“My door is always open to students, Mr. Simpson,” she said. “But I’m not sure why you’re here. My usual office hours are posted.”
“It’s something of an emergency, Professor,” Harry said as he set his rik-sack down in the chair and warmed his hands around the hot coffee. “It’s a long story, though, so you’ll have to bear with me.”
Her expression changed from bewilderment to astonishment to indignation as Harry spun his tale.
“So what do I do now?” he asked.
“I don’t know how to answer that question, Harry, but I know someone who might. Excuse me.” She went down the hall and picked up the phone. Harry could hear her talk briefly, then hang up.
“Have another cup of coffee,” Professor Epstein said. “She’ll be here in a couple of minutes. She lives right around the corner.”
Just as Harry drained his cup, the kitchen door opened, and in walked Elsie Hays, the extraterrestrial trade representative.
“We weren’t prepared for the 21st century as it was, never mind the Rik,” Elsie said. “Our political leaders know next to nothing about technology and science. Our institutions are not equipped to deal with the consequences of rapid technological change—worldwide problems like pollution, resource depletion, transportation, economic and social dislocation, and a host of things.”
Harry tried to listen politely, but he couldn’t help but fidget in his seat. Why was it that everyone over forty felt they had to give you a half-hour lecture before answering your questions?
“When the Rik arrived with all their advanced technology, everyone thought it was the millennium,” Elsie said. “They thought we would just start using all those wonderful machines, life would become effortless, and all our problems would be solved.”
“That’s what they thought for about a month,” Harry said.
“Actually it lasted about a year. But then we started to learn about other intelligent species on other planets. And we discovered that contact with the Rik is not a universally beneficial experience.”
“So I’ve come to understand,” Harry said.
“Some worlds have had their cultures completely disrupted, leaving them dependent on the Rik for everything.”
Harry thought of the guard dog substitutes at Fenway Park. Alien slave contract laborers.
“Other worlds have had their indigenous technology so disturbed that it destroyed the ecological balance.”
“Like Naverly Tol,” Harry said, remembering the wind-swept deserts and the shattered civilization of the master chefs.
“Like Naverly Tol,” Elsie said.
“Which is why you don’t think I should let Victoria’s father have the transit device,” Harry said.
“Exactly,” Elsie said. “Not today, at least. Some day we will be ready for the dislocations that the device will produce. But if released now, it would destroy the world economy overnight. And who knows what would happen to humanity after that? We must pick and choose carefully among the mysteries and treasures the Rik have brought us. If we choose wrong, there is no going back and doing it over again”
“I can imagine.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that one out for the past couple of hours,” Harry said.
“Then let me help,” Elsie said. “It’s not going to be easy to turn your back on Miss Dickinson and her father. They’re still going to want their toy. And if you won’t give it to them, they’re going to go back and start over again. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you can find a way to discourage them.”
Elsie Hays was on the phone to the Alien Technology Bureau when the pounding started on the front door.
They’d been burning up the wires for nearly an hour now. First Elsie had called the Bureau, then Harry had called Arleigh, then everyone had gotten together on one line—with Harry on the extension upstairs.
Then the doorbell rang, and before Professor Epstein could answer it, the windows began to rattle and the floor started to shake from the impatient hammering.
The pit of Harry’s stomach sank towards the floor as he realized too late what must have happened. Victoria’s father had traced him. It wouldn’t have taken much. They must have tracked his last transit hop to Professor Epstein’s Harvard office, and then found her home address from there. Once he thought about it, Harry was surprised they hadn’t arrived sooner.
“They’re here,” he said breathlessly.
Professor Epstein was at the window, looking out onto the front porch. “There’s two of them,” she said. “Big guys. Head for the back door.”
But now Elsie came running up the hallway from the kitchen, waving them back. “There’s another one in the backyard. You can’t go out there.”
Harry grabbed the phone from the table where Elsie had left it and punched Arleigh’s number. It took him an eternity to answer the phone, and when he did Harry talked fast.-“Arleigh, I don’t have much time, so listen up. They’re about to smash down the door. You know what to do, and this is the time to do it.”
By the time he was finished, the pounding on the door had become frighteningly violent. Any second now Harry expected to hear the crash of breaking glass.
He pushed past Professor Epstein and dashed for the kitchen, sliding across the floor to a stop. He grabbed his rik-sack and switched on his think-man.
“Don’t worry. I have a better way to get out of here. Would you like to come along?”
“And leave my house to these barbarians? Not on your life,” she said as she followed him into the room. She opened a cupboard beside the stove and pulled out a cast iron frying pan, waving it ominously in the air. “Come here, Elsie, I’ve got one of these for you, too.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you in class,” Harry said as he squeezed the virtual mouse tightly. The room faded into darkness…
…And re-formed itself, not as the broad plaza at Copley Square, but as a spacious, low-ceilinged office with a long window on one side looking out over the city.
Harry swallowed hard. This wasn’t where he’d planned to go.
He wasn’t alone. The off-duty football team stood in an uneasy circle around him, a long table surrounded with heavy wooden chairs behind them.
He turned around to see another man, older and wearing a suit that probably cost a semester’s tuition at Harvard, seated behind a desk the size of a limousine.
“Hello, darling. We’ve been waiting for you to drop in.”
Harry turned again to see Victoria Dickinson, sitting on a leather-covered couch, her legs drawn up beneath her. She stood slowly, then walked over to take Harry by the hand and lead him to the big desk.
“Daddy, I don’t think you’ve met Harry. Harry, this is my father—Albert Dickinson. He’s been trying to get hold of you all day.”
Albert Dickinson stood up, but didn’t bother to offer Harry his hand. He was an intense man—his eyes burned brightly, his face was knotted up with tension, and his hair was cut severely above the ears but left shaggy on top.
“Simpson, you’re a royal pain in the ass, do you know that?”
Harry breathed cautiously. It occurred to him that he might have it within himself to resist whatever pressure the elder Dickinson was going to bring to bear on him. He managed to do that with Victoria, why not her father?
“I don’t mean to be,” he said. Dickinson motioned to his men, who moved quickly up beside him. They grabbed him by the arms. A flood of adrenaline pumped through him. He prepared himself for violence—remembering a fistfight he’d been in at an ecology camp in Montana years ago. If this was going to be anything like that, it would be sharp and brief.