Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  Until it becomes more than a minor inconvenience to be late.

  It becomes a sin. Then a crime. Then a crime punishable by this: EFFECTIVE 15 JULY 2389, 12:00:00 midnight, the office of the Master Timekeeper will require all citizens to submit their time-cards and cardioplates for processing. In accordance with Statute 555-7-SGH-999 governing the revocation of time per capita, all cardioplates will be keyed to the individual holder and What they had done, was devise a method of curtailing the amount of life a person could have. If he was ten minutes late, he lost ten minutes of his life. An hour was proportionately worth more revocation. If someone was consistently tardy, he might find himself, on a Sunday night, receiving a communiqué from the Master Timekeeper that his time had run out, and he would be "turned off" at high noon on Monday, please straighten your affairs, sir.

  And so, by this simple scientific expedient (utilizing a scientific process held dearly secret by the Ticktockman's of-fice) the System was maintained. It was the only expedient thing to do. It was, after all, patriotic. The schedules had to be met. After all, there was a war only But, wasn't there always?

  "Now that is really disgusting," the Harlequin said, when pretty Alice showed him the wanted poster. "Disgusting and highly improbable. After all, this isn't the days of desperadoes.

  A wanted poster!"

  "You know," Alice noted, "you speak with a great deal of inflection."

  "I'm sorry," said the Harlequin, humbly.

  "No need to be sorry. You're always saying I'm sorry.' You have such massive guilt, Everett, it's really very sad."

  "I'm sorry," he repeated, then pursed his lips so the dimples appeared momentarily. He hadn't wanted to say that at all. "I have to go out again. I have to do something."

  Alice slammed her coffee-bulb down on the counter. "Oh for God's sake, Everett, can't you stay home just one night! Must you always be out in that ghastly clown suit, running around axunoying people?"

  "I'm" he stopped, and clapped the jester's hat onto his auburn thatch with a tiny tingling of bells. He rose, nnsed out his coffee-bulb at the tap, and put it into the drier for a moment.

  "I have to go."

  She didn't answer. The faxbox was purring, and she pulled a sheet out, read it, threw it toward him on the counter. "It's about you. Of course. You're ridiculous."

  He readit quickly. It said the Ticktockman was trying to locate him. He didn't care, he was going out to be late again. At the door, dredging for an exit line, he hurled back petulantly, "Well, you speak with inflection, too!"

  Alice rolled her pretty eyes heavenward. "You're ridiculous."

  The Harlequin stalked out, slamming the door, which sighed shut softly, and locked itself.

  There was a gentle knock, and Alice got up with an exhalation of exasperated breath, and opened the door. He stood there. "I'll be back about ten-thirty, okay?"

  She pulled a rueful face. "Why do you tell me that? Why?

  You know you'll be late! You know it! You're always late, so why do you tell me these dumb things?" She closed the door.

  On the other side, the Harlequin nodded to himself. She's right. She's always right. I'll be late. I'm always late. Why do /tell her these dumb things?

  He shrugged again, and went off to be late once more.

  He had fired off the firecracker rockets that said: I will attend the 115th annual International Medical Association Invocation at 8:00 P.M. precisely. I do hope you will all be able to join me.

  The words had burned in the sky, and of course the authorities were there, lying in wait for him. They assumed, naturally, that he would be late. He arrived twenty minutes early, while they were setting up the spiderwebs to trap and hold him, and blowing a large bullhorn, he frightened and unnerved them so, their own moisturized encirclement webs sucked closed, and they were hauled up, kicking and shrieking, high above the amphitheater's floor. The Harlequin laughed and laughed, and apologized profusely. The physicians,' gathered in solemn conclave, roared with laughter, and accepted the Harlequin's apologies with exaggerated bowing and posturing, and a merry time was had by all, who thought the Harlequin was a regular foofaraw in fancy pants; all, that is, but the authorities, who had been sent out by the office of the Ticktockman, who hung there like so much dockside cargo, hauled up above the floor of the amphitheater in a most unseemly fashion.

  (In another part of the same city where the Harlequin carried on .his "activities," totally unrelated in every way to what concerns here, save that k illustrates the Ticktockman's power and import, a man named Marshall Delahanty received his turn-off notice from the Ticktockman's office. His wife received the notification from the gray-suited minee who delivered it, with the traditional "look of sorrow" plastered hideously across his face. She knew what it was, even without unsealing it. It was a billet-doux of immediate recognition to everyone these days. She gasped, and held it as though it were a glass slide tinged with botulism, and prayed it was not for her. Let it be for Marsh, she thought, brutally, realistically, or one of the kids, but not for me, please dear God, not for me. And then she opened it, and it was for Marsh, and she was at one and the same time horrified and relieved. The next trooper in the line had caught the bullet. "Marshall," she screamed, "Marshall! Termination, Marshall! OhmiGod, Marshall, whattiwe do, whatti we do, Marshall omigodmarshall . . ." and in their home that night was the sound of tearing paper and fear, and the stink of madness went up the flue and there was nothing, absolutely nothing they could do about it. (But Marshall Delahanty tried to run. And early the next day, when turn-off time came, he was deep in the forest two hundred miles away, and the office of the Ticktockman blanked his cardioplate, and Marshall Delahanty keeled over, running, and his heart stopped, and the blood dried up on its way to his brain, and he was dead that's all. One light went out on his sector map in the office of the Master Timekeeper, while notification was entered for fax reproduction, and Georgette Delahanty's name was entered on the dole roles till she could re-marry. Which is the end of the footnote, and all the point that need be made, except don't laugh, because that is what would happen to the Harlequin if ever the Ticktockman found out his real name. It isn't funny.) The shopping level of the city was thronged with the Thursday-colors of the buyers. Women in canary yellow chitons and men in pseudo-Tyrolean outfits that were jade and leatherand fit very tightly, save for the balloon pants.

  When the Harlequin appeared on the still-being-constructed shell of the new Efficiency Shopping Center, his bullhorn to his elfishly-laughing lips, everyone pointed and stared, and heberated them:

  "Why let them order you about? Why let them tell you to hurry and scurry like ants or maggots? Take your time! Saunter a while! Enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the breeze, let life carry you at your own pace! Don't be slaves of time, it's a helluva way to die, slowly, by degrees . . . down with the Ticktockman!"

  Who's the nut? most of the shoppers wanted to know. Who's the nut oh wow I'm gonna be late I gotta run. . .

  And the construction gang on the Shopping Center received an urgent order from the office of the Master Timekeeper that the dangerous criminal known as the Harlequin was atop their spire, and their aid was urgently needed in apprehending him.

  The work crew said no, they would lose time on their construction schedule, but the Ticktockman managed to pull the proper threads of governmental webbing, and they were told to cease work and catch that nitwit up there on the spire with the bullhom. So a dozen and more burly workers began climbing into their construction platforms, releasing the a-grav plates, and rising toward the Harlequin.

  After the debacle (in which, through the Harlequin's attention to personal safety, no one was seriously injured), the workers tried to reassemble, and assault him again, but it was too late. He had vanished. It had attracted quite a crowd, however, and the shopping cycle was thrown off by hours, simply hours. The purchasing needs of the system were therefore falling behind, and so measures were taken to accelerate the cycle for the rest of the day, but it got bogge
d down and speeded up and they sold too many float-valves and not nearly enough wegglers, which meant that the popli ratio was off, which made it necessary to rush cases and cases of spoiling Smash-0 to stores that usually needed a case only every three or four hours. The shipments were bollixed, the trans-shipments were misrouted, and in the end, even the swizzleskid industries felt it.

  "Don't come back till you have him!" the Ticktockman said, very quietly, very sincerely, extremely dangerously.

  They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardioplate crossoffs. They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stiktytes. They used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks. They used cops. They used search&seizure. They used fallaron. They used betterment incentive. They used fingerprints. They used Bertillon. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery. They used Raoul Mitgong, but he didn't help. much. They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology.

  And what the hell: they caught him.

  After all, his name was Everett C. Marm, and he wasn't much to begin with, except a man who had no sense of time.

  "Repent, Harlequin!" said the Ticktockman.

  "Get stuffed!" the Harlequin replied, sneering.

  "You've been late a total of sixty-three years, five months, three weeks, two days, twelve hours, forty-one minutes, fifty-nine seconds, point oh three six one one one microseconds.

  You've used up everything you can, and more. I'm going to turn you off."

  "Scare someone else. I'd rather be dead than live in a dumb world with a bogeyman like you."

  "It's my job."

  "You're full of it. You're a tyrant. You have no right to order people around and kill them if they show up late."

  "You can't adjust. You can't fit in."

  "Unstrap me, and I'll fit my fist into your mouth."

  "You're a non-conformist."

  "That didn't used to be a felony."

  "It is now. Live in the world around you."

  "I hate it. It's a terrible world."

  "Not everyone thinks so. Most people enjoy order."

  "I don't, and most of the people I know don't."

  "That's not true. How do you think we caught you?"

  "I'm not interested."

  "A girl named pretty Alice told us who you were."

  "That's a lie."

  "It's true. You unnerve her. She wants to belong, she wants to conform, I'm going to turn you off."

  "Then do it already, and stop arguing with me."

  "I'm not going to turn you off."

  "You're an idiot!"

  "Repent, Harlequin!" said the Ticktockman.

  "Get stuffed."

  So they sent him to Coventry. And in Coventry they worked him over. It was just like what they did to Winston Smith in "1984," which was a book none of them knew about, but the techniques are really quite ancient, and so they did it to Everett C. Marm, and one day quite a long time later, the Harlequin appeared on the communications web, appearing elfish and dimpled and bright-eyed, and not at all brainwashed, and he said he had been wrong, that it was a good, a very good thing indeed, to belong, and be right on time hip-ho and away we go, and everyone stared up at him on the public screens that covered an entire city block, and they said to themselves, well, you see, he was just a nut after all, and if that's the way the system is run, then let's do it that way, because it doesn't pay to fight city hall, or in this case, the Ticktockman. So Everett C. Marm was destroyed, which was a loss, because of what Thoreau said earlier, but you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and in every revolution, a few die who shouldn't, but they have to, because that's the way it happens, and if you make only a little change, then it seems to be worthwhile. Or, to make the point lucidly:

  "Uh, excuse me, sir, I, uh, don't know how to uh, to uh, tell you this, but you were three minutes late. The schedule is a , little, uh, bit off."

  He grinned sheepishly.

  "That's ridiculous!" murmured the Ticktockman behind his mask. "Check your watch." And then he went into his office, going mrmee, mrmee, mrmee, mrmee.

  Count the Clock That Tells the Time, by Harlan Ellison

  When I do count the clock that tells the time,

  And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;

  When I behold the violet past prime,

  And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;

  When lofty trees I see barren of leaves

  Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,

  And summer's green all girded up in sheaves

  Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;

  Then of the beauty do I question make,

  That thou among the wastes of time must go . . .

  William Shakespeare

  Waking in the cool and cloudy absolute dead middle of a Saturday afternoon one day, Ian Ross felt lost and vaguely frightened. Lying there in his bed, he was disoriented, and it took him a moment to remember when it was and where he was. Where he was: in the bed where he had awakened every day of his 35-year-old life. When it was: the Saturday he had resolved to spend doing something. But as he lay there he realized he had come to life in the early hours just after dawn, it had looked as though it would rain, the sky seen through the high French windows, and he had turned over and gone back to sleep. Now the clock-radio on the bedside table told him it was the absolute dead middle of the afternoon; and the world outside his windows was cool and cloudy. "Where does the time go?" he said.

  He was alone, as always: there was no one to hear him or to answer. So he continued lying there, wasting time, feeling vaguely frightened. As though something important were passing him by.

  A fly buzzed him,, circled, buzzed him again. It had been annoying him for some time. He tried to ignore the intruder and stared off across Loch Tummel to the amazing flesh tones of the October trees, preparing themselves for Winter's disingenuous attentions and the utter absence of tourism. The silver birches were already a blazing gold, the larches and ash trees still blending off from green to rust; in a few weeks the Norway spruces and the other conifers would darken until they seemed mere shadows against the, slate sky.

  Perthshire was most beautiful at this time of year. He had taken the time to learn to pronounce the names-Schiehallion, Killiecrankie, Pitlochry, Aberfeldy-and had come here to sit. The dream. The one he had always held: silent, close to him, unspoken, in his idle thoughts. The dream of going to Scotland. For what reason he could not say. But this was the place that had always called, and he had come.

  For the first time in his life, Ian Ross had done something. Thirty-seven years old, rooted to a tiny apartment in Chicago, virtually friendless, working five days a week at a drafting table in a firm of industrial designers, watching television till sign-off, tidying the two and a half rooms till every picture hung from the walls in perfect true with the junctures of walls and ceiling, entering each checkbook notation in the little ledger with a fine-point ink pen, unable to remember what had happened last Thursday that made it different from last Wednesday, seeing himself reflected in the window of the cafeteria slowly eating the $2.95 Christmas Dinner Special, a solitary man, somehow never making the change of the seasons save to understand only by his skin that it was warmer or colder, never tasting joy because he could never remember having been told what it was, reading books about things and subject matter, topics not people, because he knew so few people and knew none of them, drawing straight lines, feeling deserted but never knowing where to put his hands to relieve that feeling: a transient man, passing down the same streets every day and perceiving only dimly that there were streets beyond those streets, drinking water and apple juice, and water, replying when he was addressed directly, looking around sometimes when he was addressed to see if it was, in fact, himself to whom the speaker was speaking, buying gray socks and white undershorts, staring out the windows of his apartment at the Chicago snow, staring for hours at the invisible sky, feeling the demon wind off Lake Michigan rattl
ing the window glass in its frame and thinking this year he would reputty and this year failing to reputty, combing his hair as he always had, cooking his own meals, alone with the memories of his mother and father who had died within a year of each other and both from cancer, never having been able to speak more than a few awkward sentences to any woman but his mother . . . Ian Ross had lived his life like the dust that lay in a film across the unseen top of the tall wardrobe cabinet in his bedroom; colorless, unnoticed, inarticulate, neither giving nor taking.

  Until one day he had said. "Were does the time go?" And in the months following those words he had come to realize he had not, in any remotely valuable manner, lived his life. He had wasted it. Months after the first words came, unbidden and tremulous, he admitted to himself that he had wasted his life.

  He resolved to actualize at least the one dream. To go to Scotland. Perhaps to live. To rent or even buy a crofter's cottage on the edge of a moor or overlooking one of the lochs he had dreamed about. He had all the insurance money still put by; he hadn't touched a cent of it. And there, in that far, chill place in the north he would live . . . walking the hills with a dog by his side, smoking a pipe that trailed a fragrant pennant of blue-white smoke, hands thrust deep into the pocket of a fleece-lined jacket. He would live there. That was the dream.

  And from King's Cross Station he had taken the 2130 sleeper to Edinburgh, and he had walked the Royal Mile and gazed in wonder at Edinburgh Castle high on the bluff overlooking that bountiful city, and finally he had rented a car and had driven north out the Queens ferry Road, across the bridge that spanned the Firth of Forth, on up the A-90 till he reached Pitlochry. Then a left, a random left, but not so random that he did not know it would come out overlooking the Queens View, said to be the most beautiful view in the world, certainly in Scotland; and he had driven the twisting, narrow road till he was deep in the hills of Perth.