comfortably sleek. And how many people did it take, slaving away somewhere in industry or office, to provide the funds necessary to maintain this fabulous establishment? Parasites!
Tracy said flatly, “So you figured out a way of sending back through time. Of hypnotizing me. Of providing my hypnotized body with information that allowed it to put itself into a state of suspended animation. To accomplish this, I absconded with some twenty thousand dollars. Perhaps that isn’t a great deal in your eyes, but it was composed of thousands upon thousands of tiny donations… donations to a great cause. An attempt to make the world a better place to live in. To end poverty and war.”
Stein was frowning worriedly and clucking under his breath. But the ever easygoing Edmonds had an amused expression on his face, as though Cogswell couldn’t have said anything further out.
Cogswell snapped, “When I’ve got back some of my strength, I’d like to take a crack at wiping some of that vacant-minded amusement off your pretty face, Edmonds.”
“Sorry, old chap,” Edmonds said. “No idea of irritating you was intentioned.”
Tracy snarled, “For now I’d like to know this: Why!”
The girl, Betty, came out then and looked from one to the other. She said impatiently, as though the others were idiots, “What are you doing, Father? And you, Jo? Good heavens, look at the state Mr. Cogswell is in. I thought you weren’t going to discuss this project with him until he was suitably recovered.”
This project, yet! What project! Tracy Cogswell was getting more out of his depth by the minute.
He glared at the girl. “I want to know what the big idea is!” he snapped. “I’ve been kidnapped. On top of that, in spite of the fact that seemingly I did it, actually you bastards are guilty of stealing twenty thousand dollars of money that was intrusted with me. I want an explanation.” He could feel the flush of extreme rage mounting over his face, and he didn’t give a good goddamn.
“See?” she said indignantly to Academician Stein and Jo Edmonds. “You’ve upset him terribly.”
The two men looked at Cogswell in embarrassment. “Sorry. You’re right,” Edmonds said to her. He turned on his heel and left, nervously thumbing his piece of jade.
Stein began bustling and clucking again, attempting to take Cogswell’s pulse.
Tracy jerked his arm away. “Damn it,” he said, ignoring the girl. “I want to know what this is all about. You bastards have a lot to answer for.”
“Later, later,” the older man soothed.
“Later, my ass!”
It was Betty who said, “See here… Tracy. You’re among friends. Let us do it our way. Answers will come soon enough.” She added, like a nurse to a child, “Tomorrow, perhaps, I’ll take you for a pleasant ride over Gibraltar and up the Costa del Sol.”
In the morning, for the first time, Tracy Cogswell ate with the rest of them in a small breakfast room. The more he saw of the house, the more he was impressed by its efficient luxury. Impressed wasn’t quite the word. Cogswell had never known this sort of life, and he had never desired to. The movement had been his life. Food, clothing, and shelter were secondary things, necessary only to keep him going. The luxuries? Oh, he liked good food when it came to him… and good drink, for that matter. But he had seen little of them, and he wasn’t particularly regretful.
He’d expected to be waited upon by Moorish servants, or possibly even French or Spanish ones. However, evidently he was being kept under wraps. The table in the breakfast nook was automated; it operated by dials. Betty did the ordering, and when the dishes appeared—the table top had sunk and then returned with them—served them.
The food, admittedly, was out of this world. He wondered if Betty Stein had cooked it herself, earlier. But no, of course not. Betty Stein was much too decorative to have any useful qualities. She was dressed today in a brief outfit that looked something like Tarzan’s wife, Jane, used to wear in Edgar Rice Burroughs movies.
The conversation was desultory, and obviously deliberately so. Walter Stein even avoided Tracy’s eyes for some reason. However, there was still amusement behind those of Jo Edmonds.
Toward the end of the meal, Stein said, “How do you feel, Mr. Cogswell? Up to the little jaunt that Betty suggested yesterday? You’re sure it wouldn’t tire you too much? After all, it’s been just a few days.”
Tracy growled, “I don’t see why not.”
The way he felt, the more information he gathered about his surroundings, the better prepared he would be to take care of himself when and if he went on the run from whatever situation they’d gotten him into. In his time, Tracy Cogswell had been on the run more than once; his experience had taught him to case the area as well as he could.
He was able to walk by himself to the garage, although Academician Stein bumbled worriedly along beside him all of the way.
Cogswell was settled into the front seat of a vehicle that didn’t look so much different from a sport sedan of his own time, except for the fact that it lacked wheels. Betty took her place behind the controls, beaming at him reassuringly. The controls didn’t look too much different from those of a car of the late 1950s, a steering wheel, some foot pedals, and a conglomeration of gadgets on the dashboard.
The difference came, Cogswell found, when they emerged from the garage, proceeded a few feet, and then took to the air, without wings, rotars, propeller, jets, or any other noticeable method of support or propulsion.
She could see he was taken aback and said, “What’s the.matter, Tracy?”
Cogswell said wryly, “I hadn’t expected this much progress in this much time.”
“Oh, you mean the car?”
So they still called them cars.
“You needed wings in my day,” Cogswell said dryly.
She was obviously a skilled driver… or pilot, as the case might be.
“I sometimes get my dates mixed,” Betty said, making a small moue. “But I thought that you were beginning to get air-cushioned cars, hover-craft, that sort of thing, in your time. And hadn’t Norman Dean already begun his work?”
“Never heard of him,” he said. Cogswell was looking down at the countryside beneath him.
Tangier had changed considerably. It had obviously become an ultrawealthy resort area. Gone was the Casbah, with its Moorish slums going back a thousand years and more. Gone was the medina with its teeming thousands of poverty-stricken Arabs and Riffs.
Tracy grunted to himself. He supposed that as Europe’s and America’s wealthy had discovered the climactic and scenic advantages of northern Morocco, they had displaced the multitude of natives who had formerly made uncomfortable by their obvious need those few of the well-to-do who had lived here before. The rich hate to see the poor; it makes them uncomfortable. Tracy Cogswell remembered the old story about the lush in the nightclub listening tearfully to a plaintive blues singer and saying, “Throw her out, she’s breaking my heart.”
There were quite a few of the flying cars such as he and Betty were in. That was a good thing, though. With flight on various levels, there was no congestion. However, he assumed that probably other traffic problems had evolved.
Betty put on speed and in a matter of five or ten minutes they were circling Gibraltar, perhaps the world’s most spectacular landfall. Here too the signs of the military of his own period had given way to villas and what he assumed were luxury apartment buildings.
Tracy said, “Where are all the stores, garages, and other business establishments?”
She said, “Underground.”
“Where you can’t see them and be bothered by their unattractiveness, eh?”
“That’s right,” she told him, evidently missing his sarcastic note.
They flew north along the coast, passing Estapona, Marbella and Fuengirola. Cogswell was impressed. Even in his own time the area had been booming, but he had never expected to see anything like this. Why, the whole coast seemed dotted with villas.
“It’s much too crowded,” Betty said in disgust. “I’ve always been amazed that so many people gravitate to the warm climates.”
He said impatiently, “Everyone would, wouldn’t they, given the wherewithal?”
“But why? She was surprised at his words. ”Why not stay in areas where you have season changes? For that matter, why not spend some seasons in the far north and enjoy the extremes of snow and cold weather? Comfortable homes can be built in any climate.”
