Chronopolis

by J. G. Ballard

  “And if you do find free space? Will you come back then?”

  “If I can.”

  Franz patted Gregson on the shoulder reassuringly, waved and disappeared among the commuters.

  He took the local Suburban Green to the district junction in the next county. The Greenline train traveled at an interrupted 70 mph and the ride took two and a half hours.

  At the Junction he changed to an express elevator which got him up out of the Sector in ninety minutes, at 400 mph.

  Another fifty minutes in a Through-sector Special brought him to the Mainline Terminus which served the Union.

  There he bought a coffee and gathered his determination together. Supersleepers ran east and west, halting at this and every tenth station. The next arrived in seventy-two hours’ time, westbound.

  The Mainline Terminus was the largest station Franz had seen, a vast mile-long cavern tiered up through thirty levels. Hundreds of elevator shafts sank into the station and the maze of platforms, escalators, restaurants, hotels, and theaters seemed like an exaggerated replica of the City itself.

  Getting his bearings from one of the information booths Franz made his way up an escalator to Tier 15, where the Supersleepers berthed. Running the length of the station were two gigantic steel vacuum tunnels, each two hundred feet in diameter, supported at thirty-foot intervals by massive concrete buttresses.

  Franz walked slowly along the platform and stopped by the telescopic gangway that plunged into one of the airlocks.

  Two hundred and seventy degrees true, he thought, all the way, gazing up at the curving underbelly of the tunnel. It must come out somewhere. He had forty-five dollars in his pocket, sufficient coffee and sandwich money to last him three weeks, six if he needed it, time anyway to find the City’s end.

  He passed the next three days nursing coffees in any of the thirty cafeterias in the station, reading discarded newspapers and sleeping in the local Red trains, which ran four-hour journeys around the nearest sector.

  When at last the Supersleeper came in he joined the small group of Fire Police and municipal officials waiting by the gangway, and followed them into the train. There were two cars; a sleeper which no one used, and a day coach.

  Franz took an inconspicuous corner seat near one of the indicator panels in the day coach, pulled out his notebook and got ready to make his first entry.

  1st Day: West 270°. Union 4,350.

  “Coming out for a drink?” a Fire Captain across the aisle asked. “We have a ten-minute break here.”

  “No thanks,” Franz said. “I’ll hold your seat for you.”

  Dollar five a cubic foot. Free space, he knew, would bring the price down. There was no need to leave the train or make too many inquiries. All he had to do was borrow a paper and watch the market averages.

  2nd Day: West 270°. Union 7,550.

  “They’re slowly cutting down on these Sleepers,” someone told him. “Everyone sits in the day coach. Look at this one. Seats sixty, and only four people in it. There’s no need to move around. People are staying where they are. In a few years there’ll be nothing left but the suburban services.”

  Ninety-seven cents.

  At an average of a dollar a cubic foot, Franz calculated idly, it’s so far worth about $4 x 1027.

  “Going on to the next stop, are you? Well, good-bye, young fellow.”

  Few of the passengers stayed on the Sleeper for more than three or four hours. By the end of the second day Franz’s back and neck ached from the constant acceleration. He got a little exercise walking up and down the narrow corridor in the deserted sleeping coach, but had to spend most of his time strapped to his seat as the train began its long braking runs into the next station.

  3rd Day: West 270°. Federation 657.

  “Interesting, but how could you demonstrate it?”

  “It’s just an odd idea of mine,” Franz said, screwing up the sketch and dropping it in the disposal chute. “Hasn’t any real application.”

  “Curious, but it rings a bell somewhere.”

  Franz sat up. “Do you mean you’ve seen machines like this? In a newspaper or a book?”

  “No, no. In a dream.”

  Every half-day’s run the pilot signed the log, the crew handed over to their opposites on an eastbound sleeper, crossed the platform, and started back for home.

  One hundred twenty-five cents.

  $8 x 1033

  4th Day: West 270°. Federation 1,255.

  “Dollar a cubic foot. You in the estate business?”

  “Starting up,” Franz said easily. “I’m hoping to open a new office of my own.”

  He played cards, bought coffee and rolls from the dispenser in the washroom, watched the indicator panel and listened to the talk around him.

  “Believe me, a time will come when each union, each sector, almost I might say, each street and avenue will have achieved complete local independence. Equipped with its own power services, aerators, reservoirs, farm laboratories . .

  The car bore.

  $6 x 1075.

  5th Day: West 270°. 17th Greater Federation.

  At a kiosk on the station Franz bought a clip of razor blades and glanced at the brochure put out by the local chamber of commerce.

  “Twelve thousand levels, 98 cents a foot, unique Elm Drive, fire safety records unequaled . . .”

  He went back to the train, shaved and counted the thirty dollars left. He was now ninety-five million Great-Miles from the suburban station on 984th Street and he knew he couldn’t delay his return much longer. Next time he’d save up a couple of thousand.

  $7 x 10127.

  7th Day: West 270°. 212th Metropolitan Empire.

  Franz peered at the indicator.

  “Aren’t we stopping here?” he asked a man three seats away. “I wanted to find out the market average.”

  “Varies. Anything from fifty cents a—”

  “Fifty!” Franz shot back, jumping up. “When’s the next stop? I’ve got to get off!”

  “Not here, son.” He put out a restraining hand. “This is Night Town. You in real estate?”

  Franz nodded, holding himself back. “I thought...”

  “Relax.” He came and sat opposite Franz. “It’s just one big slum. Dead areas. In places it goes as low as five cents. There are no services, no power.”

  It took them two days to pass through.

  “City Authority are starting to seal it off,” the man told him. “Huge blocks. It’s the only thing they can do. What happens to the people inside I hate to think.”

  He chewed on a sandwich. “Strange, but there are a lot of these black areas. You don’t hear about them, but they’re growing. Starts in a back street in some ordinary dollar neighborhood; a bottleneck in the sewage disposal system, not enough ash cans,

  and before you know it—a million cubic miles have gone back to jungle. They try a relief scheme, pump in a little cyanide, and then-brick it up. Once they do that they’re closed for good.”

  Franz nodded, listening to the dull humming air.

  “Eventually there’ll be nothing left but these black areas. The City will be one huge cemetery. What a thought?”

  10th Day: East 90°. 755th Greater Metropolitan—

  “Wait!” Franz leapt out of his seat and stared at the indicator panel.

  “What’s the matter?” someone opposite asked.

  “East!” Franz shouted. He banged the panel sharply with his hand but the lights held. “Has the train changed direction?”

  “No, it’s eastbound,” another of the passengers told him. “Are you on the wrong train?”

  “It should be heading west,” Franz insisted. “It has been for the last ten days.”

  “Ten days!” the man exclaimed. “Have you been on this Sleeper for ten days? Where the hell are you going?”

  Franz went forward and grabbed the car attendant.

  “Which way is this train going? West?”

  The attendant shook his head. �
��East, sir. It’s always been going east.”

  “You’re crazy,” Franz snapped. “I want to see the pilot’s log.” “I’m afraid that isn’t possible. May I see your ticket, sir?” “Listen,” Franz said weakly, all the accumulated frustration of the last twenty years mounting inside him. “I’ve been on this . . .” He stopped and went back to his seat.

  The five other passengers watched him carefully.

  “Ten days,” one of them was still repeating in an awed voice. Two minutes later someone came and asked Franz for his ticket.

  “And of course it was completely in order,” the police surgeon commented.

  He walked over to M. and swung the spot out of his eyes. “Strangely enough there’s no regulation to prevent anyone else doing the same thing. I used to go for free rides myself when I was younger, though I never tried anything like your journey.” He went back to the desk.

  “We’ll drop the charge,” he said. “You’re not a vagrant in any indictable sense, and the Transport authorities can do nothing against you. How this curvature was built into the system they can’t explain. Now about yourself. Are you going to continue this search?”

  “I want to build a flying machine,” M. said carefully. “There must be free space somewhere. I don’t know . . . perhaps on the lower levels.”

  The surgeon stood up. “I’ll see the sergeant and get him to hand you over to one of our psychiatrists. He’ll be able to help you with that dream.”

  The surgeon hesitated before opening the door. “Look,” he began to explain sympathetically, “you can’t get out of time, can you? Subjectively it’s a plastic dimension, but whatever you do to yourself you’ll never be able to stop that clock”—he pointed to the one on the desk “—or make it run backward. In exactly the same way you can’t get out of the City.”

  “The analogy doesn’t hold,” M. said. He gestured at the walls around them and the lights in the street outside. “All this was built by us. The question nobody can answer is: what was here before we built it?”

  “It’s always been here,” the surgeon said. “Not these particular bricks and girders, but others before them. You accept that time has no beginning and no end. The City is as old as time and continuous with it.”

  “The first bricks were laid by someone,” M. insisted. “There was the Foundation.”

  “A myth. Only the scientists believe in that, and even they don’t try to make too much of it. Most of them privately admit that the Foundation Stone is nothing more than a superstition. We pay it lip service out of convenience, and because it gives us a sense of tradition. Obviously there can’t have been a first brick. If there was, how can you explain who laid it, and even more difficult, where they came from?”

  “There must be free space somewhere,” M. said doggedly. “The City must have bounds.”

  “Why?” the surgeon asked. “It can’t be floating in the middle of nowhere. Or is that what you’re trying to believe?”

  M. sank back limply. “No.”

  The surgeon watched M. silently for a few minutes and paced back to the desk. “This peculiar fixation of yours puzzles me. You’re caught between what the psychiatrists call paradoxical faces. I suppose you haven’t misinterpreted something you’ve heard about the Wall?”

  M. looked up. “Which wall?”

  The surgeon nodded to himself. “Some advanced opinion maintains that there’s a wall around the City, through which it’s impossible to penetrate. I don’t pretend to understand the theory myself. It’s far too abstract and sophisticated. Anyway I suspect they’ve confused this Wall with the bricked-up black areas you passed through on the Sleeper. I prefer the accepted view that the City stretches out in all directions without limits.”

  He went over to the door. “Wait here, and I’ll see about getting you a probationary release. Don’t worry, the psychiatrists will straighten everything out for you.”

  When the surgeon had left, M. stared emptily at the floor, too exhausted to feel relieved. He stood up and stretched himself, walking unsteadily around the room.

  Outside the last pilot lights were going out and the patrolman on the catwalk under the roof was using his torch. A police car roared down one of the avenues crossing the street, its rails screaming. Three lights snapped on along the street and then one by one went off again.

  M. wondered why Gregson hadn’t come down to the station. Then the calendar on the desk riveted his attention. The date exposed on the fly leaf was the 12th of August. That was the day he had started off on his journey.

  Exactly three weeks ago.

  Today!

  Take a westbound Green to 298th Street, cross over at the intersection and get a Red elevator up to Level 237. Walk down to the station on Route 175, change to a 438 suburban and go down to 795th Street. Take a Blueline to the Plaza, get off at 4th and 275th, turn left at the roundabout and

  You’re back where you started from. $HELL x 10n.

  The Garden of Time

  Toward evening, when the great shadow of the Palladian villa filled the terrace, Count Axel left his library and walked down the wide rococo steps among the time flowers. A tall, imperious figure in a black velvet jacket, a gold tiepin glinting below his George V beard, cane held stiffly in a white-gloved hand, he surveyed the exquisite crystal flowers without emotion, listening to the sounds of his wife’s harpsichord, as she played a Mozart rondo in the music room, echo and vibrate through the translucent petals.

  The garden of the villa extended for some two hundred yards below the terrace, sloping down to a miniature lake spanned by a white bridge, a slender pavilion on the opposite bank. Axel rarely ventured as far as the lake; most of the time flowers grew in a small grove just below the terrace, sheltered by the high wall which encircled the estate. From the terrace he could see over the wall to the plain beyond, a continuous expanse of open ground that rolled in great swells to the horizon, where it rose slightly before finally dipping from sight. The plain surrounded the house on all sides, its drab emptiness emphasizing the seclusion and mellowed magnificence of the villa. Here, in the garden, the air seemed brighter, the sun warmer, while the plain was always dull and remote.

  As was his custom before beginning his evening stroll, Count Axel looked out across the plain to the final rise, where the horizon was illuminated like a distant stage by the fading sun. As the Mozart chimed delicately around him, flowing from his wife’s graceful hands, he saw that the advance column of an enormous army was moving slowly over the horizon. At first glance, the long ranks

  seemed to be progressing in orderly lines, but on closer inspection, it was apparent that, like the obscured detail of a Goya landscape, the army was composed of a vast throng of people, men and women, interspersed with a few soldiers in ragged uniforms, pressing forward in a disorganized tide. Some labored under heavy loads suspended from crude yokes around their necks, others struggled with cumbersome wooden carts, their hands wrenching at the wheel spokes, a few trudged on alone, but all moved on at the same pace, bowed backs illuminated in the fleeting sun.

  The advancing throng was almost too far away to be visible, but even as Axel watched, his expression aloof yet observant, it came perceptibly nearer, the vanguard of an immense rabble appearing from below the horizon. At last, as the daylight began to fade, the front edge of the throng reached the crest of the first swell below the horizon, and Axel turned from the terrace and walked down among the time flowers.

  The flowers grew to a height of about six feet, their slender stems, like rods of glass, bearing a dozen leaves, the once transparent fronds frosted by the fossilized veins. At the peak of each stem was the time flower, the size of a goblet, the opaque outer petals enclosing the crystal heart. Their diamond brilliance contained a thousand faces, the crystal seeming to drain the air of its light and motion. As the flowers swayed slightly in the evening air, they glowed like flame-tipped spears.

  Many of the stems no longer bore flowers, and Axel examined them all carefully, a
note of hope now and then crossing his eyes as he searched for any further buds. Finally he selected a large flower on the stem nearest the wall, removed his gloves, and with his strong fingers snapped it off.

  As he carried the flower back onto the terrace, it began to sparkle and deliquesce, the light trapped within the core at last released. Gradually the crystal dissolved, only the outer petals remaining intact, and the air around Axel became bright and vivid, charged with slanting rays that flared away into the waning sunlight. Strange shifts momentarily transformed the evening, subtly altering its dimensions of time and space. The darkened portico of the house, its patina of age stripped away, loomed with a curious spectral whiteness as if suddenly remembered in a dream.

  Raising his head, Axel peered over the wall again. Only the farthest rim of the horizon was lit by the sun, and the great throng, which before had stretched almost a quarter of the way across the plain, had now receded to the horizon, the entire concourse abruptly flung back in a reversal of time, and appeared to be stationary.

  The flower in Axel’s hand had shrunk to the size of a glass thimble, the petals contracting around the vanishing core. A faint sparkle flickered from the center and extinguished itself, and Axel felt the flower melt like an ice-cold bead of dew in his hand.

  Dusk closed across the house, sweeping its long shadows over the plain, the horizon merging into the sky. The harpsichord was silent, and the time flowers, no longer reflecting its music, stood motionlessly, like an embalmed forest.

  For a few minutes Axel looked down at them counting the flowers which remained, then greeted his wife as she crossed the terrace, her brocade evening dress rustling over the ornamental tiles.