‘Thank you. What’s hypnosis?’
‘Oh, of course they’d have removed knowledge of that. It’ll all be explained to you later.’
‘James, come and have a look at this, will you?’ Allen’s voice called. ‘I can’t make much of it.’
Myri followed James a little way. Among the clamour of voices, some speaking languages unfamiliar to her, others speaking none, she heard James ask: ‘Is this the right file? Fear Elimination?’
‘Must be,’ Allen answered. ‘Here’s the last entry. Removal of Bruno V and substitution of Bruno VI accomplished, together with memory-adjustment of other three subjects. Memo to Preparation Centre: avoid repetition of Bruno V personality-type with strong curiosity-drives. Started catching on to the set-up, eh? Wonder what they did with him.’
‘There’s that psycho hospital across the way they’re still investigating; perhaps he’s in there.’
‘With Brunos I to IV, no doubt. Never mind that for the moment. Now. Procedures: penultimate phase. Removal of all ultimate confidence: severance of communication, total denial of prospective change, inculcation of “uniqueness” syndrome, environment shown to be violable, unknowable crisis in prospect (food deprivation). I can understand that last bit. They don’t look starved, though.’
‘Perhaps they’ve only just started them on it.’
‘We’ll get them fed in a minute. Well, all this still beats me, James. Reactions. Little change. Responses poor. Accelerating impoverishment of emotional life and its vocabulary: compare portion of novel written by Myri VII with contributions of predecessors. Prognosis: further affective deterioration: catatonic apathy: failure of experiment. That’s a comfort, anyway. But what has all this got to do with fear elimination?’
They stopped talking suddenly and Myri followed the direction of their gaze. A door had been opened and the man called Douglas was supervising the entry of a number of others, each supporting or carrying a human form wrapped in a blanket.
‘This must be the lot from the tank,’ Allen or James said.
Myri watched while those in the blankets were made as comfortable as possible on benches or on the floor. One of them, however, remained totally wrapped in his blanket and was paid no attention.
‘He’s had it, has he?’
‘Shock, I’m afraid.’ Douglas’s voice was unsteady. ‘There was nothing we could do. Perhaps we shouldn’t have—’
Myri stooped and turned back the edge of the blanket. What she saw was much stranger than anything she had experienced in the sphere. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ she asked James.
‘Matter with him? You can die of shock, you know.’
‘I can do what?’
Myri, staring at James, was aware that his face had become distorted by a mixture of expressions. One of them was understanding: all the others were painful to look at. They were renderings of what she herself was feeling. Her vision darkened and she ran from the room, back the way they had come, down the steps, across the floor, back into the sphere.
James was unfamiliar with the arrangement of the rooms there and did not reach her until she had picked up the manuscript of the novel, hugged it to her chest with crossed arms and fallen on to her bed, her knees drawn up as far as they would go, her head lowered as it had been before her birth, an event of which she knew nothing.
She was still in the same position when, days later, somebody sat heavily down beside her. ‘Myri. You must know who this is. Open your eyes, Myri. Come out of there.’
After he had said this, in the same gentle voice, some hundreds of times, she did open her eyes a little. She was in a long, high room, and near her was a fat man with a pale skin. He reminded her of something to do with space and thinking. She screwed her eyes shut.
‘Myri. I know you remember me. Open your eyes again.’
She kept them shut while he went on talking.
‘Open your eyes. Straighten your body.’
She did not move.
‘Straighten your body, Myri. I love you.’
Slowly her feet crept down the bed and her head lifted.
THE 2003 CLARET
‘How long to go now?’ the Director asked for the tenth time.
I compared the main laboratory chronometer with the dial on the TIOPEPE (Temporal Integrator, Ordinal Predictor and Electronic Propulsion Equipment). ‘He should be taking the trance-pill in a few seconds, sir,’ I said. ‘Then there’s only the two minutes for it to take effect, and we can bring him back.’
‘Supposing he hasn’t taken the pill?’
‘I’m sure he’d survive the time-shift even if he were fully conscious, sir. It’s instantaneous, after all.’
‘I know, but being snatched back from fifty years in the future can’t do a man’s mind any good, can it? We just don’t know what we’re up against, Baker. I wish those blasted politicians had let us go slow on this project. But no, there mustn’t be any delay or the Russians will have developed time-travel before the Atlantic Powers, so we bundle Simpson off to the year 2010 and if we lose him or he turns up a raving lunatic it’s our fault.’ The Director sat moodily down on a work-bench. ‘What happens if he gets tight?’
‘He won’t have done that, sir. Simpson’s one of the Knights of Bordeaux. They never get drunk – isn’t it a rule of the society?’
‘I believe so, yes.’ The Director cheered up a little. ‘He’ll probably have a good deal to tell us, with any luck. The Douro growers are saying that last year was the best since 1945, you know, Baker. Imagine what that stuff must be like where Simpson is. Just one glass—’
‘Did you actually tell Simpson to sample the wines in 2010?’
The Director coughed. ‘Well, I did just make the suggestion to him. After all, part of our terms of reference was to report on social conditions, in addition to the political situation. And drinking habits are a pretty good guide to the social set-up, aren’t they? Find out how people treat their port and you’ve found out a lot about the kind of people they are.’
‘Something in that, sir.’ I’m a beer man myself, which made me a bit of an outsider in the team. There were only the four of us in the lab that night – the VIPs and the press boys had been pushed into the Conference Room, thank heaven – and all the other three were wine-bibbers of one sort or another. The Director, as you will have gathered, was fanatical about port; Rabaiotti, my senior assistant, belonged to a big Chianti family; and Schneider, the medical chap, had written a book on hock. Simpson was reputedly on the way to becoming a sound judge of claret, though I had sometimes wondered whether perhaps tactical considerations played their part in his choice of hobby. Anyway, I considered I was lucky to have got the job of Chief Time-Engineer, against competition that included a force-field expert who doubled as an amateur of old Madeira and an electronics king named Gilbey – no relation, it turned out, but the Director couldn’t have known that at the time.
‘The receiver is tuned, Dr Baker.’
‘Thank you, Dr Rabaiotti. Would you like to operate the recall switch, sir?’
‘Why, that’s extremely kind of you, Baker.’ The Director was shaking with excitement. ‘It’s this one here, isn’t it?’ His hand brushed the trigger of a relay that would have sent Simpson shooting back to about the time of Victoria’s accession. This may have been half-deliberate: the Director often got wistful about what pre-phylloxera stuff might or might not have tasted like.
‘No, this one, sir. Just press it gently down.’
The switch clicked and instantly the figure of Simpson – tallish, forty-ish, baldish – appeared in the receiver. We all gave a shout of triumph and relief. Rabaiotti killed the power. Schneider hurried forward and there was tension again. ‘I’d give a case of Dow 1919 to see him conscious and mentally sound,’ the Director muttered at my side.
‘Everything all right so far,’ Schneider called. ‘I’ve given him a shot that’ll pull him round in a minute or two.’
We lit cigarettes. ‘Pity conditions
wouldn’t allow of him bringing anything back,’ the Director said. ‘Just think of a forty-year-old 1970 all ready to drink. But I suppose it would have cost too much anyway. Next time we must find a better way of handling the currency problem. Very risky giving him raw gold to pawn. And we’re restricted to a lump small enough not to arouse too much suspicion. Oh, well, he should have been able to afford a few glasses. I hope that champagne’s all right, by the way?’
‘Oh, yes, I put it in the molecular-motion-retarder myself, with the setting at point-three. It’ll be nicely chilled by now.’
‘Splendid. I do want the dear boy to get a decent livener inside him before he faces all those cameras and interviews. I should have preferred a dry port myself, or possibly a Bittall, but I know what the occasion demands, of course. It’s a Lambert 1952 I’ve got for him. I don’t understand these things myself, but the Director of Lunar Projectiles swears by it.’
‘He’s coming round now,’ Schneider shouted, and we all pressed forward.
There was an intense silence while Simpson blinked at us, sat up and yawned. His face was absolutely impassive. Very slowly he scratched his ear. He looked like a man with a bad hangover.
‘Well?’ the Director demanded eagerly. ‘What did you see?’
‘Everything. At least, I saw enough.’
‘Had there been a war? Is there going to be a war?’
‘No. Russia joined the Western Customs Union in 1993, China some time after 2000. The RAF’s due to be disbanded in a few months.’
Then everyone hurled questions at once: about flying saucers, the Royal Family, the sciences, the arts, interplanetary travel, climatic conditions in the Rheingau – all sorts of things. Simpson seemed not to hear. He just sat there with the same blank look on his face, wearily shaking his head.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked finally. ‘What was wrong?’
After a moment, he said in a hollow voice, ‘Better if there had been a war. In some ways. Yes. Much better.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
Simpson gave a deep sigh. Then, hesitantly, to a silent audience and with the bottle of champagne quite forgotten, he told the following story.
The landing went off perfectly. Hyde Park was the area selected, with a thousand-square-yard tolerance to prevent Simpson from materializing inside a wall or halfway into a passer-by. Nobody saw him arrive. He changed his gold into currency without difficulty, and in a few minutes was walking briskly down Piccadilly, looking into shop-windows, studying dress and behaviour, buying newspapers and magazines, and writing busily in his notebook. He had several fruitful conversations, representing himself according to plan as a native of Sydney. This brought him some commiseration, for England had just beaten Australia at Lord’s by an innings and 411 runs. Yes, everything seemed normal so far.
His political report and much of his social report were complete by six-thirty, and his thoughts started turning to drink: after all, it was a positive duty. As he strolled up Shaftesbury Avenue he began looking out for drink advertisements. The beer ones had much in common with those of 1960, but were overshadowed in prominence by those recommending wines. MOUTON ROTHSCHILD FOR POWER, BREEDING AND GRANDEUR, one said. ASK FOR OESTRICHER PFAFFENBERG – THE HOCK WITH THE CLEAN FINISH, enjoined another. MY GOLLY, MY ST GYOERGHYHEGYI FURMINT, bawled a third. Well, practical experiment would soon establish what was what. Simpson slipped quietly through the doorway of an establishment clearly devoted to drink.
The interior was surprising. If some French provincial café had not been gutted of décor and furnishings to get this place up, then a good job of duplication had been done. Men in neat, sombre clothing sat at the tables talking in low tones, wineglasses and wine-bottles before them, while aproned waiters moved silently about. One of them was decanting a red wine from a bottle that was thick with dust and cobwebs, watched critically by all the nearby drinkers. Simpson crept to a seat in an unfrequented part of the room.
A waiter approached. ‘What can I bring you, monsieur?’
Here it must be explained that Simpson was not quite the claret-fancier the Director thought him. He enjoyed claret all right, but he also enjoyed other French wines, and German wines, and Italian wines, and Iberian wines, and Balkan wines, and fortified wines, and spirits, and liqueurs, and apéritifs, and cocktails, and draught beer, and bottled beer, and stout, and cider, and perry – all the way down to Fernet Branca. (There were some drinks he had never drunk – arak, kava, Gumpoldskirchner Rotgipfler, methylated spirits – but they were getting fewer all the time.) Anyway, feeling dehydrated after his walk round the streets, he unreflectingly ordered a pint of bitter.
‘I’m sorry, monsieur, I don’t understand. What is this bitter?’
‘Bitter beer, ale; you know. Haven’t you got any?’
‘Beer, monsieur?’ The waiter’s voice rose in contempt. ‘Beer? I’m afraid you’re in the wrong district for that.’
Several men turned round, nudged one another and stared at Simpson, who blushed and said, ‘Well . . . a glass of wine, then.’
‘France, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria . . .’
Simpson tried to think. ‘A claret, please. Let’s say – a nice St Emilion.’
‘Château Le Couvent, Château Puyblanquet, Château Bellefore Belcier, Château Grand Corbin d’Espagne . . .’
‘Oh . . . I leave it to you.’
‘Bien, monsieur. And the year? Will you leave that to me too?’
‘If you don’t mind.’
The waiter swept away. Conscious that all eyes were upon him, Simpson tried to sink into his chair. Before he could compose himself, a middle-aged man from a nearby table had come over and sat down next to him. ‘Well, who are you?’ this man asked.
‘A – a traveller. From Sydney.’
‘These days that’s no excuse for not knowing your wines, friend. Some of them Rubicons and Malbecs are as firm and fully rounded as all bar the greatest Burgundies. And I found a Barossa Riesling on holiday this year that was pretty near as gay as a Kreuznacher Steinweg. You well up on the Barossas, friend?’
‘No, not really, I’m afraid.’
‘Thought not, somehow. Otherwise you wouldn’t stalk in here and screech out for beer. Ger, ought to be ashamed of yourself, you ought.’
‘I’m awfully sorry.’
‘Should hope so and all. Now, I’m an honest working man, see? I’m a drip, I am.’
‘A drip?’
‘Domestic Reactor Installation Patentee. Don’t they go in for them down under? Now you listen to me. When I come in here to meet my colleagues and crack a bottle or two after the daily round, I don’t want my palate soured by some toff yelling out about beer, especially not when we got a really elegant Gevrey Chambertin or Chambolle Musigny or something of that in front of us. It’s psychosomatic, like. Just the idea of beer’s enough to cut off some of the subtler overtones, get me?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Simpson said again. ‘I didn’t realize. But tell me: don’t you eat while you’re drinking these wines?’
‘What, and foul up the taste-buds with fat and sauces and muck? You got a nerve even mentioning food in a place like this. We’re oenophiles in here, I’ll have you know, not a bunch of pigs. Ah, here’s your claret.’ The stranger held the glass up to the light, then sniffed it delicately. ‘Right, now let’s see what you got to say about this. And get on with it.’
Simpson drank. It was the most wonderful wine he had ever known, with a strange warm after-taste that seemed to seep upwards and flood his olfactory centres. He sighed deeply. ‘Superb,’ he said at last
‘Come on, come on, we want more than that; you got to do better than that. Give us a spot of imagery, kind of style, a reference to art, that type of stuff.’
‘It’s – I don’t know – it’s the richness of summer, all the glory of . . . of love and lyric poetry, a whole way of life, profound and . . . some great procession of—’
‘Ah, you turn me up,’ the man said violently.
‘This is a 2003 Château La Bouygue, reconstituted pre-phylloxera of course. Now, light and free, not rich in association but perfectly assured without any insincerity, instrumental where the ’ois are symphonic, the gentleness of a Braque rather than the bravura of a Matisse. That’s as far as you can go with it. Love and lyric poetry indeed. I never heard such slop in my life. You aren’t fit to come in here, friend. You get off out to one of the pubs with your boss-class pals, that’s where you belong.’
Simpson threw down some coins and ran, a gust of ill-natured laughter sounding in his ears. He felt like walking the streets for the two hours in 2010 that still remained to him, but a nagging curiosity emboldened him to ask to be directed to a pub.
The place he finally made his way to was on the corner of a narrow street on the edge of Soho. It was a red-brick affair like a miniature grammar school or a suburban bank. As he approached, a bus drew up and a crowd of young people got off, chattering loudly to one another in what Simpson made out as a version of the upper-class tones current in his own time. He was more or less swept in through the front door of the pub, and had no time to puzzle out the significance of a notice above the entrance, painted by hand with what seemed deliberate inelegance, and bearing the legend: cracked up by the wallop and scoff mob.
He found himself in a large, ill-lighted and crowded room of which the main feature was a long counter that ran from end to end zigzag-wise, as if to accommodate as many as possible of the tall stools that were closely packed along it. What were evidently glass sandwich cupboards stood every couple of feet along the red plastic top. A group of people, half-crowd, half-queue, was clustered round the entrance, and Simpson mingled with them. He noticed that most of the stools were occupied by persons drinking beer or some such liquid out of pint glasses and eating rolls or sandwiches. Conversations were bawling away around him.
Dear Illusion: Collected Stories Page 22
