No one had seen him appear. At least, any witnesses to his materialization had quickly scurried on about their businesses, without meddling. Good.
He had to get his bearings, now.
He was in a city, presumably New York. Shops and offices all around. Pomrath drifted with the pedestrian tide. A kiosk at the corner was peddling what seemed to be the this-time equivalent of a faxtape. Pomrath stared. There was a date: 6 May 2051. Good old Lanoy. Within a year of the requested time. The yellow tape chuttered out of the slot in the machine.
Pomrath had difficulty reading the ancient sans-serif type face. He hadn’t realized how the shapes of the letters had changed. A moment, though, and he had the hang of it.
Fine. Now all he needed was some money, an identity, a place to live. Within a week, he felt, he would be fully established in the matrix of this era.
He filled his lungs with air. He felt confident, bouncy, buoyant. There was no job machine here. He could live by his own wits, doing solitary battle with the inexorable forces of the universe and actually getting the universe to yield a little. In his own time, he was just a number on a punched card, a patch of ions on a coded tape. Here he was free to select his own role and capitalize on it.
Pomrath stepped into a shop at random. They were selling books in there. Not spools; books. He looked at them in wonder. Cheap, sleazy paper; blurry ink; flimsy bindings. He picked up a novel, flipped its pages, put it down. He found what seemed to be a popular medical guide. It would be useful; Pomrath wondered how he could gain possession of it without money. He didn’t want to admit to anyone that he was a hopper. He wanted to make the grade by his own devices.
A man whom he assumed was the proprietor came up to him—plump, grimy-faced, with watery blue eyes. Pomrath smiled. He knew that his clothing marked him as a stranger, but he hoped it didn’t stamp him too clearly as a stranger out of time.
The man said in a soft, feathery voice, “There’s better downstairs. Want to catch some haunch?”
Pomrath’s smile grew broader. “Sorry, I be not easy speaking. My English very hard.”
“Haunch, I said. Haunch. Downstairs. You from out of town?”
“Visitor from Slavic country. Incomplete grasp your language,” Pomrath said, laying on what he hoped sounded like a thick Czech accent. “Maybe you help? Am feeling un-settled here.”
“That’s what I thought. A lonely foreigner. Well, go downstairs. The girls’ll cheer you up. Twenty dollars. You got dollars?”
Pomrath began to see what was going on in the basement of the bookshop. He nodded vociferously and headed towards the rear of the store, still clutching his medical guide. The proprietor didn’t appear to notice that he had taken the book.
Stairs led below. Stairs! Pomrath hardly knew what they were. He gripped the railing tightly, unsure of his footing as he descended. At the bottom, some sort of scanner beamed him and he heard a blipping sound that probably indicated he was carrying no weapons. A fleshy woman in bulky robes came swishing out to inspect him.
In his own time there were public sex cubicles available to all, without concealment. It figured that in this neopuritan era there would be girlie cribs hidden in the lower levels of musty old buildings. Vice, Pomrath thought, was probably more common here per capita than up yonder.
The woman said, “You’re the foreigner Al said was coming down, huh? You sure look foreign to me. Where you from, France?”
“Slavic district. Praha.”
“Where’s that?”
Pomrath looked uncertain. “Europe. To the east.”
The woman shrugged and led him within. Pomrath found himself in a small, low-ceilinged room which contained a bed, a washstand, and a pasty-faced blonde girl. The girl slipped off her robe. Her body was soft and slightly flabby, but the basic material was pretty good. She looked young, and more intelligent than her job called on her to be.
“It’s twenty dollars,” she said patiently.
Pomrath knew that the moment of truth had arrived. He flicked a wary glance around the little room and saw no sign of any scanning devices. He couldn’t be sure, naturally. Even way back here, they had been pretty sophisticated about espionage, and he didn’t doubt that they pulled the same dirty tricks that were common in his own time. But he had to take the risk. Sooner or later, he had to find himself an ally in this other time, and now was a reasonable time to begin.
“I don’t have any money,” said Pomrath, dropping the phony accent.
“Then get the hell out of here.”
“Shh. Not so fast. I’ve got some ideas. Sit down. Relax. How would you like to be rich?”
“Are you a cop?”
“I’m just a stranger in town, and I need a friend. I’ve got plans. Co-operate with me and you’ll be out of the bed-girl business in a hurry. What’s your name?”
“Lisa. You talk funny. What are you, a hopper or something?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Just a guess.” The girl’s eyes were very blue, very wide. She picked up her robe and put.it on again, as though she did not think it proper to hold a business conference in the nude. She kept her voice low as she said, “You just get here?”
“Yes. I’m a doctor. I can make us fabulously rich. With what I know—”
“We’ll turn all the turbines, child!” she said. “You and me. What’s your label?”
“Keystone,” Pomrath said at random. “Mort Keystone.”
“We’re going to twist orbits, Mort.”
“I know we are. How soon can you get out of this place?”
“Two more hours.”
“Where should I meet you?”
“There’s a park two blocks from here. You can sit there and wait and I’ll come along.”
“A what?”
“A park. You know, grass, benches, some trees. What’s the matter, Mort?”
Pomrath was struck by the alienness of having trees and grass in the middle of a city. He managed a smile. “Nothing’s the matter. I’ll wait for you in the park.” Then he handed her the book. “Here. Buy this for me when you leave the shop. I don’t want to have to steal it.”
She nodded. Then she said, “You sure you don’t want anything else while you’re down here?”
“There’s time for that later,” said Pomrath. “I’ll be waiting in the park.”
He went out. The bookstore proprietor waved cheerily to him. Pomrath replied in a string of improvised guttural sounds and stepped into the street. It was difficult for him to believe that he had been on the verge of psychotic collapse only a few hours ago and four hundred and forty-nine years from now.
He was utterly calm. This world held challenges for him, and he knew he could meet those challenges.
Poor Helaine, he thought. I wonder how she took the news.
He walked briskly down the street, only momentarily bothered by the lack of resilience in the pavement. I am Mort Keystone, he told himself. Mort Keystone. Mort Keystone. And Lisa will help me get together some money to start a medical practice. I’ll be a rich man. I’ll live like a Class Two. There’s no High Government to slap me down.
I’ll have power and status among these primitives, he told himself pleasantly. And after I’m established, I’ll track down a few people from my own time, just so I don’t feel too isolated from it. We’ll reminisce, he thought.
We’ll reminisce about the future.
Fourteen
Quellen waited three hours, until Koll and. Spanner both were tied up on other government business. Then he went down the hall to the custody tank. He opened the scanner slot and peered in. Lanoy floated peacefully on the dark green fluid, utterly relaxed, evidently enjoying himself. On the stippled metal wall of the tank the indicators announced the slyster’s status. EEG and EKG bands wavered and crisscrossed. Heartbeat, respiration, everything was monitored.