The Old Die Rich Page 6

shop I wasinterested in said: ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES.

  I went in.

  A neat young salesman came up and politely asked me if he could doanything for me. I sounded stupid even to myself, but I said, "No,thanks, I'd just like to do a little browsing," and gave a sillynervous laugh. Me, an actor, behaving like a frightened yokel! I feltashamed of myself.

  He tried not to look surprised, but he didn't really succeed. Somebodyelse came in, though, for which I was grateful, and he left me aloneto look around.

  I don't know if I can get my feelings across to you. It's a situationthat nobody would ever expect to find himself in, so it isn't easy totell what it's like. But I've got to try.

  Let's stick with the ancient Egyptian I mentioned a while back, theone ordered to sneak a mummy out of the Metropolitan Museum. Maybethat'll make it clearer.

  The poor guy has no money he can use, naturally, and no idea of whatNew York's transportation system is like, where the museum is, how toget there, what visitors to a museum do and say, the regulations hemight unwittingly break, how much an ordinary citizen is supposed toknow about which customs and such. Now add the possible danger that hemight be slapped into jail or an insane asylum if he makes a mistakeand you've got a rough notion of the spot I felt I was in. Being ableto speak English doesn't make much difference; not knowing what'sregarded as right and wrong, and the unknown consequences, are enoughto panic anybody.

  That doesn't make it clear enough.

  Well, look, take the electrical appliances in that store; that mightgive you an idea of the situation and the way it affected me.

  The appliances must have been as familiar to the people of that timeas toasters and TV sets and lamps are to us. But the things didn'tmake a bit of sense to me ... any more than our appliances would tothe ancient Egyptian. Can you imagine him trying to figure out whatthose items are for and how they work?

  * * * * *

  Here are some gadgets you can puzzle over:

  There was a light fixture that you put against any part of a wall--noscrews, no cement, no wires, even--and it held there and lit up, andit stayed lit no matter where you moved it on the wall. Talk aboutpin-up lamps ... this was really it!

  Then I came across something that looked like an ashtray with a blueelectric shimmer obscuring the bottom of the bowl. I lit mypipe--others I'd passed had been smoking, so I knew it was safe to dothe same--and flicked in the match. It disappeared. I don't mean itwas swirled into some hidden compartment. _It vanished._ I emptied thepipe into the ashtray and that went, too. Looking around to make surenobody was watching, I dredged some coins out of my pocket and letthem drop into the tray. They were gone. Not a particle of them wasleft. A disintegrator? I haven't got the slightest idea.

  There were little mirror boxes with three tiny dials on the front ofeach. I turned the dials on one--it was like using three dialtelephones at the same time--and a pretty girl's face popped onto themirror surface and looked expectantly at me.

  "Yes?" she said, and waited for me to answer.

  "I--uh--wrong number, I guess," I answered, putting the box down in ahurry and going to the other side of the shop because I didn't haveeven a dim notion how to turn it off.

  The thing I was looking for was on a counter--a tinted metal box nobigger than a suitcase, with a lipped hole on top and smallundisguised verniers in front. I didn't know I'd found it, actually,until I twisted a vernier and every light in the store suddenly glaredand the salesman came rushing over and politely moved me aside to shutit off.

  "We don't want to burn out every appliance in the place, do we?" heasked quietly.

  "I just wanted to see if it worked all right," I said, still shakingslightly. It could have blown up or electrocuted me, for all I knew.

  "But they always work," he said.

  "Ah--always?"

  "Of course. The principle is simple and there are no parts to get wornout, so they last indefinitely." He suddenly smiled as if he'd justcaught the gist. "Oh, you were joking! Naturally--everybody learnsabout the Dynapack in primary education. You were interested inacquiring one?"

  "No, no. The--the old one is good enough. I was just--well, you know,interested in knowing if the new models are much different or betterthan the old ones."

  "But there haven't been any new models since 2073," he said. "Can youthink of any reason why there should be?"

  "I--guess not," I stammered. "But you never can tell."

  "You can with Dynapacks," he said, and he would have gone on if Ihadn't lost my nerve and mumbled my way out of the store as fast as Icould.

  * * * * *

  You want to know why? He'd asked me if I wanted to "acquire" aDynapack, not _buy_ one. I didn't know what "acquire" meant in thatsociety. It could be anything from saving up coupons to winningwhatever you wanted at some kind of lottery, or maybe working up theright number of labor units on the job--in which case he'd want toknow where I was employed and the equivalent of social security andsimilar information, which I naturally didn't have--or it could justbe fancy sales talk for buying.

  I couldn't guess, and I didn't care to expose myself any more than Ihad already. And my blunder about the Dynapack working and the newmodels was nothing to make me feel at all easier.

  Lord, the uncertainties and hazards of being in a world you don't knowanything about! Daydreaming about visiting another age may bepleasant, but the reality is something else again.

  "Wait a minute, friend!" I heard the salesman call out behind me.

  * * * * *

  I looked back as casually, I hoped, as the pedestrians who heard him.He was walking quickly toward me with a very worried expression on hisface. I stepped up my own pace as unobtrusively as possible, trying tokeep a lot of people between us, meanwhile praying that they'd think Iwas just somebody who was late for an appointment. The salesman didn'tbreak into a run or yell for the cops, but I couldn't be sure hewouldn't.

  As soon as I came to a corner, I turned it and ran like hell. Therewas a sort of alley down the block. I jumped into it, found a basementdoor and stayed inside, pressed against the wall, quivering withtension and sucking air like a swimmer who'd stayed underwater toolong.

  Even after I got my wind back, I wasn't anxious to go out. The placecould have been cordoned off, with the police, the army and the navyall cooperating to nab me.

  What made me think so? Not a thing except remembering how puzzled ourancient Egyptian would have been if he got arrested in the subway forsomething everybody did casually and without punishment in his owntime--spitting! I could have done something just as innocent, as faras you and I are concerned, that this era would consider a misdemeanoror a major crime. And in what age was ignorance of the law ever anexcuse?

  Instead of going back out, I prowled carefully into the building. Itwas strangely silent and deserted. I couldn't understand why until Icame to a lavatory. There were little commodes and wash basins thatcame up to barely above my knees. The place was a school. Naturally itwas deserted--the kids were through for the day.

  I could feel the tension dissolve in me like a ramrod of ice melting,no longer keeping my back and neck stiff and taut. There probablywasn't a better place in the city for me to hide.

  _A primary school!_

  The salesman had said to me, "Everybody learns about the Dynapack inprimary education."

  * * * * *

  Going through the school was eerie, like visiting a familiar childhoodscene that had been distorted by time into something almost totallyunrecognizable.

  There were no blackboards, teacher's big desk, children's littledesks, inkwells, pointers, globes or books. Yet it was a school. Thesmall fixtures in the lavatory downstairs had told me that, and so didthe miniature chairs drawn neatly under the low, vividly paintedtables in the various schoolrooms. A large comfortable chair wasevidently where the teacher sat when not wandering around among thepupils.


  In front of each chair, firmly attached to the table, was a box with ascreen, and both sides of the box held spools of wire on blunt littlespindles. The spools had large, clear numbers on them. Near theteacher's chair was a compact case with more spools on spindles, andthere was a large screen on the inside wall, opposite the enormouswindows.

  I went into one of the rooms and sat down in the teacher's chair,wondering how I was going to find out about the Dynapack. I felt likean archaeologist guessing at the functions of strange relics he'dfound in a dead city.

  Sitting in the chair was like sitting on a column of air that let mesit upright or slump as I chose. One of the arms had a row of buttons.I pressed one and waited nervously to find out if I'd done somethingthat would get me into trouble.

  Concealed lights in the ceiling and walls began glowing, gettingbrighter, while the room gradually turned dark. I glanced aroundbewilderedly to see why, because it was still daylight.

  The windows seemed to be sliding slightly, very slowly, and as theyslid, the sunlight was damped out. I grinned, thinking of what myancient Egyptian would make of that. I knew there were two sheets ofpolarizing glass, probably with a vacuum between to keep out the coldand the heat, and the lights in the room were beautifully synchronizedwith the polarized sliding glass.

  I wasn't doing so badly. The rest of the objects might not be too hardto figure out.

  The spools in the case alongside the teacher's chair could be wirerecordings. I looked for something to play them with, but there was nosign of a playback machine. I tried to lift a spool off a spindle. Itwouldn't come off.

  Hah! The wire led down the spindle to the base of the box, holding thespool in place. That meant the spools could be played right in thatposition. But what started them playing?

  * * * * *

  I hunted over the box minutely. Every part of it was featureless--nodials, switches or any unfamiliar counterparts. I even tried moving myhands over it, figuring it might be like a theramin, and spoke to itin different shades of command, because it could have been built torespond to vocal orders. Nothing happened.

  Remember the Poe story that shows the best place to hide something isright out in the open, which is the last place anyone would look?Well, these things weren't manufactured to baffle people, any morethan our devices generally are. But it's only by trying everythingthat somebody who didn't know what a switch is would start up a vacuumcleaner, say, or light a big chandelier from a wall clear across theroom.

  I'd pressed every inch of the box, hoping some part of it might act asa switch, and I finally touched one of the spindles. The spoolimmediately began spinning at a very low speed and the screen on thewall opposite the window glowed into life.

  "The history of the exploration of the Solar System," said anannouncer's deep voice, "is one of the most adventuresome inmankind's long list of achievements. Beginning with the crude rocketsdeveloped during World War II...."

  There were newsreel shots of V-1 and V-2 being blasted from theirtakeoff ramps and a montage of later experimental models. I wished Icould see how it all turned out, but I was afraid to waste the timewatching. At any moment, I might hear the footsteps of a guard orjanitor or whoever tended buildings then.

  I pushed the spindle again. It checked the spool, which rewoundswiftly and silently, and stopped itself when the rewinding wasfinished. I tried another. A nightmare underwater scene appeared.

  "With the aid of energy screens," said another voice, "the oceans ofthe world were completely charted by the year 2027...."

  I turned it off, then another on developments in medicine, one onarchitecture, one on history, the geography of such places as theinterior of South America and Africa that were--or are--unknown today,and I was getting frantic, starting the wonderful wire films that heldfull-frequency sound and pictures in absolutely faithful color, andshutting them off hastily when I discovered they didn't have what Iwas looking for.

  They were courses for children, but they all contained informationthat our scientists are still groping for ... and I couldn't chancewatching one all the way through!

  I was frustratedly switching off a film on psychology when a femalevoice said from the door, "May I help you?"

  * * * * *

  I snapped around to face her in sudden fright. She was young and slimand slight, but she could scream loud enough to get help. Judging bythe way she was looking at me, outwardly polite and yet visiblynervous, that scream would be coming at any second.

  "I must have wandered in here by mistake," I said, and pushed past herto the corridor, where I began running back the way I had come.

  "But you don't understand!" she cried after me. "I really want tohelp--"

  Yeah, help, I thought, pounding toward the street door. A gag rightout of that psychology film, probably--get the patient to hold still,humor him, until you can get somebody to put him where he belongs.That's what one of our teachers would do, provided she wasn't tooscared to think straight, if she found an old-looking guy thumbingfrenziedly through the textbooks in a grammar school classroom.

  When I came to the outside door, I stopped. I had no way of knowingwhether she'd given out an alarm, or how she might have done it, butthe obvious place to find me would be out on the street, dodging forcover somewhere.

  I pushed the door open and let it slam shut, hoping she'd hear itupstairs. Then I found a door, sneaked it open and went silently downthe steps.

  In the basement, I looked for a furnace or a coal bin or a fuel tankto hide behind, but there weren't any. I don't know how they got theirheat in the winter or cooled the building in the summer. Probably somecentral atomic plant that took care of the whole city, piping in theheat or coolant in underground conduits that were led up through thewalls, because there weren't even any pipes visible.

  I hunched into the darkest corner I could find and hoped they wouldn'tlook for me there.

  * * * * *

  By the time night came, hunger drove me out of the school, but I didit warily, making sure nobody was in sight.

  The streets of the shopping center were more or less deserted. Therewas no sign of a restaurant. I was so empty that I felt dizzy as Ihunted for one. But then a shocking realization made me halt on thesidewalk and sweat with horror.

  Even if there had been a restaurant, what would I have used for money?

  Now I got the whole foul picture. She had sent old people back throughtime on errands like mine ... and they'd starved to death because theycouldn't buy food!

  No, that wasn't right. I remembered what I had told Lou Pape: anybodywho gets hungry enough can always find a truck garden or a food storeto rob.

  Only ... I hadn't seen a truck garden or food store anywhere in thiscity.

  And ... I thought about people in the past having their hands cut offfor stealing a loaf of bread.

  This civilization didn't look as if it went in for such drasticpunishments, assuming I could find a loaf of bread to steal. Butneither did most of the civilizations that practiced those barbarisms.

  I was more tired, hungry and scared than I'd ever believed a humanbeing could get. Lost, completely lost in a totally alien world, butone in which I could still be killed or starve to death ... and Godknew what was waiting for me in my own time in case I came backwithout the information she wanted.

  Or maybe even if I came back with it!

  That suspicion made up my mind for me. Whatever happened to me nowcouldn't be worse than what she might do. At least I didn't have tostarve.

  I stopped a man in the street. I let several others go by beforepicking him deliberately because he was middle-aged, had a kindlyface, and was smaller than me, so I could slug him and run if heraised a row.

  "Look, friend," I told him, "I'm just passing through town--"

  "Ah?" he said pleasantly.

  "--And I seem to have mislaid--" No, that was dangerous. I'd beenabout to say I'd mislaid my wallet, but I still did
n't know whetherthey used money in this era. He waited with a patient, friendly smilewhile I decided just how to put it. "The fact is that I haven't eatenall day and I wonder if you could help me get a meal."

  He said in the most neighborly voice imaginable, "I'll be glad to doanything I can, Mr. Weldon."

  * * * * *

  My entire face seemed to drop open. "You--you called me--"

  "Mr. Weldon," he repeated, still looking up at me with that neighborlysmile. "Mark Weldon, isn't it? From the 20th Century?"

  I tried to answer, but my throat had tightened up worse than on anyopening night I'd ever had to live through. I nodded, wonderingterrifiedly what was going on.

  "Please relax," he said persuasively. "You're not in any dangerwhatever. We offer you our utmost hospitality. Our time, you mightsay, is your time."

  "You know who I am," I managed to get out through my constrictedglottis. "I've been doing all this running and ducking and hiding fornothing."

  He shrugged sympathetically. "Everyone in the city was instructed tohelp you, but you were so nervous that we were afraid to alarm youwith a direct approach. Every time we tried to, as a matter of fact,you vanished into one place or another. We didn't follow for fear ofthe effect on you. We had to wait until you came voluntarily to us."

  My brain was racing again and getting nowhere. Part of it wasdizziness from hunger, but only part. The rest was plain frightenedconfusion.

  They knew who I was. They'd been expecting me. They probably even