Chronocules

by D. G. Compton

  “How marvelous, darling. And what are you going to wear?”

  “Wear your red, Rachel. You know it suits you.”

  “And its so demure. That’s right—wear your red. It’s best to err on the demure side till you know what the

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  future’s like. It’s better for them to think you odd than

  shocking.”

  For a moment Rachel stood still, her hands held out from her naked thighs, dreaming of the new ages she would conquer in her red. Then she pulled herself together.

  “Nonsense,” she said. “The first few unities will only be for two or three minutes. It’s hardly worth wearing anything.”

  “All the same, I should wear your red, love, if only

  for poor old Kravchensky’s sake.”

  They giggled at this disrespect, flicked little furtive glances toward Vill. Psych. What good sports they were. And, in spite of all their learning, how feminine. Vill. Psych, stepped forward. There were still the finalizing tests (body and mind) to be performed. He took her arm and led her away to the testing suite. Her companions cheered and waved.

  Roses, although sentiment had played little part in his upbringing or subsequent life, was determinedly sentimental. Also, although justice had likewise been absent, he had an equally determined belief in it. Therefore, when he found the cat that had wounded him so viciously lying dead in the nettles outside his back door, a serious conflict arose in his nature. “Poor li’l bugger” did battle with “Serve un right.” They struggled together mutely for some minutes.

  “Serve un right” began to win. The cat had been an ungrateful bastard, going on like that after all he’d done was rescue him from that mad old professor. Might have finished up like spotty dog else. . . . This thought led in due time to a general condemnation of Professor Rrav- chensky and his activities in the laboratory overhead. Things that the professor had to do with died. He knew.

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  He’d seen it. He prodded the cat with his foot. At least all of it seemed to be there, not like spotty dog.

  At this point a new consideration entered the conflict: curiosity. Usually in Roses’ life things just died. There wasn’t any reason; there didn’t have to be. They just died. (Except for his dad, of course, chopping himself up in the woods.) But this case was different. Things that Professor Kravchensky had to do with died. They didn’t just die, they died because Professor Kravchensky had had to do with them. And Professor Kravchensky had had to do with old black tom here. Roses picked the black cat up, carried it into his kitchen, and put it on the table.

  He sat in front of it for a long time, staring into its open, dead jelly eyes, occasionally touching its flattened fur. It was the professor’s fault. Of course it was. The only question was what (if anything) should he, Roses, do about it?

  “All this,” said David Silberstein to Professor Kravchensky, calling in at the laboratory just before lunch, “all this is particularly opportune in view of the government’s new ruling. With any luck we’ll be able to stave them off for a couple of days-long enough to get out anybody who wants to go.”

  He was talking solely because a certain decent interval of conversation was necessary before he could draw the professor to one side and ask him the questions that really mattered. The old man stared at him, bewildered.

  “Government ruling? What is this?”

  “I’m sorry. I thought the Founder would have told you.”

  “Not a Word. Not a word.”

  “We’re being forced to disband. Not only' us—all research centers. It’s an attempt to mollify the public. Re

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  search has been a dirty word ever since the beginning of the fever. All that wretched Mrs. Lampton’s fault, of course.” He smiled nervously. Anybody could go who wanted to go. . . . Did he? Did he want to go if there was really no coming back? “I hear they’re even closing a place in Sussex that’s doing research on the fever vaccine. Might be true. I certainly wouldn’t put it past them.”

  Professor Kravchensky was gathering his scattered wits. “So we have not long? Two days, you say?”

  David nodded. He gained the strong impression that the professor’s question was asked on Liza’s account rather than on his own. When Liza turned abruptly away he knew the impression had been right.

  “Two days if we’re lucky,” he said. “The Founder’s making aggressive noises, but there’s really nothing he can do about it. Not against the sort of airborne forces the government can muster. And there’s nothing they’d like more than to make an example of us.” He took Professor Kravchensky’s arm. He’d chatted long enough. After all, he was the O.S. “A word in confidence, if you don’t mind, Professor?”

  They went away into the old man’s little office. Briefly and without interest, Liza watched them go. Then she returned to her work: if there had ever been any hope of delaying the afternoon’s experiment there certainly was none now. All that was left was for her to do her scientific—if not her human—best.

  There was something of the Confessional about the tiny office. David confided his fears, and Professor Kravchensky listened. When David had finished, the old man sat on very still for some seconds. He was probably, as confessors will, preparing a scuttle. David nearly walked out then and there—he should have known the

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  interview would be a waste of time. Who else, however, was there for him to go to?

  “It’s an old argument,” said die professor at last, judicially steepling his fingers, “and one to which I can give no positive answer. Everything you say is true. Nevertheless . . .” He frowned, screwing up his eyes at the complexity of the conundrum he was about to present. “Nevertheless, there is serious risk involved in applying one discipline’s logic to another. We have the second law of thermodynamics, for example. This well-known law, the principle of entropy, asserts that, in any system, order tends to give way to disorder unless controlled by something from without. A general principle that would seem to be self-evident—until one applies it to life, and to living things in general. Then it becomes complete nonsense. In the field of live-matter we see structures maintaining their fixed forms and functions down countless generations.”

  He allowed a long pause. It was his trump, indeed his only card, and he wanted to be sure it was appreciated. Out in the laboratory the Bohn computer whirred and clicked, performing for Liza a year’s calculations in the space of two seconds.

  “So we see, my dear O.S., that a law unquestionable in one field may well be complete nonsense in another. We know so little . . and about the nature of the chronos we know next to nothing.”

  “So?” David posed the question flatly, angry with himself for ever having hoped.

  “My dear O.S., if you haven’t followed my reasoning, then—”

  "I followed your reasoning perfectly. You were saying you didn’t know.”

  “A reasonable attitude, don’t you think? In a field of science not three years old, a reasonable attitude.” A pa

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  tient smile, a sad quirking of the sparse eyebrows. “We scientists are so often accused of being arrogant. Yet here you are, complaining when I make a perfectly normal, humble admission of ignorance.”

  This was so blatantly a manipulation that David didn’t bother to answer. He got up. He should have left right at the beginning.

  “A spirit of adventure, O.S., a willingness to take the calculated risk—is that really so much to ask?”

  No. No, it wasn’t He should indeed have left earlier, before his inadequacy had been exposed. Perhaps he had once possessed a spirit of adventure (not in his college days; earlier, perhaps, riding his brother’s bicycle down Leckhampton Hill): certainly he possessed one no longer. And as for the calculated risk—wouldn’t Liza have been securely s
exing with him by now if he’d just once been willing to take it?

  “Thank you, Professor. A salutary reminder. You did well to give it to me.” He went to the door, then turned. “I look forward to seeing this afternoon’s experiment, Professor. A historic occasion. If I don’t get a chance to speak to you before then—good luck.” Safe as the O.S. “And thank you.”

  He went out quickly, head averted, past Liza and down the laboratory steps to the steep harsh shadows of the Village street. The height of the sun emphasized the street’s solidity: every house, every wall, every cobblestone possessed location, weight, permanence. Hollyhocks grew in gardens, and huge yellow sunflowers— they promised continuity, one high summer following another. Smoke rose straight in the still air from the chimney behind Joseph’s bakery. David brushed his hand through white alyssum along the top of a garden wall. How long would it last? When the Villagers were gone, two days at the most, dispersed by the govem-

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  ment or projected into the future, whichever it might be, after that for how long would all this permanence survive?

  When they could Liza and her team would return, of course. And permanence belonged within himself, to be taken with him wherever he went. But it wasn’t going to be easy. ...

  Manny Littlejohn ate lunch in his hospital room, food sent over specially from Joseph’s kitchens. He ate well, his digestion, as always, quite as determined and purposeful as his mind. Margot, on the other hand, was a fussy eater, pushing food suspiciously about her plate as if the whole thing were some sort of trap. Manny Littlejohn always had time to correct other people’s bad habits.

  “Has no one ever told you, woman, that poison is usually invisible?” He himself had, three times a day, since before they were married. “You can shove your food around all day and you’ll never spot it.”

  “You know it’s not that, Emmanuel. You know I’m looking for gristle. You know I can’t stand gristle.”

  “Gristle? The most neutral of substances? You’ll eat blood? You’ll eat muscle? You’ll eat blood that’s been pumped around and around through that poor animal’s heart? You’ll eat muscle that’s helped it to walk and run and reproduce itself? You’ll eat all that and you won’t eat gristle?”

  Margot pushed her plate away. “I think I shall become a vegetarian,” she said.

  Since this was her usual reply, made on an average twice a day, it irritated her husband still further.

  After lunch, Manny Littlejohn and his entire entourage (in different hospital rooms suited to their different stations) were given final quarantine checks and discharged. Released at last, Manny Littlejohn emerged

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  from the hospital with an audible pop. On his way through the Village, nodding to people as he passed, he noticed that they were far more clothed than before, far more clothed than the weather made necessary. What an interesting, he thought, what an interesting byproduct of insecurity. If he ever cared to work on it, he could get his social psychologist to formulate a theory.

  The first visit he made was to the crew room. He despised pep talks—the sight of him alone should be inspiration enough. He chatted with the chrononauts and looked at their watches. He talked about his last few days in London, riots, armed policemen, censored newspapers, and told a funny story about a traffic jam composed entirely of flashing ambulances. He was introduced formally to Rachel Moser, and complimented her on her pretty hair. He said a few kind words to Vill. Psych. To show he was afraid of nothing, ashamed of nothing, he even tackled the difficult subject of the late Sir Edwin Solomons.

  “There’s been a recent funeral,” he said. If' their minds were really as fine as their bodies he could treat them almost as equals. “I’m sorry it was necessary. Regarding Sir Edwin’s guilt, I imagine the O.S. has explained the situation. Him you can trust. The O.S., being a fool, a man too weak to be thoroughly unscrupulous and so a bad liar, is one of the most trustworthy men alive. Sir Edwin was none of those things. He was needed here for his brilliance rather than his virtue. I for one will remember him with affection and respect.”

  He left the chrononauts and made his way, more slowly now for it had already been a long day and he was tiring, up Fore Street to the vet’s establishment at the upper end of the Village by the generating station. He wanted to see for himself the success of Professor Krav-

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  chensky’s experiments with the smaller and larger mammals.

  Behind the vet’s surgery there was a number of strong wire pens. They contained, separately, eight dogs, two cats, and one large dead sheep. The vet looked at this last with some surprise.

  “It was fine half an hour ago,” he said. “I checked everything, temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate, after

  the midday feed.”

  “You noticed nothing?”

  “A slight lassitude, perhaps. It’s very hard to tell with sheep.” The vet hesitated. “What a pity. Just when the research program was going so well.”

  “Any unnecessary death is a pity.” Manny Littlejohn looked around the side of his nose. “But I don’t see what it has to do with the research program.”

  “But Founder—the animal was in chronomic unity and now, twenty-four horns later, it is dead. Surely—” The Founder turned and began to walk away. He hoped the man wasn’t going to be difficult.

  “Can you be certain it was chronomic unity that caused the sheep’s death?”

  “Of course not. Not at this early stage. But—”

  “Tell me, doctor”—the title could have been either flattery or an obscure warning—“are there not many causes from which a sheep may die? All of them totally unconnected with chronomic unity?”

  “Of course there are. All the same—”

  “How many?”

  “That’s an impossible question, sir. Obviously a large number. Offhand I can think of perhaps eight primary causes of death in sheep.”

  Manny Littlejohn stopped walking. They were standing beside two caged cats, a black tom and a tabby quean. “Eight natural causes, doctor? And only one un

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  natural one? In the face of such odds would it not be reasonable to assume a natural death, at least until you discover concrete evidence to the contrary?”

  “Sir? Are you asking me to—?”

  “I’m asking you to do nothing. I merely suggest that any announcement from you until you have performed a thorough autopsy would be premature. Some people might call it irresponsible.”

  “But that will take anything up to five hours, sir.” Exactly, thought Emmanuel Littlejohn. He leaned against the wires of the cages and stared in at the two cats. The quean was industriously washing herself, while the tom patted boredly at a ping-pong ball on the end of a piece of elastic.

  “Two experimental subjects, doctor?”

  “That’s right. And of longer standing than the sheep. All the same—”

  “Very normal, I’d say. Wouldn’t you? And all these dogs. . . . Taking everything into account, doctor, I’d say there was a very strong evidence against chronomic unity having anything to do with the death of that sheep. And no evidence at all to support the idea.”

  “I think I understand what you want me to do, sir.” The Founder leaned forward, patted the vet’s arm as old men will. “I want you to do your job, my boy. Get on with the autopsy at once. Let me have your findings as soon as possible. I shall be at the laboratory all afternoon with Professor Kravchensky.” He patted again, then changed the subject to make his departure less significant. “I see all these cages are marked either with a P or an N. Perhaps you can tell me what this signifies.” “It’s the different pacing techniques, sir. Peripheral or nucleic.”

  “How very technical-sounding. . . . I notice that as

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  well as our de
funct sheep, four dogs and this black cat here all share the N classification.”

  “The dogs are of very short standing, sir. Four or five hours at the most.”

  “But our black friend here is not?”

  “No, sir. The two cats are both in their thirty-sixth hour.”

  “Excellent, young man. Excellent.” He bent laboriously and rattled the wire of the black tom’s cage. The cat twitched the last inch of his tail but otherwise gave no sign. “Koochie, koochie, koochie . . .” If humans cared to make fools of themselves that was their business. “Excellent, excellent,” said Manny Littlejohn, and hobbled arthritically, engagingly away.

  Once out again in Fore Street, however, the Grand and Remarkable Old Man was immediately reinstated. He walked briskly, pausing only to greet properly the many Villagers who looked out from their houses and shops. He was eager to get to the laboratory, looking forward to a long and interesting session.

  Rachel Moser reported for duty promptly at two forty- five. Liza noted the neat red outfit and was grateful. It was her duty to protect Professor Kravchensky from all outside distractions. She herself had long since ceased to have any interests, any life, outside the closed world of c.u. coordinates, the calculation of focal lengths, the devising of suitable electro-chronomic nucleic pacers. To her Rachel Moser was no more than a body to be weighed, a cell structure to be assessed. There was, as in every scientific advance, an element of risk. It was Liza’s duty, as she saw it, to minimize that risk.

  She gave Rachel Moser her final briefing. “You sit here, on this chair. There’s no need to keep particularly still—the accelerators have a focus wide enough to accommodate a moderate amount of movement.”

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  The girl settled herself placidly on the chair. For a moment she became a person to Liza, either very brave or very trusting. Liza felt she couldn’t do it, couldn’t use her, couldn’t toss her out into the unfathomed void. But the words to tell her this would have been im- moderate—and what else, when put to it, had Liza Simmons but her moderacy? So she only patted Rachel Moser’s hand and checked the position of the chair on the take-out platform.