KLOOF!
A simpler world, that’s what he needed. To hop to a place not yet this fouled with humanity—yes. Yes. Lanoy was the answer. Pomrath’s head throbbed. It seemed to him that his frontal lobes were swelling, pushing his forehead dangerously forward. “Can you direct me to Lanoy?” His head might burst, spewing brains all over the street. “I’m out of work. I want to see Lanoy.” FLOOK! XAT RAET! “Lanoy?”
A squat, flabby-faced man with a row of natural teeth on top and a single seamless chopper below said, “I’ll get you to Lanoy. Four pieces, huh?”
Pomrath paid him. “Where do I go? What do I do?”
“Quickboat. Number Sixteen Line.”
“Where do I get off?”
“Just get on, that’s all.”
EMPL! FMAN! Pomrath headed for the quickboat ramp. He filed obediently aboard. It seemed a pleasant coincidence that someone would have been so conveniently available to tell him how to reach the elusive Lanoy, Norm thought. But a moment’s reflection led him to think it was no coincidence at all. The flabby-faced man had probably been an agent of Lanoy, haunting him, ready to guide him in the right direction when the critical moment approached. Of course. His eyes were aching. Something coarse and gritty was in the air, a special eyeball-abrasive gas, perhaps, released by order of the High Government to bring about universal polishing of proletarian corneas. MANK! NOTD! Pomrath huddled in a corner of the quickboat. A cowled figure came up to him, a girl with shaven scalp, jutting cheekbones, no lips at all. “For Lanoy?” she asked.
“Why not?”
“Transfer to the Northpass Line.”
“If you say so.”
“It’s the only way.” She smiled at him. Her skin seemed to change colour, cycling attractively through the spectrum from infragreen to ultralemon. PLOYM! XAT! Pomrath trembled. He wondered what Helaine would say when she knew. Would she weep? How soon would she remarry? Would his children bear his name? The line of Pomraths extinct? Yes. Yes. For he would have to bear some other name back there. FMANK! What if he called himself Kloofman? Sublime irony: my great-grandchild a member of the High Government. Some chance.
Pomrath got off the quickboat. The cowled girl remained aboard. How did they know who he was and where he was bound? He felt frightened. The world was full of spectres.
Pray for the repose of my soul, he thought. I’m so tired. OOF! TON!
He waited at the ramp. Around him the spires of ugly buildings of the previous century stabbed holes in the sky. He was out of the central slum-clearance zone now. Who knew what stinking warren he was heading towards? A new quickboat arrived. Pomrath boarded it unquestioningly. I am in your hands, he thought. LANOY I YONAL! Anyone. Anyone. Just get me out of here.
Out!
He journeyed northward. Was this still Appalachia? The sky was dark here. Programmed for rain, perhaps. A clean flush to purify the streets. What if Danton recommended a rain of sulphuric acid? The pavement hissing and smoking, citizens running to and fro as their flesh dissolved. The ultimate population control. Death from the skies. Serve you right for going outdoors. The quickboat halted. Pomrath got out and waited on the ramp. Rain was falling here, pocking against the sidewalk.
“I’m Pomrath,” he said to a kindly old lady.
“Lanoy’s waiting. Come on.”
He found himself in rural surroundings ten minutes later. There was a shack by the edge of a lake. Figures moved mysteriously in and out. Pomrath was thrust forward. A purring voice said, “Lanoy’s waiting for you out back.”
He was a small man with a big nose. He wore clothing that seemed to be two hundred years old.
“Pomrath?”
“I think so.”
“What are you, Class Twelve?”
“Fourteen,” Pomrath confessed. “Get me out of here, will you, please?”
“My pleasure,” said Lanoy.
Pomrath looked at the lake. It was a hideous sight, crawling with pollution. Great greasy swatches of coarse algae roiled in the oily water.
Lanoy said, “Isn’t it lovely? Six centuries of non-stop pollution interspersed with high-sounding official speeches. The renewal zone is still twenty years away by public count.
Would you like to take a swim? We don’t practise baptism here, but we can arrange a ceremony to fit anybody’s religious preferences.”
Pomrath shuddered. “I can’t swim. Just get me out of here.”
“The alga is cladaphora. Biologists sometimes come up here to admire it. It reaches lengths of ninety feet. We’ve also got anaerobic sludgeworms here, and fingernail clams. Quite primeval. I don’t know how they survive. You’d be shocked if you knew the oxygen content of that water.”
“Nothing shocks me,” said Pomrath. “Please. Please.”
“It’s full of coliform intestinal bacteria also,” Lanoy remarked. “I believe the current count is 10,000,000 per 100 millilitres. That’s about 10,000 times the safe level for human contact. Lovely? Come inside, Pomrath. You know it’s not easy, being a hopper.”
“It’s not easy being anything, these days.”
“Consider the challenges, though.” Lanoy led him within the shack. Pomrath was startled to see that the interior was out of keeping with the weatherbeaten exterior. Inside, everything was neat, spanking clean. A partition divided the building into two huge compartments. Lanoy dropped into a web and lay there, jiggling, like a spider. Pomrath remained standing. Lanoy said, “I can take you and dump you into the year 1990, if you’d like, or 2076, or most any other year. Don’t be fooled by what you read in the faxtapes. We’re actually more versatile than the public knows. We’re improving the process constantly.”
“Send me anywhere,” said Pomrath.
“The correct term is anywhen. But look here: I send you to 1990. Can you face it? You won’t even be able to speak the language properly. You’ll speak a weird jargon that they won’t understand, all your grammar blurred. Do you know the distinction between ‘who’ and ‘whom’? Between ‘shall’ and ‘will’? Can you handle tenses?”
Pomrath could feel the blood surging in his arteries. He did not understand why Lanoy was weaving this cocoon of words about him. He had had enough words.
Lanoy laughed. “Don’t let me frighten you. You don’t need to know those things. They were forgotten, even then. People were sloppy in their speech. Not as sloppy as we are today, because we’ve had another few hundred years to erode the language. But they had blotted out all the conjugations and declensions already. Still, it’ll take you a couple of weeks to learn how to communicate. You can get into a lot of trouble in a couple of weeks. Are you prepared to be sent to a lunatic asylum? Shock treatments, straitjacket, all the barbarities of our ancestors?”
“Just get me out of here.”
“The police will interrogate you. Don’t give them your right name, Pomrath. You aren’t listed in the hopper records, which means you never gave them your right name, and don’t you dare try to do it. Make up a name. You can admit to being a hopper if you land in 1979 or later. If you go back earlier, you’re entirely on your own. Frankly, I wouldn’t try it. I don’t think you’ve got the calibre for a free-lance trip like that. You’re an intelligent man, Pomrath, but you’re worn thin by care. Don’t take risks. Go as an orthodox hopper and throw yourself on the mercies of the past. You’ll make out.”
“What does it cost?”
“Two hundred units. A token fee, really. Barely covers the energy costs.”
“Is it safe?”
“As safe as taking a quickboat ride.” Lanoy grinned. “It’s disconcerting. No High Government to watch over you. Dozens of independent national states. Local rivalries. Conflicting taxing bodies. You’ll have to cope, but that’s all right. I think you’ll manage.”