Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [46]
His reflexes kicked in. The cop, who expected Dave to take his beating submissively, made no effort to protect himself. Dave nailed him in the jaw and hit him again as he went down.
Somebody screamed at him from behind. He started to turn when the lights went out.
HE wasn’t sure what had happened or why he was standing in front of a counter with a uniformed officer behind it. “Name?” said the officer.
Every time he moved, a stab of pain ripped through his ribs. One eye was swollen shut. “Dryden.”
Someone was going through his jacket. Pulling out his wallet, car keys, a couple of pens, a cell phone. And they had the converter.
“First name?”
He hesitated, still not certain what was happening. “David.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” He touched his eye. It hurt. He began to remember the march. Remembered walking on the bridge. “Am I being charged with something?”
“Assaulting an officer.” He looked at Dave with contempt. “Where are you from, Mr. Dryden?”
“Philadelphia.”
“What were you doing out there?”
He was trying to remember when the cop holding his wallet extracted his driver’s license. He held it up to the light, made a face, and handed it to the booking officer. There was some whispering. Then the booking officer stared suspiciously at him. “What’s this?” he asked.
“It’s my license.”
He rubbed it, frowned. Showed it to a fat, bald-headed guy with sergeant’s stripes. “Look at this, Jay.”
Jay took it, tapped the edge of it on the counter, and turned back to David. “Pennsylvania’s doing plastic licenses now?”
Plastic licenses? Sure. Oh, wait. It was 1965. “Yes,” he said. “Started this year.”
Jay’s frown deepened. “Mr. Dryden,” he said, “I see you’re a joker.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Most of it came back to him with the query about the license. Selma, the Brown Chapel, and the march. He couldn’t remember anything, though, after walking up the incline on the bridge. Never got to the top.
Jay put the license back on the counter where the booking officer could see it, and pointed at it. The booking officer broke into a large smile. Shook his head. Jay turned back to David. “Tell me your name again.”
“Dryden.”
“Your real name?”
“Dryden’s my real name.”
“Look, sonny. You have any idea what can happen to you for falsifying state documents?”
“I didn’t falsify anything.”
“This thing says it was issued in 2016.”
“Um . . . Oh.”
“That all you got to say?”
“I . . .” Dave could think of no way to explain it.
“All right.” Jay shook his head. “Get him printed and put him in back. Let me know if he decides to tell us who he is.” Jay led him to a desk occupied by a woman. A plate identified her as the property officer. One of the other cops put his personal belongings, including the converter, down in front of her. She took a form from her top drawer and started an inventory.
“Mr. Dryden,” she said, examining his cell phone, “what’s this?”
Jay was still hanging around. She handed the instrument to him. He looked at it. Looked at Dave. Turned it over and opened it. “I think the officer asked you a question,” he said.
The cell phone wasn’t going to work in 1965. “It’s a tabulator.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“It counts things.”
“It counts things?”
“It’s an adding machine.”
Jay sneered at it and put it down. Then he scooped up the converter. “How about this?”
Dave was tempted to tell him to lift the plastic cover and press the black button. “It’s a game box.”
“A what?”
“You can play games with it.”
“Sure you can. Like you’re doing now.” Dave held his breath, fearing that Jay might do something to it. But he only shook his head before putting it back on the table.
The property officer bagged everything and passed the inventory sheet to him. “Please sign both copies,” she said. She’d dutifully logged a game box and an adding machine, putting both items in quotation marks. Dave signed, she initialed, and she put the papers into a pile at her right hand. Then she dropped the bag into a metal basket.
They fingerprinted him and took him back to the cellblock. Several others, three or four, he