"Let's see—the watches never existed—but they were on the desk a minute ago—but—they took Hedges back so he could make it impossible for him to have done the thing he did to enable him to go back to make it impossible for him to go back—"
Bloss got out a bottle and a couple of glasses. "My dear Collingwood," he said, "don't drive yourself crazy trying to resolve the paradoxes of time travel. The watches are one, and I for one say it's a good thing. Have a drink."
Collingwood snatched up his glass. "Now, Your Efficiency, you're talking sense!""
THE WARRIOR RACE
They were serious these days, the young men who gathered in Prof. Tadeusz Lechon's room to drink his mighty tea and set up propositions for him to knock down. Between relief that the war was over without their having come to harm personally, and apprehension for the future, and some indignation at the prospect of foreign rule, there was not much room left for undergraduate exuberance and orneriness. Something was going to happen to them, they thought.
"Whatever it is," said Tadeusz Lechon, "it is not cowardice, I am sure." He moved his large bald head forward to a cup of tea the color of an old boot, his big gold-plated earrings hobbling. He sucked noisily, watching Frederick Merrian.
Fred Merrian, a sandy-haired sophomore with squirrel-teeth, looked grateful but still defiant. He was in civilian clothes. Baldwin Dowling, the co-ed's dream, was in a very new U. S. Army uniform. The uniform was so new because, by the time Dowling had reached his unit in Los Angeles, the war was over, and he had been told to return home, free, on anything he liked. He had taken the next 'plane back to Philadelphia.
Lechon continued: "It is rather an example of the conviction of most thoughtful young men, that human problems must have a solution. Those problems being what they are, one cannot prove that any of them has no solution, the way Abel proved the problem of solving quintic equations algebraically impossible. So they try one idea after another, these young men; it may be Adrenalism or Anarcho-Communism OI Neo-Paganism. In your ease it was non-resistance. Perhaps it is well that they do—"
"But—" said Fred Merrian.
Lechon stopped the waiting flood of impassioned argument with a wave. "We have been over all this before. Some day you will tire of Centaurian rule, and join some other movement with equally impractical ideals. Our Centaurian is nosing around the campus. He may visit us. Suppose we let Baldwin tell us what he has learned about them."
"Yeah, what are they like?" asked Merrian.
"Much like other people," said Baldwin Dowling. "They're pretty big. I guess the original group of colonists that went to Proxima Centauri were a pretty tall bunch. They have a funny manner, though; sort of as if they ran by clockwork. You don't get palsy with a Bozo."
Arthur Hsi smiled his idiotic smile. His name was really Hsi A-tsz, and he was Dot at all idiotic. "I came half way und the world so I could study away from the Bozos. Not far enough, it seems."
Dowling asked: "Heard anything from China?"
"Bozos are busy, trying to make everything sternly efficient and incorruptible, like themselves. May be the greatest fighters on earth, but don't know China. My father writes—"
"Shh!" hissed Lechon, his big red face alert. Then he relaxed "I thought it was our Centaurian." There was an uncomfortable pause; nobody had much enthusiasm left for chatter, even if the superman failed to appear. Finally Lechon took it up: "Everybody I talk to says what an impossible thing it was, that war. But if you read your history, gentlemen, you will see that it was nothing new. In 1241 the Hungarians never dreamed the Mongols had things like divisional organization and wig-wig signals. So they were swamped. Our government never dreamed the Centaurians had an oxidizing ray, and airplanes with fifteen centimeter armor. So we were swamped. You follow mc? The tune is always different, but the notes stay much the same."
He broke off again, listening. A brisk step approached. Somebody knocked. The history professor said to come in. The Centaurian came.
"My name," he said in a metallic voice, "is Juggins." He was about thirty, with a lantern jaw, high cheekbones, and outstanding ears. He wore the odd plum-colored uniform of the Centaurians: descendants of those hardy souls who had colonized a planet of Proxima Centauri, had fought a three-generation battle against hostile environment and more hostile natives, and had finally swarmed back to earth fifty-odd years ago. Australia had been turned over to them, and their science had made this second most useless continent the world's most productive area. Their terrible stay on the other planet had made them something more and something less than men. Now they ruled the earth.
"Hello, Mr. Jug—" began Dowling. The Centaurian cut him off: "You will not use 'mister' in speaking to a Centaurian. I am Juggins."
"Will you sit down?" invited Lechon.
"I will." The Bozo folded his long legs, sat, and waited for somebody to say something.
Somebody finally did. Dowling asked: "How do you like Philly?"
"You mean Philadelphia?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Then kindly say so. I don't like it at all. It's dirty, corrupt, and inefficient. But we shall fix that. You will do well to cooperate with us. We shall give you a much healthier life than you have ever known." He got this out with some difficulty, as if saying more than one sentence at a time made him self-conscious.
Even Dowling, who though a native was not bothered by an excess of local pride, was taken aback by such candor. He murmured: "You guys don't pull any punches."
"I think I grasp the meaning of your slang expression. We are taught to tell the truth." He made telling the truth sound like a most unattractive occupation.
Hsi spoke up: "I hope you do something about the water system. This morning when I turned on the faucet, I got a live eel, a size twelve rubber, and about a cubic meter of chlorine gas before the water came through."
The Bozo stared at him coldly. "Young man, that is an unpardonable exaggeration. A rubber could not possibly pass through the water-pipes."
"He is juckink," said Lechon helplessly, the stress of conflicting emotions bringing out his Polish accent.
Juggins shifted his glare. "I understand. That's what you call a joke, is it? Very funny."
"Have a cigarette," suggested Dowling.
"We never use the filthy weed. It's unhealthy."
"Some tea, then," sighed Lechon.
"Hmm. It is a drug."
"Oh, I would not say that. Juggins. It does contain caffein, which is a stimulant, but most foods have one or more things like that in them."
"Very well, if you'll make it weak. And no sugar."
Hsi poured, and added some very hot water. The Bozo stirred it suspiciously. He looked up to say: "I want you, and everybody in the University, to look on me as a kind of father. There's no sense in your taking a hostile attitude, because you can't change conditions. If you will cooperate—Gaw!" He was staring popeyed at his spoon.
The lower half of the spoon had melted all at once and run down into a puddle of molten metal at the bottom of the cup.
"You stirred too hard," said Hsi.
"I—" said Juggins. He glared from face to face. Then he carefully put down his cup, laid the unmelted half of the spoon in the saucer, rose, and stalked out.
Lechon mopped his red forehead. "That was terrible, Arthur! You shouldn't play jokes on him. He might have us all shot."
Hsi let a long-suppressed giggle escape. "Maybe so. But I had that Wood's-metal spoon handy, and it was too good to miss."
"Is he real?" asked Merrian.
"Yeah," said Dowling. "A lot of people have wondered if the Bozos weren't robots or something. But they're real people; reproduced in the normal fashion and everything.