A Century of Progress Read online

“Clear now, chief.” Ginny’s voice, quavering but functional, came through a small external speaker in the APC’s armored flank. “My scan shows they’re all dead over there. Are you getting back aboard?”

  “Thanks, Gin,” Norlund said. There was a smell of cooked meat in the air, and Jerry was being sick. Temporarily, Norlund hoped. He himself had been inoculated by the events of twenty combat missions. “Some of us are getting on. Just stay alert in there, and give us a minute to do some things out here.”

  Jerry recovered quickly. Between him and Norlund they loaded the two casualties of the crew into the vehicle. There was no place to put the bodies but in seats; Ginny was going to have a grim trip back. Norlund rifled Andy’s and Mercury’s pockets for the local money that they had just been issued, but the bills were burned into unusability.

  Ginny looked on, pale-faced in the concentrated interior lighting.

  Norlund draped blankets over the bodies. Then he thumped his hand on the inner surface of the hull. “We can’t use this vehicle here in Thirty-four, and we can’t just leave it. I don’t know what Mercury’s method of hiding it or returning it would have been. So I want you to take it back to home base, Ginny. If the base isn’t there any more, or you can’t reach it, do what you can.”

  “What about the mission?”

  “Jerry and I are going on. You’re the utility person in the lineup, and this is where we need you.”

  She nodded, more relieved than anything, Norlund thought. Then she remembered to give him back the few local dollars that Mercury had just given her. He split the money with Jerry; now the two of them had nine dollars each.

  Norlund asked her to delay departure briefly while he went with Jerry to look over the enemy dead. There were four scattered bodies in Thirties clothing. Again, no money was salvageable; their dropped weapons were unfamiliar to Norlund, and what he thought was probably a communicator of some kind was dead.

  He went back to the APC with Jerry and called for different weaponry. In moments all trace of the enemy dead was gone. There was only a faint scorching noticeable on what had been cindered ground anyway. Let Hajo Brandi wonder what had happened to his people—unless one of those bodies by some good luck had been his.

  Moments after that the APC, with Norlund’s final wave to Ginny, was out of sight as well.

  In the moon-shadow of the huge studio building, Norlund stood facing Jerry. “We split up here,” said Norlund. “Get to Chicago and—hell, you know what you have to do.”

  “Yeah.”

  They shook hands. Norlund waited until Jerry’s footsteps had died away before he moved himself.

  Norlund during his more or less sheltered Depression youth had often heard about but never actually seen hobos riding freight trains across the country. According to the usual expression they “rode the rods”, which meant that in some perilous way that Norlund had never quite understood they traveled slung beneath the cars, taking their ease within inches of the rails and ties and roadbed roaring past beneath them.

  In his own first five days of traveling by freight, Norlund had yet to see the trick performed by anyone in quite that way. Most non-paying riders, he had observed, followed the method he had chosen for himself—clinging to the top of a boxcar or else riding lower and more sheltered in a gondola. Some few were successful in getting inside, like the men Norlund had glimpsed during his own recent period of prosperity, when he’d been riding the Twentieth Century first class.

  One idea his last five days’ experience had refuted—a cynical suspicion born during the time when he’d been paying for his passage. He was now quite sure that freights took just as long as passenger trains to cross the country. At least the ones he had been riding did. Five days, five times he’d watched the sun go down on dusty plains or desert, and he was still no farther east than Texas—crossing which, of course, promised to be an epic struggle in itself. Five days . . . or was it six?

  With only nine dollars in his pocket at the start, there hadn’t been very many means of transportation open to him. And he knew that Jerry would prefer hitchhiking, and he was determined to travel separately from Jerry, determined that one of them at least was going to get through. Either of them, of course, could call for help, from Jeff or other local agents, but after being ambushed in the presence of one such agent Norlund didn’t want to do that just yet. There were a few days to spare. The Graf should not yet have departed from Germany, and to cross the Atlantic would take it a couple of days at the very least, even assuming favorable winds. Norlund meant to work his way east, closer to New York, and call for help when he was nearly there.

  At least that had been his original plan on leaving Hollywood. Now he wasn’t so sure. In one sense his plan was working; at least Brandi’s people, Hitler’s people, hadn’t caught up with him yet. But on the other hand he wasn’t all that much closer to New York, where on the twentieth of July the Graf Zeppelin was due to tie up to Jeff Holborn’s ingenious mast atop the Empire State, and where the great dirigible would then discharge her illustrious passenger and his entourage to begin his state visit . . .

  And Norlund was having other problems. He had eaten only twice in the last three days, and not too often in the three days before that, even if you could call swallowing the kind of stuff he had ingested eating. Three days ago he’d been granted a share from an iron stewpot hanging over a fire in a tramp encamp-merit lodged between railroad tracks and a highway bridge in Arizona. And the day after that he’d been fed at some religious charity’s soup kitchen in a New Mexico town of modest size whose name Norlund had never learned, any more than he had learned with any certainty the name of the religious group who ran the charity.

  He was traveling alone, which had its good points and its bad. One point about it, good or bad, was that he had to decide for himself when he had passed the point of being merely hungry and had started actually starving, in the sense of growing dangerously weak. Clinging now to a boxcar’s top in the fifth or possibly sixth dusty sunset of his trip, he knew from the way the train’s swaying motion made him feel that he now qualified as starving. Next town he came to, he’d have to take some serious steps about getting food. He still had his nine dollars.

  As soon as a scattering of lights appeared ahead, and the train began to slow, Norlund made his way to the iron ladder at the end of the car, climbed down most of the way, and watched and waited for his chance. You had to be careful of more than being run over by the train, old hands at this game had warned him. You couldn’t just stroll on and off, in and out of railroad yards. In some yards, some towns, the local cops or the railroad bulls lay in wait for unpaying passengers and beat them, sometimes just for the fun of it, or hauled them off to stand before a magistrate and then fill the ranks of work gangs on the county roads for thirty days. Personal and esthetic considerations aside, Norlund couldn’t afford that kind of a delay.

  The train rattled swaying around a curve, as the lights ahead grew closer. When Norlund had judged that the train had slowed enough, he jumped, tumbling on the uneven footing in the dark, but luckily not spraining or breaking anything.

  He lay still until the train he had been riding on was past, then dodged across the tracks toward the lights. A fence presented no very serious problem. All was quiet.

  Five minutes later, Norlund was walking up the dusty main street of another southwestern town whose name he did not know. He had brushed off his clothes as well as possible as he walked into town, wondering how close he could still come to an appearance of respectability. Not very, he had been forced to admit. His suit had been new-looking when he’d put it on in Hollywood, but after almost a week of continuous wear in hobo jungles and atop freight cars it was in bad shape. And Norlund himself was unwashed and unshaven. He had a necktie in his pocket if he wanted to put it on, but under the circumstances it was not going to help.

  Any decent-looking eatery had to be considered off limits. Fortunately the sign of the soup kitchen was visible for a block away, with a
dim light shining on it like some fading hope for salvation. The Mission for Unfortunates, or some such name. Norlund drew no attention as he entered and took his place amid a handful of other clients, most of them looking worse off than he did. He spent a dime for a bowl of soup and a chunk of bread, and in a couple of minutes was back to spend another dime for seconds.

  Sitting down to savor this second helping, Norlund found himself alone at a converted picnic table lit by a bare bulb that hung overhead on its own wire. A sign on the wall across from him assured him that JESUS SAVES.

  To keep himself from reading this over and over infinitely, he looked about for something else. There was old newspaper, spread on the other end of the table, where some messy project had evidently been carried out. Norlund grabbed what looked like a front page and pulled it nearer. It ought to be part of his job to keep up with the news, ready to cope with unscheduled and unforeseen events.

  The first item, on the bottom half of the page, was reassuring.

  HITLER TRIP ON SCHEDULE

  Frankfurt, Ger, July 1–Final preparations were in progress today for the state visit of Chancellor Adolf Hitler to the United States. Crews of men labored day and night to ready the Graf Zeppelin for the trans-Atlantic voyage, the most important of its successful career . . .

  This demonstration of German progress and aerial superiority, viewed by some in the United States as threatening, and by others as an encouraging sign of friendship . . .

  Norlund sighed faintly, wishing for a more recent newspaper as a source of information about possible changes of plan during the past few days.

  He flipped over the folded page, bringing its top half into view on the stained table. Here the headlines, also expected by Norlund, were bigger.

  HITLER CRUSHES REVOLT BY NAZI RADICALS

  STORM TROOP CHIEFS DIE

  Killed Or Take Own Lives

  As Chancellor and Goering Strike

  REACTIONARIES ALSO HIT

  Wife Shot With Schleicher

  as He Resists Police

  Head of Catholic Action Slain

  LOYAL FORCES HOLD BERLIN

  IN AN IRON GRIP

  The famous purge of Ernst Roehm and his troublesome Brownshirts. According to the plan, it should not result in Hitler’s visit to America being called off.

  Looking for more information, looking for he knew not what, Norlund flipped the paper over to page two.

  DILLINGER RAIDS BANK IN SOUTH BEND

  Officer Slain, Loot $28,000

  Even the nation’s most wanted criminal had been pushed to page two by Hitler’s news. Even . . .

  FLYER RUDEL DEAD IN CRASH

  Berlin, July 2—Willy Rudel, 37, well-known aviator known also as the son-in-law of the famous designer Geoffrey Holborn, died Saturday in the crash of his small plane in the Bavarian Alps, it was announced today. Rudel’s son, Wilhelm Jr., 9, also perished in the crash. The aviator’s estranged wife, Holly, was reported in New York . . .

  There was a very little more.

  The phone available in the mission was the kind you had to feed with coins for a long-distance call. The people behind the soup-kitchen counter had plenty of small coins with which to make change, when Norlund thrust dollar bills at them. If his manner was somewhat wild when he approached them, they had doubtless seen wilder, and made no comment.

  Now, Norlund told himself, it was necessary for him to contact Jeff at once instead of waiting until he got closer to New York. Jeff was to be his prime contact on this mission, and anything likely to affect Jeff’s capacity to function was something that he, Norlund, had to check up on as soon as possible. And a disaster like this striking at Jeff’s daughter was certainly going to take a toll on Jeff.

  To hell with all this justification, Norlund told himself. His fingers were busy clipping a small dull jewel—his bug-detector, part of his small store of secret equipment—on the receiver cord where it clung like a dark bug itself. The truth was he didn’t know if it would be a mistake to make this call or not, but he was going to call her anyway.

  He told the operator what number he wanted to reach, and fed in coins. Eventually there were two rings at the far end. And then Norlund recognized the voice of the butler answering.

  “Rupert, this is Alan Norlund. Is Holly available? It’s very important that I speak with her.”

  There was a pause. “Mr. Norlund, sir?”

  “Yes, it’s me.” At least he had not been totally forgotten.

  “Very glad to hear your voice, sir. We were all worried . . . I’ll fetch Miss Holly to the phone immediately.”

  Long seconds passed. Norlund watched his bug-detector. So far the line appeared to be safe. He rearranged his little piles of coins on the little shelf before the phone, ready to feed in more money when the operator should break in to ask for it. He thought that he could feel the proprietors of the mission staring at his back.

  Again someone picked up the receiver at the other end. “Hello?” said Holly’s voice. The unbearable grief that Norlund had been bracing himself to hear in her voice was not evident. What he heard sounded to him more like simple suspense.

  “Holly, it’s Alan Norlund. I’ve just now heard. God, I’m so sorry for you.”

  “They killed them, Alan.” Maybe the feeling that tightened her voice was not suspense either, but rage compressed and waiting. She’d had days now to get it under control, but still it seemed to leave no room for surprise at hearing from him so suddenly. “Those bastards killed them. It wasn’t any crash, at least not accidental. The big purge was on, gangsters settling scores among themselves. And I know Willy had enemies, Goering and others. I’ve had word from people who got out.” At last her voice did soften. “Alan, where are you, how are you?”

  “At the moment, in Texas. And I’m in good shape.” And still the bug-detector remained inert; Norlund supposed that Brandi’s people were having their problems too, trying to defend in a dozen or a hundred places against the attack that they must know was coming, trying to avoid the crushing paradoxes that could make some regions inaccessible to time travel. “Could you find out anything through the State Department? If Jeff—”

  “None of Jeff’s friends were able to do anything. If the German government says it was an accident, then officially that’s what it was. Even if we all know better. With that son of a bitch coming on his airship, nobody wants to stir things up.”

  “How’s Jeff doing?”

  “About as usual. He’s out working, even if it is almost midnight. But you. Was that a heart attack? Jeff tells me that you . . . that you got the best medical care available anywhere.”

  It sounded like maybe Jeff had told her more. Norlund sighed. “Better than you’d believe. You won’t know me when you see me again. That’s going to be soon, I hope.”

  “Are you coming here?”

  “Holly, I want you to tell Jeff something for me. Something very important.” The detector still indicated that no one was listening in, but there was no telling how long it would stay that way. “Tell him rendezvous Jupiter, a couple of days from now. Will you do that?”

  “Of course. Jupiter, in a couple of days. Is that all? What does it mean?”

  “No, goddamn it, that’s not all. That’s very far from all. I want to see you, I’ve got to see you, but I can’t see you just yet.” And the device on the line sparked suddenly, emitting a sharp gem-flash of light directed at Norlund’s eyes. He tried to change his voice. “I’ll be talking to you, Mrs. Rudel. Good-bye.”

  The abrupt closing of that phone conversation was probably not the strangest thing about it, Holly thought, nor was it perhaps even the most alarming.

  She knew where to look for her father. It was very doubtful that she would be able to reach him there by phone, and anyway in this case she preferred a face-to-face confrontation.

  Griffith drove her to the Empire State, and waited at the curb. With a judicious combination of brass and cash, Holly got herself first into the building lobby a
nd then into an elevator.

  In a narrow service passage on the level of the observation deck she encountered Jeff, who was just coming down from a climb on stairs and ladders to even greater heights. He was coming through a door, with the sprawl of the city’s midnight lights behind him.

  Holly stepped forward. “Jeff, I . . .” The rest of the sentence was never said. Descending immediately behind Jeff was the man she had encountered in the elevator on New Year’s morning. Like Jeff, he was now wearing engineer’s coveralls over his suit.

  Holly’s father, though startled for a moment, did not appear enormously surprised to see her there. Instead he became—not exactly embarrassed, Holly thought, he never really did that, but he got the look he usually wore when dealing with some social difficulty. “Holly, what’s up?” he asked.

  She grinned. “Just an impulse.” She knew that from her such an explanation was likely to be accepted readily. “I timed it well, I see.”

  As the man behind him stepped forward smiling lightly at Holly, Jeff turned to him. “Ah, Mr. Brandi, this is my daughter.”

  For a moment Holly had the idea that Brandi might click his heels, Prussian-style, and bow. But he only grinned and put out his hand in an open, quite American way. “We’ve met once,” he said.

  Jeff was surprised. “Oh? Where was that?”

  Holly told him briefly, not mentioning what had been said that time in the elevator. “I just didn’t want to bother you with it, Dad; I didn’t think it would turn out to have any importance. But what . . . ?”

  Brandi cleared his throat. “A mutual friend introduced me to your father. I have been helping him on some matters connected with the mooring mast. We are making sure that it is safe.”

  Holly got the impression that when Brandi said those last words he was watching her closely for a reaction. “Good idea,” she acknowledged, while wondering all the more what was going on.