Abut, meanwhile, had taken a train. A stone struck his compartment window but he only got a cut face. He had to miss Tomorrow’s Gimmicks, an entertaining programme about scientific gadgetry, and wait six hours in hospital while more urgent cases were dealt with, and finally was walking home at two in the morning when he was knifed in the ribs. The history of tithes never got published. (His widow later left their house unoccupied too long, and it was three months before the squatters were expelled, leaving slogans executed in excreta.)
Kevn and Younis next day, just back from a half-weekend celebrating the bicentenary of Shiftem Trendy, went for a walk in the park. The usual speakers were there, plus two they had never seen before. One, a flushed youth with the bulging forehead of an epileptic, was yelling, ‘We are living in exciting times! A new morality is being worked out! A total revolution in thinking is under way! Bourgeois liberalism and bourgeois ethics are dead! A new dawn is rising!’ His scanty audience ate ice creams and dropped the cartons and papers on the grass. The other, twitching, with tremulous limbs and dully glazed eyeballs bearing witness to the long-range toxic effects of too much continuous indignation, had lost his voice in catarrh, and his audience with it. His gaze fixed on a caravanserai of noble thunderheads sweeping and boiling above the horizon, he was hoarsely murmuring, ‘Nature, unutterable muddle of elegance and horror, of micro-miniaturized precision and mega-waste, indefensible handiwork of Nobodaddy! Man, unspeakable paragon of presumption, who out-elegances Nature, who out-horrors Nature, who are so sure you are right in your casuistries and that others are wrong, who cannot spare a moment to imagine what your neighbour needs! Man, pleased with your most infantile follies and your most cynical manoeuvres, who — heckler, protester, terrorist, oppressor — in the name of freedom will obliterate freedom, in the name of peace plot war, in the name of right do wrong — when will you make an end of yourself and give the illimitable messy universe a chance to start again clean?’
‘Time for lunch,’ said Younis. ‘Something extra special I’ve run up. You’ll never guess.’
<
~ * ~
Doctor Fausta
Plus ça change et plus c’est la petite différence.
I first met him when I was a year or two younger. Now I’m older and, perhaps, wiser, I know better what to think of that meeting. It was a day just like today. I was walking alone in the Peak District. The weather was fine (for the north of England, anyway) but not too hot; there was a fresh breeze blowing behind me, and I was climbing up a long gentle slope in the limestone-and-grass area when I saw him, a tall figure like myself, standing stock still, a mile ahead at the top. After a bit I saw that he was looking down towards me. He had his hands in his pockets, a rucksack like mine on his back, shorts, no cap. Gave me an uneasy feeling, having him waiting there staring at me. Looked casual enough, though, with those hands in his pockets. Lost, maybe, or just lonely. I slowed down a bit as I got near the top, and the wind seemed to drop. A few bird cries around. No one else in sight. Three hundred yards away now, he sat down by the track, still staring towards me.
As I came up I saw he was smiling tentatively at me, still silent. It was he who looked guarded. Then I saw why. My heart gave a great leap. He was very like a photo of me might be, only a bit more lined, a bit less hair perhaps, mouth tenser at the corners. Must have given him as much of a turn as me to see the resemblance. Then we both grinned at one another, like children who share a secret.
‘Hello!’ was all he said. Thin voice, but I had an idea I’d heard it before, somehow.
‘Waiting for company?’ I said.
‘Thought I might as well wait, seeing you were coming this way.’ His voice trembled oddly. A nervous chap. Kept watching my face. Hands still in pockets.
‘I’m going over to the hostel down there,’ I said. ‘That your way too?’
‘Yes; mind if I come with you?’
‘Okay.’
After that we went along together, but he seemed to dry up. Let me do all the talking, didn’t say much about himself, said his plans were vague, said he’d had a job abroad but it was good to get back. His voice lost its tremble and he seemed to relax, but he had the air of listening all the time, if you know what I mean. As if he expected pearls of wisdom to fall from my lips. None did, of course.
‘Funny we look so alike — you might be my twin brother -only a bit older perhaps,’ I remarked at one point.
He gave a snort of laughter. ‘Doppelgangers, yes; we do.’
I asked if he knew my home town, and various places the family had come from. No, he said, but didn’t go into details.
At the hostel he seemed to look around and get his bearings. We chatted about this and that — religion, sex, the government, students, food, drugs, TV, parties and so on. Except for a sort of reserve and vagueness here and there, his views were very close to my own, only a little more bitter at times in comparison. Next morning he went down the valley, while I went over the next ridge.
~ * ~
A couple of weeks later, when I was just rustling up tea after my first day back at work, who should turn up but this type again. There he stood at the door of my flat. He had a small case with him this time, and, a town suit. ‘Thought I’d look you up,’ he said. I must have given him my address, I supposed. I had to ask him in. Gave him tea. The fellow and I got talking. Pretty soon we were finishing each other’s sentences, agreeing with each other like mad. It was late at night when we drew breath and I offered him a doss-down on the settee. We clashed in the bathroom next morning, but he presented me with a tinned ham and said he’d a day or two to kill; might he spend the evenings in my pad till then? This was all right by me. He said he’d browse around the shopping centre nearby, lunch out, and be back that night. Which he was, with some beer.
A couple of days later, early in the morning, we were deep in discussion of old Donne and Priestley and serial time. He was letting me do most of the talking this time. Suddenly he got up and began to pace to and fro.
‘Ever hear a tape recording of yourself?’ he said.
‘No, why?’
‘You’d be surprised at how different you might sound to yourself. So they say. Never heard one myself. Ever noticed your own mannerisms?’
‘Now I come to think of it, you’ve got one that’s rather like mine — rubbing your left ear when you’re thinking. That’s the only one I can think of. I suppose you made me notice it by having the same trick.’
‘Ever studied your fingerprints?’ And he came up close, seized my left hand in his right, swung round, and laid his own left hand alongside.
There was a long silence. Those left hands were twins. The lines on them were twins. The whorls and loops on their fingers were twins. Same thing with the right. I stared at his face. It had a mole on the right cheek, the spitting image of mine.
‘We must be unique,’ I said shakily. ‘The only identical non-twins in the world.’
‘You think so?’
‘I’m sure so. Stands to reason. How—’
‘Then what about this chickenpox mark?’
On his left temple was a little pit, in the same place (and with the same shape and size) as mine.
‘Let me tell you a few things about yourself you never told me, and haven’t really told anyone. Your mother used to call you Bop when you were five or six — correct? ... You were called Fits at school — spelt f, i, t, s. You pretended to like it, but secretly you hated it... You cried yourself to sleep the first day at boarding school, but no one knew — right? ... A terrier frightened you by jumping at you, at the age of four, but no one saw — right? It was a sandy ginger thing with one black ear. And you never told anyone ... You could never stand the way your father put his hand on your shoulder when he was trying to put something over on you right? But you never said anything about it, you never let on ... Have I said enough?’
I sat down and looked at him. I was rubbing my left shoulder resen
tfully.
‘Your middle name is Absalom but you never told anyone. You changed your second initial to I because of the word that A makes, and you told that girl Katy two years ago that the I stood for Ian — right? ... Now let me tell you who I am, and how I know.’ (And he sat down.) ‘My second name was Absalom. I told that bird it was Ian. I was called Fits. I was frightened by that dog. My father put his hand on my shoulder. And so on. Yes, I am a doppelganger: I’ve been buzzing you all this time, a real doppel. I knew you were going to come up that track up the moor just then. I knew you were back from your first day’s work when I came to your flat. I knew where it was and where you work. I knew because I am you ... only a little bit older ... I don’t expect you to believe it, not all at once. Let’s have some coffee.’ And he made the coffee. His hands were shaking a bit. As for me, my mind was whirling.
‘Well now, let’s begin at the beginning. You’ve heard of the idea that some of these elementary particles are particles going backwards in time? In fact I know you have. You read it about four months ago, or thereabouts ... It’s Saturday night, we may as well make a night of it and sleep in tomorrow ... Someone said he thought there might be a reverse-time universe, what he called the Faustian universe, in which time went the other way, and all the particles would be anti-particles to ours. A silly name, Faustian — Faust was going the same way as the rest of us, only he got jumped back to a personally younger age at one point, that’s all. The effect of spending time in the reverse universe ages you, it doesn’t make you younger. For there is a reverse universe. The catacosm, the boys call it. This one we’re in is the anacosm. The earth here is called the anageon, the other one is the catageon. Across there, only in the same spot, if you get me; only it can’t really be the same spot, or the two universes would annihilate each other. But no one seems to know where it is, or even if the word where has any meaning in this context. Anyway, it’s a nearly identical universe, with the same galaxies, clusters, novae, solar system, planets, earth, continents, seas, animals, plants, men, national groupings, events, and so on, broadly speaking; as long as you choose the same instant of time ... But you can’t choose, really. That’s it. When you “print off’ — that’s passing from one “cosm” to the other — you print off onto the same point of time as you started in.’
‘You mean, you mean, there’s a lot of people switching from one universe to the other?’
‘That’s it. They are. As I was going to say, if you print off, as they call it, at, say, 1970, then 1970 is the year you find yourself in, or rather the anti-particle you that corresponds to you, what we call your edition. In fact you find yourself at the identical point of time, down to the identical attosecond, as it were. Only, when you “reprint”, that is, when you come back here again, you reprint at the same old angle, so to speak. Suppose you print off at 1970, and then live on through the catageon for six years up till 1976, and decide to reprint back into this world; the year you come back to as a reissue as we call it, is 1964, six years earlier. You’ve been going backwards for six years. (For people who start off from the catacosm, it’s just the other way round, they print off at the same time point, but reprint n units earlier.) Now meanwhile, you’ve perhaps met up with guys who printed off in 1973, say, and landed in 1973 in the catageon. Once you know the ropes, you can contact guys back here who maybe lived there as editions, say ten years, suppose from 1973 to 1983, then reprinted back to — 1963, it would be. If you play your cards right they tell you everything they know. Besides, you get a new slant on things just through living through them twice, as it were. One way or another, you get a sort of boosting effect; we call it the psychotron effect. The convertron boys — where you print off, you know — give you a bit of gen, of course, because everything’s not quite the same, in that world. But it’s near enough. History, current affairs, names — it’s all pretty close to ours.’
‘How long has all this been going on?’
‘The primary convertron won’t get built in this world till 1990. But a lot of scientists will go over then as first editions and stay twenty, thirty, forty years. Then they came back forty years older from the year 2030 in the catageon via the 1989 AD primary reconvertron there, into the year 1950 here. They lay low here and formed a gang of eggheads and built the secondary convertron here round about 1960. In some ways it’s better than our primary will be. Most “printers” avoid doppels like the plague — doppels, that’s “buzzes”, I mean meeting your original self. But I thought I’d risk it and let you in on the secret (anyway I had to, because that’s how it happened to us). You are me, only minus a year of experience as a cata, and another year working some things out as a psychotronized ana. You’re going to print off, when you get used to the idea, and sample the catageon as a first edition, before reprinting as me. The secondary reconvertron went up about 1961 in the catageon, so we’ve been able to reprint as anageon reissues ever since.’
‘How do I know I will go over?’
‘Because I remember going over. I couldn’t resist it. Don’t forget, I am you, only a little older. Have some more coffee, it’ll help you think.’
‘Will it help me stay sane? Thanks — black, for God’s sake, and no sugar this time. My God ...’
‘Pass us the biscuits. I remember I — you — did, they’re in that cupboard, had to remind me — you — where they were.’
‘Okay. Did you remember me dropping one like that?’
‘I dropped one, yes. Well now, we’ve got the weekend to work out details and you can ask me questions. I think it’s about 5 a.m. we get to bed, and we have brunch tomorrow about 11 ... I get dizzy myself sometimes. They warned me about doppels ... You get a touch of flu on Sunday night and recover about Tuesday, really a piece of luck, because that gives us time to make the switch before your office knows you’re okay again.’
‘Oh, I get flu, do I? Thanks!’
‘Not at all! Delighted! Then we’ll travel to the convertron and print you off.’
‘What’s all this print-off business?’
‘Printing off is what happens to you in the convertron. Your particles here are all replicated by anti-particles in the catageon, the reverse-time earth, making another you, which we call an edition. Your own particles disappear in the machine. As the new edition is an exact copy of you, only going backwards in time, it’s the same personal age as you. Of course it has the same memories and personality. Now, as I was saying, owing to some principle they haven’t yet fathomed (or if they have I never picked it up) you always print off, from whichever world, onto the same point of time, every time you do it, even if you go round and round. But you always reprint from the other world into your original world, onto a point of time as far back from your point of view as you have lived through in the other world. There’s a lack of time symmetry in this business, it seems. I spent about a year as an edition, then when I reprinted and became a reissue, as we call it, I found myself a year back in time from when I (or you) printed off, that is, from about now. I’ve been swanning around for a lot of that time, after working some things out with the convertron boys. Finally I came and did a doppel on you. Got it?’
‘Dimly. What’s the point of all this switching about? What’s wrong with this world?’
‘Plenty, when you think about it. Isn’t there, now? Would there be all these protest marches and unrest and so on, if there wasn’t? A lot of people get fed up with this world, and when they get to hear about this conversion business, fancy trying the other. It’s a brain drain in effect. Some of them decide to come back, like us. Some go round and round, gaining ideas all the time, each time round, more voltage, the psychotronic effect. Then again, some people are dumping unwanted goods by persuading the convertron squad to print them off — have to pay heavily for transport to dump, of course, or to market; and there is a tight limit to the volume you can print at a time. And they have to document your antecedents and addresses, in case an SOS of some sort comes up and a rescue operati
on has to be mounted from one universe to the other. (Messages are easily printed off, of course.) They did an Eichmann kidnapping once on an ex-Nazi who had got over.’
He spoke like a sleepwalker. Not like a sleeptalker, no! Everything he said was crisp. But like an automaton. A kindly automaton. Easily, though, and with no suggestion of urgency. He seemed to wait for me. That was it. He knew what I was going to say and how long I was going to take over it, how long everything was going to take. He’d seen the play before — as me. At the moment when this thought hit me he opened his eyes (he had them lightly closed) and smiled at me. He knew what I was thinking. A goose goose-stepped on my grave and I shuddered, but a sort of relaxation communicated itself to me and from then on I floated easily along.
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