The Day of the Boomer Dukes by Frederick Pohl.

There was a silvery aura around the kid.

The CoP's guns hit him, but he didn't notice.

Section one for a min of fair and nine pap taste utterly semped, semp des havevu qued schmers.

Excuse me.

I mean to say that it was like an endless diet of days, boring, tedious.

No, it loses too much in translation, explete my reasons, I say.

Do my reasons matter?

No, not to you, for you are troglodytes, knowing nothing of causes, understanding only acts, acts and facts.

I will give you acts and facts.

First you must know how I am called.

My name is for a min of fair and nine heart Bailey's Beam, and I am of adequate age and size.

If you doubt this, I am prepared to fight.

Once the tee to ty of life, as you might say, had made itself clear to me.

There were, of course only two alternatives.

I do not like to die, so that possibility was out, and the remaining alternative was flight.

Naturally, the necessary machinery was available to me.

I arrogated a small viewing machine and scanned the centuries of the past in the hope that a sanctuary might reveal itself to my aching eyes.

Co well t Tody.

That was back back.

I went through the ages, back to the century of the dog, back to the age of the crippled man.

I found no time better than my own.

Back and back.

I peered back as far as the numbered years.

The twenty eighth century was boredom, unendurable, the twenty sixth was a morass of dullness, twenty fifth, twenty fourth.

Wherever I looked, te Tody was what I found.

I snapped off the machine and considered put the problem.

Thus, was there in all of the pages of history no age in which a nine heart Bailey's beam might find adventure and excitement?

There had to be.

It was not possible.

I told myself, despairing that from the dawn of the dreaming primates until my own time, there was no era at all in which I could be happy.

Yes, I suppose happiness is what I was looking for, But where was it in my viewer?

I had fifty centuries or more to look back upon, and that was I decreed the trouble.

I could spend my life staring into the viewer and yet never discover the time that was right for me.

There were simply too many eras to choose from.

It was like an enormous library in which there must there had to be contained the one fact that I was looking for, that lacking an index, I might wear my life away and never find index.

I said the word aloud, for to be sure it was the answer.

I had the freedom of the learning Lodge, and the index in the reading room could easily find for me just what I wanted.

Splendid, splendid, I almost felt cheerful.

I quickly returned the viewer I had been using to the keeper and received my deposit back.

I hurried to the learning Lodge and fed my specifications into the index as follows.

That is to say, find me a time in recent past where there is adventure and excitement, where there is a secret, colorful band of desperadoes with whom I can ally myself.

I then added two specifications, second that it should be before the time of the high radiation levels, and first that it should be after the discovery of anesthesia in case of accident, and retired to a desk in the reading room to await results.

It took only a few moments which I occupied in making a list of the gear I wished to take with me.

Then there was a hiss and a crackle, and in the receiver of the desk a book appeared.

I unzipped the case, took it out, and opened it to the pages marked on the attached reading tape.

I had found my wonderland of adventure.

Ah.

Hours and days of exciting preparation.

What a round of packing and buying, What a filling out of forms and a stamping of visas.

What an orgy of injections and inoculations and preventive therapy.

Merely getting ready for the trip made my pulse race faster, in my adrenaline balance rise to the very point of paranoia.

It was like being given a true blue new chance to live at last.

I was ready.

I stepped into the transmission capsule, set the dials, unlocked the door, stepped out, collapsed to the capsule, and stored it away in my carryall, and looked about at my new home.

Pay you co well, smell of staleness, of sourness above all of coldness.

It was a close matter then if I would be able to keep from a violent eructative stenosis, as you say, I closed my eyes and remembered warm violets for a moment, and then it was all right.

The coldness was not merely a smell.

It was a physical fact.

There was a damp, grayish substance underfoot, which I recognized as snow, and in a hard surfaced roadway.

There were a number of wheeled vehicles moving, which caused the liquefying snow to splash about me.

I adjusted my coat controls for warmth and deflection, but that was the best I could do.

The reek of stale decay remained.

Then there were also the buildings, painfully almost vertical.

I believe it would not have disturbed me if they had been truly vertical, But many of them were minutes of arc from a true perpendicular, all of them covered with a carbonaceous material, which I instantly perceived was an inadvertent deposit from the air.

It was a bad beginning, However, I was not bored.

I made my way down the street, as you say, toward where a group of young men were walking toward me, five abreast.

As I came near, they looked at me with interest and co well respect, conversing with each other in whispers.

I addressed them sirs, please direct me to the nearest recruiting office, as you call it, for the dread Camorra.

They stopped and pressed about me, looking at me intently.

They were handsomely, though cruelly dressed, in coats of a striking orange color and long trousers of an extremely dark material.

I decreed that I might not have made them understand me.

It is always probable.

It is understood that a quick nick course in dialects of the past may not give one instant command of spoken communication in the field.

I spoke again, I wish to encounter a representative of the Camorra, in other words, the black Hand, in other words, the cruel and sinister Sicilian terrorists named the Mafia.

Do you know where these can be found?

One of them said, nay, what's that jive?

I puzzled over what he had said for a moment, but in the end decreed that his message was sense free.

As I was about to speak, however, he said suddenly, let's row man, and all five of them walked quickly away a few yards.

It was quite disappointing.

I observed them conferring among themselves, glancing at me, and for a time proposed terminating my venture, for I then believed that it would be better to return home, as you say, in order to more adequately research the matter.

However, the five young men came toward me again.

The one who had spoken before, who I now detected was somewhat taller and fatter than the others, spoke as follows, you're wanting the mafia?

I agreed.

He looked at me for a moment.

Are you holding?

He was inordinately hard to understand.

I said, slowly, with a patience, keska that holding?

Say money, man, you going to slip us something to help you find these cats?

Certainly money, I have great quantities of money instantly available, I rejoined him.

This appeared to relieve his mind.

There was a short pause directly after which this first of the young men spoke, you're on man, Yeah, come with us.

What's to call you?

I queried this last statement, and he expanded the name.

What's the name?

You may call me?

Four a min a fare in nine, I directed, since I wished to be incognito, as you put it, and we proceeded along the street.

All five of the young men indicated a desire to serve me, offering indeed to take my carryall.

I rejected this politely.

I looked about me with lively interest, as you may well believe, co well dirt, col dinginess, co well cold.

And yet there was a certain charm which I can determine no way of expressing in this language acts and fax.

Of course, I shall not attempt to capture the subjectivity which is the charm, only to transcribe the physical datum, perhaps even data.

Who knows my companions For example, they were in appearance overwrought, looking about them, continually, stopping entirely and drawing me with them to the shelter of a door, when another man, this one wearing blue clothing and a visored hat, appeared.

Yet they were clearly devoted to me at that moment, since they had put aside their own projects in order to escort me without delay to the mafia.

Mafia.

Fortunate that I had found them to lead me to the mafia, for it had been clear in the historical work I had consulted that it was not ultimately easy to gain access to the Mafia.

Indeed, so secret were they that I had detected no trace of their existence in other histories of the period.

Had I relied only on the conventional work, I might never have known of their great underground struggle against what you term society.

It was only in the actual contemporary volume itself, The Curiosity titled us a confidential by one Lay and one Mortimer, that I had described that throughout the world this great revolutionary organization flexed its tentacles, the plexus within a short distance of where I now stood, battling courageously with me to help them.

What heights might we not attain?

Co well, dramatic delight, My meditations were interrupted, Boomers, asserted one of my five escorts in a loud, frightened tone.

Let's cut it, man.

He continued, leading me with them into another entrance.

It appeared as well as I could decree, that the cause of his ejaculative outcry was the discovery of perhaps three, perhaps four other young men in coats of the same shiny material as my escorts.

The difference was that they were of a different color, being blue.

We hastened along a lengthy chamber which was quite dark, immediately after which the large heavy one opened away to a serrated incline leading downward.

It was extremely dark, I should say, there was also an extreme smell quite like that of the outer air, but enormously intensified.

One would suspect that there was an incomplete combustion of perhaps wood or coal, as well as a certain quantity of general decay.

At any rate, we reached the bottom of the incline, and my escort behaved quite badly.

One of them said to the other four in these words, them jumpers follow us, Shure, yeah, there's much trouble.

What's to prime this guy now?

And split instantly they fell upon me with violence.

I had fortunately become rather alarmed at their visible emotion of fear, and already had taken from my carryall a Stolgrat sixteen, so that quickly I turned it on them.

I started to replace the Stolgrat sixteen as they fell to the floor.

Yet I realized that there might be an additional element of danger.

Instead of putting the Stolgrat sixteen in with the other trade goods which I had brought to assist me in negotiating with the mafia, I transferred it to my jacket.

It had become clear to me that the five young men of my escort had intended to abduct and rob me.

Indeed, had intended it all along, perhaps having never intended to convey me to the office of the mafia.

And the other young men.

Those who wore the blue jackets in place of the orange were already descending the incline toward me quite rapidly stop.

I directed them, I shall not entrust myself to you until you have given me evidence that you entirely deserve such trust.

They all halted, regarded me in the Stolgrat sixteen.

I detected it.

One of them said to another that cat's got a zip.

The other denied this, saying that's no zip.

Man.

Yeah, look at them leopards.

Say you bust them flunkies with that thing.

I perceived his meaning quite quickly.

You are correct, I rejoined.

Are you associated in friendship with them flunkies?

Hell no, Yeah, they're the leopards and we're boomer dukes.

You cool them, You do us much good.

I received this information as indicating that the two socioeconomic units were inimical and unfortunate lapsed into an example of the bivalent error.

Since P implied not Q, I sloppily assumed that not Q implied R with you understand are being taken as the class of phenomenon pertinently favorable to me.

This was a very poor construction, and of course resulted in certain difficulties.

Qued.

After all, I stated them flunkies offered to conduct me to a recruiting office, as you say, of the mafia, but instead tried to take from me the much money I am holding.

I then went on to describe to them my desire to attain contact with the said mafia.

Meanwhile, they descended further and grouped about me in the very little light, Examining curiously the motionless figures of the leopards.

They seemed to be greatly impressed and at the same time very much puzzled.

Naturally, they looked at the leopards and then at me.

They gave every evidence of wishing to help me.

But of course if I had not forgotten that, one cannot ass so from the statements not leopard implies boomer Duke, and not leopard implies for am in a fair and nine that qued boomer Duke implies for a min a fair and nine.

If I had not forgotten this, I say I should not have been deceived, for in practice they were as little favorable to me as the leopards a certain member of their party reached a position behind me.

I quickly perceived that his intention was not favorable and attempted to turn around in order to discharge at him with the Stolgrat sixteen.

But he was very rapid.

He had a metallic cylinder, and with it struck my head, knocking me unconscious.

Section two Shield eighty eight five.

This candy store is called Chriss.

There must be ten thousand like it in the city.

A marble counter with perhaps five stools, a display case of cigars and a bigger one of candy.

A few dozen girly magazines hanging by closed pins sort of things from wire ropes along the wall.

It has a couple of very small glass topped tables under the magazines, and a juke.

I can't imagine a place like Chris's without a juke.

I had been sitting around Chris's for a couple of hours, and I was beginning to get edgy.

The reason I was sitting around Chris's was not that I liked Cochs particularly, but that it was one of the hanging out places of a juvenile gang called the Leopards, with whom I had been trying to work for nearly a year, and the reason I was becoming edgy was that I didn't see any of them.

There a boy behind the counter.

He had the same first name as I Walter in both cases, though my last name is Hunter, in his, I believe is something Puerto Rican.

The boy behind the counter was dummying up too.

I tried to talk to him on and off when he wasn't busy.

He wasn't busy most of the time it was too cold for sodas, but he just didn't want to talk.

Now, these kids love to talk.

A lot of what they say doesn't make sense, either bullying or bragging or purposeless swearing, but talk is their normal state.

When they quiet down, it means trouble.

For instance, if you ever find yourself walking down thirty fifth Street and a couple of kids past you talking, you don't have to bother looking around.

But if they stopped talking, turn quickly, you're about to be mugged.

Not that Walt was a mugger as far as I know, but that's the pattern of the enclave.

So his being quiet was a bad sign.

It might mean that a rumble was brewing, and that meant that my work so far had been pretty nearly a failure.

Even worse, it might mean that somehow the Leopards had discovered that I had at last passed my examinations and been appointed to the New York City Police Force as rookie patrolman Shield eighty eight o five.

Trying to work with these kids is hard enough at best.

They don't like outsiders, but they particularly hate cops, and I had been trying for some weeks to decide how I could break the news to them.

The door opened.

Hawk stood there.

He didn't look at me, which was a bad sign.

Hawk was one of the youngest in the Leopards, a skinny, very dark kid who had been reasonably friendly to me.

He stood in the open door, with snow blowing past him.

Walt out here, man, it wasn't me, he meant.

They call me champ.

I suppose because I beat them all shooting eight ball pool.

Walt put down the comic he had been reading and walked out, also without looking at me.

They closed the door.

Time passed.

I saw them through the window talking to each other, looking at me.

It was something, all right.

They were scared.

That's bad because these kids are like wild animals.

If you scare them.

They hit first.

It's the only way they know to defend themselves.

But on the other hand, a rumble wouldn't scare them, not where they would show it, and finding out about the shield in my pocket wouldn't scare them either.

They hated cops, as I say, but cops were part of their environment.

It was strange and baffling.

Walt came back in and Hawk walked rapidly away.

Walt went behind the counter, lit a cigarette, wiped at the marble top, picked up his comic, put it down again, and finally looked at me.

He said, some punk busted Fayo and a couple of the boys.

It's real trouble.

I didn't say anything.

He took a puff on his cigarette.

They're chilled champ five of them chilled dead.

It sounded bad.

There hadn't been a real rumble in months, not with a killing.

He shook his head.

Not dead.

You're wanting to see you go down Gomez's cellar.

Yeah, they're all stiff, but they're breathing.

I'd be along soon as the old man comes back in the store.

He looked pretty sick.

I left it at that and hurried down the block.

To the tenement where the Gomez family lived, and then I found out why they were all sprawled on the filthy floor of the cellar like winos in an alley, Feo who ran the gang, Jap Baker, two others I didn't know as well.

They were breathing, as Walt had said, but you just couldn't wake them up.

Hawk and his twin brother Yogi were there with them, looking scared.

I couldn't blame them.

The kids looked perfectly all right, but it was obvious that they weren't.

I bent down and smelled, but there was no trace of liquor or anything else on their breath.

I stood up.

We'd better get a doctor.

Nay, you call the meat wagon and the cop comes right with it, man, Yogi said, and his brother nodded.

I laid off that for a moment.

What happened?

Hawk said, You know that which Gloria goes with one of the Boomer dukes, She opened her big mouth to my girl.

Yeah, opened her mouth, and much bad talk came out, said Feyo primed some jumper with a zip and the punk cooled him, and then a couple of the Boomers moved in.

Real cool now, they've got the punk with the zip and much other stuff, real stuff, What kind of stuff?

Hawk looked worried.

He finally admitted that he didn't know what kind of stuff, but it was something dangerous in the way of weapons.

It had been the zip that had knocked out the five Leopards.

I sent Hawk out to the drug store for smelling salts and containers of hot black coffee.

Not that I knew what I was doing, of course, but they were dead set against calling an ambulance, and the boys didn't seem to be in any particular danger, only sleep.

However, even then, I knew that this kind of trouble was something I couldn't handle alone.

It was a toss up what to do.

The smart thing was to call the precinct right then and there, but I couldn't help feeling that that would make the Leopards clam up hopelessly.

The six months I had spent trying to work with them had not been too successful.

A lot of other neighborhood workers had made a lot more progress than I, but at least they were willing to talk to me, and they wouldn't talk to uniformed police.

Besides, as soon as I had been sworn in the day before, I had begun the practice of carrying my thirty eight at all times, as the regulations say, it was in my coat.

There was no reason for me to feel I needed it, but I did.

If there was any truth to the story of a zip knocking out the boys, and I had all five of them right there for evidence.

I had the unpleasant conviction that there was real trouble circulating around East Harlem that afternoon.

Champ, they're all waking up.

I turned around, and Hawk was right.

The five leopards, all of a sudden were stirring and opening their eyes.

Maybe the smelling salts had something to do with it, but I rather think not.

We fed them some black coffee, still reasonably hot.

They were scared.

They were more scared than anything I had ever seen in those kids before.

They could hardly talk at first, and when finally they came around enough to tell me what had happened, I could hardly believe them.

This man had been small and peculiar, and he had been looking for, of all things, the mafia, which he had read about in history books, old history books.

Well, it didn't make sense unless you were prepared to make a certain assumption that I refused to make man from Mars nonsense or from the future equally ridiculous.

The five leopards reviving began to walk around.

The cellar was dark and dirty, and packed with the accumulation of generations, in the way of old furniture and rat inhabited mattresses and piles of newspapers.

It wasn't surprising that we hadn't noticed the little gleaming thing that had apparently rolled under an abandoned pot belly stove.

Jap picked it up, squalled, dropped it and yelled for me.

I touched it cautiously, and it tingled.

It wasn't painful, but it was an odd, unexpected feeling.

Perhaps you've come across the buzzers that novelty stores sell, which concealed in the palm, give a sudden, surprising tingle when the owner shakes hands with an unsuspecting friend.

It was like that, like a mild electric shock.

I picked it up and held it.

It gleamed brightly with a light of its own.

It was round.

It made a faint droning sound.

I turned it over and it spoke to me.

It said in a friendly, feminine whisper warning.

This portatron, attuned only two Bailey's beam percepts, remain quiescent until the adjuster comes.

That settled it.

Any time a lit up cube ball talks to me, I refer the matter to a higher authority.

I decided on the spot that I was heading for the precinct house, no matter what the leopards thought.

But when I turned and headed for the stairs, I couldn't move.

My feet simply would not lift off the ground.

I twisted and stumbled and fell in a heap.

I yelled for help, but it didn't do any good.

The leopards couldn't move either.

We were stuck there in Gomez's cellar, as though we had been nailed to the filthy floor.

Section three.

Cow.

When I see what this flunky has done to them leopards, I call him a cool cat right away.

But then we jump him and he ain't so cool.

Angel and Tiny grab him under the arms and I'm grabbing the stuff he's carrying.

Yeah, we get out of there.

There's bulls on the street, so we cut through the back and over the fences.

Tiny don't like that.

He tells me, Cow, what's to leave this cat here?

He must weigh eighteen tons.

You're bringing him, I tell him, so he shuts up.

That's how it is in the Boomer Dukes.

When Col talks them other, Flunky's shut up fast.

We get him in the loft over the R and I Social club.

Damn, but it's cold up there.

I can hear the pool balls clicking down below.

So I passed the word to keep quiet.

Then I give this guy the foot and pretty soon he wakes up.

As soon as I talk to him a little bit.

I figure we had luck writing with us when we see them leopards.

This cat's got real bad stuff.

Yeah, I never hear of anything like it.

But what it takes to make a fight he's got.

I take my old pistol and give it to tiny hell.

It makes him happy, and what's the cost to me?

Because what this cat's got makes that pistol look like something for babies.

First, he don't want to talk.

Stomp him, I tell Angel, but he's scared.

He says, nay, this is a real weird cat.

Cow, I'm for cutting out of here.

Stomp him.

I tell him again, pretty quiet, but he does it.

He don't have to tell me this cat's weird but when the cat gets the foot a couple of times, he's willing to talk.

Yeah, he talks real funny, but that don't matter to me.

We take all the loot out of his bag, and I make the cat tell me what it's to do.

Damn, I don't know what he's talking about one time out of six, but I know enough.

Even tiny catches on after a while because I see him put down that funky old pistol I gave him that he's been loving up.

I'm feeling pretty good.

I wish a couple of them chicken leopards would turn up so I could show them what they missed out on.

Yeah, I'll take on them and the black dogs and all the cops in the world all at once.

That's how good I feel.

I'm feeling so good that I don't even like it.

When Angel lets out a yell and comes up with a wad of loot, It's like I want to prime the US mint for chicken feed.

I don't want it to come so easy, but money's on hand, so I take it off Angel and count it.

This cat was really loaded.

There must be one thousand dollars here.

I take a handful of it.

And hand it over to Angel.

Real cool, get us some charge.

I tell him there's much to do and I'm feeling ready for some charge to do it with.

How many sticks you want me to get?

He asks, holding onto that money like he never saw any before.

I tell him sticks, Nay, I'm for the real stuff.

Tonight, you find four Eye and get us some horse.

Yeah, he digs me.

Then he looks like he's pretty scared, and I know he is, because this punk hasn't had anything bigger than reefers in his life.

But I'm for busting a couple of caps of h and what I do, he's gonna do.

So he takes off to find four Eye, and the rest of us get busy on this cat with the funny artillery until he gets back.

It's like a million miles down dream street.

Hell, I don't want to wake up, but the h is wearing off and I'm feeling mean.

Damn.

I'll stop my mother if she talks big to me.

Right then, I'm the first one on my feet, and I'm looking for trouble.

The whole place is full now.

Angel must have passed the word to everybody in the Duke's but I don't even remember them coming in.

There's eight or ten cats lying around on the floor now, not even moving.

This won't do.

I decide if I'm on my feet, they're all going to be on their feet.

I start to give them the foot and they begin to move.

Even the weird he must have had some h I'm guessing that somebody slipped him some to see what would happen, because he's off in cloud number nine.

Yeah, they're feeling real mean when they wake up, but I handle them cool.

Even that little flunky Sailor starts to go up against me, but I look at him cool and heat.

Chickens, Angel and Peter real sick with the shakes and the heaves.

But I ain't waitin for them to feel good.

Gimme that loot.

I tell Tiny, and he hands over the stuff we took off the weirdy.

I start to pass out the stuff.

What's to do with this stuff?

Tiny asks me, looking at what I'm giving him.

I tell him point it and shoot it.

He isn't listening when the weird he's telling me what the stuff is.

He wants to know what it does, but I don't know that.

I just tell him point it and shoot it.

Man, I've sent one of the cats out for drinks and smokes, and he's back by then, and we're all beginning to feel a little better, only still pretty mean.

They begin to dig me.

Yeah, it sounds like a rumble, one of them says.

After a while.

I give him the nod.

Cool you're calling it.

I tell him there's much fighting to night.

The boomer Duke's is taken on The World, Section four Sandy van Pelt.

The front office thought the radio car would give us a break in spot news coverage, and I guessed as wrong as they did.

I'd been covering City Hall long enough, and that's no place to build a career.

The press association is very tight there.

There's not much chance of getting any kind of exclusive story because of the sharing agreements.

So I put in for the radio car.

It meant taking the night shift, but I got it.

I suppose the front office got their money's worth because they played up every lousy auto smash.

The radio car covered as though it were the story of the Second Coming, and maybe it helped circulation, but I had been on it for four months, and wouldn't you know it, there wasn't a decent murder or sewer explosion or running gun fight between six pm and six am any night I was on duty in those whole four months.

What made it worse the kid they gave me as a photographer, Saul Dettweiler.

His name was couldn't drive worth a dam.

So I was stuck with chauffeing us around.

We had just been out to La Guardia to see if it was true that Marilyn Monroe was sneaking into town with Ali Khan on a night plane.

It wasn't, and we were coming across the triborough Bridge heading south toward the East River Drive when the office called.

I pulled over and parked and answered the radio phone.

It was Harrison, the night City editor.

Listen, Sandy, there's a gang fight in East Harlem.

Where are you now?

It didn't sound like much to me.

I admit, there's always a gang fight in East Harlem.

Harrison.

I'm cold, and I'm on my way down to night Court, where there may or may not be a story, but at least I can get my feet warm.

Where are you now?

Harrison wasn't fooling.

I looked at Saul on the seat next to me.

I thought I had heard him snicker.

He began to fiddle with his camera without looking at me.

I pushed the talk button and told Harrison where I was.

It pleased him very much.

I wasn't more than six blocks from where this big rumble was going on, he told me, and he made it very clear that I was to get on over there.

Immediately.

I pulled away from the curb, wondering why I had ever wanted to be a newspaper man.

I could have made five times as much money for half as much work in an ad agency.

To make it worse, I heard Saul chuckle again.

The reason he was so amused was that when we first teamed up, I made the mistake of telling him what a hot reporter I was, and I had been visibly cooling off before his eyes for better than four straight months.

Believe me, I was at the very bottom of my career that night.

For five cents cash, I would have parked the car, thrown the keys in the East River, and taken the first bus out of town.

I was absolutely positive that the story would be a bust, and all I would get out of it would be a bad cold from walking around in the snow.

And if that doesn't show you what a hot newspaper man.

I really am nothing.

Will Saul began to act interested as we reached the corner.

Harrison had told us to go to that's Chris's, he said, pointing at a little candy store, And that must be the pool hall where the leopards hang out.

You know this place, he nodded.

I know a man named Walter Hunter.

He and I went to school together until he dropped out a couple of weeks ago.

He quit college to go to the police academy.

He wanted to be a cop.

I looked at him.

You're going to college, sure, mister van Pelt.

Wally Hunter was a sociology major.

I'm journalism.

But we had a couple of classes together.

He had a part time job with a neighborhood council up here, acting as a sort of adult advisor for one of the gangs.

They need advice on how to be gangs.

No, that's not it, mister van Pelt.

The councils try to get their workers accepted enough to bring the kids into the social centers.

That's all.

They try to get them off the streets.

While he was working with a bunch called the Leopards, I shut him up, tell me about it later.

I stopped the car and rolled down a window listening.

Yes, there was something going on, all right, Not at the corner Harrison had mentioned.

There wasn't a soul in sight in any direction.

But I could hear what sounded like gunfire and yelling, and I got even bombs going off, and it wasn't too far away.

There were sirens too, squad cars.

No doubt, it's over that way, Saul yelled, pointing.

He looked as though he was having the time of his life, all keyed up and delighted.

He didn't have to tell me where the noise was coming from.

I could hear it for myself.

It sounded like d Day at Normandy, and I didn't like the sound of it.

I made a quick decision and slammed on the brakes, then backed the car back the way we had come.

Saul looked at me.

What local color?

I explained quickly, this is the place you were talking about, Chris is let's go in and see if we can find some of these hoodlums.

But mister van Pelle, all the pictures are over where the fight's going on.

Pictures, mixtures, come on.

I got out in front of the candy store, and the only thing he could do was follow me.

Whatever they were doing, they were making the devil's own racket about it.

Now that I looked a little more closely, I could see that they must have come this way.

The candy store's windows were broken, every other street light was smashed, and what had at first looked like a flight of steps in front of a tenement across the street wasn't anything of the kind.

It was a pile of bricks and stone from the false front cornice on the roof.

How in the world they had managed to knock that down?

I had no idea, but it sort of convinced me that, after all, Harrison had been right about this being a big fight.

Over where the noise was coming from, there were queer flashing lights in the clouds overhead, reflecting exploding flares.

I thought, no, I did not want to go over where the pictures were.

I like living.

If it had been a normal Harlem rumble with broken bottles and knives, or maybe even homemade zip guns, I might have taken a chance on it.

But this was for real.

Come on, I yelled the sow, and we pushed the door open.

To the candy store.

At first, there didn't seem to be any one in, but after we called a couple of times, a kid of about sixteen, coffee colored and scared looking, stuck his head up above the counter.

You what's going on here?

I demanded.

He looked at me as if I was some kind of two headed monster.

Come on, kid, tell us what happened?

Excuse me, mister van Pelt.

Saul cut in ahead of me and began talking to the kid in Spanish.

It got a rise out of him.

At least Saul got an answer.

My Spanish is only a little bit better than my Swahili, so I missed what was going on except for an occasional word.

But Saul was getting it all.

He reported, he knows Walt.

That's what's bothering him.

He says, Walt and some of the Leopards are in a basement down the street, and there's something wrong with them.

I can't exactly figure out what.

But the hell with them?

What about that?

You mean?

The fight?

Oh, it's a big one, all right, mister van Pelt.

It's a gang called the Boomer Dukes.

They've got hold of some real guns somewhere.

I can't exactly understand what kind of guns he means, but it sounds like something serious.

He says, they shot that parapet down across the street.

Gosh, mister van Pelt, think it'd take a cannon for something like that.

But it has something to do with Walt Hunter and all the leopards too, I said, enthusiastically, Very good, Sol, that's fine, find out where the cellar is and we'll go interview Hunter.

But mister van Pelt the pictures.

Sorry, I have to call the office.

I turned my back on him and headed for the car.

The noise was louder, and the flashes in the sky brighter.

It looked as though they were moving this way.

Well.

I didn't have any money tied up in the car, so I wasn't worried about leaving it in the street, and somebody's cellar seemed like a very good place to be.

I called the office and started to tell Harrison what we'd found out, but he stopped me short, Sandy, where have you been.

I've been trying to call you for Listen.

We got a call from Fordham.

They've detected radiation coming from the east side.

It's got to be what's going on up there radiation.

Do you hear me?

That means atomic weapons?

Now you get the silence?

Hello, I cried, and then remembered to push the talk button.

Hello, oh Harrison, you there?

Silence.

The two way radio was dead.

I got out of the car, and maybe I understood what had happened to the radio, and maybe I didn't.

Anyway, there was something new shining in the sky.

It hung below the clouds in parts, and I could see it through the bottom of the clouds.

In the middle, it was a silvery tea cup upside down, a hemisphere over everything.

It hadn't been there two minutes before I heard firing coming closer and closer.

Around the corner.

A bunch of cops came, running, turning, firing, running, turning, and firing again.

It was like the retreat from Caparetto in miniature.

And what was chasing them.

In a minute I saw coming around the corner was a kid with a lightning blue satin jacket and two funny looking guns in his hand.

There was a silvery aura around him, the same color as the lights in the sky, and I swear I saw those cops guns hit him twenty times in twenty seconds.

But he didn't seem to notice Saul and the kid from the candy store right beside me.

We took another look at the one man army that was coming down the street towards us, laughing and prancing and firing those odd looking guns, and then the three of us got out of there, heading for the cellar any Seller.

Section five Priam's Maw.

My occupation was short order cook, as it is called.

I practiced it in my locus entitled The White Heaven, established at Fifth Avenue, New York, between nineteen forty nine and nineteen sixty two Common era.

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 to ceased.

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 deemed 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, you got an alarm clock in your pocket book.

He had related the enunciator's 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 made an undesirable into it.

This proved unnecessary, and retired to the back of the store with my carryall.

On identifying myself to the portatron, I received information that it was attuned to A Bailey's being identified as for a minifare and nine heart, who had refused treatment for systematic Veltschmertz and instead sought to relieve his boredom by adventuring into this era.

I thereupon compiled two recommendations which are attached.

Two a proposal for a reprimand to the keeper of the Learning Lodge for failure to properly annotate a volume entitled us A Confidential, and one 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 towards the locus of the transmitting Portaitron.

I had proximately left when I received an additional information, namely that developed weapons were being employed in the area towards which I was directing.

This provoked that I abandoned guys 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 Alpplex Priam's maw.

That is my father, he bespoke me as follows Curry b Splex Brriyam's maw that crazy four a men of Fara has been captured by aboriginals and they have taken his weapons away from him.

Weapons.

I inquired, Yes, weapons, he stated for four a min of Fara nine Heart 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 perceps quarantine asked my father and I had to agree quarantine.

I voted, and he opened his carryall 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 and replace queried a lefplex an adjuster.

I observed the phenomenon to which he was referring.

A young dark Aboriginal was coming towards 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 Stolgrat sixteen 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 carryall.

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.

The portatron developed to be in a cellar, and with it were some nine or eleven aboriginals, which it had immobilized pending my arrival.

One spoke to me, thus, young lady, please call the cops.

Were stuck here, and I did not wait to hear what he wished to say further, but neutralized and collapsed him with the other aboriginals.

The portatron apologized for having caused me inconvenience, but of course it was not its fault, so I did not neutralize it.

Using it for DF, I quickly located the culprit foramin Affair and nine Heart Bailey's beam nearby.

He spoke despairingly in the dialect of the locusts b splex Briam's maw.

For God's sake, get me out of this out, I spoke to him, You'll wish you never were born.

As they say, I neutralized but did not collapse him, pending instructions from the central authority.

The Aboriginals who were with him.

However, I did collapse presently arrived a Leftplex, along with four other adjusters who had arrived before the quarantine shield made it not possible for anyone else to enter the disturbed area.

Each one of us had to abandon guys, so that this locus of New York nineteen thirty nine to nineteen eighty six must require new adjusters to replace us, a matter to be charged against the guilt of form in a fair and nine heart Bailey's beam IDM.

This concluded steps three and two of our adjustment, the removal and the isolationation of the disturbed specimens.

We are transmitting same disturbed specimens to you under separate cover herewith in neutralized and collapsed state, for the manufacture of Similacra.

Thereof one regrets to say that they number three thousand, eight hundred forty six comprising all Aboriginals within the quarantined area who had firsthand knowledge of the anachronisms caused by foreigm an affairs importation of contemporary weapons into this locus.

Alifplex and the four other adjusters are at present reconstructing such physical damage as was caused by the use of said weapons simultaneously, while I am preparing this report, I am maintaining the quarantine shield, which cuts off this locust both physically and temporarily from the remainder of its environment.

I deem that if replacements for the attached Aboriginals can be fabricated quickly enough, there will be no significant outside percept of the shield itself or of the happenings within it.

That is, by maintaining a quasi stasis of time while the repairs are being made, an outside Aboriginal observer will see at most a mere flicker of silver in the sky.

All adjusters here present are working as rapidly as we can to make sure the shield can be withdrawn before so many Aboriginals have observed it as to make it necessary to replace the entire city with similacra.

We do not wish a repetition of the California incident.

After all.

End of the Day of the Boomer Dukes by Frederick Pohl