The Time Hoppers
Q.E.D.
A quickboat took her to the flamboyant skyscraper that housed the Secretariat of Crime. Some persistent work at the front desk yielded Helaine the information that her brother was at the office today, and if she cared to wait a while perhaps he would see her. She requisitioned an appointment with him. The machine asked for her thumbprint, and she gave it, and then sat down to wait in an anteroom draped with sombre purplish fabrics.
Helaine was not accustomed to venturing out in the world of office buildings and walking servomechanisms. She stayed close to home, and did her shopping by remote contact. ‘Downtown’ – the world at the end of the quickboat routes – was a frightening place to her. She forced herself to remain cool. On a matter as serious as this, she had to see her brother face to face across a desk, so that he could not escape from her at the flick of a switch. She was terrified.
‘The CrimeSec will see you,’ a flat, impersonal vocoder voice told her.
She was ushered into the presence of her brother. Quellen stood up, flashed a quick, uncomfortable smile, beckoned her into a chair. The chair grabbed her and began to knead the muscles of her back. Helaine shuddered at the sensation, and pulled away in alarm as the invisible hands within the chair started to go to work on her thighs and buttocks. The delicate feedback sensors of the chair caught her mood, and the attentions ceased.
She looked uncertainly at her brother. Quellen seemed to be as ill at ease with her as she was with him; he tugged at his ear, clenched his jaws, popped his knuckles. They were practically strangers. They met on family occasions, but there had been no real communication between them for a long time. He was a few years older than she was. Once, they had been quite close, two devoted siblings bantering and heckling one another just as her Joseph and Marina did today. Helaine could remember her brother as a boy, stealing his peeks at her body in their one-room apartment, pulling her hair, helping her with her homework. Then he had begun his training for government service, and after that he had not been part of her world in any meaningful way. Now she was an edgy housewife and he was a busy public officer, and she was somewhat afraid of him.
For perhaps three minutes they exchanged friendly pleasantries about domestic matters. Helaine talked about her children, her social conscience unit in the apartment, her personal reading programme. Quellen said very little. He was a bachelor, which set him farther apart from her. Helaine knew that her brother kept company with some woman, somebody named Judith, but he rarely talked about her and seemed hardly ever even to think of her. There were times when Helaine suspected that Judith did not exist – that Quellen had invented her as camouflage for some solitary vice he preferred, or, worse, for some homosexual involvement. Sodomy was acceptable socially these days; it helped to keep the birth rate low. But Helaine did not like to think of her brother Joe taking part in such practices.
She brought the chatter to a deliberate end by asking about Judith. ‘Is she well? You’ve never kept your promise to bring her to visit us, Joe.’
Quellen looked as uncomfortable at the mention of Judith as Norm Pomrath had looked while Helaine was questioning him about the Lanoy minislip. He said evasively, ‘I’ve mentioned the idea to her. She thinks it would be fine to meet you and Norm, but not just yet. Judith’s a little disturbed by having to meet your children. Children unsettle her. But I’m sure we’ll work something out.’ He flashed the quick, hollow smile again. Then he dismissed the touchy subject of Judith by getting down to the business at hand. ‘I’m sure this wasn’t just a social call, Helaine.’
‘No. It’s business, Joe. I see by the faxtapes that you’re conducting an investigation of the hoppers.’
‘Yes. True.’
‘Norm’s going to hop.’
Quellen sat stiffly upright, his left shoulder rising higher than the right one. ‘What gives you that idea? Has he told you so himself?’
‘No, of course not. But I suspect it. He’s been very depressed lately, about not working and all that.’
‘Nothing new with him.’
‘More so than usual. You should hear the way he talks. He’s so bitter, Joe! He talks absolute nonsense, just a stream of angry words that don’t make any sense. I wish I could quote him for you. He’s building up to some kind of psychological explosion, I know it. I can feel the steam gathering inside him.’ She winced. The chair was starting to massage her again. ‘He hasn’t worked for months now, Joe.’
Quellen said, ‘I’m aware of that. You know, the High Government is furthering a whole sequence of plans designed to alleviate the unemployment problem.’
‘That’s fine. But in the meanwhile Norm isn’t working, and I don’t think it’ll matter much longer. He’s in contact with the hopper people and he’s going to hop. Even while I’m sitting here telling you this, he might be getting into the machine!’
Her voice had risen to a tinny screech. She could hear the echoes of it go bouncing around in her brother’s office. It seemed to her that the ends of her nerves had burst through her skin all over her body, and were jutting out like quills.
Quellen’s manner changed. He seemed to make a conscious effort to relax, and he leaned forward benevolently, giving her a froodlike smile. Helaine expected him to ask, ‘Shall we now attempt to get to the bottom of this delusion of yours?’ What he actually said, in honeyed, humoring tones, was, ‘Maybe you’re getting overwrought for no real reason, Helaine. What makes you think he’s having dealings with the hopper criminals?’
She told him about the Lanoy minislip, and about Norm’s exaggerated reaction of unconcern when she had queried him on Lanoy. As she quoted the five-word slogan on the slip, Helaine was startled to see her brother’s beaming look of phony solicitude give way for a moment to a blank expression betokening some sudden absolute terror within. Then Quellen recovered; but he had already betrayed himself. Helaine was sharp to detect such momentary flickers of the inner persona. She said, ‘You know about Lanoy?’
‘It happens that I’ve seen one of those slips, Helaine. They’re being circulated pretty widely. You go up a quickboat ramp and somebody comes up to you and hands one out. No doubt that’s how Norm got his.’
‘And it’s advertising for the hopper people, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve got no reason to think so,’ Quellen drawled, his eyes proclaiming his lie to her.
‘Are you investigating Lanoy, though? I mean, if there’s reason to suspect – ’
‘We’re investigating, yes. And I repeat, Helaine, there’s no necessary cause to feel that this person Lanoy is in any way connected with the hopper problem.’
‘But Beth Wisnack said that her husband Bud talked about Lanoy all week before he went.’
‘Who?’
‘Wisnack. A recent hopper. When I asked her about Lanoy, Beth told me point-blank that he was responsible for Bud’s disappearance, and she also said that it was a sure thing that Norm would be going too.’ Agitated, Helaine crossed and uncrossed her legs. The chair’s dull brain picked up the evidence of her restlessness, and after having been quiescent for a few minutes began to fondle her again.
Quellen said, ‘We can check this business of Norm’s going hopper very easily.’ He swung around and produced a spool. ‘I have here the complete listing of all the documented hoppers who were recorded as they arrived in the past. This list was compiled recently for me and of course I haven’t studied it completely, because it contains hundreds of thousands of names. But if Norm did hop, we’ll find him here.’
He activated the spool and began to search it, explaining in a half-mumble that the listings were alphabetical. Helaine sat rigidly as the search continued through the alphabet at a rate of thousands of bits per second. It would not take long for Quellen to reach the ‘P’ entries. And then –
If Norm had gone, he would be entered here. His fate would be plain for her to see – his fate and hers, inscribed in this Dome day Book of thermoplastic tape. She would learn that her marriage had been doomed three hundred y
ears before she contracted it. She would find that her husband’s name had been inscribed centuries ago on a roster of fugitives from this century. Why had that roster not been a matter of public record all this time? Because, she knew, it would lie like a dead hand across the souls of those who had hopped, would hop, must hop. What would it be like to grow up under the shadow of the knowledge that you were destined to leap from your own era?
‘You see?’ Quellen said triumphantly. ‘He isn’t on the list.’
‘Does that mean he didn’t hop?’
‘I’d say so.’
‘But how can you be sure that all the hoppers are really listed?’ Helaine demanded. ‘What if a lot of them slipped through?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘And the names,’ she went on. ‘If Norm gave a different name when he got to the past, he wouldn’t be on your list either. Right?’
Quellen looked glum. ‘There’s always the possibility that he adopted a pseudonym,’ he admitted.
‘You’re hedging, Joe. You can’t be sure he didn’t hop. Even with the list.’
‘So what do you want me to do, Helaine?’
She took a deep breath. ‘You could arrest Lanoy before he sends Norm back in time.’
‘I’ve got to find Lanoy,’ Quellen observed. ‘And then I’ve got to have some proof that he’s involved. So far there isn’t even any circumstantial evidence, just a lot of conclusion-jumping on your part.’
‘Then arrest Norm.’
‘What?’
‘Find him guilty of something and lock him up. Give him a year or two of corrective therapy. That’ll keep him out of circulation until the hopper crisis is over. Call it protective custody.’
‘Helaine, I can’t use the law as a private plaything for members of my family!’
‘He’s my husband, Joe. I want to keep him. If he goes back in time, I’ve lost him for ever.’ Helaine stood up. She swayed, and had to grip Quellen’s desk. How could she make him understand that she stood at the edge of an abyss? To hop was effectively the same as to die. She was fighting to keep her husband. And there sat her brother in the cloak of his righteousness, doing nothing while precious seconds ticked away.
‘I’ll do what I can,’ Quellen promised. ‘I’ll look into this Lanoy. If you’d like to send Norm here, I’ll talk to him and try to find out what’s on his mind. Yes. Perhaps that’s best.
Get him to come to see me.’
‘If he’s planning to hop,’ said Helaine, ‘he’s not likely to tell you about it. He won’t come within five miles of this building.’
‘Why don’t you tell him that I want to talk to him about a job opportunity? He’s been complaining that I haven’t been doing anything for him, yes? All right. He’ll come to me, thinking that I’ve got an opening for him. And I’ll pump him about hopping. Subtly. If he knows anything, I’ll get it out of him. We’ll smash the hopper ring and there’ll be no danger of his taking off. How does that sound, Helaine?’
‘Encouraging. I’ll talk to him. I’ll send him to you. If he hasn’t already taken off.’
She moved towards the door. Her brother smiled once again. Helaine winced. She was fearful that Norm had already vanished irretrievably, while she sat here talking. She had to get back to him in a hurry. Until this crisis was over, she knew she must keep close watch.
‘Remember me to Judith,’ Helaine said, and went out.
Eight
Quellen had not enjoyed the interview with his sister. Helaine always left him feeling flayed. She was so visibly unhappy that it pained him to see her at all. Now she looked five or six years older than he was. He remembered Helaine at thirteen or so, virginal and radiant, naive enough to think that life held something wonderful for her. Here she was a few years short of forty, marooned within four walls, clawing like a demon to hang on to her morose, embittered husband, because he was just about all that she had.
Still, she had given him some useful information. Lanoy had been on Quellen’s mind ever since the sallow-faced stranger had pressed the wadded minislip into his hand on the flyramp. The next day, Quellen had initiated a routine check, but it had turned up nothing tangible. A mere last name was useless to the computer. There were thousands of Lanoys in the world, and Quellen could scarcely investigate every one of them for possible criminal activities. A random scoop had yielded no information. Now, though, came Helaine with her intuitive conviction that Lanoy was behind the hopper business. And this woman she had mentioned, this Beth Wisnack – Quellen made a note to send a man around to talk to her again. No doubt Beth Wisnack had already been interrogated about her husband’s disappearance, but she would have to be approached from the direction of Lanoy information this time.
Quellen considered the possibility of posting a guard cm Norm Pomrath to prevent any untimely departure. He had been ordered in no ambiguous terms to leave Donald Mortensen alone and to do no meddling with any of the listed hoppers. Koll had received The Word from Giacomin, who had it from the lips of Kloofman himself: ‘Hands off Mortensen.’
They were afraid of changing the past. Quellen could feel the fear in them, running right up to the High Government. It was within his power to shake the underpinnings of the universe. Pick up Donald Mortensen for questioning and put a laser bolt through his skull, for example.
‘Sorry. Resisted arrest and had to be destroyed.’
Yes. And then Donald Mortensen would never take off for the past on 4 May. Which would upset the entire structure of the last few centuries. At the moment I shoot Mortensen, Quellen thought, everything will shift and it will turn out that we were conquered by an army of slimy centipedes from the Magellanic Clouds in AD 2257 – a conquest that would have been prevented by one of the descendants of Donald Mortensen, if I hadn’t been so thoughtless as to shoot him down.
Quellen had no intention of inviting the wrath of the High Government by interfering with the departure of Donald Mortensen. But Norm Pomrath was not on the hopper list. Was he covered by Kloofman’s directive, then? Was Quellen required to abstain from any action that could possibly lead to the time-departure of any person whatever?
That made no sense. Therefore Quellen agreed with himself that he could without compromising himself keep watch on his brother-in-law and take steps to prevent Norm from going hopper. That would make Helaine happy. It might also, Quellen thought, contribute to an ultimate solution to this entire worrisome assignment.
‘Get me Brogg,’ he said into his communicator mouthpiece.
Brogg turned out to be conducting an investigation outside the building. The other UnderSec, Leeward, entered Quellen’s office.
The CrimeSec said, ‘I’ve got a possible lead. My brother-in-law Norm Pomrath is allegedly on the verge of seeking out a contact who’ll help him become a hopper. I’m not sure there’s any truth in it, but I want it checked. Slap an Ear on Pomrath and have him monitored on a twenty-four-hour, round-the-clock basis. If he utters so much as a syllable about hopping, we’ll make our move.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Leeward stolidly.
‘There’s also this matter of a certain Lanoy. Did anything new turn up?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘I’ve learned that Pomrath’s supposed contact man is this Lanoy. So that’s our key syllable. Make sure that the monitors are triggered to flash if Pomrath mentions the name. I’m to be summoned immediately.’
Leeward went off to take care of things. There was the end to Norm Pomrath’s privacy, of course. From now until Quellen withdrew the Ear, Pomrath could not embrace his wife, relieve his bowels, scratch his armpit, or denounce the High Government without having some omniscient monitoring system making a record of it. Too bad. Quellen himself had been victimized by an Ear, and he knew the anguish of it, because that was how the treacherous Brogg had learned of the CrimeSec’s illegal home in Africa. Yet Quellen had no real regrets about what he was doing to Pomrath. It was for Helaine’s sake. She had asked to have Norm put in jail, hadn’t she? This
would be far less inconvenient to him. He’d never even know, most likely. And he might just lead Quellen to the source of the hopper enterprise. In any event it would be extremely difficult for Pomrath to take leave of the present century while he was being monitored.
Quellen dismissed the Pomrath problem from his mind, for the moment, and turned his attention to other matters of urgency.
The day’s general crime reports had landed on his desk. Obsessed as he was with hoppers, Quellen still had responsibilities in other sectors. He was required to examine the details of all crimes committed within his zone of Appalachia, and to make recommendations for dispensation. The new stack was about the same size as yesterday’s – crime was a statistical constant – and, Quellen knew, today’s atrocities would be neither less nor more imaginative than yesterday’s.
He leafed through the documents.
The roster of crimes no longer chilled Quellen, and that was the worst part of the job. A creeping loss of sensitivity was overtaking him year by year. When he had been young and new at this game, a fledgling Class Eleven just finding out what it was all about, the extent of man’s capacity to do injury to man had numbed him. Now it was all statistics and coded tapes, divorced from reality.
The crimes tended to be motiveless. The benign High Government had removed most of the archaic causes for crime, such as hunger, want, and physical frustration. Everyone received a pay-cheque, whether he worked or not, and there was enough food for all, nutritious if not particularly tasty. No one was driven into banditry to support a starving family. Most addictive drugs were easily available. Sex of all varieties could be had cheaply at government-regulated cubicles. These measures were signs of maturity, so it was said. By making most things legal, the High Government had removed the need to commit illegalities.
True. The motives for crime were largely extinct. Crime itself, though, remained. Quellen had had ample proof of that melancholy sociological fact. Theft, murder, rape – these were amusements now, not matters of need. The middle classes were shot through with criminality. Respectable Class Six burghers did the most hideous things. Plump matrons from Class Five households waylaid strangers in dark alleyways. Bright-eyed children took part in abominations. Even the officers of the law themselves, Quellen knew, circumvented authority by illegal acts, such as establishing second homes for themselves in reservations supposedly limited to Class Two personnel. Yet at least Quellen’s own crime did no direct injury to other human beings. Whereas –