Robert Silverberg - The Time Hoppers

Pomrath got off the quickboat. The cowled girl remained aboard. How did they know who he was and where he was bound? He felt frightened. The world was full of spectres.

Pray for the repose of my soul, he thought. I’m so tired. OOF! TON!

He waited at the ramp. Around him the spires of ugly buildings of the previous century stabbed holes in the sky. He was out of the central slum-clearance zone now. Who knew what stinking warren he was heading towards? A new quickboat arrived. Pomrath boarded it unquestioningly. I am in your hands, he thought. LANOY I YONAL! Anyone. Anyone. Just get me out of here.

Out!

He journeyed northward. Was this still Appalachia? The sky was dark here. Programmed for rain, perhaps. A clean flush to purify the streets. What if Danton recommended a rain of sulphuric acid? The pavement hissing and smoking, citizens running to and fro as their flesh dissolved. The ultimate population control. Death from the skies. Serve you right for going outdoors. The quickboat halted. Pomrath got out and waited on the ramp. Rain was falling here, pocking against the sidewalk.

“I’m Pomrath,” he said to a kindly old lady.

“Lanoy’s waiting. Come on.”

He found himself in rural surroundings ten minutes later. There was a shack by the edge of a lake. Figures moved mysteriously in and out. Pomrath was thrust forward. A purring voice said, “Lanoy’s waiting for you out back.”

He was a small man with a big nose. He wore clothing that seemed to be two hundred years old.

“Pomrath?”

“I think so.”

“What are you, Class Twelve?”

“Fourteen,” Pomrath confessed. “Get me out of here, will you, please?”

“My pleasure,” said Lanoy.

Pomrath looked at the lake. It was a hideous sight, crawling with pollution. Great greasy swatches of coarse algae roiled in the oily water.

Lanoy said, “Isn’t it lovely? Six centuries of non-stop pollution interspersed with high-sounding official speeches. The renewal zone is still twenty years away by public count.

Would you like to take a swim? We don’t practise baptism here, but we can arrange a ceremony to fit anybody’s religious preferences.”

Pomrath shuddered. “I can’t swim. Just get me out of here.”

“The alga is cladaphora. Biologists sometimes come up here to admire it. It reaches lengths of ninety feet. We’ve also got anaerobic sludgeworms here, and fingernail clams. Quite primeval. I don’t know how they survive. You’d be shocked if you knew the oxygen content of that water.”

“Nothing shocks me,” said Pomrath. “Please. Please.”

“It’s full of coliform intestinal bacteria also,” Lanoy remarked. “I believe the current count is 10,000,000 per 100 millilitres. That’s about 10,000 times the safe level for human contact. Lovely? Come inside, Pomrath. You know it’s not easy, being a hopper.”

“It’s not easy being anything, these days.”

“Consider the challenges, though.” Lanoy led him within the shack. Pomrath was startled to see that the interior was out of keeping with the weatherbeaten exterior. Inside, everything was neat, spanking clean. A partition divided the building into two huge compartments. Lanoy dropped into a web and lay there, jiggling, like a spider. Pomrath remained standing. Lanoy said, “I can take you and dump you into the year 1990, if you’d like, or 2076, or most any other year. Don’t be fooled by what you read in the faxtapes. We’re actually more versatile than the public knows. We’re improving the process constantly.”

“Send me anywhere,” said Pomrath.

“The correct term is anywhen. But look here: I send you to 1990. Can you face it? You won’t even be able to speak the language properly. You’ll speak a weird jargon that they won’t understand, all your grammar blurred. Do you know the distinction between ‘who’ and ‘whom’? Between ‘shall’ and ‘will’? Can you handle tenses?”

Pomrath could feel the blood surging in his arteries. He did not understand why Lanoy was weaving this cocoon of words about him. He had had enough words.

Lanoy laughed. “Don’t let me frighten you. You don’t need to know those things. They were forgotten, even then. People were sloppy in their speech. Not as sloppy as we are today, because we’ve had another few hundred years to erode the language. But they had blotted out all the conjugations and declensions already. Still, it’ll take you a couple of weeks to learn how to communicate. You can get into a lot of trouble in a couple of weeks. Are you prepared to be sent to a lunatic asylum? Shock treatments, straitjacket, all the barbarities of our ancestors?”

“Just get me out of here.”

“The police will interrogate you. Don’t give them your right name, Pomrath. You aren’t listed in the hopper records, which means you never gave them your right name, and don’t you dare try to do it. Make up a name. You can admit to being a hopper if you land in 1979 or later. If you go back earlier, you’re entirely on your own. Frankly, I wouldn’t try it. I don’t think you’ve got the calibre for a free-lance trip like that. You’re an intelligent man, Pomrath, but you’re worn thin by care. Don’t take risks. Go as an orthodox hopper and throw yourself on the mercies of the past. You’ll make out.”

“What does it cost?”

“Two hundred units. A token fee, really. Barely covers the energy costs.”

“Is it safe?”

“As safe as taking a quickboat ride.” Lanoy grinned. “It’s disconcerting. No High Government to watch over you. Dozens of independent national states. Local rivalries. Conflicting taxing bodies. You’ll have to cope, but that’s all right. I think you’ll manage.”

“It can’t be worse than what’s here.”

“Are you married, Pomrath?”

“Yes. Two children. I love them deeply.”

“Want to take the whole family along?”

“Can it be done?”

“With uncertainties. We’ve got to send you separately: mass limits. You could get scattered over a range of as much as a dozen years. Your kids arriving first, then you and your wife a few years later, maybe.”

Pomrath trembled. “Suppose I go first. Will you keep a record of where I’m sent— when I’m sent—so that my family can come after me if that’s what my wife wants to do?”

“Of course. We look out for your welfare. I’ll get in touch with Mrs Pomrath. She’ll have the option of following you. Not many wives do it, of course, but she’ll have the option. Well, Pomrath? Still with us?”

“You know I am,” Pomrath said.

Quellen, monitoring the conversation, sat trancelike and chilled. He could not see Lanoy, he had no real idea where the conversation was taking place, but yet he realized that his brother-in-law was about to enrol in the legion of hoppers, and there was nothing that could be done about it. Unless Brogg and Leeward reached Lanoy’s headquarters in the nick of time, and came bursting in to make the arrest—

A voice said, “Sir, UnderSec Brogg is calling.”

Quellen pulled himself away from the monitor. A visionless phone was rolled up. Quellen put it to his ear. ;

“Where are you?” he demanded. “Have you traced Lanoy yet?”

“We’re working on it,” Brogg said. “It turned out Brand didn’t know the exact location. He just knew somebody who could take him to somebody who could bring him to Lanoy.”

“I see.”

“But we’ve got a geographical area pegged. We’re cordoning it and closing in by televector. It’s only a matter of time now before we put the intercept on Lanoy in person.”

“How much time?” asked Quellen icily.

“I’d say six hours,” Brogg replied. “Plus or minus ninety minutes. We’re certain to nail him today.”