Absolutely Inflexible

PLACE LEFT HAND HERE.

He reached out tentatively with his left hand.

Be careful now. No sense in being reckless—

He placed his left hand lightly on the indicated place. There was a little crackle of electricity. He let go, quickly and started to replace the time rig when the desk abruptly faded out from under him.

The air was foul and grimy. Mahler wondered what had happened to the Conditioner. Then he looked around. Huge, grotesque, ugly buildings blocked out most of the sky. There were dark oppressive clouds of smoke overhead, and the harsh screech of an industrial society assailed his ears.

He was in the middle of an immense city, and streams of people were rushing past him at a furious pace. They were all small, stunted creatures, their faces harried and neurotic. They all had the same despairing, frightened look. It was an expression Mahler had seen many times on the faces of jumpers escaping from an unendurable nightmare world to a more congenial future.

He stared down at the time rig clutched in his hand, and knew what had happened. The two-way rig!

It meant the end of the Moon prisons. It meant a complete revolution in civilization. But he had no desire to remain in so oppressive and horrible an age a minute longer than was necessary. He reached down to activate the time rig.

Abruptly someone jolted him from behind and the current of the crowd swept him along. He was struggling desperately to regain control over himself when a hand reached out and gripped the back of his neck.

“Got a card, Hump?” a harsh voice demanded.

He whirled to face an ugly, squinting-eyed man in a dull-brown uniform.

“Did you hear what I said? Where’s your card, Hump? Talk up or you get Spotted.”

Mahler twisted out of the man’s grasp and started to jostle his way quickly through the crowd, desiring nothing more than an opportunity to set the time rig and get out of this disease-ridden, squalid era forever. As he shoved people out of his way they shouted angrily and tried to trip him, raining blows on his back and shoulders.

“There’s a Hump!” someone called. “Spot him!”

The cry became a roar. “Spot him! Spot him! Spot him!”

He turned left and went pounding down a side street, and now it was a full-fledged mob that dashed after him, shouting in savage fury.

“Send for the Crimers!” a deep voice boomed. “They’ll Spot him!”

A running man caught up to him and in sheer desperation Mahler swung about and let fly with his fists. He heard a dull grunt of pain, but he did not pause in his headlong flight. The unaccustomed exercise was tiring him rapidly.

An open door beckoned, and he hurried swiftly toward it.

An instant later he was inside a small furniture shop and a salesman was advancing toward him. “Can I help you, sir? The latest models, right here.”

“Just leave me alone,” Mahler panted, squinting at the time rig.

The salesman stared uncomprehendingly as Mahler fumbled with the little dial.

There was no vernier. He’d have to chance it and hope to hit the right year. The salesman suddenly screamed and came to life—for reasons Mahler would never understand.

Mahler ignored him and punched the stud viciously.

It was wonderful to step back into the serenity of 28th-Century Appalachia. It was small wonder so many time jumpers came to so peaceful an age, Mahler reflected, as he waited for his overworked heart to calm down. Almost anything would be preferable to back there.

He looked up and down the—quiet street, seeking a Convenience where he could repair the scratches and bruises he had acquired during his brief stay in the past. They would scarcely be able to recognize him at the bureau in his present battered condition, with one eye nearly closed, and a great livid welt on his cheek.

He sighted one at last and started down the street, only to be brought up short by the sound of a familiar soft mechanical whining. He looked around to see one of the low-running mechanical tracers of the bureau purring up the street toward him. It was closely followed by two bureau guards, clad in their protective casings.

Of course! He had arrived from the past, and the detectors had recorded his arrival, just as they would have pinpointed any time traveler. They never missed.

He turned, and walked toward the guards. He failed to recognize them, but this did not surprise him. The bureau was a vast and wide-ranging organization, and he knew only a handful of the many guards who customarily accompanied the tracers. It was a pleasant relief to see the tracer. The use of tracers had been instituted during his administration, and he was absolutely sure now that he hadn’t returned too early along the time stream.

“Good to see you,” he called to the approaching guards. “I had a little accident in the office.”

They ignored him, and began methodically to unpack a spacesuit from the storage trunk of the mechanical tracer.

“Never mind talking,” one said. “Get into this.”

He paled. “But I’m no jumper,” he protested. “Hold on a moment, fellows. This is all a terrible mistake. I’m Mahler—head of the bureau. Your boss.”

“Don’t play games with us, chum,” the tall guard said, while the other forced the spacesuit down over Mahler’s shoulders. To his horror, Mahler saw that they did not recognize him at all.

“Suppose you just come peacefully and let the chief explain everything to you, without any trouble,” the short guard said.

“But I am the chief,” Mahler protested. “I was examining a two-way rig in my office and accidentally sent myself back to the past. Take this thing off me and I’ll show you my identification card. That should convince you.”

“Look, chum, we don’t want to be convinced of anything. Tell it to the chief, if you like. Now, are you coming—or do we bring you?”

There was no point, Mahler decided, in trying to prove his identity to the clean-faced young medic who examined him at the bureau office. To insist on an immediate identification would only add more complications, No. It would be far better to wait until he reached the office of the chief.

He knew now what had happened. Apparently he had landed somewhere in his own future, shortly after his own death. Someone else had taken over the bureau, and he, Mahler had been forgotten. He suddenly realized with a little shock that at that very moment his ashes were probably posing in an urn at the Appalachia Crematorium.

When he got to the chief of the bureau, he would simply and calmly explain exactly what had happened and ask for permission to go back ten or twenty or thirty years to the time in which he belonged. Once there, he could turn the two-way rig over to the proper authorities and resume his life from his point of departure. When that happened, the jumpers would no longer be sent to the Moon, and there would be no further need for Inflexible Mahler.

But, he suddenly realized, if he’d already done that why was there still a clearance bureau? An uneasy fear began to, grow in him.

“Hurry up and finish that report,” Mahler told the medic.

“I don’t know what the rush is,” the medic complained. “Unless you like it on the Moon.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Mahler said confidently. “If I told you who I am, you’d think twice about—”

“Is this thing your time rig?” the medic asked unexpectedly. “Not really. I mean—yes, yes it is,” Mahler said. “And be careful with it. It’s the world’s only two-way rig.”

“Really, now!” said the medic. “Two ways, eh?”

“Yes. And if you’ll take me to your chief—”

“Just a minute. I’d like to show this to the head medic.”

In a few moments the medic returned. “All right, we’ll go to the chief now. I’d advise you not to bother arguing with him. You can’t win. You should have stayed in your own age.”

Two guards appeared and jostled Mahler down the familiar corridor to the brightly lit little office where he bad spent eight years of his life. Eight years on the other side of the fence!

As he approached the room that had once been his office, he carefully planned what he would say to his successor. He would explain the accident first, of course. Then he would establish his identity beyond any possibility of doubt and request permission to use the two-way rig to return to his own time. The chief would probably be belligerent at first. But he’d quickly enough become curious, and finally amused at the chain of events that had ensnarled Mahler.

And, of course, he would make amends, after they had exchanged anecdotes about the job they both held at the same time across a wide gap of years. Mahler vowed that he would never again touch a time machine, once he got back. He would let others undertake the huge job of transmitting the jumpers back to their own eras.

Ht moved forward and broke the photoelectric beam. The door to the bureau chief’s office slid open. Behind the desk sat a tall, powerfully built man with hard gray eyes.

Me!

Through the dim plate of the spacesuit into which he had been stuffed, Mahler stared in stunned horror at the man behind the desk. It was impossible for him to doubt that he was gazing at Inflexible Mahler, the man who had sent four thousand men to the Moon, without exception, in the unbending pursuit of his duty.

And if he’s Mahler—

Who am I?

Suddenly Mahler saw the insane circle complete. He recalled the jumper, the firm, deep-voiced, unafraid time jumper who had arrived claiming to have a two-way rig and who had marched off to the Moon without arguing. Now Mahler knew who that strange jumper was.

But how did the cycle start? Where had the two-way rig come from in the first place? He had gone to the past to bring it to the present to take it to the past to—

His head swam. There was no way out. He looked at the man behind the desk and began to walk slowly toward him, feeling a wall of circumstance growing up around him, while in frustration he tried impotently to beat his way out.

It was utterly pointless to argue. Not with Absolutely Inflexible Mahler. It would just be a waste of breath. The wheel had come full circle, and he was as good as on the Moon already. He looked at the man behind the desk with a new, strange light in his eyes.

“I never dreamed I’d find you here,” the jumper said. The transmitter of the spacesuit brought the jumper’s voice over deeply and resonantly.