The plot of "Time Pawn" is as follows. James Parsons, a doctor living in 21st Century New York, is on his way to work in his remotely controlled car one morning. The control suddenly fail and the vehicle crashes. Parsons is thrown clear and into some field of force. When he regains consciousness he finds himself outside a strange city at night. The city is unlike any he has ever seen – the spires were not his own" – and the stars are unfamiliar. He rather quickly realizes that he is in the future and he accepts this extraordinary fact without too much discomfort. He is still holding his medical case and assures himself that, no matter where he is, the civilization will need a competent physician. Indeed, he is excited by the idea and makes his way toward the city via a multi-ramped highway. Parsons is picked up by a youth named Wade who wears strange robes and an Eagle emblem. He offers to drive Parsons into the city. Wade is no more than 20 years old. More significantly, he appears to be a full-blooded American Indian. He speaks a strange polyglot language, a bizarre combination of Latin and Anglo-Saxon that Parsons has little trouble understanding him. Indeed, Phil rather rushes over a good number of points that might make a discerning reader raise an eyebrow. Phil had laboriously constructed this new language and clearly wanted to try it out. The chances of Parsons really being able to understand such an improbable tongue are nil and Phil quickly drops the whole matter and switches to regular English. After hearing Parsons story Wade confirms that this is indeed his future. It is 700 years after "the War" in the 21st Century and a new society has grown up, one that barely remembers Parson’s era. This society is organized into clans grouped around animal totems such as Eagle, Wolf and Bear. The population is now very young and all of full-blooded American Indian stock. Parsons is White and the people he meets are all repelled by his skin color. Wade takes Parsons to a place in the city and introduces him to a young woman named Icara. She questions the two of them and it is here that a number of strange terms appear: "Soul Cube," "the Fountain," "the Lists," and "Loris." Other people enter the room including a young man named Kem who insists that Icara leave with him. She refuses and the two struggle. Kem shoots Icara with a terrible weapon that cuts her to pieces. This scene of graphic violence is quite shocking given Phil’s usual restraint in this matter. As she lies dying the other sends for "the Euthanor" but Parsons immediately opens his medical case and attempts to save her. Using 21st Century medical technology he is able to stabilize her. But when the crowd realizes that he is actually saving her life they react in horror and beat Parsons into unconsciousness. Parsons regains consciousness in a new place surrounded by white robed young men and women. A hospital? But he realizes that this society has no hospitals and no doctors. They use euthanasia. Parsons is in a government center called the Fountain. The Director of the Fountain, a man named Stenog, questions him. At thirty, Stenog is the oldest person in the room. From him Parsons learns that healing is a crime in this society and that he will be sent to a prison colony on Mars as soon as his interrogation is complete. Parsons eventually learns that the average age in the future is fifteen. Society revolves around the operation of the Soul Cube – an immense "cold-pack" unit in which is stored the total reproductive future of mankind in the form of arrested zygotes. When a person dies a new zygote is allowed to begin developing. Meanwhile, at the other end of the process, a fully formed fetus, frozen until needed, emerges from the Cube and goes to the tribe that suffered the death. In this way the population of the planet is stabilized. Contribution of gametes to the Cube is regulated by the Lists – contests of physical and mental ability arranged among clan lines with the winners donating the majority of the new gametes to the Cube for future fertilization. In this way only the best and the brightest gametes are available and so the human race continuously improves. Stenog remarks that the Wolf Clan had recently triumphed in the Lists and made a major contribution to the Cube. This is the sole form of reproduction permitted. "Unauthorized zygote production" is both illegal and impossible as males are sterilized at birth. The Cube has the only source of male gametes, frozen within the Cube for later fertilization. (Phil is at great pains to avoid the terms "sperm" and "ovum" for some reason. Maybe he thought "gametes" sounded more futuristic.) To the people of the future, earlier societies’ use of birth control – "rassmort" ("race death," presumably) – is an incredible perversion. The reason medical science and the healing arts are illegal is that this society looks upon death as something to be embraced for the good of the clan. When a person dies a superior individual replaces him or her, hence the clan as a whole is strengthened. By saving Icara Parsons saddled her clan with a person who, because of her injuries, would drag them down in the Lists. Her continued existence damaged the clan’s chance to contribute their gametes to the Cube. In this society such an action is intolerable. Indeed, after swearing out a legal action against Parsons, Icara immediately had herself euthanized. The details of this brave new world allow Stenog and Parsons to discuss the whole concept of death within their different cultures, with Parsons coming out rather the worse in the debate. Stenog and his colleagues make an effort to understand Parsons and his profession as a healer but the concept is too alien to their manner of life. They bear him no ill will but he has no place in their society, has transgressed their most basic laws and so must be exiled to Mars. Parsons is stuffed into a one-way rocket and launched into space but something goes wrong and the rocket crashes back to Earth. When he recovers (this is the third time he’s been rendered unconscious since he left home in the 21st Century) he finds himself a prisoner of the Wolf Clan and their leader, a beautiful 35-year old woman named Loris. She and her group are responsible for Parsons’ predicament. It was they who transported him into the future via a time-dredge and later caused the rocket to crash land. They had originally planned to meet him when he first arrived by time travel is an imperfect technology and so Parsons inadvertently entered the city and came to the attention of the authorities. The reason for this elaborate conspiracy is simple: the Wolf Clan needs a doctor. They have a medical problem and want Parsons to help them. Loris takes Parsons to a secret chamber within the Wolf Clan stronghold. The Clan has a miniature Cube. Within its cold-pack field is the body of a man, perfectly preserved. Loris explains that he is Corith, the head of the Clan and her father. He died 35 years ago but was placed in cold-pack immediately after death. The Clan lacks the expertise to resuscitate him but hopes that Parson can do so. If he succeeds, Parsons will be returned to his own era. If he fails, he dies. Parsons is still recovering from the crash landing and so is allowed some time before attempting the operation. He has many questions. How had Corith died 35 years before? How did the Clan acquire cold-pack technology, which is a government monopoly? How did they happen to have a Cube ready at the exact moment they needed it to preserve their deceased leader? But Loris refuses to give him any answers and Parsons is reluctant to press her. He is already developing strong emotional and sexual feelings toward her. He also realizes that this whole situation is highly illegal and that the Clan is desperate. In any case, the Wolf Clan is the only group who can return him to the 21st Century. So, despite his misgivings, Parson agrees to help them. A large number of people gather to watch Parsons work, including a very old woman of nearly 70. She is Jepthe, Loris’ mother and the wife of Corith. Parsons notes a strong resemblance amongst all three and, indeed, all of the conspirators share the same general look. A family resemblance, Parsons realizes. But he has no time to dwell on this, nor how it happens that a 70-year old woman continues to survive in this future society, nor how a family resemblance can exist in the randomized reproductive system of the Cube. He plugs in the various devices necessary to restore life to his patient – a mechanical lung, a heart pump. Doctors in the 21st Century operate more like mechanics than in the manner we normally associate with physicians. (Eric Sweetscent, in Now Wait For Last Year, works in much the same way. In this sense even doctors resemble the typical working class protagonists of Phil’s world along with squibble repairmen and tire re-groovers.) The operation is a success and Corith revives. He is taken away to recover. Parsons then sees still another old woman in the crowd and she quite the oldest one of all. She is Nixina, the Urmutter, nearly a century old and the progenitor of all the conspirators. Jepthe and Corith are her children and their children are the secret group within the Wolf Clan. They have created an actual family, albeit incestuous, in a society that neither permits nor understands the very concept of a biological family. Dazed by these revelations, Parsons visits his patient and explains the details of his resuscitation. Corith shouts out "You damn fool! I died once to get away. Wasn’t that enough?" Then the whole story tumbles out. Nixina and Jepthe are plotting to spawn a new race by carefully manipulating the Soul Cube. They are mutants, as is Corith, and have isolated the Wolf Clan mutant gametes from those of the other tribes, forming zygotes only within their own Clan’s genetic material so that the strain breed true. Once they have reached sufficient numbers they will overthrow the government and destroy the Soul Cube. The mutant Wolf Clan alone will be permitted to reproduce and so will inherit the Earth. But they still have to use the official Soul Cube to breed; their own Cube failed in its reproductive function but could be used to preserve Corith. Corith and Jepthe bred nearly 80 children, some of whom are still in the Soul Cube waiting to be released. When Corith realized the nature of this insane conspiracy he killed himself rather than go on. Corith is crucial to the plot because he had not been sterilized; Nixina was able to spirit him away from the Fountain as a child before the operation. Corith is the only fertile male on Earth and when he committed suicide the plot was stuck in its track. But Corith was preserved in cold-pack and could be revived. For more than 30 years the conspiracy has been on hold as the Wolf Clan sought a way to bring Corith back to life. Finally they kidnapped Parsons from the past to perform the necessary procedure. Now Nixina and Jepthe plan to mate Corith with Loris and continue their breeding program. Corith begs Parsons to escape and alert the Government. Unfortunately a guard overhears them talking and calls for reinforcements. They are about to shoot Parsons when Corith pulls the heart pump from his chest and begins bleeding to death. Horrified the guards rush to help him and in the confusion Parsons escapes from the stronghold. The Clan pursues him but he manages to kill four of the guards. There is not much violence in "Time Pawn" but what there is is quite savage. For a doctor, Parson is quite a ruthless and efficient killer. He escapes finally by hijacking a car driven by a young couple (he does this by threatening to kill the girl unless her boyfriend does follows his orders, by the way) and manages to reach Stenog in the city. Stenog is not quite sure what to believe but orders the Cube to be ready for a possible attack. A Cube official tells him that Loris is already in the facility. Stenog and Parsons rush to the Cube and discover Loris calmly destroying a tape file. She admits to Stenog the details of the Wolf Clans’ plot. It’s moot now. Corith died when he tore out the pump and there is no way to save him a second time. Without his fertility and with the government now alerted the conspiracy cannot continue. There are still a number of mutant Wolf Clan zygotes in the Cube which will emerge from time to time over the next 40 centuries. Perhaps they will begin the conspiracy again. There is no way to identify them from the normal zygotes; the file she burned was the only record. And with that, "Time Pawn" draws to a close. The Wolf Clan are rounded up and exiled to Mars. Parsons is to be sent back to his own time. On the way to the time-dredge Stenog and Parsons discuss the ramifications of the mutant zygotes still in the Cube. Will Earth have to exile any unusually talented humans who emerge from the Cube to be on the safe side? But that undermines the whole point of the Lists and the Fountain. Stenog wonders if humanity will have to go back to normal reproduction, "unify reproduction and sexual intercourse into one act" again. Parsons doesn’t care. He’s returning home to his wife. Stenog shudders. "A wife. Well, almost any kind of society can exist. Almost any system of morals.’ Parson smiles and says, "Just about any. I guess you have to take the broad view of it." While certainly enjoyable as a sci-fi action story with some kinky (for 1953) subtexts, "Time Pawn" has more than a few logical lapses. For example, if all males are sterilized at birth, why do they participate in the Lists? They have no gametes to contribute to the Cube. By sterilizing male at birth the future undermines its own agenda to improve humanity; only half of the human race, the females, can contribute. The supply of male gametes in the Cube freezes male contribution to evolutionary progress to the time when the supply was first preserved. Stenog need have no fear of mutant revolutionaries climbing out of the Cube to overthrow his civilization. Any Wolf Clan zygotes that emerge will be, first, sterilized at birth if male, then distributed to whatever Clan has suffered a recent death. Without a group of conspirators operating within the Fountain the Clan will not be able to isolate these zygotes and monopolize them for their own breeding purposes. In the normal course of events, Wolf Clan genetic material will be contributed to the Cube via the Lists and their heritage either strengthen the total human gene pool or be diluted though fertilization with normal gametes. In no sense do they pose a threat to the future of humanity or the society of the Cube. And why would the future be horrified by the use of artificial birth control in the 20th and 21st Centuries? The Cube itself is a gigantic birth control system and about as "artificial" as one can imagine. It would make much more sense if they were deeply repulsed by the concept of natural impregnation and natural childbirth – things that do not ever happen in the 28th Century. Beyond these issues, the story as a whole is something of a disappointment. Characterization is weak. Most of the people in the story are mere cardboard. Parsons has a bit more depth but he must be the most unlikable protagonist Phil ever conceived. The pacing is off; events are too hurried and there is too much jumping around. There is too much "pulp fiction action" and the violence is fairly gratuitous. The whole American Indian idea doesn’t make sense nor why so unlikely a society as the Cube evolve from what must have been a genocidal world-wide war (the Caucasian race is extinct). But perhaps we need not be too critical. This is a short story written for the pulps and likely written in a hurry. And perhaps, too, with the intent to be rather shocking speaking, as it does, of sex, birth control, euthanasia, eugenics, and incest -- not, we may imagine, typical fare for SF readers in Eisenhower’s America.

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