Chronopolis

by J. G. Ballard

  Boardman seemed puzzled. “The what towers?” He made a spiral motion with his cigar. “You mean the big slide? Don’t worry I’m not having one of those, nobody’s got the energy to climb all those steps.”

  He stuck his cigar in his mouth and ambled to the door. “Well, so long, Mr. Renthall. I’ll send you an invite.”

  Later that afternoon Renthall went to see Dr. Clifton in his room below.

  “Excuse me, doctor,” he apologized, “but would you mind seeing me on a professional matter?”

  “Well, not here, Renthall, I’m supposed to be off duty.” He turned from his canary cages by the window with a testy frown, then relented when he saw Renthall’s intent expression. “All right, what’s the trouble?”

  While Clifton washed his hands Renthall explained. “Tell me, doctor, is there any mechanism known to you by which the simultaneous hypnosis of large groups of people could occur? We’re all familiar with theatrical displays of the hypnotist’s art, but I’m thinking of a situation in which the members of an entire small community—such as the residents of the hotels around this crescent —could be induced to accept a given proposition completely conflicting with reality.”

  Clifton stopped washing his hands. “I thought you wanted to see me professionally. I’m a doctor, not a witch doctor. What are you planning now, Renthall? Last week it was a fete, now you want to hypnotize an entire neighborhood, you’d better be careful.”

  Renthall shook his head. “It’s not I who want to carry out the hypnosis, Doctor. In fact I’m afraid the operation has already taken place. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed anything strange about your patients?”

  “Nothing more than usual,” Clifton remarked dryly. He watched Renthall with increased interest. “Who’s responsible for this mass hypnosis?” When Renthall paused and then pointed a forefinger at the ceiling Clifton nodded sagely. “I see. How sinister.”

  “Exactly. I’m glad you understand, doctor.” Renthall went over to the window, looking out at the sunshades below. He pointed to the watchtowers. “Just to clarify a small point, doctor. You do see the watchtowers?”

  Clifton hesitated fractionally, moving imperceptibly toward his valise on the desk. Then he nodded, “Of course.”

  “Good. I’m relieved to hear it.” Renthall laughed. “For a while I was beginning to think that I was the only one in step. Do you realize that both Hanson and Boardman can no longer see the towers? And I’m fairly certain that none of the people down there can or they wouldn’t be sitting in the open. I’m convinced that this is the Council’s doing, but it seems unlikely that they would have enough power—” He broke off, aware that Clifton was watching him fixedly. “What’s the matter? Doctor!”

  Clifton quickly took his prescription pad from his valise. “Rent-hall, caution is the essence of all strategy. It’s important that we beware of overhastiness. I suggest that we both rest this afternoon. Now, these will give you some sleep—”

  For the first time in several days he ventured out into the street. Head down, angry for being caught out by the doctor, he drove himself along the pavement toward Mrs. Osmond, determined to find at least one person who could still see the towers. The streets were more crowded than he could remember for a long time and he was forced to look upward as he swerved in and out of the ambling pedestrians. Overhead, like the assault craft from which some apocalyptic air raid would be launched, the watchtowers hung down from the sky, framed between the twin spires of the church, blocking off a vista down the principle boulevard, yet unperceived by the afternoon strollers.

  Renthall passed the cafe, surprised to see the terrace packed with coffee drinkers, then saw Boardman’s marquee in the cinema car park. Music was coming from a creaking Wurlitzer, and the gay ribbons of the bunting fluttered in the air.

  Twenty yards from Mrs. Osmond’s he saw her come through her front door, a large straw hat on her head.

  “Charles! What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you for days, I wondered what was the matter.”

  Renthall took the key from her fingers and pushed it back into the lock. Closing the door behind them, he paused in the darkened hall, regaining his breath.

  “Charles, what on earth is going on? Is someone after you? You look terrible, my dear. Your face—”

  “Never mind my face.” Renthall collected himself, and led the way into the living room. “Come in here, quickly.” He went over to the window and drew back the blinds, ascertained that the watch-tower over the row of houses opposite was still there. “Sit down and relax. I’m sorry to rush in like this but you’ll understand in a minute.” He waited until Mrs. Osmond settled herself reluctantly on the sofa, then rested his palms on the mantelpiece, organizing his thoughts.

  “The last few days have been fantastic, you wouldn’t believe it, and to cap everything I’ve just made myself look the biggest possible fool in front of Clifton. God, I could—”

  “Charles-!”

  “Listen! Don’t start interrupting me before I’ve begun, I’ve got enough to contend with. Something absolutely insane is going on everywhere, by some freak I seem to be the only one who’s still compos mentis. I know that sounds as if I’m completely mad, but in fact it’s true. Why I don’t know, though I’m frightened it may be some sort of reprisal directed at me. However.” He went over to the window. “Julia, what can you see out of that window?”

  Mrs. Osmond dismantled her hat and squinted at the panes. She fidgeted uncomfortably. “Charles, what is going on?—I’ll have to get my glasses.” She subsided helplessly.

  “Julia! You’ve never needed your glasses before to see these. Now tell me, what can you see?”

  “Well, the row of houses, and the gardens . . .”

  “Yes, what else?”

  “The windows, of course, and there’s a tree . . .”

  “What about the sky?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I can see that, there’s a sort of haze, isn’t there? Or is that my eyes?”

  “No.” Wearily, Renthall turned away from the window. For the first time a feeling of unassuageable fatigue had come over him. “Julia,” he asked quietly. “Don’t you remember the watch-towers?”

  She shook her head slowly. “No, I don’t. Where were they?” A look of concern came over her face. She took his arm gently. “Dear, what is going on?”

  Renthall forced himself to stand upright. “I don’t know.” He drummed his forehead with his free hand. “You can’t remember the towers at all, or the observation windows?” He pointed to the watchtower hanging down the center of the window. “There-used to be one over those houses. We were always looking at it. Do you remember how we used to draw the curtains upstairs?”

  “Charles! Be careful, people will hear. Where are you going?”

  Numbly, Renthall pulled back the door. “Outside,” he said in a flat voice. “There’s little point now in staying indoors.”

  He let himself through the front door, fifty yards from the house heard her call after him, turned quickly into a side road and hurried toward the first intersection.

  Above him he was conscious of the watchtowers hanging in the bright air, but he kept his eyes level with the gates and hedges, scanning the empty houses. Now and then he passed one that was occupied, the family sitting out on the lawn, and once someone called his name, reminding him that the school had started without him. The air was fresh and crisp, the light glimmering off the pavements with an unusual intensity.

  Within ten minutes he realized that he had wandered into an unfamiliar part of the town and completely lost himself, with only the aerial lines of watchtowers to guide him, but he still refused to look up at them.

  He had entered a poorer quarter of the town, where the narrow empty streets were separated by large waste dumps, and tilting wooden fences sagged between ruined houses. Many of the dwellings were only a single story high, and the sky seemed even wider and more open, the distant watchtowers along the horizon like a continuous palisade.

>   He twisted his foot on a ledge of stone, and hobbled painfully toward a strip of broken fencing that straddled a small rise in the center of the waste dump. He was perspiring heavily, and loosened his tie, then searched the surrounding straggle of houses for a way back into the streets through which he had come.

  Overhead, something moved and caught his eye. Forcing himself to ignore it, Renthall regained his breath, trying to master the curious dizziness that touched his brain. An immense sudden silence hung over the waste ground, so absolute that it was as if some inaudible piercing music was being played at full volume.

  To his right, at the edge of the waste ground, he heard feet shuffle slowly across the rubble, and saw the elderly man in the shabby black suit and wing collar who usually loitered outside the public library. He hobbled along, hands in pockets, an almost Chaplinesque figure, his weak eyes now and then feebly scanning the sky as if he were searching for something he had lost or forgotten.

  Renthall watched him cross the waste ground, but before he could shout the decrepit figure tottered away behind a ruined wall.

  Again something moved above him, followed by a third sharp angular motion, and then a succession of rapid shuttles. The stony rubbish at his feet flickered with the reflected light, and abruptly the whole sky sparkled as if the air was opening and shutting.

  Then, as suddenly, everything was motionless again.

  Composing himself, Renthall waited for a last moment. Then he raised his face to the nearest watchtower fifty feet above him, and gazed across at the hundreds of towers that hung from the clear sky like giant pillars. The haze had vanished and the shafts of the towers were defined with unprecedented clarity.

  As far as he could see, all the observation windows were open. Silently, without moving, the watchers stared down at him.

  Now Wakes the Sea

  Again at night Mason heard the sounds of the approaching sea, the muffled thunder of long breakers rolling up the nearby streets. Roused from his sleep, he ran out into the moonlight, where the white-framed houses stood like sepulchers among the washed concrete courts. Two hundred yards away the waves plunged and boiled, sluicing in and out across the pavement. A million phosphorescent bubbles seethed through the picket fences, and the broken spray filled the air with the wine-sharp tang of brine.

  Offshore the deeper swells of the open sea surged across the roofs of the submerged houses, the whitecaps cleft by the spurs of isolated chimneys. Leaping back as the cold foam stung his bare feet, Mason glanced uneasily at the house where his wife lay sleeping, estimating the sea’s rate of progress. Each night it moved a few yards nearer, as the hissing black guillotine sliced across the empty lawns, riveting the fences with staccato bolts of spray.

  For half an hour Mason watched the waves vault among the rooftops. The luminous surf cast a pale nimbus on the clouds racing overhead on the dark wind, and covered his hands with a vivid waxy sheen.

  At last the waves began to recede, and the deep roaring bowl of illuminated water withdrew down the emptying streets, disgorging the lines of houses glistening in the moonlight. Mason ran forward across the expiring bubbles, but the sea shrank away from him into the fading light, disappearing around the corners of the houses, sliding below the garage doors. He sprinted to the end of the road as a last fleeting glow was carried away across the sky beyond the spire of the church. Exhausted, Mason returned to his bed, the sound of the dying waves filling his head as he slept.

  “I saw the sea again last night,” he told his wife at breakfast.

  Quietly, Miriam said, “Richard, the nearest sea is a thousand miles away.” She watched her husband silently for a moment, her long pale fingers straying to the coil of black hair lying against her neck. “Go out into the drive and look. There’s no sea.”

  “Darling, I saw it.”

  “Richard—!”

  Mason stood up, with slow deliberation raised his palms. “Miriam, I felt the spray on my hands. The waves were breaking around my feet. I wasn’t dreaming.”

  “You must have been.” Miriam leaned against the door, as if trying to exclude the strange night world of her husband which haunted the shadows in the bedroom. With her long raven hair framing her oval face, and the scarlet dressing gown open to reveal her slender neck and white breast, she reminded Mason of a Pre-Raphaelite heroine in an Arthurian pose. “Richard, you must see Dr. Clifton. It’s beginning to frighten me.”

  Mason smiled, his eyes searching the distant rooftops above the trees outside the window. “I shouldn’t worry. What’s happening is really very simple. At night I hear the sounds of a sea breaking down the streets, I go out and watch the waves in the moonlight, and then come back to bed.” He paused, a faint flush of fatigue on his lean face. Tall and slimly built, Mason was still convalescing from the illness which had kept him at home for the previous six months. “It’s curious, though,” he resumed, “the water is remarkably luminous, and I should guess that its salinity is well above normal—”

  “But Richard ...” Miriam looked around helplessly, her husband’s calmness exhausting her. “The sea isn’t there, it’s only in your mind. No one else can see it.”

  Mason nodded, hands lost in his pockets. “Perhaps no one else has heard it yet.”

  Leaving the breakfast room, he went into his study. The couch on which he had slept during his illness still stood against the corner, his bookcase beside it. Mason sat down, taking a large fossil mollusk from a shelf. During the winter, when he had been confined to bed, the smooth trumpet-shaped conch, with its endless associations of ancient seas and drowned strands, had provided him with unlimited pleasure, a bottomless cornucopia of image and reverie. Cradling it reassuringly in his hands, as exquisite and ambiguous as a fragment of Greek sculpture found in a dry riverbed, he reflected that it seemed like a capsule of time, the condensation of another universe, and he could almost believe that the midnight sea which haunted his sleep had been released from the shell when he inadvertently scratched one of its helices.

  Miriam followed him into the room and briskly drew the curtains, as if aware that Mason was returning to the twilight world of his sickbed and reading lamp. She took his shoulders in her hands.

  “Richard, listen. Tonight, when you hear the waves, wake me and we’ll go out together.”

  Gently, Mason disengaged himself. “Whether you see it or not is irrelevant, Miriam. The fact is that I see it.”

  Later, walking down the street, Mason reached the point where he had stood the previous night, watching the waves break and roll toward him. The sounds of placid domestic activity came from the houses he had seen submerged. The grass on the lawns was bleached by the July heat, and several sprays rotated in the bright sunlight, casting rainbows in the vivid air. Undisturbed since the rainstorms in the early spring, the long summer’s dust lay between the palisades of the wooden fences and silted against the water hydrants.

  The street, one of a dozen suburban boulevards on the perimeter of the town, ran northwest for some three hundred yards and then joined the open square of the neighborhood shopping center. Mason shielded his eyes and looked out at the clock tower of the library and the church spire, identifying the various protuberances which had projected from the steep swells of the open sea. All were in exactly the positions he remembered.

  The road shelved slightly as it approached the shopping center, and by a curious coincidence marked the margins of the beach which would have existed if the area had in fact been flooded. A mile or so from the town, this shallow ridge, which formed part of the rim of a large natural basin enclosing the alluvial plain below, culminated in a small chalk outcropping. Although it was partly hidden by the intervening houses, Mason now recognized it clearly as the promontory which had reared like a citadel above the sea. The deep swells had rolled against its flanks, sending up immense plumes of spray that fell back with almost hypnotic slowness upon the receding water. At night the promontory seemed larger and more gaunt, a huge uneroded bastion against the sea.
One evening, Mason promised himself, he would go out to the promontory and let the waves wake him as he slept on the peak.

  A car moved past slowly, the driver watching Mason curiously as he stood motionless in the middle of the pavement, head raised to the air. Not wishing to appear any more eccentric than he was already considered—the solitary, abstracted husband of the beautiful but childless Mrs. Mason (in addition he was honorary secretary of the local astronomical society, a notorious gathering of cranks and stargazers)—Mason turned into the avenue which ran along the ridge. As he approached the distant outcropping he glanced over the hedges for any signs of waterlogged gardens or stranded cars. The houses here had been almost completely inundated by the flood water.

  The first visions of the sea had come to Mason only three weeks earlier, but he was already convinced of its absolute validity. He recognized that after its nightly withdrawal the water failed to leave any mark on the hundreds of houses it submerged, and he felt no alarm for the people who should have been drowned and who were presumably, as he watched the luminous waves break across the rooftops, sleeping undisturbed in the sea’s immense liquid locker. Despite this paradox, it was his complete conviction of the sea’s reality that had made him admit to Miriam that he had woken one night to the sound of waves outside the window and gone out to find the sea rolling across the neighborhood streets and houses. At first she had merely smiled at him, accepting this illustration of his strange private world. Then, three nights later, she had woken to the sounds of him latching the door on his return, bewildered by his pumping chest and tense perspiring face, his eyes lit by an uncanny light.

  From then on she spent all day looking over her shoulder through the window for any signs of the sea. What worried her as much as the vision itself was Mason’s complete calm in the face of this terrifying unconscious apocalypse.