The Productions of Time

by John Brunner

  Delgado and Valentine were masked. At least, that was the first impression; the upper parts of their faces were covered by black goggles with large flat lenses, and in the middle of their foreheads another lens suggested a third eye. Murray had never seen such equipment before, but he could make an excellent guess at its function. These were exceedingly compact night-vision glasses, with their own black-light sources built in.

  In Valentine's left hand there was an object much harder to identify -- a box, about six inches square by ten deep, held by a handle attached to one side and having on the side opposite the handle a square open-meshed grille. Whatever it was, Valentine was alarmed at having it seen, and as soon as he recovered from his first shock, he thrust it as well as he could inside his jacket.

  "All right," Murray said after a pause. "What the devil are you doing in my room?"

  Delgado's self-possession had deserted him completely; he scarcely resembled the arrogant dominating person Murray had known. By contrast, Valentine summed the situation up almost at once. He made no attempt to excuse his presence or prevaricate.

  "Delgado!" he said sharply. "You've observed him. What's he most likely to do?"

  "Uh -- " Delgado strove to master himself, raising a hand to peel off his dark-vision goggles. There was a sucking noise as they parted from his skin. "Call -- uh -- call the others to witness the fact that we're in here, I guess."

  "How many intractables are left?"

  "Stop this nonsense!" Murray interrupted harshly. He had an uneasy feeling that he knew too little, and his temporary control of events was slipping away. "Heather, I think Delgado has a good idea. Here!" He reached behind him without taking his eyes off the intruders, unhooked a dressing gown from the back of the door, and tossed it toward her. "Go and wake Sam Blizzard and get him here. Do you know which is his room?"

  "Y-yes," Heather whispered, sitting up in bed and pulling the robe around her.

  There was no hint of a reaction from Valentine to tell Murray whether his guess about Blizzard's "tractability" was right or not. But judging by the way the producer had made Delgado eat crow over scrapping the play, he should be a tough customer to argue with.

  Heather padded barefoot from the room. Warily, Murray concentrated on seeing that neither Valentine nor Delgado tried to make a break. But they seemed resigned to their predicament, and that nettled him.

  "What's the long silence for?" he taunted. "Thinking up a good story?"

  Valentine glanced at Delgado. For public consumption, Murray guessed, he wanted to return to his former subordinate's role. Delgado, however, was too upset to take his cue and failed to reply.

  "Not enjoying this experience, hey?" Murray went on after a pause. "Didn't you contract for it?"

  Even Valentine's composure fractured at that; as for Delgado, his jaw dropped as though he had seen a ghost. "What did you say?" he blurted.

  "Quiet!" Valentine rapped.

  "Ah! Beginning to get worried, are you? I'm delighted." Murray cast around in his mind for something else that might disturb Valentine, and settled on the first possibility to strike him. "What did you think you'd get when you hired me -- another Jean-Paul Garrigue? Well, you were wrong. You got another Léa Martinez instead -- with teeth this time."

  Valentine flinched visibly, and Delgado caught at his arm. "We've got to shut him up!" he exclaimed. "We can't let him talk like this to -- "

  "Hold your tongue!" Valentine snapped. "That's exactly what he wants you to do -- tell him more than he actually knows. He doesn't know anything. He can't possibly."

  "No?" Murray said, curling his lip. "I suppose it was because I didn't know anything that I avoided all the tapes you put in my bed, and turned the television set around so my room couldn't be scanned!"

  Delgado whimpered.

  "Keep your head," Valentine cautioned him through white lips. "He's bluffing. He's got a few hints, and he's trying to make us think he knows it all."

  That was so true Murray almost allowed himself to smile. He repressed the impulse, wondering why it was taking Heather so long to wake Blizzard and come back.

  "Your trouble's obvious, Valentine," he said, to keep the others' minds occupied during the interminable waiting. "You don't know anything about me. You're too used to your scanners and tapes and God knows what, and because I've been dodging I'm a mystery to you. But I don't need to use anything except my common sense. I've never become dependent on anything else. Delgado kidded Sam Blizzard along pretty well, but he didn't kid me. He lets it be seen much too easily that he doesn't care a hoot in hell about this play he's alleged to be writing with us. All he's interested in is corrupting people."

  "You don't count taking young girls to bed as corrupting them?" Valentine suggested, with a hint of sarcasm.

  "I didn't have time to corrupt her, Valentine. I laid a little trap for you, and you fell into it beautifully." Murray smiled. It felt -- and probably looked -- more like a sneer.

  There was a tap at the door behind him. The tension diminished sharply.

  "Right!" Murray said. "Now's your chance to explain yourselves." He turned the handle. "Come in, Heather!"

  She complied. But not willingly. The hope of her being followed by Blizzard was so imprinted on Murray's mind that for a long moment he failed to see -- from the corner of his eyes -- what was really happening to her.

  When he did, he was so shaken that his attention left Valentine, and Valentine seized his chance. Murray had no idea what he used -- possibly the heavy box he had been hiding in his coat -- but he made the blow violent.

  In one second, Murray was turning to see Heather pinioned by another of the black-garbed "stewards" -- the tallest of the three, whose name he had never learned -- both arms locked behind her back by the steward's one hand and his other clamped over her mouth, with his thumb and forefinger beside her nose to choke off her breath if she dared to make a sound. The next, Murray was lost in a blinding haze of pain, which began at the top of his head and ended when the floor came spiralling to meet him.

  He lost consciousness for perhaps a minute. When he came to, he had no energy to rise. All his willpower had been sapped by the blow and the pain. He heard voices as though they were lights in swirling fog.

  "I was servicing Blizzard's tape." That was from the tall "steward." "A beautiful clean record. I'd just changed it for the new playback when the girl came to the door. I imitated Blizzard's voice and took her in. She said what she wanted before I opened the door, and in view of that I brought her around."

  "Very quick thinking, Walter." That was Valentine. "You saved us a great deal of trouble."

  "But what are we going to do?" That was Delgado, still not recovered from his shock and dismay. "You told me yourself, Valentine -- Douglas promised his friend he was going to leave in the morning!"

  "I know." Valentine sounded impatient. "And I no longer think we can afford to let him go so easily. I told you he was bluffing, and he was. But he was building that bluff on too many hard facts for my liking. We shall have to find out how he picked up all his clues. Walter, is everything else in order?"

  "Yes, as far as I know. I'd just started the tape for Blizzard when I was interrupted, and that was the only exchange required tonight, wasn't it?"

  "Yes. But it's no longer so urgent. We've overlooked something in Blizzard's case; that's certain from the way he spoke to Manuel about the play. We can live with that for a day or two, though. Right now -- Manuel!"

  "Yes?" Delgado asked hesitantly.

  "Go and edit a concentrape for the girl. Put in a basic wipe at the beginning to cure her of this damned habit of cutting the triplem to her recorder. Walter, get her something to make her sleep. I want the last four nights' urges in her mind -- solidly in -- by morning. Is that clear?"

  "It's risky, isn't it?" Walter countered. "You might unstable her whole personality."

  "It doesn't have to hold for long. And we have bigger fish to fry, anyway. As soon as I've made my rounds, Manuel, I'll
come in and help you edit a tape for Douglas. It'll have to be mainly basic wipes tonight, I'm afraid -- with some kind of excuse for his deciding to stay here, of course. I doubt if this friend of his will actually come to see him, but he just might. I'll think up a good way of phrasing it. Go on, out with you."

  There was the sound of the door opening and closing. Lying face down on the carpet, Murray fought to make sense of what he was hearing and failed. Concentrape -- triplem -- they were without meaning for him. The only fact that stood out was equally absurd -- it was that these men were talking as if they could make adjustments in a human brain as easily as a mechanic could retime an engine.

  "What exactly happened?" Walter inquired as the door closed behind Delgado.

  Valentine briefly recounted the events of the past hour. In conclusion, he said, "But as you probably gathered from what I told Manuel, somebody's been careless. Douglas wasn't just flapping his lips when he challenged us. He's got hold of a few phrases -- contracting for an experience, that's one -- which just oughtn't be in his vocabulary. Cleaning his mind will be the devil's own job. I shall have to probe for all kinds of chance references. . . . Well, it has to be done, if we aren't to abandon this project entirely. Help me get him up on the bed. I suppose he's played his usual trick of stripping the triplem off the mattress. Never mind. I have the conditioner with me, and it may still be working even though I used it to bang him on the head."

  Murray summoned up what power to act was left him by the blinding pain in his skull and snatched at the only thing that came within reach. As the two men bent to take his legs and drag him toward the bed, he put his remaining strength into a convulsive jerk, and something gave.

  "Damn. I thought he was unconscious," he heard Valentine say calmly. "Surprising endurance they have, considering their primitive physical maintenance, don't you think?"

  A foot came down cruelly on the fingers grasping the -- the -- what had he taken hold of, anyway? Murray saw foggily that it was the cable running from the television set into room thirteen. He hoped he had done some more damage by hauling on it. He couldn't really hope, but if what Valentine had said was a guide, it might be his last act of his own volition before they turned him into a puppet.

  "Just a second," he heard Walter say. "He hasn't stopped at stripping off the triplem tonight. He's removed the tape as well."

  "Probably thrown it out the window again," Valentine sighed. "Go and get a fresh spool from Manuel, will you? I shall have to have a fairly long recording of Douglas before I can make up his wipes."

  "Right." Walter moved toward the door.

  Painfully, Murray gathered the tattered shreds of his faculties. If he could just get to his feet while Valentine was alone in the room --

  "Is something wrong?" Valentine said sharply.

  "Yes," Walter snapped. "I smell something. I think it's smoke."

  "A fire?" Valentine started. "Look in thirteen, quick!"

  There was the noise of a door opening, a cry of alarm. "It's an inferno in there! He must have caused a short when he pulled that cable! I told Manuel -- "

  "Never mind! Get Victor! Run for it -- these places are built like tinderboxes!"

  "What about -- ?"

  "The rest of them can take their chance! I'm not going to stay and be roasted alive! Out of my way, damn you!"

  XXII

  The acrid scent of burning rubber reached Murray's nostrils then. It galvanized him and drove him unsteadily to his feet. The room swam; he struggled to fix the blurs of color into images of actual objects.

  The first thing he saw clearly was Heather, dumped in the easy chair. A sleeve had been torn out of the gown she wore and used to gag her. It was patched dark with saliva. Her eyes were wide and rolling. Her arms had been bound with the sash of the gown, and her ankles with Murray's tie.

  When he did not move toward her, she moaned and tried to draw his attention. But he had gone to the bed to find his pocketknife in his trousers. Fumbling, he opened it, bent, and slashed her bonds.

  "Go and wake the others!" he ordered harshly. "Don't stop to get your clothes on. Hurry!"

  She only paused long enough to thrust her feet into her shoes. Then, clutching the dressing gown around her, she fled from the room.

  Alone, Murray stumbled to the washbasin and cupped cold water to pour over his aching head. The treatment was without effect; his skull went on ringing like a gong. Striving to plan rationally despite the waves of pain, he spoke aloud to himself as he swayed before his reflection in the mirror above the basin.

  "Something to prove the truth. Take something with me. The tape, at least. Or the box Valentine left behind, the one he hit me with -- Christ!"

  Without thinking about what he was doing, he had put his hand on the wall beside him for support, and it had taken long seconds for the report of his nerves to sink in.

  That wall was hot! And beyond it was room thirteen, and Delgado!

  Everything else vanished from his mind. He dashed into the corridor. Tearful, Heather confronted him, forgetting her loose gown as she caught his arm.

  "Murray, I can't wake anybody! There're like -- like zombies lying in their beds!"

  "Try again! Try harder! If you can't manage it I'll help you drop them out the windows. They're not going to have a chance in this!"

  He pointed to the door of room thirteen. It was closed, but fumes were leaking from the keyhole and from between the door and the carpet.

  "Delgado's still in there! Valentine and his precious friends have run off and we may never catch them -- but if we can hang on to Delgado we've got one man who can answer our questions!"

  He brushed her aside and flung open the door of the blazing room.

  Walter's guess had probably been pretty accurate. There was no shortage of power to cause an arc when the cable was broken. It filled the air with a stink of ozone even though there were flames licking up at a dozen places. A brilliant cascade of sparks was continuing somewhere under the window. Something exploded as he flung wide the door, and he instinctively ducked. Hot fragments of glass peppered his forehead and limbs. He was wearing nothing but shorts and a shirt, and the heat struck at his skin as though a furnace door had been opened.

  He had no time to examine what the mysterious room held. He received only a vague impression of banks of complex electronic equipment across which flames and sparks vied to outdo one another in brightness before he saw the limp body of Manuel Delgado slumped over what might have been a vastly elaborate tape-mixing panel.

  Murray plunged forward, smoke and fumes stinging his eyes. Something that bit like a venomous snake sent a jab into his heel -- a red-hot fragment on the floor, perhaps. He caught Delgado by one arm and one leg and somehow got him on his shoulders. As he turned back to the door, there was a second explosion, and the floor lurched under him. He stumbled out of the room, remembering somewhere in the back of his muddled mind that opening doors was bad because it let oxygen get to the fire. He slammed the door behind him.

  In the same split second as the slam, a third and vast explosion rent the air. A jolt traveled up his arm, numbing it. A dreadful crackling sound like a bonfire magnified a hundred times followed the explosion.

  "Murray!"

  From another room -- Ida's, he thought -- Heather emerged, ghost-pale with terror, and stumbled toward him.

  "Murray, I can't wake anybody! I've shouted and slapped and -- and -- oh God, Murray, I can't !"

  "Get down in the hall," Murray ordered savagely, forcing his unwilling feet toward the landing in the main building. "Find a phone. Call the fire department, then ambulances and doctors, then the police. Make sure they all come. This wing is bound to go first, but the rest of the house will last for a while."

  He now came to the landing, and at the head of the stairs bent to spill his unconscious burden down them. Delgado fell like a dummy, coming to rest against the banisters at the first curve.

  He'd live, Murray decided cynically. If he was alive at the mo
ment. Part of his hair had been scorched away, and a charred sleeve and trouser leg suggested probable burns, but nothing beyond a doctor's capacity to treat.

  "Get to that phone!" he added with violence and didn't stop to see if Heather obeyed before diving back along the landing of the rear wing.

  There followed an appalling period which he never remembered clearly. It was compounded of nightmare, pain, and a prevision of hell. It began in room twelve where Adrian Gardner lay wax white in his bed as though -- Heather's phrase -- he was a true zombie, one of the undead. No wonder Valentine and Delgado had grown careless and left the door of room thirteen ajar while they discussed their secrets together! If they were sure that most of the other people in the house were locked in this corpselike slumber, they would naturally grow overconfident.