The Door Into Summer (19 page)

“But—As a matter of fact, I don’t see why you would come out anywhere near the lab. Why not to the spot in outer space corresponding to where the lab used to be—I mean where it was…or rather—”

“You don’t mean anything. You stay on the world line you were on. Don’t worry about the math; just remember what that guinea pig did. But if you go back before the lab was built, maybe you wind up in a tree. Four, how could you get back to now even with cold sleep, even if you did go the right way, arrive at the right time, and live through it?”

“Huh? I did once, why not twice?”

“Sure. But what are you going to use for money?”

I opened my mouth and closed it. That one made me feel foolish. I had had the money once; I had it no longer. Even what I had saved (not nearly enough) I could not take with me—shucks, even if I robbed a bank (an art I knew nothing about) and took a million of the best back with me, I couldn’t spend it in 1970. I’d simply wind up in jail for trying to shove funny money. They had even changed the shape, not to mention serial numbers, dates, colors, and designs. “Maybe I’d just have to save it up.”

“Good boy. And while you were saving it, you’d probably wind up here and now again without half trying…but minus your hair and your teeth.”

“Okay, okay. But let’s go back to that last point. Was there ever a big explosion on that spot? Where the lab was?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then I
wouldn’t
wind up in a tree—because I
didn’t
. Follow me?”

“I’m three jumps ahead of you. The old time paradox again, only I won’t buy it. I’ve thought about theory of time, too, maybe more than you have. You’ve got it just backward. There wasn’t any explosion and you aren’t going to wind up in a tree…because
you aren’t ever going to make the jump.
Do
you
follow
me?”

“But suppose I did?”

“You won’t. Because of my fifth point. It’s the killer, so listen closely. You ain’t about to make any such jump because the whole thing is classified and you
can’t
. They won’t let you. So let’s forget it, Danny. It’s been a very interesting intellectual evening and the FBI will be looking for me in the morning. So let’s have one more round and Monday morning if I’m still out of jail I’ll phone the chief engineer over at Aladdin and find out the first name of this other ‘D. B. Davis’ character and who he was or is. He might even be working there and, if so, we’ll have lunch with him and talk shop. I want you to meet Springer, the chief over at Aladdin, anyway; he’s a good boy. And forget this time-travel nonsense; they’ll never get the bugs out of it. I should never have mentioned it…and if you ever say I did I’ll look you square in the eye and call you a liar. I might need my classified status again someday.”

So we had another beer. By the time I was home and had taken a shower and had washed some of the beer out of my system I knew he was right. Time travel was about as practical a solution to my difficulties as cutting your throat to cure a headache. More important, Chuck would find out what I wanted to know from Mr. Springer just over chops and a salad, no sweat, no expense, no risk. And I liked the year I was living in.

When I climbed into bed I reached out and got the week’s stack of papers. The
Times
came to me by tube each morning, now that I was a solid citizen. I didn’t read it very much, because whenever I got my head soaked full of some engineering problem, which was usually, the daily fripperies you find in the news merely annoyed me, either by boring me or, worse still, by being interesting enough to distract my mind from its proper work.

Nevertheless, I never threw out a newspaper until I had at least glanced at the headlines and checked the vital-statistics column, the latter not for births, deaths, and marriages, but simply for “withdrawals,” people coming out of cold sleep. I had a notion that someday I would see the name of someone I had known back then, and then I would go around and say hello, bid him welcome, and see if I could give him a hand. The chances were against it, of course, but I kept on doing it and it always gave me a feeling of satisfaction.

I think that subconsciously I thought of all other Sleepers as my “kinfolk,” the way anybody who once served in the same outfit is your buddy, at least to the extent of a drink.

There wasn’t much in the papers, except the ship that was still missing between here and Mars, and that was not news but a sad lack of it. Nor did I spot any old friends among the newly awakened Sleepers. So I lay back and waited for the light to go out.

About three in the morning I sat up very suddenly, wide awake. The light came on and I blinked at it. I had had a very odd dream, not quite a nightmare but nearly, of having failed to notice little Ricky in the vital statistics.

I knew I hadn’t. But just the same when I looked over and saw the week’s stack of newspapers still sitting there I was greatly relieved; it had been possible that I had stuffed them down the chute before going to sleep, as I sometimes did.

I dragged them back onto the bed and started reading the vital statistics again. This time I read all categories, births, deaths, marriages, divorces, adoptions, changes of name, commitments, and withdrawals, for it had occurred to me that my eye might have caught Ricky’s name without consciously realizing it, while glancing down the column to the only subhead I was interested in—Ricky might have got married or had a baby or something.

I almost missed what must have caused the distressing dream. It was in the
Times
for 2 May 2001, Tuesday’s withdrawals listed in Wednesday’s paper: “Riverside Sanctuary… F. V. Heinicke.”

F. V.
Heinicke!

“Heinicke” was Ricky’s grandmother’s name… I knew it, I was
certain
of it! I didn’t know
why
I knew it. But I felt that it had been buried in my head and had not popped up until I read it again. I had probably seen it or heard it at some time from Ricky or Miles, or it was even possible that I had met the old gal at Sandia. No matter, the name, seen in the
Times
, had fitted a forgotten piece of information in my brain and then I
knew
.

Only I still had to prove it. I had to make sure that “F. V. Heinicke” stood for “Frederica Virginia Heinicke.”

I was shaking with excitement, anticipation, and fear. In spite of well-established new habits I tried to zip my clothes instead of sticking the seams together and made a botch of getting dressed. But a few minutes later I was down in the hall where the phone booth was—I didn’t have an instrument in my room or I would have used it; I was simply a supplementary listing for the house phone. Then I had to run back up again when I found that I had forgotten my phone-credit ID card—I was really disorganized.

Then, when I had it, I was trembling so that I could hardly fit it into the slot. But I did and signaled “Service.”

“Circuit desired?”

“Uh, I want the Riverside Sanctuary. That’s in Riverside Borough.”

“Searching…holding…circuit free. We are signaling.”

The screen lighted up at last and a man looked grumpily at me. “You must have the wrong phasing. This is the sanctuary. We’re closed for the night.”

I said, “Hang on,
please
. If this is the Riverside Sanctuary, you’re just who I want.”

“Well, what do you want? At this hour?”

“You have a client there, F. V. Heinicke, a new withdrawal. I want to know—”

He shook his head. “We don’t give out information about clients over the phone. And certainly not in the middle of the night. You’d better call after ten o’clock. Better yet, come here.”

“I will, I will. But I want to know just one thing. What do the initials ‘F. V.’ stand for?”

“I told you that—”

“Will you
listen
, please? I’m not just butting in; I’m a Sleeper myself. Sawtelle. Withdrawn just lately. So I know all about the ‘confidential relationship’ and what’s proper. Now you’ve already published this client’s name in the paper. You and I both know that the sanctuaries always give the papers the full names of clients withdrawn and committed…but the papers trim the given names to initials to save space. Isn’t that true?”

He thought about it. “Could be.”

“Then what possible harm is there in telling me what the initials ‘F. V.’ stand for?”

He hesitated still longer. “None, I guess, if that’s all you want. It’s all you’re going to get. Hold on.”

He passed out of the screen, was gone for what seemed like an hour, came back holding a card. “The light’s poor,” he said, peering at it. “ ‘Frances’—no, ‘Frederica.’ ‘Frederica Virginia.’ ”

My ears roared and I almost fainted. “Thank God!”

“You all right?”

“Yes. Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Yes, I’m all right.”

“Hmm. I guess there’s no harm in telling you one more thing. It might save you a trip. She’s already checked out.”

I
COULD HAVE SAVED TIME BY HIRING A CAB
to jump me to Riverside, but I was handicapped by lack of cash. I was living in West Hollywood; the nearest twenty-four-hour bank was downtown at the Grand Circle of the Ways. So first I rode the Ways downtown and went to the bank for cash. One real improvement I had not appreciated up to then was the universal checkbook system; with a single cybernet as clearinghouse for the whole city and radioactive coding on my checkbook, I got cash laid in my palm as quickly there as I could have gotten it at my home bank across from Hired Girl, Inc.

Then I caught the express Way for Riverside. When I reached the sanctuary it was just daylight.

There was nobody there but the night technician I had talked to and his wife, the night nurse. I’m afraid I didn’t make a good impression. I had a day’s beard, I was wild-eyed, I probably had a beer breath, and I had not worked out a consistent framework of lies.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Larrigan, the night nurse, was sympathetic and helpful. She got a photograph out of file and said, “Is this your cousin, Mr. Davis?”

It was Ricky. There was no doubt about it, it was Ricky! Oh, not the Ricky I had known, for this was not a little girl but a mature young woman, twentyish or older, with a grown-up hairdo and a grown-up and very beautiful face. She was smiling.

But her eyes were unchanged and the ageless pixie quality of her face that had made her so delightful a child was still there. It was the same face, matured, filled out, grown beautiful, but unmistakable.

The stereo blurred, my eyes had filled with tears. “Yes,” I managed to choke. “Yes. That’s Ricky.”

Mr. Larrigan said, “Nancy, you shouldn’t have showed him that.”

“Pooh, Hank, what harm is there in showing a photograph?”

“You know the rules.” He turned to me. “Mister, as I told you on the phone, we don’t give out information about clients. You come back here at ten o’clock when the administration office opens.”

“Or you could come back at eight,” his wife added. “Dr. Bernstein will be here then.”

“Now, Nancy, you just keep quiet. If he wants information, the man to see is the director. Bernstein hasn’t any more business answering questions than we have. Besides, she wasn’t even Bernstein’s patient.”

“Hank, you’re being fussy. You men like rules just for the sake of rules. If he’s in a hurry to see her, he could be in Brawley by ten o’clock.” She turned to me. “You come back at eight. That’s best. My husband and I can’t really tell you anything anyhow.”

“What’s this about Brawley? Did she go to Brawley?”

If her husband had not been there I think she would have told me more. She hesitated and he looked stern. She answered, “You see Dr. Bernstein. If you haven’t had breakfast, there’s a real nice place just down the street.”

So I went to the “real nice place” (it was) and ate and used their wash-room and bought a tube of Beardgo from a dispenser in the washroom and a shirt from another dispenser and threw away the one I had been wearing. By the time I returned I was fairly respectable.

But Larrigan must have bent Dr. Bernstein’s ear about me. He was a young man, resident in training, and he took a very stiff line. “Mr. Davis, you claim to be a Sleeper yourself. You must certainly know that there are criminals who make a regular business of preying on the gullibility and lack of orientation of a newly awakened Sleeper. Most Sleepers have considerable assets, all of them are unworldly in the world in which they find themselves, they are usually lonely and a bit scared—a perfect setup for confidence men.”

“But all I want to know is where she went! I’m her cousin. But I took the Sleep before she did, so I didn’t know she was going to.”

“They usually claim to be relatives.” He looked at me closely. “Haven’t I seen you before?”

“I strongly doubt it. Unless you just happened to pass me on the Ways, downtown.” People are always thinking they’ve seen me before; I’ve got one of the Twelve Standard Faces, as lacking in uniqueness as one peanut in a sackful. “Doctor, how about phoning Dr. Albrecht at Sawtelle Sanctuary and checking on me?”

He looked judicial. “You come back and see the director. He can call the Sawtelle Sanctuary…or the police, whichever he sees fit.”