Timepiece

by Brian N Ball

  “What do you hope to find?”

  “Does it matter?” asked Rosetti quickly.

  Del reflected. If Rosetti was sufficiently impressed with the potentialities of what he and his daughter had in mind, it had to be big. To put the kind of ship extra-Galactic exploration demanded into hyperspace condition demanded also the resources of thousands of highly trained Field Theorists. They would have to be taken away from vital work in communications and computer research.

  “You’re looking for some way of working out a Unified Field Theory?” asked Del.

  “The final problem,” said Rosetti. “I thought of it at one time. No. It’s a straightforward expedition to a known planet”

  Del looked speculatively at the girl. “You’d better tell me,” he said.

  “I’m going to look for the Forever World.”

  Del laughed at the girl, quietly and briefly. The chimera of the total experience simulators—the hope of the Hold Time Society—the focus of odd cults: whole libraries were stocked with reels and tapes and discs of unvisited analyses and speculations about the planet that had acquired the name of the Forever World: “The Planet of Forever.”

  “All right,” said Rosetti, turning away. "Satisfied, my dear?”

  ‘He hasn’t refused,” the girl said. “He’s still wondering.”

  Del remembered the scene in the Frame. The girl was a fanatic. She had the air of belief, the sense of active participation in every detail of life that characterized the dynamic thinker. But why in the name of the gods of time and space had she picked on the most ludicrous of all romantic legends? All that was

  known about the planet was recorded on a few seconds of tape, a garbled message from a deep-space commander who was stunned by the imminent loss of his ship. And his life. There was only the famous Report from Time.

  “It's a pleasure to have met you, Mr. Rosetti, Miss Rosetti,” said Del. He could still work for Disaster Control for a few years. There were a few dirty little jobs they wouldn't send either the best agents or the new recruits out on.

  “Thanks for your time,” said Rosetti curtly. “You wouldn't believe this, Delvaney, but I can hardly spare the time to talk to you. I certainly haven't the time or the inclination to persuade you."

  The girl's face was as calm as it had been when she entered the room. “You still haven't refused," she said.

  “If you can stay for a moment or two,” said Del. Rosetti stopped. “I have to know only one thing,” he told them. “Why?"

  The girl answered. “I don't have to say it to you. When you've thought about it, you'll be able to work it out. I could be clever and subtle and tell you some kind of vague answer like ‘Because it's supposed not to be there,' but I won't.”

  “No,” said Del. There was far more to this girl than he had realized. She was not stirred by the prospect of adventure, nor was she simply scalp-hunting amongst the agents in Disaster Control.

  “Look," said Rosetti, “I've thought about this too. There was the Commander’s Report, there was a planet, there was a ship. If my daughter wants to look into it, so far as I’m concerned she can. If you'll go along, I'll do all that's humanly possible to give you every chance of a decent job when you get back."

  ‘I don't know what else I can offer,” said the girl. For a moment she looked embarrassed, but since Del neither smiled nor looked at her directly, she went on:

  “There's just a hope that we can find something in what the Commander said.”

  “Convince me,” said Del. “And then 111 come along.” As he spoke he cursed himself. His answer had been thoughtless in the ultimate sense. His intuition had spoken for him. He too was now a romantic. With middle age had come the craze for the bizarre, and not only that but the presence of a nubile young woman had brought him to a kind of stupor intellectually.

  “Stretch your tolerance a little further,” advised the Bookings official. “That's my advice, Mr. Delvaney.” The smooth tones held a note of triumph, and Del realized that the man thought him a fool “Mr. Rosetti has a ship already in commission, you'll find.”

  Del thought of the beautifully engineered damage to the Byzantine Plot and wondered again at the girl's motives. Why pick on him?

  “Why me?’ he asked impulsively.

  “My daughter thinks you're the man for the job.” Obviously what the girl wanted she got. ‘1 think she could be right.”

  “And where do we go from here?”

  “There's a couple of people you have to meet,” said Rosetti. “They’ll convince you that this isn't a fools' errand—if anyone can.”

  “And there's something you have to see,” added the girl.

  ‘I’ll withdraw your name from the Active list,” said the Bookings official happily. “May I wish you every success in your venture?” There was barely an effort at concealment of the smile now.

  Chapter Six

  “You like the place?” the girl asked.

  “I didn’t know people still lived like this.” There was no noise. The sun shone murkily through cloud. “No weather control, a private island, a building above ground—who designed it?”

  ‘I did. It’s based on a Cretan design. What they’d call a small palace.”

  “And a dome over the whole island to keep the noise out?”

  “Of course.”

  “Suzanne majored in industrial archaeology,” said a voice behind Del and the girl. She swung round and crossed to the newcomer. He was her lover, Del decided. There was the look of anticipation in his eyes, an air of casual acceptance of her smooth walk, and a knowledge of her body in the way he swept a look over her cool swelling breasts. Del was aware of a pang of disappointment that was immediately replaced by hostility.

  “This is Andy Garvin,” the girl told him. Their eyes smiled, and Del wondered if she would ever look at him like that.

  “Del! My pleasure!” A glad-hander this, Del told himself. An easy, smooth, talented man. Andy Garvin possessed the superb self-confidence that only the really great tele-personalities developed. “Terrific to meet you! I was working on your latest assignment only yesterday. Were doing it as three one-hour shows over the next month. Every hook-up we can get in the Galaxy! It should have a higher rating than the runs for the Vigan Wars! You certainly handled the Byzantine Disaster well!”

  “You don't have to, Gary,” the girl said. “You're not taking Delvaney in, you know. He knows as well as I do that the tapes are being shown as a calamity. A joke!"

  “So it's a joke! But Del's name means a lot to all those little people who watch his old assignments over and over again. That terrific job he did six or seven years ago when Bookings took on a madman in the Medieval Frames—he'd almost got a nuclear technology going when Del stepped in!”

  He was clever, thought Del. It had been a good assignment: a junior food-processor had wanted a five-year spell as a camel-driver, and suddenly after a year or so he had begun to question current scientific theory. The local Control had been unbelievably lax, and it had been touch and go as to whether or not the whole Frame would have to be written out. And, of course, everyone in it at the time.

  “The worst mistake Disaster Control ever made was to take you off the major Frames," said Garvin.

  “Leave it, Garv,” said the girl again. “He knows, we all know, why Del was taken off. He tried to make the Peace of Sirius stick.” She smiled at Del: “I think I’d have tried to do the same, even though the Frame was only for the psychopaths. Don't mind Garv, though. He thinks you can get people to like you if you talk at them for long enough.”

  “So I should stick to commentating, Del,” he said and now Del found himself liking this compactly-built laughing man. It had been a fiasco, the Peace of Sirius. The frame was for the murderers, the sadists, the compulsive killers: Del had accidentally set up a

  political genius with suppressed pacific ideals who had the notion of concluding a final peace settlement in the endless wars of the huge arena of the Sirian Frame. Now the girl
and Garvin knew all about it: and they knew about the Medieval Frames. They were both looking at him, appraising him carefully.

  “You said a ship,” Del said.

  “Its time you asked,” Garvin said. *1 told you Suzanne was an archaeologist in her spare moments. Look what she found.” He flicked a button on the gleaming marble table. Del looked around the elegant gardens, amongst the pillars and the statues.

  “Over there,” said the girl, pointing to the white sands beyond.

  Sand was flowing smoothly to the rocky sides of the small bay. Black steel was revealed stretching in an unbroken mass down to where at the waters edge steam billowed from the warm metal. The black mass rose slightly. Its surface was flecked with shells and bones and discoloured by salt at the line of the sea.

  “Two centuries it’s lain there,” said the girl. Her voice trembled with excitement, an almost delirious quality in it. Del found himself responding to the thrill of her excitement “It's like looking at another age.” She turned to Garvin: “Now,” she said. “Now that Delvaney's here—convince him we can do it.”

  Again Garvin adjusted dials in the control panel. “It doesn't have to work,” he warned. “It's been a long time since the ship was docked.” As he spoke, there was a whistling of air and an easing of old electronic locks. Then the whole colossal dome of the subterranean dock swung away in one easy movement.

  The three watchers looked in wonderment as the sand and water settled and the steam gradually sank into writhing coils on the beach. Below, in its vast silo, was the archaic hyperspace vessel, a ship of so ancient a design that it looked like a monster from an early age, a relic from the days when enormous bulk was necessary to move through the contours of time and space.

  Del felt a chill, of time passing, age creeping up on him: here he was, a middle-aged man with no future looking at a ship that was a museum-piece. Could the ship slip through the uncertain, shifting fields of hyperspace? Could he provide the leadership in any dangerous encounter? Or were both man and ship used up? He had failed in the final analysis—he had not been able to act only as catalyst in the unstable reactions he moved amongst in the Frames; and the ship had been abandoned by its builders as insufficiently reliable for ventures into hyperspace.

  “The Thomas Cook” said Garvin reverently. ‘"Doesn’t the name of that great mythological figure send your mind leaping across time? He was the first and the greatest of all the agents. He revealed the world to the people. What a tribute, to name this ship after him!”

  “Look at it,” said the girl, as they walked towards the great cliff-like walls of the silo. “The most advanced vessel ever built. And it never left its dock.”

  “The Thomas Cook” said Del. “I’ve heard of it. Can you get it to work?”

  “Maybe,” said the girl.

  “Certainly!” said Garvin. His resonant voice swelled out: “This ship was not meant to lie here idle when the greatest mystery of all time still lies unresolved just outside the furthest arm of our galaxy.” He would have continued, but the girl interrupted:

  “See if you can get my father, Garv,” she ordered. “Tell him Delvaney’s seen the ship.” As Garvin at once hurried off, she led Del to the entrance shuttle. “I saw you looking pained at Garvin,” she said. “Don’t underrate him. He’s more than a bigmouth from the telecasts.”

  “He is?”

  “He’s that too, but he’s much more.” The girl pointed the way down echoing, eerily-lit corridors. “You might call him a cartographer of the intellect.,,

  “And thats what he calls himself?” Del was amused. He wondered for the hundredth time why he had allowed himself to be directed by this devious superbly-confident girl.

  “He does. He wanted you in on this as much as I did. Im not sure if it wasn’t his idea in the first place.”

  “Why?”

  “He checked your emotional ratings and cross-referenced them with the adaptability levels of every agent since the Frames were put up. You’re high on every count, but you’ve got one capacity that doesn’t fit in with an agent’s requirements.” The girl stopped. They were in the silo. “Garvin says you’re the only man who could understand what the Forever Planet could mean. You see, you have a sense of wonder.” Del waited for the explanation, but apparently the girl was building up to some kind of climax. She had studied every word, and now she wanted him to absorb the impact of the vessel before she went on.

  It was a stupendously impressive sight. Small clusters of translucent drive chambers clung on to a complex framework of field generators; spidery dull black arms supported the living quarters. What immediately held the attention, however, was the proud nameplate blazoned across the main drive housing. Like all public inscriptions, it was a compound of sensory impressions; intertwining groups of images clamoured for attention: a million holiday-makers roaring off in cigar-shaped aircraft; ten thousand horsemen clattering away into glorious sunrises; a hundred excited daring individuals spreading great soaring wings of gossamer and setting out from interplanetary launches into the billowing winds of solar radiation, their fragile sail-planes at once filling with the fierce impulse of radiation pressure; and then there were the million upon million of cosmic dust-riders swarming like flies in summer to view the latest and most spectacular supernova. And superimposed on every image, there was the saviour of civilization himself, the benign black-hatted bewhiskered smiling face of Thomas Cook himself, as he waved to a cheering crowd of passengers steaming away to the accompaniment of a brass band and tremendous clouds of black smoke. He towered through the sensory impressions like a god, as indeed he may well have been, for, the artists who designed the name-plate were saying, what else could the man have been who propounded the secret of humanity: man’s life was a vacation.

  “How does my sense of wonder help?” asked Del.

  “Now you've seen the ship, will you listen to Garv?”

  “Yes.” Strangely he felt himself becoming excited about the girls crazy idea. There were fewer and fewer occasions when he felt now the tendrils of excitement that had attracted him to the life of an agent; not for a year or two had he become infected with that curious feeling of rapport with an assignment that had once filled him with pride and a sense of power. What was it? An awareness that one can decide fate? An arrogant fist flourished at eternity?

  ‘What are you thinking of?” the girl asked on the way back to the palace. “I think you’re with us, Delvaney, you know.’* She took his hand and stopped him. “You have to come along, don’t you?”

  Del said, “Let’s hear the rest of the arguments first,” but he knew that he was already persuaded. If the ship could be put into action, he would lead the expedition. Even to a planet whose very existence was doubted.

  Chapter Seven

  This was a different Garvin. The bombast was gone, and the golden tones had vanished from the voice. The girl was right, Del realized: Garvin knew how to frame an argument so that it appealed instantly. He had already set out the immediate history of the human race. The succinct outline he drew brought out the relevance and inevitability of their commitment to the search for the Forever Planet All human history had pointed the way:

  The first time man told a story that symbolized experience, the basis of our civilization was laid.” Garvin spoke with an absolute unquestionable authority. “We can all share in all experience. It's only a matter of technology then to allow everyone to take part in every experience that’s ever been recorded. When the total experience simulators replaced the earlier forms of sound and vision broadcasting, again it was only a short step to the ultimate stage in experience of what has gone before. The Frames. Re-creating the worlds of our past. It had long ago become the highest ethic of our civilization to entertain one’s fellows. There wasn’t enough work to go round—those who had the intelligence to understand the sciences dedicated themselves to making life amusing for the rest All life is a holiday. Work is a therapy.”

  The lucky ones get a job,” said Hec
tor Rosetti. I'm lucky. I even get high blood pressure.” He looked wistfully at Del: ‘I hear some of the Disaster Control people get ulcers?”

  “I’ve heard that,” agreed Del. Then they all looked back to Garvin.

  “The trouble is that there aren’t enough jobs,” said Garvin. “We can’t manufacture employment. Only entertainment. Now we need all the brains of the galaxy to keep the people supplied with pastimes. There’s no energy left for extra-Galactic exploration. The people who could work on the final problem— the Unified Field Theory—are juggling with the mechanics of the Frames. People like yourself, Del, who should be reaching out in ships like the Thomas Cook are struggling with details of Plot.”

  The girl broke in: “Del, you can’t let it happen any longer!He’s as sick of the Frames as we are. That right?”

  Del nodded. He found himself saying, “That’s how I feel. That’s how I’ve felt for years.”

  “Like us,” said Garvin. “I heard of the Thomas Cook last year from Suzanne. She built this place on the site of its silo.” He looked intently at Del: “Do you know that we’re the only four people alive who know where the ship is?”

  “No-one cared,” said the girl “No-one troubled to mark the place where it was put down.”