RUNDOWN BY ROBERT LORY All panhandlers ask for dimes--but this one had a very special purpose! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The subway train announced its arrival with a screech of grating steel. The man was shoved from the car onto the platform by the eight p.m. crowd. The noise and the abrupt handling of his body brought him to awareness. Not that he had been asleep or unconscious. Although he might have been. He didn't know for sure. He found it hard to concentrate, but soon a sign over the platform came into focus: WESTBORO It meant nothing to him. The second thing he became aware of did. Another train had replaced his, and directly in front of him was an army of people, dispassionate towards everything but its one objective--to get on. They came at him all at once, forming a pushing, elbowing, cursing, jarring mass of humanity. He glanced off one to collide with another. He escaped the punishment by a lunge to one side which ended with a crash to the cold cement floor. He regained some semblance of steadiness on his feet and looked at the sign. It was still Westboro. It still meant nothing to him. He was lost. What was worse, he couldn't remember where he was lost _from_. He turned to walk, he didn't know exactly where, when he smashed into a little boy eating an apple. The boy reacted in a strange manner. "Leave me alone, you dirty man, you," the boy said. He dropped his apple and ran off. Scared. The man flushed with embarrassment, but the boy's remark made him look down at himself. He saw a dirty man. Filthy. His white shirt--it had been white once--was torn at the elbow and was covered with grime, his shoes at the toes were white where the black polish had worn completely off, his pants reflected no evidence of ever having been pressed and the right leg was ripped from the knee down. Two girls in their teens passed and giggled. He was aware that others had noticed him. "Hey, lookit the bum," a fat jolly-rover called out to his three on-the-towning cronies. "Bum," the man thought, and reached to his back pocket. No wallet. But not long ago he had one, he was sure, because the feel of its absence was there. Somebody must have taken it, or he might have lost it. In that crowd or on the subway or before.... He couldn't remember where he had been before. The feeling of not remembering seemed familiar, and he tried hard to think. But there was nothing static in his mind that he could hold on to. His mind wasn't blank anymore, it was a jumble. He somehow recalled he had been looking for his money. He fumbled through his other pockets. He found a dirty handkerchief and two cents.