Time Out of Joint

thirteen

The boy on the left reached into his robe and produced a leather case. From it he selected a cigar and a small pair of gold scissors; he cut off one end of the cigar and placed the cigar in his mouth. His companion, with equal ritual, brought forth a jeweled cigar lighter and lit his friend's cigar.

The boy smoking the cigar said, "Necktie-fellows, you carry dead chuck-chuck. Wait-lady, she make foulupgoweewee."

The money, Ragle understood. The waitress shouldn't have accepted it. The boys had told her to, but they had known what the driver had known; it was no longer legal tender.

"So what?" Vic said, also following their broken jargon.

The boy with the jeweled lighter said, "Bigchiefs, they fixee. No? No? So." He held out his hand. "Bigchiefs fixee, necktiefellows fixee fat chuck-chuck."

"Give him some of the tokens," Vic said, under his breath. Ragle counted four of the six tokes into the boy's open hand. The boy bowed from the waist; his topknot grazed the sidewalk. Beside him his companion stood impassively upright, ignoring the transaction.

"You necktie-fellows, you got woojy?" the boy with the lighter said emotionlessly.

"Necktie-fellows eyeball on pavement," the boy with the lighter said. Both he and his companion nodded. Now they had taken on a somber air, as if something important had entered into the questioning. "Flop-flop," the boy with the cigar lighter said. "Right, necktie-fellows? Flop-flop." He clapped his hands, back to back, like a seal. Both Ragle and Vic watched in fascination.

"Sure," Vic said.

The two boys conferred. Then the first, puffing on his cigar and scowling, said, "Dead chuck-chuck for plenty woojy. You go joe no?"

"No," his companion put in quickly, striking him on the chest with the flat of his hand. "Baby go joe no chuck-chuck. Flop ma flop, ma flop-flop. Necktie-fellows flop-flop you-self." Wheeling, he started off, craning his neck and weaving his head from side to side.

"Wait a minute," Ragle said, as the other boy prepared to do the same. "Let's talk it over."

Both boys halted, turned and regarded him with amazement.

Then the boy with the cigar held out his hand. "Dead chuckchuck," he said.

Ragle got out his wallet. "One bill," he said. He handed the boy a dollar bill; the boy accepted it. "That's plenty.

After the boys had again conferred, the one with the cigar stuck up two fingers.

"Okay," Ragle said. "Do you have any more ones?" he asked Vic.

Digging into his pocket Vic said, "Be sure you want to go along with this."

The alternative, as he saw it, was to remain on the street corner, with no idea where they were or what to do. "Let's take a chance," he said, accepting the bills and passing them over to the boy. "Now," he said to the boys. "Let's have the plenty woojy."

The boys nodded, bowed from the waist, and stalked away. He and Vic, after hesitating, followed them.

The journey took them down damp-smelling, twisting alleys, across lawns and up driveways. At last the boys led them over a fence and up a flight of steps, to a door. One of the boys rapped on the door. It opened.

"Necktie-fellows quickly walkinachamber," the boy whispered, as he and his companion squeezed inside.

Unstable brown light filled the room. To Ragle, it appeared to be a commonplace, rather barren apartment. He saw, through an open door, a kitchen with sink, table, stove, refrigerator. Two other doors had been left shut. In the room sat several boys, all on the floor. The only furniture was a lamp, a table, a television set, and a pile of books. Some of the boys wore the robes, sandals, topknots, and bracelets. The others wore single-breasted suits, white shirts, argyle socks, oxfords. All gazed at Ragle and Vic.

"Here woojy," the boy with the cigar said. "You makum sitsit." He indicated the floor.

"What do you say?" Vic said.

Ragle said, "Can't we take the woojy with us?"

"No," one of the seated boys said. "Sniff sitinachamber."

The boy with the cigar opened a door and disappeared into the other room. After a time he returned with a bottle which he handed to Ragle. Everyone watched as Ragle accepted the bottle.

As soon as he had unscrewed the lid, he recognized it.

Vic, sniffing, said, "It's plain pure carbon tet."

"Yes," Ragle said. They've been sitting around sniffing carbon tet, he realized. This is woojy.

"Sniff," one of the boys said.

Ragle sniffed. Off and on, during his life, he had had occasion to get a noseful of carbon tet. It had no effect on him, except to make his head ache. He passed the bottle to Vic. "Here," he said.

"No thanks," Vic said.

One of the boys in a suit said in a high-pitched voice, "Necktie-fellows bedivere."

Everyone smiled cuttingly.

"That's a girl," Vic said. "That one there."

Those in suits, oxfords, shirts and argyles were girls. Their hair had been shaved right to their scalps. But, by their smaller, more delicate features, Ragle recognized them as girls. They wore no make-up. If one of them hadn't spoken, he would not have known.

Ragle said, "Pretty sissy woojy."

The room became silent.

One of the girls said, "Necktie-fellow, him play strange fruit by-an-by."

The faces of the boys had darkened. At last one of the boys arose, walked over to the corner of the room, and picked up a tall slim cloth bag. From the bag he slipped a plastic tube with holes spaced along it. He placed one end of the tube in his nose, covered the holes with his fingers, and then humming, began to play a tune on the tube. A nose-flute.

"Sweet flute-flute," one of the girls, in her suit, said.

The boy lowered the flute, wiped his nose with a small colored cloth which he drew from his sleeve, and then said in the general direction of Ragle and Vic, "How's it feel being a lunatic?"

The jargon has lapsed, Ragle thought. Now that they're sore. The others in the room, the girls especially, stared at Ragle and Vic.

"A lunatic?" one of the girls said faintly. "Really?" she asked the boy.

"Sure," the boy said. "Necktie-fellows lunatic." He smirked. But he, too, looked uneasy. "Isn't that right?" he demanded.

Ragle said nothing. Beside him Vic ignored the boy.

"You by yourselves?" another boy asked. "Or are there any more of you around?"

"Just us," Ragle said.

They stared at him wildly.

"Yes," he said. "I admit it." It seemed to command respect from them, unlike anything else. "We're lunatics."

None of the kids moved. They sat rigidly.

One of the boys laughed. "So necktie-fellows lunatic. So what?" Shrugging, he too went over and got his nose-flute.

"Strike up the flute-flute," a girl said. Now three flutes had started to whine.

"We're wasting our time here," Vic said.

"Yes," he agreed. "We better leave." He started to open the door, but as he did so, one of the boys removed the flute from his nose and said,

"Hey, necktie-fellows."

They stopped.

The boy said, "MP after you. You go outadoor, MP catch." He resumed his fluting. The others nodded.

"You know what MP do with lunatic?" a girl said. "MP give dose of cc."

"What's that?" Vic said.

All of them laughed. None of them answered. The fluting and humming continued.

"Necktie-fellows pale," a boy said, between breaths. Outside, on the stairs, a tread made the floor shake. The fluting ceased. A knock.

They have us now, Ragle thought. No one in the room moved as the door opened.

"You darn kids," a raspy voice muttered. A gray-haired elderly woman, immense in a shapeless silk wrapper, peered into the room. She had furred slippers on her feet. "I told you no piping after ten o'clock. Cut it out." She glared at them all, from half-shut eyes. At that point she noticed Ragle and Vic. "Oh," she said, with suspicion. "Who are you?"

They tell her, Ragle thought, and then she flounders back down the steps in a state of panic. And the tanks -- or whatever the MPs come in -- arrive at the bottom. Ted the driver has had plenty of time, by now. So has the waitress. So has everyone.

Anyhow, he thought, we've been out and we've seen that it is 1998, not 1959, and a war is in progress, and the kids now talk like and dress like West African natives and the girls wear men's clothing and shave their heads. And money as we know it has dropped out somewhere along the line. Along with diesel trucks. But, he thought with sudden pessimism, we didn't learn what it's all about. Why they set up the old town, the old cars and streets, kidded us for years

"Who are these two gentlemen?" the elderly woman inquired.

A pause, and then one of the girls, with a mischievous grin, said, "Looking for rooms."

"What?" the old woman said, with disbelief.

"Sure," a boy said. "They showed up here looking for a room to rent. Stumbling around. Don't you gotcha porch light on?"

"No," the old woman said. She got out a handkerchief and wiped at her soft, wrinkled forehead; under the pressure the flesh yielded. "I had retired." To Ragle and Vic, she said, "I'm Mrs. McFee. I own this apartment house. What kind of rooms did you want?"

Before Ragle could think of an answer, Vic said, "Anything will do. What do you have?" He glanced at Ragle, showing his relief.

"Well," she said, beginning to waddle back out onto the stairs, "if you two gentlemen will follow me, I'll just show you." On the stairs, she gripped the railing and swung her head to peer back at them. "Come on," she said, gasping for breath. Her face had swollen with exertion. "I've got some very attractive property. You wanted something together, the two of you?" Eying them doubtfully, she said, "Let's step into my office and I can chat with you about your employment and--" she started on down again, step by step -- "other particulars."

At the bottom, with much muttering and gasping she located a light switch; a bare bulb winked on, showing them the path that led along the side of the house to the front porch. On the porch an old-fashioned cane rocking chair could be seen. Old-fashioned even from their standpoint. Some things never change, Ragle thought.

"Right in here," Mrs. McFee called. "If you will." She disappeared into the house; he and Vic trailed after her, into a cluttered, dark, clothy-smelling living room filled with bric-a-brac, chairs, lamps, framed pictures on the walls, carpets, and, on the mantel, greeting cards by the score. Over the mantel, knitted or woven in many colors, hung a streamer with the words:

ONE HAPPY WORLD BRINGS BLESSINGS

OF JOY TO ALL MANKIND

"What I'd appreciate knowing," Mrs. McFee said, lowering herself into an easy chair, "is if you're regularly employed." Leaning forward she tugged a massive ledger from a desk, onto her lap.

"Yes," Ragle said. "We're regularly employed."

"What sort of business?"

Vic said, "Grocery business. I operate the produce section of a supermarket."

"A what?" the old woman gasped, twisting her head to hear. In its cage a black and yellow bird of some variety squawked hoarsely. "Be quiet, Dwight," she said.

Vic said, "Fruits and vegetables. Retail selling."

"What sort of vegetables?"

"All kinds," he said, with annoyance.

"Where do you get them?"

"From truckers," Vic said.

"Oh," she said, grunting. "And I suppose," she said to Ragle, "you're the inspector."

Ragle said nothing.

"I don't trust you vegetable men," Mrs. McFee said. "There was one of you around -- I don't think it was you, but it might have been -- last week. They looked good, but oh my, I would have died if I'd eaten any. They had r.a. written all over them. I can tell. Of course, the man assured me they didn't grow toptop; came from way down in the cellars. Showed me the tag that swore they grew a mile down. But I can smell r.a." Ragle thought, _Radio-activity_. Produce grown up on the surface, exposed to fallout. There've been bombings, in the past. Contamination of crops. Understanding rushed over him; the scene of trucks being loaded with food grown underground. _The cellars_. Dangerous peddling of contaminated tomatoes and melons.

"No r.a. in our stuff," Vic said. "Radio-activity," he said under his breath, for Ragle's benefit.

"Yes," Ragle said.

Vic said, "We're -- from a long distance from here. We just got in tonight."

"I see," Mrs. McFee said.

"We've both been ill," Vic said. "What's been happening?"

"What do you mean?" the old woman said, pausing in her task of flipping the pages of her ledger. She had put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses; behind them her eyes, magnified, had a shrewd, alert glint.

"What's been happening?" Ragle demanded. "The war," he said. "Will you tell us?"

Mrs. McFee wet her finger and again turned pages. "Funny you don't know about the war."

"Tell us," Vic said fiercely. "For Christ's sake!"

"Are you enlisters?" Mrs. McFee said.

"No," Ragle said.

"I'm patriotic, but I won't have enlisters living in my house. Causes too much trouble."

We'll never get a straight story from her, Ragle thought. It's hopeless. We might as well give up.

On a table rested an upright frame of tinted photographs, all of a young man in uniform. Ragle bent to examine the photographs. "Who is he?" he said.

"My son," Mrs. McFee said. "He's stationed down at Anvers Missille Station. I haven't seen him in three years. Not since the war began."

That recently, Ragle thought. Perhaps the same time that they built the--

When the contest began. Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next? Almost three years...

He said, "Any hits, down there?"

"I don't understand you," Mrs. McFee said.

"Never mind," Ragle said. Aimlessly, he roamed about the room. Through a wide arch of dark-shiny wood he could see a dining room. Solid central table, many chairs, wall shelves, glass cupboards with plates and cups. And, he saw, a piano. Wandering over to the piano he picked up a handful of the sheet music resting on the rack. All cheap popular sentimental tunes, mostly to do with soldiers and girls.

One of the tunes had the title:

LOONIES ON THE RUN MARCH

Carrying the sheet music back with him, he handed it to Vic. "See," he said. "Read the words."

Together, they read the verse under the music staff.

You're a goon, Mister Loon,

One World you'll never sunder.

A buffoon, Mister Loon,

Oh what a dreadful blunder.

The sky you find so cozy;

The future tinted rosy;

But Uncle's gonna spank -- you wait!

So hands ina sky, hands ina sky,

BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!

"Do you play, mister?" the old woman was asking.

Ragle said to her, "The enemy -- they're the lunatics, aren't they?"

The sky, he thought. The Moon. Luna.

It wasn't himself and Vic that the MPs hunted. It was the enemy. The war was being fought between Earth and the Moon. And if the kids upstairs could take him and Vic for lunatics, then lunatics had to be human beings. Not creatures. They were colonists, perhaps.

A civil war.

I know what I do, now. I know what the contest is, and what I am. I'm the savior of this planet. When I solve a puzzle I solve the time and place the next missile will strike. I file one entry after another. And these people, whatever they call themselves, hustle an anti-missile unit to that square on the graph. To that place and at that time. And so everyone stays alive, the kids upstairs with their nose-flutes, the waitress, Ted the driver, my brother-in-law, Bill Black, the Kesselmans, the Keitelbeins.

That's what Mrs. Keitelbein and her son had started telling me. Civil Defense... _nothing but a history of war up to the present_. Models from 1998, to remind me.

_But why have I forgotten?_

To Mrs. McFee he said, "Does the name Ragle Gumm mean anything to you?"

The old woman laughed. "Not a darn thing," she said. "As far as I'm concerned Ragle Gumm can go jump in a hat. There isn't any one person who can do that; it's a whole bunch of people, and they always call them 'Ragle Gumm.' I've known that from the start."

With a deep, unsteady breath, Vic said, "I think you're wrong, Mrs. McFee. I think there is such a person and he really does do that."

She said slyly, "And be right, day in day out?"

"Yes," Ragle said. Beside him, Vic nodded.

"Oh come on," she said, screeching.

"A talent," Ragle said. "An ability to see a pattern."

"Listen," Mrs. McFee said. "I'm a lot older than you boys. I can remember when Ragle Gumm was nothing but a fashion designer, making those hideous Miss Adonis hats."

"Hats," Ragle said.

"In fact I still have one." Grunting, she rose to her feet and lumbered to a closet. "Here." She held up a derby hat. "Nothing but a man's hat. Why, he got them wearing men's hats just to get rid of a lot of old hats when men stopped buying them."

"And he made money in the hat business?" Vic said.

"Those fashion designers make millions," Mrs. McFee said. "They all do; every one of them. He was just lucky. That's it -- luck. Nothing but luck. And later when he got into the synthetic aluminum business." She reflected. "Aluminide. That was luck. One of these fireball lucky men, but they always wind up the same way; their luck runs out on them at the end. His did." Knowingly, she said, "His ran out, but they never told us. That's why nobody sees Gumm any more. His luck ran out, and he committed suicide. It's not a rumor. It's a fact. I know a man whose wife worked for the MPs for a summer, and she told him it's positive; Gumm killed himself two years ago. And they've had one person after another predicting those missiles."

"I see," Ragle said.

Triumphantly, Mrs. McFee told him, "When they made him put up -- when he accepted that offer to come to Denver and do their missile predicting for them, then they saw through him; they saw it was just bluff. And rather than stand the public shame, the disgrace, he--"

Vic interrupted, "We have to leave."

"Yes," Ragle said. "Good night." Both he and Vic started toward the door.

"What about your rooms?" Mrs. McFee demanded, following after them. "I haven't had a chance to show you anything."

"Good night," Ragle said. He and Vic stepped out onto the porch, down the steps to the path, and to the sidewalk.

"Will you be back?" Mrs. McFee called from the porch.

"Later," Vic said.

The two of them walked away from the house.

"I forgot," Ragle said. "I forgot all this." But I kept on predicting, he thought. I did it anyhow. So in a sense it doesn't matter, because I'm still doing my job.

Vic said, "I always believed you couldn't learn anything from popular tune lyrics. I was wrong."

And, Ragle realized, if I'm not sitting in my room working on the puzzle tomorrow, as I always do, our lives may well be snuffed out. No wonder Ted the driver pleaded with me. And no wonder my face was on the cover of _Time_ as Man of the Year.

"I remember," he said, stopping. "That night. The Kesselmans. The photograph of my aluminum plant."

"Aluminide," Vic said. "She said, anyhow."

Do I remember everything? Ragle asked himself. What else is there?

"We can go back," Vic said. "We have to go back. You do, at least. I guess they needed a bunch of people around you, so that it would look natural. Margo, myself, Bill Black. The conditioned responses, when I reached around in the bathroom for the light cord. They must have light cords, here. Or I did, anyhow. And when the people at the market ran as a group. They must have worked in a store here, worked together. Maybe in a grocery store out here, the same job. Everything the same except that it was forty years later."

Ahead of them a cluster of lights burned.

"We'll try there," Ragle said, increasing his pace. He still had the card Ted had given him. The number probably got him in touch with the military people, or whoever it was who had arranged the town in the first place. Back again... but why?

"Why is it necessary?" he asked. "Why can't I do it here? Why do I have to live there, imagining I'm back in 1959, working on a newspaper contest?"

"Don't ask me," Vic said. "I can't tell you."

The lights transformed themselves into words. A neon sign in several colors, burning in the darkness:

WESTERN DRUG AND PHARMACY

"A drugstore," Vic said. "We can phone from there."

They entered the drugstore, an astonishingly tiny, narrow, brilliantly lit place with high shelves and displays. No customers could be seen, nor a clerk; Ragle stopped at the counter and looked around for the public phones. Do they still have them? he wondered.

"May I help you?" a woman's voice sounded nearby.

"Yes," he said. "We want to make a phone call. It's urgent."

"You better show us how to operate the phone," Vic said. "Or maybe you could get the number for us."

"Certainly," the clerk said, sliding around from behind the counter in her white smock. She smiled at them, a middle-aged woman wearing low-heeled shoes. "Good evening, Mr. Gumm."

He recognized her.

Mrs. Keitelbein.

Nodding to him, Mrs. Keitelbein passed him on her way to the door. She closed and locked the door, pulled down the shade, and then turned to face him. "What's the phone number?" she said.

He handed her the card.

"Oh," she said, reading the number. "I see. That's the switchboard for the Armed Services, at Denver. And the extension is 62. That--" She began to frown. "That probably would be somebody in the missile-defense establishment. If they'd be there this late they must virtually live there. So that would make them somebody high up." She returned the card. "How much do you remember?" she said.

Ragle said, "I remember a great deal."

"Did my showing you the model of your factory help you?"

"Yes," he said. It certainly had. After seeing it, he had gotten onto the bus and ridden downtown to the supermarket.

"Then I'm glad," she said.

"You're hanging around," he said, "to give me systematic doses of memory. Then you must represent the Armed Services.

"I do," she said. "In a sense."

"Why did I forget in the first place?"

Mrs. Keitelbein said, "You forgot because you were made to forget. The same way you were made to forget what happened to you that night when you got up as far as the top of the hill and ran into the Kesselmans."

"But it was city trucks. City employees. They grabbed me. They worked me over. The next morning they started ripping out the street. Keeping an eye on me." That meant the same people who ran the town. The people who had built it. "Did they make me forget in the first place?"

"Yes," she said.

"But you want me to remember."

She said, "That's because I'm a lunatic. Not the kind you are, but the kind the MPs want to round up. You had made up your mind to come over to us, Mr. Gumm. In fact, you had packed your briefcase. But something went wrong and you never got over to us. They didn't want to put an end to you, because they needed you. So they put you to work solving puzzles in a newspaper. That way you could use your talent for them... without ethical qualms." She continued to smile her merry, professional smile; in her white clerk's smock she could have been a nurse, perhaps a dental nurse advocating some new technique for oral hygiene. Efficient and practical. And, he thought, dedicated.

He said, "Why had I made up my mind to come over to you?"

"Don't you remember?"

"No," he said.

"Then I have things for you to read. A sort of reorientation kit." Stooping, she reached behind the counter and brought out a flat manila envelope; she opened it on the counter. "First," she said, "the January 14, 1996 copy of _Time_, with your picture on the cover and your biography inside. Complete, in so far as public knowledge about you goes."

"What have they been told?" he said, thinking of Mrs. McFee and her garble of suspicions and rumors.

"That you have a respiratory condition that requires you to live in seclusion in South America. In a back-country town in Peru called Ayacucho. It's all in the biography." She held out a small book. "A grammar school text on current history. Used as the official text in One Happy World schools."

Ragle said, "Explain the 'One Happy World' slogan to me."

"It's not a slogan. It's the official nomenclature for the group that believes there's no future in interplanetary travel. One Happy World is good enough, better in fact than a lot of arid wastes that the Lord never intended man to occupy. You know of course what 'lunatics' means."

"Yes," he said. "Lunar colonists."

"Not quite. But it's there in the book, along with an account of the origins of the war. And there's one more thing." From the folder she brought out a pamphlet with the title:

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST TYRANNY

"What's this?" Ragle said, accepting it. The pamphlet gave him an eerie feeling, the strong shock of familiarity, long association.

Mrs. Keitelbein said, "It's a pamphlet circulated among the thousands of workers at Ragle Gumm, Inc. In your various plants. You haven't given up your economic holdings, you understand. You volunteered to serve the government for a nominal sum -- a gesture of patriotism. Your talent to be put to work saving people from lunatic bombings. But after you had worked for the government -- the One Happy World Government -- for a few months, you had an important change of heart. You always did see patterns sooner than anyone else."

"Can I take these back to town?" he said. He wanted to be ready for tomorrow's puzzle; it was in his bones.

"No," she said. "They know you got out. If you go back they'll make another try at wiping out your memories. I'd rather you stayed here and read them. It's about eleven o'clock. There's time. I know you're thinking about tomorrow. You can't help it."

"Are we safe here?" Vic said.

"Yes," she said.

"No MPs will come by and look in?" Vic said.

"Look out the window," Mrs. Keitelbein said.

Both Vic and Ragle went to the drugstore window and peered out at the street.

The street had gone. They faced dark, empty fields.

"We're between towns," Mrs. Keitelbein said. "Since you set foot in here we've been in motion. We're in motion now. For a month now we've been able to penetrate Old Town, as the Seabees call it. They built it, so they named it." Pausing, she said, "Didn't it ever occur to you to wonder where you lived? The name of your town? The county? State?"

"No," Ragle said, feeling foolish.

"Do you know where it is now?"

"No," he admitted.

Mrs. Keitelbein said, "It's in Wyoming. We're in western Wyoming, near the Idaho border. Your town was built up as a reconstruction of several old towns which got blown away in the early days of the war. The Seabees recreated the environment fairly well, based on texts and records. The ruins that Margo wants the city to clear for the health of the children, the ruins in which we planted the phone book and word-slips and magazines, is a bit of the genuine old town of Kemmerer. An archaic county armory."

Seating himself at the counter, Ragle began to read his biography in _Time_.