“Blodgett is busy revising the histories right now,” said Eve grimly. “I’ll bet the big ham hasn’t got buck teeth in the pictures you’ve seen, either.”
“Of course not,” said Mazurin. “Have you ever seen him in person?” he demanded.
Eve reddened. “No. But I’ve seen smuggled pictures of him before he got his dentures—”
“Then,” said Mazurin triumphantly, “how do you know the pictures you saw weren’t faked?”
They kept it up for another hour, ruffling tempers all around, until Charlie told them both to pipe down and get some sleep.
IV
Mazurin awoke feeling as if he had spent the night hanging by his thumbs. His hands were completely numb, and the rest of his body was so stiff and painful that it took him ten minutes to stand up.
The other two had made out a little better, but they were all cold, hungry and short-tempered. They drank water from the stream, ate some wild berries they found after an hour’s search, stuffed leaves into Charlie’s socks, and then started off again through the woods. Charlie, when Mazurin asked him where they were going, politely requested him to keep his geographically described questions to his precisely defined self.
An hour or so later, when the sun was higher and exercise had loosened their muscles, they were feeling a little better. They had struck a path of sorts under some kind of fragrant trees that were unfamiliar to Mazurin. The branches made a comfortable pattern against the deep-blue sky, and there were birds calling pleasantries back and forth. Mazurin moved up beside Eve and walked with her for a while in silence.
“I suppose I was kidding myself last night when I thought you might be able to help us,” she said finally. “We’ve got a fair chance as it is, but it’s awfully risky. It would be nice to know that the Marines were going to ride up at the last moment.”
Mazurin made sympathetic noises, feeling a little embarrassed.
“How do you feel about being cut off from your own time?” she asked suddenly. “You’re in a pretty tough spot, too.”
Mazurin realized that he hadn’t had time to wonder how he did feel about it. He imagined the technicians back at the Physics Bureau searching through the time-lines, finding him by some improbable chance, and yanking him back. He had a clear vision of the expression on the face of his square-jawed superior when that worthy read his report.
He shuddered.
“What’s the matter?”
“If I got back now,” said Mazurin, “they’d give me one year in the Black House and then turn my totem upside down and demote me to the Cleanliness Inspection Squad.”
“Why? Because your mission wasn’t successful?”
“Well, that isn’t exactly the way my chief would put it. He’d say I was a disgusting ghoul with the moral fiber of a cuckoo, who would pick his teeth with a splinter from his uncle’s coffin.”
“But you did all you could, didn’t you?”
Mazurin conscientiously reviewed his activities of the day before. “I guess I did, but that doesn’t matter. They go by results.”
“H’m,” said Eve. “So does Buck-tooth Blodgett. How did you happen to go to work for the—what is it?”
“Internal Security Commission,” said Mazurin.
“It would be. Fancy name for secret police, isn’t it? Well, how did you happen to join up?”
“Why,” said Mazurin in astonishment, “I was selected. When I was fifteen. Those decisions can’t be left to individuals.”
She stopped and stared at him, wide-eyed. “And you think that’s the best of all possible worlds? Even Blodgett hasn’t pulled anything quite as rank as that yet. But he will, I can see.”
She moved on, and Mazurin followed her, puzzled. “How else would you do it?” he inquired.
“Free choice,” she said curtly. “Government does its best to provide equal opportunities for everybody, and you choose what you want to be.”
“Ah,” said Mazurin shrewdly, having swiftly found the illogicality, “but who would want to go into the ISC?”
"Yes,” she agreed, “who?”
Mazurin mulled that over for a while.
“It wouldn’t work,” he said finally. “You could never get people to agree to it, in my time. It goes directly contrary to the teachings of our ancestors.”
“Exactly,” she said.
Half an hour later, Mazurin was still thinking about the implications of that remark.
They stopped when they got to another small stream that Charlie and Eve seemed to recognize. Charlie washed his face and hands, swore because he had no razor, and looked suspiciously at Mazurin’s pinkly beardless chin.
“Depilatory cream,” Mazurin told him. “Stuns the follicles for a month. Invented about 2050, I think.”
Charlie grunted, but looked half-convinced.
“Let me have those sandals,” he said. He put them on and climbed along to the top of the next ridge. He looked cautiously over, then waved to Eve and disappeared over the top.
“What now?” asked Mazurin.
“We wait here,” said Eve shortly. “There’s a town up ahead where one of our contacts lives. Charlie’s going in to see if it’s safe.”
He was back in half an hour, wearing shoes and carrying Mazurin’s sandals wrapped in a bundle. He looked worried. “There’s hell to pay,” he told Eve, then turned to Mazurin. “I guess you’re on the level, all right. Those cockeyed things of yours—the tweedledums and so forth—have been popping up all over this area for the last twenty-four hours. The Worstas are going crazy. They can’t figure it out, and it scares them. The place is swarming with troops and no-goods.”
“National Guardsmen,” Eve explained to Mazurin, seeing his puzzled look. “N. G.—no good. They’re a bunch of picked stinkers, probably about like your ICS. Anybody ever call your crowd the leks, by the way?”
Charlie made an impatient gesture, cutting off Mazurin’s reply. “Here’s what we’re up against,” he said. “Bauernfeind got through to H.Q. all right, and they’ll send a ’copter in time to get us to rendezvous. But the woods are full of patrols—we’re lucky we haven’t been picked up before now. The only place we’ll be safe is in Bauernfeind’s sub-cellar."
He stared at Mazurin’s outlandish costume. “You and I probably can get through all right, one at a time,” he said to Eve, “but he’s a problem. I was ready to ditch him if we had to, but Bauernfeind says we’ve got to take him along; the Central Council wants him. We couldn’t figure out any way to take those cuffs off, without bringing a machine shop out here. Best we could think of was this.”
He unfolded his bundle and produced a long-sleeved robe, a pair of scissors, needles and thread. “There are two or three, different sects in the hills around here,” he explained. “This isn’t quite the color any of ’em wear—Bauernfeind got it from a theatrical costumer’s—but he thinks it will pass. We’ll have to cut it open, so he can get his arms into the sleeves, and then sew him into it.” He picked up the scissors and spread the robe out over his knees.
“No, not that way,” said Eve, and took the scissors from him. “Underneath, where it won’t show.” She rapidly snipped the robe apart, starting in the middle of. the chest, upward to the end of each sleeve.
The result looked like nothing that would ever serve as a garment again, but she slipped it over Mazurin’s head, brought the dangling top part over his shoulders and, working swiftly, sewed it into shape again.