Ralph Williams

“ She laughed suddenly, as the full implications of what he had said struck her. "The past? Oh, poor Smith. And poor Brown. A long way in the past, where there are no people at all, just dinosaurs and snakes—and they hate such things so." She laughed helplessly, tears rolling down her cheeks. "And poor George, and poor Moirta. All with their clever little plans, their tricks to out-smart each other. Everyone has outsmarted everyone else, and we all lose now, don't we?"
Dolan stared at her narrowly. "We all lose?"
She nodded—
The senior gun runner had been quite confident of victory. ”

“ Dolan shook his head helplessly. "I never thought. You seemed so ... so...."
"So human?" her lips curled wryly. "I was made to seem human, twentieth-century human, it was part of my job. I'm not. And soon, I shall not even seem human, without the things I need—things that won't even be invented for ten thousand years—cancer inhibitors, blood clotting agents, insulin surrogate, vaccines, serums, antibiotics—why, I can't even eat your food!" ”

“ He put his arms about her, and she came into them, supple but not limp, as a beautifully trained dancer follows a lead. For a very long moment they remained thus, lip to lip and breast to breast, the yearning and response in each rising in swift even balance.
And then Brown opened the door, casting a shaft of light past them in the dusk.
"Oh, Moirta," he called. "Are you there? Could you come here a moment, please—"
The two male gun runners had stepped outside the cottage while Moirta served Dolan his dinner. ”

“ Dolan said. "Let me think about it a minute." He was not really much surprised at the disclosure. In terms of the technology he knew, the machine was almost completely meaningless. From the beginning, there had only been two possibilities—either it was the product of an alien culture, or it was an elaborate hoax. He had already decided it was not a hoax. He had not, he realized, allowed himself to explore fully the implications of the other possibility. He did so now, and some of the implications were—intriguing. ”

“ Emotion is my trade, as electronics is yours. Electrons, I have been told, have a certain freedom of choice, or appear to have. Yet you know with quite high probability which choice they will make under the influence of certain physical fields. In the same way, I know what choice to expect of a man or a woman, under the influence of certain emotional fields."
"You didn't want me, though, you just wanted a technician. The first man would have done just as well for you, if he had 'reacted.'"
"That is true. And I am the first woman you have ever made love to?" ”

“ It is important in their trade to be suspicious. It would not be wise to let them think we are avoiding them."
"OK, I suppose not," he acknowledged glumly. He rose and followed her down the path.
Like all true artists, Moirta tended to submerge herself completely in her role, a failing which the senior gun runner recognized and allowed for in his calculations.
In the following days, Dolan held her hand often, and kissed her sometimes, and talked with her frequently, and took her in his arms for short periods; but at the crucial moment Smith or Brown always casually appeared upon the scene. ”

“ Dolan frowned. Private work, money no object, very secret—there were implications to this offer which he did not like.
On the other hand—
His eye strayed to the young woman who sat quietly beside the man, silently exercising her specialty. The plastic surgeons of her era had done a beautiful and nearly perfect job on her body; but bone-deep, in ways an observant man could sense, she was still not a twentieth century woman. In a city full of women who made a profession of being young and handsome, she too was young and handsome, but different. ”

“ There are certain anomalies, the displacement effect for example—but that is immaterial, for all practical purposes we can move at will to and from any time in our past, though not into our future—when the machine is working.
"Naturally, such time travel must be kept secret, if it were not, several undesirable consequences might arise. It is very closely regulated, and may be used only for bona fide historical research by responsible persons."
He looked inquiringly at Dolan. "I am not really sure I can tell you much more about the machine, I am not a technician, as you know. ”

“ He still had no idea why the time translator worked, but he was beginning to know quite a bit about how it worked, in the sense of functional operation, the input/output relations of the black boxes. A time came when he could have activated the machine by making a few minor connections.
He did not do so.
With the knowledge that he had the technical problem whipped, some of his urgency faded. He could take time to amplify and clarify his knowledge. Quite probably the time translator could never be duplicated by twentieth century technology. ”

“ The gun runners were not technicians, they were specialists in other fields. They pulled and prodded uncertainly here and there, pushed the buttons again.
Nothing happened.
The senior gun runner, a man who wore in this century the appearance of a quiet, gray-haired professional man, and who wore in any century the habit of command, came to a decision. He spoke in their own language, a language time had pruned to telegraphic brevity:
"If tamper, make worse. Electronics technicians this era. Use."
The second man raised an eyebrow. "Knowledge adequate? Time travel not simple." ”

“ Dolan hesitated, studying both Moirta's and the men's positions, and then nodded sullenly.
"I thought there might be," Brown said with satisfaction. "Mr. Smith, help Mr. Dolan up to the machine."
Dolan reached out unsteadily, leaning on Smith, and reversed two connections. "That's it," he mumbled.
"Thank you, Mr. Dolan. Now, Mr. Smith, if you will just carry Mr. Dolan over there into the corner, well away from the machine, and immobilize him—no, no, just temporarily. We may still need him again, Mr. Dolan is a very tricky sort of person." ”

“ Brown shook his head. "The purpose of the machine must remain secret," he said firmly. "We think the trouble may be superficial, some minor thing an expert could quickly repair; and we wish you to work on it from that viewpoint, without inquiring into its purpose."
"I see," Dolan said noncommittally. The whole business was screwy. For two cents, he thought—
He glanced at the girl. She sat quietly on a chair, hands folded demurely in her lap, watching him, practising her specialty. ”

“ Brown nodded. "Of course. Excuse me. I will be more explicit. Mr. Smith wants to kill you and get you out of the way immediately; he does not trust you. I do not trust you completely myself, I do not trust anyone completely; and for that exact reason I feel it would be stupid and dangerous to kill you. I am quite sure you will have booby-trapped the machine against just such a contingency."
"Booby-trapped?" Dolan asked blankly.
"Yes," Brown said patiently. "I mean the machine will not work satisfactorily if you are killed. It will blow up, burn out, or some such thing. ”

“ Smith and I have discussed the matter," Brown said, "and we have decided to be completely frank with you." He paused, watching Dolan. "The machine is a time translator," he said.
Dolan looked back at him, poker-faced. "So?"
Brown frowned slightly. Perhaps he had expected more of a reaction. "We are from a time very far in your future," he continued. "The machine has the apparent effect of transferring our physical bodies to this age. ”

“ Dolan considered it briefly and decided to pass it up for now.
"I am a technically trained person," he said, "an expert as you say; and I can tell you this: machinery, electronic gear, anything like that, is built to do a specific job. Before you can design, build, or repair such equipment, the very first thing you have to know is: what do you want it to do? For all I know, this machine here may just be an overgrown coffee percolator. ”

“ She did not bother to practise her specialty on her colleagues—they were, for one thing, almost immune, they had grown up in a civilization where her specialty was over-crowded. For another, in the nature of her specialty, she found it hard to concentrate on more than one subject at a time. "Doing best," she said indifferently.
Brown studied her shrewdly. "Supplies short," he said mildly. "One-half larger than one-third. Each must pay way."
His voice was mild, but Moirta understood the threat quite clearly. "Suggestions?" ”

“ The girl frowned thoughtfully and shook her head. "Nothing lights up, moves, buzzes, hums, spins around. When the machine works, it ... well, it just works, and that's all." She studied him with troubled eyes. "You are an expert, it seems to me an expert should be able to look at a machine and see what parts are faulty, isn't that true? Why must you know what the machine does?"
Dolan leaned back against the machine and lit a cigarette. ”

“ In your time there are women who get things from men by seeming to promise more than they intend to give, for simulating emotions they do not feel. You think I am one of those ... no, please don't interrupt ... I am not. In my time there are no such women, people understand each other too well, they are too hard to fool. ”

“ In his work, Dolan kept running into reminders of the first technician, and the matter bothered him. The man seemed to have been making progress, and surely he would not have been such a fool as simply to refuse to work, the message he had left showed he understood quite clearly his danger. He asked Moirta about this, and got another shock.
"That was a mistake," she said. "We did not fully understand your world then. In our time, medical science is very exact. ”

“ There are no incomplete men or incomplete women. We assumed that because this man ... person ... looked like a man, and seemed to be a man, he was one. However, we have since discovered that this is not always true, and it was not in this case. We could not allow him to work on the machine, since we could not predict his reactions adequately."
Not predict his reactions? There was an obvious corollary—
Dolan's lips tightened. "But you can predict mine, is that it?"
Moirta ran her fingers lightly along the back of his hand, studying his knuckles with the tips of them. ”

“ He examined the wreckage of the time translator curiously, tried and failed to make sense of the erratic pattern in which their cargo had accompanied them, the absence of Moirta. He straightened and looked about. There were no dinosaurs, the range of the time machine did not extend that far; but over on a ledge of rock a large cat with hyper-trophied eyeteeth squatted, switching its stub of a tail, startled by their sudden appearance.
He sighed and turned toward the other gun runner. "Old, old, time," he said. He nodded toward the cat. "Bad for us. ”

“ Killers in the house at the end of River Road.
This was the house at the end of River Road.
Brown had stopped speaking and was looking at him questioningly.
"Uh, yeah," Dolan said hastily. "Well, that still doesn't tell me too much." He carefully rolled the length of wire and hung it on a projecting piece of the time translator. His hands were damp, and he was sure he was moving awkwardly and unnaturally. Dolan was not an easily flustered person, but things were coming a little fast—mysterious aliens, time machines, and now—murder, or hint of it. ”

“ They came from an old ingrowing world which had never reached the stars, where there were only men and their works, no blade of grass or micro-organism or sparrow which did not directly serve men. In their time, hereditary traits which had meant untimely and certain death in earlier times had persisted and multiplied. Immunities and instincts which had fitted men to live with tigers and streptococci, and seek their food in the wilderness, had atrophied. ”

“ The gun runners did not want the mass weapons of their own day, they wanted selective weapons which could be used for private murder. In the mid-twentieth century, the level of technology was such that well-made and reliable weapons were available ”

“ Instead, there are women like me, women who are peculiarly attractive to men, and peculiarly susceptible to men—honestly so. Believe me, it is not an easy way to make a living. A woman has only so much honest emotion to give. ”

“ He grinned down at her. "In this time, the boy always gets the girl, and they live happily ever after. It's a natural law, like gravitation.
"Brown and Smith aren't infallible. They may know people, but I know machines. Don't forget, the time translator is the key, the big item in this mess. And that's in my bailiwick."
Dolan went back to work.
He left it to Brown to satisfy the people at the shop, and apparently Brown satisfied them, they sent along the equipment and supplies he requested without comment. ”

“ In a matter such as this, they do nothing without a purpose."
"Well, that's fair enough," Dolan said grimly. "As long as they aren't actually mind-readers, they can guess all they want to."
Moirta shook her head. "It is not guessing, that is what I have been trying to tell you. Whatever you plan, they will have foreseen it, perhaps not the exact thing you wish to do; but all the possible things you can do, and the most likely thing you will do.
"Really, it will not be so bad, you will finish the translator, and we will go, and you will forget us, and ... ”