Time Travelers Strictly Cash (24 page)

There was a pistol in Trebor’s hand. I noted absently that the safety was on the wrong side, and that it was off.

“Very astute,” he said quietly.

“Listen Trebor,” I called, “don’t be a jerk! Right now you’re wanted by the cops in one dimension only-in this one your biggest problem is that a barfull of guys think you stink. Don’t blow it.” I spoke with great haste, but my mind was racing even faster.

“You have a point,” he allowed. “As long as no one is foolish enough to get in my way, I believe I’ll just take my Tiger Breath and toddle off.” He picked up the half-keg in his right arm and started edging toward the door.

The deductions were coming like clusters of grapeshot now. I glanced up at the mirror, and what I saw there confirmed all speculation. Trebor had a reflection in the mirror, now, and the image looked straight at me with pleading eyes.

“Hold on, buddy,” I barked. “The least you can do is tell us why you went through all this.”

He stopped, about three feet out of position. I wanted him right on the chalk line from which one addresses the fireplace. “I don’t expect you’ll believe me, at this point, but I sincerely want to improve both worlds,” he said.

“How? By swapping your booze for ours?”

“That’s one small way,” he agreed. “Alcohol has a symmetrical molecule, so either one gets you loaded. It’s the congeners, the asymmetrical esters which produce the taste and the impact, that make one wOrld’s mead anOther wOrid’s poison.” He paused, and giggled. To my annoyance, so did I. “But there are infinite possibilities. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last week: walking around your world thinking of all the splendid possibilities. Once it’s safe to use my auxiliary Bridge, I could…well figure it out for yourself. Suppose I swapped our smog for yours, molecule by molecuin, in bulk? The reversed ozone wouldn’t be an irritant any more…”

“Brilliant,” I said sarcastically.. “It’d still block sunlight and foul our lungs, but it wouldn’t be irritating enough a remind us to clean up the source any more. Remove the nuisance value and leave the menace intact, that’s a great idea, Trebor.” I was frantically trying to catch Callahan’s eye without alerting Trebor, and at last I succeeded. motioned imperceptibly toward the mirror, and Callahan casually turned to it. The mirror-image of Trebor gesticulated at him, and I prayed that Mike would dope it out in time. Just like Doris’s Valiant and my mailbox: the only thing the could help Trebor now was an unexpected collision.

Trebor failed to notice. “Well,” he said, plainly crestfallen, “then suppose I imported food from my dimension and exported yours? Really fattening items, I mean. Tarts creampuffs, banana splits. The stereisomer of a strawberry shortcake would taste as good as the real thing…I know, I’ve tested it-but your digestive system would ignore it entirely. All the fat people could get thin!”

Callahan answered this time, coming around the bar with an air of total innocence, plainly involved in the intellectual exercise of talking to this nice man with the pistol. Trebor moved to let him by, covering him carefully with the pistol placing himself just where I wanted him to be. I hoped Mike understood his part.

“Nope, I’m afraid that’s no good either, pal, “he boomed. “Glandular cases aside, the ŕnly genuine cure for fat is to not be a hog. Your method would encourage fat people to keep on being hogs-so, they’ll keep on being fat people, regardless of what they happen to weigh. You’d know one anywhere. That’s the third time you’ve proposed to treat the symptoms instead of the disease.”

“Third time?” Trebor said, puzzled.

“Yeah. The first was when you decided you could get yourself out of a jam by throwing your mirror-twin to the wolves. They used to say when I was a kid that that kinda stuff’d grow hair on your palms. Self-abuse, I mean. And just like the last two ‘cures’ you proposed, it didn’t cure a thing. Look”

He pointed over Trebor’s shoulder at the mirror, and Trebor smiled.

“That’s an old old gag,” he said reprovingly.

And then Fast Eddie caught sight of the mirror and yelped, and Trebor must have known the runty little piano man was no actor, for he whirled then, gun ready, and-

-froze. In the mirror, he saw himself, keg and all, but the “right” hand held no pistol, and it was upraised in ritual gesture that loses nothing by mirror-reversal. Trebor’s jaw dropped, he raised the pistol…

And Callahan kicked him square in the ass.

No other man among us could have pulled it off-but Callahan is built along the lines of Mount Washington, and I’ve seen him carry a full keg in each hand. His big size twelve impacted behind Trebor’s lap with the speed and power of a cannonball, lofting the inventor into the air, clean over the bar and into the mirror. As he struck it, he seemed to reverse direction and bounce back into the room, landing in a heap on the sawdust.

But when he landed, his hand was empty.

“Thanks,” he gasped to Callahan. “I needed that.”

And in the mirror, a man in a grey flannel suit stepped up to that Trebor, took away his pistol, and slapped handcuffs on him. The grey man turned to the mirror, aimed the pistol at it and pulled the trigger. There was no bang, but the mirror exploded in a million shards, which fell to the floor of Callahan’s Place with the multiple crashes you’d expect.

Fifteen minutes later, Bob Trebor-the one who belonged here-was sitting by the fireplace with his feet up, sipping at some Wonderbooze and rounding up the story of his exploits in Mirrorland.

“If the local police had apprehended me, it might have been a sadder story. But the .I.B.F has some people bright enough to add together my story plus the fact that my fingerprints were mirror-reversed plus the scar on the wrong cheek plus what the X-rays showed and come up with the plain truth-and tough-minded enough to believe their own eyes. Pretty soon everybody I was talking to was named Smith, and they cooked up a plan to trap the other Trebor and send me home again. They put a top .I.B.F computer onto predicting Trebor’s movements, using data I supplied them as well as their own dossiers. Then, with access to his lab and notes, I used my similar background and skills to build another

Bridge. It took me a week. By that time computer analysis indicated that he was 89% liable to come in here, tonight, so we had the Bridge installed, I hope-you didn’t mind?”

“Not at all,” Callahan assured him. “Livened up a dull night.”

“I don’t get it,” Eddie complained. “Why din’t the feds just come t’ru de Bridge an’ bust ‘im?”

- “They couldn’t, Eddie,” Trthôr said patiently. “Jurisdictional questions aside, the more changes they caused in this continuum, the greater the chance of separating the two forever. They were nervous about doing anything at all,”

“So you worked it out wth the folks at Callahan’s Place-the other Callahan’s-and they agreed to stage as perfect an exchange as possible,” I said wonderingly. It was kinda nice to know that each world had a Callahan’s-but I wondered if the other me still had his wife and kids. Probably not, or he wouldn’t be there…but I wonder.

“Yes,” Trebor agreed. “And fortunately for me, you were as quick on the uptake as your counterparts assured me you’d be. You followed my cues beautifully.”

“The Wonderbooze helped,” Callahan observed, sweeping the last of the mirror into the fireplace.

“That it did. Amazing what molecular reversal will for liquor.” He gazed meditatively at his glass.

“That’s what I don’t get,” I admitted. “Most of our food must have been wrong for his digestive system-and theirs must’ve been mostly useless to you. How come neither of you came down with malnutrition?”

“We were both starting to,” Trebor said drily. “That’s what brought him to Dr. Webster, which in turn brought him here. He must have planned to use his alternate Bridge to bring food across eventually, and he must have had a cache of food with him that be could ration out ‘till then; If I find it at my house I’ll bring it around. “That, by the way, is how Doc Webster came to lose a hundred pounds. For awhile, anyway-the hog. Don’t tip him off, okay? “I guess he simply expected me to starve-if he thought about it. He couldn’t have been very imaginative, or he’d have realized that I had enough evidence to sell the truth to the .I.B.F”

“That kinda bothers me too,” I said. “The feds are not, for one reason and another, my favorite people-and I don’t imagine a mirror-fed is any better. I have to admit I don’t find it reassuring that men analagous to our F.B.I. possess a secret bridge to our world.”

“True,” said Callahan “But what do we do? Tell our feds? With no sober witnesses and no way to make a working Bridge in this world? If we could put it over, would it help-or make things worse?”

“Forget it,” Trebor advised. “Whatever their intentions, there isn’t a lot they can do, for good or ill. If they take any action benefiting their continuum at the expense of ours, the two continua become too dissimilar and the Bridge is useless.”

Callahan burst into gargantuan laughter. “I’ll bet they’re sittin’ around a table right now, quiet as mice, wonderin’ what the hell they can possibly do with the goddam thing,” he whooped, and slapped the bar.

The picture of a dozen top government thinkers staring in silent frustration at a device more awesome than the atomic bomb-with no known use-was so lovely that we all broke up, and Eddie struck up Stevie Wonder’s “It Ain’t No Use.”

“At least they got a half-keg o’ Wonderbooze out of it,” Long-Drink yelled, and we laughed louder; and then Eddie yelled, “An’ so did we!” and a cheer went up that rattled the rafters.

But I noticed that Trebor wasn’t smiling. “What’s wrong, Bob?”

He sighed moodily and sipped of the Wonderbooze. “It’s not fair,” he said.

“How do you mean?” Callahan asked. “You’re home free and your rotten twin is in Leavenworth-what’s your beef?”

“That’s it precisely,” Trebor said exasperatedly. “My counterpart is, I agree with you, rotten. I knew him only for the half hour it took him to shanghai me into stepping through his damned Bridge, but in retrospect I don’t believe I’ve ever me a more classic sociopath. I, on the other hand, like to think of myself as… well, as one of the good guys, and I believe I’ve conducted myself honorably throughout this affair. I even took a kick in the pants that I’m not certain I deserved. That’s why I think it’s unfair.”

He emptied his glass, tossed it into the fire, and sighed again.

“Why is it,” he mourned, “that I will never again see my face in the shaving mirror without wincing?”

Concerning “Mirror,rorriM, Off The Wall”:

As I say, I’ve never actually caught lake in a flat lie. But often his yarns are built on elements I find oddly familiar - perhaps because both Jake and I are regular readers of sf. (We take prunes to keep it that way.)

The mirror-reversal business in this story, for instance, bears a remarkable resemblance to ideas put forth in Roger Zelazny’s demonically inventive novel, Doorways In The Sand (although the two stories in no other way resemble each other).

Similarly, isaac Asimov has written extensively about thiotimoline-which in this continuum has the odd properly of reacting a split second before it contacts the reagent. Interested readers are directed to the Good Doctor’s (Is he a good doctor? Does he make house calls?) autobiography; specificaliy to Volume One, In Memory Almost Ripe; * Finally, the Four-Eye Monogahela made its first appearance (as did a variant of Tiger Breath called “Tiger Bone”) in a magnificent Oliver La Farge story called “Spud And Cochise”-which happens, by happy coincidence, to be reprinted in my current anthology, The Best Of All Possible Worlds, Volume One. (Ace Books, another coincidence.) Does all this mean that Jake is putting us on? I don’ t think so. I might have thought so-if lake hadn’t

shown me the 01$ bill that Trebor left behind. And if Mike hadn’t privately slipped me a snort of the Wonderbooze.

instead I find myself wondering whether Zelazny, Asimov or La Farge ever owned unusual mirrors…

* All right, all right, Isaac: the real tide is In Memory Yet Green.

SERPENTS’ TEETH

House Rules, Age 16 And Up:

IF THERE’S A BEEF, IT’S YOUR FAULT. IF YOU BREAK IT, YOU PAY FOR IT, PLUS SALES TAX AND INSTALLATION. NO RESTRICTED DRUGS. IF YOU ATTEMPT TO REMOVE ANY PERSON OR PERSONS FROM THESE PREMISES INVOLUNTARILY, BY FORCE OR COERCION AS DEFINED BY THE HOUSE, YOU WILL BE SURRENDERED TO THE POUCE IN DAMAGED CONDITION. THE DECISIONS OF YOUR BARTENDER ARE FINAL, AND THE MANAGEMENT DOESN’T WANT TO KNOW YOU. THE FiRST ONE’S ON THE HOUSE; HAVE A GOOD TIME.

Teddy and Freddy both finished reading with slightly raised eyebrows. Any bar in their own home town might well have had nearly identical-unofficial-house rules. But their small town was not sophisticated enough for such rules to be so boldly committed to printout.

“You can surrender those sheets at the bar for your complimentary drink,” the door-terminal advised them.

“Good luck to you both.”

Freddy said “Thank you.” Teddy said nothing. The soft music cut off; a door slid open. New music spilled out, a processor group working the lower register, leaving

the higher frequencies free for a general hubbub of conversadon. Smells spilled out as well; beer, mostly, with overlays of pot, tobacco, sweat, old vomit, badly burned coffee and cheap canned air. It was darker in there; Teddy and Freddy could not see much. They exchanged a glance, shared a quick nervous grin.

“Break a leg, kid,” Teddy said, and entered the Lounge, Freddy at her heels.

Teddy’s first impression was that it was just what she had been expecting. The crowd was sizable for this time of night, perhaps four or five dozen souls, roughly evenly divided between hunters and hunted. While the general mood seemed hearty and cheerful, quiet desperation could be seen in any direction, invariably on the faces of the hunters.

Teddy and Freddy had certainly been highlighted when the door first slid back, but by the time their eyes bad adjusted to the dimmer light no one was looking at them. They located the bar and went there. They strove to move synchronousIy; complementarily, as though they were old dance partners or old-cop partners, as though they were married enough to be telepathic. In point of fact they were all these things; but you could never have convinced anyone watching them now.