IV

Fermeti met them. “Mr. Anderson,” he said, “this is an incredible honor.” He held out his hand, but now Anderson was peering through the open hatch past him, at the city beyond; he did not notice the offered hand.

“Say,” Anderson said, his face twitching. “Um, what’s, uh, this?”

He was staring at the monorail system primarily, Tozzo decided. And this was odd, because at least in Seattle there had been monorails back in Anderson’s time… or had there been? Had that come later? In any case, Anderson now wore a massively perplexed expression.

“Individual cars,” Tozzo said, standing close beside him. “Your monorails had only group cars. Later on, after your time, it was made possible for each citizen’s house to have a monorail outlet; the individual brought his car out of its garage and onto the rail-terminal, from which point he joined the collective structure. Do you see?”

But Anderson remained perplexed; his expression in fact had deepened.

“Um,” he said, “what do you mean ‘my time’? Am I dead?” He looked morose now. “I thought it would be more along the lines of Valhalla, with Vikings and such. Not futuristic.”

“You’re not dead, Mr. Anderson,” Fermeti said. “What you’re facing is the culture-syndrome of the mid twenty-first century. I must tell you, sir, that you’ve been napped. But you will be returned; I give you both my personal and official word.”

Andersen’s jaw dropped, but he said nothing; he continued to stare.

Donald Nils, notorious murderer, sat at the single table in the reference room of the Emigration Bureau’s interstellar speed-of-light ship and computed that he was, in Earth figures, an inch high. Bitterly, he cursed. “It’s cruel and unusual punishment,” he grated aloud. “It’s against the Constitution.” And then he remembered that he had volunteered, in order to get out of Nachbaren Slager. That goddam hole, he said to himself. Anyhow, I’m out of there.

And, he said to himself, even if I’m only an inch high I’ve still made myself captain of this lousy ship, and if it ever gets to Proxima I’ll be captain of the entire lousy Proxima System. I didn’t study with Gutman himself for nothing. And if that don’t beat Nachbaren Slager, I don’t know what does…

His second-in-command, Pete Bailly, stuck his head into the reference room. “Hey, Nils, I have been looking over the micro-repro of this particular old pre-cog journal Astounding like you told me, this Venus Equilateral article about matter transmission, and I mean even though I was the top vid repairman in New York City that don’t mean I can build one of these things.” He glared at Nils. “That’s asking a lot.”

Nils said tightly, “We’ve got to get back to Earth.”

“You’re out of luck,” Bailly told him. “Better settle for Prox.”

Furiously, Nils swept the micro-reproductions from the table, onto the floor of the ship. “That damn Bureau of Emigration! They tricked us!”

Bailly shrugged. “Anyhow we got plenty to eat and a good reference library and 3-D movies every night.”

“By the time we get to Prox,” Nils snarled, “we’ll have seen every movie—” He calculated. “Two thousand times.”

“Well, then don’t watch. Or we can run them backwards. How’s your research coming?”

“I got going the micro of an article in Space Science Fiction” Nils said thoughtfully, “called The Variable Man. It tells about faster-than-light transmission. You disappear and then reappear. Sonic guy named Cole is going to perfect it, according to the old-time pre-cog who wrote it.” He brooded about that. “If we could build a faster-than-light ship we could return to Earth. We could take over.”

“That’s crazy talk,” Bailly said.

Nils regarded him. “I’m in command.”

“Then,” Bailly said, “we got a nut in command. There’s no returning to Terra; we better build our lives on Proxima’s planets and forget forever about our home. Thank God we got women aboard. My God, even if we did get back… what could one-inch high people accomplish? We’d be jeered at.”

“Nobody jeers at me,” Nils said quietly.

But he knew Bailly was right. They’d be lucky if they could research the micros of the old pre-cog journals in the ship’s reference room and develop for themselves a way of landing safely on Proxima’s planets… even that was asking a lot.

We’ll succeed, Nils said to himself. As long as everyone obeys me, does exactly as I tell them, with no dumb questions.

Bending, he activated the spool of the December 1962 If. There was an article in it that particularly interested him ... and he had four years ahead of him in which to read, understand, and finally apply it.

Fermeti said, “Surely your pre-cog ability helped prepare you for this, Mr. Anderson.” His voice faltered with nervous strain, despite his efforts to control it.

“How about taking me back now?” Anderson said. He sounded almost calm.

Fermeti, after shooting a swift glance at Tozzo and Gilly, said to Anderson, “We have a technical problem, you see. That’s why we brought you here to our own time-continuum. You see—”

“I think you had better, um, take me back,” Anderson broke in. “Karen’ll get worried.” He craned his neck, peering in all directions. “I knew it would be somewhat on this order,” he murmured. His face twitched. “Not too different from what I expected… what’s that tall thing over there? Looks like what the old blimps used to catch onto.”

“That,” Tozzo said, “is a prayer tower.”

“Our problem,” Fermeti said patiently, “is dealt with in your article Night Flight in the August 1955 If. We’ve been able to deprive an interstellar vehicle of its mass, but so far restoration of mass has—”

“Uh, oh, yes,” Anderson said, in a preoccupied way. “I’m working on that yarn right now. Should have that off to Scott in another couple of weeks.” He explained, “My agent.”

Fermeti considered a moment and then said, “Can you give us the formula for mass-restoration, Mr. Anderson?”

“Um,” Poul Anderson said slowly, “Yes, I guess that would be the correct term. Mass-restoration… I could go along with that.” He nodded. “I haven’t worked out any formula; I didn’t want to make the yarn too technical. I guess I could make one up, if that’s what they wanted.” He was silent, then, apparently having withdrawn into a world of his own; the three men waited, but Anderson said nothing more.

“Your pre-cog ability,” Fermeti said.

“Pardon?” Anderson said, cupping his ear. “Pre-cog?” He smiled shyly. “Oh, uh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. I know John believes in all that, but I can’t say as I consider a few experiments at Duke University as proof.”

Fermeti stared at Anderson a long time. “Take the first article in the January 1953 Galaxy” he said quietly. “The Defenders… about the people living beneath the surface and the robots up above, pretending to fight the war but actually not, actually faking the reports so interestingly that the people—”

“I read that,” Poul Anderson agreed. “Very good, I thought, except for the ending. I didn’t care too much for the ending.”

Fermeti said, “You understand, don’t you, that those exact conditions came to pass in 1996, during World War Three? That by means of the article we were able to penetrate the deception carried on by our surface robots? That virtually every word of that article was exactly prophetic—”

“Phil Dick wrote that,” Anderson said. “The Defenders?’

“Do you know him?” Tozzo inquired.

“Met him yesterday at the Convention,” Anderson said. “For the first time. Very nervous fellow, was almost afraid to come in.”

Fermeti said, “Am I to understand that none of you are aware that you are pre-cogs?” His voice shook, completely out of control now.