Chronocules

by D. G. Compton

  “Perhaps I will.” How the hell could he? “Or perhaps, better still”—so liberal, so liberal—“better still, I might explain to Roses the importance of his pills.”

  “You just try. Myself, I wouldn’t mind betting that goop still believes in storks and gooseberry bushes.”

  Daniel walked away, not proud of having said what was necessary, angrily flicking his towel at the heads of the tall daisies that grew by the Village Green.

  David Silberstein stayed where he was, on the bench. He loved Liza Simmons. Mawkishly perhaps . . . unsuitably, anachronistically, he didn’t mind: he loved Liza Simmons. He had a duty to save her. Indeed, he had a double duty, both as Operations Supervisor and as a man. And in such a delicate situation he would be justified in using the latter quality to help the former. Wouldn’t he? In front of him a girl climbed up out of the water onto the quay, stood poised for a moment, then dived back in again. Of course he was justified. It wasn’t inclination that was driving him, it was duty. Out of sight down in the water the swimmers laughed and splashed and shouted. Where his sense of duty pointed, there he would go.

  It was an intimate matter. Intimate matters demanded

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  intimate situations. As O.S., as a father to many assorted children, he had a clear and unequivocal duty.

  No doubt, as Daniel claimed, she had a healthy appetite. Healthy appetites demanded healthy food. As a man, as a man on whom she had looked with apparent favor, his duty was equally clear and unequivocal.

  Otherwise . . . otherwise, if she were hungry enough . she mightn’t stop to consider. And what the result of that might do to a sensitive girl like Liza he hated to think. . . . There was no time to be lost. He left the quay and went back to his quarters, determination strong within him.

  The leaded lights of his bedroom window overlooked a little whitewashed courtyard, with geraniums in pots and an old rusty mangle and a large marmalade cat suffering from heat-stroke. There was a beautiful jumble of sagging roofs and crooked chimneys. And above it all, the black-green curve of the summer hillside. Staring out, seeing none of it, David Silberstein tried not to be realistic. He tried not to remember how—even when the suggestion about sexing had come from her—he had still been confused and unable to accept it. He tried not to remember all the girls whose hands he had not dared to hold, all the years of pillow-chewing celibacy, all the sensible, tension-relaxing masturbation he had practiced in the shameful secrecy of his room, the door locked, the curtains drawn, the mirror turned to face the wall. . . . But he’d never been in love before, not properly in love. Love (the old world whispering sentimentally in his ear?), love gave a man courage. It would give him courage. It had to. Now, quickly, before it was too late. If it wasn’t too late already.

  He took a shower, then opened his wardrobe and sorted through his summer suits for something young- looking and attractive. The door of the cupboard swung

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  back and he caught sight of himself, naked, in its full- length mirror. Young-looking and attractive? Well, certainly not old-looking, not particularly unattractive either. At least, not to a woman. Presumably. He inspected himself carefully, improperly. Chest, arms, belly, penis, testicles, knees, ankles . . . none of it was any more or any less horrible than the equivalent components of the men he saw around him every day. He revolved, found the side view a bit perky and pressed it hopefully down with his hands. It bounced up again. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing—perhaps women liked their men perky, and anyway, perky was the way the good Lord had made him. And nakedness was supposed to make you feel so free....

  His duty was as clear as ever. Pursuing it, he put on his shoes and socks. Somehow they spoiled the effect, so he got out a pair of sandals instead. These, and sunglasses to complete the outfit. The sunglasses made him feel a great deal better. Clothed. And in them he looked so much like everybody else that perhaps he wouldn’t even be recognized until, for Liza Simmons, he took them off again. Not that it mattered to him—not to him as David Silberstein. But he had to remember he was also the O.S And he knew the private parts of the OS to be far more outrageous, most certainly not to be casually bandied about. With his sunglasses on, perhaps the walk through the Village could indeed be managed incognito.

  He went downstairs and hesitated outside the closed door of his landlady’s kitchen. He could hear her moving about inside, laying the table. There was no need to disturb her when she was so busy.

  “I may be a bit late for supper, Mrs. Berman,” he shouted loudly, more or less through the keyhole. “Please don’t wait for me.”

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  He slipped quickly out through the front door and

  snapped it shut behind him. Oh my Lord. The door to the house that had clothed him was shut and, trouser- less, he had no key. The sun shone on him, the wind blew on him, the space around him spread unconfined as far as the farthest stars. If he rang the doorbell to be let in again, then Mrs. Berman would . . . He moved neither forward nor back. And old Joseph’s wife came ambling past. David Silberstein leaned against the door, lightly sunning himself. She was a vague old thing: perhaps she wouldn’t notice him.

  “Good evening, Mr. Silberstein.”

  “Good evening, Mrs. Engels.”

  “Lovely weather, Mr. Silberstein.”

  “Indeed yes, Mrs. Engels. Lovely weather.”

  So much for the incognito. Oh my Lord. Now then, where was he supposed to be going? Liza would probably be in the laboratory: the laboratory was at the extreme bottom end of the Village. Oh my Lord. Perhaps it would be better if he ran all the way. . . . He levered himself away from the wall. After all, the Greeks ran races in the nude. So did the chrononauts. And they looked all right. Didn’t they?

  He walked very slowly indeed, treading carefully, agitating nothing, drawing his balls up into himself until they ached.

  Mercifully he met practically nobody at all. The married cbuples were indoors, sharing the preparation of supper, the unmarried ones were swimming or playing tennis or even—when as devoted as Liza—working late. And the few people he did meet pretended (pretended?) to notice nothing unusual about him at all. He sidled unobtrusively through the gate to the laboratory garden and went up the steps. Though love might have launched him, it was duty that kept him going.

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  It was duty alone that drew him up, could ever draw him up the laboratory steps, arse exposed for all to see, and in at the laboratory door.

  The air inside was cool and dim. Liza was alone, sitting at the computer console, neat in her long white coat. In spite of his sunglasses she recognized him at once—he’d never really hoped she wouldn’t. He felt pinned out.

  “Looking for the professor?” she said.

  “Not really. I...” was looking for you.

  “He’s gone home for the evening.” She turned back to her figures. “I took the afternoon off, so I said I’d stay late instead and tidy things up.”

  “Yes. Well. . it was you I wanted, Liza. Dear Liza.

  “You’ll find the professor in his quarters. Though I doubt if he’ll welcome being bothered.”

  She hadn’t lifted her eyes from the print-out, so he felt braver. He leaned casually by the half-open door, screwing himself to the point when he would dare everything. After all, he told himself, he was the O.S.

  “It wasn’t the professor I wanted. It was you. I wanted a word with you. Liza Simmons.”

  And then he waited. Five, ten, fifteen years passed.

  “Oh yes?” At last she really looked at him. Really saw him as he was. Not old, not unattractive, not even shy. . . . He searched for something in her eyes, even as much as had been there the last time, the last time she had really looked at him, that morning in the laboratory garden just before the Founder’s visit. He searched in her eyes and found nothing, nothing but very d
istant surprise.

  (She was thinking how wrong she had been to feel intrigued by David Silberstein. He was nothing. He was neither old-fashioned, nor quiet, nor a father, nor a

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  child. She was looking for a person, and he wasn’t one. He was just another sexual object.)

  “Oh yes?” she said again, all this in her voice. “What did you want to say to me?”

  There was nothing now worth daring. Except duty. There was always duty. He cleared his throat.

  “I wanted to warn you”—not a trace of a squeak, staring at the wall opposite—“that Roses Varco is probably very slack over taking his sterilization pills.” A hush followed. “I just thought you ought to know.”

  He realized he could escape now, for his duty was done. He escaped. His sandals flapped noisily as he went down the steps.

  He hid in a storeroom under the laboratory until it was dark enough for him to get his nakedness home unseen. Dealing with men, dealing with administration, external defensive systems, internal jealousies, departmental rivalry, dealing with all this he was a genius. Dealing with love he was . . . less good. Mrs. Berman let him in without comment, quite understanding why he didn’t have his key. She’d kept his supper hot for him, but he wasn’t hungry. At that moment he doubted if he would ever be hungry again.

  And Liza? Liza worked on in the shadowy, silent laboratory, disturbed occasionally by gongs or whistles or farts from the laboratory clock. She had been very amused that David Silberstein should think her so feckless. Especially as she had put a pill in Roses Varco’s cocoa only that very afternoon. Just in case.

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  INTERJECTION

  At this point in my story it so happens that the original book from which it is being imaginatively reconstructed has a newspaper cutting I can helpfully and economically include as found. My book’s printers, of course, are not the original book’s printers. They have less patience and less technical ingenuity at their disposal. In the original book every newspaper cutting, though as indestructible as the rest, has the smell, the feel, the shabby, blotted appearance, the overtones of fish and chips, the precise but undefinable newspaperyness of a newspaper. All that my present reader will simply have to imagine for himself.

  After the newspaper cutting I have decided to include also a short section of the original, multi-choiced narrative—just so that the reader may understand what this imaginative reconstruction is sparing him. Evidently, at the time of wiring the original book, means of feedback between communication and response will exist, so that the former is continually being modified to suit the latter—presumably by means of variable-track tape and sophisticated encephalographic interpretation. Obviously this technique is not possible in an ordinary book with ordinary pages. Nevertheless, summoning great typographical ingenuity, the author (authors?) of the original book attempted it.

  I do not feel that the experiment works. The reader

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  may well feel it doesn’t work even more than I do. And if he is a person likely to be made angry by things that do not work, he would be well-advised to skip the whole section. (Not the newspaper cutting, just the odd-looking page that follows it.)

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  PERV BY NAME AND PERV BY NATURE? ASKS MRS. L.

  Yesterday I met a sad and lonely man. He lives in a tiny village not two miles from the friendly Cornish holiday town of St. Kin- now. The village is no ordinary village, and the man no ordinary man. His name is Varco, his village nickname Roses. He presents a pathetic figure, shambling, inarticulate, frightened. And his home is in the mysterious Penheniot Experimental Research Village.

  Wretched condition.

  The boss-man of this establishment, suave David Silber- stein, claims that Varco was bom the way we see him now. That the experiments done there —financed by the well-known merchant adventurer, Emmanuel Littlejohn OBE—can in no way have brought about Mr. Varco’s present wretched condition. The establishment’s chief scientist Igor Kravchensky, onetime victim of Nazi persecution, supports this claim. So does every other employee of Mr. Littlejohn, be he Kops or Engels or Greenspan.

  Repressive system

  Yet Mr. Varco himself—a Com- ishman bom and bred—appears very afraid, and avoids interview. Probing deeper, I found that Mr. Silberstein would prefer not to disclose the exact nature of the research done at Penheniot. But, whatever it is, it needs a nine-foot electrified fence*around it. It needs a repressive system of internal discipline. It needs rigid censorship, total isolation from the outside world.

  Suffering

  So what are we to think? This is, of course, a free country. But when, as happened a few days ago, the population of St. Kinnow violently attacked a group of Penheniot employees, one might say that they ought to know. After all, they have lived cheek by jowl with Penheniot for over two years now. Certainly the situation in that part of sunny Cornwall is explosive. In my opinion an enquiry into the activities of PERV is long overdue. And, more particularly, an enquiry into the suffering of Mr. Roses Varco.

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  Since newspapers are

  usually reliable, a series of skillful innuendoes and misrepresentations such as this did a great deal of damage.

  Several responsible organizations, including the Committee for Moral Responsibility in Science, took tentative steps to discover the truth of these accusations. Other more disruptive agencies were not so patient.

  Roses went his friendly, gentle way, unaware of anything but the passage of his own sufficient days. He fished, he fed his swans, he passed strange, awkward hours with Liza. David Silberstein, trying to be civilized, smarted nevertheless under the girl’s treatment of him. And Manny Littlejohn followed his news media and waited to see i which way the cat would jump.

  malicious, irresponsible & disastrously successful shapers of public opinion, it is hardly surprising that this editorial-appearing in several different guises—had the desired effect.

  L_ ^ 1

  Disregarding the various official channels available, anarchic organizations, including the CMRS, made plans for civil disturbance.

  insignificant, and seldom believed anyway, it was indicative of the hysterical nature of society at that time that reports of this nature in fact made a considerable impression.

  I

  The third in a progression of high pressure zones, reaching 31 millibars, had been moving over England and W. Europe for the previous 7 weeks, giving max. temps, of 32 C., with humidity at 80¾.

  understandably very minor. Therefore very little was done, apart from the despatch of a Ministerial letter to David Silberstein requesting confirmation that the research being done at* Penheniot was indeed that which appeared on Ministry files—namely, into the Nature of Time. David replied to this letter most carefully, hiding nothing. The Minister unfortunately did not think it necessary to make the details of this letter known. He had under-estimated the intensity of public feeling.

  1

  For a few days all remained calm. But the weather was working against reasoned judgment, intensifying the anxieties of a society already near to breaking point. It is possible that prompt governmental action at this stage, the setting up of a Board of Enquiry, for example, might have averted the impending violence. But unfortunately, among the Government’s many pressing problems, Penheniot was i

  neglected disgracefully. After the exchange of a couple of wholly inadequate letters' with the O.S., the Minister lost interest-issuing a brief and unhelpful statement in classic de

  flationary terms. Evidently ho did not care whether he was believed or not The British Public, always quick to sense when it is not being taken seriously, acted accordingly.

  CHRONOCUIES

  And so on, page after page, ramifying almost to infinity. If a justification of my imaginative reconstruction were needed, this is it. Life is full enough of unavoid
able decisions without—in addition to paintings that are blank canvases and music that consists of silence—the creation of multi-choice books. A story benefits from a definite viewpoint, from passages that annoy as well as those that please. It’s easier to read. And I hope it’s more fun.

  Meanwhile, back in Penheniot...

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  FIVE

  It was evening. Roses and Liza had been up the St. Kinnow river as far as the group of houseboats in Roses’ old wooden dinghy. As an excuse for the journey Liza had told herself they were looking for the swans. But the birds were nowhere to be seen and she wasn’t exactly heartbroken—she didn’t share Roses’ enthusiasm for them: nasty, greedy, vicious things. He rowed close to the houseboats and she peered in through their portholes, catching little round glimpses of another way of life: a council room, a communal salon, a row of cubicles, something that might have been a Scientology temple. Children on the decks stared at her drowsily. Women paused in their chores to stare at her too, grubby women with long hair and strange, hand-made clothes. Nobody spoke to her. On account of Village regulations she couldn’t have answered them, even if they had, but their silence worried her. There was an air of desperation, of totally inward preoccupation about the place that was disquieting. Even the drugged children were unlike any other drugged children she had seen. Roses turned the boat and started back down river.

  The air was heavy, and unpleasantly loaded. The sunset lay like a bruise, smeared with septic yellows and purples. The river, curiously iridescent, wound between dark, silenced hillsides. The tide was against the boat now, and they moved slowly, Roses heaving on

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  the oars, frowning with concentration, his breath audible against the pressure of the silence. Liza gripped the sides of the boat, felt the timber working with each of his strokes. There were thirty years of paint under her hands, and beneath these the clear ridges and furrows of worn wood. On the way up river they had ridden the fast mid-stream tide, but now Roses steered for the slacker water inshore. His starboard oar dipped inches from the low branches that trailed scum, greened plastic cartons, gray toilet roll. On the shore, and in the air above it, nothing moved.