THE DAY

OF THE

BOOMER

DUKES

by Frederik Pohl

Illustrated by EMSH

There was a silvery aura around the kid ... the
cops' guns hit him ... but he didn't notice....

I

Foraminifera 9

Paptaste udderly, semped
sempsemp dezhavoo, qued
schmerz—Excuse me. I
mean to say that it was like an
endless diet of days, boring, tedious....

No, it loses too much in the
translation. Explete my reasons,
I say. Do my reasons matter? No,
not to you, for you are troglodytes,
knowing nothing of
causes, understanding only acts.
Acts and facts, I will give you
acts and facts.

First you must know how I
am called. My "name" is Foraminifera
9-Hart Bailey's Beam,
and I am of adequate age and
size. (If you doubt this, I am
prepared to fight.) Once the—the
tediety of life, as you might
say, had made itself clear to me,
there were, of course, only two
alternatives. I do not like to die,
so that possibility was out; and
the remaining alternative was
flight.

Naturally, the necessary machinery
was available to me. I
arrogated a small viewing machine,
and scanned the centuries
of the past in the hope that a
sanctuary might reveal itself to
my aching eyes. Kwel tediety
that was! Back, back I went
through the ages. Back to the
Century of the Dog, back to the
Age of the Crippled Men. I
found no time better than my
own. Back and back I peered,
back as far as the Numbered
Years. The Twenty-Eighth Century
was boredom unendurable,
the Twenty-Sixth a morass of
dullness. Twenty-Fifth, Twenty-Fourth—wherever
I looked, tediety
was what I found.

I snapped off the machine and
considered. Put the problem
thus: Was there in all of the
pages of history no age in which
a 9-Hart Bailey's Beam might
find adventure and excitement?
There had to be! It was not possible,
I told myself, despairing,
that from the dawn of the
dreaming primates until my own
time there was no era at all in
which I could be—happy? Yes,
I suppose happiness is what I
was looking for. But where was
it? In my viewer, I had fifty
centuries or more to look back
upon. And that was, I decreed,
the trouble; I could spend my
life staring into the viewer, and
yet never discover the time that
was right for me. There were
simply too many eras to choose
from. It was like an enormous
library in which there must,
there had to be, contained the
one fact I was looking for—that,
lacking an index, I might
wear my life away and never
find.

"Index!"

I said the word aloud! For, to
be sure, it was the answer. I had
the freedom of the Learning
Lodge, and the index in the
reading room could easily find
for me just what I wanted.

Splendid, splendid! I almost
felt cheerful. I quickly returned
the viewer I had been using to
the keeper, and received my deposit
back. I hurried to the
Learning Lodge and fed my
specifications into the index, as
follows, that is to say: Find me
a time in recent past where there
is adventure and excitement,
where there is a secret, colorful
band of desperadoes with whom
I can ally myself. I then added
two specifications—second, that
it should be before the time of
the high radiation levels; and
first, that it should be after the
discovery of anesthesia, in case
of accident—and retired to a
desk in the reading room to
await results.

It took only a few moments,
which I occupied in making a
list of the gear I wished to take
with me. Then there was a hiss
and a crackle, and in the receiver
of the desk a book appeared. I
unzipped the case, took it out,
and opened it to the pages marked
on the attached reading tape.

I had found my wonderland
of adventure!

Ah, hours and days of exciting
preparation! What a
round of packing and buying;
what a filling out of forms and a
stamping of visas; what an orgy
of injections and inoculations
and preventive therapy! Merely
getting ready for the trip made
my pulse race faster and my adrenalin
balance rise to the very
point of paranoia; it was like
being given a true blue new
chance to live.

At last I was ready. I stepped
into the transmission capsule; set
the dials; unlocked the door,
stepped out; collapsed the capsule
and stored it away in my
carry-all; and looked about at my
new home.

Pyew! Kwel smell of staleness,
of sourness, above all of
coldness! It was a close matter
then if I would be able to keep
from a violent eructative stenosis,
as you say. I closed my eyes
and remembered warm violets
for a moment, and then it was
all right.

The coldness was not merely
a smell; it was a physical fact.
There was a damp grayish substance
underfoot which I recognized
as snow; and in a hard-surfaced
roadway there were a
number of wheeled vehicles
moving, which caused the liquefying
snow to splash about me. I
adjusted my coat controls for
warmth and deflection, but that
was the best I could do. The
reek of stale decay remained.
Then there were also the buildings,
painfully almost vertical. I
believe it would not have disturbed
me if they had been truly
vertical; but many of them were
minutes of arc from a true perpendicular,
all of them covered
with a carbonaceous material
which I instantly perceived was
an inadvertent deposit from the
air. It was a bad beginning!

However, I was not bored.

I made my way down the
"street," as you say, toward
where a group of young men
were walking toward me, five
abreast. As I came near, they
looked at me with interest and
kwel respect, conversing with
each other in whispers.

I addressed them: "Sirs, please
direct me to the nearest recruiting
office, as you call it, for the
dread Camorra."

They stopped and pressed
about me, looking at me intently.
They were handsomely, though
crudely dressed in coats of a
striking orange color, and long
trousers of an extremely dark
material.

I decreed that I might not
have made them understand me—it
is always probable, it is understood,
that a quicknik course
in dialects of the past may not
give one instant command of
spoken communication in the
field. I spoke again: "I wish to
encounter a representative of the
Camorra, in other words the
Black Hand, in other words the
cruel and sinister Sicilian terrorists
named the Mafia. Do you
know where these can be
found?"

One of them said, "Nay.
What's that jive?"

I puzzled over what he had
said for a moment, but in the
end decreed that his message was
sensefree. As I was about to
speak, however, he said suddenly:
"Let's rove, man." And all
five of them walked quickly
away a few "yards." It was quite
disappointing. I observed them
conferring among themselves,
glancing at me, and for a time
proposed terminating my venture,
for I then believed that it
would be better to return
"home," as you say, in order to
more adequately research the
matter.

However, the five young
men came toward me
again. The one who had spoken
before, who I now detected was
somewhat taller and fatter than
the others, spoke as follows:
"You're wanting the Mafia?" I
agreed. He looked at me
for a moment. "Are you holding?"

He was inordinately hard to
understand. I said, slowly and
with patience, "Keska that 'holding'
say?"

"Money, man. You going to
slip us something to help you
find these cats?"

"Certainly, money. I have a
great quantity of money instantly
available," I rejoined him.
This appeared to relieve his
mind.

There was a short pause, directly
after which this first of the
young men spoke: "You're on,
man. Yeah, come with us.
What's to call you?" I queried
this last statement, and he expanded:
"The name. What's the
name?"

"You may call me Foraminifera
9," I directed, since I wished
to be incognito, as you put it,
and we proceeded along the
"street." All five of the young
men indicated a desire to serve
me, offering indeed to take my
carry-all. I rejected this, politely.

I looked about me with lively
interest, as you may well believe.
Kwel dirt, kwel dinginess, kwel
cold! And yet there was a certain
charm which I can determine no
way of expressing in this language.
Acts and facts, of course.
I shall not attempt to capture
the subjectivity which is the
charm, only to transcribe the
physical datum—perhaps even
data, who knows? My companions,
for example: They
were in appearance overwrought,
looking about them continually,
stopping entirely and drawing
me with them into the shelter of
a "door" when another man, this
one wearing blue clothing and a
visored hat appeared. Yet they
were clearly devoted to me, at
that moment, since they had put
aside their own projects in order
to escort me without delay to the
Mafia.

Mafia! Fortunate that I had
found them to lead me to
the Mafia! For it had been clear
in the historical work I had consulted
that it was not ultimately
easy to gain access to the Mafia.
Indeed, so secret were they that
I had detected no trace of their
existence in other histories of the
period. Had I relied only on the
conventional work, I might
never have known of their great
underground struggle against
what you term society. It was
only in the actual contemporary
volume itself, the curiosity
titled U.S.A. Confidential by one
Lait and one Mortimer, that I
had descried that, throughout
the world, this great revolutionary
organization flexed its tentacles,
the plexus within a short
distance of where I now stood,
battling courageously. With me
to help them, what heights
might we not attain! Kwel dramatic
delight!

My meditations were interrupted.
"Boomers!" asserted one
of my five escorts in a loud,
frightened tone. "Let's cut,
man!" he continued, leading me
with them into another entrance.
It appeared, as well as I could
decree, that the cause of his
ejaculative outcry was the discovery
of perhaps three, perhaps
four, other young men, in coats
of the same shiny material as my
escorts. The difference was that
they were of a different color,
being blue.

We hastened along a lengthy
chamber which was
quite dark, immediately after
which the large, heavy one
opened a way to a serrated incline
leading downward. It was
extremely dark, I should say.
There was also an extreme smell,
quite like that of the outer air,
but enormously intensified; one
would suspect that there was an
incomplete combustion of, perhaps,
wood or coal, as well as a
certain quantity of general decay.
At any rate, we reached the bottom
of the incline, and my escort
behaved quite badly. One of
them said to the other four, in
these words: "Them jumpers
follow us sure. Yeah, there's
much trouble. What's to prime
this guy now and split?"

Instantly they fell upon me
with violence. I had fortunately
become rather alarmed at their
visible emotion of fear, and already
had taken from my carry-all
a Stollgratz 16, so that I
quickly turned it on them. I
started to replace the Stollgratz
16 as they fell to the floor, yet I
realized that there might be an
additional element of danger. Instead
of putting the Stollgratz 16
in with the other trade goods,
which I had brought to assist me
in negotiating with the Mafia, I
transferred it to my jacket. It had
become clear to me that the five
young men of my escort had intended
to abduct and rob me—indeed
had intended it all along,
perhaps having never intended
to convoy me to the office of the
Mafia. And the other young men,
those who wore the blue jackets
in place of the orange, were already
descending the incline toward
me, quite rapidly.

"Stop," I directed them. "I
shall not entrust myself to you
until you have given me evidence
that you entirely deserve such
trust."

They all halted, regarding
me and the Stollgratz 16. I
detected that one of them said
to another: "That cat's got a
zip."

The other denied this, saying:
"That no zip, man. Yeah,
look at them Leopards. Say, you
bust them flunkies with that
thing?"

I perceived his meaning quite
quickly. "You are 'correct'," I
rejoined. "Are you associated in
friendship with them flunkies?"

"Hell, no. Yeah, they're Leopards
and we're Boomer Dukes.
You cool them, you do us much
good." I received this information
as indicating that the two
socio-economic units were inimical,
and unfortunately lapsed into
an example of the Bivalent
Error. Since p implied not-q, I
sloppily assumed that not-q implied
r (with, you understand, r
being taken as the class of phenomena
pertinently favorable to
me). This was a very poor construction,
and of course resulted
in certain difficulties. Qued, after
all. I stated:

"Them flunkies offered to conduct
me to a recruiting office, as
you say, of the Mafia, but instead
tried to take from me the much
money I am holding." I then
went on to describe to them my
desire to attain contact with the
said Mafia; meanwhile they descended
further and grouped
about me in the very little light,
examining curiously the motionless
figures of the Leopards.

They seemed to be greatly impressed;
and at the same time,
very much puzzled. Naturally.
They looked at the Leopards,
and then at me.

They gave every evidence of
wishing to help me; but of
course if I had not forgotten
that one cannot assume from the
statements "not-Leopard implies
Boomer Duke" and "not-Leopard
implies Foraminifera 9"
that, qued, "Boomer Duke implies
Foraminifera 9" ... if I
had not forgotten this, I say, I
should not have been "deceived."
For in practice they were as little
favorable to me as the Leopards.
A certain member of their party
reached a position behind me.

I quickly perceived that his intention
was not favorable, and
attempted to turn around in
order to discharge at him with
the Stollgratz 16, but he was very
rapid. He had a metallic cylinder,
and with it struck my head,
knocking "me" unconscious.

II

Shield 8805

This candy store is called
Chris's. There must be ten
thousand like it in the
city. A marble counter with perhaps
five stools, a display case of
cigars and a bigger one of candy,
a few dozen girlie magazines
hanging by clothespin-sort-of
things from wire ropes along the
wall. It has a couple of very
small glass-topped tables under
the magazines. And a juke—I
can't imagine a place like Chris's
without a juke.

I had been sitting around
Chris's for a couple of hours,
and I was beginning to get edgy.
The reason I was sitting around
Chris's was not that I liked
Cokes particularly, but that it
was one of the hanging-out
places of a juvenile gang called
The Leopards, with whom I had
been trying to work for nearly a
year; and the reason I was becoming
edgy was that I didn't
see any of them there.

The boy behind the counter—he
had the same first name as
I, Walter in both cases, though
my last name is Hutner and his
is, I believe, something Puerto
Rican—the boy behind the
counter was dummying up, too.
I tried to talk to him, on and off,
when he wasn't busy. He wasn't
busy most of the time; it was too
cold for sodas. But he just didn't
want to talk. Now, these kids
love to talk. A lot of what they
say doesn't make sense—either
bullying, or bragging, or purposeless
swearing—but talk is
their normal state; when they
quiet down it means trouble. For
instance, if you ever find yourself
walking down Thirty-Fifth
Street and a couple of kids pass
you, talking, you don't have to
bother looking around; but if
they stop talking, turn quickly.
You're about to be mugged. Not
that Walt was a mugger—as
far as I know; but that's the pattern
of the enclave.

So his being quiet was a bad
sign. It might mean that a
rumble was brewing—and that
meant that my work so far had
been pretty nearly a failure. Even
worse, it might mean that somehow
the Leopards had discovered
that I had at last passed my examinations
and been appointed
to the New York City Police
Force as a rookie patrolman,
Shield 8805.

Trying to work with these
kids is hard enough at best. They
don't like outsiders. But they
particularly hate cops, and I had
been trying for some weeks to
decide how I could break the
news to them.

The door opened. Hawk stood
there. He didn't look at me,
which was a bad sign. Hawk was
one of the youngest in the Leopards,
a skinny, very dark kid
who had been reasonably friendly
to me. He stood in the open
door, with snow blowing in past
him. "Walt. Out here, man."

It wasn't me he meant—they
call me "Champ," I suppose
because I beat them all shooting
eight-ball pool. Walt put down
the comic he had been reading
and walked out, also without
looking at me. They closed the
door.

Time passed. I saw them
through the window, talking
to each other, looking at me.
It was something, all right. They
were scared. That's bad, because
these kids are like wild animals;
if you scare them, they hit first—it's
the only way they know to
defend themselves. But on the
other hand, a rumble wouldn't
scare them—not where they
would show it; and finding out
about the shield in my pocket
wouldn't scare them, either.
They hated cops, as I say; but
cops were a part of their environment.
It was strange, and
baffling.

Walt came back in, and Hawk
walked rapidly away. Walt went
behind the counter, lit a cigaret,
wiped at the marble top, picked
up his comic, put it down again
and finally looked at me. He
said: "Some punk busted Fayo
and a couple of the boys. It's
real trouble."

I didn't say anything.

He took a puff on his cigaret.
"They're chilled, Champ. Five
of them."

"Chilled? Dead?" It sounded
bad; there hadn't been a real
rumble in months, not with a
killing.

He shook his head. "Not
dead. You're wanting to see, you
go down Gomez's cellar. Yeah,
they're all stiff but they're breathing.
I be along soon as the old
man comes back in the store."

He looked pretty sick. I left it
at that and hurried down the
block to the tenement where the
Gomez family lived, and then I
found out why.

They were sprawled on the
filthy floor of the cellar like
winoes in an alley. Fayo, who ran
the gang; Jap; Baker; two others
I didn't know as well. They were
breathing, as Walt had said, but
you just couldn't wake them up.

Hawk and his twin brother,
Yogi, were there with them,
looking scared. I couldn't blame
them. The kids looked perfectly
all right, but it was obvious that
they weren't. I bent down and
smelled, but there was no trace
of liquor or anything else on
their breath.

I stood up. "We'd better get
a doctor."

"Nay. You call the meat
wagon, and a cop comes right
with it, man," Yogi said, and his
brother nodded.

I laid off that for a moment.
"What happened?"

Hawk said, "You know that
witch Gloria, goes with one of
the Boomer Dukes? She opened
her big mouth to my girl. Yeah,
opened her mouth and much bad
talk came out. Said Fayo primed
some jumper with a zip and the
punk cooled him, and then a
couple of the Boomers moved in
real cool. Now they got the punk
with the zip and much other
stuff, real stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

Hawk looked worried. He finally
admitted that he didn't
know what kind of stuff, but it
was something dangerous in the
way of weapons. It had been the
"zip" that had knocked out the
five Leopards.

I sent Hawk out to the drug-store
for smelling salts and containers
of hot black coffee—not
that I knew what I was doing, of
course, but they were dead set
against calling an ambulance.
And the boys didn't seem to be
in any particular danger, only
sleep.

However, even then I knew
that this kind of trouble
was something I couldn't handle
alone. It was a tossup what to do—the
smart thing was to call
the precinct right then and there;
but I couldn't help feeling that
that would make the Leopards
clam up hopelessly. The six
months I had spent trying to
work with them had not been
too successful—a lot of the
other neighborhood workers had
made a lot more progress than I—but
at least they were willing
to talk to me; and they wouldn't
talk to uniformed police.

Besides, as soon as I had been
sworn in, the day before, I had
begun the practice of carrying
my .38 at all times, as the regulations
say. It was in my coat.
There was no reason for me to
feel I needed it. But I did. If
there was any truth to the story
of a "zip" knocking out the
boys—and I had all five of
them right there for evidence—I
had the unpleasant conviction
that there was real trouble circulating
around East Harlem that
afternoon.

"Champ. They all waking
up!"

I turned around, and Hawk
was right. The five Leopards, all
of a sudden, were stirring and
opening their eyes. Maybe the
smelling salts had something to
do with it, but I rather think
not.

We fed them some of the
black coffee, still reasonably hot.
They were scared; they were
more scared than anything I had
ever seen in those kids before.
They could hardly talk at first,
and when finally they came
around enough to tell me what
had happened I could hardly believe them.
This man had been
small and peculiar, and he had
been looking for, of all things,
the "Mafia," which he had read
about in history books—old
history books.

Well, it didn't make sense,
unless you were prepared to
make a certain assumption that I
refused to make. Man from
Mars? Nonsense. Or from the
future? Equally ridiculous....

Then the five Leopards, reviving,
began to walk
around. The cellar was dark and
dirty, and packed with the accumulation
of generations in the
way of old furniture and rat-inhabited
mattresses and piles of
newspapers; it wasn't surprising
that we hadn't noticed the little
gleaming thing that had apparently
rolled under an abandoned
potbelly stove.

Jap picked it up, squalled,
dropped it and yelled for me.

I touched it cautiously, and it
tingled. It wasn't painful, but it
was an odd, unexpected feeling—perhaps
you've come across
the "buzzers" that novelty stores
sell which, concealed in the
palm, give a sudden, surprising
tingle when the owner shakes
hands with an unsuspecting
friend. It was like that, like a
mild electric shock. I picked it
up and held it. It gleamed
brightly, with a light of its own;
it was round; it made a faint
droning sound; I turned it over,
and it spoke to me. It said in a
friendly, feminine whisper:
Warning, this portatron attuned
only to Bailey's Beam percepts.
Remain quiescent until the Adjuster
comes.

That settled it. Any time a
lit-up cue ball talks to me, I refer
the matter to higher authority.
I decided on the spot that I
was heading for the precinct
house, no matter what the Leopards
thought.

But when I turned and headed
for the stairs, I couldn't move.
My feet simply would not lift off
the ground. I twisted, and stumbled,
and fell in a heap; I yelled
for help, but it didn't do any
good. The Leopards couldn't
move either.

We were stuck there in
Gomez's cellar, as though we
had been nailed to the filthy
floor.

III

Cow

When I see what this
flunky has done to them
Leopards, I call him a
cool cat right away. But then we
jump him and he ain't so cool.
Angel and Tiny grab him under
the arms and I'm grabbing the
stuff he's carrying. Yeah, we get
out of there.

There's bulls on the street, so
we cut through the back and
over the fences. Tiny don't like
that. He tells me, "Cow. What's
to leave this cat here? He must
weigh eighteen tons." "You're
bringing him," I tell him, so he
shuts up. That's how it is in the
Boomer Dukes. When Cow
talks, them other flunkies shut
up fast.

We get him in the loft over
the R. and I. Social Club. Damn,
but it's cold up there. I can hear
the pool balls clicking down below
so I pass the word to keep
quiet. Then I give this guy the
foot and pretty soon he wakes
up.

As soon as I talk to him a
little bit I figure we had luck
riding with us when we see them
Leopards. This cat's got real bad
stuff. Yeah, I never hear of anything
like it. But what it takes to
make a fight he's got. I take my
old pistol and give it to Tiny.
Hell, it makes him happy and
what's it cost me? Because what
this cat's got makes that pistol
look like something for babies.

First he don't want to talk.
"Stomp him," I tell Angel,
but he's scared. He says, "Nay.
This is a real weird cat, Cow.
I'm for cutting out of here."

"Stomp him," I tell him again,
pretty quiet, but he does it. He
don't have to tell me this cat's
weird, but when the cat gets the
foot a couple of times he's willing
to talk. Yeah, he talks real
funny, but that don't matter to
me. We take all the loot out of
his bag, and I make this cat tell
me what it's to do. Damn, I
don't know what he's talking
about one time out of six, but I
know enough. Even Tiny catches
on after a while, because I see
him put down that funky old
pistol I gave him that he's been
loving up.

I'm feeling pretty good. I wish
a couple of them chicken Leopards
would turn up so I could
show them what they missed out
on. Yeah, I'll take on them, and
the Black Dogs, and all the cops
in the world all at once—that's
how good I'm feeling. I feel so
good that I don't even like it
when Angel lets out a yell and
comes up with a wad of loot. It's
like I want to prime the U.S.
Mint for chickenfeed, I don't
want it to come so easy.

But money's on hand, so I
take it off Angel and count it.
This cat was really loaded;
there must be a thousand dollars
here.

I take a handful of it and
hand it over to Angel real cool.
"Get us some charge," I tell
him. "There's much to do and
I'm feeling ready for some
charge to do it with."

"How many sticks you want
me to get?" he asks, holding on
to that money like he never saw
any before.

I tell him: "Sticks? Nay. I'm
for real stuff tonight. You find
Four-Eye and get us some
horse." Yeah, he digs me then.
He looks like he's pretty scared
and I know he is, because this
punk hasn't had anything bigger
than reefers in his life. But I'm
for busting a couple of caps of
H, and what I do he's going to
do. He takes off to find Four-Eye
and the rest of us get busy on
this cat with the funny artillery
until he gets back.

It's like I'm a million miles
down Dream Street. Hell, I
don't want to wake up.

But the H is wearing off and
I'm feeling mean. Damn, I'll
stomp my mother if she talks
big to me right then.

I'm the first one on my feet
and I'm looking for trouble. The
whole place is full now. Angel
must have passed the word to
everybody in the Dukes, but I
don't even remember them coming
in. There's eight or ten cats
lying around on the floor now,
not even moving. This won't do,
I decide.

If I'm on my feet, they're all
going to be on their feet. I start
to give them the foot and they
begin to move. Even the weirdie
must've had some H. I'm guessing
that somebody slipped him
some to see what would happen,
because he's off on Cloud Number
Nine. Yeah, they're feeling
real mean when they wake up,
but I handle them cool. Even
that little flunky Sailor starts to
go up against me but I look at
him cool and he chickens. Angel
and Pete are real sick, with the
shakes and the heaves, but I
ain't waiting for them to feel
good. "Give me that loot," I tell
Tiny, and he hands over the stuff
we took off the weirdie. I start to
pass out the stuff.

"What's to do with this
stuff?" Tiny asks me, looking at
what I'm giving him.

I tell him, "Point it and shoot
it." He isn't listening when the
weirdie's telling me what the
stuff is. He wants to know what
it does, but I don't know that. I
just tell him, "Point it and shoot
it, man." I've sent one of the
cats out for drinks and smokes
and he's back by then, and we're
all beginning to feel a little better,
only still pretty mean. They
begin to dig me.

"Yeah, it sounds like a rumble,"
one of them says, after a
while.

I give him the nod, cool.
"You're calling it," I tell him.
"There's much fighting tonight.
The Boomer Dukes is taking on
the world!"

IV

Sandy Van Pelt

The front office thought
the radio car would give
us a break in spot news
coverage, and I guessed as
wrong as they did. I had been
covering City Hall long enough,
and that's no place to build a
career—the Press Association is
very tight there, there's not much
chance of getting any kind of
exclusive story because of the
sharing agreements. So I put in
for the radio car. It meant taking
the night shift, but I got it.

I suppose the front office got
their money's worth, because
they played up every lousy auto
smash the radio car covered as
though it were the story of the
Second Coming, and maybe it
helped circulation. But I had
been on it for four months and,
wouldn't you know it, there
wasn't a decent murder, or
sewer explosion, or running gun
fight between six P.M. and six
A.M. any night I was on duty in
those whole four months. What
made it worse, the kid they gave
me as photographer—Sol Detweiler,
his name was—couldn't
drive worth a damn, so I was
stuck with chauffeuring us
around.

We had just been out to LaGuardia
to see if it was true that
Marilyn Monroe was sneaking
into town with Aly Khan on a
night plane—it wasn't—and
we were coming across the Triborough
Bridge, heading south
toward the East River Drive,
when the office called. I pulled
over and parked and answered
the radiophone.

It was Harrison, the night City
Editor. "Listen, Sandy,
there's a gang fight in East Harlem.
Where are you now?"

It didn't sound like much to
me, I admit. "There's always a
gang fight in East Harlem, Harrison.
I'm cold and I'm on my
way down to Night Court, where
there may or may not be a story;
but at least I can get my feet
warm."

"Where are you now?" Harrison
wasn't fooling. I looked at
Sol, on the seat next to me; I
thought I had heard him snicker.
He began to fiddle with his
camera without looking at me. I
pushed the "talk" button and
told Harrison where I was. It
pleased him very much; I wasn't
more than six blocks from where
this big rumble was going on, he
told me, and he made it very
clear that I was to get on over
there immediately.

I pulled away from the curb,
wondering why I had ever wanted
to be a newspaperman; I
could have made five times as
much money for half as much
work in an ad agency. To make
it worse, I heard Sol chuckle
again. The reason he was so
amused was that when we first
teamed up I made the mistake of
telling him what a hot reporter
I was, and I had been visibly
cooling off before his eyes
for a better than four straight
months.

Believe me, I was at the very
bottom of my career that night.
For five cents cash I would have
parked the car, thrown the keys
in the East River, and taken the
first bus out of town. I was absolutely
positive that the story
would be a bust and all I would
get out of it would be a bad cold
from walking around in the
snow.

And if that doesn't show you
what a hot newspaperman I
really am, nothing will.

Sol began to act interested as
we reached the corner Harrison
had told us to go to.
"That's Chris's," he said, pointing
at a little candy store. "And
that must be the pool hall where
the Leopards hang out."

"You know this place?"

He nodded. "I know a man
named Walter Hutner. He and I
went to school together, until he
dropped out, couple weeks ago.
He quit college to go to the
Police Academy. He wanted to
be a cop."

I looked at him. "You're going
to college?"

"Sure, Mr. Van Pelt. Wally
Hutner was a sociology major—I'm
journalism—but we had a
couple of classes together. He
had a part-time job with a neighborhood
council up here, acting
as a sort of adult adviser for one
of the gangs."

"They need advice on how to
be gangs?"

"No, that's not it, Mr. Van
Pelt. The councils try to get their
workers accepted enough to bring
the kids in to the social centers,
that's all. They try to get them
off the streets. Wally was working
with a bunch called the Leopards."

I shut him up. "Tell me about
it later!" I stopped the car and
rolled down a window, listening.

Yes, there was something
going on all right. Not at
the corner Harrison had mentioned—there
wasn't a soul in
sight in any direction. But I
could hear what sounded like
gunfire and yelling, and, my
God, even bombs going off! And
it wasn't too far away. There
were sirens, too—squad cars,
no doubt.

"It's over that way!" Sol yelled,
pointing. He looked as
though he was having the time
of his life, all keyed up and delighted.
He didn't have to tell
me where the noise was coming
from, I could hear for myself. It
sounded like D-Day at Normandy,
and I didn't like the sound
of it.

I made a quick decision and
slammed on the brakes, then
backed the car back the way we
had come. Sol looked at me.
"What—"

"Local color," I explained
quickly. "This the place you
were talking about? Chris's? Let's
go in and see if we can find
some of these hoodlums."

"But, Mr. Van Pelt, all the
pictures are over where the
fight's going on!"

"Pictures, shmictures! Come
on!" I got out in front of the
candy store, and the only thing
he could do was follow me.

Whatever they were doing,
they were making the devil's
own racket about it. Now that I
looked a little more closely I
could see that they must have
come this way; the candy store's
windows were broken; every
other street light was smashed;
and what had at first looked like
a flight of steps in front of a
tenement across the street wasn't
anything of the kind—it was a
pile of bricks and stone from the
false-front cornice on the roof!
How in the world they had managed
to knock that down I had
no idea; but it sort of convinced
me that, after all, Harrison had
been right about this being a big
fight. Over where the noise was
coming from there were queer
flashing lights in the clouds
overhead—reflecting exploding
flares, I thought.

No, I didn't want to go over
where the pictures were. I
like living. If it had been a normal
Harlem rumble with broken
bottles and knives, or maybe
even home-made zip guns—I
might have taken a chance on it,
but this was for real.

"Come on," I yelled to Sol,
and we pushed the door open to
the candy store.

At first there didn't seem to be
anyone in, but after we called a
couple times a kid of about sixteen,
coffee-colored and scared-looking,
stuck his head up above
the counter.

"You. What's going on
here?" I demanded. He looked
at me as if I was some kind of a
two-headed monster. "Come on,
kid. Tell us what happened."

"Excuse me, Mr. Van Pelt."
Sol cut in ahead of me and began
talking to the kid in Spanish. It
got a rise out of him; at least Sol
got an answer. My Spanish is
only a little bit better than my
Swahili, so I missed what was
going on, except for an occasional
word. But Sol was getting it
all. He reported: "He knows
Walt; that's what's bothering
him. He says Walt and some of
the Leopards are in a basement
down the street, and there's
something wrong with them. I
can't exactly figure out what,
but—"

"The hell with them. What
about that?"

"You mean the fight? Oh, it's
a big one all right, Mr. Van Pelt.
It's a gang called the Boomer
Dukes. They've got hold of some
real guns somewhere—I can't
exactly understand what kind of
guns he means, but it sounds
like something serious. He says
they shot that parapet down
across the street. Gosh, Mr. Van
Pelt, you'd think it'd take a cannon
for something like that. But
it has something to do with Walt
Hutner and all the Leopards,
too."

I said enthusiastically, "Very
good, Sol. That's fine. Find out
where the cellar is, and we'll go
interview Hutner."

"But Mr. Van Pelt, the pictures—"

"Sorry. I have to call the office."
I turned my back on him
and headed for the car.

The noise was louder, and
the flashes in the sky brighter—it
looked as though they
were moving this way. Well, I
didn't have any money tied up in
the car, so I wasn't worried about
leaving it in the street. And
somebody's cellar seemed like a
very good place to be. I called
the office and started to tell Harrison
what we'd found out; but
he stopped me short. "Sandy,
where've you been? I've been
trying to call you for—Listen,
we got a call from Fordham.
They've detected radiation coming
from the East Side—it's got
to be what's going on up there!
Radiation, do you hear me? That
means atomic weapons! Now,
you get th—"

Silence.

"Hello?" I cried, and then remembered
to push the talk button.
"Hello? Harrison, you
there?"

Silence. The two-way radio
was dead.

I got out of the car; and maybe
I understood what had happened
to the radio and maybe I
didn't. Anyway, there was something
new shining in the sky. It
hung below the clouds in parts,
and I could see it through the
bottom of the clouds in the middle;
it was a silvery teacup upside
down, a hemisphere over
everything.

It hadn't been there two minutes
before.

I heard firing coming closer
and closer. Around a corner
a bunch of cops came, running,
turning, firing; running, turning
and firing again. It was like the
retreat from Caporetto in miniature.
And what was chasing
them? In a minute I saw. Coming
around the corner was a kid
with a lightning-blue satin jacket
and two funny-looking guns
in his hand; there was a silvery
aura around him, the same color
as the lights in the sky; and I
swear I saw those cops' guns hit
him twenty times in twenty seconds,
but he didn't seem to
notice.

Sol and the kid from the candy
store were right beside me.
We took another look at the one-man
army that was coming down
the street toward us, laughing
and prancing and firing those
odd-looking guns. And then the
three of us got out of there,
heading for the cellar. Any
cellar.

V

Priam's Maw

My occupation was
"short-order cook", as it
is called. I practiced it
in a locus entitled "The White
Heaven," established at Fifth
Avenue, Newyork, between 1949
and 1962 C.E. I had created rapport
with several of the aboriginals,
who addressed me as Bessie,
and presumed to approve the
manner in which I heated specimens
of minced ruminant quadruped
flesh (deceased to be
sure). It was a satisfactory guise,
although tiring.

Using approved techniques, I
was compiling anthropometric
data while "I" was, as they say,
"brewing coffee." I deem the
probability nearly conclusive that
it was the double duty, plus the
datum that, as stated, "I" was
physically tired, which caused
me to overlook the first signal
from my portatron. Indeed, I
might have overlooked the second
as well except that the aboriginal
named Lester stated:
"Hey, Bessie. Ya got an alarm
clock in ya pocketbook?" He had
related the annunciator signal of
the portatron to the only significant
datum in his own experience
which it resembled, the
ringing of a bell.

I annotated his dossier to provide
for his removal in case it
eventuated that he had made an
undesirable intuit (this proved
unnecessary) and retired to the
back of the "store" with my
carry-all. On identifying myself
to the portatron, I received information
that it was attuned to
a Bailey's Beam, identified as
Foraminifera 9-Hart, who had
refused treatment for systemic
weltschmerz and instead sought
to relieve his boredom by adventuring
into this era.

I thereupon compiled two recommendations
which are attached: 2, a proposal for reprimand
to the Keeper of the
Learning Lodge for failure to
properly annotate a volume entitled
U.S.A. Confidential and,
1, a proposal for reprimand to
the Transport Executive, for
permitting Bailey's Beam-class
personnel access to temporal
transport. Meanwhile, I left the
"store" by a rear exit and directed
myself toward the locus
of the transmitting portatron.

I had proximately left when I
received an additional information,
namely that developed
weapons were being employed in
the area toward which I was directing.
This provoked that I
abandon guise entirely. I went
transparent and quickly examined
all aboriginals within view,
to determine if any required removal;
but none had observed
this. I rose to perhaps seventy-five
meters and sped at full atmospheric
driving speed toward
the source of the alarm. As I
crossed a "park" I detected the
drive of another Adjuster, whom
I determined to be Alephplex
Priam's Maw—that is, my
father. He bespoke me as follows:
"Hurry, Besplex Priam's
Maw. That crazy Foraminifera
has been captured by aboriginals
and they have taken his weapons
away from him." "Weapons?" I
inquired. "Yes, weapons," he
stated, "for Foraminifera 9-Hart
brought with him more
than forty-three kilograms of
weapons, ranging up to and including
electronic."

I recorded this datum and we
landed, went opaque in the shelter
of a doorway and examined
our percepts. "Quarantine?"
asked my father, and I had to
agree. "Quarantine," I voted,
and he opened his carry-all and
set-up a quarantine shield on the
console. At once appeared the
silvery quarantine dome, and the
first step of our adjustment was
completed. Now to isolate, remove,
replace.

Queried Alephplex: "An Adjuster?"
I observed the phenomenon
to which he was referring.
A young, dark aboriginal was
coming toward us on the "street,"
driving a group of police aboriginals
before him. He was armed,
it appeared, with a fission-throwing
weapon in one hand and
some sort of tranquilizer—I
deem it to have been a Stollgratz
16—in the other; moreover, he
wore an invulnerability belt. The
police aboriginals were attempting
to strike him with missile
weapons, which the belt deflected.
I neutralized his shield, collapsed
him and stored him in my
carry-all. "Not an Adjuster," I
asserted my father, but he had already
perceived that this was so.
I left him to neutralize and collapse
the police aboriginals
while I zeroed in on the portatron.
I did not envy him his job
with the police aboriginals, for
many of them were "dead," as
they say. It required the most
delicate adjustments.

The portatron developed to
be in a "cellar" and with it
were some nine or eleven aboriginals
which it had immobilized
pending my arrival. One
spoke to me thus: "Young lady,
please call the cops! We're stuck
here, and—" I did not wait to
hear what he wished to say further,
but neutralized and collapsed
him with the other
aboriginals. The portatron apologized
for having caused me inconvenience;
but of course it was
not its fault, so I did not neutralize
it. Using it for d-f, I
quickly located the culprit, Foraminifera
9-Hart Bailey's Beam,
nearby. He spoke despairingly in
the dialect of the locus, "Besplex
Priam's Maw, for God's sake get
me out of this!" "Out!" I spoke
to him, "you'll wish you never
were 'born,' as they say!" I neutralized
but did not collapse him,
pending instructions from the
Central Authority. The aboriginals
who were with him, however,
I did collapse.

Presently arrived Alephplex,
along with four other Adjusters
who had arrived before the quarantine
shield made it not possible
for anyone else to enter the
disturbed area. Each one of us
had had to abandon guise, so
that this locus of Newyork 1939-1986
must require new Adjusters
to replace us—a matter to
be charged against the guilt of
Foraminifera 9-Hart Bailey's
Beam, I deem.

This concluded Steps 3 and
2 of our Adjustment, the removal
and the isolation of the
disturbed specimens. We are
transmitting same disturbed
specimens to you under separate
cover herewith, in neutralized
and collapsed state, for the
manufacture of simulacra thereof.
One regrets to say that they
number three thousand eight
hundred forty-six, comprising all
aboriginals within the quarantined
area who had first-hand
knowledge of the anachronisms
caused by Foraminifera's importation
of contemporary weapons
into this locus.

Alephplex and the four other
Adjusters are at present reconstructing
such physical damage
as was caused by the use of said
weapons. Simultaneously, while
I am preparing this report, "I"
am maintaining the quarantine
shield which cuts off this locus,
both physically and temporally,
from the remainder of its
environment. I deem that if replacements
for the attached
aboriginals can be fabricated
quickly enough, there will be
no significant outside percept of
the shield itself, or of the happenings
within it—that is, by
maintaining a quasi-stasis of
time while the repairs are being
made, an outside aboriginal observer
will see, at most, a mere
flicker of silver in the sky. All
Adjusters here present are working
as rapidly as we can to make
sure the shield can be withdrawn,
before so many aboriginals have
observed it as to make it necessary
to replace the entire city
with simulacra. We do not wish
a repetition of the California
incident, after all.