Timepiece

by Brian N Ball

  Del explained. He had worked for Photius. His business was urgent; he had been loaned to Nicephorus to ensure that the girl was turned over without any fuss; she was to be taken at once for questioning by Nicephorus himself. There was a danger to the state. The escort would make sure she arrived safely and quietly.

  “She’s a dangerous woman,” offered the policeman.

  “The minister was most pressing.”

  “I have to safeguard my position.”

  “This gives me authority,” said Del, pushing over the seal.

  Whilst the man made up his mind, Del ran over the situation. The girl had defied the probabilities of the situation. She had altered the Plot. Basil was too weak to rule. He was honest in an age of complex corruption, he was trusting where intrigue was a way of life, and he had attempted to heal the conflicts in the state when one of the principal occupations of the mob was rioting. Obviously he had to die. The six short-stay vacationers were to have had a hand in his downfall, helping along the opposition to Basil by passing on rumours about his pacific intentions. The girl was to make independent contacts with Palace officials to obtain details of the Emperor’s private life that might be useful in discrediting him. Naturally there was a long-stay Control who was to have co-ordinated the sub-Plot. And the Control had alerted the Plot Director when things began to go wrong.

  “You know what she did?” said the policeman.

  “Not the details. That’s why she’s wanted quickly. Our organization is very efficient.”

  “But you weren’t told what she was doing when we picked her up?” insisted the neutral voice.

  “No.”

  “She’d arranged to get the tyrant Basil out of the cave.”

  It read like a page from the Odyssey. With admirable dexterity, which Del could appreciate, she had seduced the young lieutenant in charge of Basil’s guard with a direct physical appeal that had been instantly effective; and in a few hours she had convinced the older captain that she was a visionary nun who could arrange substantial benefits in the next world for a favour or two in this. The rest of the guard took the gold she had wangled from Control. The poor dazed man, one of a large class of minor administrators who opted for this kind of life, had no resistance to offer.

  “We executed them all in front of her.” The policeman, for the first time, showed a sign of emotion. “She shouted for Basil as their heads rolled. The captain died believing he was to be transported to instant bliss, and the lieutenant smiled at her as the sword fell.”

  “A drunk boasted of gold. We relieved the guard two hours before the break. There were three changes of horses and then a fast light chariot. Basil would have got away just as the Greens rioted in the circus.”

  “She’d arranged that too!”

  “Lottery prizes thrown into the crowd, together with the rumour that there were none for the Greens’ side of the circus. And a road-block to stop pursuit!”

  The Plot Director had been right to call in the

  Chief Programmer at once. Del rapidly worked out solutions—not that it was his concern to correct a Plotting Deviation, but his advice might well be called for. There were many dead, and more would have to be eased out. Some of the officials could be transferred out of Constantinople and by, possibly, a pirate raid or an incursion by one of the nomadic tribes.

  “Time passes,” suggested Del. The escort should be properly armed and clad by now.

  “I’d prefer to kill her now,” said the policeman.

  Del rose. How much pressure dare he bring on the man? His sort were conditioned to abrupt and final action. Reluctance showed briefly in his face and Del knew that he had won. Fear of Nicephorus the Eunuch dominated his urge to destroy the danger. “The bitch from Syria 1” he yelled. “Bring her.” Then he dropped the seal of authority on Del’s outstretched palm.

  Outside a man yelled in anger and pain. Then there was a heavy thud. Two men dragged in the weeping girl, one of them with a long deep wound down the side of his face and along his neck. He punched the girl viciously as she writhed in his grip. For a moment she stood still and Del saw her as she must have seemed to the foolish trusting captain, slim, eyes huge and dark and a pale face that looked beyond the confines of the small grim room.

  “Hadrian Antonius,” he said to her. “My master will question you.”

  The girl looked up at him and her face screwed into a mask of hate. “Filthy regicide! Foul Anti-Christ!” And then the gutter abuse of the Byzantine mob. He was an iconoclast, a consort of beasts, infected with disease and inspired by devils. Del was pleased with her reaction. He leaned forward and chopped lightly and expertly at her extended neck. She sank back unconscious.

  “Good,” said the neutral policeman. “Kill her slowly.”

  “My men can take her,” said Del as the wounded guard made to kick her.

  The Control had been quick. Now the four men looked like the private hatchet men of a Minister. They bundled the girl into a chair held by eight slaves and quickly they moved away from the bland and threatening alley. There was a tremendous bustle of activity in the streets, but Del and the men ploughed through the crowds impatiently and they made fast progress. A few buffoons yelled at them from a safe distance, and twice small squads of archers made them give way.

  Del dismissed the slaves a few blocks away from his destination. Emergency Control was in a disused fifth-century church that had belonged to a sect of suicides from Libya. There was no pursuit, and no noise of the crowds penetrated into the massive soaring building; and when Del had found the anachronistic force-lock the vacation was over for the dazed girl and her four guards. A few doves fluttered high above and small echoes shrilled eerily as a block of stone squealed out of its socket The men drew back in alarm with prayers at their lips and terror in their eyes. Del motioned them down the steps below: “Bring the girl—quick!”

  Conspirators and enjoying it the men pushed forward eagerly to be anaesthetized instantly as they passed him. For them the vacation was at an end, and they would see no more of the Byzantium that had been re-created as faithfully as meticulous scholarship, enormous enthusiasm, and unlimited wealth could make it. Del easily evaded the surprisingly fast blow the girl aimed at him, and then she too passed back into the Third Millennium.

  Chapter Four

  “Five hours! Wonderful, Delvaney! A magnificent coup!” shouted the Chief Programmer. ‘We'll schedule the whole of it, every minute of it, over every sector of our galaxy! You’ll get your rating back when the reviews come in, Delvaney they’ll love you!”

  “A moment, Chief,” said the Plot Director as a dapper assistant pattered over to them.

  “I’m tired” said Delvaney. “You don’t need to do more than write out the immediate security network I came in contact with. You could have them sent out to the Sicilian wars.”

  “Trouble,” said the Plot Director faintly.

  “Sure, sure, Delvaney, we’ll take care of it. Now who said that word I hate?”

  “Bad news,” said the Plot Director. “From the Third.”

  ‘It must be the girl,” said Del. “It was too easy.”

  The Chief Programmer’s face bulged. “But you got her away! That character—that Basil the King----”

  "Emperor,” put in the assistant.

  “So the Emperor. He was written off. Wasn’t he?” The Plot Director shook his head. “The message just came through Emergency on Third Six-Fourteen. The Eunuch’s dead. Basil got away.”

  “That Rosetti woman!” yelled the Chief Programmer. “I hate her!”

  She must be a throw-back, Del was deciding. A woman of instant decision who not only absorbed the ethos of the ancient worlds that was re-created for the amusement of a civilization bored with itself, but who identified totally with its concepts, aims, hopes and ideals. Del poured the first drink and waited for the Chief to catch his breath.

  “She got the Emperor away,” said the Plot Director incredulously. “A troupe of performing Parthian
s suddenly charged down on the escort and in the confusion they got Basil away. Then a fast galley across the Straits. He’s already raised the beginnings of an army. My Plot! My poor, poor Plot. It’ll never work now, not in a hundred years!”

  “The Eunuch was hung up in Basil’s place,” said the assistant “Quick thinking on the part of the Treasurer. The mob had been promised an execution.” His face gleamed with admiration. “She passed the message through to one of the slaves carrying the litter.” “There’s a bright side,” said Del, turning. “Think of the new staff you’ll have to recruit for the re-writes.” “And what am I going to do with all the applicants for short-stay vacations!” said the Chief. “Til have to / let the computers work something out, and whilst they’re in charge I can’t let any more casuals in.”

  “Put them in twentieth-century traffic,” said Del. “Turn the mortality rate to normal and get rid of them that way.”

  The Chief Programmer’s face looked wistful for a moment. “If only I could,” he sighed. “Or put her in the middle of an Early Third Millennium robot war. There weren’t many human casualties, but they suffered, how they suffered!”

  ‘Her contract isn’t binding,” reminded the assistant. “We couldn’t put her into anything masochistic anyway, it’s not in her options.”

  “Just a dream,” said the Chief Programmer. “You know, Del, you have it easy. You’re a man of unusual skills. In other ages you'd be a successful sportsman, or a great guerilla leader, or maybe a daring explorer. Now, you use your wits to guide our Plots if they go wrong. But for you there's no personal involvement. You go into the Frames knowing just what factors need to be influenced to change the direction of events. You’re not totally involved, like all the people who experience totally the realities of life in our little creations. You don’t enter into the spirit of the thing at all. There’s no risk for you.”

  “I could lose my rating,” said Del. “This job wasn’t a success.”

  “A Disaster,” agreed the Chief Programmer. “It could have meant a new start for you; important jobs, instead of little assignments like this. I’m sorry, Del. I’ll do what I can in my report, but you know how things are.”

  “Anything else you want?” asked Del.

  The Chief Programmer grinned. “I could do with a complete erasure of the whole damned Plot, but that’s too much to hope for. No, Del, HI call if there’s anything.”

  As Del grinned back, the Plot Director came across from the panel he was studying. “There was something else. Hector Rosetti wants you.”

  Chapter Five

  LIVE! shouted the advertisements in the reception room where Del waited. Rosetti was late. Del regarded the Bookings official at the desk across the room. There was to be some sort of inquiry, Del guessed. Bookings should not have accepted the girls story, since she had not presented the necessary credentials. She was under-age and still a student. Her ratings for social responsibility and psychological independence were too low for any kind of total experience of Life Frames. Del guessed again that the distinguished-looking man at the desk would not suffer. He would already have passed on the blame to a line of subordinates, and it was possible that jobs had already been lost somewhere along that line. LIVE IN ANY ONE OF A THOUSAND WORLDS! glared the boards. The handsome man was enjoying himself. Here was a field operative, a real hotshot, one of the daring few who plunged into the near-reality of the Frames to arrange deaths, coups, and sometimes wholesale massacres. And though he was something of a has-been, Delvaney had once possessed a formidable reputation. He was in trouble, now. A thin smile passed across the regular features. His voice was light and cultured:

  “Miss Rosetti isn’t any ordinary client, you understand.”

  Del suddenly saw the slight flaws in the man’s face. It was a complete re-build. Even the bones had been re-structured. Why did people change themselves, he wondered. Why erode altogether any remnant of personality? He nodded briefly to acknowledge the comment.

  “In fact, Miss Rosetti isn’t really qualified to opt for a trip of this kind,” said the cultured voice. “I’d go further and say there has probably been some slight administrative failure in this department.”

  Del was bored now. He leaned forward and interrupted an explanation that promised to last for hours. "What does Rosetti want?”

  "I have to detail the background,” said the man stiffly.

  “It’s about the girl.”

  “Exactly. I can tell you now that she didn’t want to go into the Third Frame at first. She joined on to the party scheduled for a fortnight in Six-Fourteen when one of my assistants told her you were assigned to the Frame.”

  “Me?” A fan? Was she one of the many ecstatic fans who watched the re-runs of some of his earlier jobs? Del half-listened to the explanation. YOU ARE THERE! pecked out a subliminal board behind the handsome plastic face. It tapped away as Del learned that the girl was an admirer. She wanted to see him in action. Del laughed aloud as the explanation unfolded. “She did what?”

  “Apparently Miss Rosetti used some initiative and her father’s name in getting access to the Plots for this Level. She worked out a scheme for herself and succeeded in getting one of my senior assistants—not with us any longer, unfortunately—to ask for a part to be written in for her. What she didn’t explain was that she was also preparing to alter the nature of the part.”

  She had nerve, Del thought. How many lives had been sacrificed to set up this meeting? Six? Eight? More in the riots?

  “Did she say why she wanted to see me?”

  “That’s what Mr. Rosetti wants to meet you for, Delvaney.”

  At that moment, a couple entered. The girl’s face was shadowed for a moment and when Del saw her fully he was stunned. The short broad man held out a hand and Del hardly noticed the conventional responses. He had seen the girl before.

  “We’ve met before,” she was saying. Words about her admiration and her pleasure in meeting him again.

  Del looked at the exquisite shape with its subtle planes. She moved towards him and Del realized why she had been able to alter the delicately constructed social mechanism that was the Plot. She would make every man she met think of only one thing: how he could take up the extraordinarily direct physical challenge of her every movement.

  “I didn’t exactly welcome you when we met,” she said. “I was deep in the conditioning of the period. Now that I can tell you how I feel, I want you to know how grateful I am. I could have lost my head!”

  Del refrained from telling her of the others who had lost theirs. This smiling, slim, high and full-breasted girl had no connection with the conditioned virago from Byzantium.

  “We’re grateful to you, Delvaney,” said the man. “You did a good job. You’ll find me grateful if you ever want a favour.” And he was the man to know if you needed help, Del thought. There was little enough work to go round, but Rosetti could manage things. “I can’t do much for you, I find,” went on Rosetti. “You’ve lost your status as a trouble-shooter in the big Frames.” So there it was, thought Del. Finish. A few more minor assignments like this, then a period of semi-retirement when he might be called on to help some up and coming young agent. And then the half-life of watching others in the Frames, or the strange experience of participating totally in one of the worlds now flashing away at him in the Booking office.

  Del shrugged. There wasn’t a thing to be said. “You’re welcome, Mr. Rosetti,” he said politely. The little man caught the note of resignation.

  “Look, Delvaney,” he said, “look at facts. You haven’t a future in your business. If they let you carry on, you’d be killed soon.”

  “We all risk that.”

  “There’s nothing to be done. My daughter wants something, though.”

  There was more, Del realized suddenly. It wasn’t simply a courtesy visit.

  ‘We’ve a proposition to put to you,” said the girl. She smiled, a pert, confident and excited smile.

  “The Department has
approved it,” put in the Bookings official. ‘We can release you at once.”

  “That so?” Was it a quiet way of easing him out? Some kind of administrative or training job?

  “That isn’t to say that the venture has the—”

  “Be quiet,” said Rosetti to the official.

  He was not to be stopped: “—permission of the Ways and Means Committee—”

  “I could manage without you here,” said Rosetti dangerously, but the man was launched into what obviously was a prepared statement:

  “—nor that the Security aspects have been cleared, but it has the sanction of this Department.” He stopped and said, “Mr. Rosetti?”

  “I’ll remember you,” said Rosetti. “My daughter will tell you about it, Delvaney.”

  The handsome face showed a flicker of fear and the eyes filled with malice. He managed to smile as he repeated the formula of all civil servants: he had merely been following instructions in passing on the message.

  “It's a job,” said the girl.

  “Disaster Control?”

  “Nothing to do with the Frames,” she said. “It's an expedition

  There weren’t any, Del was about to say, but he held the words back. Could there be sufficient influence in the Galaxy for some land of exploratory work? It hadn’t happened in decades.

  “An expedition?”

  “Extra-Galactic”

  ‘Impossible.”

  “It’s not,” said Rosetti, and then Del believed him. “You know me. I control the Committee of Ways and Means for this part of the Galaxy. You’ve heard of me, I’ve no doubt. What you don’t know is that I’ve got the Security Committee partly under my control as well.”

  It was enough. Rosetti could get a licence to undertake deepspace exploration with that kind of sway. Even though the Izard Investigation of a hundred and twenty years before had proved conclusively that it was uneconomic to use skilled labour to mount expeditions, there were one or two loopholes that a man like Rosetti could find. But what kind of expedition? And where to? There was nothing to explore in the Galaxy. Every comer of it had been charted, every aspect of it had been the subject of broadcasts. There was nothing new to be experienced, the Izard Committee had decided. Therefore all possible resources were to be used in future for the development of the Frames. Del appreciated the logic of the argument. The principal aim of modem life was to keep mankind entertained. Until all possible varieties of experience had been thoroughly explored, it was logical to continue the search for the novel. But now it was known that there was nothing new in the Galaxy. The only sensible course was to re-create the exciting worlds of earlier days. And now the girl proposed to put a ship out into the void.