'Will do.'
We did, settling down behind a ridge that ran along a narrow dirt road.
Carl asked, 'Jake, do you have a screwdriver in the truck?'
'A power driver. Well, maybe I do have an old screwdriver lying around.' I went back and found it, then met everyone in the small cargo bay. Arthur had already dilated the doorway.
'Well, we're off,' Carl said, flushing with excitement.
'We're coming with you,' I told him.
'Jake, you can't!'
'We're not going to stay. I just want to make sure that we haven't left you in an untenable position. We don't know exactly when we are, Carl.'
'This is where I belong. I know it! This has to be my world, my time frame.'
'Carl, think a minute: When exactly were you abducted? What was the date?'
'I'll never forget it. It was August twenty-fifth, 1964.'
I still didn't know quite how to tell him. Arthur came into the bay and did it for me.
'Well, I've got the exact date,' he said. 'It was fairly easy. I monitored some local radio broadcasts. It's Tuesday, July seventh, 1964.'
Finally, it dawned on Carl. 'Oh, my God.'
'Yeah,' I said.
His eyes widened. 'Then-' He broke off, his mouth hanging open.
'Right. You can't go home yet, Carl.'
Carl closed his mouth and swallowed hard, looking suddenly ill. He leaned back against the fender of his car. 'Shit.'
'It seems we have some time to kill,' Darla said.
'I can't believe it,' Carl said. 'I just can't believe it. You mean that if I drive to Santa Monica and knock on my front door. :'
'Your paradoxical double would get a big shock,' I said. 'But since it never happened, . or did it?'
'I think I'd remember it.'
'Exactly. And I don't think you should do it, either. We'll just have to wait.'
'Yeah, wait for Prime to come and do his dirty work. Kidnap me. And I guess we have to let him do it.'
'I have some thoughts about that,' I said. 'I'm not sure I'm right, but-'
'I don't want to stay here,' Carl said.
'Where do you want to go?'
'I have some friends who could put me up for a while.'
I thought it over briefly and decided it was a good idea. The Paradox Machine was spinning its wheels frantically now, coming up to full steam. We'd have to be careful, but we'd have to act.
Arthur said, 'Jake, I'm going to take the ship up into orbit, if you don't mind.' He handed me an oblong- shaped object made of the same olive-drab material that was all around us. It was about ten by five centimeters and a little over one centimeter thick. 'This is a communcations device. It will always be operating, monitoring you, giving your position. If you want to reach me, just hold it next to your mouth and speak, either side of it. I'll hear you.' He turned to Carl. 'How far away are you going? Where do you live?'
'In Santa Monica. It's right on the beach, about sixty, seventy miles from here… er, a hundred klicks, about.'
'You won't have to come all the way back, Jake. Just let me know and I'll pick you up at a convenient place. I can easily home in on that beacon.'
'Good,' I said. Something occurred to me, and I considered the way we were all dressed. Carl and Lori had on gray utility jumpsuits which the Voloshins had lent them, and Darla was wearing her silver Allclyme survival suit. She had been wearing it when we first met. It was a little tight around the waist now.
Darla caught my stare and looked down at herself. 'This won't do, will it? I'll change into that old stuff of John's. It looks ridiculous, but it's more nondescript than this.'
'Hell, I left my old clothes back at Emerald City,' Carl said.
'And I don't have much but this jacket and slacks,' I said. 'Not what you'd call outlandish in our day, but the styles might be different enough to draw a few odd looks.'
'Forget it,' Carl said. 'This is southern California, the land of the nuts. You should see some of the getups people walk around in out here.'
Home.
The reality of being back on Earth again sank in as I sat in the back seat of the Chevy, watching the countryside roll by. I had seen the surfaces of a thousand planets, and none looked exactly like this. None, no matter how 'Earthlike' they were. A good part of my lifetime had been spent in alien environments, and now I was home again at long last, back in the environment that had spawned those of my kind. The Good Earth.
Compounding the wonder was the knowledge that this was Earth as it had been before I'd been born, almost a century before. A dented blue automobile passed us, spewing pale blue smoke. What the hell did it run on-burning wood? There was a smell in the air, something I didn't recognize. Gasoline, I thought. No, oil. I asked Carl if it was, and he said yes, but told me that the car was burning it because it was in bad repair. Interesting.
We came into a town, San Bernardino, Carl told us. We drove around for a bit, then pulled into a parking lot adjacent to a large shopping plaza.
'Be right back,' Carl said, getting out. He took the screwdriver with him.
He returned in a few minutes, stooped in front of the car and did something, then went around and fiddled with something at the back. Then he got in.
'Had to steal some license plates,' he explained. 'Otherwise we'd get stopped for sure.'
He pulled out of the lot, cruised down a traffic-choked boulevard, turned right at a sign and got onto a ramp leading to a multilane highway.
The sky was Earth blue, the earth the color of earth. Trees looked like what trees should look like, grass looked like grass. With all the worlds I'd been on in the last thirty years, this seemed strange.
The air was… unusual, and it got to be more so as we sped into the heart of a endless, sprawling metropolis.
Darla was rubbing her eyes. 'Some kind of irritation,' she said, sniffling.
'That's smog,' Carl told us. 'You get used to it, kinda, after living here for a while. In the fall we get the Santa Ana from the desert. Winds. They blow all the shit out to sea.'
'Those poor fish,' I said.
'Oh, it's not as bad as some people make it out to be.'
'Carl, it smells awful,' Lori said fretfully. 'I don't think I'm ever going to get used to it.'
'Take a good whiff of it into your lungs. You'll get to like it. Gee, I should stop and get a pack of cigarettes.'
'Carl!'
It was a bright, hazy day, and the warm sun put me into a strangely good mood. The Sun. How many alien suns had warmed my skin, or irradiated it, or nearly burned it? Too many.
The sun-drenched metropolis went on and on. I couldn't believe that Los Angeles had been this big in the middle of the twentieth century, kilometer after endless kilometer of residences, businesses, office buildings, service stations, shops, institutional buildings, and apartment complexes, all laid out in a vast grid of streets and highways. These last were something. They made the Skyway look like a country lane. Clogged with murderous traffic, they met five or six at a time at snarled interchanges, twining about one another into knots of elevated ramps, cloverleafs, and cutoffs. Although speeds weren't high compared to those on the Skyway, the sheer volume of traffic made the whole mess frightening. Anyway, I was scared. Carl wasn't. He seemed to have cheered up a little, and he was navigating his way through the shifting streams of vehicles with automatic ease, like a veteran. He was home.
'There are no restraining harnesses in this buggy,' I said, looking down at the blue fur-covered seats. I had known it before, but the careless disregard for safety struck me now.
'Damn good idea to have 'em,' Carl said. 'Congress should get after Detroit to make 'em mandatory.' An afterthought: 'I should have thought of putting them in when I was designing it.'
