Forsyte's Retreat Part 2

s.e.xtus grasped at a straw. "How many did you have to drink this evening, Mr. Turner?"

The attorney squirmed uncomfortably. "Well, quite a few, maybe, but not enough to--"

s.e.xtus shrugged one shoulder and turned to leave. "Understand, we don't blame you a bit, sir. You know how these middle-aged women can carry on when they get out on the town. You must have dozed off before she slipped in."

"But my door was locked! I think," he added uncertainly.

"We won't breathe a word of it, Mr. Turner. Rest well!"

s.e.xtus padded silently back to his room in his stocking feet and took a long pull at the whiskey. Funny thing, this. People often got into the wrong hotel beds, but rarely with such impalpable excuses. He sighed and picked up the letter from his predecessor again. It read:

Welcome to the Phony-Plaza. (That name again.) You will be the fifth manager in 30 days. If you need the job as much as I thought I did you will probably ignore my advice, but here goes, anyway: RESIGN! BAIL OUT! SKIDOO! (The man was emphatic.) I can't tell you where they've got the 2600 rooms in this haunted ant-hill, but believe me, they are there, and you'll be sorry if you hang around long enough to prove it.

_My_ predecessor left a garbled note about some _hypers.p.a.ce_ system that the owner, Dr. Bradford, has figured out. Actually, there are only 260 rooms, as you've probably surmised. But this Bradford, who is a nuclear physicist, by the way, has installed some sort of field generator in each elevator shaft that gives entry to these rooms at _ten different locations in time_. Room 500, for instance, in Vector A is 10 years from Vector B. So when you run to capacity with, say, two people to the room, you have 5200 guests in 260 rooms! They all live by the same calendar, but in their rooms they are actually centuries apart.

How do you like those apples?

It's all quite neat and economical, what with the cost per front foot of this beach area zoned for business, and you'll find a dandy profit on the books, but start worrying, fellow!

Things are beginning to happen. The maintenance engineer, who, incidentally, is quitting, too, says that the equipment in the shafts is wearing out, and the fields are pulsating or decaying or some d.a.m.ned thing. And we can't contact Dr. Bradford, who took the service manual with him.

Maybe you are more experienced in this hotel business than I am, but I couldn't stand the gaff. One more mess like I barely managed to clean up this week and someone's going to the pokey.

It won't be me.

Good luck, if you insist on staying, but I warned you.

(signed) Thornton K. Patterson

P.S. The fire-marshall is on our necks because the windows are all sealed, but for G.o.d's sake, DON'T UNSEAL THEM!

s.e.xtus tossed the fantastic communication aside in disgust, but his mind began to unreel a picture of the confusion he had witnessed down in the service quarters: Bellboys and room-service waiters fighting for service elevators; chambermaids trundling their little carts on the dead run; the overworked laundry staff, laboring in a veritable sweatshop of steamy chaos, swamped in a billowing backlog of sheets and towels. It all pointed to a large hotel operation.

If so, where were the rooms? Refusing to argue further with himself, he got undressed. Hypers.p.a.ce or not, the people apparently were there, and it was his job to serve them. He got a bucket of ice from room-service, mixed an ice and whiskey highball and retreated into his private little world between crisp sheets and the pages of a twenty-five-cent mystery novel.

Arising early, he was girded for the summons from Miss Genevieve Hafner in room H-408. He went to her room. Fully dressed and in the daylight she was still a hollow-eyed mess. The only visible improvement was in the bleached bird's-nest, now a prim, rolled circle on her unlovely pate.

"What amends," she demanded, "do you intend to make for my terrible experience last night? Is that horrid creature in jail?"

"Experience? Jail?" s.e.xtus asked innocent-eyed. He asked that she tell him about it. Exasperated, she went over the details. When she finished he patted her hand and pointed to the sleeping pills. "You should see your doctor."

"But my doctor _prescribed_ those pills," she whimpered, looking down shyly at the hand which s.e.xtus held gingerly. "They never made me dream--before."

He bent and kissed the revolting hand. "You are much too lovely a lady to have escaped from such a predicament as you describe without suffering--shall we say, a more romantic--fate?"

Miss Hafner blushed at the thought and wavered between outrage and ecstasy for a dangerous moment. With time-tested genius, s.e.xtus withdrew quietly and left her to her thoughts.

He _must_ get in touch with Dr. Bradford, atom business or not. This place could blow sky-high any minute.

He slipped the key into his own door and entered his suite. He took two brisk strides into his bedroom, tripped over a lady's overnight case and sprawled into his unmade bed. Even as he landed he realized it had an occupant, a gorgeous, strangely familiar blonde creature, touselled and asleep hugging her pillow with a creamy arm. A crash from the bathroom brought his head bouncing off the silken coverlet even as the girl awakened with a scream and tangled them both with the bed clothes.

Gary Gable charged from the bathroom, face dripping and a tuft of lather under each ear. "What in the G.o.ddam h.e.l.l--" He leaped for s.e.xtus with his internationally famous shoulders knotted into bunches of muscular menace.

"I'm the hotel manager," s.e.xtus blurted loudly. For once his self-a.s.surance wavered under fire. Even to himself his words explained nothing.

Meanwhile, Gable tripped over one of s.e.xtus' heavy suitcases and joined the pair in bed. Another male voice issued from the bathroom, and as they all thrashed about, s.e.xtus became aware that a second female had somehow appeared between Gable and his brand new bride. They came up together, face to face, the beautiful, sleepy blonde and the very wide-awake, queenly brunette. Now a pot-bellied little man in shorts and unders.h.i.+rt emerged from the bathroom, his mouth a gaping hole in a fully lathered face.

s.e.xtus wriggled free, made for the door and off down the hall. To his horror, the automatic signal light on the vector "H" elevator was flickering and fading. The whole H-vector must be collapsing. He dashed for the stairwell and then reconsidered. He moved to the end of the hall which overlooked the low roof of the adjacent building. He tried the window and remembered that it was sealed. Back in the alcove he seized one of the sand jars and headed back for the window. A growing tide of commotion swelled from behind almost every door now. Grunts, screams and wrestling sounds came over the transoms.

He dashed the sand jar through the window, chipped off the jagged edges with his heel and climbed out. It was a twenty-foot drop to security, and he made it without hesitation. What could a man hope to do with a mess like--

Spang! His feet struck, not with a crunch on gravelled tar, but into a springy fabric that sagged under his 180 pounds, tossed him six feet in the air, caught him on the rebound and then juggled him down with diminis.h.i.+ng bounces.

They were waiting for him, as he regained his feet on the quivering surface of a spring-loaded, canvas trampoline. The bright, mid-morning sun blinded him for an instant, but their voices a.s.sailed his ears in a mighty roar of approval as he squinted under his hand and peered around him.

"Attaboy, s.e.xy," a shrill female voice piped. The roof-top was jammed with a pressing throng of--nearly naked people. In the cleared semi-circle about him a cordon of male bodies-beautiful restrained the mob behind a rope from which a long streamer hung with letters reading:

"WELCOME, s.e.xTUS, TO 2153 A. D."

Reaching over the edge of the canvas platform with outstretched hand was a single, willowy, sun-baked oldster in a purple loin-cloth. His hair and beard were a dazzling white, and his face was wreathed in a silly smile, the kind officials always wear when presenting the keys to the city.

He shuffled his white kid sandals and spoke with an accent: "Welcome to 2153, s.e.xtus Rollo Forsyte! California salutes you!"

Somewhere down on the street a raucous bra.s.s band broke into the _Stars and Stripes Forever_ that quickly medlied into _California, Here We Come_!

s.e.xtus shrank back against the wall and felt ancient bricks crumble into dust against his hands. The magnitude of his disaster crushed in upon shrinking soul, and as his nimble imagination grasped the stunning significance every molecule of his being vibrated with horror. _He had been warned not to open a window._

"You have fulfilled the legend," the old man sang joyously. "You are a famous man." How famous, s.e.xtus was forced to acknowledge as a television boom snaked over the heads of the crowd trailing a wisp of cable and cast its baleful, gla.s.sy eye full into his face.

"Two hundred years to the day, as my great-great-grandfather predicted.

I am Clark Bradford, direct descendent of--"

s.e.xtus stared wildly up at the open window. He bounced once experimentally. It was a fine trampoline, and he flipped a foot off the surface. Next bounce he flexed his knees a little and gained another foot. Now he doubled up purposefully.

The one-man-delegate in purple frowned. "Stop that. We are here to welcome you and start the celebration at the Hollywood Bowl and--Stop that, I say!" Now he sensed s.e.xtus' incredible intent. "Officer, help out here, please!"

A bulgy, bronzed fellow clad mainly in an immaculately white bra.s.sard left the rope barrier and joined Bradford.

The Elder screamed, "You can't go back, Forsyte! Don't you understand?

You disappeared two centuries ago when the vector field collapsed. You can't go back! You can't! This is your destiny!"

s.e.xtus' heels soared five feet above the canvas and gained precious alt.i.tude with each spring, but it was a precarious business the higher he went. One slip and he'd glance off at a tangent and be captured by those reaching, grasping obscene hands in the crowd. The thought almost unseated his reason.

The police officer asked Bradford, "What would happen if he did go back?" Then he added, "Ain't he got a right to?"

Bradford shuffled nervously. "I don't quite know. We never considered such a--my G.o.d! Stop, man, stop. You'll change the whole course of history! Stop him!"