Mack Reynolds: After Utopia

That was all right. Almost anything was all right. Food and rest. That was obviously the ticket. All problems could be solved later.

The food came, brought by a girl in her late twenties who looked somewhat like Paulette Goddard back when that actress had been the reigning beauty of Hollywood. She also had some facial resemblance to the older of the two men.

The food consisted of a thick soup. She watched him, wide-eyed and speechless, as she fed him. She wore an outfit composed of a bikini-type top, a pair of peddle-pushers, and startling shoes of golden color.

Yes, Paulette Goddard, Tracy thought. She looks something like Paulette Goddard, and she has a better figure. Wherever I am, they’ve got some strange ideas about clothes.

When he awoke the second time, there was more food. After a while, they’d gotten him up into a chair and pushed him out onto a terrace. He recognized the scene. No other houses were in sight, but there was no doubt about it, he was within a mile of Cape Spartel, atop the mountain which rises above Tangier and looks out over Spain and the Atlantic. Over in that direction was Trafalgar. When Nelson had fought his last naval battle with the fleets of Bonaparte, residents had been able to hear the thunder of the guns.

There was little else he could indentify. The architecture of the house was extreme to the point of making Frank Lloyd Wright’s wildest conceptions a primitive adobe by comparison. The chair in which he sat was wheelless, but it carried him at the gentlest direction of Jo Edmonds’ hand.

The three of them—the girl’s name, it turned out, was Betty Stein—accompanied him to the terrace, treating him as though he were porcelain. Tracy Cogswell was still weak, but he was alert enough now to be impatient and curious.

He said, “My elbow.”

Academician Stein fluttered over him. “Don’t overdo, Tracy Cogswell, don’t overdo.”

Jo Edmonds grinned, and, turning on his charm, said, “We had your elbow and various other, ah, deficiencies taken care of before we woke you.”

Tracy was about to say “Where am I?” but he knew where he was. Something strange was going on but he knew where he was. He was within a few miles of Tangier proper and in the strangest house he’d ever seen, and certainly the most luxurious. For a moment that fact struck him. He was, on the face of it, in the hands of the opposition. Only a multimillionaire could afford this sort of an establishment, and none of the ultra wealthy were sympathetic to the movement.

He considered Jo Edmonds’ words and accepted them. But he realized the implications of accepting them. He’d had that arm worked on in London by a man who was an organization sympathizer and possibly the world’s outstanding practitioner in the field. He had saved the elbow, but let Tracy know it would never be strong again. Now it was strong.

By the third day, he was up and around and beginning to consider his position and how to escape from it. He kept his mind from some of the more far-out aspects of the thing. Explanations would come later. For now, he wanted to evaluate his situation.

He didn’t seem to be a prisoner, but that was beside the point. You didn’t have to have steel bars to be under duress. The three oddly garbed characters who had him here seemed to be of good will, but Tracy Cogswell was experienced enough in world political movements to know that the same man who sentenced you to the gas chamber or firing squad could be a gentle soul who loved his children and spent his spare time puttering happily in a rock garden.

There were a few moderately wealthy persons in the movement but certainly no one this wealthy. He was in the hands of the enemy, and, considering the amount of trouble they had gone to, there was something big in the wind.

He wondered about the possibilities of escape. No, not yet. For one thing, he’d never make it. He was still too weak, particularly if he had to fight his way out. For another thing, he had to find out what was happening. He had to ferret out information about what was going on. Perhaps… just perhaps… there was some explanation that would make sense to Dan Whiteley and the International Executive Committee. At least that was the straw he clung to.

He had made his own way out to the terrace again and had seated himself on a piece of furniture somewhat similar to a lawn chair. That was one of the things that got to him. Even the furniture in this ultra-automated house was so far out as to be unbelievable.

Jo Edmonds drifted easily onto the terrace and raised his eyebrows at Cogswell. He was wearing shorts today, and slippers that seemed somehow to cling to the bottom of his feet, although there wasn’t a strap on top. He was flipping, as though it was a coin, the flat green stone.

“How do you feel?” he said.

Cogswell said irritably, indicating the stone, “What in the hell’s that?”

Edmonds said, in his mild voice, “This? A piece of imperial jade. Do you enjoy tactile sensation?”

Cogswell scowled at him. “What in the devil are you talking about?”

Edmonds said, and there was enthusiasm in his usually lazy voice, “The Chinese have been familiar with the quality of jadeite—a sodium aluminum silicate, belonging to the pyroxenes, you know—for centuries. They’ve developed its appreciation into an advanced art form. I have a small collection and make a point of spending an hour or so every day over it. It takes considerable development to obtain the sensual gratification possible by stroking jade. Some people never develop it.”

Cogswell said disgustedly, “You mean to say you’ve got nothing better to do with your time than to pet a piece of green stone?”

Edmonds was somewhat amused. “There are less kindly things to which to devote yourself,” he said.

Walter Stein emerged from the house and looked worriedly at Cogswell. He said, “How are you feeling? You’re not overexerting yourself, are you?”

A Paul Lucas type, Tracy had already decided. Paul Lucas playing the part of an M.D.

Tracy said, “I’m all right, but, look, I’ve gotten to the point where if I don’t find out what’s going on, I’ll go completely around the corner. Let’s get to some explanations. I realize that somehow or other you rescued me from a crazy nightmare I got myself into. My only explanation is that I must have had a complete nervous breakdown. I didn’t think I was the type.”

Jo Edmonds chuckled, good-naturedly.

Cogswell turned on him. “What’s so damn funny?”

Academician Stein held up a hand. “I’m afraid, Mr. Cogswell, that Jo’s humor is poorly taken. You see, we didn’t rescue you from yourself. No, hardly. It was we who put you into your predicament. Please forgive us, but it was for a very good reason.”

Cogswell stared at him.

Stein said uncomfortably, almost sheepishly. “Do you know where you are Tracy Cogswell?”

“Yes, I know where I am. Tangier is a few miles over in that direction. And that’s Spain, over the water there.”

Walter Stein said, “That’s not exactly what I meant. Let’s cut corners, Mr. Cogswell. You are now in the year 2045 a.d., or at least you would be if we still used the. somewhat inefficient calendar of your era. We haven’t been utilizing it since the turn of the century. We now call this the year 45 New Calendar.”

Cogswell thought to himself that it didn’t really come as too much of a surprise. He knew that it was going to be something like that.

“Time travel,” he said aloud. It was a field of thought he had never investigated, but he was dimly aware of the conception. He had seen a movie or two, such as Berkley Square , in which Tyrone Power had played a time traveler who found himself in the world of Boswell and Dr. Johnson, and he had read a few short stories over the years. And hadn’t he read a short novel by H.G. Wells or somebody about a time machine that took the inventor far into the future?