The Time Hoppers Read online

  Helaine sighed. ‘What time is it?’ she asked.

  Her earwatch said gently, ‘Ten minutes to fifteen.’

  The children would be arriving home from school soon. Little Joseph was seven, Marina was nine. At this age, they still had some shreds of innocence, as much as any children could have who had spent all their lives in the same room as their parents. Helaine turned to the foodbox and programmed their afternoon snack with furious jabs of her knuckles. She had just finished the job when the children appeared.

  They greeted her. Helaine shrugged. ‘Plug in and have your snacks,’ she said.

  Joseph grinned angelically at her. ‘We saw Kloofman in school today. He looks like Daddy.’

  ‘Sure,’ Helaine said. ‘The High Government has nothing better to do than visit schoolrooms, I know. And the reason why Kloofman looks like Daddy is – ’ She cut herself short. She had been about to say something untrue, but Joseph had a literal mind. He’d repeat it, and the next day the investigators would come around to know why the Class Fourteen Pomrath family was claiming to be related to one of Them.

  Marina broke in, ‘It wasn’t really Kloofman anyway. Not himself. They just showed pictures of him on the wall.’ She nudged her brother. ‘Kloofman wouldn’t come to your grade, silly. He’s much too busy.’

  ‘Marina’s right,’ Helaine said. ‘Listen, children, I’ve programmed you. Have your snack and start your homework right away.’

  ‘Where’s Daddy?’ Joseph asked.

  ‘He went to punch the job machine.’

  ‘Will he get a job today?’ Marina wanted to know.

  ‘It’s hard to say.’ Helaine smiled evasively. ‘I’m going to visit Mrs Wisnack.’

  The children ate. Helaine stepped through the door and went uplevel to the Wisnack apartment. The door told her that Beth was home, so Helaine announced herself and was admitted. Beth Wisnack nodded to her wordlessly. She looked terribly tired. She was a small woman, just about forty, with dark, trusting eyes and dull-green hair pulled back in a tight grip to a bun. Her two children, the usual boy and girl, sat with their backs to the door, snacking.

  ‘Any news?’ Helaine asked.

  ‘None. None. He’s gone, Helaine. They won’t admit it yet, but he’s hopped, and he won’t ever come back. I’m a widow.’

  ‘What about the televector search?’

  The little woman shrugged. ‘According to law they’ve got to keep it going eight days. Then that’s all. They’ve searched the registered list of hoppers, but there’s nobody named Wisnack on it. Which doesn’t mean a thing, of course. Very few of them used their real names when they arrived in the past. And the early ones, they didn’t even record the physical descriptions. So there’ll be no proof. But he’s gone. I’m applying for my pension next week.’

  Helaine felt the weight of Beth Wisnack’s misery like some kind of additional humidity in the room. Her heart went out to her. Life wasn’t very attractive here in Class Fourteen, but at least you had your family structure to cling to in times of stress. Beth didn’t even have that, now. Her husband had put thumb to nose and disappeared on a one-way journey to the past. ‘Goodbye, Beth, goodbye, kids, goodbye, lousy twenty-fifth century,’ he might have said, as he vanished down the time tunnel. The coward couldn’t face responsibility, Helaine thought. And who was going to marry Beth Wisnack now?

  ‘I feel so sorry for you,’ Helaine murmured.

  ‘Save it. There’ll be troubles for you, too. All the men will run away. You’ll see. Norm will go too. They talk big about obligations, but then they run. Bud swore he’d never go, either. But he was out of work two years, you know, and even with the cheque every week he couldn’t stand it any more. So he went.’

  Helaine didn’t like the implication that her own husband was about to check out. It seemed ungracious of Beth to hurl such a wish at her, even in her own grief. After all, Helaine thought, I came on a simple neighbourly mission of consolation. Beth’s words hadn’t been kind.

  Beth seemed to realize it.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘Rest. Talk to me. I tell you, Helaine, I hardly know what’s real any more, since the night Bud didn’t come back. I only wish you’re spared this kind of torture.’

  ‘You mustn’t give up hope yet,’ Helaine said gently.

  Empty words, Helaine knew. Beth Wisnack knew it too.

  Maybe I’ll talk to my brother Joe, she thought. See him again. Maybe there’s something he can do for us. He’s Class Seven, an important man.

  God, I don’t want Norm to become a hopper!

  Three

  Quellen was glad to escape from Koll and Spanner. Once he was back in his own office, behind his own small but private desk, Quellen could feel his status again. He was something more than a flunky, no matter how Koll chose to push him around.

  He rang for Brogg and Leeward, and the two UnderSecs appeared almost instantly.

  ‘Good to see you again,’ Stanley Brogg said sourly. He was a large man, sombre-looking, with a heavy face and thick, hairy-backed fingers. Quellen nodded to him and reached out to open the oxy vent, letting the stuff flow into the office and trying to capture the patronizing look Koll had flashed at him while doing the same thing fifteen minutes before. Brogg did not look awed. He was only Class Nine, but he had power over Quellen, and both of them knew it.

  Leeward did not look awed either, for different reasons. Leeward simply was not sensitive to small gestures. He was a towering, cadaverous, undemonstrative man who went about his work in a routinely methodical way. Not a dolt, but destined never to get out of Class Nine, either.

  Quellen surveyed his two assistants. He could not bear the silent scrutiny he was getting from Brogg. Brogg was the one who knew the secret of the African hideaway; a third of Quellen’s substantial salary was the price that kept Brogg quiet about Quellen’s second, secret home. Big Leeward did not know and did not care; he took his orders directly from Brogg, not from Quellen, and blackmail was not his speciality.

  ‘I suppose you’ve been informed of our assignment to handle the recent prolet disappearances,’ Quellen began. ‘The so-called time-hoppers have become the problem of the Secretariat of Crime, as we have anticipated for several years now.’

  Brogg produced a thick stack of minislips. ‘As a matter of fact, I was going to get in touch with you about the situation just now. The High Government’s taken quite an interest Koll no doubt has told you that Kloofman himself is involved. I have the new statistics. In the first four months of this year sixty-eight thousand prolets have vanished.’

  ‘But you’re on the case?’

  ‘Of course,’ Brogg said.

  ‘Progress report?’

  ‘Well,’ Brogg said, pacing up and down the little room and wiping the sweat from his heavy jowls, ‘you know the theory, though it’s been occasionally controverted. That the hoppers are starting out from our proximate time-nexus. I’ve plotted it all. Tell him, Leeward.’

  Leeward said, ‘A statistical distribution shows that the theory is correct. The present disappearances of prolets are linked directly to historical records of the appearance of the so-called hoppers in the late twentieth century and succeeding years.’

  Brogg pointed to a blue-covered volume lying on Quellen’s desk. ‘History spool. I put it there for you. It confirms my findings. The theory’s sound.’

  Quellen ran a finger along his jawline and wondered what it was like to carry around as much fat on one’s face as Brogg did. Brogg was perspiring heavily, and his expression was a sad one; he was virtually begging Quellen with his eyes to open the oxy vent wider. The moment of superiority pleased the harried CrimeSec, and he made no move towards the wall.

  Crisply Quellen said, ‘All you’ve done is to confirm the obvious. We know the hoppers have been taking off from this approximate era. That’s been a fact of record since roughly 1979. The High Government directive orders us to isolate the distribution vector. I’ve developed an immediate course of action.’
/>   ‘Which has been approved by Koll and Spanner, of course,’ Brogg said insolently. His jowls quivered as his voice rumbled through them.

  ‘It has,’ Quellen said with as much force as he could muster. It angered him that Brogg could so easily deflate him. Koll, yes, Spanner, yes – but Brogg was supposed to be his assistant. Brogg knew too much about him, though. Quellen said, ‘I want you to track down the slyster who’s shipping these hoppers back. Do anything within the codes to halt his illegal activity. Bring him here. I want him caught before he sends anyone else into the past.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Brogg said with unaccustomed humility. ‘We’!! work on it. Which is to say, we’ll continue our already established line of exploration. We have tracers out in various prolet strata. We’re doing all we can to pull in a lead. We think it’s only a matter of time, now. A few days. A week. The High Government will be satisfied.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Quellen snapped, and dismissed them.

  He activated a view-window and peered at the street far below. It seemed to him that he could make out the distant figures of Brogg and Leeward as they appeared on the street, jostled their way to a belt, and disappeared among the multitudes that thronged the outdoor environment. Turning away, Quellen reached for the oxy vent with almost savage joy and flipped it to its widest. He leaned back. Hidden fingers in his chair massaged him. He looked at the book Brogg had left for him, and thumbed his eyeballs wearily.

  Hoppers!

  It was inevitable, he realized, that this would be dumped on him. All the odd things were, the scrawny conspiracies against law and order. Four years ago, it had been that syndicate of bootlegged artificial organs. Quellen shuddered. Defective pancreases peddled in pestilent alleyways, throbbing blood-filled hearts, endless coils of gleaming intestines, marketed by shady slysters who flitted noiselessly from zone to zone. And then it had been the fertility bank and the grubby business of the sperm withdrawals. And then the alleged creatures from the adjoining universe who had run through the streets of Appalachia clashing hideous red mandibles and clutching at children with scaly claws. Quellen had handled those things, not brilliantly, for brilliance was not his style, but competently, at least And now hoppers.

  The assignment unsettled him. He had haggled for secondhand kidneys and he had quibbled over the price of ova, all in a day’s work, but he did not like this business of coping with illegal time-travel. The framework of the cosmos seemed to warp a little, once you admitted the possibility that such a thing could occur. It was bad enough that time kept flowing relentlessly forward; a man could understand that, though he did not necessarily have to like it. Backward, though? A reversal of all logic, a denial of all reason? Quellen was a reasonable man. Time paradoxes troubled him. How easy it would be, he knew, to step into the stat and leave Appalachia behind, return to the tranquil humidity of his African hideaway, shrug off all responsibility.

  He conquered the creeping apathy that beset him and snapped on the projector. Stereoscopic Julesz figures flashed on the screen while his eyes adjusted to undifferentiated blacks and whites. The Julesz edge kept the screen perpetually in focus, no matter what the degree of optical distortion. The history spool began to unroll. Quellen watched the words, sharp as blades, stream by:

  The first sign of invasion from the future came about the year 1979, when several men in strange costumes appeared in the district of Appalachia then known as Manhattan. Records show they appeared with increasing frequency throughout the next decade, and when interrogated all ultimately admitted that they had come from the future. The pressure of repeated evidence eventually forced the people of the twentieth century to accept the disturbing conclusion that they were in truth being subjected to a peaceful but annoying invasion by time-travellers.

  There was more, a whole reel more, but Quellen had had enough for the moment. He cut the projector off. The heat of the little room was oppressive, despite the air conditioning and the oxy vent. He could smell his own acrid sweat and didn’t like the sensation. Quellen looked despairingly at the confining walls, thinking with longing of the murky stream that ran by the front porch of his African retreat.

  He nudged the pedal stud of the minislip dictator and delivered himself of a few memos:

  ‘1. Can we catch a live hopper? That is, a man from our own time who went back, say, ten or twenty years and has lived on back through his own lifespan a second time? Are there such men? What would happen if one met himself of pre-hop existence?

  ‘2. Assuming capture of a live hopper, apply interrogation techniques to discover source of original backward momentum.

  ‘3. Current indications are that hopper phenomenon ceases as of year 2491. Does this indicate success in our prevention attempts or merely lacunae in the records?

  ‘4. Is it true that no hoppers were recorded prior to ad 1979? Why?

  ‘5. Consider possibility of masquerading as Class Fifteen’ prolet in order to experience solicitation by hopper-transport agents. Would such an arrest be considered entrapment? Check with legal machines.

  ‘6. Take depositions from families of recently departed prolet hoppers. Sociological index, reliability rating, etc. Also attempt to retrace events leading up to disappearance of hopper.

  ‘7. Perhaps – ’

  Quellen rejected the last memo in unfinished form and kicked over the pedal. The dictator thrust minislips at him. He let them lie on his desk and started the projector again, reeling out some more of the history spool.

  Analysis of the time-hopper records indicates that all reported arrivals took place within the years AD 1979 and 2106 – that is, an era prior to the establishment of the High Government. (Quellen made a mental note. Possibly it was significant.) Those hoppers who upon interrogation were willing to admit to a year of departure listed the same as lying between AD 2486 and 2491, without exception. Of course, this does not foreclose the possibility of unreported hoppers departing from a time other than that, just as it does not eliminate all possibility that arrivals were not confined wholly to the aforementioned period of 127 years. Nonetheless –

  There was an interruption in the text. Brogg had inserted his own memo here:

  See Exhibits A, B. Examine possibility of time-travel outside recorded temporal zones. Occult phenomena. Worth study.

  Quellen found Exhibits A and B on his desk: two more spools. He did not put them into the projector. Nor did he run the history spool any further just yet. He paused and considered.

  All the hoppers seemed to be coming from a single five-year period, of which this was the fourth year. All the hoppers had landed within a temporal spectrum of about a century and a quarter. Naturally, some hoppers had escaped detection, slipping smoothly into the life-patterns of their new era and never showing up on the charts of time-travel. Methods of persona-detection had been fairly primitive three and four hundred years ago, Quellen knew, and it was surprising that so many of the hoppers had actually been found and recorded. Low-order prolets, though, weren’t likely to be subtle about concealing themselves in an era to which they were unaccustomed. But surely the syndicate running the hopper business was not sending back only prolets!

  Removing the history spool from the projector, Quellen slipped Brogg’s Exhibit A into its place and switched the machine on. Exhibit A was uninspiring: nothing less nor more than a census roll of the recorded hoppers. Quellen tuned in on the data in a random way as it flowed past.

  BACCALON, ELLIOT V. Detected 4 April 2007, Trenton, New Jersey. Interrogated eleven hours. Declared date of birth 17 May 2464. Skill classification: computer technician fifth grade. Assigned to Camden Hopper Rehabilitation Zone. Transferred to Westvale Polyclinic District 30 February 2011 for therapy. Discharged 11 April 2013. Employed as switching technician 2013-22. Died 7 March 2022, pleurisy and complications.

  BACKHOUSE, MARTIN D. Detected 18 August 2102, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Interrogated fourteen minutes. Declared date of birth 10 July 2470, declared date of departure 1 November 2488. Ski
ll classification: computer technician seventh grade. Assigned to West Baltimore Rehabilitation Zone. Released in full capacity 27 October 2102. Employed as computer technician, Internal Revenue Service, 2102-67. Married Lona Walk (q.v.) 22 June 2104.

  Died 16 May 2187, pneumonia.

  BAGROWSKI, EMANUEL. Detected –

  Quellen halted the roster as ideas flooded his mind. He ran ahead to Lona Walk, q.v., and made the interesting discovery that she was a hopper who had landed in 2098, claiming to have been born in 2471 and to have shipped out for the past on 1 November 2488. This, obviously, had been a prearranged rendezvous; boy of eighteen, girl of seventeen, chucking the twenty-fifth century and heading for the past to start a new life together. Yet Martin Backhouse had landed in 2102, and his girl-friend in 2098. Clearly they hadn’t planned it that way. Which told Quellen that the hopper-transporting process was not exact in its attainment of destinations. Or, at least, had not been exact a few years ago. That must have been uncomfortable for poor Lona Walk, Quellen thought: to land in the past and then to find that her heart’s desire hadn’t made it to the same year.

  Quellen was quick to devise some grievous hopper tragedies of this sort. Romeo lands in 2100, Juliet in 2025. Heartbroken Romeo comes upon decades-old gravestone of Juliet. Worse yet, youthful Romeo encounters ninety-year-old Juliet. How did Lona Walk spend the four years while waiting for Martin Backhouse to drop into her era? How could she be sure that he would arrive at all? What if she lost faith and married someone else the year before he showed up? What if the four-year gulf had destroyed their love – for by the time he reached the past, she was objectively twenty-one years old, and he was still only eighteen?