Paycheck

  In a moment only gray clouds and the dim outline of ruined buildings remained.

  Douglas paced back and forth, examining the living room, the wallpaper, the light fixture and chairs. He picked up some magazines and thumbed through them. ‘From the past. But not far in the past.’

  ‘Seven years?’

  ‘Could it be? I suppose. A lot of things have happened in the last few months. Time travel.’ Douglas grinned ironically. ‘You picked a bad spot, McLean. You should have gone farther on.’

  ‘I didn’t pick it. It just happened.’

  ‘You must have done something.’

  Tim shook his head. ‘No. Nothing. We got up. And we were - here.’

  Douglas was deep in thought. ‘Here. Seven years in the future. Moved forward through time. We know nothing about time travel. No work has been done with it. There seem to be evident military possibilities.’

  ‘How did the war begin?’ Mary asked faintly.

  ‘Begin? It didn’t begin. You remember. There was war seven years ago.’

  ‘The real war. This.’

  ‘There wasn’t any point when it became - this. We fought in Korea. We fought in China. In Germany and Yugoslavia and Iran. It spread, farther and farther. Finally the bombs were falling here. It came like the plague. The war grew. It didn’t begin.’ Abruptly he put his notebook away. ‘A report on you would be suspect. They might think that I had the ash sickness.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Virginia asked.

  ‘Radioactive particles in the air. Carried to the brain. Causes insanity. Everybody has a touch of it, even with the masks.’

  ‘I’d sure like to know who’s winning,’ Earl repeated. ‘What was that outside? That truck. Was it rocket propelled?’

  ‘The snake? No. Turbines. Boring snout. Cuts through the debris.’

  ‘Seven years,’ Mary said. ‘So much has changed. It doesn’t seem possible.’

  ‘So much?’ Douglas shrugged. ‘I suppose so. I remember what I was doing seven years ago. I was still in school. Learning. I had an apartment and a car. I went out dancing. I bought a TV set. But these things were there. The twilight. This. Only I didn’t know. None of us knew. But they were there.’

  ‘You’re a Political Commissioner?’ Tim asked.

  ‘I supervise the troops. Watch for political deviation. In a total war we have to keep people under constant surveillance. One Commie down in the Webs could wreck the whole business. We can’t take chances.’

  Tim nodded. ‘Yes. It was there. The twilight. Only we didn’t understand it.’

  Douglas examined the books in the bookcase. ‘I’ll take a couple of these along. I haven’t seen fiction in months. Most of it disappeared. Burned back in ‘77.’

  ‘Burned?’

  Douglas helped himself. ‘Shakespeare. Milton. Dryden. I’ll take the old stuff. It’s safer. None of the Steinbeck and Dos Passos. Even a polic can get in trouble. If you stay here, you better get rid of that.’ He tapped a volume of Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov.

  ‘If we stay! What else can we do?’

  ‘You want to stay?’

  ‘No,’ Mary said quietly.

  Douglas shot her a quick glance. ‘No, I suppose not. If you stay you’ll be separated, of course. Children to the Canadian Relocation Centers. Women are situated down in the undersurface factory-labor camps. Men are automatically a part of Military.’

  ‘Like those there who left,’ Tim said.

  ‘Unless you can qualify for the id block.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Industrial Designing and Technology. What training have you had? Anything along scientific lines?’

  ‘No. Accounting.’

  Douglas shrugged. ‘Well, you’ll be given a standard test. If your IQ is high enough you could go in the Political Service. We use a lot of men.’ He paused thoughtfully, his arms loaded with books. ‘You better go back, McLean. You’ll have trouble getting accustomed to this. I’d go back, if I could. But I can’t.’

  ‘Back?’ Mary echoed. ‘How?’

  ‘The way you came.’

  ‘We just came.’

  Douglas halted at the front door. ‘Last night was the worst rom attack so far. They hit this whole area.’

  ‘Rom?’

  ‘Robot operated missiles. The Soviets are systemically destroying continental America, mile by mile. Roms are cheap. They make them by the million and fire them off. The whole process is automatic. Robot factories turn them out and fire them at us. Last night they came over here - waves of them. This morning the patrol came in and found nothing. Except you, of course.’

  Tim nodded slowly. ‘I’m beginning to see.’

  ‘The concentrated energy must have tipped some unstable time fault. Like a rock fault. We’re always starting earthquakes. But a time quake … Interesting. That’s what happened, I think. The release of energy, the destruction of matter, sucked your house into the future. Carried the house seven years ahead. This street, everything here, this very spot, was pulverized. Your house, seven years back, was caught in the undertow. The blast must have lashed back through time.’

  ‘Sucked into the future,’ Tim said. ‘During the night. While we were asleep.’

  Douglas watched him carefully. ‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘there will be another rom attack. It should finish off what is left.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It is now four in the afternoon. The attack will begin in a few hours. You should be undersurface. Nothing will survive up here. I can take you down with me, if you want. But if you want to take a chance, if you want to stay here—’

  ‘You think it might tip us back?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. It’s a gamble. It might tip you back to your own time, or it might not. If not—’

  ‘If not we wouldn’t have a chance of survival.’

  Douglas flicked out a pocket map and spread it open on the couch. ‘A patrol will remain in this area another halfhour. If you decide to come undersurface with us, go down the street this way.’ He traced a line on the map. ‘To this open field here. The patrol is a Political unit. They’ll take you the rest of the way down. You think you can find the field?’

  ‘I think so,’ Tim said, looking at the map. His lips twisted. ‘That open field used to be the grammar school my kids went to. That’s where they were going when the troops stopped them. Just a little while ago.’

  ‘Seven years ago,’ Douglas corrected. He snapped the map shut and restored it to his pocket. He pulled his mask down and moved out the front door onto the porch. ‘Maybe I’ll see you again. Maybe not. It’s your decision. You’ll have to decide one way or the other. In any case - good luck.’

  He turned and walked briskly from the house.

  ‘Dad,’ Earl shouted, ‘are you going in the Army? Are you going to wear a mask and shoot one of those guns?’ His eyes sparkled with excitement. ‘Are you going to drive a snake?’

  Tim McLean squatted down and pulled his son to him. ‘You want that? You want to stay here? If I’m going to wear a mask and shoot one of those guns we can’t go back.’

  Earl looked doubtful. ‘Couldn’t we go back later?’

  Tim shook his head. ‘Afraid not. We’ve got to decide now, whether we’re going back or not.’

  ‘You heard Mr Douglas,’ Virginia said disgustedly. ‘The attack’s going to start in a couple hours.’

  Tim got to his feet and paced back and forth. ‘If we stay in the house we’ll get blown to bits. Let’s face it. There’s only a faint chance we’ll be tipped back to our own time. A slim possibility - a long shot. Do we want to stay here with roms falling all around us, knowing any second it may be the end - hearing them come closer, hitting nearer - lying on the floor, waiting, listening—’

  ‘Do you really want to go back?’ Mary demanded.

  ‘Of course, but the risk—’

  ‘I’m not asking you about the risk. I’m asking you if you really want to go back. Maybe you want to stay here. Maybe Earl’s right. You
in a uniform and a mask, with one of those needle guns. Driving a snake.’

  ‘With you in a factory-labor camp! And the kids in a Government Relocation Center! How do you think that would be? What do you think they’d teach them? What do you think they’d grow up like? And believe …’

  ‘They’d probably teach them to be very useful.’

  ‘Useful! To what? To themselves? To mankind? Or to the war effort …?’

  ‘They’d be alive,’ Mary said. ‘They’d be safe. This way, if we stay in the house, wait for the attack to come—’

  ‘Sure,’ Tim grated. ‘They would be alive. Probably quite healthy. Well fed. Well clothed and cared for.’ He looked down at his children, his face hard. ‘They’d stay alive, all right. They’d live to grow up and become adults. But what kind of adults? You heard what he said! Book burnings in ‘77. What’ll they be taught from? What kind of ideas are left, since ‘77? What kind of beliefs can they get from a Government Relocation Center? What kind of values will they have?’

  ‘There’s the id block,’ Mary suggested.

  ‘Industrial Designing and Technology. For the bright ones. The clever ones with imagination. Busy slide rules and pencils. Drawing and planning and making discoveries. The girls could go into that. They could design the guns. Earl could go into the Political Service. He could make sure the guns were used. If any of the troops deviated, didn’t want to shoot, Earl could report them and have them hauled off for reeducation. To have their political faith strengthened - in a world where those with brains design weapons and those without brains fire them.’

  ‘But they’d be alive,’ Mary repeated.

  ‘You’ve got a strange idea of what being alive is! You call that alive? Maybe it is.’ Tim shook his head wearily. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should go undersurface with Douglas. Stay in this world. Stay alive.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Mary said softly. ‘Tim, I had to find out if you really understood why it’s worth it. Worth staying in the house, taking the chance we won’t be tipped back.’

  ‘Then you want to take the chance?’

  ‘Of course! We have to. We can’t turn our children over to them - to the Relocation Center. To be taught how to hate and kill and destroy.’ Mary smiled up wanly. ‘Anyhow, they’ve always gone to the Jefferson School. And here, in this world, it’s only an open field.’

  ‘Are we going back?’ Judy piped. She caught hold of Tim’s sleeve imploringly ‘Are we going back now?’

  Tim disengaged her arm. ‘Very soon, honey.’

  Mary opened the supply cupboards and rooted in them. ‘Everything’s here. What did they take?’

  ‘The case of canned peas. Everything we had in the refrigerator. And they smashed the front door.’

  ‘I’ll bet we’re beating them!’ Earl shouted. He ran to the window and peered out. The sight of the rolling ash disappointed him. ‘I can’t see anything! Just the fog!’ He turned questioningly to Tim. ‘Is it always like this, here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tim answered.

  Earl’s face fell. ‘Just fog? Nothing else. Doesn’t the sun shine ever?’

  ‘I’ll fix some coffee,’ Mary said.

  ‘Good.’ Tim went into the bathroom and examined himself in the mirror. His mouth was cut, caked with dried blood. His head ached. He felt sick at his stomach.

  ‘It doesn’t seem possible,’ Mary said, as they sat down at the kitchen table.

  Tim sipped his coffee. ‘No. It doesn’t.’ Where he sat he could see out the window. The clouds of ash. The dim, jagged outline of ruined buildings.

  ‘Is the man coming back?’ Judy piped. ‘He was all thin and funny-looking. He isn’t coming back, is he?’

  Tim looked at his watch. It read ten o’clock. He reset it, moving the hands to four-fifteen. ‘Douglas said it would begin at nightfall. That won’t be long.’

  ‘Then we’re really staying in the house,’ Mary said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Even though there’s only a little chance?’

  ‘Even though there’s only a little chance we’ll get back. Are you glad?’

  ‘I’m glad,’ Mary said, her eyes bright. ‘It’s worth it, Tim. You know it is. Anything’s worth it, any chance. To get back. And something else. We’ll all be here together … We can’t be - broken up. Separated.’

  Tim poured himself more coffee. ‘We might as well make ourselves comfortable. We have maybe three hours to wait. We might as well try to enjoy them.’

  At six-thirty the first rom fell. They felt the shock, a deep rolling wave of force that lapped over the house.

  Judy came running in from the dining room, face white with fear. ‘Daddy! What is it?’

  ‘Nothing. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Come on back,’ Virginia called impatiently. ‘It’s your turn.’ They were playing Monopoly.

  Earl leaped to his feet. ‘I want to see.’ He ran excitedly to the window. ‘I can see where it hit!’

  Tim lifted the shade and looked out. Far off, in the distance, a white glare burned fitfully. A towering column of luminous smoke rose from it.

  A second shudder vibrated through the house. A dish crashed from the shelf, into the sink.

  It was almost dark outside. Except for the two spots of white Tim could make out nothing. The clouds of ash were lost in the gloom. The ash and the ragged remains of buildings.

  ‘That was closer,’ Mary said.

  A third rom fell. In the living room windows burst, showering glass across the rug.

  ‘We better get back,’ Tim said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Down in the basement. Come on.’ Tim unlocked the basement door and they trooped nervously downstairs.

  ‘Food,’ Mary said. ‘We better bring the food that’s left.’

  ‘Good idea. You kids go on down. We’ll come along in a minute.’

  ‘I can carry something,’ Earl said.

  ‘Go on down.’ The fourth rom hit, farther off than the last. ‘And stay away from the window.’

  ‘I’ll move something over the window,’ Earl said. ‘The big piece of plywood we used for my train.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Tim and Mary returned to the kitchen. ‘Food. Dishes. What else?’

  ‘Books.’ Mary looked nervously around. ‘I don’t know. Nothing else. Come on.’

  A shattering roar drowned out her words. The kitchen window gave, showering glass over them. The dishes over the sink tumbled down in a torrent of breaking china. Tim grabbed Mary and pulled her down.

  From the broken window rolling clouds of ominous gray drifted into the room. The evening air stank, a sour, rotten smell. Tim shuddered.

  ‘Forget the food. Let’s get back down.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Forget it.’ He grabbed her and pulled her down the basement stairs. They tumbled in a heap, Tim slamming the door after them.

  ‘Where’s the food?’ Virginia demanded.

  Tim wiped his forehead shakily. ‘Forget it. We won’t need it.’

  ‘Help me,’ Earl gasped. Tim helped him move the sheet of plywood over the window above the laundry tubs. The basement was cold and silent. The cement floor under them was faintly moist.

  Two roms struck at once. Tim was hurled to the floor. The concrete hit him and he grunted. For a moment blackness swirled around him. Then he was on his knees, groping his way up.

  ‘Everybody all right?’ he muttered.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Mary said. Judy began to whimper. Earl was feeling his way across the room.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Virginia said. ‘I guess.’

  The lights flickered and dimmed. Abruptly they went out. The basement was pitch-black.

  ‘Well,’ Tim said. ‘There they go.’

  ‘I have my flashlight.’ Earl winked the flashlight on. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Fine,’ Tim said.

  More roms hit. The ground leaped under them, bucking and heaving. A wave of force shuddering the whole house.
>
  ‘We better lie down,’ Mary said.

  ‘Yes. Lie down.’ Tim stretched himself out awkwardly. A few bits of plaster rained down around them.

  ‘When will it stop?’ Earl asked uneasily.

  ‘Soon,’ Tim said.

  ‘Then we’ll be back?’

  ‘Yes. We’ll be back.’

  The next blast hit them almost at once. Tim felt the concrete rise under him. It grew, swelling higher and higher. He was going up. He shut his eyes, holding on tight. Higher and higher he went, carried up by the ballooning concrete. Around him beams and timbers cracked. Plaster poured down. He could hear glass breaking. And a long way off, the licking crackles of fire.

  ‘Tim,’ Mary’s voice came faintly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re not going to - to make it.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We’re not. I can tell.’

  ‘Maybe not.’ He grunted in pain as a board struck his back, settling over him. Boards and plaster, covering him, burying him. He could smell the sour smell, the night air and ash. It drifted and rolled into the cellar, through the broken window.

  ‘Daddy,’ Judy’s voice came faintly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Aren’t we going back?’

  He opened his mouth to answer. A shattering roar cut his words off. He jerked, tossed by the blast. Everything was moving around him. A vast wind tugged at him, a hot wind, licking at him, gnawing at him. He held on tight. The wind pulled, dragging him with it. He cried out as it seared his hands and face.

  ‘Mary—’

  Then silence. Only blackness and silence.

  Cars.

  Cars were stopping nearby. Then voices. And the noise of footsteps. Tim stirred, pushing the boards from him. He struggled to his feet.

  ‘Mary.’ He looked around. ‘We’re back.’

  The basement was in ruins. The walls were broken and sagging. Great gaping holes showed a green line of grass beyond. A concrete walk. The small rose garden. The white stucco house next door.

  Lines of telephone poles. Roofs. Houses. The city. As it had always been. Every morning.

  ‘We’re back!’ Wild joy leaped through him. Back. Safe. It was over. Tim pushed quickly through the debris of his ruined house. ‘Mary, are you all right?’