Roger Flint Young

“ Tom Tredel could take a machined part in his big, rough hands, or a piece of sheet metal that had been fashioned with a purpose, study it briefly, turning it to observe unseen attachments, and seem to see the continuations of it that were not there to be seen. From a part he could visualize the assembly of which it must be component, and then describe the connecting assemblies until he had joined it finally and without question to Earth. Only then was he satisfied, and only then did it become an orderly component of an orderly Universe. ”

“ Big Tom Tredel was a machinist. He worked in a machine shop when he was ten years old. He worked there all his life, the last forty-five years as its owner. He was in the same shop when he was past seventy. With no schooling at all he learned to read and write while he worked. He learned all the math and common sense he ever had reason to need, at the shop or away from it.
On his own, he learned a philosophy that was his own. It began to form in the first few weeks he worked, grew with the years.
"There is no such thing as a part," he would explain, over and over, to his son, Jim. ”

“ A hundred thousand revolutionists against a world of ten billion! That would mean only one person out of every hundred thousand belonged to the Underground. No wonder they would need such a store of weapons and supplies. One hundred thousand to one!
Tredel's mind worked with the picture, now seen as a whole. ”

“ Perhaps the big opportunities wouldn't come in Jim's lifetime, but Jim could raise his boy in that field, too. He could pass on just a little more knowledge than a boy would get who was born to be a doctor, lawyer, dentist, or machinist.
Jim would get the education he needed for electronics, and all the help money and planning could provide. He'd also understand the philosophy of Tom Tredel, and he'd know something of the relationships of parts to the whole. ”

“ Tredel hesitated. Then: "This is part of a toy?"
Morton bobbed his head. "Sure. That's all they make—toys. Now, here's our new television tuner—"
Tredel replaced the stamping reluctantly and followed Morton. His mind was still on Triesting. "Toys. Exclusive."
Yet, that stamping was part of no toy. Not the kind of toys children played with, anyhow. The kind grown-ups used when they wanted to kill other grown-ups. Not the kind of weapon he'd ever seen, or heard of. But, somehow, the assembly he visualized wasn't designed by any kind of grown-ups he'd ever heard of, either. ”

“ He knew it was something big. The biggest thing in the country outside of the government itself. Blit he hadn't thought too much, after all, for he had been against only one phase at a time. There had been no sign of counteraction. It was as though he had been against the vari ous segments of an intricate machine, but one that was blind, letting him inspect it at his will, with no powers against him.
There had always been the feeling of menace, but menace without form or shape.
Now—
It couldn't be a secret movement. ”

“ There is no freedom. It is a place to be born, to live a dull, restricted working life, and die.
"You would call the movement an Underground. There are a lot of us in it. Its purpose is to bring the world back to the glories of the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth centuries.
"It was ... is ... will be a very secret movement, of necessity, lest the Dictatorship uncover some phase of it. Let us use the past tense referring to my part in it. We worked secretly to build an organization that could overthrow the Dictator and return the people, after a time, of course, to their own rule. ”

“ It would be simpler to take over . . . mind of Dictator. Understand . . . Dictator isn't human."
"I'm—This body . . . dead. Your fight now. Weapons for Guards . . . useless against Dictator. Only one thing—"
A cough, almost mental, ending in a tired, submitting sigh as even mental consciousness left. Tredel continued to kneel after knowing Del could give him no further word.
He could work to make the weapons for others to use against something not human. An organism, perhaps, a machine, a growth, a wave pattern—
Animal, vegetable or mineral? ”

“ It's designed to hold a man who sits. It's no good unless it does that. The four legs of the chair are made to come to the same plane, so it will rest evenly on the floor. And the floor is another component, meeting the walls of the house, which are built to reach the foundations.
"The foundations lead to the street, and that street connects with other streets, so that one house is connected to all the other houses in the world. And if there's an ocean in between, they're still connected."
Tom Tredel had a hundred different ways of saying the same thing, so that the boy must understand. ”

“ Tredel."
He twisted in the chair, so that he could see the desk, and the man sitting behind it.
He was a small man, with a long, lean face, graying hair, and eyes that seemed almost lidless, beady and staring. On the desk Tredel saw his pistol, and, close to it, the man's small hand.
Tredel didn't answer for a moment. Then: "No, I guess not." "My name is Del," the man behind the desk said. His voice was flat and even, the words unaccented. "Del has no meaning to you so far as nationality goes. My face, my body, are essentially North American." ”

“ One run of the ego-translator would use all available power, stolen from forty thousand main beams, and would darken, momentarily, an entire continent. Our own power lines would stand only a fraction of a second. One person could be sent back—The experiment could never be repeated, for after that once all the beams would be so arranged as to shut off automatically on sudden overloads. The Dictator would be unlikely to know what we had done, yet suspicions would be aroused.
"We couldn't build weapons in our own time. ”

“ It would be necessary to rework them slightly, fill them with our weapons, and seal them against possible discovery.
"My ego ... consciousness ... that came to this age was equipped with all required knowledge. I was educated solely to do this job. Therefore, it has been done."
It was almost impossible not to believe, Tredel found. ”

“ Trucks backed up to the dock, unloaded their cargo. There was an endless belt at the middle of the dock, disappearing into a six-foot square hole in the wall that separated the dock from the rest of the warehouse.
He heard it running now. It always ran, day and night, whether trucks were unloading or not.
Tredel had expected another way into the warehouse. Known there must be one on the dock, out of sight from his watching point. There had to be doors, perhaps at the end of the dock, so that he could get in without going the same way the endless belt did. ”

“ Tredel wasn't surprised to find that the spares on his suspect part amounted to two-hundred-andfifty a month.
It seemed ridiculous at first. A customer ordered fifty intercoms a month, and two-hundred-and-fifty spares on a part that was under no strain, had practically no chance of breaking, no need to be replaced. How could he expect to go unsuspected?
Yet, why not? Who was there to question it? Certainly Morton never had. Almost every company gets enough screwy orders so that sooner or later they stop worrying about what the customer is going to do. ”

“ It was Jim Tredel, not James, just as the father was Tom, not Thomas—a full and legal name.
"There is no such thing as a piece. There is no such thing as something that doesn't belong to something else. There is nothing, except as it fits into something else, as it's part of the whole.
"The arm of a chair now, for instance. That arm is meant to fit the back of a chair, and the seat of the chair. It is also meant to fit the forearm of the man who sits in it. ”

“ Tredel nodded.
"Seems to me you use a lot of spares."
"Spares! No, we don't use any. All the spares are for the original customer. They're probably still selling them to the Navy." Watkins grinned. "There's nothing likely to go wrong with your units that a new tube won't fix. We don't touch the boxes marked SPARES. Just reroute them to Industrial Finance."
Tredel waited until he was away from here to really let his surprise sink in. Industrial Finance! They specialized in long- and short-term loans, any amount, any amount, to business firms, factories, wholesalers, chain stores. ”

“ He went back to his own business, to living his own life. Yet, it kept nagging at his mind. Time after time he tried to put the thoughts away. One should never be a fool more than once over the same subject.
Then he went out and bought one of their Mystery Ray Pistols. He took it apart, studied it, redesigned it to his own satisfaction. He made parts for his redesign, assembled them, and tried the toy.
It worked just a little better than the product Triesting was making. Worked better and would be cheaper to produce. And it didn't make use of the stamping made by Tredel & Morton. ”

“ Now the Tredel & Morton nameplate was gone, replaced by a new one: Wilson Watkins.
He went to them directly, then, and talked to Watkins. Watkins was big, bluff, red-faced and bald. He used tissues to wipe continuously at a steady stream of sweat-moisture from his face. He coughed, agonizingly, when Tredel lighted a cigarette, and looked grateful when it was immediately put out.
"Sure, we take your intercoms, change the nameplate, and sell them out here. We've never had quite the market to go into the manufacturing ourselves. We want to carry them, so we use yours. ”

“ So far as Tredel knew they made no products directly for public consumption, but handled a good deal of work for other companies. It had been started by Thomas Menton as a place where the blind could work, earning a living solely through their own productive efforts. The workers were well paid, worked regular hours, and went to their own homes at the end of the shift.
The Institute drew on Industrial Finance warehouses for a good percentage of their work. ”

“ They were big. Orders would come down from the top, be lost in the maze of legitimate orders, never be questioned, accepted as a part of the routine. It would take someone—one man, perhaps—at the top—
It was no surprise to find Higgenson Rapid Transit was owned by Industrial Finance.
Many things would be unsurprising now. Tredel was quite sure that if he checked with the Navy he'd find that they had secured, during the war, a number of Wilson Watkins intercommunications.
Back at home he assembled the components for what he had come to think of as the T assembly. ”

“ We do not have time travel, nor anything approaching it. We had one thing only, and that was a theory worked out by the mathematicians of the Underground: That a human ego could be sent back, to any time in the past, to occupy a human body pf that period, and control it. ”

“ He stared upwards at the ceiling, hundreds of feet above him, then looked to the far walls, a thousand or more feet from him.
Then he rolled again, so that he was under the belt. Small protection—
The belt was going only one way. It was coming into the—room? What was it? The belt was coming in, but there was no return. An endless belt going one way only.
There was a lot to think about, now. Now that it was too late even to begin to think. There was no use starting with the obvious fact that he was in too deep.
What, Tredel wondered, had he thought he was up against? ”

“ One with enough followers to support this, would have enough believers to man their own factories. Their own people could be turning out such weapons as they wanted, without going through the twists and turns for production that he had encountered. ”

“ We've too much dependent upon this project.
"You see, I couldn't kill you. You must live. Even at the risk of some day remembering. I think that chance is rather strong, in view of the fact that you are to invent—or will it be discover?—the Transmatter. However—"
Tredel's thoughts swung abruptly away, back to the future. ”

“ It gave the repair man a better chance to make repairs the way they should be made.
Tredel had gone out to the little shed where the machine was installed. The operator was in the corner, reading, when he entered. The man looked up, grinned a little sheepishly, then waved his hand at the machinery. He didn't try to talk. The rivet maker was going, with its loud, rapid phut-ti-phut-phut-ti-phut as it took the long wire from the drum, punched it into rivets, then ejected them into a stock cart. Tredel understood the gesture of the operator: "Takes care of itself, Boss. ”

“ It meant, with very little shadow of doubt, that the receiving department at Triesting Company was making the inspections. Only rejected parts were going into Mystery Ray Pistols.
The stampings that met spec? Where were they going?
Tredel considered getting into the toy factory to find out. Then thought made it seem that would not be the best way. Working in a factory, in some small section of it, he would have less opportunity to discover many things than would someone on the outside. ”

“ That's why you made the first part of the trip from the warehouse and lived.
"We're about twelve hundred miles from the warehouse now. No, you didn't come that far by belt, of course. The conveyor goes into the warehouse, hits a Transmatter—a matter projector—that reassembles inside the tunnel leading to the first cave.
"I see you are willing to accept the idea of the Transmatter. You should—Never mind, however. In the first tunnel there are usually rays in operation to kill all living matter on the belt. ”

“ Hardness specified was natural for the grade of aluminum used. Holes were to be located and drilled on assembly. No finish.
Then he was guessing again. Production of Triesting stampings were five hundred a month. Approximately half were used in Mystery Ray Pistols, leaving two hundred and fifty unaccounted for. Therefore, two hundred and fifty of the record rack ends should be unaccounted for, leaving seven hundred and fifty to go into record racks.
Providing there were such record racks, and he rather imagined—
There were, all right. ”