloud. We couldn't get it out if we had another month. The only thing was, as soon as our plant closed up, they could ask the court for an extension because of unforeseen circ.u.mstances, and probably get it. So I laughed aloud.

I saw Dr. Hudson cleaning out his desk, and I nodded. "Sorry, Doc, we got all fouled up. Maybe some other time--"

He nodded. "Progress always encounters opposition," he said. "It just happens that we are the sacrifices in this deal."

"Yeah." I went out and had a drink.

I was pretty dazed that week. It didn't make any difference. I had already tried everything possible, and they had me hog-tied. And those nine High-Pocketses had made me a laughing-stock.

On Friday morning, I looked at the calendar and it suddenly occurred to me that this was the thirty-first and the receivers would be around this afternoon to decide whether or not to close the place.

There wasn't any doubt as to what they would do. I began to clean out my own desk. I felt terrible.

Then one of the High-Pocketses came in with a piece of copy in his hand.

He looked at me queerly and then said softly, "You leaving?"

"Yes," I said bitterly, "I'm going. You got me licked; I'm through."

"I was just trying to point out to you the absurdity of some of your new devices," he said.