User:Auric/The Day of the Boomer Dukes (short story)

The Day of the Boomer Dukes is a 1959 short story by Frederik Pohl, about the havoc a bored time traveler can cause. It originally appeared in Future Science Fiction, illustrated by Ed Emshwiller (as Emsh).

Plot
Foraminifera 9, a being residing in the far future, is bored and seeks escape. His time viewer shows only tedium. He looks in the Learning Lodge, finding a book titled U.S.A. Confidential by Lait and Mortimer, about the Mafia. The book in improperly not labeled as fiction and he makes preparations to travel back into the past and ally himself with them. He brings a large amount of weapons and contemporary devices. He arrives in 1950s East Harlem in the winter and asks a group of youths, the Leopards, about being escorted to the Mafia. They agree to escort him there. They encounter the Boomer Dukes and try to mug him. He stuns them and the Booker Dukes thank him. He assumes that they were grateful to him and they manage to knock him out and take his weapons.

Wally Hutner encounters Foraminifera's portatron in a cellar and is immobilized by it, pending the arrival of an Adjuster. The Boomer Dukes take his weapons, many of which are simple point-and-shoot devices and start shooting.

Priam's Maw receives the summons while at work and leaves to go there, meeting her father on the way, who tells her what is going on. By this time the gang fight with the police is out of control. They agree to quarantine the area. Priam's Maw finds the portatron and immobilizes and collapses the others in the cellar. She immobilizes but does not collapse Foraminifera.

In the end, the adjusters find that in order to remove the knowledge of the anachronisms Foraminifera introduced, 3846 simulacra need to be produced.

Characters

 * Foraminifera 9-Hart Bailey's Beam is a 9-Hart Bailey's Beam with untreated Weltschmerz.


 * Shield 8805 (Champ; real name Wally Hutner) is a rookie policeman of the New York City Police Force, assigned to the Leopards, as an undercover social officer.


 * Cow is a member of the Boomer Dukes, a street gang in East Harlem.


 * Sandy Van Pelt is a young reporter.


 * Priam's Maw is an adjuster, working undercover in a diner on Fifth Avenue (locus Newyork [sic] 1939-1986), as a cook named Bessie. "Her" actual name is Besplex Priam's Maw. Her father is Alephplex Priam's Maw, also an adjuster.

Publication History

 * Future Science Fiction, #30
 * Tomorrow Times Seven (1959)
 * Masters of Science Fiction (1964)
 * The Frederik Pohl Omnibus (1966)


 * Non-English publications
 * Un par del espacio (1968)
 * Die Welt wird umgepolt (1971)
 * Galassia #210


 * Translations


 * El día de los duques tronadores (The day of the thundering dukes)
 * Reparaturtermin (Repair date)
 * Giorni di fuoco (Days of fire/Last of the Renegades)

Availability
The story is one of five of Pohl's works that is available free online.