Once again in the warm clasp of the chair, Jed asked, with a shaking voice, “Could you give me the background on — this amazing currency?”
“Nothing amazing about it. Technic advances made all too easily obtainable through lab methods except living humans. There, due to growth problems and due to — certain amount of non-technic co-operation necessary, things could not be made easily. Full-sized ones were too unwieldy, so lab garcons worked on size till they got them down to what you see. Of course, they are never brought up to level of consciousness. They go from birth bottle to suspension chambers and are held there until adult and then refrigerated and boxed.”
Greenbush broke off suddenly and said, “Are you ill?”
“No. No, I guess not.”
“Well, when I first went to work for this bank, HUC was unit worth twenty thousand dollars. Then lab techs did some growth acceleration work — age acceleration, more accurate — and that brought price down and put us into rather severe inflationary period. Cup of java went up to dollar and it’s stayed there ever since. So World Union stepped in and made it against law to make any more refinements in HUC production. That froze it at five thousand. Things have been stable ever since.”
“But they’re living, human beings!”
“Now you sound like silly Anti-HUC League. My boy, they wouldn’t exist were it not for our need for currency base. They never achieve consciousness. We, in banking business, think of them just as about only manufactured item left in world which cannot be produced in afternoon. Time lag is what gives them their value. Besides, they are no longer in production, of course. Being economist, you must realize overproduction of HUC’s would put us back into inflationary period.”
At that moment the girl announced that the temporal techs had arrived with their equipment. Jed was led from the office out into the bank proper. The last few customers were let out as the closing hour arrived.
The men from Columbia seemed to have no interest in Jed as a human being. He said hesitantly to one, smiling shyly, “I would think you people would want to keep me here so your historians could do research on me.”
The tech gave him a look of undisguised contempt. He said, “We know all to be known about your era. Very dull period in world history.”
Jed retired, abashed, and watched them set up the massive silvery coil on the inside of the bank door.
The youngest tech said quietly, “This is third time we’ve had to do this. You people seem to wander into sort of rhythm pattern. Very careless. We had one failure from your era. Garcon named Crater. He wandered too far from point of entry. But you ought to be all opt.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Just walk through coil and out door. Adjustment is complicated. If we don’t use care you might go back into your own era embedded up to your eyes in pavement. Or again, you might come out forty feet in air. Don’t get unbalanced.”
“I won’t,” Jed said fervently.
Greenbush came up and said, “Could you give me that coin you have?”
The young technician turned wearily and said, “Older, he has to leave with everything he brought and he can’t take anything other with him. We’ve got to fit him into same vibratory rhythm. You should know that.”
“It is such nice coin,” Greenbush sighed.
“If I tried to take something with me?” Jed asked.
“It just wouldn’t go, gesell. You would go and it would stay.”
Jed thought of another question. He turned to Greenbush. “Before I go, tell me. Where are the HUC’s kept?”
“In refrigerated underground vault at place called Fort Knox.”
“Come on, come on, you. Just walk straight ahead through coil. Don’t hurry. Push door open and go out onto street.”
Jed stood, faintly dizzy, on the afternoon sidewalk of Wall Street in Manhattan. A woman bounced off him, snarled, “Fa godsake, ahya goin’ uh comin!”. Late papers were tossed off a truck onto the corner. Jed tiptoed over, looked cautiously and saw that the date was Tuesday, June 14th, 1949.
The further the subway took him uptown, the more the keen reality of the three quarters of an hour in the bank faded. By the time he reached his own office, sat down behind his familiar desk, it had become like a fevered dream.
Overwork. That was it. Brain fever. Probably wandered around in a daze. Better take it easy. Might fade off into a world of the imagination and never come back. Skip the book for a month. Start dating Helen again. Relax.
He grinned slowly, content with his decision. “HUC’s, indeed!” he said.
Date Helen tonight. Better call her now. Suddenly he remembered that he hadn’t cashed a check, and he couldn’t take Helen far on a dollar.
He found the check in his pocket, glanced at it, and then found himself sitting rigid in the chair. Without taking his eyes from the check, he pulled open the desk drawer, took out the manuscript entitled, “Probable Bases of Future Monetary Systems,” tore it in half and dropped it in the wastebasket.
His breath whistled in pinched nostrils. He heard, in his memory, a voice saying, “You would go and it would stay.”
The check was properly made out for twenty dollars. But he had used the ink supplied by the bank. The check looked as though it had been written with a dull knife. The brown desk top showed up through the fragile lace of his signature.