Chapter 5: Priam's Maw

My occupation was “short-order cook”, as it is called. I practiced it in a locus entitled “The White Heaven,” established at Fifth Avenue, Newyork, between 1949 and 1962 C.E. I had created rapport with several of the aboriginals, who addressed me as Bessie, and presumed to approve the manner in which I heated specimens of minced ruminant quadruped flesh (deceased to be sure). It was a satisfactory guise, although tiring.

Using approved techniques, I was compiling anthropometric data while “I” was, as they say, “brewing coffee.” I deem the probability nearly conclusive that it was the double duty, plus the datum that, as stated, “I” was physically tired, which caused me to overlook the first signal from my portatron. Indeed, I might have overlooked the second as well except that the aboriginal named Lester stated: “Hey, Bessie. Ya got an alarm clock in ya pocketbook?” He had related the annunciator signal of the portatron to the only significant datum in his own experience which it resembled, the ringing of a bell.

I annotated his dossier to provide for his removal in case it eventuated that he had made an undesirable intuit (this proved unnecessary) and retired to the back of the “store” with my carry-all. On identifying myself to the portatron, I received information that it was attuned to a Bailey’s Beam, identified as Foraminifera 9-Hart, who had refused treatment for systemic weltschmerz and instead sought to relieve his boredom by adventuring into this era.

I thereupon compiled two recommendations which are attached: 2, a proposal for reprimand to the Keeper of the Learning Lodge for failure to properly annotate a volume entitled U.S.A. Confidential and, 1, a proposal for reprimand to the Transport Executive, for permitting Bailey’s Beam-class personnel access to temporal transport. Meanwhile, I left the “store” by a rear exit and directed myself toward the locus of the transmitting portatron.

I had proximately left when I received an additional information, namely that developed weapons were being employed in the area toward which I was directing. This provoked that I abandon guise entirely. I went transparent and quickly examined all aboriginals within view, to determine if any required removal; but none had observed this. I rose to perhaps seventy-five meters and sped at full atmospheric driving speed toward the source of the alarm. As I crossed a “park” I detected the drive of another Adjuster, whom I determined to be Alephplex Priam’s Maw--that is, my father. He bespoke me as follows: “Hurry, Besplex Priam’s Maw. That crazy Foraminifera has been captured by aboriginals and they have taken his weapons away from him.” “Weapons?” I inquired. “Yes, weapons,” he stated, “for Foraminifera 9-Hart brought with him more than forty-three kilograms of weapons, ranging up to and including electronic.”

I recorded this datum and we landed, went opaque in the shelter of a doorway and examined our percepts. “Quarantine?” asked my father, and I had to agree. “Quarantine,” I voted, and he opened his carry-all and set-up a quarantine shield on the console. At once appeared the silvery quarantine dome, and the first step of our adjustment was completed. Now to isolate, remove, replace.

Queried Alephplex: “An Adjuster?” I observed the phenomenon to which he was referring. A young, dark aboriginal was coming toward us on the “street,” driving a group of police aboriginals before him. He was armed, it appeared, with a fission-throwing weapon in one hand and some sort of tranquilizer--I deem it to have been a Stollgratz 16--in the other; moreover, he wore an invulnerability belt. The police aboriginals were attempting to strike him with missile weapons, which the belt deflected. I neutralized his shield, collapsed him and stored him in my carry-all. “Not an Adjuster,” I asserted my father, but he had already perceived that this was so. I left him to neutralize and collapse the police aboriginals while I zeroed in on the portatron. I did not envy him his job with the police aboriginals, for many of them were “dead,” as they say. It required the most delicate adjustments.