Timepiece

by Brian N Ball

  TIMEPIECE

  Brian N. Ball

  BALLENTINE BROOKS . NEW YORK

  An Intext Publisher

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  TIMEPIECE

  "Jordan Delvaney!”

  The call to action: somewhere a disaster, a cataclysmic monkey-wrench smashed into the delicate re-creation of reality that was the twenty-ninth century form of leisure activity.

  Someone had twisted one of the carefully arranged Plots that were the set-pieces known as The Frames. But this time, correcting the chaos of riot and murder that could result from such deviations was only the beginning of Del’s troubles. This time, cause and effect led inevitably to an ancient intergalactic ship, to the eerie plunge into hyperspace in search of a chunk of writhing time somehow poised in thermodynamic equilibrium in its own strange universe—this time he had to find Time itself.

  Copyright © by Brian N. Ball

  British SBN 234-77223-9

  American SBN 345-01903=2=075

  First American Edition: April 1970

  Cover Art by Mort Engle

  Printed in the United States of America

  BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC.

  101 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003

  This look at tomorrow is for

  Harry and Frances Armytage

  Chapter One

  “Delvaney,” said the voice from the walls, “Emergency in Time Level Six-Fourteen. You’re wanted on the Third Frame.” And in the large, quiet, sun-blossoming office, Delvaney slept whilst again and again the voice, with pitch and tempo altering through a dozen inflections, called sombrely and unanxiously to him. Disturbed by the involuntary motion of a thin angular arm, an empty glass began to roll across the desk. Delvaney was dreaming.

  It was a recurrent dream, familiar as whisky, piquant as a spring morning. The girl in it was tall, slim, bright brown, extraordinarily pliant and faceless. In the dream, he was able to investigate this problem of her facelessness. She had a problem, this beautiful girl, one of communication which was complicated by her own lack of identity. “Time,” she had said, “if time could have a stop.” Delvaney found himself out of sympathy with her philosophizing. She was the focus of his every erotic fancy at one time, and at another she would be a creature of mist and light, segmenting into a dozen reflections of herself and weaving them into a pattern. It was the patterns that disturbed him, that and the noise. “Quiet,” he said, and he woke to find he was talking to the voice from the walls.

  He reached the door as three youngish women burst through it. His secretary and her assistants.

  “The Plot Director says you’re to get over right away, Del,” said the efficient assistant, the one who didn’t trouble to hide her awareness of his dishevelled state.

  “Come on, Del,” said his secretary. “Try this.” She mixed a drink. “It’s quick and it lasts for a few hours. That’s all you’ll need for this one.”

  Del muttered several obscenities at the Plot Director. The second assistant said, “Delightful,” and Del felt a stab of self-pity. They all needed him, but they knew he was on the way down. Even his secretary occasionally looked at him with distaste, whereas at one time she had worshipped him. He patted her on the backside and she answered, “HI wait for you tonight,” as she always did, but he could see that the old eagerness was gone.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “Six short-term trippers stuck in Third Six-Fourteen.” He frowned. “Mid-Byzantine,” she added. “There’s an Executive’s daughter mixed up in it.”

  “Damn all lousy short-stay trippers!” Del shouted. He reached for the glass on the desk, but already the women were beginning the Emergency routine. They clipped the helmet-like Plot Informant on his head and punched buttons on the control panel that covered the wall behind his desk. He had a momentary glimpse of the woman of the dream as the drug began to take effect, but then it was gone.

  “It was the girl,” explained his secretary, pushing him through the blue door marked “Emergency”. “All hell let loose. The Chief Programmer says there’ll have to be a complete rewrite for a couple of decades before the Plot gets back to normal.”

  ‘What girl?”

  “You’ll find out,” said the second assistant. “Come back in one psychotic piece, dear,” she said and, as

  the door slid into its place behind him, she added, “we need you.”

  “I hope he can still do it,” said the assistant who worried. “It is a bit nasty this time. Have you two ever been to Third Six-Fourteen?”

  “No,” said the secretary. “I’m a romantic girl really. Nineteenth-century England for me every time. All cousins and discreet incest and galloping consumption. Im going to the new one this year—the one Alex wrote up during his second sabbatical year. Why don’t you try them?”

  ‘"Not realistic enough for me,” said the efficient assistant. “Too much Charlotte and Emily and Jane and litcrit. I suppose it’s all right for a week or so but it seems all so wordy. Alex can’t get the feel of real life. He’s fine with novels and letters and diaries, and I know he does a nice job of conflation, but what I like is something fairly modem and hectic.”

  The secretary eyed her with dislike. “I was forgetting, dear,” she said. “I couldn’t really see you fluttering a fan.”

  “But what about Del?” said the worried assistant.

  The second assistant shrugged. “If he doesn’t make it, we’ll still have a job for years. Think of all the reports we can make out. Histories of his cases. Cross-reference work.” She smiled. “It might be better with him out of the way.”

  “Bitch,” said the secretary. ‘He’ll be all right. He can still do it.”

  “He has gone down in the grades,” pointed out the second assistant, quite unabashed. “You can’t really call this a big job.”

  “It was just bad luck on the Seventh Frame!” said the worried assistant.

  “And the Sirian job?” said the other assistant. “And two years ago when the Primitives got out of hand on the First Frame?”

  “That was bad luck,” said the secretary firmly. “He

  was damned good, and he’s had a bad patch lately; but he can still cope.”

  “You’re still in love with him,” said the worried assistant. “That’s wonderful!”

  “There’s the statistics too, if he doesn’t make it,” said the efficient assistant gaily. “Years of work!”

  “And is it a bad one! Really bad?” said the other assistant.

  “A Disaster.”

  Even the efficient assistant looked back in awe.

  “You don’t lose the touch because of a run of bad luck ” said the secretary. “Del can still find the answer.”

  Chapter Two

  “Any dead?” said Del. The familiar excitement of impending action was there, but there was the doubt too. He looked at the Plot behind the Chief Programmer. It was bad.

  “One so far,” said the Plot Director. “But don't worry about that.” He turned to the Chief Programmer. “Del worries.”

  “You're not to worry about casualties,” said the Chief. “There's another four men you might not be able to get out.
Til have to write them off if you can't work something into the Plot for them. Your job is to make sure of one thing, and one thing only.” He stopped because Del was reaching for the bottle the Plot Director kept in a drawer. He frowned now, but Del took no notice.

  “It's very important,” said the Plot Director worriedly. In his anxiety, he reached out a hand to detain Del's arm. Immediately Del chopped out and the Plot Director looked at his own numb shoulder. “These men of action,” he said, with a pained smile. After that, Del knew that he had been called in only as a last resort. All the other members of the Disaster team must either be out working or recovering from injuries.

  “Please, Del,” said the Plot Director, and Del felt sorry for him. Here was another person who simply

  wanted to hold on to his job, another like his bitchy office help.

  Del drank slowly. ‘'Make sure of what?” he asked. “The girl—bring her out alive. No conditions. No restrictions.”

  “This the Executive’s daughter?”

  “Hector Rosetti’s only child.”

  The intent desperate faces opposite him were explained. Del knew that the whole framework of this sector of Programming would be thrown out of work if the girl wasn’t brought out.

  “There was a slip-up—not ours,” hastily added the Plot Director. “You got the details on the way over?” Del touched the Informant that still slipped information into his mind. “A little set-piece, bit of subversive work for half-a-dozen conspirators. I’ve got that.”

  “She fouled it up!” snarled the Chief Programmer. “What did we do to get a girl like that! Bookings didn’t check her stability ratings, and anyway they didn’t get a valid disclaimer!”

  “I don’t want to go back to being part of the audience,” said the Plot Director. “Just get this one right, Del. We’re all relying on you.”

  In a stagey voice, the Chief Programmer appealed to Del in his turn: ‘When I was a kid, I used to think the Frames were real. I got a job fixing some of the small plots when I graduated, but the romance of the Frames was still real to me. All those little people wanting to experience for themselves the thoughts and emotions of peoples who lived in happier days! Think of all those wonderful tensions and neuroses they’re going through right now! And you’re the man who’s going to make sure they go right on enjoying themselves!”

  “She sounds an interesting girl,” offered Del.

  “She’s under-age, she’s Executive Rosetti’s daughter, and she's due for execution in a couple of hours! Now, get in there, Delvaney, and bring her out!"

  “Can he do it?" Del heard the Chief saying anxiously as he entered the long, coffin-like conveyor. The faint swish of the tube hid the answer. All other thoughts were hidden too as Del felt his own world slipping away. Now the helmet began to acclimatize him to the world of Byzantium.

  Chapter Three

  “Hadrian Antonius,” the ten thousand voices murmured. Information flowed into Del’s brain. “Freeman and soldier, former ballistae expert, now entrepreneur and tax-farmer in Thrace; inharmoniously married with two children alive, a girl of fifteen soon to be the wife of a guardsman, and a boy attending the local military academy.” His friends were Artemius, a wine-importer, and Eudoxus, a sub-governor. “Friends too,” muttered Del.

  It was to be dry and hot in Constantinople, with riots and beatings, processions, parades and circuses. The tyrant Basil had been overthrown, chiefly because he had been too honest. The ministers Nicephoros the Eunuch and Photius the Treasurer had decided on their own candidate for the vacant throne, and they had sufficient money to bribe the Praetorian guard into acquiescing. Basil was locked in a cave filled with bats, scorpions and vipers; so far he had evaded the reptiles by a combination of luck and agility. Del found himself interested in spite of the prosaic nature of the Plot. The Programmer had stuck to historical fact. He had sufficient intelligence to know that the details of palace politics were themselves of great interest. Action, sudden and violent action, was a part of tenth-century Byzantine life.

  Basil, of course, had been unaware of the true state

  of affairs. A gallant general, he had become Emperor by accident. He had not known how to ensure that Photius paid the fleet and the armies, nor had he the wit to realize how Nicephorus had alienated the populace by issuing Imperial decrees that curtailed the holidays, lowered the free ration of bread, and ensured deliberately poor shows at the circus. And now a thousand trumpets would sound when he hung between a gold statue of a pig and a silver statue of a wolf; at his first howl of terror, a thousand banners would wave, and then the best-known buffoons would be invited to hack at the unfortunate Basil till he died.

  Pictures of the political scene flashed across Del’s conscious mind as facts were hammered subliminally into his unconscious. Then word-patterns followed, voice rhythms, habit recognition signals, and endless personality data. Few men could stand the impact of the mass of knowledge specialists in Plot Disaster Control had to absorb. In an hour, Del learned all that there was to know about the six trippers who had contrived to get into difficulties in the re-created world of Byzantium. Like a latter-day Faust, Del was ejected through a trapdoor onto the floor of a cellar in a wineshop.

  The first thing he saw was a dead man. He was recognizable by his deep sunburn and the criss-cross of old machete scars from a previous vacation. Blood seeped from sword wounds in his chest. There was nothing to be done for him and nothing to be learned from him. Del crossed quickly to the rough stone steps and up to the crowded tavern above. The woman saw him.

  “The dead arise!” she called. Half-a-dozen men looked round. Outside the roar of the huge crowd swelled and boomed.

  “Julia, my heart, my queen, my empress!” shouted Del to her. Immediately he had recognized her as the loud-mouthed bitch who informed on her customers to one of Nicephorus* agents.

  “But you came from the cellar where the dead—”

  “State business, my love,” called Del. *1 couldn’t be seen entering.” He took a jug from her hand, drank heavily from the warm scented mixture of wine and spices.

  “You couldn’t,” she agreed, his brisk and confident air turning aside her suspicions. The men had turned back to their game without another look.

  Til be back,” he promised. He threw silver to her, far more than the woman would see in a week, and then he was hurrying into the narrow magnificent avenue, with its huge blocks of stone and stench of excited citizenry. The crowd swirled around him and away from a clattering troop of cavalry, their heavy Persian-style armour scoured and glittering in the bright sunlight. Three men suddenly swung around and yelled into the noise. Del’s conditioning automatically identified two of them, short broad men with alert fanatic faces, but the other man had not been on his schedule. He was the danger. Del evaluated the situation at once and moved fast.

  There was no escape in the crowd, for it was not thick enough to halt all movement, nor thin enough to allow him an easy escape. The cavalry blocked his escape across the street: a single citizen darting through their ranks would be ridden down without thought. It was the big, fat man, the one with the air of unquestionable authority that had to be removed first. His presence indicated that the Disaster in this Frame was of a much greater magnitude than had at first been realized. Del killed him with a heavy Scithian hunting-knife that circled flickeringly in the hot afternoon sunshine like a big brilliant insect. The man halted, shock turning the calm of his big face into outraged hate. His companions moved like fast, well-trained hounds, but already Del had moved yards away into a briefly-formed wall of people, unsighting the first man through the crowd. Del pushed a youth into his path and turned to smash hard at the second man. The members of the crowd hung back and away, the front ranks still intent on the noble sight of the scarlet-plumed troop, and those immediately around Del fascinated and fearful at the desperate encounter before them. They moved away further as Del tinned the dead and gross body of the man he had knifed; he found the seal the man carr
ied and only as he ran away from the body did a first hint of anger surge up from the sightseers. The remaining secret policeman hung back and Del heard him begin to shout for help.

  The situation was changing rapidly. Del hurried to the headquarters of the police forces maintained by Nicephorus. Somehow the Eunuch had known of Del's appearance: either that, or the five visitors who remained alive had reinforced the complications of the Plot.

  “Hadrian Antonius!” yelled a voice behind him as he neared the Street of the Egyptians. Four men came towards him, one limping, another clutching a bleeding shoulder. Del did not question them: there was no time for questions, no time except to give them brief and clear instructions on their part during the next hours. Why they had not made for the agreed rendezvous was of no importance; Del could use them in a version of the plan he had devised.

  Next to the Street of the Egyptians was the narrow unimpressive alley that housed the most feared men in the Empire. Secret police were always housed in the same anonymous kind of buildings, blank windows, heavy doors, quiet streets. There was no revelation of identity. And once you stepped inside, you had to declare yourself fully and repeatedly.

  “I see a seal,” admitted the man Del was eventually questioned by.

  “Of Nicephorus himself,” pointed out Del.

  ‘Your name?”

  “I told you. Hadrian Antonius.”

  “Occupation?”

  There was too, one part of Del’s mind mused, a sameness about the men who chose to play this kind of person, though this was no act now. The man was of medium height, with a grim functional square face, enough grey hair, a way of threatening horrifying dangers with a single word.