“Nothing new with him.”
“More so than usual. You should hear the way he talks. He’s so bitter, Joe! He talks absolute nonsense, just a stream of angry words that don’t make any sense. I wish I could quote him for you. He’s building up to some kind of psychological explosion, I know it. I can feel the steam gathering inside him.” She winced. The chair was starting to massage her again. “He hasn’t worked for months now, Joe.”
Quellen said, “I’m aware of that. You know, the High Government is furthering a whole sequence of plans designed to alleviate the unemployment problem.”
“That’s fine. But in the meanwhile Norm isn’t working, and I don’t think it’ll matter much longer. He’s in contact with the hopper people and he’s going to hop. Even while I’m sitting here telling you this, he might be getting into the machine!”
Her voice had risen to a tinny screech. She could hear the echoes of it go bouncing around in her brother’s office. It seemed to her that the ends of her nerves had burst through her skin all over her body, and were jutting out like quills.
Quellen’s manner changed. He seemed to make a conscious effort to relax, and he leaned forward benevolently, giving her a froodlike smile. Helaine expected him to ask, “Shall we now attempt to get to the bottom of this delusion of yours?” What he actually said, in honeyed, humoring tones, was, “Maybe you’re getting overwrought for no real reason, Helaine. What makes you think he’s having dealings with the hopper criminals?”
She told him about the Lanoy minislip, and about Norm’s exaggerated reaction of unconcern when she had queried him on Lanoy. As she quoted the five-word slogan on the slip, Helaine was startled to see her brother’s beaming look of phony solicitude give way for a moment to a blank expression betokening some sudden absolute terror within. Then Quellen recovered; but he had already betrayed himself. Helaine was sharp to detect such momentary flickers of the inner persona. She said, “You know about Lanoy?”
“It happens that I’ve seen one of those slips, Helaine. They’re being circulated pretty widely. You go up a quickboat ramp and somebody comes up to you and hands one out. No doubt that’s how Norm got his.”
“And it’s advertising for the hopper people, isn’t it?”
“I’ve got no reason to think so,” Quellen drawled, his eyes proclaiming his lie to her.
“Are you investigating Lanoy, though? I mean, if there’s reason to suspect—”
“We’re investigating, yes. And I repeat, Helaine, there’s no necessary cause to feel that this person Lanoy is in any way connected with the hopper problem.”
“But Beth Wisnack said that her husband Bud talked about Lanoy all week before he went.”
“Who?”
“Wisnack. A recent hopper. When I asked her about Lanoy, Beth told me point-blank that he was responsible for Bud’s disappearance, and she also said that it was a sure thing that Norm would be going too.” Agitated, Helaine crossed and uncrossed her legs. The chair’s dull brain picked up the evidence of her restlessness, and after having been quiescent for a few minutes began to fondle her again.
Quellen said, “We can check this business of Norm’s going hopper very easily.” He swung around and produced a spool. “I have here the complete listing of all the documented hoppers who were recorded as they arrived in the past. This list was compiled recently for me and of course I haven’t studied it completely, because it contains hundreds of thousands of names. But if Norm did hop, we’ll find him here.”
He activated the spool and began to search it, explaining in a half-mumble that the listings were alphabetical. Helaine sat rigidly as the search continued through the alphabet at a rate of thousands of bits per second. It would not take long for Quellen to reach the “P” entries. And then—
If Norm had gone, he would be entered here. His fate would be plain for her to see—his fate and hers, inscribed in this Dome day Book of thermoplastic tape. She would learn that her marriage had been doomed three hundred years before she contracted it. She would find that her husband’s name had been inscribed centuries ago on a roster of fugitives from this century. Why had that roster not been a matter of public record all this time? Because, she knew, it would lie like a dead hand across the souls of those who had hopped, would hop, must hop. What would it be like to grow up under the shadow of the knowledge that you were destined to leap from your own era?
“You see?” Quellen said triumphantly. “He isn’t on the list.”
“Does that mean he didn’t hop?”
“I’d say so.”
“But how can you be sure that all the hoppers are really listed?” Helaine demanded. “What if a lot of them slipped through?”
“It’s possible.”
“And the names,” she went on. “If Norm gave a different name when he got to the past, he wouldn’t be on your list either. Right?”
Quellen looked glum. “There’s always the possibility that he adopted a pseudonym,” he admitted.
“You’re hedging, Joe. You can’t be sure he didn’t hop. Even with the list.”
“So what do you want me to do, Helaine?”
She took a deep breath. “You could arrest Lanoy before he sends Norm back in time.”
“I’ve got to find Lanoy,” Quellen observed. “And then I’ve got to have some proof that he’s involved. So far there isn’t even any circumstantial evidence, just a lot of conclusion-jumping on your part.”
“Then arrest Norm.”
“What?”
“Find him guilty of something and lock him up. Give him a year or two of corrective therapy. That’ll keep him out of circulation until the hopper crisis is over. Call it protective custody.”
“Helaine, I can’t use the law as a private plaything for members of my family!”
“He’s my husband, Joe. I want to keep him. If he goes back in time, I’ve lost him for ever.” Helaine stood up. She swayed, and had to grip Quellen’s desk. How could she make him understand that she stood at the edge of an abyss? To hop was effectively the same as to die. She was fighting to keep her husband. And there sat her brother in the cloak of his righteousness, doing nothing while precious seconds ticked away.
“I’ll do what I can,” Quellen promised. “I’ll look into this Lanoy. If you’d like to send Norm here, I’ll talk to him and try to find out what’s on his mind. Yes. Perhaps that’s best.
Get him to come to see me.”
“If he’s planning to hop,” said Helaine, “he’s not likely to tell you about it. He won’t come within five miles of this building.”
“Why don’t you tell him that I want to talk to him about a job opportunity? He’s been complaining that I haven’t been doing anything for him, yes? All right. He’ll come to me, thinking that I’ve got an opening for him. And I’ll pump him about hopping. Subtly. If he knows anything, I’ll get it out of him. We’ll smash the hopper ring and there’ll be no danger of his taking off. How does that sound, Helaine?”
“Encouraging. I’ll talk to him. I’ll send him to you. If he hasn’t already taken off.”
She moved towards the door. Her brother smiled once again. Helaine winced. She was fearful that Norm had already vanished irretrievably, while she sat here talking. She had to get back to him in a hurry. Until this crisis was over, she knew she must keep close watch.
“Remember me to Judith,” Helaine said, and went out.
Eight
Quellen had not enjoyed the interview with his sister. Helaine always left him feeling flayed. She was so visibly unhappy that it pained him to see her at all. Now she looked five or six years older than he was. He remembered Helaine at thirteen or so, virginal and radiant, naive enough to think that life held something wonderful for her. Here she was a few years short of forty, marooned within four walls, clawing like a demon to hang on to her morose, embittered husband, because he was just about all that she had.