CHAPTER 13

"New York squared, that's where we are," Elliot said, squinting at the direction indicator map cross-reference dial on his new Time Patrol Control Watch.

"What kind of a dumb name is that?" Bill sneered.

"I have no idea — but that's what it says here. New York, New York. Maybe they like the city so much that they named it twice."

Although Bill was not exactly the cosmopolitan sort, he'd seen his share of cities throughout the Empire. He'd seen cities alien, cities human and cities not quite either. He'd seen small cities — and of course there was Helior, the Galactic Capitol, the planet that was just one big city.

But this city, this New York, New York, was like nothing Bill had ever seen before.

He sort of liked it. Even though it stank.

He didn't like the doggie-do on his shoe, however, which he scraped off on the curb, avoiding other scattered mounds of the same substance. What he did like, however, were the little hats and gray and drab clothes the people wore. Nice and old-fashioned. What he liked even better were the bars on almost every corner. A gleaming contrast to the general blockiness of the place, and most of all the clear surliness of the citizens.

In short, it reminded him of back home on Phigerinadon II, and it made him feel homesick.

Sir Dudley the Time Portal wavered in the air. "Ahh, there you are. Simply wizard to see that you have arrived safely."

Elliot looked up skeptically at the granite building before them. "You sure that this is the place you let that hippie off?" He pulled out his new Time Ticker and consulted the digital readout. "Hmm. Looks okay to me."

"Indeed it should. I do recall that he wanted this particular building, the offices of SUPREME COMICS. ACNE PUBLISHERS. Well, must dash."

"Hey. How do we get back home?"

"Simple," said Sir D. "When you're finished here, you can find me at the 1939 World's Fair in Flushing. I'll be at the British Pavilion, watching a cricket match. You might enjoy the other exhibits as well. Toodle-oo!"

He wavered a bit — then vanished.

"I hope he doesn't get lost there," muttered Bill.

"Keep the faith, baby. Come on Bill. Next stop, the offices of SUPER DUPER COMIX. According to my machine here, the editor is currently Kraft-Nibbling, father of horny-porny comix."

Bill looked down the street. "Isn't that a bar down there? You must be thirsty. Why don't we have a drink first?"

"I can understand your misplaced interest in me. Particularly since my arm is now well healed and I can bend it again to lift a drink. But, if you please Bill, later. Also, if you help me get this mess straightened out, I'll see to it that the Time Police will personally buy you your own bar using the Police Pension Fund."

Bill frowned. "You wouldn't bowb an old buddy?"

"Never! This is an important job you're on, Bill. The fate of the universe rests on our shoulders. A bar seems a small reward."

"How about hiring some lady bartenders for my bar, so I won't have to work too hard?"

"Let's not get too greedy, Bill."

"You're on! One successful mission — one bar." Bill squared his shoulders and marched ahead toward the revolving doors of the office building. He stepped inside and started twirling round and round. He got dizzy and sick. When he came out, he still wasn't inside the building, and he fell on top of Elliot.

"It's some kind of trap!" Bill said. "A trap!"

"No, Bill," said Elliot. "This is an ancient type of portal called revolving doors. When you get to the other side, you step out. You don't keep going around like you just did."

"Oh."

Bill, feeling a little queasy — and more than a little stupid — picked himself up and tried again. He stepped into the revolving doors, but pushed a little too hard. He went around and around, and fell out — this time, fortunately, on the other side.

Elliot came through the revolving doors and circled his lips at Bill's attempts to dust himself off. He shook his head.

"Bill, just don't do that in the editorial offices, okay? We Time Cops have got a certain amount of dignity to maintain."

"That's okay, Elliot," said Bill. "I feel much better now."

"Then let's go find that hippie!"

The elevator disgorged them onto a drab carpet in front of a drab set of offices. A sign on one read, ACNE PUBLISHING.

Bill was quite impressed by the array of comix displayed in the foyer. They were thick things, with beautiful artwork, featuring keen-looking detectives, and slant-eyed oriental villains, bug-eyed monsters and women with bobbed hair and incredible bosoms, slinkily covered — often in slips that rose well up their thighs to reveal lacy panties.

"How do you get them to move and hear the sound effects?" Bill asked.

"You don't. What you see is what you get. This is the distant past — remember. And these are pulps," said Elliot, consulting his Time Ticker. "A popular form of magazine, containing mass-market fiction in the nineteen twenties, thirties and forties. The covers promised a lot — the contents delivered little. If you moved your lips when you read, then this was for you.

"ACNE apparently published quite a few of them — as well as all kinds of cruddy general interest nonfiction magazines. Then Kraft-Nibbling started up their Comix line."

"Huh?" Bill was still looking at the colorful babes on the covers.

"Never mind, Bill. Let's just go in and see Kraft-Nibbling, shall we?"

"Sure." Bill picked up a copy of a pulp called SPICY DEFECTIVES with a particularly alluring blonde on the cover.

At a desk sat a sultry secretary.

"Time Police," said Elliot, flashing his badge. "We're here to see Kraft-Nibbling. Official Transchronic Business."

The brunette blinked and stopped chewing her gum. "I'm sorry. No salesmen allowed."

"And I'd like to meet the model for this painting," said Bill, showing her the copy of SPICY DEFECTIVES.

"The door is right behind you — don't let the handle get you in the butt on the way out."

"These are the offices of SUPER DUPER COMIX, are they not?" said Elliot in his best stern and authoritarian voice.

"Beat it, will you buster —"

"Furthermore, this is where the editors work."

"You hard of hearing, Mac?"

"Thank you very much." Without further adieu, and ignoring the angry shrieks behind him, Elliot chuntered into the offices, dragging Bill with him.

They walked into a modest, basic office with filing cabinets, desks and bookshelves. Upon the walls hung framed covers of SUPER DUPER COMIX, showing colorful starships, aliens and gorgeously rendered planets and star formations. In one corner was a tall man with longish, unkempt hair standing beside a refrigerator, industriously scribbling away on a sheaf of papers. He seemed to have finished with one piece of paper; he pulled it off its tablet and deposited it in an empty milk crate, where a huge pile of scribbled-upon papers had already accumulated. The big-boned man seemed totally oblivious to the newcomers.

Not so the other man in the room. The seated man looked up from a neatly arranged desk. He was an older man, with graying, slicked-back hair. He wore a tie and round spectacles. He looked up and scowled.

"How did you jokers get in?"

"Through the door!" Elliot sneered. "You are Kraft-Nibbling — the editor of ASTOUNDING. Don't deny it!"

"William Kraft-Nibbling? Father of the atomic bomb? Hardly," said the owlish-looking man, blinking with surprise. "But I am editor of SADO-MASO SUPERMEN!"

Elliot shook his head as though to clear it. "The father of the atomic bomb — something's wrong here. Who are you?"

"Why, Maxwell Perkins, of course. Remember that name as you leave."

Bill of course had never heard of Perkins; however, Elliot, keen student of history, apparently had. He nonetheless checked his Time Ticker to be certain.

"Maxwell Perkins — famous editor at Scribners. Editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, amongst others?" he said, looking down at the digital readout.

"Yes, you finally got something correct. In fact, that's Thomas Wolfe right over there beside that refrigerator.... How's it going, Tom?"

"...of wandering forever and her breasts again ... of seed-time, bloom and the mellow-dropping oversexed juveniles. And the flowers, the rich flower genitalia of the countryside...." The gigantic, rumpled author muttered like a man possessed. He finished the page and then dropped it into the milk crate.

"Yes! Sounds quite excellent, Thomas!" Maxwell Perkins looked over at the new arrivals. "It'll need some trimming, of course, for comix continuity. Wolfe does go on. But then, that's what I'm paid for. Tom's writing the new serial for TITILLATIONS — a juicy item titled LINGAM AND YONI ON THE RIVER OF LOVE. In a way it is kind of a sequel to Fitzgerald's GREAT GATSBY'S GREAT ORGAN."

"Wait a minute," said Elliot. "Thomas Wolfe and F. Scott Fitzgerald never wrote horny-porny comix!"

"Well of course they write horny-porny!" said Perkins, indignant. "They are the greatest writers of our time — and horny-porny is the greatest literary innovation of the twentieth century!"

Bill was looking at the covers on display. He read the titles of stories out loud. "THE ERECTION ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway. THE SEX-CREATURES FROM THE SOUTH by William Faulkner. Wow! Sounds like great stuff."

"Something's wrong," said Elliot, shaking his head morosely. "Something's definitely wrong! Either Sir Dudley put us in an alternate universe. Or that hippie went back much further in time!"

Bill was tapping on a framed cover. "I don't suppose you'd have a comix adaptation of THE PREVERTS OF MAGIC MOUNTAIN STRIKE BACK by Thomas Mann, would you? That looks like a really hot story!"

"Incredible stylistic advances!" said Perkins. "Art and sex bound together. And does it sell!"

"Wait a minute ... you say that Kraft-Nibbling invented the atomic bomb?"

"That's right."

"But it's not supposed to be this way ... there's been a terrible mistake." He noticed a newspaper clipping on the desk, picked it up, and read the headline. "COMMUNIST TRAITORS EXECUTED FOR STEALING NUCLEAR SECRETS FOR RUSSIANS. What's all this — fiction?"

"Nope — hard fact," said Perkins. "The Chief of the S.S. caught them red-handed!"

"S.S.!" said Elliot. "You mean to tell me that the United States is run by a Nazi government?"

"Please, we don't use that term anymore since Uncle Adolph changed it in 1936. It's now the 'National Capitalists.'"

"The Nakies?" said Bill.

"How astute. Some say it's a shame about the colored people, but boy, my train from Connecticut sure gets to the station on time now!"

Grasping for understanding, Elliot turned to Perkins. "But you say that Kraft-Nibbling invented the nuclear bomb — and wait a minute — Thomas Wolfe is supposed to be dead now...."

The large, gangling writer suddenly took notice. "Horny-porny comix saved my life!" he said with total conviction. "Why, when I first read 'THE SEXUAL ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN,' by Mark Twain, I knew I'd found my mode of expression!"

"I don't understand," said Elliot, totally baffled. "A Fascist American government? Publishing dominated by horny-porny! We're going to have to go and consult with Dudley again. We've got bigger problems here than I thought possible! Come on, Bill!"