"No," Poul said, "as a matter of fact it's my best suit."
"Heh, heh," the clerk said. "I share the joke, sir; quite witty. But what about your head? You haven't shaved your head in weeks."
"Nope," Anderson admitted. "Well, maybe I do need a nuzzler." Evidently everyone in this century had one; like a TV set in his own time, it was a necessity, in order for one to be part of the culture.
"How many in your family?" the clerk said. Bringing out a measuring tape, he measured the length of Poul's sleeve.
"Three," Poul answered, baffled.
"How old is the youngest?"
"Just born," Poul said.
The clerk's face lost all its color. "Get out of here," he said quietly. "Before I call for the polpol."
"Um, what's that? Pardon?" Poul said, cupping his ear and trying to hear, not certain he had understood.
"You're a criminal," the clerk mumbled. "You ought to be in Nachbaren Slager."
"Well, thanks anyhow," Poul said, and backed out of the store, onto the sidewalk; his last glimpse was of the clerk still staring at him.
"Are you a foreigner?" a voice asked, a woman's voice. At the curb she had halted her vehicle. It looked to Poul like a bed; in fact, he realized, it was a bed. The woman regarded him with astute calm, her eyes dark and intense. Although her glistening shaved head somewhat upset him, he could see that she was attractive.
"I'm from another culture," Poul said, finding himself unable to keep his eyes from her figure. Did all the women dress like this here in this society? Bare shoulders, he could understand. But not -
And the bed. The combination of the two was too much for him. What kind of business was she in, anyhow? And in public. What a society this was… morals had changed since his own time.
"I'm looking for the library," Poul said, not coming too close to the vehicle which was a bed with motor and wheels, a tiller for steering.
The woman said, "The library is one bight from here."
"Um," Poul said, "what's a 'bight'?"
"Obviously, you're wanging me," the woman said. All visible parts of her flushed a dark red. "It's not funny. Any more than your disgustingly hairy head is. Really, both your wanging and your head are not amusing, at least not to me." And yet she did not go on; she remained where she was, regarding him somberly. "Perhaps you need help," she decided. "Perhaps I should pity you. You know of course that the polpol could pick you up any time they want."
Poul said, "Could I, um, buy you a cup of coffee somewhere and we could talk? I'm really anxious to find the library."
"I'll go with you," the woman agreed. "Although I have no idea what 'coffee' is. If you touch me I'll nilp at once."
"Don't do that," Poul said, "it's unnecessary; all I want to do is look up some historical material." And then it occurred to him that he could make good use of any technical data he could get his hands on.
What one volume might he smuggle back to 1954 which would be of great value? He racked his brains. An almanac. A dictionary… a school text on science which surveyed all the fields for laymen; yes, that would do it. A seventh grade text or a high school text. He could rip the covers off, throw them away, put the pages inside his coat.
Poul said, "Where's a school? The closest school." He felt the urgency of it, now. He had no doubt that they were after him, close behind.
"What is a 'school'?" the woman asked.
"Where your children go," Poul said.
The woman said quietly, "You poor sick man."
V
For a time Tozzo and Fermeti and Gilly stood in silence. And then Tozzo said in a carefully controlled voice, "You know what's going to happen to him, of course. Polpol will pick him up and mono-express him to Nachbaren Slager. Because of his appearance. He may even be there already."
Fermeti sprinted at once for the nearest vidphone. "I'm going to contact the authorities at Nachbaren Slager. I'll talk to Potter; we can trust him, I think."
Presently Major Potter's heavy, dark features formed on the vidscreen. "Oh, hello, Fermeti. You want more convicts, do you?" He chuckled. "You use them up even faster than we do."
Behind Potter, Fermeti caught a glimpse of the open recreation area of the giant internment camp. Criminals, both political and nonpol, could be seen roaming about, stretching their legs, some of them playing dull, pointless games which, he knew, went on and on, sometimes for months, each time they were out of their work-cells.
"What we want," Fermeti said, "is to prevent an individual being brought to you at all." He described Poul Anderson. "If he's monoed there, call me at once. And don't harm him. You understand? We want him back safe."
"Sure," Potter said easily. "Just a minute; I'll have a scan put on our new admissions." He touched a button to his right and a 315 -R computer came on; Fermeti heard its low hum. Potter touched buttons and then said, "This'll pick him out if he's monoed here. Our admissions-circuit is prepared to reject him."
"No sign yet?" Fermeti asked tensely.
"Nope," Potter said, and purposefully yawned.
Fermeti broke the connection.
"Now what?" Tozzo said. "We could possibly trace him by means of a Ganymedean sniffer-sponge." They were a repellent life form, though; if one managed to find its quarry it fastened at once to its blood system leech-wise. "Or do it mechanically," he added. "With a detec beam. We have a print of Anderson's EEG pattern, don't we? But that would really bring in the polpol." The detec beam by law belonged only to the polpol; after all, it was the artifact which had, at last, tracked down Gutman himself.
Fermeti said bluntly, "I'm for broadcasting a planet-wide Type II alert. That'll activate the citizenry, the average informer. They'll know there's an automatic reward for any Type II found."
"But he could be manhandled that way," Gilly pointed out. "By a mob. Let's think this through."
After a pause Tozzo said, "How about trying it from a purely cerebral standpoint? If you had been transported from the mid twentieth century to our continuum, what would you want to do? Where would you go?"
Quietly, Fermeti said, "To the nearest spaceport, of course. To buy a ticket to Mars or the outplanets – routine in our age but utterly out of the question at mid twentieth century." They looked at one another.
"But Anderson doesn't know where the spaceport is," Gilly said. "It'll take him valuable time to orient himself. We can go there directly by express subsurface mono."
A moment later the three Bureau of Emigration men were on their way. "A fascinating situation," Gilly said, as they rode along, jiggling up and down, facing one another in the monorail first-class compartment. "We totally misjudged the mid twentieth century mind; it should be a lesson to us. Once we've regained possession of Anderson we should make further inquiries. For instance, the Poltergeist Effect. What was their interpretation of it? And table-tapping – did they recognize it for what it was? Or did they merely consign it to the realm of the so-called 'occult' and let it go at that?"
"Anderson may hold the clue to these questions and many others," Fermeti said. "But our central problem remains the same. We must induce him to complete the mass-restoration formula in precise mathematical terms, rather than vague, poetic allusions."