Time Travel Omnibus, page 392
She gave me a bleak look.
“Two of them came into my room. A man and a girl. They wouldn’t go. They laughed at me. Then they started—acting as if I weren’t there. I—I couldn’t stay there, Jerry.”
Then, not altogether unaccountably, she burst into tears.
From then on it stepped up. There was a brisk if one-sided engagement on Jefferson next morning. Miss Dotherby, who was quite Daniel City’s most respected D.A.R., was outraged in every lifelong principle by the appearance of four mop-headed girls who were giggling on the corner of Chestnut. Once she’d retracted her eyes and got her breath back, she knew her duty. She gripped her umbrella like it was her Grandad’s sabre, and charged. She sailed right through them, smiting right and left, and when she turned round they were laughing at her. She swiped wildly through them again, and they kept on laughing. Then she started babbling, so somebody called an ambulance to take her away.
By the end of the day the town was full of mothers crying shame and men looking staggered, and the mayor and the police were snowed under with protest and demands that somebody do something about it.
The trouble seemed thickest in that district that Jimmy had originally marked out. You could meet them elsewhere, but in that area you were liable any and every minute to encounter a gang, the men in coloured shirts, the girls with amazing hair-do’s and more amazing decorations on their shifts, sauntering arm-in-arm out of walls, and wandering indifferently through automobiles and people alike. They’d pause anywhere to point out things and people to one another and go into helpless roars of silent laughter. What tickled them most was when folks got riled with them. They’d make signs and faces at them until they got them tearing mad—and the madder the funnier. They ambled as the spirit took them through stores, banks, offices and homes without a care for the raging occupants. Everybody started putting up “Private: Keep Out” signs: that amused them a lot.
You couldn’t seem to be free of them any place in the area though they appeared to be operating on levels that weren’t always the same as ours. In some places it looked as if they walked on the ground or the floor, but in others they were inches above it, and elsewhere you’d find them moving along as if they were wading through the solid surface. It was very soon clear that they could not hear us any more than we could them, so there was no getting at them that way. No notice seemed to do anything but whet their curiosity.
After three days of it there was chaos. In the worst affected parts there just wasn’t any privacy any more. At the most intimate moments they were liable to wander through visibly giggling and guffawing. Folks began to complain the way Anna had, only more extensively. It was all very well for the police to announce that there was no danger, that the visitants couldn’t do anything, so the best way was simply to ignore them. There are times and places when giggling bunches of youths and maidens take more ignore-power than the average guy’s got. It sent even a placid fellow like me wild at times, while the women’s leagues of this-and-that, the purity promoters and the like were living in a constant state of blown tops.
The news getting around hadn’t helped, either. Newshounds of all breeds burnt the roads into town. They overflowed the place. Pretty well every street was snaked with leads to movie cameras, television cameras, and microphones, while the press photographers were having the snappy-shot time of their lives, and, being solid, were more nuisance than the visitants themselves.
But there was more to come. Jimmy and I happened in on the first demonstration of it. We were on our way to lunch doing our best to ignore visitants, as instructed, by walking through them. Jimmy was subdued. He’d given up theories on account of his facts had kind of submerged him. Just short of the lunch-bar we noticed that there was some commotion further along Main Street seemingly coming our way, so we waited for it. After a bit it emerged from a tangle of stopped cars further down and came towards us at some seven or eight miles an hour. Essentially it was a platform like the one Sally and I had seen at the Crossing that Sunday, but this was de luxe. There were sides to it glistening with new paint, red, yellow and blue, enclosing seats set four abreast. Most of the passengers were young, though there was a sprinkling of middle-aged men and women dressed in a soberer version of the same fashions. Behind the first platform followed half a dozen others. We read the lettering on their sides and backs as they went past:
PAWLEY’S PEEPHOLES ON THE PAST—GREATEST INVENTION OF THE AGE
HISTORY WITHOUT TEARS—FOR $10.00
SEE HOW GREAT GREAT GRANDMA LIVED
YE QUAINTE OLDE 20th CENTURY EXPRESSE
SEE LIVING HISTORY IN COMFORT—QUAINT DRESSES—OLD CUSTOMS
EDUCATIONAL! LEARN PRIMITIVE FOLKWAYS—LIVING CONDITIONS
VISIT ROMANTIC 20th CENTURY—SAFETY GUARANTEED
KNOW YOUR HISTORY—GET CULTURE—$10.00 TRIP
BIG MONEY PRIZE IF YOU IDENTIFY OWN GRANDAD/MA
Most of the occupants of the vehicles were turning their heads this way and that in gog-eyed wonder interspersed with spasms of giggles. Some of the young men waved their arms and addressed us with witticisms to the admiration of their companions. Others leaned back, bit into large yellow fruits, and munched. They cast occasional glances at the scene, but most of their attention was paid to the contents of their left arms. On the back of the next to last car was lettered:
WAS GREAT GREAT GRANDMA AS GOOD AS SHE SAID? SEE THE THINGS YOUR FAMILY HISTORY DIDN’T TELL YOU
and on the final one:
SPOT THE FAMOUS BEFORE THEY GOT CAREFUL—THE REAL INSIDE DOPE MAY WIN YOU A BIG PRIZE!
As the procession moved away it left the rest of us looking at one another kind of stunned. Nobody seemed to have much left to say just then.
I guess that show must have been something in the nature of a grand premiere. After that you were liable almost any place about town to come across a platform labelled:
HISTORY IS CULTURE—BROADEN YOUR MIND
or:
KNOW THE ANSWERS ABOUT YOUR ANCESTORS
with full good-time loads aboard, but I never heard of a regular procession again.
The Mayor’s Office was tearing what was left of its hair and putting up big notices left, right and centre about what was not allowed to “tourists”—and giving them a big laugh. The thing grew more embarrassing. A lot of those on foot got to coming close up and peering at your face, and then consulting some book or piece of paper they were carrying—after which they looked disappointed and annoyed with you, and moved on. I calculated there was no prize at all for finding me.
Well, work has to go on. We couldn’t fix to do anything about it, so we had to put up with it. Quite a pack of families moved out of town for privacy and to spare their daughters from getting the new ideas about dress, and so on, but most of us had to keep on. Pretty near everyone you met those times looked dazed or scowling—except, of course, the “tourists.”
I called for Sally one evening about a couple of weeks after the trolley procession. When we came out of the house there was a ding-dong going on down the road. A couple of girls with heads that looked like globes of gilded basketwork were scratching the living daylight out of one another. There was a guy standing by looking mighty like a proud rooster, the rest were whooping things on. We went the other way.
“It just isn’t like our town any more,” said Sally. “Our homes aren’t our homes any more. Why can’t they go away and leave us in peace, damn them! I hate them!”
But outside the park we saw one little chrysanthemum head sitting on apparently nothing at all, and crying her heart out. Sally softened a little.
“Maybe they are human,” she said. “But why do they have to turn our town into a goddam Amusement Park?”
We found a bench and sat on it, looking at the sunset. I wanted to get her away out of it.
“It’d be grand to be off up in the hills now,” I said.
“It’d be lovely, Jerry,” she sighed.
I took her hand, and she didn’t pull it away.
“Sally, darling—” I began.
And then, before I could get any further, two tourists, a man and a girl, had to come and anchor themselves in front of us. I was angry. You might see the platforms any place, but you reckoned to be free of walking tourists in the park, where there was nothing to interest them.—Or shouldn’t have been. These two seemed to find something, though. They stood staring unabashed at Sally. She took her hand out of mine. They conferred. The man opened a folder he was carrying, and took a piece of paper out of it. They looked at the paper, then at Sally, then back at the paper. It was too much to ignore. I got up and walked through them to see what the paper was. There I had a surprise. It was a piece of the Daniel City News; obviously from a very ancient copy indeed. It was badly browned and tattered, and to keep it from falling to bits entirely it had been mounted inside some thin, transparent plastic. I looked where they were looking—and Sally’s face looked back at me from a smiling photograph. She had her arms spread wide, and a baby in the crook of each. I’d just time to see the headline: “Twins for City Councillor’s Wife,” when they folded up the paper, and made off along the path, running. I reckoned they’d be hot on the trail of one of their goddammed prizes—and I hoped it would turn around and bite them.
I went back, and sat down again beside Sally. That picture had kind of spoiled things—“Councillor’s Wife” ! Naturally she wanted to know what I’d seen on the paper, and I had to sharpen up a few lies to cut my way out of that.
We sat on awhile; feeling gloomy, saying nothing.
A platform went by labelled:
PAINLESS CULTURE—
GET EDUCATED IN MODERN COMFORT
We watched it glide through the railings and into the traffic.
“Maybe it’s time we moved?” I suggested.
“Yes,” agreed Sally, dully.
We walked back towards her place, me wishing that I’d been able to see the date on that paper.
“You wouldn’t,” I asked her casually, “you wouldn’t happen to know any councillors?”
She looked surprised.
“Well, there’s Mr. Falmer,” she said, kind of doubtfully.
“He’d be a—a youngish man?” I inquired, off-handedly.
“Why, no. He’s ever so old. As a matter of fact, it’s his wife I know really.”
“Ah!” I said. “You don’t know any of the younger ones?”
“I’m afraid not. Why?”
I put over a line about a situation like this needing young men of ideas.
“Young men with ideas don’t have to be councillors,” she remarked.
There again, like I said, Sal doesn’t make a lot of bases on logic, maybe; but she’s her own ways of making a guy feel better.
Next day found indignation right up the scale again. It seems there had been an evening service going on in All Saints Church. The preacher was just drawing breath to start his sermon when a platform labelled:
WAS GT. GT. GRANDAD ONE OF THE BOYS?—
OUR $10.00 TRIP MAY SHOW YOU
floated in, and slid to a stop in front of the lectern. The preacher stopped dead. For some seconds he stood regarding it in silence. Then he crashed his fist down on his desk.
“This,” he boomed, “this is intolerable. We shall wait until this object is removed.”
He remained motionless, glaring at it. And the congregation glared with him.
The tourists on their platform had an air of waiting for the show to begin. When nothing happened, they started passing round bottles and fruit to while away the time. The preacher kept right on glaring. When still nothing happened, the tourists began to get bored. The young men tickled the girls, and the girls giggled them on. Several of them began to urge the man at the end of their craft, after a bit he nodded, and the platform slid away through the west wall.
It was the first point our side had ever scored. The preacher mopped his brow, cleared his throat, and then extemporised the sermon of his life, on the subject of “The Cities of the Plain.”
But no matter how many and how influential the tops that were blowing, there was a big zero getting done about it. There were schemes, of course. Jimmy had one of them: it concerned either ultra-high or infra-low frequencies thatwere going to shudder the projections of the tourists to bits. Maybe something along those lines might have been worked out sometime, but right then it wasn’t getting any further than being an idea. It’s darned difficult to know what you can do about what is virtually a movie portrait in three dimensions, unless you can find some way of cutting its transmission. All its functions are going on not where you see it, but some place where the origin is. So how do you get at it? What you are actually seeing doesn’t feel, doesn’t eat, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t sleep . . .?
It was while I was considering what it does do that I had my idea. It struck me all of a heap—so simple. I grabbed my hat in one, and took myself round to the Mayor’s Office.
By this time, a daily procession of highly carbonated citizens, threateners, and screwballs, had them acting pretty leary there, but I worked through at last to a man who got interested, though doubtful.
“No one’s going to like it,” he said, uneasily.
“No one’s meant to like it. But it can’t be much worse than this—and it’s likely to do something for trade, too,” I pointed out.
He brightened a bit at that.
“The Mayor has his restaurants,” I went on. “And I don’t see why the whole town shouldn’t make a bit on it, too, at that.”
“I’ll grant you’ve got a good why-not there,” he admitted. “Okay. We’ll put it up to him.”
For all of three days we worked hard on it. On the fourth we went into action. Soon after daylight there were gangs out on all the roads into town setting up crossing-barriers at the city limits, and when they had those fixed, they put up big white boards lettered in red:
DANIEL CITY
THE COMMUNITY THAT LOOKS AHEAD
COME AND SEE
BEYOND THE MINUTE—NEWER THAN TOMORROW SEE
THE WONDER CITY OF THE AGE
TOLL (Non-Residents) 25c.
The same morning the television concession was revoked, and papers all through the State and beyond carried large display ads:
UNIQUE!—COLOSSAL!—EDUCATIONAL!
DANIEL CITY
presents the only authentic
FUTURAMIC SPECTACLE
WANT TO KNOW:
WHAT YOUR GREAT GREAT GRANDFATHER WILL WEAR?
HOW YOUR GREAT GREAT GRANDSON WILL LOOK?
HOW CUSTOMS WILL CHANGE?
NEXT CENTURY’S STYLES?
WHAT A HUNDRED YEARS WILL DO?
COME TO DANIEL CITY AND SEE FOR YOURSELF
IT’S THE OFFER OF THE AGES
THE FUTURE for 25c.
We reckoned that with the publicity there’d been already we’d not need more detail than that—though we ran a few more specialised ads some places:
DANIEL CITY
GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS
THE SHAPES TO COME
SAUCY FASHIONS—CUTE WAYS
ASTONISHING—AUTHENTIC—UNCENSORABLE
GLAMOUR GALORE FOR 25c.
and so on. We took enough space to get mentions, too, in the news columns on account of those who like to think they are doing things for sociological, psychological, and other toney reasons.
And they came.
There’d been quite a few running into town to see the sights before, but now they learned it was something worth charging money for, the figures went up steeply—and the more they went up, the gloomier the City Treasurer got on account of we’d not made it 50c. or even a dollar.
Within a couple of days it got so that we had taken over all vacant lots, and some fields further out, for car parks. When it came to evenings, that wasn’t enough, and folk were parking far enough out for us to run a bus service to bring them in. The streets were so full of crowds stooging around and greeting any of Pawley’s platforms with whistles, jeers and raspberries that the regular citizens mostly stayed indoors, and kind of smouldered there.
The lists of protests at the Mayor’s Office grew longer each day, but he didn’t have the time for that to worry him a lot, being so busy arranging special convoys of food and beer for his restaurants. Nevertheless, a few days of it started me wondering whether Pawley wasn’t going to see us out, after all. The tourists didn’t like it much, one could see, but that hadn’t done a lot to curb their habits of wandering about all over the place, and now, in addition, we had trippers in their thousands whooping it up with pandemonium for most of the night. Tempers all round were getting short enough for real trouble to break.
Then, on the sixth night when several of us had begun to wonder whether maybe we oughtn’t to leave town for a while, the first crack showed—a man in the Mayor’s Office rang me up to say he’d seen several platforms with empty seats on them.
The next night I went down to one of their regular routes to see for myself. There was a well-seasoned crowd round there, jostling, shoving and exchanging cracks. I didn’t have long to wait. A platform slid out on a slant through the front of Al’s Place. The label on it read:
CHARM AND ROMANCE OF 20th CENTURY—$7.50
It was good to see Pawley cutting his rates—and there were half a dozen empty seats at that.
The arrival of the platform brought a well-supported Bronx cheer, and a shrilling of whistles. The conductor remained indifferent as he steered through the people filling the street. His cargo looked less certain. Part of it did its best to play up. It giggled, and made motions of returning slap for slap and grimace for grimace with the crowd to start with. Maybe it was as well the tourist girls couldn’t hear the things the crowd was shouting to them, but plenty of the gestures were clear enough. I’d say it couldn’t have been a lot of fun gliding straight into the men who were making them. By the time the platform was clear of the crowd and disappearing into Hogan’s Store pretty well all the tourists had given up pretending it was, and some of them were looking kind of sick. By the expressions on one or two of the faces there I reckoned Pawley might be going to have a tough time explaining the culture aspect of it to a watch committee some place.
