Free Troublemakers by Harlan Ellison Page B

forgotten in the space of a second, he removed it, held it while he spoke.
        His tones were amazed. “Do you know what you’ve got up there in that cell?”
        Sims said nothing, knowing what was to come would not startle him too much; he had expected something fantastic.
        “That man...do you know where he...that soldier-and by God, Sims, that’s what he is- comesfrom, from-now you’re going to think I’m insane to believe it, but somehow I’m convinced-he comes from the future!”
        Sims tightened his lips. Despite himself, he was shocked. He knew it was true. It had to be true, it was the only explanation that fit all the facts.
        “What can you tell me?” he asked the philologist.
        “Well, at first I tried solving the communications problem by asking him simple questions...pointing to myself and saying ‘Soames,’ pointing to him and looking quizzical, but all he’d keep saying was a string of gibberish. I tried for hours to equate his tones and phrases with all the dialects and subdialects of every language I’d ever known, but it was no use. He slurred too much. And then I finally figured it out. He had to write it out-which I couldn’t understand, of course, but it gave me a clue-and then I kept having him repeat it. Do you know what he’s speaking?”
        Sims shook his head.
        The linguist spoke softly. “He’s speaking English. It’s that simple. Just English.
        “But an English that has been corrupted and run together, and so slurred, it’s incomprehensible. It must be the future trend of the language. Sort of an extrapolation of gutter English, just contracted to a fantastic extreme. At any rate, I got it out of him.”
        Sims leaned forward, held his dead pipe tightly. “What?”
        Soames read it off a sheet of paper:
        “My name is Qarlo Clobregnny. Private. Six-five-one-oh-two-two-nine. “
        Sims murmured in astonishment. “My God...name, rank and-”
        Soames finished for him, “-and serial number. Yes, that’s all he’d give me for over three hours. Then I asked him a few innocuous questions, like where did he come from, and what was his impression of where he was now.”
        The philologist waved a hand vaguely. “By that time, I had an idea what I was dealing with, though not where he had come from. But when he began telling me about the War, the War he was fighting when he showed up here, I knew immediately he was either from some other world-which is fantastic-or, or...well, I just don’t know!”
        Sims nodded his head in understanding. “From when do you think he comes?”
        Soames shrugged. “Can’t tell. He says the year he is in-doesn’t seem to realize he’s in the past-is K79. He doesn’t know when the other style of dating went out. As far as he knows, it’s been ‘K’ for a long time, though he’s heard stories about things that happened during a time they dated ‘GV: Meaningless, but I’d wager it’s more thousands of years than we can imagine.”
        Sims ran a hand nervously through his hair. This problem was, indeed, larger than he’d thought.
        “Look, Professor Soames, I want you to stay with him, and teach him current English. See if you can work some more information out of him, and let him know we mean him no hard times.
        “Though Lord knows,” the special advisor added with a tremor, “ he can give us a harder time than we can give him. What knowledge he must have!”
        Soames nodded in agreement. “Is it all right if I catch a few hours’ sleep? I was with him almost ten hours straight, and I’m sure he needs it as badly as I do.”
        Sims nodded also, in agreement, and the philologist went off to a sleeping room. But when Sims looked down through the window, twenty minutes later, the soldier was still awake, still looking about nervously. It seemed he did not need sleep.
         Sims was terribly worried, and