Part 5 (1/2)

Two fifteen. There would be a jamboree going on in his room at that time of a particularly confusing sort.

He did not want to gothere-notyet. Not until his blood brothers got through playing happy fun games with the Gate.

The Gate!

It would be in his room until sometime afterfour fifteen . If he timed it right-”Drive to the corner of Fourth and McKinley,” he directed, naming the intersection closest to his boardinghouse.

He paid off the taxi driver there, and lugged his bags into the filling station at that corner, where he obtained permission from the attendant to leave them and a.s.surance that they would be safe. He had nearly two hours to kill. He was reluctant to go very far from the house for fear some hitch would upset his timing.

It occurred to him that there was one piece of unfinished business in the immediate neighborhood-and time enough to take care of it. Hewalked briskly to a point two streets away, whistling cheerfully and turned in at an apartment house.

In response to his knock the door ofApartment211 was opened a crack, then wider. ”Bob darling! I thought you were working today.”

”Hi, Genevieve.Not at all-I've got time to burn.”

She glanced back over her shoulder. ”I don't know whether I should let you come in-I wasn't expecting you. I haven't washed the dishes, ormade the bed. I was just putting on my make-up.”

”Don't be coy.” He pushed the door open wide, and went on in.

When he came out he glanced at his watch.Three thirty -plenty of time. He went down the street wearing the expression of the canary that ate the cat.

He thanked the service station salesman and gave him a quarter for his trouble, which left him with a lone dime. He looked at this coin, grinned to himself and inserted it in the pay phone in the office of the station.

He dialed his own number.

”h.e.l.lo,” he heard.

”h.e.l.lo,” he replied. ”Is that Bob Wilson?”

”Yes. Who 'is this?”

”Never mind,” he chuckled. ”I just wanted to be sure you were there. Ithoughtyou would be. You're right in the groove, kid,right in the groove.” He replaced the receiver with a grin.

Atfour ten he was too nervous to wait any longer. Struggling under theload of the heavy suitcases he made his way to the boardinghouse. He let himself in and heard a telephone ringing upstairs. He glanced at his watch -four fifteen. He waited in the hall for three interminable minutes,then labored up the stairs and down the upper hallway to his own door. He unlocked the door and let himself in.

The room was empty, the Gate still there.

Without stopping for anything, filled with apprehension lest the Gate shouldflicker and disappear while he crossed the floor, he hurried to it, took a firm grip on his bags and strode through it.

The Hall of the Gate was empty, to his great relief. What a break, he told himself thankfully. Just five minutes, that's all I ask.Five uninter-rupted minutes.He set the suitcases down near the Gate to be ready for a quick departure. As he did so he noticed that a large chunk was missing from a corner of one case.

Half a book showed through the opening,sheared as neatly as with a printer's trimmer. He identified it as ”MeinKampf .”

He did not mind the loss of the book but the implications made him slightly sick at his stomach. Suppose he had not described a clear arc when he had first been knocked through the Gate, had hit the edge, half in and half out? Man Sawed in Half-and no illusion!

He wiped his face and went to the control booth. FollowingDiktor's simple instructions he brought all four spheres together at the center of the tetrahedron. He glanced over the side of the booth and saw that the Gate had disappeared entirely. ”Check!” he thought. ”Everything on zero -no Gate.”He moved the white sphere slightly. The Gate reappeared. Turning on the speculum he was able to see that the miniature scene showed the inside of the Hall of the Gate itself. So far so good-but he would not be able to tell what time the Gate was set for by looking into the hall. He displaced a s.p.a.ce control slightly; the scene flickered past the walls of the palace and hung in the open air. Returning the white time control to zerohe then displaced it very, very slightly. In the miniature scene the sun became a streak of brightness across the sky; the days flickered past like light from a low frequency source of illumination. He increased the displacement a little, saw the ground become sear and brown, then snow covered and finally green again.

Working cautiously, steadying his right hand with his left, he made the seasons march past. He had counted ten winters when he became aware of voices somewhere in the distance. He stopped and listened, then very hastily returned the s.p.a.ce controls to zero, leaving the time control as itwas-set for ten years in the past-and rushed out of the booth.

He hardly had time to grasp his bags, lift them and swing them through the Gate, himself with them. This time he was exceedingly careful not to touch the edge of the circle.

He found himself, as he had planned to, still in the Hall of the Gate, but, if he had interpreted the controls correctly, ten years away from theevents he had recently partic.i.p.ated in. He had intended to giveDiktor awider berth than that, but there had been no time for it. However, he reflected, sinceDiktor was, by his own statement and the evidence of thelittle notebookWilson had lifted from him, a native of the twentieth century, it was quite possible that ten years was enough.Diktor might not be in this era. If he was, there was always the Time Gate for a getaway. But it was reasonable to scout out the situation first before making any more jumps.

It suddenly occurred to him thatDiktor might be looking at him through the speculum of the Time Gate.

Without stopping to consider that speed was no protection-since the speculum could be used to view anytime sector-he hurriedly dragged his two suitcases into the cover of the control booth. Once inside the protecting walls of the booth he calmed down a bit. Spying could work both ways. He found the controls set at zero; making use of the same process he had used once before, he ran the scene in the speculum forward through ten years,then cautiously hunted with the s.p.a.ce controls on zero. It was a very difficult task; the time scale necessary to hunt through several months in a few minutes caused any figure which might appear in the speculum to flash past at an apparent speed too fast for his eye to follow.

Several times he thought he detected flitting shadows which might be human beings but he was never able to find them when he stopped moving the time control.

He wondered in great exasperation why whoever had built the double-d.a.m.ned gadget had failed to provide it with graduations and some sort of delicate control mechanism-avernier , or the like. It was not until much later that it occurred to him that the creator of the Time Gate might have no need of such gross aids to his senses. He would have given up, was about to give up, when, purely by accident, one more fruitless scanning happened to terminate with a figure in the field.

It was himself, carrying two suitcases. He saw himself walking directlyinto the field of view, grow large, disappear . He looked over the rail, half expecting to see himself step out of the Gate.

But nothing came out of the Gate. It puzzled him, until he recalled that it was the setting atthatend, ten years in the future, which controlled the time of egress. But he had what he wanted; he sat back and watched. Almost immediatelyDiktor and another edition of himself appeared in the scene. He recalled the situation when he saw it portrayed in the speculum. It was Bob Wilson Number Three, about to quarrel withDiktor and make his escape back to the twentieth century.

That was that-Diktorhad not seen him, did not know that he had made unauthorized use of the Gate, did not know that he was hiding ten years in the ”past,” would not look for him there. He returned the controls to zero, and dismissed the matter.

But other matters needed his attention-food, especially. It seemed obvious, inretrospect, that he should have brought along food to last him for a day or two at least.And maybe a .4g. He had to admit that he had not been very foresighted. But he easily forgave himself-it was hard to be foresighted when the future kept slipping up behind one. ”All right, Bob, old boy,” he told himself aloud, ”let's see if the natives are friendly -as advertised.”

A cautiousreconnoiter of the small part of the palace with which he was acquainted turned up no human beings or life of any sort, not even insect life. The place was dead, sterile,as static and unlived-in as a window display. He shouted once just to hear a voice. The echoes caused him to s.h.i.+ver; he did not do it again.

The architecture of the place confused him. Not only was it strange to his experience-he had expected that-but the place, with minor excep-tions, seemed totallyunadapted to the uses of human beings. Great halls large enough to hold ten thousand people at once-had there been floors for them to stand on.For there frequently were no floors in the acceptedmeaning of a level or reasonably level platform.In following a pa.s.sagewayhe came suddenly to one of the great mysterious openings in the structure and almost fell in before he realized that his path had terminated. He crawled gingerly forward and looked over the edge.

The mouth of the pa.s.sage debouched high up on a wall of the place; below him the wall was cut back so that there was not even a vertical surface for the eye to follow. Far below him, the wall curved back and met its mate of the opposite side -not decently, in a horizontal plane, but at an acute angle.

There were other openings scattered around the walls, openings as unserviceable to human beings as the one in which he crouched. ”The High Ones,” he whispered to himself. All his c.o.c.kiness was gone out of him. He retraced his steps through the fine dust and reached the almost friendly familiarity of the Hall of the Gate.

On his second try he attempted only those pa.s.sages and compartments which seemed obviously adapted to men. Hehad already decided whatsuch parts of the palace must be-servants' quarters, or, more probably, slaves' quarters. He regained his courage by sticking to such areas. Though deserted completely, by contrast with the rest of the great structure a room or a pa.s.sage which seemed to have been built for men was friendly andcheerful. Thesourceless ever-present illuminations and the unbrokensilence still bothered him, but not to the degree to which he had been upset by the gargantuan and mysteriously convoluted chambers of the ”High Ones.”

He had almost despaired of finding his way out of the palace and was thinking of retracing his steps when the corridor he was following turned and he found himself in bright sunlight.

He was standing at the top of a broad steep ramp which spread fanlike down to the base of the building.

Ahead of him and below him, distant at least five hundred yards, the pavement of the ramp met the green of sod and bush and tree. It was the same placid, lush and familiar scene he had looked out over when he breakfasted withDiktor -a few hours ago and ten years in the future.

He stood quietly for a short time, drinking in the suns.h.i.+ne, soaking upthe heart-lifting beauty of the warm, spring day. ”This is going to be all right,” he exulted. ”It's a grand place.”

He moved slowly down the ramp, his eyes searching for human beings. He was halfway down when he saw a small figure emerge from the trees into a clearing near the foot of the ramp. He called out to it in joyous excitement. The child-it was a child he saw-looked up, stared at him for a moment, then fled back into the shelter of the trees.

”Impetuous, Robert-that's what you are,” he chided himself. ”Don't scare 'em. Take it easy.” But he was not made downhearted by the incident. Where there were children there would be parents, society, opportunities for a bright, young fellow who took a broad view of things. He moved on down at a leisurely pace.

A man showed up at the point where the child had disappeared. Wilson stood still. The man looked him over and advanced hesitantly a step or two. ”Come here!” Wilson invited in a friendly voice. ”I won't hurt you.”

The man could hardly have understood his words, but he advanced slowly. At the edge of the pavement he stopped, eyed it and would not proceed farther.

Something about the behavior pattern clicked in Wilson's brain, fitted in with what he had seen in the palace and with the little thatDiktor had told him. ”Unless,” he told himself, ”the time I spent in 'Anthropology I' was totally wasted, this palace istabu , the ramp I'm standing on istabu , and, by contagion, I'mtabu . Play your cards, son, play your cards!”

He advanced to the edge of the pavement, being careful not to step off it. The man dropped to his knees and cupped his hands in front of him, head bowed. Without hesitation Wilson touched him on the fore-head. The man got back to his feet, his face radiant.

”This isn't even sporting,” Wilson said. ”I ought to shoot him on the rise.