The Productions of Time

by John Brunner

  He whistled under his breath. So Blizzard did know what he was doing! Facilities like these weren't found under bushes. Abruptly, the idea of preparing a London production from scratch in four weeks didn't seem so ridiculous after all. Author, cast, producer -- and presumably lighting engineer, set designer and so on -- under one roof, with their own miniature theater for the rehearsal. That could be far, far better and more productive than meeting for rehearsal and then dispersing.

  Murray cocked an eyebrow at the little theater and went out again.

  He wandered back through the big hall, catching a glimpse as he went of a man he at first thought was Valentine but who Murray realized after a second must be another steward, slightly taller, with the same eerie soft tread and the mourning-black clothes. The front door was standing ajar. He paused by his car to put up the top because there was a scent of rain in the cool air, and went around the house to look at the grounds behind.

  They were lavish. He crossed a long lawn, put his head into a dusty-smelling shed full of sports equipment, wandered to the edge of the swimming pool -- the cabanas, too, had a dusty scent -- and came at last to the woods which he had seen from his room. They were dense and dark and very quiet. Kicking at a pebble, he followed a narrow path among the trees. He had gone barely fifty yards, and was already out of sight of the house because the path twisted, when he came to a fence.

  It was eight feet tall, made of heavy-guage linked wire on galvanized metal posts and topped with three strands of barbed wire. There was no way of telling whether it was the club's or belonged to the owner of the adjacent property; he guessed it must be the club's, possibly installed to prevent members from wandering on to other people's land.

  Murray turned back. There was plenty of space open to him, and he didn't care what happened beyond the fence.

  At the back of his mind was the idea that it was a shame he had had to come here to work. This would have been a hell of a place to rest up after his spell in the sanatorium -- if he'd had the money for it.

  He was getting close to the house when he heard a car approaching on the driveway. He hurried his steps; he was eager to know who else Blizzard had roped in to enjoy such unexpected luxury.

  IV

  It had occurred to Murray as he was telling Valentine to get rid of the liquor in his room that it might be difficult to refuse a drink when everyone came together for dinner. By half past eight, when dinner was over and the dozen-odd members of the company had moved to the big lounge for what Valentine had called the introductory discussion, Murray was really tempted to drown his sorrows.

  Somehow, he managed to distract himself as Valentine and his two aides -- equally silent, identically garbed -- moved in response to calls for drinks. The bar in the corner had been opened before dinner, and its stock was visibly depleted now. The air was getting thick with smoke; someone had found records and put them on the player in the corner, and the chatter was loud and bright. It was more like the early stages of a party than a business meeting.

  Only Murray sat somberly by himself in a deep wing chair, his big-knuckled hands cradling a glass of lime juice and soda. His brows were ferociously drawn together as he looked and listened.

  Most of the talk concerned the usual commonplaces -- backbiting, sickly praise, the disgusting habits of critics. No one had said anything about Murray's own assault on Pat Burnett, and he was glad. Probably Heston-Wood had talked his colleague out of taking the matter further. It would get to people as gossip sooner or later, but at least it hadn't been in the evening papers.

  Occasionally, there was a fierce burst of argument concerning a subject of real interest: the profitability of this whole idea and the value of collective improvisation as a basis for a play. That was a point Murray had given much thought to in the past few days, and he'd expected to be discussing it seriously by now. But he didn't have the heart. He'd seen whom else Blizzard had collected, and he felt contaminated.

  Blizzard and Delgado hadn't been at the dinner table. Valentine had replied, in answer to repeated questions, that they wanted to talk over some business matters and settle last-minute problems, so they were dining in another room. That rang false to Murray. It seemed more probable that Delgado was trying to build a phony aura of mystery around himself. No one here had seen him yet.

  Not that anybody appeared to mind. They were quite contented with the excellent food and inexhaustible supply of liquor. "All expenses paid" was an understatement.

  He glanced around the room. The noisier of the two small groups numbered five and included four people with whom he had previously worked. There was Ida Marr, red-haired, still slim but showing her age around her eyes and on her throat; she was posing consciously -- but then, she was never really offstage. On one side of her sat Gerry Hoading, looking younger even than his actual age of twenty-four, his fair hair untidy and his thin face propped on one upturned hand. Hoading presumably was going to be their designer; he had considerable talent, undoubtedly, but . . .

  On the other side of Ida was Adrian Gardner, running a little to fat, blowing his large nose frequently into a red silk handkerchief. Murray had worked with him in Skeleton and knew he was a good average actor. Again -- but . . .

  He'd worked with Constant Baines in rep nearly ten years ago. Constant was sitting beside Adrian, not saying much. He had stayed in rep after Murray had reached the West End; it had been something of a shock to meet him here, and their greeting had not been cordial.

  And the last one of the five. Ida made a crack which Murray failed to catch, they all laughed, and the girl sitting on a cushion at Ida's feet looked up. Ida caught the movement and put her red-nailed hand on the girl's hair for a quick caress.

  Her latest conquest, presumably. Shame. Murray's scowl deepened. He didn't know the girl and imagined she must be from a provincial rep somewhere; at dinner he had heard her addressed as Heather. She could be no older than twenty. Her hair was raven black and her face was just imperfect enough to be piquant. In a plain red dress, her figure was extremely interesting.

  Shame.

  Murray shrugged. There was a stir and a break in the conversation, and Murray realized the door had opened and Blizzard had come in, followed by a sallow man who could only be the celebrated Manuel Delgado himself.

  Blizzard -- portly, dark-suited, waving an immense cigar -- plunged forward, distributing greetings like largesse. "Ida darling, delighted! Why, Murray! I'm so glad you could be with this venture of ours! And little Heather -- how you doing so far, sweetie?"

  But no one paid more than mechanical attention. They were staring at Delgado.

  Makes a change, Murray thought cynically. A cat may look . . .

  There was a cold expression on the author's face. Like a snake's? Yes, Murray decided after a second's hesitation. A sort of reptilian tautness, as though his dark eyes were lidless. He was of medium height, medium build; his hair was dark, and he wore a dark blue jacket, charcoal pants, and a gray-and-white tie secured by a gold bar. He held himself easily. One might have taken him more readily for an actor than -- say -- Constant Baines, who looked like an unsuccessful clerk.

  For a long moment Murray's eyes met those peculiar snake-like dark ones. Murray felt as though he were being weighed in a balance. Then the man's stare moved on, and Murray saw he was doing the same thing to each person in turn -- locking eyes with them, waiting, looking away.

  Murray felt another pang of disillusionment. The word for this wasn't phony. It was cheap.

  "All right, everybody!" Blizzard had moved to a table at the side of the room and parked himself on a large chair behind it, where he could face the others. "Manuel?"

  Delgado nodded and walked around the table to another chair beside Blizzard's. He moved gracefully. A thought crossed Murray's mind, and he glanced sidelong at Adrian Gardner. As he'd thought, Ade's eyes were following that graceful walk.

  Murray wanted to laugh for the first time since his arrival. He managed to suppress the impulse, jus
t as Blizzard beamed on the gathering and launched his spiel.

  "Well, I bet you think this is a crazy setup. Hey?"

  A nervous giggle from the girl Heather and some incomprehensible crack from Adrian.

  "I suspected as much." Blizzard's beam vanished. "Right! As of now, you can stop thinking so. This place may still look like a country club, but it isn't. It just happens to be ideal for our venture. How many of you have seen the theater in the new wing? I thought you would have, Murray -- you have a trouper's nose."

  "Next week: Murray Douglas in Osborne's Entertainer ," muttered Constant. Nobody laughed.

  "Only Murray has looked over the theater so far? Jesus." Blizzard stubbed his cigar. "Go and take a look after this discussion, will you? You'll be impressed. Okay, let's get on.

  "You all know what we're going to try and do. We're going to try something that isn't easy, but that Manuel here has done two or three times with -- do I have to say it? -- the kind of success some people get once in a lifetime and die happy.

  "Jean-Paul Garrigue?" Constant murmured. He timed the words perfectly. Everyone heard them, and everyone turned to look at him.

  "Constant, that isn't funny," Adrian said in a strained voice.

  "I didn't mean it to be," Constant grunted.

  Had anyone found it funny? Murray glanced around. On the thin lips of Delgado he caught the last trace of a vanishing smile. He suddenly found he was looking forward to hearing what Delgado had to say for himself.

  "I'm sorry about that, Manuel," Blizzard was saying under his breath. Delgado now pulled himself forward on his chair. From the inside pocket of his dark blue jacket he extracted a large gold cigarette case, then took out a king-size cigarette which he lit with a gold lighter.

  "Am I supposed to mind?" he said. His voice was low and his English accent good, with tantalizing traces of Spanish and generalized United States overlaid on that. "Make no mistake, if Jean-Paul had not already been on the edge of suicide he would not have made Trois Fois the -- the success it became."

  Smoke wreathed his face. He cocked his head, looking even more like a reptile. "You know nothing about me, any of you. There is a reputation, of course, and perhaps some of you have seen a film I made. None of you have seen Trois Fois . If you had, you would not be here. I am uninterested in repeating myself. I am interested in one thing only. Listen and I will tell you what it is, and when I say listen I order you to listen because this is what you are going to live."

  It wasn't the words. It was the manner of their delivery -- the fantastic conceit, the weight of meaning he managed to convey every time he said "I" -- which caught their attention.

  Murray hunched forward on his chair, his scalp prickling. He had been in the presence of competence all his working life, talent more times than he could remember, and arrogant genius perhaps half a dozen times in all. Add one. This was a man with dynamite behind his eyes.

  Delgado continued. "All the time and everywhere there is one thing that we are told, and we know it is true. It is said in learned articles, in long books, in church sermons and philosophy seminars. We are in a period of decay. Not decadence -- decay. Here is a description of a man in this age which prides itself that the individual is respected, important, unique." The thin upper lip curled and sarcasm pointed the words. "This man is a dummy, and inside he is foul. Do you know him? He has no goal. He is made an individual by decree, and he is soft crumbling dirt inside, and he is ashamed to want what he wants, which is relief from the unceasing need to make up his own mind. He will clutch at anything -- he will copy his neighbors to save making a decision of his own, he will take his neighbor's wife to bed to save mending his own marriage. He will have children because in them he sees some hope of rescuing a shadow of himself from the wreck of his youth, and he will drive them to wreck their youth in turn. In the end he will resort to drink." Here Delgado looked at Murray, and Murray felt like a small boy who has misbehaved in school.

  "Or drugs! Or the lying consolation of religion which tells him when he dies he will be rewarded for being a creep. And he is not alone, this man. There are a thousand million of him in the world at the moment, surrounded by an armor of washing-machines, shod with three-hundred-horsepower winged sandals, drowning his mind in an endless delusion of other places and other times. He is Phaëthon, so conceited he has stolen the sun's chariot. He is Andromeda's father, so proud of his daughter's beauty that the gods are made angry and compel him to chain her to a rock for a sea monster to devour, while he wrings his foolish hands and moans, 'What did I do, what did I do?'" His voice slid up to a parody-falsetto on the repeated question.

  "He makes me sick, and he makes you sick. Everyone knows him and nobody understands him, so nothing is done about him. That is what interests me, and for the next four weeks -- and for as long afterward as the play runs in London or anywhere else -- that is what is going to interest you. I make myself clear?"

  Delgado tapped the ash from his cigarette and leaned back, his snake's eyes darting from face to face as though inciting a challenge.

  There was a long silence. Finally Ida stirred and spoke.

  "Are we to take it, Mr. Delgado, that the form you wish to give the result of our -- our collectively developed work is that of social criticism?"

  "If you mean will it contain a plea for reform, then the answer is no." Delgado spoke quite calmly. "I am an artist, not a doctor. My speciality is cancer and gangrene at the stage where there is no hope of cure."

  He looked at his cigarette with some distaste and stubbed it out. Then he pushed back his chair and rose.

  "We will assemble for preliminary thematic discussion at nine-thirty tomorrow morning. Good night."

  V

  After that, Murray wanted fresh air. He had been intending to corner Blizzard and take up the matter of the bottles he had found in his room, but the hell with it. While the others tried to pick up where they had left off on Delgado's entrance, he slipped outside. There was a stone plinth in front of the porch which was a convenient height for sitting on; he perched himself there and lit a cigarette, staring moodily at the dark forms of the bushes along the drive.

  He was completely lost in his own thoughts when he heard a hesitant voice behind him.

  "Mr. Douglas? You are Murray Douglas, aren't you?"

  It was Heather. He half turned, and saw her as an indistinct silhouette against the light paint of the front door, which she had closed behind her.

  "Oh, hullo. Ida let you off the leash for a minute?" He hadn't meant to say anything as cutting as that -- the gloomy drift of his musings had dictated the words.

  "I'm sorry? I don't quite -- ?"

  "Never mind. Yes, I'm Murray Douglas." He threw his spent cigarette butt into the darkness. "Why?"

  "I thought you were, but I wasn't sure, and I didn't like to ask anybody." The girl gave a nervous chuckle. "I can't quite get used to what's happened. I keep feeling I ought to be going around asking for autographs the way I used to."

  "Have half a plinth," Murray said, shifting to one end of the cold stone on which he sat. "Cigarette?"

  "No thanks, Mr. Douglas. I've been smoking too much this evening." She moved down the last of the steps from the porch and sat beside him. With a trace of excitement coloring her voice, she went on, "You know, I can't get over this! I remember seeing you in Skeleton when I was at school and thinking what a wonderful performance you gave, and -- here I am, meeting you so soon after!"

  Five years ago, Murray reminded himself. So soon after! My God!

  "What do you think of all this, Mr. Douglas?" she went on after a pause. "I've never heard of anything quite like it before -- have you?"

  "Stop calling me mister," Murray said. "I probably look old enough to be your father, but I'm not."

  A startled hiss of indrawn breath. "I -- I'm very sorry!"

  Murray hesitated and finally laughed. It was funny, in a crazy sort of way. "Forget it. What's your name, by the way? Nobody told me."

&nb
sp; "Heather Carson."

  No bells. "And how did you get mixed up in this, Heather?"

  "Well -- I don't really know, to be honest." Another nervous chuckle. "I've been in rep in Southampton for the past year, since I finished at the Gourlay School; I did two years there. I suppose I must have impressed Mr. Blizzard. He came down to see us a couple of months ago, and then -- well, I got this invitation."

  Of all the places Murray might have suspected, the Gourlay School was about the last he would have picked for a kid like this to have attended. Gourlay was all Method-and-water. Well, no matter. Clearly he had also been wrong about a connection with Ida, or the girl would have mentioned it.