The Nick Of Time Part 3

"I wonder if they were expecting somebody else. Maybe we were supposed to bring somebody back with us from the past."

"You know that would have been impossible, Frank," she said. She clutched his arm more tightly.

"All this is really for us!"

Mihalik was still dubious. "Cheryl," he said, "they don't even throw this kind of a clambake for theHeisman Trophy winner." Before his companion could reply, Mihalik noticed a large info set mounted on the wall nearby. Glowing figures said February 18, 1996. According to the calendar, they had been gone only a day -- yet both he and Cheryl had spent weeks, months, perhaps a year stranded in the past.

And yet it was only the eighteenth of February; they hadn't even managed to miss the end of winter.

"Look at the date, Cheryl," he said.

She was as astonished as he had been. "But it can't be!" she said. While they watched, the clock changed from 12:59 to 13:00.

"Thirteen o'clock?" asked Mihalik. "That's strange."

A man came toward them with their drinks. He was wearing a military-style uniform of silver and blue.

"This is a real privilege for me," he told them. "I'm General Vadin Ransom. I'd like to introduce you to a few important people. If you'll just come with me--"

"Certainly," said Mihalik, waving confidently to the camera crews.

Once again, Cheryl tugged at his sleeve. "Frank," she said in an urgent tone, "I'm sure there's something wrong."

He smiled down at her; how dear she was, how sweet, how wonderfully in need of protection. "You just have to get used to it, honey," he told her. "We're famous people now. We're going to get this kind of treatment for a while, and then, as quickly as it came, it will all go away again. It may be some time before we even get a little privacy. It's just another one of the sacrifices we knew we'd have to make."

"It's not that, Frank! Look around! Everything's Wrong!"

Mihalik paused to sip from his gla.s.s. He wondered what Cheryl could possibly mean: everything seemed just swell to him, so far. The gin was okay. Then, slowly, he felt an uneasiness spread through him. Things that he had heard and seen since their arrival had, at last, become the basis of thoughts. He almost choked.

There were framed pictures on the wall. One of them was a familiar pose, a photograph of the Man from Mars, the t.i.tular head of the candy company and the actual ruler of the world -- but the face in the photograph was wrong, different. The festive bunting should have been blue and yellow, not blue and white. The general was wearing a uniform Mihalik had never seen before in his life. And everyone else should have been wearing the uniform of 1996, olive green jumpsuits, like Mihalik, like Cheryl; but there wasn't another jumpsuit in the crowd. Attire ran more to casual slacks and sports coats for the men, with the women wearing knee-length plaid skirts and sweaters with circle pins. The most unusual feature of the room was the abundance of framed slogans everywhere: LESS IS MORE.

MARS IS EARTH.

TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY.

"Holy crow," said Mihalik in a hoa.r.s.e voice, "what the h.e.l.l is this?"

"Is something the matter?" asked General Ransom. "Did you pick up some disease in the past or something? What can we do for you?"

"I suppose," whispered Cheryl, "that we better talk to someone from the project, and quick."

"You'd think Dr. Waters would be here," said Mihalik. "You'd think that he'd be the first one to meet us."

"That's something else to wonder about," said Cheryl. "And where's Ray?"

Mihalik nodded, knowing that no force on Earth could have prevented Ray, the faithful backup man, from being there. "Don't worry, baby," said Mihalik, "I'll handle it." His bravery training took over, and for a few moments he would be able to function without regard for the unsettling things his mind was beginning to tell him. When he spoke, it was with a clear and manly voice. "General," he said, "we're quite healthy and in good spirits. However, there is one small matter of a highly scientific and technical nature that we must discuss immediately with one of the upper-level supervisors of the project. It is of the utmost urgency." And with that, his bravery slipped away; he seemed to wilt just a little as panic,confusion, disorientation, and mild nausea attacked him.

General Ransom hadn't worn a uniform for thirty years without learning when a situation was obviously out of his hands. "Right," he said briskly, and turned away to find someone to give an order to.

The Proof Is in the Eating Cheryl led Mihalik toward the buffet tables. "I've never seen food like this before," she said. "I remember my parents talking about it sometimes. Like they sort of missed it. Once my mother described to me something called a 'cutlet.' I was too young to understand, though."

"This is like the food we saw in the past," said Mihalik. "Real meat. Real vegetables. And lots of it all." A thin narrow-shouldered man was standing beside them, staring at them and munching on something on a cracker. Suddenly Mihalik turned to him and grabbed him by the shirt. "Hey!" Mihalik cried. "Where's all the candy?"

The man sprayed a cloud of cracker crumbs into the air and coughed. Cheryl took a quick glance up and down the tables; it was true -- there wasn't a single bowl of M & Ms or sour b.a.l.l.s or those awful orange peanut-shaped things that taste like bananas.

"Answer me!" Mihalik demanded. He had lifted the poor little man off his feet; dangling there, the fellow looked less like a human being than an accessory or attachment for someone Mihalik's size.

"Frank!" said Cheryl sharply. "Put him down!"

Mihalik looked at her, blinking, then slowly returned the small man to the floor. "Sorry," he muttered.

The man looked at Mihalik with a mixture of astonishment and fear. He plucked at his rumpled shirtfront, but he couldn't improve its appearance. "It's all right," he said when he'd regained his composure. "You've probably been through a lot. You were zipping through time there for a while, you're bound to be a little jittery. Forget it."

"Okay," said Mihalik. He held out his hand. "Frank Mihalik," he said.

The man shook hands. "Name's Smith," he said. He turned to Mihalik's girlfriend. "You must be Cheryl. I saw you hurrying past my office last night. Before they shot you back through time."

Cheryl smiled pleasantly while she scooped potato salad onto a paper plate. "You may not believe this, but we spent a long time in the year 1939. Months went by. And now here we are, and it's only the day after we left."

Smith looked impressed. "No wonder you're jumpy. But it'll make a terrific story. I'll bet you'll be able to sell it to the movies for a fortune. They'll have famous San Diego film stars playing you, and when they finish with it, it won't be anything at all like the real truth."

"Probably not," said Cheryl. "Would you pile some of that ham and turkey and some of that roast beef on this plate, please?"

"Sure," said Smith. "I thought the tech boys had all the angles figured out."

"So did we," said Mihalik. "They drilled me on possible malfunctions for weeks. We went through every d.a.m.n emergency procedure they could think of. So what happens?"

"A paradox," said Smith.

"A what?" asked Mihalik.

"A time-travel paradox," said the small man. "There wasn't any failure with the equipment. It wasn't the hardware. You just ran into one of the basic laws of the universe, something we don't know much about yet. Fortunately it was just a little paradox."

"Little?" cried Mihalik. "We were trapped back there on the very same day, Thursday, July 27, 1939. It kept repeating over and over, exactly the same way every time, for month after month. I was going crazy. I felt like the Robinson Crusoe of time, until Cheryl showed up. And you're saying that's a little paradox?"

"He means that it could have been a whole lot worse, Frank," said Cheryl.

"How the h.e.l.l does he figure that?"

Smith looked around nervously. "Could you kind of keep your voice down?" he said. "They're looking." "Let 'em look." Mihalik was starting to feel annoyed with Smith. He began piling food on his paper plate. He skipped the vegetables.

Smith picked up another hors d'oeuvre. "I meant that it could have been one of those cases where you go back in time and change some little, insignificant thing, and when you get back home, everything's different. It isn't the same present anymore."

Mihalik glanced at Cheryl over Smith's fair-haired head. "Well," said Cheryl slowly, "you know, we have noticed just a teensy bit of that around here."

"You have?" asked Smith. He suddenly looked very frightened.

"Uh huh," said Mihalik. "Like, who's that guy in the picture?"

"That's the Man from Mars," said Smith. "You have to know who he is."

Mihalik's face suddenly bore a weary look. "I know all about the Man from Mars. But that joker isn't him."

Smith winced. "Yes, it is," he said. "He's the new man from Mars. He has been for the last twelve years."

Cheryl swallowed a forkful of candied yams. "When we left -- yesterday -- it was still the old Man from Mars. The first one. Where is he these days?"

Smith shrugged. "He just disappeared twelve years ago, and they had to name a successor. The company stopped making candy altogether back then. They have too much to do just governing everybody, I guess. That's why there isn't any candy here; it stopped being important twelve years ago.

But you should know all of this."

"Look, pal," said Mihalik, poking a heavy forefinger into Smith's sunken chest, "we don't know any of that. That just isn't the way the world was when we left. So we're only a trifle upset to come home and find everything all screwed up like this. With no one from the project here to tell us what's going on. Isn't that just a little unlikely?"

Smith looked around the room at the other guests, who were lining up at the buffet tables and freshening their drinks. "This reception is strictly an Agency affair," he said. "The Agency gets to show you off before the scientists get their hands on you."

Mihalik closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with one hand. Then he opened his eyes again and looked squarely at Smith. "What, if you don't mind my asking, in the name of Baby Ruth is the Agency?"

Smith dropped his cracker. He grabbed Mihalik's arm with one hand, and Cheryl's arm with the other. "You mean you don't know what the Agency is?" he whispered.

"There was no Agency where we came from," said Cheryl.

"Oops," said Smith. "We have to get out of here, and very fast. Just ease toward the door there.

Pretend that you're browsing along, looking at the food. Smile at people. That's it."

"Where are we going?" asked Mihalik. He jerked his arm out of Smith's grasp.

"My apartment," said Smith.

"What for?"

"Trust me," said Smith. "You're in big trouble. And so am I, probably, for talking to you. The Second Squad will be here any minute. I'll bet you were never supposed to leave this room.

"I don't understand any of this, Cheryl," complained Mihalik. Smith urged them through the admiring people.

"Don't ask me," said Cheryl."

"Are we going to trust this one lunatic, or wait until the normal, reliable official dignitaries show up?"

"They should have been here already, Frank," said Cheryl thoughtfully. "Maybe we don't want to know who's going to come. This situation is getting crazier by the minute."

They were almost to the door. Mihalik stopped suddenly. Smith turned to him, his mouth open to plead that they continue to hurry. Mihalik shut him up with one good authoritative frown. "One thing first, Smith," he said. "You got anything to eat at your place?"

Smith was surprised by the question. "Plenty," he said. "Everyone here always has plenty to eat."

"Well," said Mihalik, giving in at last, "that does it. That proves we're not home. Where we comefrom, the only place you can see stuffed turkeys is in the Smithsonian." Quickly, cautiously, the three slipped out of the room.

What a Difference a Day Makes.

It was a cold, grim, gray afternoon. The wind lashed freezing rain in their faces as they hurried across a large marble-paved plaza and down a broad flight of marble stairs. Mihalik and Cheryl had spent the last year in summer, and neither had really given any thought to the fact that here it would be entirely different. The fierce weather was only the first in a series of shocks.

Mihalik grunted as the wet winter gusts bit through his thin garment. "I'm beginning to think we should have stayed in 1939," he said as they made their way toward a parking area.

"A lesser man might have chosen that, Frank," said Cheryl. "To stay there in that placid time, on that tranquil day. But you've explained to me too often about honor and duty and your responsibility to the project. That's one of the reasons I love you, Frank. Just as we faced the terrible fact of being marooned there, we'll face this trouble together, too. Whatever it is."

"Yeah," said Mihalik unhappily, "sure."

Smith led the way; his small automobile was parked somewhere in a vast many-storied garage that served the huge building they had just exited. This was another shock; in the 1996 that Mihalik knew, only top government officials and certain entertainment personalities were permitted to own cars. Here there were thousands of them; the garage rose level upon level into the sky. The cars were every color they could be, rather than the standard olive green. "This is mine," said Smith, looking for his keys. He'd stopped beside a grimy blue coupe.

"How do you remember where it is?" asked Cheryl. It wasn't a large car; it was built for economy rather than comfort. Even so, it was much more luxurious than the best model Cheryl had ever seen in her own world.

"We're a.s.signed places. It's very organized. The Agency is very organized about everything." Smith unlocked the doors; all three sat squeezed together on the front seat.

On the street beyond the parking garage, Mihalik could study the Agency Building. It was a huge, cheerless edifice, all white marble more than a hundred stories tall. There were few other buildings anywhere around it. As Mihalik looked down the avenue, first in one direction, then in the other, it struck him that the street seemed only occasionally populated with any sort of structure at all. And there were very few people about. "This is creepy," he said. "Where is everybody?" He was from a New York City where buildings leaned against one another, crowding the narrow streets and taking up every available plot of ground. There were no open s.p.a.ces in the New York of Mihalik's time. And he was used to sidewalks teeming endlessly with bustling pedestrians, day and night. They were always visible, always reminding you of how insignificant you were, and how powerless to alter your futile life or your dismal fate. That was why there was such a sensitivity to what people called "shameless body contact"; there was so little free s.p.a.ce that one was always aware of the proximity of some stranger.

Here, though, things seemed to be different in that regard. For instance, the people at the party had mingled in an easy and relaxed manner, without the hostility and defensiveness that usually marked the group gatherings Mihalik was familiar with. He shook his head. He was feeling the very same sort of culture shock here, in what was supposed to be "home," that he had experienced when he first arrived in 1939. He shuddered.

"Look, Frank," said Cheryl, pointing to another large building several blocks away.

"That's the Ministry of Eternity," said Smith. "The Second Squad works out of there. Scary place.

You don't want to go there. Minitern, we call it."

"Ministry?" said Mihalik. "What's a ministry?"

Smith turned his head and regarded the time traveler for a few seconds. "The government is divided up into bureaus; they're called ministries. The heads of the ministries advise the Man from Mars.

Sometimes I think you just ask these things to make me think you don't really know the answers."

Mihalik felt himself getting angry. He would have liked to grab Smith's shirtfront again, and he wouldhave if Smith hadn't been speeding along through traffic. Cheryl sensed the tension. "Where we come from, Mr. Smith, the government is divided up into departments," she said. "We have the State Department, the Defense Department, the Offense Department, and so on."

"Department, ministry, it probably doesn't matter very much," said Smith.

"It matters because it's not supposed to be this way," said Mihalik. "Any change is a frightening change. Even this city has me upset. There isn't the tiniest resemblance to the New York we grew up in."

"Well," said Smith with a sigh, "I can understand why you'd be upset."

"Yes," said Mihalik, "because somehow the entire world has been changed."

"Yes, of course, there's that," said Smith. "But I meant that this isn't New York, old boy. This is London."

There was a cold, sickening silence in the car for a long moment. "It couldn't be," said Cheryl at last.

Smith turned toward her and smiled. "Trust me," he said. He pointed across their bodies, out the right pa.s.senger window. "Do you know what that is?"

"Yeah," said Mihalik, "some bridge across a river."

"You don't have a bridge like that in New York, do you?"