I submit to the Committee that we now have gained information enough. The human Overgovernment has shown it is afraid of the effects continuing irritations of the kind might have on its species. We, too, should be wise enough to be afraid of such effects. If the Federation is launched on a pattern of retaliatory conquests, the pattern might well become an established habit. That is the real danger.
THE LORD ILDAAN: The Committee agrees. I speak then as the Lord Ildaan, representing the Alliance of the Lords of the Sessegur, Chiefs of the Dark Ships. I address the Wirrollan delegation and all those they represent. To the ends of the area through which the influence of the Alliance extends there will be no future hostile action prepared or planned against the human Federation. The Alliance forbids it, and the Dark Ships enforce our ruling as they have done in past star periods. Be warned!
The Committee concurs. The meeting is closed.
WHERE THE TIME WENT
No wonder Belk had troubles. His time particles were not synchronal!
This began in the office of John D. Carew, of the John D. Carew Literary Agency, New York City. Present in the room were John D. Carew and George Belk, one of his authors.
“George,” Carew was saying, “please don’t misunderstand me. When—rather long ago—I saw the first samples of your work, I was delighted. I told myself you might grow in time to be one of our most valuable properties. I still believe you retain that potential. But having represented you for over eight years, I begin to feel concerned. Your overall output remains regrettably slight.”
George Belk sighed. “I know it.”
“I can place almost anything you write,” Carew went on, “for relatively good money. But over the years checks have been few and far between. You must be feeling the financial pinch from time to time.”
“I get by,” George said, looking despondent. “But barely.”
Carew clucked in a sympathetic way. “If you’d like to confide in me, George—what seems to be your problem?”
George sighed again. “I wish I could define the problem! I can’t. The effect is simply that I don’t seem to have time to get more writing done.”
Carew’s eyebrows lifted for a moment. “You are engaged in other work? Perhaps in intensive social activities?”
“No! Neither. I write full time. Of course I have chores to take care of around the house. I go shopping. And I try to reserve half an hour a day for physical exercise.”
Carew nodded. “The last is commendable! One should keep fit. But is that all you do? Besides writing?”
“Yes,” George said. “That’s all.”
“Then you must, in fact, be putting in a great deal of worktime during an average day . . .
“No, I don’t,” George said. “Let me try to explain it to you—though, as I said, I can’t explain it myself. You may not believe this, but I’m a methodical and orderly man. I keep files and records. So I can’t help noticing that I manage to waste an incredible amount of time.”
“In what way?”
George scowled. “That’s what I’d like to know! Take my half-hour of exercise in the morning. Nine to nine-thirty is the period I set aside for it. I shave at eight, right after breakfast. Then I drag some mats out into the living room and pull back the furniture. By then it’s nine o’clock.”
Carew looked very thoughtful. “Shaving and dragging out some mats and pulling back a few pieces of furniture consumes a full hour?”
“It doesn’t seem reasonable, does it?” George said. “Well, that’s part of what I mean. A small part . . . So then it’s nine o’clock and I exercise. I time that—thirty minutes exactly.
“But before I’ve got dressed again and straightened out the living room and am ready to go shopping, it’s usually close to eleven.” Carew grunted and stroked his chin. “When do you actually get to work?”
George looked embarrassed. “Well, around one-fifteen.”
“You shop for two hours?”
“Yes, somehow it comes to that. I have to go to several stores. No one store ever seems to carry everything you want.”
“I see. Then you work through the afternoon?”
“In principle. I may put in a short break now and then.”
“Doing what?” Carew asked. “Oh, I might have a snack—and then of course I have to wash the dishes again. Oh I’ll tidy up a room that’s beginning to look too messy. That kind of thing.”
“Umm. And in the evening?”
“Ordinarily I’m working. I take in an occasional TV show.”
Carew leaned back in his chair. “And what is your average daily output under those circumstances?” George hung his head. “Roughly—five hundred words.”
Carew just blinked at him in silence.
“That’s the incredible part of it!” George said explosively. “Because I’ve timed myself on occasion. When I have, I’ve found I can turn out a page of perfectly usable material in around twenty minutes.” He leaned forward, slammed his fist on the desk. “I tell you, sometimes I think this is going to drive me crazy! Where does the rest of my time go?”
“I’m not hure,” said Carew, pulling open a desk drawer. “But it’s possible that there is a solution to your problem. Yes, quite possible!”
“What kind of solution?” George asked hopefully.
Carew fished about in the drawer, took out a business card and slid it across the desk to George. “When you get home,” he said, “call this number and get yourself an appointment. I’ll have talked with their office meanwhile.”
George read the card. The name on it was William W. Gordon, M.D.
“Now wait a minute!” he said suspiciously. “This Dr. Gordon doesn’t happen to be a psychiatrist, does he?”
“No,” said Carew. “Dr. Gordon is not a psychiatrist. He has medical and psychological degrees, but he isn’t in general practice. He does research work.”
“And just how is he supposed to research me?” George asked in a somewhat belligerent tone.
“He isn’t going to research you, George. He’s going to research your problem.”
“Well, I don’t know,” George muttered. He stared uneasily at the card, turning it around in his fingers.
“George,” said Carew, “you exhibit the not uncommon fear of your ilk that if a headshrinker ever got his hooks on you, you’d be in for a fast trip to the funny farm. Let me assure you that you run no risk of that in doing as I suggest. Let me assure you further that I know of several cases in which a problem quite similar to yours was solved by Dr. Gordon to the applicants’ great satisfaction.”
“Could you give me a few names?” George said warily.
“I could, but I don’t intend to,” Carew told him.
Dr. Gordon was a big warm fuzzy man who seemed reluctant to voice even the most general sort of opinion about George’s problem. “First, Mr. Belk,” he said, “we must establish precisely what the nature of the trouble is. Only then can we begin to think in terms of corrective procedures.”
George had to be satisfied with that. He sat rigid in a chair while Dr. Gordon fitted a mesh of metal bands about his skull and tightened them down gently with large stubby fingers.
“What’s that for?” George asked.
“It should give me some information about this and that going on inside your head.”
George cleared his throat. “Carew told me you weren’t a psychiatrist.”
“Pm not,” Dr. Gordon said, “though I started out in that direction. Think of me as an electronics specialist and don’t worry about your mittful of neuroses and compulsions. I couldn’t care less about them. Now let’s see how well you can let yourself relax for the next five minutes . . .”
The five minutes passed eventually, and George was told he could stop relaxing. He twisted around in the chair and saw Dr. Gordon place some instruments into a drawer in his desk. He was frowning pensively-
“What did you find out, Doctor?” George asked.
Dr. Gordon looked up and stop
ped frowning. “Oh, about what I expected.” He came over and began to remove the metal mesh from around George’s head.
“Is it . . . serious?” asked George.
“Well, definitely it’s something we must follow up. Now, Mr. Belk, I need your cooperation for the next step. It will hardly inconvenience you at all.”
Dr. Gordon then turned to a wall closet and took from it a device which looked like one of the more expensive kinds of camera except that it had no lens and nothing visibly on it which would be twisted or pressed. “We’ll put this in a case,” Dr. Gordon said, placing the instrument in a case as he spoke, “and you’ll set it up in your house for the next two days. You say you’re not married. Do you have many visitors?”
“Very few nowadays,” said George.
“You live alone?”
“Yes. Except for some cats.”
“Cats don’t count,” said Dr. Gordon. “Very well. Set up this instrument—you can leave it in the case—somewhere near the center of your house. This is Tuesday. Between now and ten A.M. Friday, I’d like you to note down the occasions when somebody besides yourself is in the house or even comes to the door. The mailman, as an example. If you happen to forget, it won’t matter too much. But try to remember. Note the time anybody arrives and the length of time he stays around. I’ll see you again Friday at ten. Bring the instrument back with you.” Hesitantly George took the instrument case. “This is all rather mystifying!” he remarked uncomfortably.
“I’m sure it must seem that way to you,” Dr. Gordon. “But remember, Mr. Belk, that we live in a rapidly evolving scientific age!” He gave George a brief smile and a reassuring clap on the shoulder. “Put your trust in advanced electronics!”
Touring the next two days George forgot half the time that he had Dr. Gordon’s device in the house. When he first got home with it, he’d taken it out of the case and looked it over carefully. That told him nothing. There were no settings, no concealed switches in it. He put it back in the case on a small table which stood approximately in the center of the house. He called John Carew, told him what Dr. Gordon had said and described the mysterious instrument. “Is that his usual procedure?” Carew said he had no idea what Dr. Gordon’s usual procedure was. However they could assume he knew what he was doing, and George should go along with instructions.
That part was easy. Only the mailman came to the house on Wednesday and Thursday, and George dutifully noted the time of day. Otherwise he went about his normal activities, still wondering now and then at the way time seemed to be slipping through his grasp. In spite of Carew’s assurances, he found himself unable to develop much faith in the effectiveness of Dr. Gordon’s approach.
At quarter to eleven on Friday morning his telephone rang. He picked up the receiver.
“Hello, Mr. Belk,” Dr. Gordon’s voice said. “It appears we’ve forgotten our appointment, heh?” Abashed, George admitted that he had indeed forgotten it. “And I don’t know how it happened,” he said. “I definitely planned to be at your office by ten o’clock. It seems to me I was looking at my watch just a moment ago, and it was then barely past nine.”
“I’m not surprised,” Dr. Gordon said cryptically. “I’ll see you as soon as you can make it here. Bring along the drainometer.”
“The what?” asked George.
“The gadget,” said Dr. Gordon, and hung up.
On reflection George decided that knowing the device was called a drainometer didn’t really tell him much. He took it from its place on the table and set off, feeling unhappy and badly confused. At the office Dr. Gordon ushered him into a side room, provided him with some magazines to leaf around in, and disappeared with the drainometer. Some fifteen minutes, later he came back into the room, dosed the door, and stood staring at George.
“This is as bad a case as I’ve come across,” he observed, shaking his head. “Worse even than I’d suspected!”
“As bad a case of what?” George asked, alarmed.
“Of time drainage!” Dr. Gordon pulled a chair out from behind a table and sat down. “I’ll explain the situation to you as well as I can, Mr. Belk, and I believe you’ll see why it was necessary for me to remain silent until now.”
He steepled his fingers. “I won’t attempt to go into the math of this,” he said. “For one reason, because I suspect that scientific math is not your forte.”
“No, it isn’t,” George agreed. “Then let me tell you in a more general way about time. There are two distinct kinds of time. There is TIME—time in capitals, so to speak—which is the time through which the world about all of us progresses. And then there is subjective, or individual, lower case time.” George nodded interestedly. “Einstein’s theories have to do that, don’t they?”
“Not really. The science of time units is a different development. Picture to yourself that everybody generates and has available for his use a personal supply of time units or particles. Say, roughly, that for every fifty years of real time, or TIME, everybody generates and uses up fifty million time particles.
“When this process is operating normally, the individual is synchronal in TIME. He feeds out his time particles in a steady uniform stream which keeps him comfortably abreast of the passage of TIME in the world. However, problems may arise. You, for example, Mr. Belk, do not have as solid a contact with the flow of your time particles as you might have—we can assume that something in you withdraws to some extent from the outside world and TIME. As a result you’re a natural time particle waster. At present there isn’t much we can do about that condition. On the other hand, it’s hardly a serious matter. I’d estimate that you normally lose about one time particle in twenty—not a significant percentage.”
“I’m not sure I’m following all all this,” George admitted.
“It’s not necessary for you to grasp it all,” Dr. Gordon assured him. “I simply want you to have the general picture. Now look at another aspect of the matter. People, as you know, have widely varying feelings about the value of time. Some never get enough of it. They have many things to do and many more things they’d like to do and simply can’t get around to doing. If they could squeeze forty-eight full hours into a single workday, they’d be delighted.
“And then there are people who have, as we say, time on their hands. Often very heavily on their hands. It is a commodity for which they can find no real use. If it were possible, they would be glad to be relieved of a large part of it.
“And nowadays it is possible. That’s the point here. There are methods whereby a portion of the flow of one individual’s time particles can be diverted from him and integrated into the flow of another person’s time particles. The second person now has subjectively more time available to him than he had before, and the first person has subjectively less. It is an insidious process: the loser in this transaction has no way of grasping what has happened. If he is a man who places no value on time and has time to spare in that sense, he may not even notice that anything has happened. He may feel quite comfortable—and less bored—within the time particle flow left at his disposal.
But when the victim is a busy man, a man who needs his time, it is a different matter. Again, of course, he doesn’t understand the situation. He simply is aware that is seems to take him forever to get anything done. He feels that the minutes and hours are slipping through his fingers, as in fact they are.”
George stared at the doctor in shocked dismay. “That’s what’s been happening to me?” he asked.
“That’s what’s been happening to you, Mr. Belk.”
“But,” George cried, outraged, “this has been going on for years!”
“Evidently.”
“What can I do to stop it? You said—”
“I indicated that your problem could be solved, Mr. Belk,” said Dr. Gordon. “And indeed it will be. You see, this situation is so fraught with unethical possibilities that an organization exists which is dedicated to policing the transfer of subjective time among individuals. Such
transactions may be quite legitimate. As I explained, a good many people have more time than they know what to do with, they have surplus time which is a nuisance to them. People who need additional time are allowed to draw it from such individuals, providing suitable compensation is made. Since our organization operates with as much secrecy as possible, the donor frequently doesn’t know there has been a transaction. But always he must be compensated. An unexpected stroke of good fortune comes his way; he may find a better job, more suitable to his unenergetic nature, suddenly open to him, and so forth. Both parties have benefited.”
“But why the secrecy?” George asked. “If everybody knew—”
“If everybody were aware of this, Mr. Belk, the situation might get completely out of hand. As I said, the process of extracting time particles from somebody else is very simple, once it is understood. We want no more people to know about it than we can help.”
“I see.” George hesitated. “Then you—this organization—will keep whoever has been stealing my time from doing it again?”
Dr. Gordon smiled. “We can do better than that. Much better. The drainometer recordings indicate that at various periods during the past two days as much as nine out of ten of your time particles have been surreptitiously diverted. This is a blatant crime. The fact that you are, as I previously indicated, inherently somewhat careless with your time has made you an easy victim. But now compensation must be made by those who took advantage of this. When you leave here, you will carry another instrument with you. The next attempt to tap the flow of your time particles will give us a direct line to the perpetrator. In all likelihood we shall find then that you have been preyed upon not by one individual but by a criminal gang.”
“A gang?” George repeated.
“Exactly. As I pointed out, Mr. Belk, time is a commodity. It has value. For some it has great value. Among such people there always will be a number who do not care whether the commodity they want can be obtained legally or ethically, provided only they get it. And there always will be criminal elements willing to supply the commodity for a price. We’re constantly on the lookout for indications of such a situation.”
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 198