Conrad's Time Machine (11 page)

At the top of the escalator, where they couldn't be seen from the floor below, stood two uniformed guards, festooned with radios, side arms and submachine guns. These were not your usual rent-a-cops. They were deadly types.

"This way, sir." The angel put her hand on a wall mirror and a heavy door opened electrically.

"The screen is keyed to my palm print," she said. "This is as far as I am allowed to go. The next door is keyed to both of your prints."

"Hey, this is getting a little ridiculous," I said.

"Dr. Hasenpfeffer's orders."

"Look, Hasenpfeffer isn't God."

"Indeed?"

I didn't know how to answer that one, so I went in and Ian limped after me. Inside were more guards with that sleepy look and more guns with thirty-round clips. Ian opened the next door and we finally saw Hasenpfeffer, sitting behind a huge desk in a big, dirty, and profoundly cluttered office. There were old newspapers and computer printouts all over the place.

"I see that you gentlemen made it."

"Quite a setup you have here, Jim."

"Thank you. It's quite necessary, I assure you."

"Look, what's with the guards and bank vault doors?" I asked.

"My friends, you must understand that when you convert twelve thousand dollars into something in excess of twenty-six million within six months, people are bound to ask questions. For obvious reasons, it is preferable that they do not receive accurate answers."

"Twenty-six million!" I gasped.

"At present. Six times that amount by this time tomorrow, if all goes well." Hasenpfeffer said.

"How in the hell did you do it?" Ian rasped.

"The stock market. The race tracks. And real estate. I asked you both here to sign several warranty deeds. We have four closings scheduled this afternoon, but I have arranged them at forty-five minute intervals so as to interrupt your schedules as little as possible."

"Like, what schedules? We work and we sleep."

"Jim," Ian said, "With the staff you have here, what do you need with our help?"

"In most things I can act in your names with relatively little difficulty, but when a major corporation pays thirty-one million dollars for a parcel of oil producing land, they naturally expect a clear title."

"Hey, back up." I said. "
Our
signatures? You mean I own a piece of this?"

"One third, of course. This
is
a group venture."

The year before, Hasenpfeffer had taken my four-channel, two-gigahertz, delayed sweep Textronics storage scope and dropped it down the basement steps. It was at this moment that I finally forgave him.

"But we must hurry," he continued. "It is imperative that we finish by 4:15. Soybean futures will be hitting a three year low this afternoon, Great Stag will be paying thirty-seven to one this evening, and Mitsubishi will be announcing a three to one split at 11:30 local time. Come, now."

Hasenpfeffer led us quickly to the corridor.

"Is that all?" Ian was having trouble keeping up with Hasenpfeffer's rapid, jerky stride.

"Of course not. There's the heavyweight championship, National Robotics is going public in the morning, and Exxon will announce an inexpensive shale oil recovery process. It won't prove to be practical, but there will still be plenty of money to be made in trading its stocks for a few months." Hasenpfeffer broke into a trot. "We'll be receiving fifty-five million dollars in certified checks, which must be in the bank before it closes."

"Hey, calm down," I said. "The universe will still be here."

"If we upset today's schedule, we'll slow our growth by four months. So many highly profitable things are happening today! We are at a cusp, and there is a sea tide in these things. We must not miss it!"

The office was empty except for the angel.

"Where are they, Haskins?"

"Standard Oil called from Chicago. They'll be at least an hour late, Dr. Hasenpfeffer," the angel said.

"Reschedule this afternoon's appointments."

"I've been trying to, sir. I haven't been able to contact the Texaco group or Bradford Development. Mobile will get here on time, but not before. And they are the last of the four."

"Most annoying. Keep trying, Haskins."

When she left, Hasenpfeffer said, "Shit!" and flopped down on a couch. "Oh, yes. There is the matter of your new laboratory. I have taken the liberty of having a moving company clean out your present quarters. I think the new facility in Arizona will be very much to your liking."

"New facility!" Ian cried. "What on earth for? We've got pretty much what we need right where we're at."

"Primarily for security. Your coming here has announced your presence. We can not have our project known to the public."

"Security! Damn it, if you think that I'm going to let a gang of armed thugs into my lab . . ." I said.

"Tom, security forces are the lesser of the possible evils. Your staff can isolate you from any unpleasantries."

"Staff?" Ian said. "Jim, one of our primary goals with the time field was to keep it to ourselves. With a staff, there's bound to be a leak."

"They will be quite reliable people, selected from my own personnel here. Many of them are very competent, technically, and Haskins will set up the organization along the lines of the Manhattan Project."

"Haskins? The angel?" I said.

"Yes, she'll be going with us as General Manager. You'll find that she's quite efficient."

I pondered maybe twenty milliseconds.

"Ian," I announced, "if you're against it, you're outvoted." Arizona suddenly sounded good.

"Don't worry, gentlemen," Hasenpfeffer said. "Soon, I'm sure you will be successful and we will soon be able to travel in the fourth dimension."

"Fourth? Jim, we are working with at least nine."

"Yeah, and I figure there's got to be at least two more that we can't use, just for the sake of symmetry," I added.

"Having
eleven dimensions
is symmetrical?"

"Sure, when you think about it properly," I said. "Look, you can't go straight back in time. If you tried to, you'd run into yourself before you left. You got to go sideways through dimension five first, then work yourself back through four, six and seven to your destination, then back through five to our own continuum."

"Indeed? I didn't realize that. But you said eleven dimensions. What about the rest of them?"

"There are only nine that we are really sure about, Jim," Ian said. "The other two exist only in Tom's current half-baked theory. He'll change his mind about them tomorrow."

"The hell you say. Tomorrow's Wednesday."

"Right. Jim, we've decided that until further data is in, there are eleven dimensions on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and nine of them on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It shortens the arguments that way."

"On Sunday, God Himself doesn't know," I added.

"Hush! On Sunday, it's indeterminate."

"I am still confused, gentlemen. Whether it is nine or eleven, you have still only mentioned using the first seven."

"Oh, you wouldn't like those other two." Ian said. "You wouldn't like them at all."

"What?"

"Uh, he means that when we tried to use them, things go away and don't come back," I said. "Ever."

"I wish I understood all that," Hasenpfeffer said. "Perhaps if I had studied some more technical field."

"Well, don't let it trouble you. We don't know what we're doing, either."

"I suppose that your last statement should cause me some relief, but somehow it doesn't."

The angel popped in and announced that Standard Oil had arrived. The problem was that the V.P. brought along four corporate lawyers, each of whom tried to justify his existence by delaying the proceedings. Those bozos are paid by the hour and like to sandbag it. It was 3:45 before the deal closed.

Haskins popped in again. "Texaco is waiting in Office Nine, Mobile is in Eighteen, and Bradford is in Twelve."

"Lord!" Hasenpfeffer said as we ran to Office Nine. Texaco's lawyers delayed us an additional twenty-five minutes and Hasenpfeffer looked like he was getting ready to chew a hole in the conference table. We had five minutes left to close two deals and get the money to the bank.

"Just maybe!" Hasenpfeffer shouted as he rounded the corner to Office Eighteen. He ran crunch into a man who was running in the opposite direction. They both went sprawling on the floor.

"Excuse me! But I've got to run!" Hasenpfeffer jumped up. His nose was bleeding.

"Relax. Everything is all right." The stranger felt his own bandaged nose. "Shit! Twice!"

"He's you!" Ian's mouth was open.

"Obviously," the two of them said in unison.

"But you can't do that, Jim! We don't have it working for short time periods yet!"

"Of course not," they said in unison again. Then the bandaged Hasenpfeffer, who had been there before, stopped talking. "But you will."

Ian and I quickly signed the remaining two deeds and the bank's courier ran out with the checks. Then we drove the bleeding Hasenpfeffer to the hospital and got his broken nose fixed up. He promptly ducked out of the side door of the hospital lobby.

"I'll see you genlemen shortly," Hasenpfeffer said through his bandages.

"Hey! Hold on!" Ian yelled. "I want to see this gadget I'm going to invent!"

"I would advise agains tha. Seeing i migh hamper your creaive processes," he said from the doorway. And then he left.

And came in the front door six seconds later with his suit more crumpled and wearing a bigger bandage.

"Am I gone yet? Excellent! Come! Onwards! On to the airport, and a glorious future!"

"Is he drunk?"

"Hell, he's more likely stoned," I said, but it turned out to be just high spirits. We were hustled into a chauffeured stretched Cadillac that raced us to the airport, abandoning our old Chrysler in the process. I have no idea what became of it.

On the way to Detroit Metro, I pretty much convinced myself that having a couple of guys around who understood soldering irons and printed circuit layouts might speed things up a bit.

In front of the first terminal, a gorgeous airline stewardess flagged us down, hopped in the car, slithered in tight beside me, and directed us to a smaller terminal for private aircraft.

What none of us realized was that about the time we were boarding the plane, a fair-sized horde of police and government types was descending on our facility outside of Ann Arbor. All they found was a couple of very empty buildings. Even the overhead cranes were gone from the shop.

We took off in our own plane, a big wide-bodied jet no less, with a KMH corporate logo on the tail. It had things like showers and a sauna and six of the most magnificent stewardesses I'd ever seen this side of an Alfred Hitchcok movie. Like, any one of these women could have made it big in Hollywood.

Ian was embarrassed at first when one of them joined us in the sauna. I guess she was some sort of dancer, because after a bit, she went through a most amazing series of stretching exercises.

"It's almost like she's
displaying
for us, the way a bird does during a courtship ritual," I whispered to Ian.

"I think that that's exactly what she's doing," Ian whispered back. "I've never seen anything quite like it. Have you?"

"No, I haven't, my son. But I have looked on it, and found it to be good."

Hasenpfeffer just took it all in and acted smug.

I was still trying to get up my nerve to ask the dancer out to dinner some night when the plane landed at our own airport.

Ian and I had found a bunch of suits and things—all of which fit!—in the closets of our bedrooms on the plane, so we didn't feel grubby entering the terminal building.

"Gentlemen," this big fellow said as we stepped into the airport lobby. "It is certainly a great personal pleasure to meet you all personally at last. I am Bradford Jenkins, and I have the personal honor of being the mayor of your city of Morrow."

My mind had been blown totally away by the plane we flew in on, and Ian was standing there silent with his eyes unfocused, so it was kind of fun to see Hasenpfeffer get flustered.

"Mayor?"

"Yes, sir. In the first few years there were some minor problems with lost tourists and fishermen. Some representative of civil authority was needed to greet them and shoo them away. So, while it wasn't in your original instructions, I was elected."

First few years? Hold on now.

"Uh, how long did this take to build?" I asked.

"Six years, of course, sir. And we were able to stay exactly on schedule the entire time."

All I could think of to say was, "Sure. That's uh, very good. You did a nice job."

"Why, thank you, sir!" Jenkins' smile was too big to be anything but genuine. He acted like a suburban teenager being given his first car.

Ian came out of his daze long enough to say, "And how much did it cost?"

"Less than thirty billion, sir. I can get you the exact figure from accounting, but I can personally assure you that we are well within budget."

"Of course." Hasenpfeffer was looking at a long line of people in the lobby, all of whom were looking at us. "We would not have put you gentlemen in charge if we did not have absolute confidence in your abilities. Naturally, we will want a complete tour of the facilities, but for right now, we should not keep these people waiting."

You had to admit that Hasenpfeffer was pretty quick when it came to people situations.

"Yes sir. I've taken the liberty of arranging your itinerary for the next few days, but for now I would like the personal honor of introducing some of my colleagues."

That was my first—and last, damn it!—experience with a reception line. I was introduced to well over a hundred men and women, all of whom looked as though they had spent
hours
grooming themselves for the glorious occasion of meeting yours truly. All I could think of to do was to imitate Hasenpfeffer, who was smiling, shaking hands and saying things like "How are you?" and "It is so good to meet you at last!"

Most of them were in suits and dresses, but there were a dozen towards the middle in bright green military outfits. I'd spent four years as a second class airman—or worse—and it was kind of strange having a bird colonel clicking his heels and saying "Thank you, sir!"