The lady who had answered the door led me up to her office, which unlike the rest of the conformist doors in the building had no label on it. She offered me a Coke.
“You probably went to know why you’re here,” she said.
“You got that right,” I replied.
“Unfortunately that’s not information I am prepared to give you at this time.
My face flushed. “So you mean to tell me that you put my life in danger several times over, stranded me in 1932, and you won’t tell me why? I’m sorry, but you don’t have a choice.”
Still, she held firm. “For now let me tell you that the less you know about this place for now, the safer you will be. This is an important time for all of us. Your actions here will decide the fate of the world.”
Zap chimed in. “But I thought we already saved that girl. What about that? What happened there?”
“You have already stopped the war. Now you need to stop the man. Perrenian. Find his ulterior motive, there has to be one. And then there is another matter.” She paused, and then looked at Zap. “You have taken the Compound, yes?”
Zap nodded.
Her tone rose to an angry pitch. “Reckless. Stupid. Why did you do that? Did the Messenger not warn you? Nobody is to use the Compound until the Society has deemed the person safe, do you understand?
We both nodded, dumbfounded.
She stood up and picked an envelope up off the desk, and signed it. “Take this. It will help you along your travels. For now, however, you have to leave.”
I began to protest, but I didn’t get past “Wait a minute, wait a minute. What the-” , because all of a sudden, we were outside the building anyway. Which is to say, we were standing where the building was supposed to be, but wasn’t.
“This is starting to seem more and more like a treasure hunt, and less and less like saving the world. Why the hell did I even get into this with you, Jake?
“Unless you have a good way to get out of 1932, I suggest you stop bitching. We’ve got more important uses for our time. Like this.”
I tore open the envelope. Inside, folded up, was what looked like a page torn out of on of those puzzle calendars, and on it was a word puzzle. You know the kind where you change one word to another, changing only one letter at a time, and each time you change a letter it has to be an actual word? One of those. It looked like this:
Land
____
____
____
____
____
Yolk
There was also a page torn out of a book. Some old fiction novel, whose days were obviously numbered, judging by the way the page felt. Two sentences were highlighted. They were:
They’re everywhere! Everywhere!
Creepy. But each one of these things had some importance, so I knew what I had to do.
* * * * *
Corporal John Halberd was responsible for keeping an eye one the two boys. If they did anything unusual, he was to report it. If they did nothing, he was to report it. If they took a shit in a public bathroom, he was to report it. And he was really, urgently supposed to report it if they went into the Society.
Which they had just done.
He went over to the pay phone on the other side of the street, and dialed.