THE SLY BUNGERHOP

William Morrison

Colmer was five feet four inches tall and as ferocious as a baby bunny, but he had a powerful voice for the size of him. He was using it now.

“You bloated battener on better men’s brains!” he thundered alliteratively. “What makes you think you know more than I do about the future?”

L. Richard de Wike fiddled nervously with the button that would summon his secretary, but refrained from pushing it. He sighed and allowed the storm of vivid invective to burst around his ears. It was a part of his job.

There are publishing-house editors who are employed because of a great sensitivity to syntax and style; de Wike had a tin ear. There are editors who hold their jobs because of their ability to make friends and attract authors; de Wike got on badly with his own mother, and all subsequent relationships were worse.

As an editor, de Wike had only one real talent and that was an ability to absorb punishment. It was enough. Let an author come in and blow his stack—no advertising! a miserable job of production! a deliberate, calculated insult from Miss Hargreave on the switchboard, who pretended not to recognize his name!—and it was de Wike who had the task of riding out the storm.

His title was Executive Editor, but it might just as well have been Whipping Boy. After half an hour’s exercise on de Wike, even the most outraged of authors found his passions spent and was then easy meat for whatever the other editors in the firm wished to do with him.

This particular storm, though, showed no signs of spending itself.

At a momentary lull, de Wike cleared his throat and said: “Now, really, Colmer. It’s only that the editorial board feels your picture of thirty-first-century life lacks a certain warmth. Surely you can understand—

“Warmth!” howled Colmer, freshly enraged. “Good God, de Wike, this is my book and my future. I don’t tell you how to cheat an author out of his reprint royalties—don’t you tell me what the thirty-first century’s going to be like! Remember Tales of Millennium! Remember what Life said in its editorial about T Is for Tomorrow! Remember—”

De Wike closed his ears and concentrated on remembering. True, Colmer was the best science fiction writer they had. He was also the most temperamental. He didn’t look the part in either case—a mousy little man with thick glasses over his watery eyes; he was blind as a bat without them. His heroes conquered galaxies and alien maidens with equal ease and daring; Colmer himself had never ventured west of the Hudson River nor north of his apartment on the Grand Concourse. But the critics loved him and the cash customers ate his books up. So—

Crash!

L. Richard de Wike pulled out the mental plugs in his ears and paid attention. Colmer had been making a point about the hereditary cretinism in the ancestry of all publishers’ men and had pulled off his glasses to gesticulate with them. He had gestured wildly and collided with the Luna Cup that rested proudly atop de Wike’s desk. The crash was the sound of the Luna Cup flying across the room and smashing into silverplated scrap against the base of the marble bust of L. Richard de Wike as a boy.

“Now, really, Colmer! De Wike was horrified. It wasn’t just the cost of the cup—that had been only thirty or forty dollars. It was the principle. That cup was awarded for the best line of science fiction books; it had been the property of de Wike’s firm for six years running and it had cost a pretty penny, indeed, to set up an organization willing to award it to them, to pay the expenses of the award dinners, to keep the judges complacently in line, year after year.

Colmer stared blindly at de Wike. He said in a furious roar, “My only pair of glasses, ruined. And you worry about your lousy cup! Oh, you’ll pay for this, de Wike!”

And he blundered blindly out of the office, crashing against a chair, a file cabinet and the half-open door.

Colmer turned in the general direction of the elevator, afraid of bumping into someone. Hamlet could tell a hawk from a handsaw, but Colmer couldn’t—not without his glasses, not from as much as a dozen feet away. Even a human figure merged into mists at six feet or so; he could tell that it was a figure, but identity, age and sex were beyond his recognition. Not that he much cared. The memory of his insults and ill treatment was too strong in his mind.

My only glasses!” he muttered searingly. “The thirty-first century!

A figure that might have been either a pink-faced baboon or a fat man in a brown suit appeared out of the mists and murmured pleasantly: This way, sir.

Thanks,” growled Colmer, and fumbled his way to the elevator.

Usually that was easy enough, even without his glasses; de Wikes office was on the top floor, and ordinarily there would be one elevator waiting there, door open, until the starter on the ground floor buzzed it to start its descent. Not this time, though. All the doors were closed.

Colmer found the handiest door, stuck his face almost into it to make sure it wasn’t another office, and located a signal button. Bending down almost to touch it with his nose to sec that it wasnt a fire alarm or Western Union signal, he put his forefinger on it and pressed. It was an elevator button, all right. It said, Up.

He waited for a second, and then the door opened and he stepped in.

Then something registered with him for the first time. De Wike’s office was on the top floor.

But the button had said Up.

He stared witheringly at the operator, a vague blue blur of uniform with a vague blonde blur of hair on top. Practical jokes?

The operator said in a pleasant soprano voice, “Wettigo mizzer?

Colmer demanded suspiciously, “What are you talking about?”

Ah,” said the pleasant soprano, and then there was a sort of flat, fleshy click, as though she had popped her bubble-gum. Where to, sir? she asked.

Where to!” he mimicked. “Where the devil can I go to? Down, of course! I want to get out of this confounded place before—”

“Sorry, sir. This car only goes up. Where would you like to stop?”

“Now stop that!” he commanded. Up! There simply was no up, not from de Wike’s office—not in this building. I want to go down. I want to go clown now. And no nonsense about it.”

“Sorry, sir. This car only goes up. Where would you like to stop?

He stared at her, but her face was no more than a pink blur under the blonde halo. He would have liked to get a better look at her—he was nearly sure all the elevator operators he’d ever seen in this building were men—but, after all, you cant put your face right up against that of a strange blonde with no better excuse than that you’ve broken your glasses. Or can you?

The pleasant soprano said again, “Where would you like to stop, sir?

Like a damned parrot, he thought scathingly, or like a machine. But what could you expect in a building tenanted by creatures like de Wike?

He chose a number at random. “A hundred and tenth,” he snapped. “And let’s get started!” That would hold her.

Sorry, sir. Were already started, but this car only goes up to ninety-nine.

Ah, he said disgustedly, ninety-nine will do.

What was the use of going along with this nonsense? And the car certainly wasnt moving; he was sure of that! He’d ridden in enough elevators to know. Why, his famous free-fall sequence in The Martian Chanukah was based on an express elevator ride from the top of the R.C.A. Building. If this were going up, he would feel heavier; if it were going down, he’d feel lighter. And all he felt was—why, he thought wonderingly, queasy. Maybe it was moving, some way or another; certainly he seemed to be having a little trouble keeping his balance.

Colmer leaned against the back of the car and glowered blindly into space. Above the closed door there were winking pink-and-green lights—like an indicator, he thought. Well, all right, they were moving. Good. Since the only way to move was down, they would soon be at the ground floor, and he would be out of the building, and then it was only a short cab-ride to the offices of Forestry, Brasbit and Hake, who could be relied on to publish his books the way he wrote them, and who had said as much just the other day …

Still, he thought, softening, de Wike wasn’t such a bad sort. As editors went, that is. And old man Brasbit was known to have some idiosyncrasies of his own—for example, there was the time he had hauled five of his own authors into court for violating the option clauses of their contracts—and, on the whole, de Wike’s firm could be counted on to be reasonable about things like that. If a better offer turned up for a particular book, they wouldn’t usually stand in an author’s way.

And this present difficulty—well, who was to know whose impression of what the thirty-first century would be like was correct? Colmer thought of it as harsh and mechanized; de Wike’s editorial board thought there would be more human softness. Well, why wasn’t that possible, too? Suppose in chapter nineteen, for instance, he had the Eugenics Committee set aside the ruling that ninth cousins couldn’t intermarry and—

Here you are, sir. Ninety-nine.

“Oh.” Colmer blinked. The door was open and the queasy-making motion had stopped. “Thanks, he said, and then, moved by a sudden impulse and the hell with what she might think of it, he put his face close to hers.

She didn’t slap him.

She didn’t draw back.

She just stood there, waiting.

Colmer was suddenly conscious of two things, one of them obvious because it was positive, the other negative and hard to trace.

The obvious thing was that this was, indeed, a young lady —or a doll. The face was a doll’s face, with bright, unwinking blue eyes, pink and almost inhumanly perfect features.

The negative thing was harder. Something was missing. And then, in a moment, it came to him. She didn’t smell.

Colmer was no lady’s man, but he had not completely isolated himself from them. Moreover, he read the magazines and—that unfailing barometer of what their readers really liked—the advertisements the magazines contained. He knew that no self-respecting American girl would be caught dead without at least a few drops of scent behind each ear and maybe some sort of perfumed liquid or spray on the hair, plus, of course, something dainty-smelling to protect her from perspiration all day or all week long.

But there was no odor whatsoever to the bright and doll-like operator of the car.

She said, inches from his face, You get out here, sir. Ninety-nine.”

A little afraid of her and more than a little perplexed, Colmer stepped out. She was pretty but vacuous and insistently repetitious. He wondered if it was worth his while to ask the elevator starter about her. The starter should be right there, under the clock, or chatting with the owner of the cigar stand—

Colmer looked blearily and wonderingly around him. No elevator starter. No cigar stand. No clock.

Wherever he was, and his myopic vision made it more than merely hard to tell, he was not in the lobby of the Pinkstone Building, where de Wike had his offices.

As far as he could tell, he wasnt in a lobby at all.

There was a droning electrical sound in the air and a faint, sneezy tang of ozone. Long, glowing corridors spread away from him on either side, and though he could see no details, he could at least see that some of the glowing light came from objects in motion along the corridors.

He peered unbelieving, shaking his nearly blind head. This was the end, he thought sourly. If this was some trick of de Wike’s—if somehow de Wike had conspired with the operator to bring him to the basement of the building or—No. None of that was possible.

Colmer reached out one hand to the wall of the corridor for support, more moral than real, and recoiled. The wall was tingling and warm; it seemed to be vibrating.

He screwed his eyes shut and opened them again. Nearsightedness was sometimes an oddly comforting affliction; by being unable to see much of the world around one without glasses, one had sometimes the impression of being wrapped in warm and fuzzy cotton batting, insulated from harm.

But not this time.

This time, Colmer didn’t like the world around him and he wanted to know it better.

He opened his eyes and placed his index fingers on the skin at the corners of the eyes, pulling them taut and Oriental. Generally that helped; deforming the eyeball by a little outside pressure sometimes partly took the place of glasses …

Well, no. Or did it? He couldn’t tell. The vaguely glowing nimbuses of light that he could see moving did lose some of their fuzziness, but they were warped and distorted into shapes be couldn’t recognize—

Or didn’t want to.

He shook his head again and felt the beginning tremor of physical fear.

It was all right for philosophers, he thought numbly, to talk of being unable to distinguish dream from reality. Maybe they didn’t know whether they were Chinese sages or blue-bottle flies, but maybe they spent their time in a daze anyhow. Not Colmer. He knew: he wasn’t dreaming. This was incredible, but it was real. You don’t have to pinch yourself to find out if you’re awake. You just know. When you stop knowing, you’re—

You’re crazy, he finished.

He put that out of his mind, though not easily; but if he was crazy, there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.

Drunk, maybe? No, he hadnt had a drink that day—de Wike, that skunk, hadn’t taken him to lunch.

Hypnotized? No, that was also pretty improbable; he had seen no one but de Wike; and de Wike, whose personality was neither electric nor even quite bearable, was not the sort of person who could hypnotize another. De Wike couldn’t hypnotize a poet, much less a science fiction novelist, always alert for plot gimmicks.

That seemed to leave insanity.

Well, Colmer thought gloomily, facing up to it, most writers were nuts anyway, or else they would be real estate salesmen, where the big money was, or editors— De Wike kept pestering him about heading their science fiction department. If that was the only remaining possibility, by all the laws of scientific evidence Colmer had painstakingly learned at the feet of such Titans as Einstein, Jeans and Sherlock Holmes, then it had to be accepted as true.

Unless—

He laughed ruefully. It was a silly thought, but there was one other possibility.

Suppose, for instance, that maybe one of the stories he made his living by was—well, true?

It was funny. More than funny—it was downright hilarious; he was beginning to drink the stuff he made himself. But just suppose, he thought, stretching the corners of his eyes in a vain attempt to see just what the devil it was he had got into, just suppose there really was such a thing as, for example, a weak spot in the paratime web. Whatever that was.

He’d used it glibly enough in stories and he had intended it to mean that certain places might be sort of gateways between the familiar world of H-bombs and TV commercials and—different worlds. Parallel worlds, in a space of more than four dimensions.

Suppose it was true? Suppose the elevator had somehow transported him into an if world or maybe another planet?

There was a strange taste at the back of Colmer’s mouth. He looked around him with effort. Wherever he looked, the walls glowed with light. The ceiling—high overhead, as far as he could tell—also glowed. The light varied in color, but his eyes, even pulled out of shape, were too inefficient to pick out details. In some places, the lights were moving.

Now what would that be? A factory, perhaps?

He suddenly got part of the answer. People, he thought. People walking. Their clothes were luminous as the walls; maybe that was the moving blobs of light.

Colmer took a deep breath and walked toward the moving lights.

The confounded things pursued their own paths. He selected a lavender pair of blobs, hurried toward them; they were gone. Ducked into a doorway? He couldn’t tell. Disappointed, he stopped short.

A pale blue glow appeared and came toward him. When it was a dozen feet away, he saw that it was in fact the approximate size and shape of a man. He cleared his throat and blocked the path.

The pale blue glow said, “You-all tucker me?”

Colmer jumped; deep-south Alabama he had not expected. He asked, “What?”

Dassita say. Tucker me?

Colmer said miserably, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I know is I pushed the up button and—well, here I am.

The man in glowing blue said something quick and impatient; Colmer couldn’t even hear him, much less understand. He turned away and called something to a glow of muted rose that was approaching down the hall. It sounded like, “Putta sly bungerhop”; there was more to it, but not that Colmer could understand.

The rose glow came closer and, in turn, revealed itself to be human.

There was a very quick, low-voiced conference, and then the rose glow said, “Que veut-vous?

French, thought Colmer. Could he be suddenly in France? He said slowly, “I only speak English. Can you tell me where I am?

Click-pop—it was the sound the elevator operator had made, like popping bubble-gum. Then the man in glowing rose said, You are in the Palace Building, on the tenth floor. Can’t you see the signs?” It was a pleasant, reassuring voice —but accented somehow. The accent was not French, whatever it was.

Colmer said doubtfully, “I can’t see much of anything. My eyes are bad and I’ve broken my spectacles.”

Ah, said the pale blue glow in a tone of satisfaction, “putta sly bungerhop.”

“Wayman,” the rose glow said, and then, to Colmer, You came in the slide?”

I came in the elevator, if thats what you mean.”

There was a silence, as though the man were studying him.

Colmer made himself say, with studied indifference, “just as a matter of curiosity, could you tell me what planet we’re on?

The man laughed, but there was a puzzled wonder in his laughter. Excuse me,” he said, “we’re rushed just now—” He began to move away.

“Please,” Colmer begged blindly. “Im serious. Are we on—uh—the planet Earth?”

“Of course!”

How far away is the Sun?”

The Sun?” Pause. “I don’t know. Ninety million miles, something like that.”

How many moons?

The man laughed again, but with a definite note of strain. He backed away. He must think I’m crazy, thought Colmer, and small wonder!

“Wait!” Colmer called. “Look, can you tell me—let’s see, can you tell me where the manager is?”

There would have to be a manager, or something like a manager, and maybe that would get him to someone who could explain things.

Manager?” The voice was doubtful. “I don’t know—oh, I see. Front office, eh? First floor.”

Thanks,” said Colmer gratefully. How do I get there?” Side drop,” the man said impatiently.

“What’s that?” Colmer begged, but the man was gone.

Colmer cursed to himself. He should have saved a few choice words, he thought, and not wasted them all on an innocent like de Wike. He had never before met such unhelpful people.

Still, maybe things weren’t so bad. Side drop. Maybe

He moved over to the side of the corridor. That might be the “side” part. He stuck his nose close to the wall and moved along until he found a pattern of lights that seemed to offer some help. The glow of lights in his nearsighted eyes nearly blinded him, but at least he could distinguish the fine details in the difference of color.

These marks were red letters against a glowing gray background—syncopated, sketchy letters that formed misspelled words: Hozontal transmit,” Noth End,” Wes End,” and —“Syd Drop.”

This was the place, all right. Now what?

He ran his eyes along the walls. No buttons to push. Apparently there was some trick to it. He gingerly felt the wall all around the glowing words “Syd Drop”

It vanished. The floor fell away from beneath him.

For a second, he was petrified, and then some invisible force steadied him and he came to a stop.

Now where was he?

There were more moving lights here than on the tenth floor and some of them were approaching him.

“Excuse me,” he said, clutching at the nearest. “I’d like to talk to the manager, please, or whatever you call him.”

CIick-pop again. A woman’s voice this time. Manager? One who manages—oh, North Transmit.”

Apparently even the females of these people were sparing of words. He sighed and stuck his face up against a wall again. This time he knew what to expect and he was not surprised when he suddenly felt himself clutched, whirled and carried rapidly in a horizontal direction. Off the “Noth Transmit,” he stared around, stretching his eyes, which were beginning to water and ache very much.

There was a large glowing patch of white light set in the middle of the gray, and a greenish glow moving toward it. He intersected the greenish glow. “Is this the manager’s office—I mean the front office?”

The greenish glow growled at him and moved away. Colmer hesitated. Then he heard voices coming from behind the glowing patch of white. He moved toward it slowly.

One of the voices was familiar. It was saying, Thing temple sly. Putta bungerhop, thing.

Colmer pulled at his aching eyes again and saw, through the square of white, two lesser glows, one violet, one a familiar blue. That was the voice. It was the man he had met back on the tenth floor, here before him.

Colmer sighed and felt his way through the glowing white door. As long as the man was going this way anyhow, why hadn’t he escorted Colmer and spared him the nearly impossible job of finding his own way here?

These people, curse their inconsiderateness!

Colmer said loudly, “I’d like to speak to the manager.

There was no click-pop this time; the man answered him at once in English. About what youre doing here? The voice was again accented, but in a way like nothing Colmer had ever heard.

“That’s right,” Colmer said doggedly. “How did I get here?”

Thats what I was going to ask you, said the manager. Do you have a permit for the temporal slide?

“The what?” Colmer gritted his teeth. “Look, I was waiting for the elevator. I pushed the button marked `Up and the elevator stopped and—

“Temple sly bungerhop!” crowed the enraging blue glow. The violet one, the manager, said, “Wait a minute. Where were’ you when this happened?

Why—the Pinkstone Building. The twentieth floor. Thats the top floor, you see, so I wondered about that button. But I had just broken my glasses and I couldnt see very well, so—well, here I am.

There was a rapid and confused babbling among the glows —more voices than two, Colmer realized, and by squeezing his eyes again, he discovered that there were at least half a dozen persons in the room. Colmer couldn’t follow a word of it, though it had a haunting familiarity, like syncopated and slurred English, until the violet-glowing manager’s voice said, “Wait a minute until everyone gets his translator on.

There was a series of tiny click-pops.

Now, said the manager, “you’d better explain. His tone was mild, but it seemed to carry a threat.

Colmer said bravely, “I’ve got nothing to explain. I never saw this place before in my life. I’ve had the devil of a time getting around—practically had to feel my way—and your people weren’t very helpful, either. They didn’t tell me a thing except how to reach this place.”

Pause. Then the manager’s voice said meditatively, “That may be just as well. What do you think, Arrax?”

A silvery glow just within the range of Colmers vision said, “But how did he find the temporal slide?”

“What about that?” the manager demanded. “What were you doing just before that?

“Why—” Colmer stopped, remembering. “I was talking to my publisher. We’d been discussing a new book of mine—Im a science fiction writer, you see. The book was about the thirty-first century. I said the thirty-first century was likely to be a harsh, mechanistic—

“Out loud?”

What? Of course. How else?

“Ah,” said the distant bass rumble of the silvery glow in a satisfied tone. “And the monitor—”

“Yes,” agreed the manager, less satisfied. “The monitor vectored him in to the temporal slide and he pushed the slide button up. The question is, now what?” He paused. “You,” he said to Colmer, “when did all this happen?”

“When?” Colmer was completely at sea. “About one-thirty, I’d say. I remember it was time for lunch and—

You misunderstand me. What year?”

“What year?” Colmer blinked and a great light seemed to come over him. “Oh,” he said faintly. “Temporal slide, eh? What year? You mean—”

“Of course,” said the manager. “You got on the temporal slide, going up. You’re in the ninety-ninth century.”

There was a ragged series of click-pops and another argument raged in the slurred and sketchy English. Colmer didn’t mind; it gave him a chance to catch his breath.

What an opportunity! What an incredible, gorgeous, million-billion-trillion-dollar opportunity! The ninety-ninth century and here he was smack in the middle of it! Let de Wike argue with him now—here was his chance to write science fiction that would live and sell and make his name famous forever!

There was a sudden local concentration of chatter at the door and then a new figure in a glowing suit—orange, this time—joined the party. He approached Colmer, close enough so that Colmer could actually see the face. It was a man, not young, not old, no taller than Colmer himself, with a wise and patient and studious face. He poked something glittering and gleaming under Colmer’s eyes. Flaring white light danced out and blinded Colmer for a second.

“Hey!” cried Colmer. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

Click-pop; a series of click-pops. The manager’s voice soothed, “Ogratz is a doctor. You understand, we have to have a doctor look you over.”

“Oh, all right,” Colmer grumbled. Listen, I’ve got a million questions! My year was 1961. Now what happened right after that?”

The booming silver-glow voice said, “The recommendation for the monitor, then, is to replace it with a human.”

Colmer interrupted: “Excuse me! Now, after 1961, when was the next war? Did the Russians—hey! Ouch!”

It was bright green light this time and it stung. The doctor said something under his breath in a satisfied tone.

The manager’s voice said, “Arrax, the whole thing was a stupid error; I’ve always said that robot monitors were a false economy. We’ll have to change the code word. Century isn’t any good now. Maybe we ought to replace the slide operators, too, but we can table that. As for this one—

You mean me?” Colmer yelped. “Look, get this fellow away from me, will you? I want to know about the H-bomb. Was it ever used? Did Nasser get—”

“We’ll vote yes on the monitors, said Arrax. “I leave the arrangements to you. What about him, Doctor?

The doctor stepped away from Colmer, scratching his cheek. “Well,” he said meditatively, “it checks. Fovea central, bilateral occlusions. Efficiency? I’d say fifteenth percentile rods, twenty-fifth cones—oh, yes. Without his glasses, he’s just about blind. Couldnt have seen a thing.”

Colmer began to grow irritated. “I told you I didn’t see anything. Now why dont you get me some glasses as a starter? I’d like a look at what technological wonders you people—”

“Shall I? asked the doctor.

The manager chuckled. “Why not?

“Thanks, said Colmer, gratified as the dim orange glow that was the doctor bent and did something with what seemed to be the equivalent of a little black bag. “Now about my questions. Do you think you could spare me someone who speaks English to act as—

“I have the report,” the manager said, ignoring him. “The people who spoke to him told him nothing of any consequence.

“Good,” said the silvery glow named Arrax. “Take care, then.

“Wait a minute!” Colmer cried. That sounds as if you were going to send me back! Please, just let me stay a little while, won’t you? I promise not to be any trouble! Listen, there must be lots of things I can do for you—bring you up to date on the twentieth century, maybe, or help your historians check facts, or—”

“Certainly.” soothed the manager. “Of course.” ” He advanced on Colmer and took his arm. “If you’ll just come this way, we’ll take care of everything. Into this little door—that’s right. And—here, don’t forget these—” He pressed something into Colmers hand.

There was a sudden flare of polychrome light, brighter than light had ever been before… .

The world went black, and spun, and then sharpened again. Colmer, ready for anything, fearful of everything, reached out, touched a wall, braced himself, turned—

A man was approaching him.

“Arrax?” he called fearfully. “Dr. Ogratz? Manager?”

“Why, Colmer!” said the voice, pleased. “I thought you’d gone.”

It was L. Richard de Wike.

Colmer slumped against the wall. It was all over. It was too late.

“Heavens, but he has mellowed fast,” thought L. Richard de Wike. And it was true. Colmer had acted very peculiarly —what was that nonsense of looking for an Up button at the elevators?—but now he seemed quiet, mild, reasonable—almost dazed.

Look,” said de Wike eagerly, suppose we go out to lunch? We’re reasonable men. It doesn’t matter about the Luna Cup—and I’m sure we can work something out about your book. After all, I’m no expert on what’s really going to happen centuries from now—”

Colmer turned and looked at him through his new glasses —funny, thought de Wike; I could have sworn he said those others were his only pair. And these were odd-looking, rose-pink, of a most unusual shape.

“Thats true,” said Colmer at last. “And, damn it, neither am I.”

De Wike blinked happily. “Why, now, that’s the way to look at it, Colmer, he said. “Let’s go to lunch now, shall we? Just you and I, eh?

Colmer paused.

He looked around him, with the sharpness of vision the new glasses had brought. Here was where he had pressed the “Up button (no button, no scar, no shadow now to mark where it had been). There was where the monitor had met him, triggered by the code-word “century.” A secret recess in the wall? An imagined figure, born of suggestion and gullible neurones?

Whatever it was, there was no trace of the monitor or its hiding place there, either. No trace of anything. No chance that, ever again, Colmer would find the key and unlock the door to the future, where—surely this time!—forewarned and careful, he would find some way to stay there long enough to learn.

No chance?

Colmer drew a deep breath, his first breath of hope and—greed? Whatever it was, greed or nobility, that makes men want to know what is forbidden to them.

He said, “Sure, de Wike. He said, “Certainly, de Wike, lets talk things over. The two of us understand each other, after all! And he said, Oh, by the way, de Wike—I just happened to think, de Wike. Haven’t you kept asking me to head up your science fiction book department?

And so it was that Colmer, rose-pink glasses and all, came to occupy the office next to de Wike’s, and the refurbished Luna Cup now sits atop his desk.

He’s a good editor. He understands the problems of the writer; he sympathizes deeply; he comprehends fully; and the contracts he signs give an author a full fifteen per cent less than any other editor in the firm has ever been able to manage.

His employers are well satisfied, except for his one little idiosyncrasy.

Editors do their work over the lunch table and maybe so, in a way, does Colmer; but what his colleagues see is a man who brings a brown-paper bag of sandwiches to the office every morning, and never steps out of the place at noon; and every day from twelve to one-fifteen, stands in the corridor outside his door, where once a blurred figure led him to a button.

He has a sandwich in one hand and a dictionary in the other; and it is munch and read, munch and read, for seventy-five minutes every day; and if there is a word that will unlock the monitor’s help again, it begins with no letter up through the letter R.

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