The Lost Bradbury (17 page)

There was no possible way for any typewriter to get there. That was bad enough, like finding a camel in the bathtub. But even at that, an ordinary camel you could take. It was the green ones with wings that really bothered you.

The typewriter was like that. It was big, and made of something that looked like polished silver, and it shimmered like a fish under water. It was so streamlined that it flowed into itself with an eerie feeling of motion. There was a sheet of fine crisp paper in the roller, and a lot of unfamiliar crimson keys on the board.

He closed his eyes, shook his head, and looked again. It was still there. He said aloud:

“I have not been drinking. My name is Steve Temple. I live at 221 East 9th Street, and I owe three weeks rent. I have not had any dinner.”

His voice sounded all right. It made sense.

The typewriter didn’t, but it stayed there just the same.

He took a deep breath and walked around it, carefully. It had four sides. It looked solid, except for the shimmer. It squatted calmly on the dingy rug and let its beautiful streamlining flow around on itself, looking as though it had grown there with the building.

“All right,” he said to the typewriter. “You’re here. And you’re scaring hell out of me, if it makes you any happier. Now what?”

It began to type, all by itself in the middle of the floor.

He didn’t move. He couldn’t. He crouched, frozen, watching the bright keys flash and strike with nobody touching them.

“Calling the past! Calling the past! Calling the past!…!”

It was like water hitting an oiled window and running off, not leaving a mark. He heard a chime ringing softly and he saw the words. No wires—no operator—but it worked. Wireless. A radio-controlled typewriter.

He picked it up like it was scalding him and set it on the table.

“Calling the past! Calling the past! Press down on stud marked SENDING and type reply. Press down on stud marked Sending—”

Steve felt something move. It was his hand, all by itself.
Press the stud.
He pressed.

The machine stopped and waited.

Silence. There was too much of it, too suddenly. Temple felt the blood rise in his cheeks, burn his ears. It was so very quiet that he finally had to make noise.

So he typed:

“Every good boy does fine. Every good boy does fine. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country—”

Slamming, the typewriter jumped as if hit by fists. The chime jangled. Control jerked away from Temple.

“Hello!” the machine exclaimed. “You’re alive there, then. I was afraid I’d reach past the era of typewriters…. Hitler didn’t kill you, then—you’re fortunate!”

“Hell, no,” Temple retorted, loud. “Hitler’s been dead more than twenty years!” Then, realizing that speaking was impractical, he said on paper: “This is 1967. Hitler’s dead,” and then he stared at his fingers, kicking himself, wondering what had made him put it down.

Typewriter keys gleamed, moving.

“Who are you, quick! Where are you located?”

Temple replied, “May I ask the same question? Is this a gag?” He snapped his fingers, inhaled hard. “Harry—is that you, Harry? It must be! Haven’t heard from you since ‘47—you and your practical jokes!”

The RECEIVING stud clicked coldly. The SENDING stud spunged up.

“Sorry. Not Harry. Name is Ellen Abbot. Female. 26 years old. Year 2442. Five feet ten inches tall. Blonde hair, blue eyes—semantician and dimentional research expert. Sorry. Not Harry.”

Steve Temple tried to blink the words away. It didn’t work.

The machine shuddered. Keys, carriage, platinum and scarlet keys dissolved as if showered in some instant-acid. It wasn’t there any more. It was gone. And a moment later it slipped back, shining and hard under his hands. It came back bursting out its message quick and dark:

“I’ve got to get this over to you in a hurry, and yet to do it correctly it should take a long period of carefully worded propaganda. But there isn’t time. Idle talk in a dictatorship like Kraken’s is fatal. I’ll give you the simple, down to the bone facts. First, though, explain your background, the exact date and other associative details. I
must
know. If you can’t help me, I’ll withdraw the machine, refocus it in another era. Please reply—”

Steve wiped sweat off his face. “Name, Steve Temple. Profession—writer. Age 29, feel like a hundred. Date: Monday evening, January 10th, in the year 1967. I must be crazy.”

Crazy or not, the typewriter made words:

“Good. I’ve focused on the hairline of the Crisis! There’s a lot to be done before January 14th, Friday of your year. My sand’s running out. Hold on. The Guard is coming, escorting Kraken. They’re taking me from this cell to Trial. I think they’ll give the verdict tonight. So—tomorrow night: same time, I’ll push contact with you again. I don’t dare withdraw the machine. Chances of refocusing it to you are bad—Standby—”

That was all.

The machine just sat there, shining white and saying nothing. Temple touched the keys. They were frozen hard.

He stood up, his eyes spread, and put his last cigarette in his mouth, forgetting to light it. Then he looked around for his hat, found it on his head, and locked himself out of the room quick.

He walked in the park. That was nothing new, walking in the park, but it helped; looking at stars, people and boats on the water. He walked until he got drunk-tired and he wasn’t scared any more. Then he went back.

Without turning on the lights, he undressed and went to bed. An old trick. That way you imagined you were stopping over for a night at the Biltmore.

Suddenly he switched on the lights. Looking across the room dazedly, minus his glasses, he saw the typewriter.

He turned the lights out again, pulled the covers way up over his ears.

“Sorry. Not Harry. Name is Ellen Abbott. Year 2442. Sorry. Not Harry.”

He shivered.

Somebody had kicked him in the head, for no reason. At least that’s how it felt when he woke up the next morning. The room had a disturbed, electric feel to it, as if someone had drifted in, hovered over him, and vanished instantly just before his eyes opened.

The door was locked on the inside.

He saw the typewriter. He sat down again, very slowly.

Stubborn dream, that. It persisted in being real. Yet he had completely forgotten it during sleep, and he didn’t know why he should forget something so dramatically shoved into his life.

Dressing, tidying up the room, he pretended to be interested in everything but the machine. It was a poor job of acting. Stalling as long as he dared, he exited reluctantly to hunt jobs. Pausing outside the door, he listened. Not a sound but his own breathing in his mouth. Then—he remembered. Tonight. Ellen Abbott had said it. Tonight. Same time.

He walked off to find work that didn’t exist.

He must have walked a lot; his feet were swollen. He must have talked to dozens of people and had dozens of jobs refused him, and somewhere along the line he boarded a bus, because, that evening coming home he found an unused transfer in his hand. He found a dollar bill, too. Borrowed, he didn’t know where, and he didn’t care. Getting to his room fast was the main thing.

It was the first time he had ever rushed to that room or any room. Funny. The apartment house door swung ahead of him. He walked up rickety steps with his head down. Halfway up, he stopped. His face came up, jerking, all white afire and alert.

There it was. A faint singing of chimes. And beating as quickly as his heart, the sounds that were the typewriter keys.

It had been years since he had tried leaping steps three at a try. He learned how to do it all over again.

Closing the door he stiffened when he saw it. Like a man deep under clear thick water he walked across the room in dreamy slow motion. Clicking off somewhere, the typewriter sounded, but it was right in front of him:

“Hello—Steve Temple…!”

He held himself in. Fingers twitching indecisively on the keys, he shut his jaw, hard. Then he let himself go and it was easy.

“Hello, Ellen,” he wrote. “HELLO, ELLEN!”

In the first few quiet moments after contact was sealed, Temple reluctantly sketched in his life for her. Cramped, grey years dragging on like men slogging it out in a chain gang. Nights of looking at a door, waiting for a knock, for someone to come and be his friend. And nobody ever there but the landlord whining about his rent. His only friends lived between book-covers: a few of them had grown out of his typewriter before it was pawned. That was all.

Then Ellen Abbott spoke:

“If you’re going to help me, and you are the only one I depend on now to mold the future, Steve Temple, you deserve a complete explanation. My father was Professor Abbott. You’ve heard of him, of course. No, how blind of me. How would you know him; you’ve been dead five hundred years—”

Steve swallowed nervously. “I feel quite alive, thanks. Continue.”

Ellen Abbott went on:

“It’s a paradox. I’m unborn to you, and therefore unbelievable. And you’re dead and buried five centuries ago, and yet the whole future of the world revolves about we two impossibilities, and especially about you if you agree to act in our behalf.

“Steve Temple, you will have to believe what I say. I can’t expect instantaneously blind obedience, but there are only three days more for you to decide and act and if you refuse at the last moment, all my talking will be for nothing when I could have been pleading with someone else in your age. I must convince you of my utter sincerity. There’s a job for you to do—”

Temple saw the next few words and everything got dark and uneven inside himself. The small room got cold, and Steve didn’t move, he sat and stared at the words as they appeared:

“You have a job to do for me—no, not for me, but for all of us in the future.”

The next thing that came into focus was a cup of coffee in his right hand. Contracting his throat muscles, coffee scalded his stomach. The Greek was there. You could smell him, fat and greasy behind his beanery counter. Something white flashed: the Greek’s teeth.

“Hello, Greek.” Temple’s lips barely moved. “How did I get here?”

“You walked in, just like you done every night last three years. You oughta take it easy. You look like a ghost. What’s up?”

“Same thing. Is it foggy tonight?”

“Don’t
you
know?”

“Me?” Steve chafed hands that were rimmed with cool moisture. “Oh, yeah.
Sure.
Sure, it’s foggy. I forgot.” He drew a trembling breath, and it felt like the first one he had had in hours. “Funny thing, Greek—five hundred years from now they’ll do away with fog….”

“Chamber of Commerce pass a law?”

“Weather control,” said Steve. Control. He thought the word over and over again, and added. “Yeah. All kinds of control. A dictatorship, maybe.”

“You think so?” Pursing his brows, the Greek leaned heavy on the counter. “You think, the way things work now, we get into one?”

“Five hundred years from now,” said Steve.

“Hell. Who cares? Five hundred years!”

“Who cares? Maybe I do, Greek. I don’t know yet.” Steve stirred his coffee for a while. “Look, Greek, if you’d known Hitler for what he’d be forty years ago, and you’d had the chance, would you have killed him?”

“Sure! Who wouldn’t? Look what a mess he made?”

“Think. Think about all the guys who grew up with Hitler, though. Some one of them must have guessed what he’d be. Did
they
do anything about it? No.”

The Greek shrugged heavily.

Temple slumped over his coffee for a moment. “How about me, Greek? Would you kill me, knowing I’d be tomorrow’s tyrant?”

The Greek made laughter. “
You
—another Hitler?”

Temple smiled twistedly. “See! You don’t believe I could endanger the world. That’s how Hitler got away with it. Because he was a little guy long before he was a big guy, and nobody pays any attention to the little guys.”

“Hitler was
different.”

“Was he?” Steve tightened up. “A paperhanger? Different? That’s funny. Nobody recognizes a murderer until it’s too late.”

“Okay. Suppose I bump you off,” offered the Greek. “So, how do I prove you’re the next dictator. You’re dead, so you’re no dictator. It don’t work out. They toss me in the clink.”

“That’s the whole thing.” Temple was looking at a picture hung on the wall. A campaign advertisement of a healthy, pink faced man with crisp white hair and eyes that were blue and open. Under the picture was a label: J. H. McCracken for Congress, 13th District.

Things got black. Trembling violently, Temple rose from his seat, looked about wildly, passed his hands in front of his eyes and yelled it: “Greek! What’s the date? Quick! I forget! I keep forgetting important things!”

It sounded as
if the Greek was in an echo chamber. “Five o’clock in the morning. January 11th. Ten cents, please.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah.” Steve stood there, swaying, and still staring at that picture. The one of J. H. McCracken, electee to Congress. “I’ve still got time, then. Three days before they kill Ellen—”