models that would work perfectly and anybody could demonstrate, because these models were going to have to sell themselves, show by their very practicality and by the evident economy designed into them for their eventual production engineering that they would not only work but would be a good investment-the patent office is stuffed with things that work but are worthless commercially.
The work went both fast and slow, fast because I knew exactly what I was doing, slow because I did not have a proper machine shop nor any help. Presently I grudgingly dipped into my precious cash to rent some machine tools, then things went better. I worked from breakfast to exhaustion, seven days a week, except for about one weekend a month with John and Jenny at the bare-bottom club near Boulder. By the first of September I had both models working properly and was ready to start on the drawings and descriptions. I designed and sent out for manufacture pretty speckle lacquer cover plates for both of them and I had the external moving parts chrome- plated; these were the only jobs I farmed out and it hurt me to spend the money, but I felt that it was necessary. Oh, I had made extreme use of catalogue-available standard components; I could not have built them otherwise, nor would they have been commercial when I got through. But I did not like to spend money on custom-made prettiness.
I did not have time to get around much, which was just as well. Once when I was out buying a servo motor I ran into a chap I had known in California. He spoke to me and I answered before I thought. 'Hey, Dan! Danny Davis! Imagine bumping into you here. I thought you were in Mojave?'
I shook hands. 'Just a quick business trip. I'm going back in a few days.'
'I'm going back this afternoon. I'll phone Mlles and tell him I saw you.'
I looked worried and was. 'Don't do that, please.'
'Why not? Aren't you and Miles still buddy-buddy budding tycoons together?'
'Well... look, Mort, Miles doesn't know I'm here. I'm supposed to be in Albuquerque on business for the company. But I flew up here on the side, on strictly personal and private business. Get me? Nothing to do with the firm. And I don't care to discuss it with Miles.'
He looked knowing. 'Woman trouble?'
'Weelll... yes.'
'She married?'
'You might say so.'
He dug me in the ribs and winked. 'I catch. Old Miles is pretty puritanical isn't he? Okay, I'll cover for you and someday you can cover for me. Is she any good?'
I'd like to cover you with a spade, I thought to myself, you fourth-rate frallup. Mort was the sort of no-good traveling salesman who spends more time trying to seduce waitresses than taking care of his customers-besides which, the line he handled was as shoddy as he was, never up to its specs.
But I bought him a drink and treated him to fairy tales about the 'married woman' I had invented and listened while he boasted to me of no doubt equally fictitious exploits. Then I shook him.
On another occasion I tried to buy Dr. Twitchell a drink and failed.
I had seated myself beside him at the restaurant counter of a drugstore on Champa Street, then caught sight of his face in the mirror. My first impulse was to crawl under the counter and hide.
Then I caught hold of myself and realized that, out of all the persons living in 1970, he was the one I had least need to worry about. Nothing could go wrong because nothing had... I meant 'nothing would.' No-Then I quit trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread, English grammar was going to have to add a whole new set of tenses to describe reflexive situations-conjugations that would make the French literary tenses and the Latin historical tenses look simple.
In any case, past or future or something else, Twitchell was not a worry to me now. I could relax.
I studied his face in the mirror, wondering if I had been misled by a chance resemblance. But I had not been. Twitchell did not have a general-issue face like mine; he had stern, self-assured, slightly arrogant and quite handsome features which would have looked at home on Zeus. I remembered that face only in ruins, but there was no doubt-and I squirmed inside as I thought of the old man and how badly I had treated him. I wondered how I could make it up to him.
Twitchell caught sight of me eying him in the mirror and turned to me. 'Something wrong?'
'No. Uh...ou're Dr. Twitchell, aren't you? At the university?'
'Denver University, yes. Have we met?'
I had almost slipped, having forgotten that he taught at the city university in this year. Remembering in two directions is difficult. 'No, Doctor, but I've heard you lecture. You might say I'm one of your fans.'
His mouth twitched in a half-smile but he did not rise to it. From that and other things I learned that he had not yet acquired a gnawing need for adulation; he was sure of himself at that age and needed only his own self- approval. 'Are you sure you haven't got me mixed up with a movie Star?'
'Oh no! You're Dr. Hubert Twitchell... the great physicist.'
His mouth twitched again. 'Let's just say that I am a physicist. Or try to be.'
We chatted for a while and I tried to hang onto him after he had finished his sandwich. I said it would be an honor if he would let me buy him a drink. He shook his head. 'I hardly drink at all and certainly never before dark. Thanks anyway. It's been nice meeting you. Drop into my lab someday if you are ever around the campus.'
I said I would.
But I did not make many slips in 1970 (second time around) because I understood it and, anyhow, most people who might have recognized me were in California. I resolved that if I did meet any more familiar faces I would give them the cold stare and the quick brushoff-take no chances.
But little things can cause you trouble too. Like the time I got caught in a zipper simply because I had become used to the more convenient and much safer Sticktite closures. A lot of little things like that I missed very much after having learned in only six months to take them for granted. Shaving-I had to go back to shaving! Once I even caught a cold. That horrid ghost of the past resulted from forgetting that clothes could get soaked in rain. I wish that those precious esthetes who sneer at progress and prattle about the superior beauties of the past could have been with me-dishes that let food get chilled, shirts that had to be laundered, bathroom mirrors that steamed up when you needed them, runny noses, dirt underfoot and dirt in your lungs-I had become used to a better way of living and 1970 was a series of petty frustrations until I got the hang of it again.
But a dog gets used to his fleas and so did I. Denver in 1970 was a very quaint place with a fine old- fashioned flavor; I became very fond of it. It was nothing like the slick New Plan maze it had been (or would be) when I had arrived (or would arrive) there from Yuma; it still had less than two million people, there were still buses and other vehicular traffic in the streets-there still were streets; I had no trouble finding Colfax Avenue.
Denver was still getting used to being the national seat of government and was not quite happy in the role, like a boy in his first formal evening clothes. Its spirit still yearned for high-heeled boots and its Western twang even though it knew it had to grow up and be an international metropolis, with embassies and spies and famous gourmet restaurants. The city was being jerry-built in all directions to house the bureaucrats and lobbyists and contact men and clerk-typists and flunkies; buildings were being thrown up so fast that with each one there was hazard of enclosing a cow inside the walls. Nevertheless, the city had extended only a few miles past Aurora on the east, to Henderson on the north, and Littleton on the south-there was still open country before you reached the Air Academy. On the west, of course, the city flowed into the high country and the federal bureaus were tunneling back into the mountains.
I liked Denver during its federal boom. Nevertheless, I was excruciatingly anxious to get back to my own time.
It was always the little things. I had had my teeth worked over completely shortly after I had been put on the staff of Hired Girl and could afford it. I had never expected to have to see a dental plastician again. Nevertheless, in 1970 I did not have anti-caries pills and so I got a hole in a tooth, a painful one or I would have ignored it. So I went to a dentist. So help me, I had forgotten what he would see when he looked into my mouth. He blinked, moved his mirror around, and said, 'Great jumping Jehosaphat! Who was your dentist?'
'Kah hoo hank?'
He took his hands out of my mouth. 'Who did it? And how?'
'Huh? You mean my teeth? Oh, that's experimental work they're doing in... India.'
'How do they do it?'
'How would I know?'
