“Surely,” said the tall man. “But for the time-being we’ll just tell ourselves we’re staying here until we free all the other slaves, and make sure there’s no interdimensional attack on Earth in case we want to go back. We’ll need somebody to buy things for us, and maybe to advise us from time to time. We’ll need somebody around who never was a slave. We’re apt to be pretty extreme.”
“To tell the truth,” said Dick, “I thought I’d go back with Maltby and arrange for buying the sort of stuff we need here, and—well—get married, and come back ...”
The tall man nodded.
That was the way it was. They returned the spidery device to its former storage-place in the villa. It would never again be used to rob Earth. They began to clean up the bloodstains. There were hundreds of things to be done. Dick, himself, had a list of literally thousands of items that would somehow, without creating curiosity, have to be bought for this Other World.
A cutter rowed them across to the Manhattan shore just at sundown. There was a doorway there which they would ultimately set up in a closet in the house Dick and Nancy would presently acquire for the benefit of the people in the Other World.
None of the brawny figures with them showed any sign of wanting to go back to New York with them. They were going upriver in the morning, to attack another villa. They grinned when Maltby went back to Earth. He had borrowed Sam Todd’s clothes; Sam was wearing a loincloth and a riot gun and enjoying it. Nancy went through. Kelly went through, with a parcel. Dick went through and they were in New York, in a narrow, smelly small alley only feet from a well-frequented street.
“Wedding present,” said Kelly. “I picked it up at the first slave pen we took. Thought you might like it.”
“What is it?” asked Nancy.
“A crux ansata,” said Dick. “On Earth it belongs to Maltby, but Kelly rates it as spoils of war. He’s right. It is. Maltby shan’t have it. I’ll turn it into a hand-mirror for you to look at yourself in.”
“Kelly,” said Nancy. “Don’t you want to stay for the wedding?”
“No,” said Kelly laconically. “I got a date upriver.”
Maltby went out of the alley into the street.
“See you next week,” said Dick.
“Okay,” said Kelly. “Good luck.”
He vanished in a pool of quicksilver. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. Dick took Nancy’s hand and went out of the alley. He held up three fingers and whistled at a passing vehicle.
“Taxi!” said Dick.
BARRIER
By Anthony Boucher
THE FIRST DIFFICULTY was with language.
That is only to be expected when you jump five hundred-years, but it is nonetheless perplexing to have your first casual query of: “What city is this?” answered by the sentence: “Stappers will get you. Or be you Slanduch?”
It was significant that the first word John Brent heard in the State was “Stappers.” But Brent could not know that then. It was only some hours later and fifty years earlier that he was to learn the details of the Stapper system. At the moment all that concerned him was food and plausibility.
His appearance was plausible enough. Following Derringer’s advice he had traveled naked—”the one costume common to all ages,” the scientist had boomed; “Which would astonish you more, lad: a naked man, or an Elizabethan courtier in full apparel?”—and commenced his life in the twenty-fifth century by burglary and the theft of a complete outfit of clothing. The iridescent woven plastics tailed in a half-clinging, half-flowing style looked precious to Brent, but seemed both comfortable and functional.
No man alive in 2473 would have bestowed a second glance on the feloniously clad Brent, but in his speech, he realized at once, lay danger. He pondered the alternatives presented by the stranger. Stappers would get him, unless he was Slanduch. Whatever Stappers were, things that “get you” sounded menacing. “Slanduch,” he replied.
The stranger nodded. “That bees O.K.,” he said, and Brent wondered what he had committed himself to. “So what city is this?” he repeated.
“Bees,” the stranger chided. “Stappers be more severe now since Edict of 2470. Before they doed pardon some irregularities, but now none even from Slanduch.”
“I be sorry,” said Brent humbly, making a mental note that irregular verbs were for some reason perilous. “But for the third time—”
He had thought the wall beside them was solid. He realized now that part of it, at least, was only a deceptive glasslike curtain that parted to let forth a tall and vigorous man, followed by two shorter aides. All three of these wore robes similar to the iridescent garments of Brent and his companion, but of pure white.
The leader halted and barked out, “George Starvel?”
Brent saw a quiet sort of terror begin to grow on his companion’s face. He nodded and held out his wrist.
The man in white glanced at what Brent decided must be an identification plaque. “Starvel,” he announced, “you speaked against Barrier.”
Starvel trembled. “Cosmos knows I doed not.”
“Five mans know that you doed.”
“Never. I only sayed—”
“You only! Enough!”
The rod appeared in the man’s hand only for an instant. Brent saw no flame or discharge, but Starvel was stretched out on the ground and the two aides were picking him up as callously as though he were a log.
The man turned toward Brent, who was taking no chances. He flexed his legs and sprang into the air. His fingertips grasped the rim of the balcony above them, and his feet shot out into the white-robed man’s face. His arm and shoulder muscles tensed to their utmost. The smooth plastic surface was hell to keep a grip on. Beneath, he could see his adversary struggling blindly to his feet and groping for the rod. At last, desperately, Brent swung himself up and over the edge.
There was no time to contemplate the beauties of the orderly terrace garden. There was only time to note that there was but one door, and to make for it. It was open and led to a long corridor. Brent turned to the nearest of the many identical doors. Apartments? So—he was taking a chance; whatever was behind that door, the odds were better than with an armed policeman you’d just kicked in the face. Brent had always favored the devil you don’t know—or he’d never have found himself in this strange world. He walked toward the door, and it opened.
He hurried into an empty room, glancing back to see the door shut by itself. The room had two other doors. Each of them opened equally obligingly. Bathroom and bedroom. No kitchen. (His stomach growled a comment.) No people. And no exit from the apartment but the door he had come through. ‘
He forced himself to sit down and think. Anything might happen before the Stapper caught up with him, for he had no doubt that was what the white-robed man must be.
What had he learned about the twenty-fifth century in this brief encounter?
You must wear an identification plaque. (Memo: How to get one?) You must not use irregular verbs (or nouns; the Stapper had said “mans”). You must not speak against Barrier, whoever or whatever that meant. You must beware white-robed men who lurk behind false walls. You must watch out for rods that kill (query: or merely stun?). Doors open by selenium cells (query: how do they lock?). You must—
The door opened. It was not the Stapper who stood there, but a tall and majestic woman of, at a guess, sixty. A noble figure—”Roman matron” were the words that flashed into Brent’s mind.
The presence of a total stranger in her apartment seemed nowise disconcerting. She opened her arms in a broad gesture of welcome. “John Brent!” she exclaimed in delighted recognition. “It beed so long!”