A Century of Progress by Fred Saberhagen Read Free Book Online Page B

pretty good, they say it’ll be real good soon. That’s another thing—if Ah did go home, Ah couldn’t keep it.” Now Andy rotated the forearm gingerly and made the gloved fingers clench, a slow but natural movement. “Actually it’s pretty keen,” he said without too much conviction. “Ah cain’t feel nothin’ in it yet but Ah kin do things. Later it might even be better’n mah own arm. Later they can fix th’ skin so’s it looks more real.”
    “That’s good. That’s great.”
    Andy was looking at Norlund intently. As if repeating a lesson learned, Andy said: “Arm’s good and Ah’m glad t’ be alive. Ah just ain’t never gonna see any of mah family again, that’s all.”
    Shortly after that, Andy broke off the conversation fairly abruptly and took his leave. It was not as if he were upset or even tired; more as if his mind was suddenly busy elsewhere.
    Norlund could sympathize. But he himself was yawning. Something was running through his mind about Scrooge, confronted by the ghost of Christmas past. Trying to really think about anything had become hopeless . . .
    In the morning, his first impression was that of having been awakened by some kind of alarm. But whatever it was must have ceased its signal in the second before he became fully conscious of it.
    Now the room was quiet, and looked quite ordinary. Norlund lay still for a while, trying to fit the strange experiences of yesterday into some kind of pattern of reality that could be trusted. During the night there had been strange dreams, but he could no longer remember them.
    Andy Burns. That had been no dream. And Ginny had said that he, Alan Norlund, was the main reason they had gone back forty years and somehow plucked Andy to safety out of the aerial inferno over Regensburg. It had cost them to do that, she said, and Norlund could well believe it had. So it would seem that he, Alan Norlund, truly was important.
    But Ginny hadn’t said why.
    Norlund got up and went to the bathroom. He remembered Ginny telling him how he should dress today, and he followed her instructions. He picked out clothing they had issued him, letting his own garments hang in the closet against his return. Sort of like leaving the barracks to fly a mission, he thought. Though in this case the special clothing was not high-altitude stuff. Here instead he got cotton drawers, and a white cotton undershirt with thin straps across the shoulders. The business shirt was white, wrinkly cotton also, lightly starched in collar and cuffs—he’d forgotten how the starch felt when you wore it. The pants of the gray suit with the used look were, as he’d expected, just a trifle baggy in the knees. There was a matching vest, and a red tie.
    Beside his own reading glasses on the dresser had appeared a different pair, in an old clamshell case, and he put them on and slipped the case into his pocket. The glasses worked beautifully. Also on the dresser was a small tray that he was sure hadn’t been there last night. The tray held the potential contents of his Thirties pockets and a wristwatch, leather-strapped and ticking. Norlund gave the winding stem of the watch a few turns and put it on, leaving his own quartz model in its place.
    Then there was a leather billfold, slightly worn. It was packed with what certainly looked like real US money, circa nineteen-thirty. Norlund counted two hundred and twenty dollars in assorted bills, some crisp and new-looking, some old and worn. None of them were dated after nineteen-thirty two. Thoughtfully Norlund rubbed the money in his fingers before he replaced it in the billfold. The money bothered him—whether because it might be counterfeit or because it might not be, he wasn’t sure.
    The billfold also held some business cards, with Norlund’s own name on them—someone must have been sure of his recruitment. The cards gave a Wheaton address for the Radio Survey Corporation; he wasn’t sure whether it was the address of the building he was