Now Wait For Last Year Part 17

"I'll try," Eric said presently.

"Now I have to let you out. The medication you took will start to work on you in a few minutes and I don't care to have you drop five miles to the surface of the planet." The ship began to descend. "I'll let you off in Salt Lake City; it's a big place, you won't be noticed. And when you're back in 2055 you can catch a cab to Arizona."

"I don't have any 2055 money," Eric remembered. "Or do I?" He was confused; too much had happened. He groped for his wallet. "I got into a panic after that attempt on my part to buy the antidote from Hazeltine with wartime-"

"Don't ruminate over the details. I know them already."

They completed the flight to Earth's surface in silence, each inhibited by his gloomy contempt for the other. It was, Eric decided, a graphic demonstration of the necessity for having respect for one's own self. And this gave him for the first time an insight into his fatalistic quasi-suicidal inclinations ... they were undoubtedly based on this same flaw. To survive he would have to learn to view himself and his accomplishments differently.

"You're wasting your time," his counterpart said after the ship had landed in an irrigated pasture outside Salt Lake City. "You're not going to change."

As he stepped from the ship onto the spongy, moist alfalfa Eric said, "According to you, anyhow. But we'll see."

Without a further word his 2056 self slammed the hatch and took off; the ship shot up into the sky and disappeared.

Eric trudged toward the nearby paved road.

In Salt Lake City proper he snared a cab. It did not ask for his travel permit and he realized that imperceptibly, probably as he was walking toward town along the road, he had slipped a year back and was now in his own time. Nevertheless he decided to make sure.

"Give me the date," he instructed the cab.

"June 15, sir," the cab said as it buzzed south over green mountains and valleys.

"What year?"

The cab said, "Are you a Mr. Rip Van Winkle or something, sir? It's 2055. And I hope it satisfies you." The cab was old and somewhat seedy, needing repairs; its irritability showed in the activity of its autonomic circuitry.

"It does," Eric said.

By use of the cab's vidphone he learned from the information center at Phoenix the location of the prisoner of war camp; this was not cla.s.sified information. Presently the cab flew above flat desert lands and monotonous hills of rock and empty basins which in former times had been lakes. And then, in the midst of this barren, unexploited wilderness, the cab set him down; he had arrived at POW Camp 29, and it was just where he had expected it to be; in the most uninhabitable spot conceivable. To him the great desert lands of Nevada and Arizona were like a dismal alien planet, not Earth at all; frankly he preferred the parts of Mars which he had seen near Wash-35.

"Lots of luck, sir," the cab said. He paid it and it zoomed noisily off, its plate shuddering.

"Thanks," Eric said. He walked to the guardhouse at the entrance of the camp; to the soldier within he explained that he had been sent by Tijuana Fur & Dye to buy a POW for clerical work that had to be processed with absolute accuracy.

"Just one?" the soldier asked him as he led the way to his superior's office. "We can give you fifty reegs. Two hundred. We're overrun with them right now. From that last battle we nailed six of their transports."

In the colonel's office he filled out forms, signed for TF&D. Payment, he explained, would be forwarded through normal channels at the end of the month in response to presentation of a formal statement.

"Take your pick," the colonel, bored to death, told him. "Look all around; you can have any one of them-they're all alike, though."

Eric said, "I see a reeg filing forms there in the next room. He-or it-looks efficient."

"That's old Deg," the colonel said. "Deg's a fixture around here; captured in the first week of the war. Even built himself one of those translating boxes so he could be of more use to us. I wish all of them were as cooperative as Deg."

"I'll take him," Eric said.

"We'll have to affix a considerable additional fee," the colonel said slyly. "Because of the amount of training he's received here from us." He made a note of that. "And a service charge for the translating box."

"You said he built it."

"We supplied the materials."

At last they agreed on a price and then Eric walked into the next room and up to the reeg, busy with his four multijointed arms at the insurance claim files. "You belong to TF&D now," Eric informed him. "So come along." To the colonel he said, "Will he try to escape or fight me?"

"They never do," the colonel said, lighting a cigar and leaning against the wall of his office with dreary ennui, "They don't have the mentality for it; they're just bugs. Huge, shiny bugs."

Presently he was back outside in the hot sun, waiting for a cab from nearby Phoenix. If I had known it would take such a short time, he said to himself, I would have held onto the cranky, elderly cab. He felt uncomfortable, standing with the silent reeg; this was, after all, their formal enemy. Reegs battled with and killed Terrans, and this one had been and still was a commissioned officer.

Like a fly the reeg cleaned himself, combing his wings, his sensory antennae, then his lower set of extremities. He carried his translating box under one brittle arm, never letting go of it.

"Are you glad to get out of that POW camp?" Eric asked. Words, pale in the strong desert sun, appeared on the box.

NOT PARTICULARLY.

The cab arrived and Eric, along with Deg Dal Il, entered it. Soon they were in the air, turning in the direction of Tijuana.

Eric said, "I know you're an officer in reeg intelligence. That's why I bought you."

The box remained blank. But the reeg trembled. His opaque, compound eyes became even more filmed-over and the false ones gaped emptily.

"I'll take the risk of telling you this right now," Eric said. "I'm an intermediary acting to bring you together with someone high in UN circles. It's in your interest, yours and your people's, to co-operate with me. You will be dropped off at my firm-"

The box came to life.

RETURN ME TO THE CAMP.

"All right," Eric said. "I know you have to act out the pose you've maintained for so long now. Even though it's no longer necessary. I'm aware that you're still in contact with your government. That's why you can be useful to the personage you're to meet in Tijuana. Through you he can establish relations with your government-" He hesitated, then plunged in. "Without the 'Starmen knowing." That was saying a lot; he had mightily presumed on what, for his part, was a very small role.

After a pause the box relit.

I HAVE ALWAYS COOPERATED.

"But this is different." And he dropped the subject then and there. For the remainder of the trip he did not try to communicate with Deg Dal Il; it was obviously the wrong thing to do. Deg Dal Il knew it and he knew it. The rest was up to someone else, not him.

When they reached Tijuana Eric rented a room at the Caesar Hotel on the main street of town; the desk clerk, a Mexican, stared at the reeg but asked no questions. This was Tijuana, Eric reflected as he and Deg ascended to their floor. Everyone minded his own business; it had always been like this here, and even now, in wartime, Tijuana remained unchanged. You could obtain anything, do anything, you wanted. As long as it was not done blatantly on the public street. And most expecially if it was consummated at night. Because at night Tijuana became a transformed city in which everything, even unimaginable things, was possible. Once it had been abortions, narcotics, women, and gambling. Now it was concourse with the enemy.

In the hotel room he handed over a copy of the ownership papers to Deg Dal Il; in case trouble arose during his absence the papers would prove that the reeg had not escaped from a POW camp, nor was he a spy. In addition Eric provided him with money. And instructed him to contact TF&D if any difficulty-especially the appearance of 'Star intelligence agents-supervened. The reeg was to remain in the hotel room at all times, eating his meals there, watching the TV if he wished, admitting NO one if he could avoid it, and if somehow 'Star agents got through to him, he was to reveal nothing. Even if this brought about his death.

"I think it's my place to tell you that," Eric said, "not because I lack respect for reeg life or because I believe Terrans ought to tell a reeg when to die and when not to but simply because I know the situation and you do not. You'll just have to accept my word that it's that important." He waited for the box to light up but it did not. "No comment?" he asked, disappointed in a vague way. There had been so little real contact between him and the reeg; it seemed a bad omen, somehow.

At last the box, reluctantly, lit.

GOODBYE.

"You have nothing else to say?" Eric said, incredulous.

WHAT IS YOUR NAME?.

"It's on the forms I gave you," Eric said, and left the hotel room, shutting the door loudly after him.

Outdoors on the sidewalk he hailed an old-fashioned surface cab and told its human driver to take him to TF&D.

Fifteen minutes later he once more entered the attractive apteryx-shaped, gray-lit building and made his way down the familiar corridor to his own office. Or what had until recently been his office.

Miss Perth, his secretary, blinked in amazement. "Why, Dr. Sweetscent-I thought you were in Cheyenne!"

"Is Jack Blair around?" He glanced toward the parts bins but did not see his departmental a.s.sistant. Bruce Himmel, however, lurked in the dim last row, an inventory chart and clipboard in one hand. "How'd you make out with the San Diego Public Library?" Eric asked him.

Startled, Himmel rose to a standing position. "I'm appealing, doctor. I'll never give up. How come you're back here in Tijuana?"

Til Perth said, "Jack is upstairs conferring with Mr. Virgil Ackerman, doctor. You look tired. It's a lot of work there in Cheyenne, isn't it? Such a big responsibility." Her long-lashed blue eyes showed sympathy and her large b.r.e.a.s.t.s seemed to swell a trifle in a motherly, mobile, nourishing way. "Can I fix you a cup of coffee?"

"Sure. Thanks." He seated himself at his desk and rested for a moment, thinking back over the day. Strange that all these things had happened in a sequence which had returned him to this spot, to his own chair at last. Was this in some sense the end? Had he played out his little-or not so little-part in a brawl involving three races of the galaxy? Four, if the rotten-pear-shaped creatures from Betelgeuse were included ... and out of sentiment he did. Perhaps the load was off him. A vidcall to Cheyenne, to Molinari; that would do it and once more he would be Virgil Ackerman's physician, replacing organ after organ as they gave out. But there was still Kathy. Was she here at TF&D's infirmary? Or in a San Diego hospital? Perhaps she was trying to resume her life, despite the addiction, doing her job for Virgil. She was not a coward; she would keep pushing until the end.

"Is Kathy here in the building?" he asked Til Perth.

"I'll check for you, doctor." She jiggled the b.u.t.ton of her desk-corn. "There's your coffee, beside your elbow."

"Thanks." He sipped the coffee with grat.i.tude. It was almost like old times; his office had always been for him an oasis where things were rational, safe from the fury of his botched-up domestic life. Here he could pretend that people were nice to one another, that relationships between people could be merely friendly, merely casual. And yet-that was not enough. There had to be intimacy, too. Even with its threat of becoming a destroying force.

Taking paper and pen, he wrote out from memory the formula for the antidote to JJ-180.

"She's in the infirmary on the fourth floor," Miss Perth informed him. "I didn't know she was sick; is it serious?"

Eric handed her the paper, folded. "Take this to Jonas. He'll know what it is and what to do with it." He wondered if he should go up to Kathy, tell her that the antidote would soon be in existence. Beyond the shadow of a doubt he was obliged to, by the most fundamental structure of decency. "Okay," he said, rising. "I'll go see her."

"Give her my best," Til Perth called after him as he plodded out of the office into the hall.

"Sure," he murmured.

When he reached the fourth floor infirmary he found Kathy, wearing a white cotton gown, seated in a reclining chair, her legs crossed, feet bare. She was reading a magazine. She looked old and shrunken, and obviously under heavy sedation.

"Best wishes," he said to her, "from Til."

Slowly, with conspicuous difficulty, Kathy glanced up, focused her gaze on him. "Any-news for me?"

"The antidote's in town. Or soon will be. All Hazeltine Corp. has to do is whip up a batch and express it here. Another six hours." He made an attempt to smile encouragingly; it failed. "How do you feel?"

"Fine now. Since you brought me the news." She was surprisingly matter-of-fact, even for her with her schizoid ways. The sedation no doubt accounted for it. "You did it, didn't you? Found it for me." Then, at last remembering, she added, "Oh yes. And for yourself, too. But you could have kept it, not told me. Thanks, dear."

" 'Dear.' " It hurt to hear her use such a word to him.

"I can see," Kathy said carefully, "that underneath you really are fond of me still, despite what I've done to you. Otherwise you wouldn't-"

"Sure I would; you think I'm a moral monster? The cure should be a matter of public record, available for anyone who's on the d.a.m.n stuff. Even 'Starmen. As far as I'm concerned deliberately addictive, toxic drugs are an abomination, a crime against life." He was silent then, thinking to himself, And someone who addicts another is a criminal and ought to be hanged or shot. "I'm leaving," he said. "Going back to Cheyenne. I'll see you. Good luck on your therapy." He added, trying not to make it sound deliberately unkind, "You know, it won't restore the physical damage already done; you understand that, Kathy."

"How old," she asked, "do I look?"

"You look what you are, about thirty-five."

"No." She shook her head. "I've seen in the mirror."

Eric said, "See to it, will you, that everyone who took the drug that night with you, that first time, gets some of the antidote; I'll trust you to do that. Okay?"

"Of course. They're my friends." She toyed with a corner of her magazine. "Eric, I can't expect you to stay with me now, with the way I am physically. All withered and-" She broke off and became silent.

Was this his chance? He said, "You want a divorce, Kathy? If you do I'll give it to you. But personally-" He hesitated. How far could hypocrisy go? What was really required of him now? His future self, his compatriot from 2056, had pleaded with him to break loose from her. Didn't all aspects of reason dictate that he do so and if possible right now?

In a low voice Kathy said, "I still love you. I don't want to separate. I'll try to treat you better; honestly I will. I promise." promise."

"Shall I be honest?"

"Yes," she said. "You should always be honest."

"Let me go."

She looked up at him. Some of the old spirit, the venom that had etched away the fiber of their relationship, glowed in her eyes. But it was vitiated now. Her addiction, plus the sedation, had weakened her; the power which she had formerly exerted over him, trapping him and hugging him to her, had gone. Shrugging, she murmured, "Well, I asked you to be honest and I got just that. I guess I should be glad."

"Will you agree, then? You'll commence litigation?"

Kathy said carefully, "On one condition. If there's no other woman."

"There isn't." He thought of Phyllis Ackerman; that surely didn't count. Even in Kathy's suspicion-haunted world.

"If I find out there is," she stated, "I'll fight a divorce; I won't co-operate. You'll never get free from me; that's a promise, too."

"Then it's agreed." He felt a great weight slide into the abyss of infinity, leaving him with a merely earthly load, one which an ordinary human being could bear. "Thanks," he said.

Kathy said, "Thank you, Eric, for the antidote. So look what my drug addiction, my years of using drugs, has meant, finally. It's made it possible for you to escape. It did accomplish some good after all."

For the life of him he could not determine if she meant that sardonically. He decided to inquire about something else. "When you feel better are you going to resume your job here at TF&D?"

"Eric, I may have something stirring for me. When I was under the drug's influence, back in the past-" She halted, then painfully continued; talking was difficult for her now. "I mailed an electronic part to Virgil. Back in the mid 1930s. With a note telling him what to do about it and also who I was. So he'd remember me later on. About now, in fact."

Eric said, "But-" He broke off.

"Yes?" She managed to fix her attention on him, what he was saying. "Did I do something wrong? Alter the past and disturb things?"

It was almost impossible, he discovered, to tell her. But she would find out anyhow, as soon as she made inquiries. Virgil would have received no part, because as soon as she left the past the part left, too; Virgil, as a child, had received an empty envelope or nothing at all. He found this mournfully sad.

"What is it?" she was asking laboriously. "I can tell by your expression-I know you so well-that I did something bad."

Eric said, "I'm just surprised. By your ingenuity. Listen." He crouched down beside her, put his hand on her shoulder. "Don't count on it making much difference; your job here with Virgil can't basically be improved on and anyhow Virgil is hardly the grateful type."

"But it was worth a try, don't you think?"

"Yes," he said, straightening up. He was glad at that point to let it drop.