Clifford Simak - I Am Crying All Inside - And Other Stories

He saw that E.J. was staring at him, with just the slightest crinkle that was not quite a smile at the corner of his mouth.

“You can’t let it eat you,” said E.J. “You’re not responsible. We take our chances. If it wasn’t worth our while …”

“Oh, shut up!” said Spencer.

“Sure,” said E.J., “you lose one of us every now and then. But it’s no worse than any other business.”

“Not one every now and then,” said Spencer. “There have been three of them in the last ten days.”

“Well, now,” said E.J. “I lose track of them. There was Garson just the other day. And Taylor—how long ago was that?”

“Four days ago,” said Spencer.

“Four days,” said E.J., astonished. “Is that all it was?”

Spencer snapped, “For you it was three months or more. And do you remember Price? For you that was a year ago, but just ten days for me.”

E.J. put up a dirty paw and scrubbed at the bristle on his chin.

“How time does fly!”

“Look,” said Spencer, miserably, “this whole set-up is bad enough. Please don’t make jokes about it.”

“Garside been giving you a hard time, maybe? Losing too many of the men?”

“Hell, no,” said Spencer, bitterly. “You can always get more men. It’s the machines that bother him. He keeps reminding me they cost a quarter million.”

E.J. made a rude sound with his lips.

“Get out of here!” yelled Spencer. “And see that you come home!”

E.J. grinned and left. He gave the toga a girlish flirt as he went out the door.

Spencer told himself E.J. was wrong. For whatever anyone might say, he, Hallock Spencer, was responsible. He ran the stinking show. He made up the schedules. He assigned the travelers and he sent them out. When there were mistakes or hitches, he was the one who answered. To himself, if no one else.

He got up and paced the floor, hands locked behind his back.

Three men in the last ten days. And what had happened to them?

Possibly there was something to what Garside said, as well—Christopher Anson Garside, chief co-ordinator and a nasty man to handle, with his clipped, gray mustache and his clipped, gray voice and his clipped, gray business thinking.

For it was not men alone who did not come back. It was likewise the training and experience you had invested in those men. They lasted, Spencer told himself, a short time at the best without managing to get themselves killed off somewhere in the past, or deciding to squat down and settle in some other era they liked better than the present.

And the machines were something that could not be dismissed. Every time a man failed to return it meant another carrier lost. And the carriers did cost a quarter million—which wasn’t something you could utterly forget.

Spencer went back to his desk and had another look at the schedule for the day. There was E.J. bound for Roman Britain on the Family Tree project; Nickerson going back to the early Italian Renaissance to check up once again on the missing treasure in the Vatican; Hennessy off on his search once more for the lost documents in fifteenth-century Spain; Williams going out, he hoped, finally to snatch the mislaid Picasso, and a half dozen more. Not a massive schedule. But enough to spell out a fairly busy day.

He checked the men not on the projects list. A couple of them were on vacation. One was in Rehabilitation. Indoctrination had the rest of them.

He sat there, then, for the thousandth time, wondering what it would be like, really, to travel into time.

He’d heard hints of it from some of the travelers, but no more than hints, for they did not talk about it. Perhaps they did among themselves, when there were no outsiders present. Perhaps not even then. As if it were something that no man could quite describe. As if it were an experience that no man should discuss.

A haunting sense of unreality, the feeling that one was out of place, a hint of not quite belonging, of somehow standing, tip-toe, on the far edge of eternity.

It wore off after a time, of course, but apparently one was never entirely free of it. For the past, in some mysterious working of a principle yet unknown, was a world of wild enchantment.

Well, he had had his chance and flunked it.

But some day, he told himself, he would go into time. Not as a regular traveler, but as a vacationist—if he could snatch the necessary time to get ready for the trip. The trip, itself, of course, was no consideration so far as time might be concerned. It was Indoctrination and the briefing that was time-consuming.

He picked up the schedule again for another look. All of those who were going back this day were good men. There was no need to worry about any one of them.

He laid the schedule to one side and buzzed Miss Crane.

Miss Crane was a letter-perfect secretary, though she wasn’t much to look at. She was a leathery old maid. She had her own way of doing things, and she could act very disapproving.

No choice of his, Spencer had inherited her fifteen years before. She had been with Past, Inc., before there was even a projects office. And, despite her lack of looks, her snippy attitude and her generally pessimistic view of life, she was indispensable.

She knew the projects job as well as he did. At times she let him know it. But she never forgot, never mislaid, never erred; she ran an efficient office, always got her work done and it always was on time.

Spence, dreaming at times of a lusher young replacement, knew that he was no more than dreaming. He couldn’t do his job without Miss Crane in the outer office.

“You sneaked in again,” she accused him as soon as she’d closed the door.

“I suppose there’s someone waiting.”

“There’s a Dr. Aldous Ravenholt,” she said. “He’s from Foundation for Humanity.”

Spencer flinched. There was no one worse to start a morning with than some pompous functionary from Humanity. They almost always figured that you owed them something. They thought the whole world owed them something.

“And there’s a Mr. Stewart Cabell. He’s an applicant sent up by Personnel. Mr. Spencer, don’t you think …”

“No, I don’t,” Spencer snapped at her. “I know Personnel is sore. But I’ve been taking everyone they’ve been shoveling up here and see what happens. Three men gone in the last ten days. From now on, I’m taking a close look at everyone myself.”

She sniffed. It was a very nasty sniff.

“That’s all?” asked Spencer, figuring that he couldn’t be that lucky—just two of them.

“Also there’s a Mr. Boone Hudson. He’s an elderly man who looks rather ill and he seems impatient. Perhaps you should see him first.”

Spence might have, but not after she said that.

“I’ll see Ravenholt,” he said. “Any idea what he wants?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, send him in,” said Spencer. “He’ll probably want to chisel a slice of Time off me.”

Chiselers, he thought. I didn’t know there were so many chiselers!

Aldous Ravenholt was a pompous man, well satisfied and smug. You could have buttered bread with the crease in his trousers. His handshake was professional and he had an automatic smile. He sat down in the chair that Spencer offered him with a self-assurance that was highly irritating.

“I came to talk with you,” he said precisely, “about the pending proposal to investigate religious origins.”

Spencer winced mentally. It was a tender subject.

“Dr. Ravenholt,” he said, “that is a matter I have given a great deal of attention. Not myself alone, but my entire department.”

“That is what I’ve heard,” Ravenholt said drily. “That is why I’m here. I understand you have tentatively decided not to go ahead with it.”