Conrad's Time Machine (12 page)

It wasn't until I got near the end of the line that I noticed that there was a certain sameness to all of them. All of the men were big and athletic looking. That's to say, big as ordinary people go. Not my size, of course. The women were all healthy and remarkably pretty.

Why pretty? I mean, these ladies weren't decorations or somebody's second wife. They were all officials of one sort or another. Hasenpfeffer had always loved the ladies, but he wasn't the sort of guy who would promote a woman on the basis of her sex appeal.

Anyhow, everybody seemed to know who
we
were, as if they'd seen photographs or something. It was only when we were being ushered into a waiting private subway car that I realized that I hadn't remembered one single name.

Five minutes later, Jenkins led the three of us up an escalator into a tastefully lighted park. In the distance, I could see the moon glinting off the ocean, I could hear the surf and smell the salt air. The park was flanked on three sides by palaces. "Mansions" would have been a derogatory term applied to these places.

"We've arranged these quarters for you," Jenkins said. "I hope that they will prove adequate. You are doubtless tired from your journey, so, with your permission, I will leave you now. Would it be convenient if I personally picked you up at nine tomorrow morning?"

"That would be excellent." Hasenpfeffer turned and started walking towards a huge free-form concrete and glass structure that he had apparently claimed for his own.

Ian and I just stood there.

I had spent the morning in my lab in the basement in Michigan, burning my fingers on a soldering iron. Now, it was quiet for the first time in twelve hours. Silence, with just the hiss of the surf and the smell of salt air in a manicured park in front of my palace in my city by the sea in Arizona . . . 

"HASENPFEFFER!" I yelled when he was two hundred yards away. "GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE!"

He trudged back to us. "Gentlemen, it has been a long day. It has been four hours longer for me than it has for you. My nose hurts. We apparently have a busy day ahead of us tomorrow. Please, let's get some sleep."

"Dammit, not 'til you do some explaining!"

"Yeah." Ian said. "The office I could believe, and
maybe
the airplane, Jim. But this . . . this
city
is flat shit impossible!"

"It should be obvious that your technical endeavors will be quite successful, and that some time in the future—our subjective futures, that is—we are going to fund a group to build this facility for us. Yes. It should be perfectly obvious."

"Look, what about the goddamn
ocean
in
Arizona
?" I said.

"I assume that we will decide to build this in some place other than in Arizona."

"Other place? . . . 
You mean you've never been here before either?
" I tried to point at him but my hand was shaking.

"I decided this morning that we needed something better in the way of a physical plant, since we could now afford it, and that if I was sending newspapers back to myself, why not letters and money so as to get us a facility when we needed it? Then, when it became obvious that you would solve the problem of transporting people, I realized that it would be more convenient to go back and do it personally, rather than bothering with clumsy correspondence."

"So you just went to the plane and assumed that the pilot would know where to go?" Ian was staring wide-eyed.

"True. Although I didn't expect such an elaborate aircraft."

"You didn't even know about the fucking airplane!" For a Christian, Ian sure swears a lot.

"I assumed that I would arrange something. It is really quite amusing. You see, the Ann Arbor facility is called Hasenpfeffer Investments. I have been buying and selling KMH Corporation stock for months without realizing that KMH must stand for Kolczyskrenski, McTavish and Hasenpfeffer."

"How come Tom's name comes first?"

"We will probably flip a coin about it. I am perfectly content with my name being last. Please, gentlemen, let us get some sleep." Hasenpfeffer headed back to the concrete and glass thing.

"Well, take your pick." I pointed to the other two palaces.

"It's already been decided, I think. I like the Taj Mahal, so you must want Camelot."

"Yeah. I guess so. See you in the morning."

"Wait. Tom, do you have a quarter?"

"Huh? Yeah." I said.

"Flip it. Let it fall on the ground. Heads your name comes first, tails mine."

"Hell, that's ridiculous. After a day like today you're worried about the company logo?"

"No. It's important."

"Christ." I dug out the quarter I had in my right pocket. I'd been carrying the two of them around for over a year, waiting for the right opportunity. I flipped it and of course it came up heads.

"So much for predestination and free will." Ian limped over to his palace.

Making a two-headed coin is fairly simple once you have access to a Browne and Sharp surface grinder and a soldering gun. You just grind the tails off two quarters and solder them neatly together. I ask you, would it really be sensible to repaint the airplane, change all the signs on all the buildings, and print up new letterheads and stock certificates? And just because Ian has this religious hangup?

Anyway, KMH sounds better than MKH, and one must never underestimate the importance of esthetics.

My palace wasn't so much an English castle as it was Germanic with heavy Slavic overtones. It had lots of gold leaf and curlicues, and I liked it. I found myself grinning as I walked towards the place. A huge ornamental drawbridge was lowering on massive iron chains, while a heavy portcullis was rising. So, if there is a God, and he wants to smile at you, wouldn't it be sacrilegious not to smile back?

God wasn't standing in the entrance way, but a goddess was. An amazing woman who was wearing a sideless, backless outfit that I maybe saw once on
Star Trek
, where the girls are all sexy. She walked over and came close, much closer than women normally come to me. I caught a slight whiff of burning autumn leaves.

She looked up at me with these huge violet eyes.

"Good evening, sir. I'm Barbara Prescott, your majordomo."

By this time, of course, I didn't have much mind left to be blown away, so I said, "Hi."

"Hello, sir." Barb had this intense, eager look.

"Uh, Barb, where are we?"

"At your home, sir."

"No. I mean this place."

"We're on the outskirts of Morrow, in San Sebastian, sir."

"Better. Now what and where is San Sebastian?"

"San Sebastian is an independent island nation in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles."

"Yeah. Where are the Lesser Antilles?" I wasn't doing much to impress her, but heck, I'd never make it with a woman this good looking anyway.

"North of Venezuela and east of Cuba, sir."

"Okay, got it. This is some sort of banana republic?"

"No sir. Bananas don't grow here and this is—or was—a kingdom. Actually, the governmental system is somewhat undefined, just now."

"Lord. A revolution going on?"

"No, sir."

"Well, we bought off the local government, or what?"

"I think that 'bought out' would be a better term, sir. The former 'king' was a Greek shipping magnate. He'd only visited San Sebastian once."

"Oh. We bought an entire country?"

"It really isn't much of a country, sir. It's only about twenty kilometers long and eleven wide, depending on the tides. We only paid six million dollars for it. San Sebastian had no economic value, but it had the political advantage of being a sovereign nation."

"Wow. I didn't know such things still existed."

"Oh, yes, sir. Actually, we had our choice of four of them."

"Yeah? What happened to the people?"

"There were only eighteen inhabitants, sir. They were paid a few thousand dollars each to move to another—non-sovereign—island that we bought for them."

"And that was six years ago?"

"Yes, sir. Then we built Morrow with KMH Corporation funds and re-inhabited it with our own people."

So when I was joining the Air Farce because I couldn't afford college tuition, I was also a king or something, with billions of dollars. Weird.

"Yeah. How many of you are there?" I asked.

"Our present population here is about sixty-five thousand, sir."

"Sixty-five . . . Where did they all come from?"

"I'm not allowed to tell you that, sir."

"Not allowed? I thought that I was one of the bosses around here?"

"You are, sir."

"Then answer my question."

"No, sir." Barb wasn't angry, but I could see that she wasn't going to budge. I remembered what Hasenpfeffer said about how we would probably have good reasons for doing what ever it was that we did, so I let it drop for the time being. Mostly, I was still too fuzzy headed to want to argue.

"Okay. It was just that I was under the impression that this was going to be built in Arizona."

"Yes, sir. Would you like to meet your staff now?"

"Staff?"

"Yes, sir."

I figured that if I met my soldering-iron crew at this point, they'd likely think that I was a mumbling idiot, and they'd be right.

"Uh, no. Barb, I'm pretty far into stimulus saturation."

"As you wish, sir. Perhaps you would like dinner."

She kept looking at me straight in the eyes, sort of eager and switching her gaze from one eye to another. It kind of scared me. I mean, look, I'd been in the Fat Boy's Club at Westover Field, and I'd put on fifty pounds since leaving the service. I was sort of pudgy. Make that fat. I was completely hairless and my skin was still pretty blotchy. And while I've never been quite sure what the typical American woman wanted, a long series of hard knocks had taught me that whatever it is, it ain't me. Girls just don't look at me like that. And certainly not the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

"Yeah. Sure. I could use a bite to eat." I tried grinning back at her and Barb looked ecstatic.

"Very good, sir. The banquet hall is this way."

"Banquet? No. No. Please, Barb, just, just something small and informal."

"As you wish, sir. Anything in particular? Polish? Syrian? Chinese?"

"Chinese, I guess."

"Yes sir. The Confucian Room is this way."

Barb led me through an entrance hall that would have put a Hyatt hotel to shame, and then down a long corridor.

It was obvious that the building had been built with me in mind. All of the doorways were at least eight feet high, and all of the furniture was properly oversized.

She led me into a candle lit room. It was decorated with a lot of jade, Ming dynasty, maybe, and what looked like Shang bronze work. It was all imitation, of course, because it all looked new. The window overlooked an enclosed garden that was more Japanese than Chinese, but the total effect was stunning.

Also stunning was the tiny Oriental girl who was kneeling at my feet undoing my shoelaces. After that she started taking off the rest of my clothes. For a while there I wasn't sure when she was going to stop undressing me, but I was soon led—barefoot, and without my tie or jacket—to a low table.

Barb was still standing at the door, like she was waiting for something.

"Would you, uh, care to join me?" I said.

And Barb was grinning ecstatically again.

Our ninety-pound waitress (maid?) (servant?) was named Ming Po. I let Barb order the meal, since I'd been getting along mostly on Big Macs and Gallo Paisano, which didn't seem to be quite appropriate. I missed the name of the wine Barb picked, but Mr. Gallo has some catching up to do.

Ming Po had this habit of kneeling behind a pierced screen, watching to see if we wanted anything. When she went to get the food, I said to Barb, "You know, she's as pretty as that ballerina on the plane."

"Yes, sir." She was dead cold again. "You must mean Gloria McCluskey."

"I didn't catch her name."

"She's an awful social climber."

That sort of killed conversation until halfway through the meal. I was all out of things to say, and I finally figured out that Barb didn't feel free to speak until spoken to.

"Look, you mentioned a staff. Could you tell me about it?" I said.

"Yes, sir. There are nine personal secretaries. . . ."

"Nine? You mean I have a whole steno pool?"

"No, sir. The steno pool comes under the administrative section of your laboratory. That's not under my jurisdiction. You have nine secretaries."

"Uh, why so many?"

"To maintain continuity, sir. We were told that you preferred to work rather long and irregular hours. With nine, we can offer you three shifts a day, with each woman working four days on and two days off. This allows for two secretaries on duty at all times."

"Like, I need a typist sitting outside my bedroom door?"

"If you wish, sir. Or we can change the schedule if you prefer."

"Uh, no. Let it ride." There
have
been times when I was hot on the track of something and worked thirty hours straight, and I guess that that's a bit much to ask somebody else to do. Anyway, I'd hate to make some girl lose her job.

"So, who else do I have?"

"In the household staff, there are forty-five each in food services and housekeeping."

"Twenty people on duty all the time? That means that I've got—what—ninety-nine people here?"

"There are a hundred on the inside staff, including myself, sir."

"Wow. And you're the only one who is not available at all hours?"

"But I am, sir. I don't sleep. It's the main reason that I was able to get this position."

I'd heard of people like that, but I'd never met one before. Another thought hit me halfway through the Peking duck.

"Say, you mean to tell me that an hour ago, there were a hundred people spruced up and lined up to shake my hand?"

"One hundred twenty-nine, sir. There are thirty more on the gardening staff. Would you like me to call them back?"

"Uh, no. No. I'll meet them all eventually. I'm just not used to this kind of attention. I can't understand why it was decided to blow so much money on these palaces."