The Time Traveler's Almanac (99 page)

Harry opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it and scuttled out the door, which opened before him. He stood in the huge control chamber, breathing hard. Iridel walked up to him.

“Well?”

“He says for you to get me out of here.”

“All right,” said Iridel. “This way.” He led the way to a curtained doorway much like the one they had used to come in. Beside it were two dials, one marked in days, and the other in hours and minutes.

“Monday night good enough for you?” asked Iridel.

“Swell,” said Harry.

Iridel set the dials for 9:30 p.m. on Monday. “So long, actor. Maybe I’ll see you again some time.”

“So long,” said Harry. He turned and stepped through the door.

He was back in the garage, and there was no curtained doorway behind him. He turned to ask Iridel if this would enable him to go to bed again and do Tuesday right from the start, but Iridel was gone.

The garage was a blaze of light. Harry glanced up at the clock – it said fifteen seconds after nine-thirty. That was funny; everyone should be home by now except Slim Jim, the night man, who hung out until four in the morning serving up gas at the pumps outside. A quick glance around sufficed. This might be Monday night, but it was a Monday night he hadn’t known.

The place was filled with the little men again!

Harry sat on the fender of a convertible and groaned. “Now what have I got myself into?” he asked himself.

He could see that he was at a different place-in-time from the one in which he had met Iridel. There, they had been working to build, working with a precision and nicety that was a pleasure to watch. But here —

The little men were different, in the first place. They were tired-looking, sick, slow. There were scores of overseers about, and Harry winced with one of the little fellows when one of the men in white lashed out with a long whip. As the Wednesday crews worked, so the Monday gangs slaved. And the work they were doing was different. For here they were breaking down, breaking up, carting away. Before his eyes, Harry saw sections of paving lifted out, pulverized, toted away by the sackload by lines of trudging, browbeaten little men. He saw great beams upended to support the roof, while bricks were pried out of the walls. He heard the gang working on the roof, saw patches of roofing torn away. He saw walls and roof both melt away under that driving, driven onslaught, and before he knew what was happening he was standing alone on a section of the dead white plain he had noticed before on the corner lot.

It was too much for his overburdened mind; he ran out into the night, breaking through lines of laden slaves, through neat and growing piles of rubble, screaming for Iridel. He ran for a long time, and finally dropped down behind a stack of lumber out where the Unitarian church used to be, dropped because he could go no farther. He heard footsteps and tried to make himself smaller. They came on steadily; one of the overseers rounded the corner and stood looking at him. Harry was in deep shadow, but he knew the man in white could see in the dark.

“Come out o’ there,” grated the man. Harry came out.

“You the guy was yellin’ for Iridel?”

Harry nodded.

“What makes you think you’ll find Iridel in Limbo?” sneered his captor. “Who are you, anyway?”

Harry had learned by this time. “I’m an actor,” he said in a small voice. “I got into Wednesday by mistake, and they sent me back here.”

“What for?”

“Huh? Why – I guess it was a mistake, that’s all.”

The man stepped forward and grabbed Harry by the collar. He was about eight times as powerful as a hydraulic jack. “Don’t give me no guff, pal,” said the man. “Nobody gets sent to Limbo by mistake, or if he didn’t do somethin’ up there to make him deserve it. Come clean, now.”

“I didn’t do nothin’,” Harry wailed. “I asked them the way back, and they showed me a door, and I went through it and came here. That’s all I know. Stop it, you’re choking me!”

The man dropped him suddenly. “Listen, babe, you know who I am? Hey?” Harry shook his head. “Oh – you don’t. Well, I’m Gurrah!”

“Yeah?” Harry said, not being able to think of anything else at the moment.

Gurrah puffed out his chest and appeared to be waiting for something more from Harry. When nothing came, he walked up to the mechanic, breathed in his face. “Ain’t scared, huh? Tough guy, huh? Never heard of Gurrah, supervisor of Limbo an’ the roughest, toughest son of the devil from Incidence to Eternity, huh?”

Now Harry was a peaceable man, but if there was anything he hated, it was to have a stranger breathe his bad breath pugnaciously at him. Before he knew it had happened, Gurrah was sprawled eight feet away, and Harry was standing alone rubbing his left knuckles – quite the more surprised of the two.

Gurrah sat up, feeling his face. “Why, you … you hit me!” he roared. He got up and came over to Harry. “You hit me!” he said softly, his voice slightly out of focus in amazement. Harry wished he hadn’t – wished he was in bed or in Futura or dead or something. Gurrah reached out with a heavy fist and – patted him on the shoulder. “Hey,” he said, suddenly friendly, “you’re all right. Heh! Took a poke at me, didn’t you? Be damned! First time in a month o’ Mondays anyone ever made a pass at me. Last was a feller named Orton. I killed ’im.” Harry paled.

Gurrah leaned back against the lumber pile. “Dam’f I didn’t enjoy that, feller. Yeah. This is a hell of a job they palmed off on me, but what can you do? Breakin’ down – breakin’ down. No sooner get through one job, workin’ top speed, drivin’ the boys till they bleed, than they give you the devil for not bein’ halfway through another job. You’d think I’d been in the business long enough to know what it was all about, after more than eight hundred an’ twenty million acts, wouldn’t you? Heh. Try to tell
them
that. Ship a load of dog houses up to Wednesday, sneakin’ it past backstage nice as you please. They turn right around and call me up. What’s the matter with you, Gurrah? Them dog houses is no good. We sent you a list o’ worn-out items two acts ago. One o’ the items was dog houses. Snap out of it or we send someone back there who can read an’ put you on a toteline.’ That’s what I get – act in and act out. An’ does it do any good to tell ’em that my aide got the message an’ dropped dead before he got it to me? No. Uh-uh. If I say anything about that, they tell me to stop workin’ ’em to death. If I do that, they kick because my shipments don’t come in fast enough.”

He paused for breath. Harry had a hunch that if he kept Gurrah in a good mood it might benefit him. He asked, “What’s your job, anyway?”

“Job?” Gurrah howled. “Call this a job? Tearin’ down the sets, shippin’ what’s good to the act after next, junkin’ the rest?” He snorted.

Harry asked, “You mean they use the same props over again?”

“That’s right. They don’t last, though. Six, eight acts, maybe. Then they got to build new ones and weather them and knock ’em around to make ’em look as if they was used.”

There was silence for a time. Gurrah, having got his bitterness off his chest for the first time in literally ages, was feeling pacified. Harry didn’t know how to feel. He finally broke the ice. “Hey, Gurrah— How’m I goin’ to get back into the play?”

“What’s it to me? How’d you— Oh, that’s right, you walked in from the control room, huh? That it?”

Harry nodded.

“An’ how,” growled Gurrah, “did you get inta the control room?”

“Iridel brought me.”

“Then what?”

“Well, I went to see the producer, and—”

“Th’
producer!
Holy— You mean you walked right in and—” Gurrah mopped his brow. “What’d he say?”

“Why – he said he guessed it wasn’t my fault that I woke up in Wednesday. He said to tell Iridel to ship me back.”

“An’ Iridel threw you back to Monday.” And Gurrah threw back his shaggy head and roared.

“What’s funny,” asked Harry, a little peeved.

“Iridel,” said Gurrah. “Do you realize that I’ve been trying for fifty thousand acts or more to get something on that pretty ol’ heel, and he drops you right in my lap. Pal, I can’t thank you enough! He was supposed to send you back into the play, and instead o’ that you wind up in yesterday! Why, I’ll blackmail him till the end of time!” He whirled exultantly, called to a group of bedraggled little men who were staggering under a cornerstone on their way to the junkyard. “Take it easy, boys!” he called. “I got ol’ Iridel by the short hair. No more busted backs! No more snotty messages!
Haw haw haw!
”

Harry, a little amazed at all this, put in a timid word, “Hey – Gurrah. What about me?”

Gurrah turned. “You? Oh.
Tel-e-phone!
” At his shout two little workers, a trifle less bedraggled than the rest, trotted up. One hopped up and perched on Gurrah’s right shoulder; the other draped himself over the left, with his head forward. Gurrah grabbed the latter by the neck, brought the man’s head close and shouted into his ear. “Give me Iridel!” There was a moment’s wait, then the little man on his other shoulder spoke in Iridel’s voice, into Gurrah’s ear, “Well?”

“Hiyah, fancy pants!”

“Fancy— I beg your— Who is this?”

“It’s Gurrah, you futuristic parasite. I got a couple things to tell you.”

“Gurrah! How
dare
you talk to me like that! I’ll have you—”

“You’ll have me in your job if I tell all I know. You’re a wart on the nose of progress, Iridel.”

“What is the meaning of this?”

“The meaning of this is that you had instructions sent to you by the producer an’ you muffed them. Had an actor there, didn’t you? He saw the boss, didn’t he? Told you he was to be sent back, didn’t he? Sent him right over to me instead of to the play, didn’t you? You’re slippin’, Iridel. Gettin’ old. Well, get off the wire. I’m callin’ the boss, right now.”

“The boss? Oh – don’t do that, old man. Look, let’s talk this thing over. Ah – about that shipment of three-legged dogs I was wanting you to round up for me; I guess I can do without them. Any little favor I can do or you—”

“—you’ll damn well do, after this. You better, Goldilocks.” Gurrah knocked the two small heads together, breaking the connection and probably the heads, and turned grinning to Harry. “You see,” he explained, “that Iridel feller is a damn good supervisor, but he’s a stickler for detail. He sends people to Limbo for the silliest little mistakes. He never forgives anyone and he never forgets a slip. He’s the cause of half the misery back here, with his hurry-up orders. Now things are gonna be different. The boss has wanted to give Iridel a dose of his own medicine for a long time now, but Irrie never gave him a chance.”

Harry said patiently, “About me getting back now—”

“My fran’!” Gurrah bellowed. He delved into a pocket and pulled out a watch like Iridel’s. “It’s eleven forty on Tuesday,” he said. “We’ll shoot you back there now. You’ll have to dope out your own reasons for disappearing. Don’t spill too much, or a lot of people will suffer for it – you the most. Ready?”

Harry nodded; Gurrah swept out a hand and opened the curtain to nothingness. “You’ll find yourself quite a ways from where you started,” he said, “because you did a little moving around here. Go ahead.”

“Thanks,” said Harry.

Gurrah laughed. “Don’t thank me, chum. You rate all the thanks! Hey – if, after you kick off, you don’t make out so good up there, let them toss you over to me. You’ll be treated good; you’ve my word on it. Beat it; luck!”

Holding his breath, Harry Wright stepped through the doorway.

He had to walk thirty blocks to the garage, and when he got there the boss was waiting for him.

“Where you been, Wright?”

“I – lost my way.”

“Don’t get wise. What do you think this is – vacation time? Get going on the spring job. Damn it, it won’t be finished now till tomorra.”

Harry looked him straight in the eye and said, “Listen. It’ll be finished tonight. I happen to know.” And, still grinning, he went back into the garage and took out his tools.

IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?

Kim Newman

Kim Newman is an English novelist, critic, and broadcaster. His fiction includes
The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago
, the Anno Dracula novels and stories,
The Quorum, The Original Dr. Shade and Other Stories, Life’s Lottery, Back in the USSA
(with Eugene Byrne) and
The Man From the Diogenes Club
under his own name, and
The Vampire Genevieve
and
Orgy of the Blood Parasites
as Jack Yeovil.
Johnny Alucard,
the fourth Anno Dracula novel, appeared in 2012; his upcoming novel will be
An English Ghost Story.
This story was originally published in
The New English Library Book of Internet Stories
(edited by Maxim Jakubowski) in 2000.

“Is there a presence?” asked Irene.

The parlour was darker and chillier than it had been moments ago. At the bottoms of the heavy curtains, tassels stirred like the fronds of a deep-sea plant. Irene Dobson – Madame Irena, to her sitters – was alert to tiny changes in a room that might preface the arrival of a visitor from beyond the veil. The fizzing and dimming of still-untrusted electric lamps, so much less impressive than the shrinking and bluing of gaslight flames she remembered from her earliest seances. A clamminess in the draught, as foglike cold rose from the carpeted floor. The minute crackle of static electricity, making hair lift and pores prickle. The tart taste of pennies in her mouth.

“Is there a traveller from afar?” she asked, opening her inner eye.

The planchette twitched. Miss Walter-David’s fingers withdrew in a flinch; she had felt the definite movement. Irene glanced at the no-longer-young woman in the chair beside hers, shrinking away for the moment. The fear-light in the sitter’s eyes was the beginning of true belief. To Irene, it was like a tug on a fishing line, the satisfying twinge of the hook going in. This was a familiar stage on the typical sitter’s journey from scepticism to fanaticism. This woman was wealthy; soon, Irene would taste not copper but silver, eventually gold.

Wordlessly, she encouraged Miss Walter-David to place her fingertips on the planchette again, to restore balance. Open on the round table before them was a thin sheet of wood, hinged like an oversized chessboard. Upon the board’s smoothly papered and polished surface was a circle, the letters of the alphabet picked out in curlicue. Corners were marked for YES – “oui”, “ja” – and NO. The planchette, a pointer on marble castors, was a triangular arrowhead-shape. Irene and Miss Walter-David lightly touched fingers to the lower points of the planchette, and the tip quivered.