H. L. Gold

“ What a living he could make doing cigarette commercials on TV! "I can see you turn into one of these cases, Lou."
He looked startled for a second, but then crushed out the butt carefully so he could watch it instead of me. "Yeah? How so?"
"You've been too scared by poverty to take a chance. You know you could do all right acting, but you don't dare giving up this crummy job. Carry that far enough and you try to stop spending money, then cut out eating, and finally wind up dead of starvation in a cheap room." ”

“ My eyes aren't that bad; I was peering at the ink. It was dark, unfaded. I pointed it out to Lou.
"From not being exposed to daylight much," he said. "They don't haul out the bankbooks or money very often, I guess."
"And that adds up for you? I can see them being psychotics all their lives ... but not senile psychotics."
"They hoarded, Mark. That adds up for me."
"Funny," I said, watching him maneuver his cigarette as if he loved the feel of it, drawing the smoke down and letting it out in plumes of different shapes, from rings to slender streams. ”

“ I thought I'd found a loophole in his explanation: "You said people were sent back to the past to buy treasures, besides stealing them."
"I did," he agreed. "They were provided with currency of whatever era they were to visit."
I felt my forehead wrinkle up as my theory fell apart. "Then they could buy food. Why should they have died of malnutrition?"
"Because, as May Roberts herself told you, nothing can exist before it exists. Neither can anything exist after it is out of existence. ”

“ I was too relieved that I hadn't killed May Roberts; destroying anything that beautiful, however evil, would have stayed with me the rest of my life. There was another reason for my relief—if I'd killed her and left the evidence for Lou to find, he'd never help me. ”

“ I jumped into it, found a basement door and stayed inside, pressed against the wall, quivering with tension and sucking air like a swimmer who'd stayed underwater too long.
Even after I got my wind back, I wasn't anxious to go out. The place could have been cordoned off, with the police, the army and the navy all cooperating to nab me.
What made me think so? Not a thing except remembering how puzzled our ancient Egyptian would have been if he got arrested in the subway for something everybody did casually and without punishment in his own time—spitting! ”

“ When I came to a fork and wondered which way to go, there was another sign, then another pointing to still more farther on.
I followed them to the middle of the city, a big square with a park in the center and shops of all kinds rimming it. The only shop I was interested in said: electrical appliances.
I went in.
A neat young salesman came up and politely asked me if he could do anything for me. I sounded stupid even to myself, but I said, "No, thanks, I'd just like to do a little browsing," and gave a silly nervous laugh. Me, an actor, behaving like a frightened yokel! ”

“ She was right about one thing: she didn't need any of that to make money with; her method was plenty good enough, using the actual records of the past to invest in stocks, bet on sports—all sure gambles.
But those starvation cases....
"Do I get any guarantees?" I demanded.
She looked annoyed. "I'll need you for the data. You'll need me to turn it into manufacture. Is that enough of a guarantee?"
"No. Do I come out of this alive?"
"Mr. Weldon, please use some logic. I'm the one who's taking the risk. I've already given you more money than you've ever had at one time in your life. ”

“ Lou turned around from the window. He'd stood there all that time without once coughing or scratching or doing anything else that might have distracted me. "He knows his business, Mark."
"But he doesn't know old people."
"What is it you don't get?" he prompted, helping me dig my way through a characterization like the trained Stanislavskian he was—and still would have been if he hadn't gotten so sick of the insecurity of acting that he'd become a cop. "Can't money be more important to a psychotic than eating?"
"Sure," I agreed. "Up to a point. Undereating, yes. Actual starvation, no." ”

“ The old people had died of starvation somehow with all that dough in cash or banks. I didn't give a hang if the time travel was responsible, or something else was. I wasn't going to be found dead in my hotel and have Lou Pape curse my corpse because I'd been borrowing from him when, since 1931, I'd had a little fortune put away. ”

“ I rubbed my pipe disgruntledly against the side of my nose to oil it. "Ain't this a beaut of a problem? I wish I liked problems. I hate them."
Lou had to get back on duty. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do except worry my way through this tangle. He headed back to Headquarters and I went over to the park and sat in the sun, warming myself and trying to think like a senile psychotic who would rather die of starvation than spend a few cents for food.
I didn't get anywhere, naturally. There are too many ways of beating starvation, too many chances of being found before it's too late. ”

“ I must have fallen."
"On one hand? No, Mr. Weldon. May Roberts was greatly upset by the incident; she was afraid you would realize why the hamburger had turned to dust—and why the old people died of starvation. All of them, not just a few."
He paused, giving me a chance to understand what he had just said. I did, with a sick shock.
"If I ate your food," I said shakily, "I'd feel satisfied until I was returned to my own time. But the food wouldn't go along with me!"
lundell nodded gravely. "And so you, too, would die of malnutrition. The foods we have given you existed in your era. ”

“ A Stanislavskian works out everything about a character right up to the point where a play starts—where he was born, when, his relationship with his parents, education, childhood, adolescence, maturity, attitudes toward men, women, sex, money, success, including incidents. The play itself is just an extension of the life history created by the actor. ”

“ What's the other reason you didn't bother with the future?"
"You can't bring anything from the future to the present that doesn't exist right now. I won't go into the theory, but it should be obvious that nothing can exist before it exists. You can't bring the box I want, only the technical data to build one."
"Technical data? I'm an actor, not a scientist."
"You'll have pens and weatherproof notebooks to copy it down in."
couldn't make up my mind about her. I've already said she was beautiful, which always prejudices a man in a woman's favor, but I couldn't forget the starvation cases. ”

“ Weldon, you first had to decide that we represented no greater menace than May Roberts. Please believe me, we don't."
So he knew about that, too!
"All right, I'll take my chances," I gave in resignedly. "Where does a guy find a place to eat in this city?"
t was a handsome restaurant with soft light coming from three-dimensional, full-color nature murals that I might mistakenly have walked into if I'd been alone, they looked so much like gardens and forests and plains. ”

“ It was no wonder I couldn't find a restaurant or food store or truck garden anywhere—food came up through pneumatic chutes in each building, I'd been told on the way over, grown in hydroponic tanks in cities that specialized in agriculture, and those who wanted to eat "out" could drop into the restaurant each building had. Every city had its own function. ”

“ I knew it and I concentrated on shutting the gate on her.
"You'd like to be rich, wouldn't you, Weldon?" she asked through the mesh.
"I can be," I said. "I have the machine. I can send people into the past or future and make myself a pile of dough. Only I'd give them food to take along. ”

“ She opened the drawer of a work table and pulled out a stack of envelopes held with a rubber band. She put the stack at the other edge of the table.
"Would you rather have all cash or bank accounts or both?"
My heart began to beat. She was where the money came from!
ou trying to tell me you're a philanthropist?" I demanded.
"Business is philanthropy, in a way," she answered calmly. "You need money and I need your services. To that extent, we're doing each other a favor. I think you'll find that the favor I'm going to do for you is a pretty considerable one. ”

“ I lit the pipe I'd learned to smoke instead of cigarettes—old men seem to use pipes more than anything else, though maybe it'll be different in the next generation. More cigarette smokers now, you see, and they'd stick to the habit unless the doctor ordered them to cut it out.
"Did you ever try starving for weeks, Lou?" I asked.
"No. Did you?"
"In a way. All these cases you've been taking me on for the last couple of years—I've tried to be them. But let's say it's possible to die of starvation when you have thousands of dollars put away. ”

“ Even if there had been a restaurant, what would I have used for money?
Now I got the whole foul picture. She had sent old people back through time on errands like mine ... and they'd starved to death because they couldn't buy food!
No, that wasn't right. I remembered what I had told Lou Pape: anybody who gets hungry enough can always find a truck garden or a food store to rob.
Only ... I hadn't seen a truck garden or food store anywhere in this city.
And ... I thought about people in the past having their hands cut off for stealing a loaf of bread. ”

“ Let's stick with the ancient Egyptian I mentioned a while back, the one ordered to sneak a mummy out of the Metropolitan Museum. Maybe that'll make it clearer.
The poor guy has no money he can use, naturally, and no idea of what New York's transportation system is like, where the museum is, how to get there, what visitors to a museum do and say, the regulations he might unwittingly break, how much an ordinary citizen is supposed to know about which customs and such. ”

“ Being able to speak English doesn't make much difference; not knowing what's regarded as right and wrong, and the unknown consequences, are enough to panic anybody.
That doesn't make it clear enough.
Well, look, take the electrical appliances in that store; that might give you an idea of the situation and the way it affected me.
The appliances must have been as familiar to the people of that time as toasters and TV sets and lamps are to us. But the things didn't make a bit of sense to me ... any more than our appliances would to the ancient Egyptian. ”

“ Anybody who's willing to eat that stuff can stay alive on nearly nothing a day. Nearly nothing, Lou, and hunger is a damned potent instinct. I can understand hating to spend even those few cents. I can't see going without food altogether."
e took out a cigarette; he hadn't until then because he didn't want to interrupt my concentration. "Maybe they get too weak to go out after old bread and meat bones and wilted vegetables."
"It still doesn't figure." I got up off the shaky chair, my joints now really stiff from sitting in it. "Do you know how long it takes to die of starvation?" ”

“ She reached for a cigarette on the vanity and used a lighter with her free hand. The big mirror gave me another view of her lovely body, but that was beginning to interest me less than the gun. I thought of making a grab for it. There was too much distance between us, though, and she knew better than to take her eyes off me while she was lighting up. "I'm not afraid of professional detectives, Mr. Weldon. They deal only with facts and every one of them will draw the same conclusions from a given set of circumstances. I don't like amateurs. They guess too much. They don't stick to reality. ”

“ There was no way to escape the babe with the beautiful hard face, gorgeous warm body and plans for me that all seemed to add up to death. I didn't try any more. I went on making deposits, mailing orders to her stock brokers, and putting down bets that couldn't miss because they were all past history.
I don't even remember what the last one was, a fight or a race. I hung around the bar that had long ago replaced the speakeasy, until the inevitable payoff, got myself a hamburger and headed out the door. ”