The Productions of Time

by John Brunner

  A wave of relief went through his audience.

  "Why the hell couldn't you have said this yesterday instead of mucking around?" Gerry demanded, not sharing the general mood. He strode toward the stage, waving at the big canvas flats which he had slashed last night. "All that work wasted because of a petty tantrum -- God, it makes me sick!"

  "I'm sorry about that, Mr. Hoading," Delgado said after a pause.

  Murray started. It wasn't like Delgado to apologize. Delgado preferred to find a self-justification and if possible to make the person he had offended appear to be in the wrong. Which implied . . .

  "All right, everybody!" Blizzard shouted. "Places! Ade, I want you and Murray to straighten out one or two bits I thought were scrappy yesterday. Murray, hear me?"

  Belatedly, Murray responded to his name. But as he walked toward the stage, his mind was elsewhere, completing the train of his thoughts.

  Which implies that Delgado isn't pretending to care about the play anymore. He's yielding there to conceal his real interest.

  In what?

  XVII

  "If you stop and think about it," Murray told the air, "you'll see that there are no end of things -- about this place and about us -- which are peculiar. Only . . ."

  He let his voice trail away, uncomfortably aware that he was alone in his room and that if he were going to start talking to himself he would make the situation even worse than it was. He drew on his cigarette and let the smoke out in a ragged cloud that drifted toward the blank back of the TV set.

  Maybe it was irrational, but he'd turned the set to the wall. Remembering what Lester had said about it being on all the time, he couldn't escape the sensation of being watched by its blank eye of a screen.

  Am I going crazy? Am I crazy already?

  He forced himself to tackle the question, not for the first time, and came to the same answer as before -- there was someone involved who wasn't sane, and the only candidate for the title was Delgado. The very idea of the man made his flesh creep now -- and yet Murray hadn't been driven to the point where he had the guts to walk out. There were too many concrete reasons for staying which outweighed the indefinable terrors he had to wrestle with.

  He compelled himself to straighten out his thoughts, and went back all the way to the beginning of the affair.

  At first, there had been the suspicion that the venture was absurd -- collecting the company under one roof to sweat out the play. Against that, Delgado had a reputation as a successful, even though unorthodox, playwright; Sam Blizzard thought it could be made to work, and he was closer to Delgado than anyone else in Britain; and Murray Douglas needed any job he could get.

  The last item still held good. The one before that -- ditto. Until this morning, Murray had been inclined to doubt it, but he realized now he had been overhasty in assuming that Blizzard was completely dazzled by Delgado. The director must be keeping his head to some extent; he knew perfectly well the difference between a fit of bad temper on the part of the author and a real crisis of artistic principle. Today's work, which had gone like a bomb and carried them into a first-class symbolic nightmare of a second act, was proof enough that Sam Blizzard cared about getting out a worthwhile play.

  For Murray, though, it was also -- if not quite proof -- grounds for suspecting that Delgado didn't.

  Why was he suffering this absurd inchoate anxiety? No one else was taking Delgado at other than face value. Lester Harkham, for example, was ready to dismiss his electronic peculiarities as quasi-mystical mumbo jumbo not worth a second thought. Blizzard didn't seem to have an inkling that he was dealing with anything but a conventionally temperamental creative personality. Gerry Hoading was taking Murray's view seriously for the moment, but you could account for that by considering the violent emotional shock of nearly killing himself and being saved by Murray's intervention. Compare Constant's near-affability of last night with his return today to his habitual sarcastic intolerance.

  No, there was no single item of evidence to support Murray's suspicions. There was only a list of cumulative subtleties.

  The group's behavior, for instance. Thinking about the TV set had brought one point to mind. Murray hadn't turned on the set in his room once since his arrival -- not even to catch a news bulletin. He knew why; the additional circuitry hidden inside frightened him. But that didn't tell him why no one else had mentioned seeing any program on TV since coming here.

  And there had been no newspapers. No one had troubled to order a paper as far as he could tell. No one read anything at breakfast. Why on earth not?

  Phone calls. It was probable that the company had been picked partly because they had no domestic ties. Well, fair enough; if it was part of the plan to have everyone thrown together around the clock, you wouldn't want people in a hurry to drive home at quitting time or to risk someone's being delayed in the morning by a crisis in the family.

  By itself, it meant nothing that everybody here was either single or separated or divorced. But that didn't exclude all personal ties. So why had no one been called to the phone in Murray's hearing? In his own case -- why hadn't Roger Grady, for instance, called to inquire how things were going? Granted Murray had no really close friends at the moment, because he had been deliberately avoiding people since leaving the sanatorium. Was this a reason why no one else should receive a call?

  No letters, either. There was a board in the hall next to the room where Blizzard had his office. Murray couldn't remember seeing anyone check it for mail. He hadn't done so himself specifically -- he'd glanced at it in passing, but he wasn't expecting letters, and not until now had the point struck him as significant.

  There were at least five cars here -- besides his own, there were Sam's Bentley, Ida's flame red Corvette, Lester's Rover, and a Ford that he thought was Jess Aumen's. The others either didn't own cars, or had left them at home because they didn't expect to be using them much. Nonetheless, five was plenty! Yet no one had suggested going up to town for a show, or a party, or dinner. Like children in a boarding school, the entire company had developed the habit of reporting regularly for every meal, sitting around in the lounge in the evening and having a few drinks, playing records, behaving in short as though they were retired and settled down for the twilight of their days in a quiet residential hotel.

  Murray slapped the arm of his chair and jumped to his feet. No, this whole situaton was preposterous! How in God's name could you condition a flighty, temperamental bunch of theater folk into a placid routine like that?

  Oh, it was true enough that the service which Valentine and his weird aides provided was conducive to comfort -- there were no petty problems to distract the mind, like organizing one's laundry or going out for cigarettes. Everything was attended to in a way which a hotel might envy. The food was of high quality, the rooms were indisputably comfortable. And it didn't figure.

  Murray paced back and forth in the space between the bed and the door. At last he had it! This was the source of his worst, though least-defined, anxiety. It had taken a long time to put a finger on it, precisely because it was so vague. Now he could add to the list indefinitely. Tomorrow was Saturday, and at quitting time this evening no one had questioned that they should work through the weekend on the same schedule as before. Another oddity. And he remembered the way he had gone out to explore the grounds on his arrival, the shed full of sports equipment he had found, and the woods at the back of the house. You'd expect a couple of young men like Rett and Al to be interested in the sports shed. The weather had been cool and often showery, but it hadn't been so bad that one had to huddle indoors. There was a hard tennis court, wasn't there? There was the swimming pool -- neglected, with leaves floating in it, but certainly not foul nor stagnant yet. It wasn't ideal swimming weather, but it wasn't midwinter.

  Nobody going out walking. As far as he could recall, the occasion when he took Heather to that local pub for lunch was the last on which any member of the company had got in his car and driven out of the front gate
-- except for his later panicky visit to Dr. Cromarty.

  Why?

  And, thinking of Heather -- she, Cherry Bell, who hardly counted because she spent most of her evenings typing up the day's material for Delgado, and Ida, were the only women here. Everyone knew about Ida. But Heather was very pretty indeed. He had his own reasons for not making up to her; Ade had his, and Gerry's drug addiction had left him with an eerie near-sexlessness. That still left Rett, Al, Jess Aumen, Lester Harkham -- who, though nearly double Heather's age, was handsome and had something of a reputation as a lady-killer. There was Sam Blizzard, for that matter, with his three -- or was it four? -- unsuccessful marriages behind him. Not to mention Constant, who had always been chasing girls in the days when Murray and he worked together in rep.

  No shortage of susceptible men. Yet because of their apparent total lack of interest in Heather he had been able to formulate the absurd idea that she was laid on for Ida as Gerry had his heroin, Constant his pornography, and perhaps others of the company things that he didn't know about.

  In Murray's memory, the vivid picture arose of Gerry spitting at Ade this morning. An endless supply of pretty little boys?

  His head was spinning. This place was sick, with a kind of all-pervading nastiness copied directly from a Delgado play. It was one thing to see it on the stage; it was altogether different to be living it, knowing that there was no automatic escape at curtain time, back to the familiar world of longstanding friendships and outside interests.

  He checked his pacing and turned to look at the enigmatic squat black shape of the telephone on the bedside table. It had rung for him only once a day since his arrival. Each morning at a little before eight, Valentine's smooth voice reminded him of the time.

  Who was Valentine, anyway? His attempts to convey the impression that Blizzard had hired him had failed, as far as Murray was concerned. He had a very close connection with Delgado, probably going back years. Was that clear to Blizzard, or did the director still think Valentine had been his own discovery? And how had it come about that the steward was hired, anyway? A recommendation by Delgado somehow seemed like too obvious an explanation --

  Murray clenched his fists, his heart hammering. No good letting this thing run away with him. Any minute now he'd be a raving paranoiac. Determined to do something either to allay or actualize his fears, he went to the phone and picked it up.

  In a moment, there was an answer. It was not Valentine, but one of the other stewards.

  "Yes, Mr. Douglas?"

  "Get me a call to London." Murray pulled open the drawer of the table in which he had put some of his personal effects. He found his address book and turned to the page which bore Roger Grady's home number.

  When he had read it over the phone, the steward said, "Very good, sir. I'll call you as soon as I get through."

  You do that, Murray urged him silently and put down the phone.

  His last cigarette had burned out, forgotten in an ashtray. He lit another, his hands shaking with his absurd nervousness.

  Suppose the call doesn't go through? I write a letter, I guess -- no, two letters. I think I have stamps somewhere. And I give one to Valentine to mail and send the other myself and ask Roger to call me and let me know if he gets both.

  What a lunatic predicament! For a moment he was suddenly doubtful of his own stability; he had felt this way when he was in the sanatorium, and the alcohol hunger grew unbearable, so that he devised elaborate schemes for smuggling drink in.

  But that was over, he reminded himself sternly. Somehow, he'd achieved a balance. Now he was too frightened of what drink could do to him to yield to the occasional desire which tormented him. This very moment, indeed, a wave of despair crested, with a demon in an eggshell riding it. The ache was there, God, yes! But so long as the fear of disaster was dominant, he was safe.

  And since Delgado's trick this morning, Murray knew the fear was stronger than ever.

  The phone shrilled. He snatched at it.

  "Roger?"

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Douglas. There is no reply from the number you gave me."

  Liar -- Murray checked his watch. A quarter to eleven. No, it was entirely possible that Roger was out. He dared not assume persecution without impregnable evidence.

  "All right, thank you," he said in a dull voice and lowered the phone.

  What now? Write that letter? It wouldn't arrive till Monday, of course. Better to try another call -- say in an hour. Roger wasn't an early bird. He could put up with . . .

  There was a knock on the door of his room, and his mouth went so dry that he was barely able to choke out a question as he swung to face the blank panels.

  "Yes? Who is it?"

  XVIII

  The door opened. It was Heather, in jeans and a white nylon shirt just translucent enough to let one guess that she was wearing a white bra. She looked incredibly young, the more so because her only makeup was a trace of lipstick, and she was rather flushed.

  "Murray?" she said uncertainly. "Am I disturbing you?"

  "No, for heaven's sake. Come on in." He hoped that the relief he felt didn't show too clearly in his voice.

  She closed the door and paused a pace away from it. "I -- uh -- I wanted to talk to you," she said. "I wanted to ask you some advice. I've got to ask somebody."

  Grandpa, Murray said sourly under his breath. Thirty-two, and they're coming to me for advice already.

  He covered the momentary bitterness by waving her to the one easy chair and turned aside to stub out his half-smoked cigarette.

  She took the chair, leaned back, clasped her hands around one raised knee and spoke with forced brightness, as though delaying the utterance of what she had in mind.

  "Well, it went better today, didn't it? That must be a load off your mind."

  "And on yours." Murray flipped open his cigarette case and held it for her to take one, then fumbled for his lighter. As she bent to the flame, she seemed to hear, a few seconds late, what he had just said. She checked the movement.

  "What do you mean?" she said, raising bright large eyes as nervous as a fawn's.

  "Just that. You wouldn't be human if you hadn't been hoping that starting from scratch would give you a chance to dig yourself in instead of sitting at the back of the room or sliding away to help Gerry."

  "You make me sound horrible," she said after a pause. "If that's the way I strike you, I'm sorry."

  "Wasn't that part of what you've got on your mind?"

  Murray hooked his toe around the leg of an upright chair as he sat down facing her.

  "Ohhh! Oh, yes in a way I suppose it is." She wasn't looking at him, but at the back of the TV set, perhaps not liking to ask why it was turned to the wall. "I just don't know what to do, Murray. I'm strictly a fifth wheel. It wasn't important at first. I thought, well, I'm lucky to have this kind of break anyway even if it's only sort of educational, and if I get left out of the final production, so what? I'll have had a month or so at rates double what I've been getting in rep, and I'll have learned a lot just by being around Delgado and Sam Blizzard and you. But I can't feel so optimistic about it anymore. There's something so -- planned about it."

  Startled, Murray jerked his head. "What do you mean?"

  "I can't put a finger on it." She made a helpless gesture. "It's just that Sam doesn't seem to be worried. I mean, he hired me, so presumably he wanted some work out of me, but he hasn't said anything, not even bawled me out for making myself scarce occasionally. And you're the only person at all who's made any comment about it. No one else seems to find it at all odd. Although Ida -- "

  She broke off. Before Murray could prompt her, she had made a face and looked with distaste at her cigarette.

  "I'm smoking too damned much," she said, stubbing it out. "Oh God, I've made my throat so dry. Can I have a glass of water?"

  "Sure." Murray got up. A thought struck him as he started to go to the washbasin, and he turned to the wardrobe instead. The dozen cans of fruit juice were still o
n the shelf, untouched since Valentine had put them there. He picked up one of them and showed it to Heather.

  "Like one of these instead? They're just sitting here doing nothing."

  She nodded, clearly not caring what he gave her, and he punched holes in the can with his pocketknife.

  "You were saying something," he invited as he poured the juice into a glass and handed it to her.