Currently, thanks to the leadership of Dopelle, Earth had, in some ways, a slight advantage—although it was still a war of attrition.
Dopelle! That name again. Keith put down the H. G. Wells book, and started to take The Story of Dopelle out of his pocket when he realized that he had long since finished eating and was attracting curious glances just sitting there.
He paid for his meal and went out. The steps of the library across the street looked inviting. He could sit there and read some more. But there was his job to be considered.
Did he work for the Borden Publishing Co.—here and now—or didn’t he? If he did, having missed a Monday morning might not be unforgivable. Missing a whole day might be. And it was well after one o’clock already.
He walked east and then south, to the office building in which—on the tenth floor—Borden Publications was located.
He took the elevator up.
CHAPTER VII
Mekky
THAT BEAUTIFUL OUTER door was very familiar, one of those modern ones that look like nothing more than a sheet of glass with a futuristic chrome handle on it; you couldn’t even see the hinges. The lettering Borden Publications, Inc. was just below eye height, small and chaste, in chrome letters suspended right inside the thick glass.
Keith took the handle very carefully so he wouldn’t fingerprint that beautiful sheet of nothingness, opened the door and went in.
There were the same mahogany railing, the same pictures—hunting prints—on the walls and the same plump little Marion Blake with the same pouting red lips and upswept brunette hairdo, sitting at the same stenographer-receptionist desk back of the railing.
It gave him a funny little thrill to see her there—not because Marion herself could give him any thrill but because she was familiar. She was someone he knew and she was the first person he’d seen since—gosh, was it only since seven o’clock yesterday evening? It seemed like ages!
He’d seen familiar things and familiar places but not a familiar face. True, the address in the copy of Surprising Stories (at 2 cr.) had told him that Borden Publications was still here, but it wouldn’t really have surprised him to find a purple Bem at Marion’s reception desk.
For just a second, the familiar sight of her there, and the office being so completely usual, so completely as he remembered it, made him doubt his memory of the past eighteen hours.
It couldn’t be, it simple couldn’t—
Then Marion had turned and was looking up at him and there wasn’t a trace of recognition in her face.
«Yes?» she asked, a bit impatiently.
Keith cleared his throat. Was she kidding? Didn’t she know him or was she just acting funny?
He cleared his throat again. «Is Mr. Keith Winton in? I’d like to speak to him, please.» That could pass as a gag to counter hers; if she grinned now, he could grin back.
She said, «Mr. Winton has left for the day, sir.»
«Uh—Mr. Borden. He in?»
«No, sir.»
«Is Be—Miss Hadley in?»
«No, sir. Nearly everybody left at one. That’s the regular closing this month.»
«The regu—oh,» he stopped himself in time before he could pull a boner by being incredulous about something he undoubtedly should know. «I forgot,» he finished lamely. Why, he wondered, would one o’clock in the afternoon be the regular closing (she must mean the regular closing time) and why this month in particular?
«I’ll be in tomorrow then,» he said. «Uh—what would be the best time to catch Mr. Winton?»
«About seven.»
«Se—» He caught himself starting to repeat incredulously again. Did she mean seven in the morning or in the evening? No, it couldn’t be seven in the evening. It’d be almost time for the mist-out then.
Suddenly he guessed the answer and wondered why he hadn’t thought of it sooner. The mist-out, of course—in a New York in which the streets were sudden death after dark, a New York without night life at all, the hours of work would have to be different in order to give employees any personal lives of their own at all.
It would change things completely when you had to be home before dark—probably well before, in order to assure safety. The working day would be from six or seven in the morning—an hour or so after early sunrise dissolved the mist—until one o’clock in the afternoon. And that would give people afternoons which would be the equivalent of evenings.
Of course—it would have to be that way. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it himself. Then Broadway wasn’t dead, and there would still be shows and night clubs and dance halls and taverns—but their time to howl would be afternoons.
And everybody would be safely home in bed by, say, seven or eight and sleep until about four o’clock so they’d be up and dressed by dawn—and, of course, that’s what she meant by one o’clock being the closing time this month.
It would have to vary somewhat according to the seasons, as the days shortened and lengthened. And probably regulated by local law, because Marion had expected him to know it, had looked surprised that he hadn’t.
Marion, he noticed, was putting things into the drawer of her desk, getting ready to leave. She looked up again as though wondering why he was still there.
He said, «Isn’t your name Blake—uh—Marion Blake?»
Her eyes widened a little. «Why, yes, but—»
«I thought I was remembering you.» Keith was thinking fast, things he’d heard Marion say, girlfriends he’d heard her mention, where she lived, what she did.
He said, «A girl named Estelle—I forget her last name—introduced us at a dance in—wasn’t it Queens?» He laughed a little. «Isn’t it funny I can’t remember Estelle’s last name but I remember both your names?»
She dimpled at him for that compliment. «Well, I live in Queens, and I guess you mean Estelle Rainbow, but I don’t remem—»
«I wouldn’t have expected you to remember my name,» Keith assured her. «It’s—Karl Winston. And we danced just once that night. I remember, though, that you told me you worked for a magazine publisher but I didn’t know that it was here. And you told me you wrote—poetry, wasn’t it?»
«I wouldn’t really call it poetry, Mr. Winston. Just verse, really.»
«Call me Karl,» Keith said, «since we’re old friends, even if you don’t remember it. You’re leaving now?»
«Why, yes. I just had two letters to finish after one o’clock and Mr. Borden said if I’d finish them I could come in half an hour late tomorrow, and—»
«Good,» he said. «I mean, I’m glad you were late. Will you have a drink with me?»
She hesitated. «Well—just a quick one, maybe. I’ve got to be home by two-thirty. I’ve got a date then.»
«Fine,» Keith said. And he meant it. Over one drink he could find out a few things he wanted to know and he didn’t want to be stuck with Marion for the whole afternoon.
They took the elevator down and he let Marion choose the place, a little bar around the corner on Madison.
Over a pair of cocktails he said, «I think I mentioned to you that night that I’m a writer—doing feature stuff up to now. I’ve decided, though, to take a flyer at some pulp fiction. I’ve done a little of it, not much. But that’s why I was up at your office. I wanted to find out just what kind of stuff they want right now, lengths and so on.»