Turn Left on Thursday by Frederik Pohl

Author:Frederik Pohl [Pohl, Frederik]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi Collection
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 1961-01-26T00:00:00+00:00

Quayle was a toad, with a toad’s face and features.

Three men were with him—overseers from the farms, big men, rough and mean men, the kind that seemed to seek him out. And there was a woman, a woman in a scarlet dress.

That would be Diane’s successor. Trust Quayle! He wouldn’t go long without a woman, and always a beauty. Diane had been far from the first—he’d been married to only three of them. She was one; the other two had died out on the boondocks. Not in-quotation-marks “died”; one got in the way of a saposaur and one disappeared in the swamps. That was how Quayle had got where he was in fact—they had been rich, and he inherited from both.

His filmed toad’s eyes went mildly around the room.

He didn’t see me. It was very clear that he didn’t see me. After he was through not seeing me he whispered something to one of the men; and the man snapped a finger for a waiter, and whispered to the waiter, and the waiter whispered back.

Albert Quayle smiled a toadish smile. “Oh, go on, live a minute,” that smile said. “Live a minute longer, let yourself be sheltered by an Earthman’s brassard. But he won’t stay forever. And then you’re dead.”

And he was right, unless I found a way to handle it.

The first thing was to get Dunlap on my side. I had to show him what I was up against.

“Order two more Scotches,” I told him.

While the waiter was gone I whispered: “Listen close. You don’t believe that this business can kill me, do you? You don’t think that simply ignoring a man can be fatal? Watch what happens.”

He scowled, making almost as toadish a face as Quayle’s. “Hold on, Oliver! What are you up to? If you kill this guy Quayle or something—”

“If I only could!” At that moment came the waiter back. I took one of the glasses out of the waiter’s hand. He blinked only once at the remaining glass and calmly set it in front of Dunlap. “Sorry, sir,” he apologized. “You wanted two scotches, didn’t you? I’ll get another.”

“Now watch what happens.” I took the full glass and walked straight across the dance floor.

Nobody bumped into me, though the band was playing and the floor was full. Nobody noticed that I was there. They danced neatly around a moving vacuum, named me.

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