Chronocules

by D. G. Compton

  His feet were cold, and his legs, and the whole of his body. He returned to the house and lit his lamp. Only the smell lingered to remind him: the smell of hot wireless sets, aspirin tablets, the sandpaper sides of used matchboxes, and something that might have been castor oil. It remained through the night and on into the next morning. Then it too disappeared. And Roses did his best to forget that he had ever smelled it.

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  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Up to here this story is true. True insomuch as it is based on Roses’ own account, given very reluctantly over many glasses of cider and after the promise of a year’s supply of his favorite reading. Also, in case it be thought that Roses made the whole affair up, or dreamed it in some alcoholic nightmare, it must also be said that the strange book which has featured so largely in the story up to now was not in fact lost. It is now in this authors possession. It arrived on the slipway to his house at the mouth of Penheniot Pill sometime during the night following the events just related, and was found by him early the next morning.

  Books being this author’s business, it was carried up to his house and read at once from cover to cover . . . to the distress of this author’s wife, who had been counting that day on a shopping expedition into St. Kinnow. Even if she had been able to see the book’s intriguing luminosity, which she couldn’t, owing to the brightness of the morning, it is doubtful if this author’s wife would have considered it grounds enough for abandoning the first outing she had had in five weeks. As it was, she went to St. Kinnow alone, there buying herself several wholly unnecessary articles by way of compensation.

  The book, therefore, exists. And, since the materials used in its construction are indeed remarkable, Roses’ story in all its main aspects may presumably be believed.

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  As for the contents of the book, the reader of the story this author is about to tell will be able to judge their authenticity for himself, as it is to be a reconstruction of just these contents. This author makes no claims for them either way. Except that he wouldn’t be asking for the reader’s time (and perhaps a small amount of the reader’s money) if he didn’t think they made a story worth telling.

  By now one further doubt will, probably have occurred to the perceptive reader. If the book exists, why bother with reconstructions? Why not publish the book as it stands? The answer to this doubt is twofold. First of all there is this author’s vanity to be considered. Naturally he wants the story to be as much as possible his story. Secondly, he honestly believes that the book, as it stands, is a failure, pretty well unreadable. The anonymous author (authors?) has tried to make the written word do so much, has tried to pack onto the simple printed page so much psychiatric hocus-pocus, so much subliminal jugglery, so much encephalographic here-we- go and there-we-go, that the result is sometimes incomprehensible, often tedious, and continually patronizing. In short, the book, as it stands, is quite intolerable.

  And now, with explanations made and the warning given that what follows is at best unauthenticated hearsay and at worst a pack of lies from beginning to end, to the story. At last.

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  CHRONOLOG

  ONE

  The Penheniot Experimental Research Village lay across the valley at the extreme end of the Pill, where the stream had once run under a narrow wooden bridge beside a tumbledown jetty. The buildings of the Research Village were discreet, built of local materials in the local manner, and using whenever possible the shells of existing cottages and bams. The staff of the Village were dressed—whenever the weather wasn’t warm enough for a fashionable nakedness—in typical Cornish village clothes: artists’ smocks and peacock tights and a smattering of indigenous blue serge. There was a village post office and a village pub, a village police station and several village dogs who lounged about the quay-side when they weren’t being used in experiments. The village cats kept themselves in the background, in case they might also be used in experiments.

  There was a large research laboratory, and several concomittant workshops. The saw-mill had been rebuilt, disguising a high-gain generator. This, together with a seawater processing plant and vast underground storehouses of food, made the Village virtually self-sufficient. A brand new, magnificently equipped research center, nestling quietly in a fold in the hills, looking for all the world as if it had been there for centuries.

  Unfortunately all this effort fooled nobody, neither local nor tourists. These latter, primed with sensational

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  but inconclusive newspaper “disclosures,” motored up the Pill at all stages of the tide and tried to drop anchor in the new deep mooring at the end. It gained them nothing, as the locals had long since discovered. The Founder, Manny Littlejohn, had a sense of style. He chose security men with cheerful red faces and fringes of beard, dressing them in blue fisherman’s jerseys, shabby fishermen’s caps and patched blue fishermen’s jeans. But they were security men all the same, and had been known to behave accordingly.

  First of all there was a fat harbor master who hailed offenders in a thoroughly friendly manner. (The operation was number 3a in the handbook.)

  “Private mooring, old boy. Wouldn’t mind pushing off down the creek a bit, would you?”

  If the visitor objected, the follow-up was equally friendly.

  “Problem is, not to clutter up the basin, y’see. We get a lot of traffic in and out here at the Village. That’s why we put up all those notices.”

  The visitors’ attention was drawn to several very civilly-worded boards:

  THIS IS A BUSY PRIVATE WATERWAY. MOORINGS ARE REGRETFULLY RESERVED FOR RESIDENTS ONLY. THERE IS AN ATTRACTIVE COVE FOR YOUR PICNIC OR SWIMMING PARTY HALF A MILE BACK ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE PILL.

  “I don’t want to be stuffy, old boy, but you are committing what is technically a trespass. We do have statutory powers in these cases, y’know.”

  If the visitors continued to make difficulties the handbook laid down that an unobtrusive laser gun in the window of a rose-covered cottage should quietly cut

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  GHRONOCULES

  their anchoi chain so that they began drifting toward the rocks. The whole 3a operation now out of the control of the jolly harbor master, a squad of cheerful, red-faced fishermen would emerge from the Police Station, jog down onto the beach and begin to launch a menacing black motorboat, hung about with grapnels and what might have been rocket life-saving equipment.

  The boat was clearly lettered p.e.r.v. rescue boat, but no visitors had stayed long enough to experience one of its rescues. They gathered their summery nakedness with dignity about them, and departed.

  Manny Littlejohn’s defenses on the landward sides of the Village were less tactful, consisting of a continuous, nine-foot high electrified fence. But it was at least laid as discreetly as possible, through scrubby woodland for most of its length, and the charge in it was after all limited by law to what a cow might find no more than surprising. Not, of course, that many people checked to make sure.

  The transformation of Penheniot Village from a group of barely-inhabitable ruins to a subtle, self-sufficient modem laboratory had taken less than two years. The -day dredging operations started at the mouth of the Pill, bulldozers came slithering down the lane behind the Village, and behind them an arsenal of sonic drills, laser guns, concrete compressors, rock emulsifiers. The Founder’s genius was for work-study and administration—it was this, plus a ruthless business sense, that had made him his fortune. Now he applied it to the realization of his dream, his toy. Possibly the most expensive toy one man has ever owned.

  A toy, and a way out.

  The rate of change in Penheniot was one that everybody found hard to keep pace with, perhaps most of all poor Roses Varco. He had been found sitting in the

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  back kitchen of one of the houses scheduled for demolition. It was explained to him that th
e freeholds of the entire village had been bought by Mr. Emmanuel Littlejohn and that therefore, regrettably, he—Roses Varco— would have to move out. This was a proposition quite beyond Roses. He’d lived in that house for twenty, maybe thirty years, and his father before him for twenty, maybe thirty years. It was his house. His house. He sat obstinately on his chair, by his table, in his kitchen, and refused to budge.

  The foreman was called, and then the site engineer, and finally the coordinating architect. All in vain. No amount of talk could ever convince Roses that the mere manipulation of Manny Littlejohn’s millions away in some far distant, unimaginable town could take away the only home he’d known in all his thirty-eight years. He gathered his blankets and the -more precious of his other possessions—his teapot, the calendar his father had hung in the alcove by the stairs, his jar of fishhooks, his best pair of trousers—into a bundle and retreated to the farthest, darkest corner of the kitchen. There he crouched, frightened into near imbecility.

  The foreman was a humane man, as was the site engineer and the coordinating architect. They also had explicit instructions from the Founder to consider the wishes of the locals whenever possible. They had a good record in this respect and didn’t want to spoil it. There was plenty of other work to be done on the site. The Founder himself would be down in three days’ time, and they decided to refer the matter to him.

  Manny Littlejohn examined Roses and his home with his usual analytical eye.

  “Is he dangerous?” he asked.

  “On the contrary,” said the coordinating architect, ‘he seems to be exceedingly gentle.”

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  “Inquiries have been made?”

  “The police in St. Kinnow give him a very favorable report.”

  “So.” Manny Littlejohn ran his finger along the edge of the table and examined the result without nausea. “You waste my time. We build a village, so we need a village idiot. Put him on the payroll.” He looked appraisingly around the kitchen. “Perhaps he can do some maintenance work in his spare time.”

  On the original site plan Roses’ kitchen—and a great deal more besides—was to be absorbed into the structure of the laboratory itself. Therefore congenial quarters for Roses would have to be found elsewhere. Obviously the official controlled-environment living accommodation-prefabricated plastic units that slotted neatly into the Cornish stone shells—would be useless. Roses needed somewhere suited to his own particular needs. The briefest social study showed that he would be happier nowhere so much as in his own appalling kitchen. Accordingly the coordinating architect, acting on his own initiative, raised the floor of the laboratory some five foot nine inches to accommodate it beneath. The kitchen took up one tiny comer of the space thus created, the rest of it being utilized for the proper storage of wines and spirits, which the architect suddenly discovered had been quite overlooked.

  Thus the disruptions to Roses’ life were kept to a minimum and he, for his part, performed the duties of village idiot to perfection.

  On the day this part of the story begins tke Research Program at the Village had been in operation upwards of two years. For the last eight months the Operations Supervisor had been promising a breakthrough “any day,” and Manny Littlejohn in his Mayfair office was

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  impatient. The directives he sent down to the O.S. were increasingly pointed.

  The O.S. picked up that morning’s letter—shunted unopened onto his desk by the Auotsec on account of its Private and Confidential magnetic coding—and slowly peeled back its flap. He resigned himself to the intense irritation its contents would cause him. The Founder was of course being unreasonable. That was in the nature of Founders. After all, even the Americans, with the help of the best Jewish brains in the world and a budget equal to the combined GNPs of all the emergent nations, had taken God knows how long to ship their puny little space station up onto the moon. Two years for a project such as P.E.R.V. was engaged upon was next to nothing. Basically, all Manny Littlejohn was interested in was his own skin and how he could save it.

  David Silberstein put the letter into his decoder and read the self-destroying tape that it offered in return.

  ML to DS/P & C. 739 Dear David,

  Your appropriations breakdown received and approved. Funds on their way accordingly. The seven thousand increase on last week noted. Are you feeding those people on caviar, Davey? (I told my Autosec to cross that last bit out but something in her feedback won’t let her. And I promised myself this would be a letter full of sweetness and light. Old friend, forgive me.)

  Business is bad with me (and with you?) so I will take a few days off to try and break the jinx.

  I may be down your way. Why I tell you these things I don’t know. But promise me you’ll do nothing special. Daddy Littlejohn wants to see his chil-

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  dren as they really are. So promise me. Till then, be good and good.

  Your old friend,

  Manny.

  The O.S. sat for a moment watching the paper tape disintegrate in the still air of his office and drift gently down into the waste disintegrated paper basket. Another of the Founders toys, giving every one of his letters the importance of a State Secret. Of course, his letters were as deceptive as the man himself. This one, sugared, was a veritable harpoon. It struck, and where it struck the flesh quivered. The friendlier Manny Littlejohn was, the more he was to be feared. David Silberstein had no need to refer to the handbook to know what was necessary. He sighed, flexed his fingers, and typed a message into the Penheniot Central Autosec:

  The O.S. is accepting no calls for the next two hours. If wanted urgently he’ll he on Tour 4a and traceable accordingly.

  His first stop was at the Police Station. It was still early, but already the sun-heated roses around the Police Station door were giving off a heavy fragrance. Bees buzzed in the lavender under the Police Station windows, and across the Pill a heron was clearly visible, fishing wet-footed for his breakfast by one of the Private Property signs. About his ankles drifted a fine layer of mist, skeining out across the oil-smooth water. It was a beautiful summer morning, promising yet another hot and airless day.

  “Color Sergeant Colei”

  A rosy village bobby appeared almost at once. A man in friendly braces with ruthless, handcuff-gray eyes. He stood to attention.

  “Sir! Lovely morning. Sir!”

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  Wrong, Color Sergeant. Its a morning of menace and anxiety.”

  Color Sergeant Cole took the necessary intellectual step.

  “Sounds like Operation 4a in the handbook, sir.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. But refresh my memory.”

  “A rota of men at the railway station in St. Kinnow, sir: four hours on, four off. A further rota on the Town Quay. By way of back-up, full television scanning at the mouth of the creek. Surprise arrival of subject out of the question. Sir.”

  The O.S. stared tactfully away at the curve of wooded hillside up behind the Police Station.

  “If questioned, Color Sergeant, what will these men say they’re doing?”

  “Attending the Regatta. Sir.”

  “Regatta, Color Sergeant? On the railway station?” “The platform overlooks the starting line. Sir.”

  David Silberstein transferred his gaze to a passing cloud.

  “I did you an injustice, Color Sergeant. I’m sorry.” “You can rely on me. Everything will be taken care of. Sir.”

  “Of course. I know it will. Carry on then, Color Sergeant.”

  He turned away. He wished all the other stages of Tour 4a could be as simple. A few yards down the path he paused.

  “I suppose there really is a Regatta?”

  “A question, sir, not in the best of taste.” The Color Sergeant spoke without inflection, offended. “If you don’t mind my saying so.” />
  David Silberstein found himself apologizing again. He went away depressed.

  In the baker’s shop that fronted the Catering Section

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  Joseph was arranging the morning’s display of fresh crusty loaves. David was cheered a little. The comfortable smell encouraged him, and the wide scrubbed grain of the wooden bread racks. It represented continuity, a past that flowed gently through the present and on into a foreseeable future. Which of course was nonsense. If he believed that he had no place in the Village. The Founder was right: the sunshine, the cobbles underfoot, the perfection of each single blade of grass, everything was part of the same deadly confidence trick. To believe otherwise was folly. Heresy.

  “Good morning, Joseph.”

  “A glorious morning, O.S. A morning to rejoice one’s heart.”

  “As you say, Joseph, it is indeed a glorious morning.”

  David answered warily. Joseph seemed, even for him, to be ominously jolly.

  “Seen the papers yet, O.S?”

  “No, Joseph.” He knew that his forebodings had been justified. “No, I have not yet seen the papers.” '

  The fat chef put the last of the loaves in position, dusted the flour off his hands, and rummaged in the deep pocket of his apron. He produced the Times, folded into a neat square, one small item ringed firmly in red ink. He began to read it aloud, chuckling so much he could hardly speak.

  “In large areas of Central India, where rain would not normally be expected for a further six weeks, torrential showers have been falling for the last three days, causing near monsoon conditions. Although harmless to human beings, the rain contains chemicals that appear to have a seriously adverse effect upon—”

  “I saw a report on television last night, Joseph. Similar rain fell in China last month. There’s an international team of micro-biologists working on it.”

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  “Isn’t there always? Me, if I had a son, I’d tell him to be a micro-biologist. Not a farmer, not a schoolteacher—be something useful. Be a micro-biologist.”