Up The Line

7.

Sam set my dial. I pulled up my pants. He touched his hand lightly to the left-hand side of his abdomen and vanished. I described an arc from my hip to my navel on my own belly with two fingertips. I didn’t vanish. Samuel Hershkowitz did.

He went wherever candle flames go when they’re snuffed, and in the same instant Sam popped back into view beside me, and the two of us stood looking at each other in Hershkowitz’ empty office. “What happened?” I said. “Where is he?”

“It’s half-past eleven at night,” said Sam. “He doesn’t work overtime, you know. We left him two weeks down the line when we made our shunt. We’re riding the time-winds now, boy.”

“We’ve gone back two weeks into the past?”

“We’ve gone two weeks up the line,” Sam corrected. “Also half a day, which is why it’s nighttime now. Let’s go take a walk around the city.”

We left the Time Service building and rose to the third level of Under New Orleans. Sam didn’t seem to have any special destination in mind. We stopped at a bar for a dozen oysters apiece; we downed a couple of beers; we winked at tourists. Then we reached Under Bourbon Street and I realized suddenly why Sam had chosen to go back to this night, and I felt the tingle of fear in my scrotum and started suddenly to sweat. Sam laughed. “It always gets the new ones right around this point, Jud-baby. This is where most of the washouts wash out.”

“I’m going to meet myself!” I cried.

“You’re going to see yourself,” he corrected. “You better take good care not to meet yourself, not ever, or it’ll be all up for you. The Time Patrol will use you up if you pull any such trick.”

“Suppose my earlier self happens to see me, though?”

“Then you’ve had it. This is a test of your nervous system, man, and you better have the juice turned on. Here we go. You recognize that dumb-looking honky coming up the street?”

“That’s Judson Daniel Elliott III.”

“Yeah, man! Ever see anything so stupid in your life? Back in the shadows, man. Back in the shadows. White folks there, he ain’t smart, but he ain’t blind.”

We huddled in a pool of darkness and I watched, sick-bellied, as Judson Daniel Elliott III, fresh off the pod out of Newer York, came wandering up the street toward the sniffer palace on the corner, suitcase in hand. I observed the slight slackness of his posture and the hayseed out-turning of his toes as he walked. His ears seemed amazingly large and his right shoulder was a trifle lower than his left. He looked gawky; he looked like a rube. He went past us and paused before the sniffer palace, staring intently at the two nude girls in the tank of cognac. His tongue slid forth and caressed his upper lip. He rocked on the balls of his toes. He rubbed his chin. He was wondering what his chances were of spreading the legs of one or the other of those bare beauties before the night was over. I could have told him that his chances were pretty good.

He entered the sniffer palace.

“How do you feel?” Sam asked me.

“Shaky.”

“At least you’re honest. It always hits them hard, the first time they go up the line and see themselves. You get used to it, after a while. How does he look to you?”

“Like a clod.”

“That’s standard too. Be gentle with him. He can’t help not knowing all the things you know. He’s younger than you are, after all.”

Sam laughed softly. I didn’t. I was still dazed by the impact of seeing myself come up that street. I felt like my own ghost. Preliminary disorientations, Hershkowitz had said. Yes.

“Don’t worry,” said Sam. “You’re doing fine.”

His hand slipped familiarly into the front of my pants and I felt him make a small adjustment on my timer. He did the same to himself. He said, “Let’s shunt up the line.”

He vanished. I followed him up the line. A blurry half instant later we stood side by side again, on the same street, at the same time of night.

“When are we?” I asked.

“Twenty-four hours previous to your arrival, in New Orleans. There’s one of you here and one of you in Newer York, getting ready to take the pod south. How does that catch you?”

“Crosswise,” I said. “But I’m adapting.”

“There’s more to come. Let’s go home now.”

He took me to his flat. There was nobody there, because the Sam of this time slot was at work at the sniffer palace. We went into the bathroom and Sam adjusted my timer again, setting it 31 hours forward. “Shunt,” he said, and we went down the line together and came out still in Sam’s bathroom, on the next night. I heard the sound of drunken laughter coming from the next room; I heard hoarse gulping cries of lust. Swiftly Sam shut the bathroom door and palmed the seal. I realized that I was in the next room sexing with Betsy or Helen, and I felt fear return.

“Wait here,” Sam said crisply, “and don’t let anybody in unless he knocks two longs and a short. I’ll be right back, maybe.”

He went out. I locked the bathroom door after him. Two or three minutes passed. There came two long knocks and a short, and I opened up. Grinning, Sam said, “It’s safe to peek. Nobody’s in any shape to notice us. Come on.”

“Do I have to?”

“If you want to get into the Time Service you do.”

We slipped out of the bathroom and went to sightsee the orgy. I had to fight to keep from coughing as the fumes hit my unready nostrils. In Sam’s living room I confronted acres of bare writhing flesh. To my left I saw Sam’s huge black body pounding against Helen’s sleek whiteness; all that was visible of her beneath him was her face, her arms (clasped across his broad back) and one leg (hooked around his butt). To my right I saw my own prior self down on the floor entwined with busty Betsy. We lay in a kamasutroid posture, she on her right hip, I on my left, her upper leg arched over me, my body curved and pivoted at an oblique angle to hers. In a kind of cold terror I watched myself having her. Although I’ve seen plenty of copulation scenes before, in the tridim shows, on the beaches, occasionally at parties, this was the first time I had ever witnessed myself in the act, and I was shattered by the grotesqueness of it, the idiot gaspings, the contorted features, the sweaty humpings. Betsy made bleating sounds of passion; our thrashing limbs rearranged themselves several times; my clutching fingers dug deep into her meaty buttocks; the mechanical thrustings went on and on and on. And my terror ebbed as I grew accustomed to the sight, and I found a cold clinical detachment stealing over me, and my fear-born perspiration dried and at last I stood there with my arms folded, coolly studying the activities on the floor. Sam smiled and nodded as if to tell me that I had passed a test. He reset my timer once more and we shunted together.

The living room was empty of fornicators and free of fumes. “When are we now?” I asked.

He said, “We’re back thirty-one hours and thirty minutes. In a little while now, you and I are going to come walking into the bathroom, but we won’t stay around to wait for that. Let’s go up on top of the town.”

We journeyed uplevel to Old New Orleans, under the starry sky.

The robot who monitors the comings and goings of the eccentrics who like to go outdoors made note of us, and we passed through, into the quiet streets. Here was the real Bourbon Street; here were the crumbling buildings of the authentic French quarter. Spy-eyes mounted on the lacy grillwork balconies watched us, for in this deserted area the innocent are at the mercy of the depraved, and tourists are protected, through constant surveillance, against the marauders who prowl the surface city. We didn’t stay long enough to get into trouble, though. Sam looked around, considering things a bit, and positioned us against a building wall. As he adjusted my timer for another shunt, I said, “What happens if we materialize in space that’s already occupied by somebody or something?”

“Can’t,” Sam said. “The automatic buffers cut in and we get kicked back instantly to our starting point. But it wastes energy, and the Time Service doesn’t like that, so we always try to find a nonconflicting area before we jump. Up against a building wall is usually pretty good, provided you can be fairly sure that the wall was in the same position at the time you’re shunting to.”

“When are we going to now?”

“Shunt and see,” he said, and jumped. I followed.

The city came to life. People in twentieth-century clothes strolled the streets: men wearing neckties, women with skirts that came down to their knees, no real flesh showing, not even a nipple. Automobiles crashing along emitting fumes that made me want to vomit. Horns honking. Drills digging up the ground. Noise, stench, ugliness. “Welcome to 1961,” Sam said. “John F. Kennedy has just been sworn in as President. The very first Kennedy, dig? That thing up there is a jet airplane. That’s a traffic light. It tells when it’s safe for you to cross the street. Those up here are street lights. They work by electricity. There are no underlevels. This is the whole thing, the city of New Orleans, right here. How do you like it?”

“It’s an interesting place to visit. I wouldn’t want to live here.”

“You feel dizzy? Sick? Revolted?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re allowed. You always feel a little temporal shock on your first look at the past. It somehow seems smellier and more chaotic than you expect. Some applicants cave in the moment they get into a decently distant shunt up the line.”

“I’m not caving.”

“Good boy.”

I studied the scene, the women with their breasts and rumps encased in tight exoskeletons under their clothing, the men with their strangled, florid faces, the squalling children. Be objective, I told myself. You are a student of other times, other cultures.

Someone pointed at us and screamed, “Hey, looka the beatniks!”

“Onward,” Sam said. “They’ve noticed us.”

He adjusted my timer. We jumped.

Same city. A century earlier. Same buildings, genteel and timeless in their pastels. No traffic lights, no drills, no street lights. Instead of automobiles zooming along the streets that bordered the old quarter, there were buggies.

“We can’t stay,” said Sam. “It’s 1858. Our clothes are too weird, and I don’t feel like pretending I’m a slave. Onward.”

We shunted.

The city vanished. We stood in a kind of swamp. Mists rose in the south. Spanish moss clung to graceful trees. A flight of birds darkened the sky.

“The year is 1382,” said the guru. “Those are passenger pigeons overhead. Columbus’ grandfather is still a virgin.”

Back and back we hopped. 897. 441. 97. Very little changed. A couple of naked Indians wandered by at one point. Sam bowed in a courteous way. They nodded affably to us, scratched their genitals, and sauntered on. Visitors from the future did not excite them greatly. We shunted. “This is the yearA.D. 1,” said Sam. We shunted. “We have gone back an additional twelve months and are now in 1B.C. The possibilities for arithmetical confusion are great. But if you think of the year as 2059B.P., and the coming year as 2058B.P., you won’t get into any trouble.”

He took me back to 5800B.P. I observed minor changes in climate; things were drier at some points than at others, drier and cooler. Then we came forward, hopping in easy stages, five hundred years at a time. He apologized for the unvarying nature of the environment; things are more exciting, he promised me, when you go up the line in the Old World. We reached 2058 and made our way to the Time Service building. Entering Hershkowitz’ empty office, we halted for a moment while Sam made a final adjustment on our timers.

“This has to be done carefully,” he explained. “I want us to land in Hershkowitz’ office thirty seconds after we left it. If I’m off even a little, we’ll meet our departing selves and I’ll be in real trouble.”

“Why not play it safe and set the dial to bring us back five minutes later, then?”

“Professional pride,” Sam said.

We shunted down the line from an empty Hershkowitz office to one in which Hershkowitz sat behind his desk, peering forward at the place where we had been — for him — thirty seconds earlier.

“Well?” he said.

Sam beamed. “The kid has balls. I say hire him.”