Chronocules

by D. G. Compton

  “That’s dirty talk. What’d I want to do that for? That’s dirty talk.”

  The doctor avoided Liza’s eye. He chose what he hoped was an easy way out. “Well, I’d like you to take the pills now because they’ll help you not to get sick. I’d like you to take one a day.” Monstrous fertility, a man like this would have. “No, best make it two. Two a day. To stop you getting sick.”

  “Nasty things.”

  “They’re not nasty things if they stop yoii getting sick, now are they?”

  Roses was muttering rebelliously under his breath. The doctor appealed to Liza. “See he takes them, will you?”

  “Of course I will.”

  Though they were, in a way, an outrage.

  She went away with him into a small, two-bedded ward with full electro-medical surveillance. She persuaded him to let himself be put to bed. She interceded with the hospital staff in the matter of a nice hot bath, and also when the question of pajamas arose, since he objected to be parted from his shirt. He lay in his bed, with the sheet close up under his chin, and stared wildly at the ceiling. She showed him how to work his TV, but there was nothing on any channel that interested him. Since there were no comic strip books in the adult library, she went across for some from the children’s section. Also for jigsaw puzzles and ludo. She saw that

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  she was going to be kept very busy. And she knew, if she had never known before, that she loved him.

  That night, the night of Tuesday, August 23rd, was the night of the first of the outside attacks made on the Penheniot Experimental Research Village. The first and the most serious. The most serious because it was made with inside help.

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  When the first alarm reached him, David Silberstein was in bed and asleep. The telephone woke him, Color Sergeant Cole reporting a sensor response that indicated the presence of some seven or eight men near to the inside of the perimeter fence, up among the trees to the west of the Village. The time was two-thirty, the moon recently set. He got up at once and went to his office, where there were repeater boards for all the sensors throughout the Village, and where he had an open line to the guard room and could keep in touch with the entire operation.

  It seemed that Harry and Pete hadn’t bothered to go to the police, had known it would be a waste of time, had collected a posse of their friends instead. Certainly free enterprise attacks of this nature were to be expected—the Village was a perfect scapegoat for the frustrations and fears and resentments of the outside world. But it worried David that this particular group had got over the fence undetected: he would have expected them to earth out a section of the electrical circuit before climbing through, and this would have shown at once on the Color Sergeant’s board. Instead they had evidently gone over the fence with some system of ladders, not touching it. They were wiser and better- prepared than he would have expected a random group

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  of bloody-minded townspeople to be. He was not at this stage, however, in the least worried.

  He sat and watched his indicator board and chatted with the Color Sergeant over the open line. When the intruders were next heard of they were down through the woods and pausing at the back of the Village, by the generating station. This meant that, after blundering heedlessly through the first line of sensors, they had successfully evaded the second line. It was very unlikely that they could have found the gaps in the second line of sensors entirely by accident—any more than that they could merely have guessed the presence of earthing indicators on the fence. A pattern to their activities was developing—one that depressed him. He waited to see what they would do next, hoping they would try what his intuition told him they wouldn’t.

  The generating station, although by no means an inevitable target, was certainly a very probable one for anybody seriously intending harm to the Village. It had therefore been made virtually—and melodramatically— impregnable. The machinery itself was buried thirty feet down, encased in six-foot titanium-reinforced concrete. Such of the building as was above ground was made of three-inch armored steel, and a response from any of the surrounding sensors automatically charged the entire structure with two thousand volts. In addition there were gas sprinklers and a localized radio field to provide instant detonation of any timed device and jamming for any form of long distance control. The precautions were extreme, even theatrical, but necessary. Without power the Village would quickly die.

  Around the generating station lay a little cottage garden, hollyhocks, love-in-the-mist, sweet william, sensors at two foot intervals. The O.S. waited in vain for any sign from these sensors. The marauders knew too much.

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  In spite of the apparent attractiveness of such a target, they kept well away.

  They next appeared on the indicator board as they went up an alley by the post office. Another group would have expected the main street to be under heavy surveillance and would have chosen the back ways. But they had known otherwise, and had obviously gone boldly down Fore Street. David frowned—the careful planning of their route worried him. At the top of the post office alley they separated, one party making for the laboratory and the other, smaller party going in the direction of the school. The nature of the signals showed that both groups had taken no precautions against the radioactive “rubs” that would make them traceable anywhere within the Village. Their knowledge of the-various defensive layers, in fact, was extremely patchy.

  “Time we picked ’em up, sir?” said the Color Sergeant.

  “No.” The division into two parties intrigued David. “No, I want to see what the left-hand lot are up to. What could they possibly want with the school?”

  “A hostage, maybe? The schoolmasters place isn’t all that secure.”

  “Possible. But I doubt it.” If they knew so much about the Village they’d know that the work was too important for hostage-taking to be relevant. “But you’d better deploy your men, Color Sergeant. No point in taking unnecessary risks.”

  The laboratory party proceeded as expected, around the back of Workshops and across the grass outside the chrononauts quarters. Their information about sensor locations had apparently run out, for they avoided none. They took up positions in die road outside the laboratory, and there they waited—perhaps for a signal, perhaps for some prearranged time to elapse. David switched in the outside microphone nearest to them,

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  but could pick up nothing but faint, anonymous rustles.

  The party supposedly bound for the school suddenly vanished from the board. David marked their last known position and correlated it with the map. They were in the area of the catering section, the bank, and the hospital It was a part of the Village with many unmonitored alleys and back yards, a part of the Village that abounded in good defensive positions. If it was their intention to go to ground, the intruders could hardly have chosen a better place.

  It was now certain that they were acting from inside information. And an informed guess as to their present intentions could be made much more soundly if the identity of the insider were known. Accordingly the O.S. examined their knowledge of the Villages defenses, and —more importantly—the gaps in that knowledge.

  The principle was very simple, devised (inevitably) by Manny Littlejohn who, trusting nobody, had used it successfully for many years in his various business organizations. Nobody was told everything, but everybody was told enough for them to believe they had been told everything. Thus the higher Village executives— those most likely to constitute a serious threat—had been divided into groups of three, each of which separately had had the Village defenses described to them under oath of secrecy. The oath, hung about with implications of privilege, was one that would be kept. And the descriptions that each group received were different, omitting in each case two different stages in the intric
ate defense system. Thus it was that the present intruders, although well-informed, had obviously known nothing about the first line of sensors or the radioactive “rubs.”

  There were three people, and three only, who had not been told of these particular defense factors. The O.S. didn’t need to refer to his file; he knew the details

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  by heart. The three names he would find in it were: Daniel Jefferies, Workshop manager; Sir Edwin Solomons, the Training Supervisor; and Paul Meyer, the Village doctor. One of these three had turned traitor.

  The grouping was accounted for by a shared worldliness. Three men without the complications of family, of idealism, of faith. Which would any of these three men plan to attack: the catering section, the bank, or the hospital? It was a simple enough decision.

  At that moment the microphone down by the laboratory picked up the faint hooting of an owl. In a countryside where owls were all but extinct. David sighed.

  “Color Sergeant, they’re about to attack. Twenty men over to the bank at once. For the lab ten will do. It’s a decoy party—the bank is where the main trouble will come.”

  His words were interrupted by an explosion in the laboratory garden, and then another.

  “It’s not a serious attack, Color Sergeant. They’re only lobbing grenades.”

  “So it seems, sir,” said the Color Sergeant a little dryly.

  David missed the sarcasm. He was watching the indicator board, anxious to be proved right. There was still no sign of movement from the second party of intruders. Down by the laboratory the popping and thumping increased. But it was not loud enough to cover the explosion when it finally came. In front of the O.S. the bank indicator light flashed unnecessarily. His office building was already moving slightly in the blast. He’d been right. His mental processes had been sound. He could enjoy being totally cool. This was warfare.

  “I take it your men are in position, Color Sergeant?”

  “Moving in at this moment, sir. Orders to immobilize at a distance.”

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  “Quite so. We must remember that these outsiders may be highly infectious.” Activity outside the laboratory was being worked up into a wasted paroxysm. “You’d better see to the eager beavers, Color Sergeant. They’ll be ruining the hollyhocks.”

  This he immediately regretted. It was a camp joke that Color Sergeant Cole would not appreciate.

  “Then I’ll leave it to you from now on, Color Sergeant. I don’t image there’ll be any snags.”

  “No, sir. No snags.”

  David Silberstein switched off his outside microphone, the indicator board and the loudspeaker. He had had his moment, and the rest was anticlimax. He felt pleased, but not—the thought niggled him—not pleased enough. A decision had been needed, and it had been the right decision. The rest was mere mechanism. Why was he not more pleased?

  Out of the Village the floodlights came on. Rapid automatic fire anesthetized the intruders, and anti-bacteria sprays were brought up to render them temporarily sterile. Those actually inside the bank were immoblized with built-in gas sprays. They would all be shipped back to St. Kinnow and laid out decently on the quay in the morning. And a stiff note of protest—which would be a waste of time—would be left at the St. Kinnow police station. So easy. So insolently easy. And only the beginning.

  David Silberstein, sitting in his bright, three o’clock office, decided that the sourness in his mind came not from his inadequate moment of glory, but from the squalid, wearisome task that now confronted him. There was a traitor in the Village, and he knew without any doubt who that traitor must be. His task would have been easier if he could ever have liked or even respected

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  the man. He remade his connection with Color Sergeant Cole.

  “Send two men around to pick up Sir Edwin, will you?”

  “I already have, sir.”

  David was depressed still further. Of course Color Sergeant Cole had his own copy of the defense information file. And of course both the doctor and Daniel were far too clumsy ever to have made the arrangements for such a complex raid without being found out long ago. But why need Color Sergeant Cole have made the necessary deductions quite so promptly?

  “You never did like Sir Edwin, Color Sergeant.”

  “That’s beside the point, sir.”

  It was indeed. It was also highly unfair, trying to get rid of his own difficulties by blaming the color sergeant.

  “I’ll tell you a secret, Color Sergeant. I’ve never liked him either.”

  Honesty, honesty. . . . Come to that, he didn’t like Daniel all that much. And he was far from keen on the doctor. Was there anybody in the Village he did like? Except of course Liza Simmons—and she was all sexed up on that bloody Roses Varco.

  “You’re having Sir Edwin brought here to my office, Color Sergeant?”

  “That’s right, sir. He’ll probably be in bed, trying to look innocent. But my men shouldn’t take long getting him up.”

  “No violence, I hope?”

  “Good gracious me, sir, no. No violence.”

  “Well done, Color Sergeant. Well done.”

  He switched off. He leaned his elbows on his desk. Suddenly he was aware of the particular early morning quality of his office, its interior over-emphatic, more

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  than real. He covered his face with his hands. The silence made noises in his ears.

  And then Sir Edwin was being brought in by two guards. Surprisingly rumpled, not quite the perfect diplomat David would have expected.

  “Sit down, Sir Edwin. My men will have disturbed you.” I

  “Not at all. They were very civil. And I wasn’t asleep.” “No. No, I suppose not.” There ought to have been something sayable, something worth saying, to this man. But all David could think was: after him, then how many others?

  “There are three hundred adults in the Village, O.S. I’d be very interested to know how it was my name that came to be picked out of the hat.”

  David shrugged his shoulders. “Evidence,” he said. There was no point in offering more.

  “The girl Simmons, I suppose. And her faithful swain. Though I might well have been up there for the good of my health, you know.”

  David didn’t know what he was talking about, didn’t care. “You’re not going to deny responsibility,” he stated.

  Sir Edwin, solidifying rapidly for his own comfort into his former subtle image, stared at David quizzically. “You have the authority, O.S.?”

  “You know I have.” They both understood for what. “Doesn’t it worry you? You’re not another Littlejohn. I’ve seen you asking questions.”

  “Of course it worries me.”

  “I’m glad.”

  A silence fell between them, its end acknowledged. Sir Edwin sat very still, smiling because he must, hoping for nothing.

  “Tell me one thing,” he said finally, opening the one. subject that remained important to him. “You’re not a

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  Calvinist, are you? Not a believer in predestination?” “You’ve answered your own question.” Not comprehending, David allowed him this. As if it were a hearty breakfast. But how reluctant they both were to be direct. Sir Edwin’s mannerisms of thought were catching.

  “Then you’re willing to undertake time travel blindly, as an act of faith?”

  David could have echoed Professor Kravchensky, would have made a semantic objection. He didn’t bother: at this moment in his life Sir Edwin must have a point worth making. Must have.

  “Because that’s what it’ll be,” Sir Edwin said. “A complete act of faith. You’ll have no idea what you’re going to. No idea at all.”

  An a.b. spray unit passed below the office window, hissing gently. Security men were going over the path taken by the intr
uders, neutralizing any contamination. Excellent, necessary, repellant efficiency. David knew now why the raid had so depressed him. He dragged his mind back to the conversation with Sir Edwin. What was the man talking about?

  “You know the program, Sir Edwin. For myself, I shall be doing nothing blind. That’s up to the chrono- nauts. I don’t move an inch—or a minute—till one of them has come back to tell me what I may expect.”

  “Come back? But my dear O.S.—”

  “The risk of no return is theirs entirely. Professor Kravchensky. will push them on a long way—thirty or forty years. By then research here at the Village should have come up with a return boost system. It’s what people like Liza Simmons, who won’t be leaving here, are sworn to. But you know all this.”

  “I’m trying to explain—circuitously, I admit—why I did . . . what I did. Be patient with me. If you do not believe in predestination, then you believe in free will.

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  And where is the free will of a man who has traveled backward in time?”

  David began to feel the edges of panic. “I don’t understand you,” he said. Firmly. Wishfully.

  “I did what I did, my dear O.S.—my dear David— because one day I suddenly saw the obvious. I saw that to travel backward in time is a philosphical impossibility. I ceased to believe in the project.”

  “I don’t want to hear,” David said. “I don’t want to hear your excuses.”

  But Sir Edwin had to go on, had a right to be allowed to go on. There were no other rights left to him. He leaned forward, for once betraying ah intense involvement.

  “Consider a man who has traveled backward in time. Philosophically the future of the entire world will be known to him. How is such a man to behave? He knows when the rain will fall, he knows how the nations will conflict, he knows what his wife will have for supper. If you believe in free will, how is life possible to such a man?”

  “There may be more than one future.” A straw. “There may be an infinite number, in which each of an infinite number of possibilities will be followed through.”

  “Do you believe that?”