"Well," I said, "seems to me you came through okay. Here you are, a normal man, making good money, no real troubles. And the life of a female is not an easy one."
He glared at me. "A lot you know about it!"
"So?"
"Ever hear the expression ‘a ruined woman’?"
"Mmm, years ago. Doesn’t mean much today."
"I was as ruined as a woman can be; that bastard really ruined me—I was no longer a woman . . . and I didn’t know how to be a man."
"Takes getting used to, I suppose."
"You have no idea. I don’t mean learning how to dress, or not walking into the wrong rest room; I learned those in the hospital. But how could I live? What job could I get? Hell, I couldn’t even drive a car. I didn’t know a trade; I couldn’t do manual labor—too much scar tissue, too tender.
"I hated him for having ruined me for the W.E.N.C.H.E.S., too, but I didn’t know how much until tried to join the Space Corps instead. One look at my belly and I was marked unfit for military service. The medical officer spent time on me just from curiosity; he had read about my case.
"So I changed my name and came to New York. I got by as a fry cook, then rented a typewriter and set myself up as a public stenographer—what a laugh! In four months I typed four letters and one manuscript. The manuscript was for Real Life Tales and a waste of paper, but the goof who wrote it, sold it. Which gave me an idea; I bought a stack of confession magazines and studied them." He looked cynical. "Now you know how I get the authentic woman’s angle on an unmarried- mother story ... through the only version I haven’t sold—the true one. Do I win the bottle?"
I pushed it toward him. I was upset myself, but there was work to do. I said, "Son, you still want to lay hands on that so-and-so?"
His eyes lighted up—a feral gleam.
"Hold it!" I said. "You wouldn’t kill him?"
He chuckled nastily. "Try me."
"Take it easy. I know more about it than you think I do. I can help you. I know where he is."
He reached across the bar. "Where is he?"
I said softly, "Let go my shirt, sonny—or you’ll land in the alley and we’ll tell the cops you fainted." I showed him the sap.
He let go. "Sorry. But where is he?" He looked at me. "And how do you know so much?"
"All in good time. There are records—hospital records, orphanage records, medical records. The matron of your orphanage was Mrs. Fetherage—right? She was followed by Mrs. Gruenstein— right? Your name, as a girl, was ‘Jane’—right? And you didn’t tell me any of this—right?"
I had him baffled and a bit scared. "What’s this? You trying to make trouble for me?"
"No indeed. I’ve your welfare at heart. I can put this character in your lap. You do to him as you see fit—and I guarantee that you’ll get away with it. But I don’t think you’ll kill him. You’d be nuts to—and you aren’t nuts. Not quite."
He brushed it aside. "Cut the noise. Where is he?"
I poured him a short one; he was drunk but anger was offsetting it. "Not so fast. I do something for you—you do something for me."
"Uh ... what?"
"You don’t like your work. What would you say to high pay, steady work, unlimited expense account, your own boss on the job, and lots of variety and adventure?"
He stared. "I’d say, ‘Get those goddam reindeer off my roof!’ Shove it, Pop—there’s no such job."
"Okay, put it this way: I hand him to you, you settle with him, then try my job. If it’s not all I claim—well, I can’t hold you."
He was wavering, the last drink did it. "When d’yuh d’liver ’im?" he said thickly.
"If it’s a deal—right now!"
He shoved out his hand. "It’s a deal!"
I nodded to my assistant to watch both ends, noted the time—2300—started to duck through the gate under the bar—when the juke box blared out: "I’m My Own Granpaw!" The service man had orders to load it with old Americana and classics because I couldn’t stomach the "music" of 1970, but I hadn’t known that tape was in it. I called out, "Shut that off! Give the customer his money back." I added, "Storeroom, back in a moment," and headed there with my Unmarried Mother following.
It was down the passage across from the johns, a steel door to which no one but my day manager and myself had a key; inside was a door to an inner room to which only I had a key. We ent there.
He looked blearily around at windowless walls. "Where is ’e?"
"Right away." I opened a case, the only thing in the room; it was a U.S.F.F. Co-ordinates Transformer Field Kit, series 1992, Mod. II—a beauty, no moving parts, weight twenty-three kilos fully charged, and shaped to pass as a suitcase. I had adjusted it precisely earlier that day; all I had to do was to shake the metal net which limits the transformation field.
Which I did. "Wha’s that?" he demanded.
"Time machine," I said and tossed the net over us. "Hey!" he yelled and stepped back. There is a technique to this; the net has to be thrown so that the subject will instinctively step back onto the metal mesh, then you close the net with both of you inside completely—else you might leave shoe soles behind or a piece of foot, or scoop up a slice of floor. But that’s all the skill it takes. Some agents con a subject into the net; I tell the truth and use that instant of utter astonishment to flip the switch. Which I did.
1030-V-3 April 1963-Cleveland, Ohio-Apex Bldg.: "Hey!" he repeated. "Take this damn thing off!"
"Sorry," I apologized and did so, stuffed the net into the case, closed it. "You said you wanted to find him."
"But— You said that was a time machine!"
I pointed out a window. "Does that look like November? Or New York?" While he was gawking at new buds and spring weather, I reopened the case, took out a packet of hundred dollar bills, checked that the numbers and signatures were compatible with 1963. The Temporal Bureau doesn’t care how much you spend (it costs nothing) but they don’t like unnecessary anachronisms. Too many mistakes and a general court martial will exile you for a year in a nasty period, say 1974 with its strict rationing and forced labor. I never make such mistakes, the money was okay. He turned around and said, "What happened?"
"He’s here. Go outside and take him. Here’s expense money." I shoved it at him and added, "Settle him, then I’ll pick you up."
Hundred dollar bills have a hypnotic effect on a person not used to them. He was thumbing them unbelievingly as I eased him into the hall, locked him out. The next jump was easy, a small shift in era.
1700-V-10 March 1964-Cleveland-Apex Bldg.: There was a notice under the door saying that my lease expired next week; otherwise the room looked as it had a moment before. Outside, trees were bare and snow threatened; I hurried, stopping only for contemporary money and a coat, hat and topcoat I had left there when I leased the room. I hired a car, went to the hospital. It took twenty minutes to bore the nursery attendant to the point where I could swipe the baby without being noticed; we went back to the Apex Building. This dial setting was more involved as the building did not yet exist in 1945. But I had precalculated it.
0100-V-20 Sept 1945-Cleveland-Skyview Moteclass="underline" Field kit, baby, and I arrived in a motel outside town. Earlier I had registered as "Gregory Johnson, Warren, Ohio," so we arrived in a room with curtains closed, windows locked, and doors bolted, and the floor cleared to allow for waver as the machine hunts. You can get a nasty bruise from a chair where it shouldn’t be—not the chair of course, but backlash from the field.
No trouble. Jane was sleeping soundly; I carried her out, put her in a grocery box on the seat of a ar I had provided earlier, drove to the orphanage, put her on the steps, drove two blocks to a "service station" (the petroleum products sort) and phoned the orphanage, drove back in time to see them taking the box inside, kept going and abandoned the car near the motel—walked to it and jumped forward to the Apex Building in 1963.