Chronocules

by D. G. Compton

  The Founder’s reply was almost as succinct as his previous one had been.

  “That’s very good of you, Founder. I shall—” The receiver clicked offensively, then buzzed in his ear. He put it down. “Emmanuel has such a clear mind,” he said, to nobody in particular. “I’d never have thought of that, not in a million years.”

  A few minutes later Liza, looking up from the work Professor Kravchensky had given her, saw two security men pass below the laboratory window. They were laughing as they went. They carried a length of rope and a large landing net such as had been used in previous years for outsize salmon. The nonchalant way they swung their equipment was belied by their anxious laughter.

  In the Village, work went on very much as usual. The children came out of school for their eleven o’clock

  190

  CHRONOCULES

  break and ran about on the Village Green, fighting hotly. Joseph Engels, deprived of his newspapers by the new quarantine regulations, took time off from his bakery to watch TV and photograph the scenes of riot and pestilence for his sitting room wall. Safe behind the repaired wall of his bank, Paul Kronheimer lost count at nine thousand three hundred and forty new pounds, and had to begin again. The chrononauts sat dejectedly in front of their blank University of the Air screens (the courses had been discontinued because of the national emergency), and waited with dread for yet another fill-in session with the P.T. coach. And up in his office David Silberstein, tuned to the local stations, tried to dodge Mrs. Lampton on all three channels.

  The approach of the St. Kinnow armada had of course been plotted electronically ever since it entered Pen- heniot Pill. But it was one of the children playing on the Green who first saw the vanguard actually appear around the final bend and steam valiantly across the deep mooring to the Village quay. He shouted, and most of his companions stopped fighting to watch. There were pleasure boats and ferry boats and water scooters, and even a pair of cranky old fishing boats, all loaded with placards and people. Rather more placards than people, and each one of them anti-Penheniot. ° Nothing can be likened to massed placards: they bobbed up and down as only massed placards can.

  The children’s attention quickly turned from them to the preparations being made in the Village. The front of the boat-house was rolled back, and the P.E.R.V. rescue boat was made ready for launching. Several laser *

  *The foolishness of placard words is never worth repeating. The original book does so at great length, but I shan’t bother.

  191

  CHRONOCULES

  cannon were revealed in concrete gun emplacements. Also something that looked suspiciously like a flamethrower. A muster of fifty security men, all very armed, filed out and stood shoulder to shoulder along the quay and foreshore. It there had been a drawbridge, it would have rattled up on its piece of string.

  The oncoming boats halted, though not apparently so much in fear as by some prearranged signal, for they gathered in a fairly straight line across the Pill. A superior launch, flying the flag of the St. Kinnow harbor master, cruised up and down in front of them. From its cockpit a gray-suited man in wire-rimmed spectacles (in general, surgery had obviated the need for spectacles some eight years before) spoke loudly and clearly over an excellent P.A. system.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Good morning, Penheniot This is Narsius Harlien speaking.” He checked himself. The microphone had gone to his head. He made a serious effort to sound less like an American president, but his script was against him. “I represent the Ministry of Moral Responsibility. As Personal Assistant to the Minister herself I am undertaking a crash tour of scientific establishments in this Leisure Area ...”

  Color Sergeant Cole picked up the telephone and rang David Silberstein. He didn’t need to. Narsius Harlien’s amplified voice had carried easily through the O.S.’s open office window. The Ministry of Moral Responsibility—that was a new one. And as for the Minister herself, David didn’t need three guesses as to who she might be. He should have lingered on one of the three channels. Mrs. Lampton’s appointment was the typical gesture of a panicky government, intended to appease long after appeasement was no longer possible. He left his desk wearily and started down Fore

  192

  CHRONOCULES

  Street to the quay. Narsius Harlien’s voice was everywhere. Like God.

  . . Under special emergency powers I am authorized to make an inspection of the Penheniot installation. In particular, in response to public and democratic outcry, I am authorized to investigate the case of one Roses Varco.” There was a cheer from behind him which he quelled with a gracious hand. “I should like to emphasize that the good people with me have come of their own free will. I am here in no vein of intimidation, merely in order to exercise my right as a member of His Majesty’s Government.”

  “Private mooring, old boy,” interrupted Color Sergeant Cole’s deputy, a man chosen for his fat good cheer. “Wouldn’t mind pushing off down the creek a bit, would you?”

  “Indeed, but I would. Coming in no vein of intimidation, I equally well have no intention of myself being intimidated. As the representative of—”

  “Problem is, not to clutter up the basin, y’see.” Operation 3a in the handbook ground on. “We get a lot of traffic in and out here at the Research Center. That’s why we put up all those notices.”

  “My good man, I have no authority over the people who have come with me. I may say that as a solid demonstration of public feeling I find their action impressive. And gratifying. Nevertheless—”

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

  “Stuff and nonsense. And don’t you point that gun at me. By the authority vested in me under paragraph four, subsection 7k of the—”

  David arrived on the quay and took the microphone politely from the affable harbor master. There were

  193

  CHRONOCULES

  times when Operation 3a could be said to be inapplicable.

  “Mr. Harlien,” he said. “Mr. Harlien, you are now

  speaking to the director of this establishment. My name is Silberstein.”

  A startling barrage of boos came from the small craft assembled opposite. Narsius Harlien let them continue a shade too long before he silenced them with his raised arm. He should have appeared to be more on the underdog’s side.

  “Please,” he said to his followers. “Please. This is not a court. I am not a judge and you are not a jury. I am here to make inquiries. Nothing more.” He turned back to David. “Mr. Silbersteen,” (the mispronunciation might have been accidental), “Mr. Silbersteen, I have letters of accredition with me. May I please come ashore? Peaceably?”

  “I appreciate that you have letters of accredition with you,” David replied. “The trouble lies in what else you may have with you.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “To put it bluntly, Mr. Harlien, you may be a carrier for mutated enteric fever. Or”—he’d watched enough TV to pick up this, at least—“or Mexican Flu, as your government seems to be calling it.”

  “My dear Mr. Silbersteen—”

  “You may even be yourself in the early stages, for all I know.” More booing. “Be that as it may, I’m afraid I can only allow you ashore if you agree to a forty-eight hour quarantine period in our hospital. On these conditions I can assure you you’ll be made very welcome.”

  “Quarantine period? Stuff and nonsense.”

  “In that case you’ll just have to sail back the way you’ve come, Mr. Harlien.” Cheering this time from the children forgotten on the Green, behind him. “We have

  194

  CHRONOC ULES

  a clean bill of health here in Penheniot Village, and we intend to keep it that way. I should take the matter up with your Minister of Health, Mr. Harlien, before you commit yourself—and us—to unnecessary violence.”
<
br />   The Minister’s Personal Assistant turned off his amplifier and consulted inaudibly with his companions. His launch did the complete length of the other boats and back again. His supporters were growing impatient, muttering among themselves.

  “If you have any influence over the people with you,” David said, “I suggest that you advise them to turn around and go home peaceably. As you can see, we are armed and ready. The crews of any boats we sink will not be allowed to come ashore within the boundaries of the Village. This would lead to an inconvenient amount of swimming.”

  Narsius Harlien switched on again, cleared his official throat, and changed the subject. There was, he said, also the question of Roses Varco. Various allegations had been made, and it was in everybody’s interest for these to be settled. If he, Narsius Harlien, could not come ashore (a face-saving acceptance), then perhaps he, Roses Varco, would care to accompany him back to St. Kinnow.

  David Silberstein, observing that nobody was kept at St. Kinnow against his will, sent for Roses Varco, stood him up on the quay and quietly asked him—playing quite fair—if he wanted to go away to St. Kinnow with the kind gentleman.

  Roses found this an easy question. The kind gentleman closely resembled the chairman of a Mental Capacities Tribunal he had once attended. And the maniacs waving placards behind the kind gentleman exemplified every aspect of mankind he most feared. He shuffled his feet and muttered a refusal. David pushed the

  195

  CHRONOCULES

  microphone closer and asked him to repeat it. Just for the record. The words rolled around the valley, ten times man-size.

  “Thacky prissed-up old bugger? Don’ care for he’s glass eye-things. Don’ care for the company he keeps neither.”

  Which, in a free country, should have more or less

  settled the matter.

  Narsius Harlien made resigned preparations for departure, warning that he would be back after due consultation with his Minister. But the people behind him, feeling that it was he who had attached himself to their demonstration rather than the other way around, were not so discreet. They abandoned their placards and produced various not particularly legal small-arms instead. Against his deepest personal wishes, the Minister’s Personal Assistant was driven forward by their advance across the deep mooring.

  A hundred yards from the beach there was a double laser set two inches below water level the full width of the creek. It operated like a bacon slicer, removing the bottom of Mr. Harlien’s launch as he was jostled across it from behind. It removed the soles of the helmsman’s shoes as well, and regrettably, in one or two of the more heavily laden boats following, several low- lying toes.

  As the boats sank the lasers were switched off, for fear of injuring their passengers. The remaining boats, unaware of this, backed up hastily in flurries of foam and circled warily to pick up survivors. Their small- arms fire on the Village was rendered ineffective by the general agitation and the extreme range. The few heroes who scorned rescue and swam on toward the forbidden shore were soon turned back by discharges of specially selected sewage from under-water pipes.

  196

  CHRONOCULES

  Narsius Harlien himself was last seen, without his spectacles, clinging to the stem of a boat too full to let him aboard—at least, such was the claim of its Bolshevist master.

  On shore everything possible was done to make the townspeople’s rout unhumiliating. Laughter or derisive gestures were strictly forbidden. Even watchers, unless in some official and unobtrusive capacity, were discouraged as tactless. Joseph Engels, a man with an enormous, if simple, sense of fun, had to be forcibly restrained in a small room behind the guard house. The Village lay silent and discreetly deserted under the high afternoon sun.

  Nevertheless, a rout is a rout, no matter how considerately administered. And in an unwinnable war, one rout can only lead to another. . . . David Silberstein walked thoughtfully back to his office. To win a skirmish in comfort, simply by pressing buttons, is a curious sensation. The buttons, far from being glorious extensions of his manhood, were—if he cared to look at them that way—reminders of his impotence. Even his demonstration of that bloody man Varco’s oafishness had been mere patronage, visibly not to his own credit. For some men action simplified life. For David Silberstein life was unsimplifiable.

  But not—surely not—quite without hope?

  When he reached his office he gave weary orders for the two heavy-duty water purifiers to be phased in to deal with the Village’s defensive effluvia. Then he settled himself in front of his TV, seeking flagellation from the new Minister of Moral Responsibility.

  Up in the laboratory work had gone on uninterrupted. It needed a full Red Alert before the professor or Liza could be drawn away from their absorbing devices. In fact, they had been far less disturbed by the commotion

  197

  CHRONOCULES

  outside than had been the sheep brought in shortly after lunch by two disheveled security men. This distracted animal had set up a continuous and offensive bleating against which the accurate calculation of chronomic unity coefficients was very difficult. They had pored over their computer panels while the animal stamped and fretted and scattered fleas around the controlled environment of the laboratory. At last it had calmed down and settled to eat the bale of hay resulting from a second sortie by the security men. It stood now, munching serenely on the take-out platform, firmly lashed into a specimen frame, while the accelerators warmed up. Liza found its contentment distressing—surely any other animal, faced with such a situation, would at least have stopped eating?

  She switched in the pulse generators, keyed them to the de-buffering cycle. The rise in noise level had been gradual: perhaps the sheep had therefore not been aware of it. There was room for a study of decibel tolerances among the larger mammals. As -the whine increased, rising to the point of take-out, the sheep stopped chewing. Liza was obscurely thankful—even a sheep could not be so stupid and insensitive as to fail to notice the approach of chronomic unity. In this she was mistaken. The sheep’s tail lifted from its rump, and a straw-spiked turd began to be extruded. Takeout occurred. The sheep, turd and all, flickered and was gone. What a condition, thought Liza, in which to meet eternity.

  The sheep’s chronomic unity was timed to last ten minutes. Professor Kravchensky was having difficulty with the electronic timing mechanism—the second cat, the tabby one, given a peripheral charge, had been overprojected by three hours. While she was waiting for the sheep’s reentry Liza went over the professor’s rec

  198

  CHRONOCULES

  ords of the two cat experiments. The timing charge had been differently applied in each case. The first cat, the black one, had received a nucleic charge, which had resulted in a reentry time accurate to within .01 of a second. So the peripheral charge, preferable on account of its smaller molecular displacement, was far less precise.

  Liza referred to the vets latest bulletin on the black cat’s condition: after severe initial disturbance (it was the cat that had temporarily escaped), the animal had settled down completely and was now exhibiting perfectly normal behavior: good appetite, prompt sensory responses and excellent emotional stability. Its condition, in fact, was identical to that of the tabby cat on which inaccurate, peripheral timing had been used. Therefore it seemed that nucleic timing was not only more accurate, but also perfectly safe.

  She knew it was a glib decision. And she lcnew that it was on her judgment—her intuition, almost—that the life of a chrononaut would shortly rest. The responsibility, everywhere except in law, was hers. And all she could really think about was the destructiveness of her own lust. Through page after page of the vet’s report all she could really see was the face of the halfanimal she had used, the simpleton whose very innocence made him the more hateful, the more guilty. She cared nothing about her scientific duty. She cared nothing about success or failure. She was realizing that there existed only one person sh
e hated more than herself, and that was Roses Varco. She frowned, and tried harder to make sense of the vet’s bulletin.

  Precisely on time, thanks to nucleic pacing, the sheep returned, dropped its turd, and recommenced its chewing. Professor Kravchensky was delighted.

  “Liza, Liza, what more proof can anyone need? For

  199

  CHRONOCULES

  us, ten minutes—for the sheep, not a second. Not even the second it needs for . . . doing its business.” He cleared his throat and hurried on. “And observe, Liza, such tranquility! Could there possibly be brain damage with such tranquility?”

  Liza doubted privately if the dreary sheep had any brain-cells worth damaging.

  “Ring the vet, child. Tell him to send someone over for the latest subject. And tell him, another complete success. We’ll be out of here soon, Liza. Out of here forever.”

  She recognized a spark of ancient lust in his eye— evidently success invigorated his glands. She felt sick, got up, went to the telephone.

  “And your wife as well, professor,” she said with fish-wife clarity. “You weren’t forgetting her, were you?”

  Her bitchiness, her lack of moderation, shocked her. What could a wife have to do with the situation? Since when had a wife possessed sexual significance? Liza dialed the vet’s number. She was a mess.

  On this day, more than any other, Roses Varco needed the comfort of the habitual. He needed putting together again. The night, the morning, and then the afternoon, all had called for a disintegrating amount of flexibility. He needed reassurance that the world was other than it was. In the evening, therefore, he took his rod and line down to the quay to fish.

  He went late, intending to avoid the jolly swimmers. It was an unnecessary precaution: following the afternoon’s farce a heavy seriousness had descended on the Village. Swimming parties—even though the water had been declared safe—were suddenly considered fin de siecle and unsuitable. So the quay was deserted, and had been all the evening. Roses stood for a moment,