The trouble with such girls, he thought, is that they get old so fast. What you hear is true; by thirty they're worn out, fat, the bra and the coat and purse and gloves are gone; all that remains is the black, burning eyes peering out from beneath the shaggy brows, the original slender creature still imprisoned somewhere within but unable to speak any longer, play or make love or run. The click of heels against the pavement, the rushing forward into life; that's gone and only a slopping, dragging sound is left behind. The most horrid sound in the world, that of the once-was: alive in the past, perishing in the present, a corpse made of dust in the future. Nothing changes in Tijuana and yet nothing lives out its normal span. Time moves too fast here and also not at all. Look at my situation, for instance, he thought. I'm committing suicide ten years in the future, or rather I'll wipe out a life ten years ago. If I do this, what becomes of the Eric Sweetscent now working for Kaiser in Oakland? And the ten years he's spent watching over Kathy – what does that do to her?
Maybe this is my weak way of hurting her. A further punishment because she's sick.
Underneath my rationality my warped view, he thought. You can't quite manage to punish the sick enough. Is that it? Christ, he thought. No wonder I feel hatred for myself.
Holding the package of g-Totex blau in the palm of his hand, he weighed it, experienced its mass. Felt the Earth's attraction for it. Yes, he thought, the Earth likes even this. She accepts everything.
Something ran across his shoe.
He saw, skittering away into the safety of the shadows and heaps of debris, a small wheeled cart.
The cart was pursued by another of its kind. They met, in the tangle of newspapers and bottles, and then the debris trembled and bits flew everywhere as the carts fought it out, ramming each other head-on, trying for the cephalic unit mounted in each other's center. Trying to knock out the Lazy Brown Dog.
Still alive? he thought in disbelief. Ten years later? But possibly Bruce Himmel still manufactured them. By now Tijuana must be overrun by them, if that was so. It was hard to know how to take such a sight. He continued to watch the two carts as they battled it out to the end; now one had knocked its antagonist's Lazy Brown Dog loose, seemed to be triumphing. It withdrew and, like a goat, maneuvered to locate itself for the coup de grace.
While it was positioning itself the damaged one, in a last burst of native wit, popped into the sanctuary of a discarded galvanized zinc bucket and was out of the fray. Protected, it became inert, prepared to wait things out, forever if necessary.
Getting to his feet, Eric stooped and grabbed up the stronger cart; its wheels spun futilely and then somehow it managed to twist out of his grasp. It bounced clatteringly to the pavement, backed, maneuvered, and then hurled itself against his foot. Surprised, he retreated. The cart made another menacing move toward him and he retreated again. Satisfied, the cart wheeled in a circle and then rattled off, out of sight.
In the bucket the loser could still be seen. Still waiting.
'I won't hurt you,' Eric said to it, crouching down in order to get a better glimpse of it. The damaged thing, however, remained where it was. 'Okay,' he said and straightened up. 'I get the idea.' It knew what it wanted. There was no point in molesting it.
Even these things, he decided, are determined to live. Bruce was right. They deserve their opportunity, their minuscule place under the sun and sky. That's all they're asking for and it isn't much. He thought. And I can't even do what they do, make my stand, use my wits to survive in a debris-littered alley in Tijuana; that thing that's taken refuge there in that zinc bucket, without a wife, a career, a conapt or money or the possibility of encountering any of these, still persists. For reasons unknown to me its stake in existence is greater than mine.
The g-Totex blau no longer seemed attractive to him.
Even if I'm going to do this, he thought, why does it have to be now? Like everything else it can be put off – ought, in this case, to be put off. And anyhow he did not feel well; he felt dizzy and he shut his eyes, although by doing so he was inviting another attack by the fearsome Lazy Brown Dog cart which Bruce Himmel had made.
The slight weight in his hand disappeared entirely. He opened his eyes, saw that the paper bag with its black carton inside, the box of g-Totex blau, had disappeared. And the litter heaped here and there in the alley did not appear quite as extensive. From the long shadows cast by the sun he knew that it had become late in the day and this meant that the JJ-180 had worn off and he had gone back in time to – roughly – his own period. But he had taken the piece of capsule at night, in the dark, and this seemed more like five p.m. So, as before, the return was not exact and he wondered just how far off it was in this instance. After all, the 'Starmen were on their way.
In fact, he saw, they had already arrived.
Overhead a vast, dark, ugly mass hung in the sky, like something that had descended into this world from a lightless land of iron and surprise and frightened, purposeful silence. It was huge enough, he thought, to feed forever; even from the spot where he stood, at the very least a mile from it, he could see that it consisted of a limitless, appetitive self which would begin any time now to gulp down everything in sight. It made no sound. Its engines were off. This ship had come a long way, from the lines deep in intersystem space. It was a seasoned, informed, world-weary apparition, brought out by strange needs from its normal place of residence.
I wonder how easy it's going to be, Eric wondered. For them simply to drop to the surface and enter key buildings and take everything over. Probably easier than I think, than anyone here on Terra thinks.
He walked from the alley to the street, thinking to himself, I wish I had a gun.
Strange, he thought, that in the center of the greatest abomination of our time, this war, I should find something meaningful. A desire animating me equal to that possessed by the Lazy Brown Dog cart hiding in the zinc pail ten years from now. Maybe I'm its compatriot at last. Able to take my place in the world beside it, do as it does, fight as it fights; whenever it's necessary and then some, for the pleasure of it. For the joy. As was intended from the start anterior to any time or condition I could comprehend or call my own or enter into.
Traffic had slowed to a near stop along the street. Everyone, in the vehicles and on foot, watched the 'Star ship.
'Taxi!' Walking out into the street he hailed an autonomic cab capable of non-surface flight. 'Take me to Tijuana Fur & Dye,' he ordered it. 'Make it as fast as you can and don't pay any attention to that ship up there, including any instructions it might broadcast.'
The cab shuddered, rose slightly from the asphalt, and hung stationary. 'We've been forbidden to take off, sir. The Lilistar Army Command for this area sent out orders that—'
'I'm in supreme charge of this situation,' Eric told the cab. 'I outrank the Lilistar Army Command; they're dirt compared with me. I have to be at Tijuana Fur & Dye immediately – the war effort hangs on my being there.'
'Yes sir,' the cab said, and soared up into the sky. 'And it's an honor, sir; believe me, a rare honor to convey you.'
'My presence there,' Eric said, 'is of incomparable strategic importance.' At the factory I'll make my stand, he said to himself. With the people I know. And, when Virgil Ackerman escapes to Wash-35, I'll go along with him; it's beginning to unfold as I witnessed it a year from now.