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 biz horn, 4365 9863th Suit, and bookd at 9768th Prisint on tchardg'z Polis-Ekspozh'r. Thi aledjd Ekspozh'r okurM hwafle 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 ifl 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"ND YUNG MEN!
SERV EUR SENTCH'RI!
ENLIST IN THI TAIM POLIS RKURV NOW!
RIMEMB'R—
V THI AJEZ! ONLY IN THI TAIM POLIS KAN EU PROTEKT EUR
SIVILIZASH*N FR'M VARFNS! 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 "V EUR TCHAIRZ? GET ROL-
FASTS! No uth'r tcheir haz thi immidjit respons "v a Rolfast Sit enihweir—eor Rolfast iz theirl
Eur Rolfast mefl 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," Qurg 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 them 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."
Qurg 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 hell 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."