Helaine felt the weight of Beth Wisnack’s misery like some kind of additional humidity in the room. Her heart went out to her. Life wasn’t very attractive here in Class Fourteen, but at least you had your family structure to cling to in times of stress. Beth didn’t even have that, now. Her husband had put thumb to nose and disappeared on a one-way journey to the past. “Goodbye, Beth, goodbye, kids, goodbye, lousy twenty-fifth century,” he might have said, as he vanished down the time tunnel. The coward couldn’t face responsibility, Helaine thought. And who was going to marry Beth Wisnack now?
“I feel so sorry for you,” Helaine murmured.
“Save it. There’ll be troubles for you, too. All the men will run away. You’ll see. Norm will go too. They talk big about obligations, but then they run. Bud swore he’d never go, either. But he was out of work two years, you know, and even with the cheque every week he couldn’t stand it any more. So he went.”
Helaine didn’t like the implication that her own husband was about to check out. It seemed ungracious of Beth to hurl such a wish at her, even in her own grief. After all, Helaine thought, I came on a simple neighbourly mission of consolation. Beth’s words hadn’t been kind.
Beth seemed to realize it.
“Sit down,” she said. “Rest. Talk to me. I tell you, Helaine, I hardly know what’s real any more, since the night Bud didn’t come back. I only wish you’re spared this kind of torture.”
“You mustn’t give up hope yet,” Helaine said gently.
Empty words, Helaine knew. Beth Wisnack knew it too.
Maybe I’ll talk to my brother Joe, she thought. See him again. Maybe there’s something he can do for us. He’s Class Seven, an important man.
God, I don’t want Norm to become a hopper!
Three
Quellen was glad to escape from Koll and Spanner. Once he was back in his own office, behind his own small but private desk, Quellen could feel his status again. He was something more than a flunky, no matter how Koll chose to push him around.
He rang for Brogg and Leeward, and the two UnderSecs appeared almost instantly.
“Good to see you again,” Stanley Brogg said sourly. He was a large man, sombre-looking, with a heavy face and thick, hairy-backed fingers. Quellen nodded to him and reached out to open the oxy vent, letting the stuff flow into the office and trying to capture the patronizing look Koll had flashed at him while doing the same thing fifteen minutes before. Brogg did not look awed. He was only Class Nine, but he had power over Quellen, and both of them knew it.
Leeward did not look awed either, for different reasons. Leeward simply was not sensitive to small gestures. He was a towering, cadaverous, undemonstrative man who went about his work in a routinely methodical way. Not a dolt, but destined never to get out of Class Nine, either.
Quellen surveyed his two assistants. He could not bear the silent scrutiny he was getting from Brogg. Brogg was the one who knew the secret of the African hideaway; a third of Quellen’s substantial salary was the price that kept Brogg quiet about Quellen’s second, secret home. Big Leeward did not know and did not care; he took his orders directly from Brogg, not from Quellen, and blackmail was not his speciality.
“I suppose you’ve been informed of our assignment to handle the recent prolet disappearances,” Quellen began. “The so-called time-hoppers have become the problem of the Secretariat of Crime, as we have anticipated for several years now.”
Brogg produced a thick stack of minislips. “As a matter of fact, I was going to get in touch with you about the situation just now. The High Government’s taken quite an interest Koll no doubt has told you that Kloofman himself is involved. I have the new statistics. In the first four months of this year sixty-eight thousand prolets have vanished.”
“But you’re on the case?”
“Of course,” Brogg said.
“Progress report?”
“Well,” Brogg said, pacing up and down the little room and wiping the sweat from his heavy jowls, “you know the theory, though it’s been occasionally controverted. That the hoppers are starting out from our proximate time-nexus. I’ve plotted it all. Tell him, Leeward.”
Leeward said, “A statistical distribution shows that the theory is correct. The present disappearances of prolets are linked directly to historical records of the appearance of the so-called hoppers in the late twentieth century and succeeding years.”
Brogg pointed to a blue-covered volume lying on Quellen’s desk. “History spool. I put it there for you. It confirms my findings. The theory’s sound.”
Quellen ran a finger along his jawline and wondered what it was like to carry around as much fat on one’s face as Brogg did. Brogg was perspiring heavily, and his expression was a sad one; he was virtually begging Quellen with his eyes to open the oxy vent wider. The moment of superiority pleased the harried CrimeSec, and he made no move towards the wall.
Crisply Quellen said, “All you’ve done is to confirm the obvious. We know the hoppers have been taking off from this approximate era. That’s been a fact of record since roughly 1979. The High Government directive orders us to isolate the distribution vector. I’ve developed an immediate course of action.”
“Which has been approved by Koll and Spanner, of course,” Brogg said insolently. His jowls quivered as his voice rumbled through them.
“It has,” Quellen said with as much force as he could muster. It angered him that Brogg could so easily deflate him. Koll, yes, Spanner, yes—but Brogg was supposed to be his assistant. Brogg knew too much about him, though. Quellen said, “I want you to track down the slyster who’s shipping these hoppers back. Do anything within the codes to halt his illegal activity. Bring him here. I want him caught before he sends anyone else into the past.”
“Yes, sir,” Brogg said with unaccustomed humility. “We’!! work on it. Which is to say, we’ll continue our already established line of exploration. We have tracers out in various prolet strata. We’re doing all we can to pull in a lead. We think it’s only a matter of time, now. A few days. A week. The High Government will be satisfied.”
“Let’s hope so,” Quellen snapped, and dismissed them.
He activated a view-window and peered at the street far below. It seemed to him that he could make out the distant figures of Brogg and Leeward as they appeared on the street, jostled their way to a belt, and disappeared among the multitudes that thronged the outdoor environment. Turning away, Quellen reached for the oxy vent with almost savage joy and flipped it to its widest. He leaned back. Hidden fingers in his chair massaged him. He looked at the book Brogg had left for him, and thumbed his eyeballs wearily.
Hoppers!
It was inevitable, he realized, that this would be dumped on him. All the odd things were, the scrawny conspiracies against law and order. Four years ago, it had been that syndicate of bootlegged artificial organs. Quellen shuddered. Defective pancreases peddled in pestilent alleyways, throbbing blood-filled hearts, endless coils of gleaming intestines, marketed by shady slysters who flitted noiselessly from zone to zone. And then it had been the fertility bank and the grubby business of the sperm withdrawals. And then the alleged creatures from the adjoining universe who had run through the streets of Appalachia clashing hideous red mandibles and clutching at children with scaly claws. Quellen had handled those things, not brilliantly, for brilliance was not his style, but competently, at least And now hoppers.
The assignment unsettled him. He had haggled for secondhand kidneys and he had quibbled over the price of ova, all in a day’s work, but he did not like this business of coping with illegal time-travel. The framework of the cosmos seemed to warp a little, once you admitted the possibility that such a thing could occur. It was bad enough that time kept flowing relentlessly forward; a man could understand that, though he did not necessarily have to like it. Backward, though? A reversal of all logic, a denial of all reason? Quellen was a reasonable man. Time paradoxes troubled him. How easy it would be, he knew, to step into the stat and leave Appalachia behind, return to the tranquil humidity of his African hideaway, shrug off all responsibility.