Timepiece

by Brian N Ball

  “Rubbish!” bellowed Henry Sokutu. He lumbered forward to face the woman, so that they looked like two grotesque chunks of statuary. “And rubbish again!”

  “If you’ll outline your case?” suggested the Chairman in the pause. “Sit down, please, Mr. Sokutu” he said pleasantly.

  Del watched Rosetti push Henry Sokutu towards a chair. He subsided into it, his face crimson with rage.

  “First, it’s unlikely; second, it’s not worth the effort; and third, we can use it better as it is.” This woman spoke crisply and then sat down.

  “And that’s all!” shouted Henry Sokutu again getting up.

  His opponent too got to her feet “Til make it easy for you!” she snapped. “My Ministry doubts the existence of a mysterious Forever Planet; we feel the idea’s too tenuous to be worth investigating; and it’s far more use to our civilization as a legend than any factual planet could ever be. My Ministry holds to the belief that’s brought us the Frames: man’s highest duty is to embody the dreams of his fellows. The noblest of all tasks is to provide fuel for the imagination. Culture!” She paused dramatically: “Culture is Queen! And we won’t part with a useful legend!”

  “I’ll answer that!”said Henry Sokutu, but the Chairman waved him into silence.

  “No! I have a few thoughts of my own on this! And I’ve been wanting to express my views for years. The Ministry of Culture has put forward the view that the legend is of more value than the reality. She has pointed out that the dream is greater than the truth behind it. On the other hand, you—you five people here—wish to face reality.” He smiled, and he became a visionary. Del wondered whether the girl had been to him too. “You want to confront reality in your unreliable ship! You want to jump off from this comfortable and busy existence into places where there's danger and maybe death! Now, what I have to do is to balance gain and loss. I have to ask myself the questions this Committee was formed to answer— what are the Ways? What are the Means? And will this project in turn stimulate further effort, further involvement?—and what can I answer but yes, Mr. Rosetti? Yes, this is a viable aim! And the objection is overruled!”

  “That leaves my department's objection,” announced a prim voice. Del followed the Chairman's gaze to a tiny ageing woman who clutched a file of papers. Henry Sokutu reached out a hand to take them. He scanned the headings and nodded.

  “Miss Dagworth, of the Galactic Trust,” explained the Chairman. “You'll all realize that extra-Galactic discoveries are Galactic Trust’s overall responsibility?”

  Hector Rosetti looked stunned. “But there isn't anything for them to be responsible for! Damn it, it’s just a department for—” He stopped, lost for words.

  “Eccentrics?” said the prim voice. “Ineffectual do-gooders? That’s what you think, I’m sure, but we have the power!”

  “Power!” As Hector Rosetti said the word, it was an attempt at theft.

  “They have,” said the Chairman. “Under the Galactic Charter, all extra-Galactic discoveries are administered directly by the Trust.”

  “Its all we’ve got,” said the woman. “All our eggs are in this one basket. I mean, if you were to prove it’s not there at all, where would we be?”

  Henry Sokutu intoned rather than spoke:

  ‘‘Madam, how grateful we all are!”

  She turned to him, amazement registering in her lined face. “Glad?”

  “To show us of your Trust’s concern! 1 know how your members feel! Madam, I shall guard your interests!” He explained as if to a child what her motives had been. The Trust had wished to preserve the natural beauty of the notion of a Planet out of Time. It was a unique heritage that should not be imperilled. “And it won’t be, Madam! But we’ll do more! We’ll bring back descriptions of the place, we’ll hang the Trust’s signs all around that sector of the Universe, we’ll acknowledge in the widest possible way the help the Trust has given us!” He turned to the assembled meeting. “Will you not join with me now in expressing our appreciation of the Trust’s concern?”

  Slowly and deliberately they began to clap their hands. Soon Henry Sokutu was stamping his feet, and when Suzanne yelled out the others joined in. The little woman flung her file of papers into the air, and in a shower of ancient memos and documents the Chairman was able to yell out:

  “The Inquiry is closed! We recommend—” His voice was drowned in the cheering, but he insisted on being heard: “—recommend support!”

  Del realized that he was embracing the girl at least as enthusiastically as she was him. He felt a sudden surge of jealousy against all the men she must have lain with, and in the maniac crowd he wondered at himself. There were few lasting relationships between men and women, and rarer again were the long-lasting monogamous affairs that for a few moments he had been thinking of. He laughed at himself. Retrospective jealousy! At his age! Wasn't it a sign of advancing years, though?—wasn't this sudden desire for the attention of a young woman just one symptom of the disease called age?

  “Come on," someone was saying. “There’s work to do. Delvaney!”

  Del looked round and saw Rosetti regarding him with a curious expression on his face. Rosetti looked briefly at his daughter, who was entwining herself around Del.

  “Warned you about her!" he said.

  They went to talk about the Rosetti Project.

  Chapter Eleven

  The builders of the Thomas Cook believed in luxury travel, Del thought. The main cabin was large and well-fitted; there were comfortable chairs and curious recesses where the more esoteric diversions were to be found. The hyperspace traveller of a couple of centuries before could have exercised on any number of ingenious contrivances; he could have immersed himself in a total experience simulator for weeks at a time or simply hibernated during the voyage; Sokutu and Ellison spent most of their time playing a complex game of Cosmoplot, apparently a development of the political and war strategy games of the Early Nuclear period. Del watched without much interest.

  Small fish-like figures spun about suddenly magnified areas of the Galaxy on the three-dimensional boards between the two men. The game went on forever, a miniscule cosmos. Flaring pin-points of light showed where now Ellison, then Sokutu, snuffed out whole stellar systems.

  Del was trying not to think of the girl with Garvin. She had kept her distance from Del since he had turned away and left her on the day of the Committee hearing; when she met him, there was a reserve in her manner that left Del uneasily conscious of her upthrust breasts, her bare thighs now that she had taken to wearing the minimum of clothes, and her subtle, pliant movements as she padded around the ship. She looked more desirable than ever. And she was with Garvin.

  A small servo-robot scuttled past Del as he lounged against the main control console; it dropped neatly into its place amongst a row of identical robots. Trolls, Sokutu called them. Suzanne detested them: a woman's horror of the uncouth, with their hint of primeval energy and the unblinking stare of half-tamed animals; she always looked away when they went near her. Del wondered briefly what errand had been accomplished. He watched as three of the green-bronze shapes moved forward as one. Three together: that was unusual. They swept past him and disappeared down a shuttle.

  The two players at the board looked up as Del called out. He had felt again a slight variation in the even passage of the ship. A sudden blankness that marked a shift of dimensional orientation. A small blast of force to rock the solidity of the framework of the cabin—deep, subtle movements that added up to a strangeness hinting at the cruel shocks the travellers had felt when the ship plunged into hyperspace eighteen days before.

  “Shield imbalance?'’ again said Del. He gestured to the servo-robot which had just detached itself from the rack, and which was now poised over the console.

  Ellison smiled and shrugged. “Nothing to worry about,” he said. “Leave it to Charlie Five there.” Naturally the robots had taken up his name: they revered the Field Theorist they assisted. When Del had checked the ship’s runn
ing manuals, he had discovered the pleasant custom whereby the servo-robots identified themselves by name with their superior. Charlie Five stood eagerly poised to interpret Ellison’s commands.

  How could Ellison take it so lightly? There was an unmistakably unsure feel about the ship’s field. Del felt himself again distrusting the amazing self-confidence of the young man who was gleefully absorbing Sokutu’s strategic positions on the board. How could he relax when three servo-robots were busy shoring up the ship’s field projectors in some remote glowing hell beneath them?

  ‘'Your last source of energy material!” said Ellison happily. Great clouds of explosions clustered across half a galaxy as Ellison pressed button after button.

  “A death-blow!” said Sokutu. “A dirge is indicated.” He began a low moaning wail that throbbed and surged in the echoing cabin. “But what’s this?” he said, examining the board. His great pendulous cheeks wagged as he shook his head. “Del, look! He’s forgotten the Metelli factor!”

  “That’s true,” said Del. Ellison grinned slyly.

  “I can move my subversives to here—and here; place a couple of fleets here—and here. Ah! A brushfire war over this system, and what do we have?” He laughed aloud so that the big voice boomed back. “What does the master of Nuclear Age strategy say: ‘Moss kills grass’!”

  The tiny blips he sent racing across space met a cloud of interstellar dust and slipped into nothingness. Ellison was checking his tinny laughter. “Weedkiller!” he spluttered.

  “I can still do something!” said Sokutu. He turned to Del: “It’s not finished, is it?”

  “It’s never finished,” Del assured him. And it was true, for the makers of this fascinating pastime had flung in countless random factors to make unbelievably strange reversals possible. But Ellison would always win, if there was to be a winner. Del had seen Ellison in action when the random forces of hyperspace had blasted the ship from one grotesque focus of power to another. He had grown to admire the quiet, gentle and humorous young man who treated crisis as a tonic, and who would undoubtedly face disaster with a delighted curiosity.

  “They’re handling it,” Ellison said from the console. “Charlie Two reports he’s checked the fault.”

  The robots returned, fast and intent. Del was about to question Ellison when it happened.

  A mild judder ran through the length of the cabin. Del plunged forward to the Emergency Alert button, but Ellison was there before him. _

  “Disaster Control at bay,” said Sokutu approvingly, but neither man heard him. Already the racks of servo-robots had emptied as the grotesque shapes wheeled away and into the vortex of the ship’s massive drive.

  “What is it?” said Del. “Shield imbalance again?”

  Ellison shook his head. “Serious—not urgent yet, but something’s wrong.”

  Again a harsh interruption to the even progress of the ship brought a shimmering of angles and a softening of hard planes. Del felt the sickening mind-reeling agony of disorientation that he had felt at the first moment of transition into shift.

  “Garvin and Suzanne?” suggested Sokutu.

  “I’ll go,” said Del. They should have been at their stations seconds ago. There was a drill for this situation, though they all knew that only one person could act in emergency. Ellison hovered over the console with a small grin on his face. Del carried the impression of delight away with him until he saw the two others in Garvin’s cabin.

  They were in the shallower convolutions of love, the girl looking directly at him with that expression of challenge he had come to fear almost. Del said the appropriate words, and the girl waved a hand to acknowledge him. She said something, but Del saw only the full breasts hanging relaxed and Garvin reaching out for her.

  “Stay, Dell” she said again. “Up, Garv.” She pushed Garvin away. Casually she draped a shawl-like dress over her body. Garvin growled at her and Del impartially.

  “Out!” he yelled, but he sprang up as Del activated the repeater banks that had been tinned off. Immediately the whole cacophony of sirens and stammering pulsations filled the cabin. The couple took in the information instantly: field force levels, estimated spatial relationships, shield positions, the endless flow of energy levels. ‘We’ll come,” said Garvin.

  “You go,” the girl told Garvin. “Del, wait.” She smiled, and her long hair draped gently around her firm shoulders and into the valley between her breasts. ‘Its no use, is it?”

  “You should come,” said Garvin. He was clothed by now, an untidy forceful figure.

  Del saw the clash of wills. He realized that this was one of those moments in a relationship that could tell a watcher absolutely and finally how the members stood with one another: if you wanted to know; if you had time. In a brief moment of awareness as Garvin muttered angrily, Del knew that he had seen no more than what the girl wanted him to see; he refused to ask why.

  “Ellison can handle it,” the girl said when Garvin had gone.

  ‘We should be on station,” said Del. “Garvin’s right.”

  “Garv’s taking too much on himself,” the girl said. “That’s why I sent him away. I wanted to tell you about him. Did you know he’s been interfering with Ellison’s field charts?”

  ‘What! Ellison’s not said anything.”

  “Garv wanted to try out one or two manoeuvres— something to do with a theory he’s formed. Charlie just corrected the alteration and said nothing.”

  “He should have told me.”

  The girl fastened her long hair back. “You know Charlie. He wouldn’t know how to tell you.”

  “Then how did you find out?”

  “He tells me.”

  Del considered briefly. The alerting mechanisms were still stammering out messages, but there seemed to be no deterioration in the position. ‘Tell me later,” he said. “Lets get the immediate trouble over.”

  Garvin was in position monitoring a bank of controls. Sokutu lounged in a deep seat. Only Ellison looked busy. He was feeding information into the main computer with an expert's speed. His grin had gone, and now he looked intent rather than interested. Without turning from the console he spoke to them:

  “This is what I told you to expect. You'd all better know what's happening. You understand the principle of containment in the fields around the drive?” He id not wait for their answer. “Simple enough really, though the theory doesn’t fit what I think happens.” He was obviously tempted to digress. The ill-understood conjunctions of forces that made the hyper space drive possible had been the subject of a number of articles in The Field— all anonymous, but unmistakably Ellison’s; Suzanne had found him through an acquaintance with the editor. “There's a leak of some kind. All the little Charlies are trying to fix it, but I think there’s only one way of finding out once and for all what's causing the trouble.”

  “Is the main drive affected?” asked Del; it was the fundamental issue. Without it, they were doomed to drift forever.

  “Not yet. But it could be. We’re getting an odd temporal effect. Freak distribution of warp. You'd feel it differently in various part of the ship.” He grinned now, though his face was white. “Especially in the drive.”

  “That's the bending effect we're getting,” said Garvin. “A kind of haziness in line and angle?”

  “Odd,” agreed Ellison. “You know, I cant help feeling I’ve heard of something like this before.”

  “Didn’t replacing those shields just now help?” asked Suzanne.

  “Possibly,” said Ellison. “But look at this.” He gestured to the console. “We’ve replaced most of the shields in the past week or two.” A clangour of noise rang through the console. “Worse that time,” he said. The Emergency Alert apparatus had taken control; now the lights were bright red, and the warning sirens had stepped up their volume. Three computer systems blanked off and the main computer announced sombrely that it had taken over.

  “You did a paper on this,” said Garvin above the noise.

  “
Garvin!” said Del. “This isn’t the time—”

  “Exactly!” said Ellison, delightedly. “I didn’t think anyone had read it! My ‘Shield imbalance in fivedimensional geodesical gyrational patterns with especial reference to the freak space-time effects on negative ratios’!”

  “I didn’t follow your arguments, Charlie, but I thought your solution was masterly.”

  Del watched the exchange helplessly. They were in the hands of an amiable eccentric who, for all he knew, was as unfitted to discuss the niceties of warp and shift as Del himself was to iron out the irregularities of a political brouhaha in one of the Frames.

  “Of course!” Ellison said. “That’s why I was explaining the situation to the rest of my—” He caught sight of Suzanne’s casual wear and a perfect breast, “—that is, I-”

  “What is going on?” demanded Henry Sokutu impatiently. “This wretched contraption hammers about one’s ears like a confounded Steam Age propulsion unit, and Charlie here, and Garvin, babble on inconsequentially about time and space as if they knew what they were talking about!”

  ‘I've sent in robots,” Ellison explained. “But they don’t report back—I know they’re expendable, but they’re such friendly fellows—or they send in reports that don’t make sense.”

  “You’re not thinking of—” began Henry Sokutu. “Yes,” said Ellison.

  “Man! That’s dangerous!”

  “Highly unpleasant, Henry,” agreed Ellison. "I’ll take all precautions, however.”

  There was a stunned silence as the rest of them realized what Ellison was proposing to do.

  “I don’t think I’ll be long,” Ellison said. He was blanking off power units to make the main drive chambers accessible. “After all, if I’m right, it’s just a matter of a fine adjustment—” He clambered into a protective suit. “—I hate to think of just writing off Charlies! Seems so unfair.”

  “How dangerous is it?” Suzanne Rosetti said. She was talking to Del. Garvin answered: