Caltraps of Time

by David I. Masson

  And so we went on. At one point I asked him, ‘What’ll you do for a living?’

  ‘I’ll have your job when you’re gone. They won’t notice — at first. Later they’ll say “Fitch is a new man these days.” I expect I shall look for a better job. Can’t keep slogging on at the same ground — “Me that have been where I’ve been.”‘

  About five in the morning it was, before we crawled into bed. After a late meal on Sunday morning we took things easy, especially as I was feeling groggy. By Monday morning I was lousy and the other fellow went to the call box to tip them off at work I had a spot of flu. It wasn’t so much flu as shock. He nursed me a bit, and by Tuesday I was much better, though everything seemed a bit dreamy and unreal. I’d swallowed his talk hook, line and sinker by now, so when Wednesday came round and I felt okay he was able to get me packed up with a couple of cases, let me draw out fifty pounds from the bank to add to the notes he’d brought back from the other world — reprints with a vengeance! — and took me by rail to a town about fifty or a hundred miles off, which I am not going to name for obvious reasons. After that we took a taxi, then did some walking with the cases, and finished up by an old warehouse.

  The entrance was dingy and unremarkable, but the inside must have been worked on a lot. Wooden panelling, probably three-ply, covered the walls and ceilings. The latter, however, were dotted with television cameras facing down the corridors. The floors were of cork tiles. Fluorescent lighting tubes ran continuously along the angle between ceiling and wall. The main warehouse rooms seemed to have been split into a lot of small rooms with soundproof dividing walls, aerated by an elaborate system of ducts and fans, and lit by more fluorescent tubes. The seats were of metal tubing, springy and nestable. Some sort of intercom murmured incomprehensible messages everywhere. Possibly they were in technical jargon. One hall of vast size (a large chop out of a warehouse space) was ‘the gymnasium. Lots of the boys here never get out. They’ve got to keep fit. Next door’s an indoor tennis court. Beyond, there’s a squash court.’

  Finally we stopped by a large door marked prelims. The door opened silently as we stopped, a voice said, ‘Come in,’ and in we stepped. Opposite the door began an open corridor. A couch or soft bench made of unit seats backed against the right-hand wall of the room, facing a metal chair and desk on the left. On the desk were a pair of phones, an intercom grid, some switches and what looked like a desk notebook but grey and glassy. Behind the desk sat a stocky, smiling individual of about forty. My double called him George One. Somewhat to my surprise I took to him at once and was immediately at ease. I spoke to my double privately a little later about this. ‘It’s his professional charisma,’ he said quietly, ‘but all the same, he’s a regular guy.’

  ‘Well, you’re going to sample the reverse-time world,’ George One said. ‘I hope you enjoy it. You have three hundred pounds with you, I believe, including your own fifty pounds?’

  ‘What’s your fare for the, er, switch?’ I found myself saying.

  ‘No fare at all. We are a non-profit-making organization; or rather, I should say, our profits come from another type of client. Besides, as a result of your loop, we have gained certain services from Fitch One here. In fact we are in a position to make you a small loan, which your reprint here will repay in his own time if necessary. We can let you have — now let us see — and he flipped over a bunch of documents on the desk, which I now realized comprised my dossier, and wrote with a wired-up stylus on the notebook thing, which immediately turned his movements into luminous marks ‘- three hundred cata-pounds in five-pound notes, in return for your fifty ana-pounds. Yes, your reprint repaid us two hundred and fifty pounds here last year. The other two-fifty cata-pounds are out of his own — your own — earnings in the cata-future. Here’s our contribution. Yes, quite genuine. No forgeries! Any little trifling difference in appearance is an ana-cata difference.’ And he handed over a wad. ‘You’ll need it; or at least, you won’t spend all of it, as we know now, but it’ll give you more security. Pay it into — what bank was it, Fitch One?’

  ‘Benchley’s,’ said my opposite number. ‘There’s a branch in this town in the Yonder. Mocklington Street, near the corner of Lime Square.’ I noted it down. Funny, I’d never heard of Benchley’s. But I supposed it was all right.

  ‘What do I do for a job?’

  ‘With that money you can make do for quite a bit, but still. What job, Fitch One?’

  ‘Apply at Number 63 Godwick Avenue — the second floor.

  ~ * ~

  The third week. They gave me a programming job. I stayed in the development side of the anaconvertron centre at first.’

  ‘This buzzing has its compensations, I can see — for the buzzee, at any rate,’ said the other man, smiling. ‘But mind you don’t try a “Steusöö”!’

  ‘What’s a shtoyzer when it’s at home?’

  ‘Oweh Steusöö did one a few years back. You may say he created the form. He belonged to the catacosm; he was, as we say, a catanthrope. He found himself confronted by a double doppel, two doppelgangers, when he’d never heard of reverse time or anything. He was on a bender at the time, so he took it in his stride. They all three got plastered, or so he thought, fell in with a joker who took them along to the reconvertron, that’s the cataconvertron, and all four did a reprint together, or rather it was a print-off (what they call a print-out) because he was a catanthrope and so was the fourth fellow. Then all four of them went on another binge in this world, and this joker got them reprinting, except that one of them refused. The other joker must have stuck around, but no one knows whether he reprinted or stayed on in this world. Well, after Oweh had done the milk-round three times in three characters as it were, with them (it took an hour or so at a time, sobering up a little, because he drank less each time round) he stayed put in this world, in fact he was the edition that refused to reprint. Now he’s Harvey Stoyce, the Centre’s tame petrol attendant just round the corner, and quite happy except when dead sober. Better if you open the petrol cap yourself.’

  ‘What sort of a name is Ovay Shtoyzer? Sounds German or something.’

  ‘It is German, of a sort.’ An indefinable expression appeared on his face. ‘But he was naturalized English even as a cata. Well now, it’s time to meet the boys and get on with it. First of all, let me assure you, you won’t notice the switching process, so you can stop looking worried. It’s all as easy as falling off a log, and a lot more pleasant.’

  He led the way down the corridor.

  ‘I thought there was a lot of preliminary screening?’ I murmured to my double.

  ‘Not in your case, thanks to me. I’ve prepared the ground, computer and all.’

  A large hall with various consoles and panels round the perimeter opened out at the end of the corridor. About thirty men stood or sat around, some gazing into panels, some moving levers, some chatting. Most turned and looked at us. Here I had a shock. There were twins, triplets, quadruplets, multiplets. Hardly an untwinned face amongst them. A bunch of identicals standing together were distinguished, I noticed, by round scarlet plaques or badges about three inches across, on their lapels, each with a different number, 1,2,3, and so on, in white. A few had yellowish-green plaques of the same shape, with black numbers. Then I realized. These must be some of those reissues that my double had told me about. But why so many, and why all together?

  ‘I thought you disapproved of doppels in general?’

  ‘Only for the layman,’ said our guide, ‘because of the shock and the complications. For the con boys it’s meat and drink. They reissue as much as possible, and team up here, after short runs in one world or the other. The psychotron effect makes for efficiency and know-how in convertronics and conversion sociology. So long as your runs aren’t too long — it all adds to anno domini. The more reprints on this ana side, working together in teams (and ditto on the other side of course) the more efficiently they work and the more info we can pool. Five years back they’
d have said we create a dialogue with the catageon. Now we call it a resonance. Yes, a resonance. It’s quite a relevant term. Reprints together are like twins, multiple twins: they know without speaking what their other reps mean, except for really new info, something really negentropic, so they can get on faster. We don’t talk of doppels and buzzes in here, as a matter of fact; we call them boings — impactions if you like. Impactions is the formal term. Every time a new reprint comes through it’s a boing, or reboing. How many reppies do you make, Phils?’

  ‘Twenty, it was. Only, six of them are out on a job, two went and re-edited into the Yonder, and five are somewhere round the works,’ murmured four nearly identical men of about thirty years of age, in unison. The other three copies stayed silent.

  ‘The “stock” Phil, what we call Phil Zero, is that quiet one in the corner — I think,’ said our guide. ‘Oh yes — that’s him with Nought on a red badge. The rest are true reppies.’

  ‘I don’t see any women.’

  ‘No, well, domesticated types don’t print off. Families don’t print off, much, at all. Too hippy a life. As for the other types of women, well, it’d be a bit disruptive for us. Especially with all those reppies about; who would pair off with who? They work well as agents in the field, do women, but not as convertron staff. So you don’t see them around here, except for the occasional one printing-off, or reprinting. We have a resident nurse or two, of course.’

  ‘How can I get along in the other world? It strikes me I still know next to nothing about it.’

  ‘Oh it’s all more or less like this one. We’re printing off a carbon copy of your dossier now. The computer’ll formulate optimum life ways, and the reception committee’ll fix you up with info. You can’t put a foot wrong. Anyway it’s all happened, so you won’t put a foot wrong, will he, Fitch One?’

  ‘It was all right.’

  ‘Still, I suppose I may as well say, better keep clear of your firm, in your home town. There’ll be an analogue of your firm over there, probably, and very likely an analogue of you. We want to avoid these pseudo-doppels or transpactions as we call them, even more than ordinary doppels. They can be very dicey, very dicey indeed.’

  ‘I’m still pretty vague about the whole set-up.’

  ‘You mean the conversion business, or what?’

  ‘The whole thing: the other world, the business of what time you get into which way, when they started this business, and so on.’

  The man George sat me down again, pulled up a stool, and went into a long rehash, more or less like my double’s talk on the previous Saturday, but in more detail. ‘Suppose I refuse to come back? Suppose I like it there?’

  ‘You won’t stay on,’ said Deutero-Fitch quietly. ‘Remember, I remember what you did, because you were me. You’ll be ready for reprinting at a certain moment. It all happened.’

  ‘Time’s up now,’ said George One, the guide. ‘Come on now. Sure you have everything? Yes, well, in here.’ And he led the way into a central chamber made apparently of opaque plastic walls, but walls about three feet thick. A great chunk of clear glass or transparent plastic occupied the top half of a massive door which swung out. Three television cameras surveyed the scene from near the roof. The lighting was brilliant. I had expected all sorts of machinery, perhaps a sort of electric chair, but the place was bare except for grilles in the ceiling and floor, through which a fierce gale blew, and a sort of arty-crafty fairy-like, almost psychedelic construction in the centre, like a frame for a TV pop singer.

  ‘Why’s there such a hell of a draught?’

  ‘To replace the printed-off air in the focus, of course. Not to mention the printed-off bods. Otherwise there’d be a sort of implosion each time.’

  ‘Oh, the air goes with me! That’s great!’

  ‘At Development, the reception end, you know, they suck the air out instead.’

  ‘Do I lie down or what?’

  ‘No, just walk inside that egg-shaped frame. That’s the focus. Take your stuff in with you. When you’re ready, making sure all your fingers and toes and luggage and hair and so on are tucked inside it, just nod and we’ll print you off. Don’t bother to stand still or even hold your breath — so long as you keep inside.’

  ‘What’ll it feel like?’

  ‘You won’t feel a thing — honest!’ And he and Deutero-Fitch walked out. The door ‘bonged’ to.

  Four delicately curving, narrow arms or ribs of plastic, meeting overhead below the roof but touching the floor well out, enclosed a space like a slender egg nearly forty feet high and nearly flat at the base (a little depression, perhaps twenty feet in diameter, on the tiled floor). This base was solidly covered with the same plastic. I stepped through between two arms, placed my cases one to left of my feet and one to right, folded my plastic mac and laid it on one case, took out my wallet and the chequebook, made sure everything was all right, and replaced them. I almost looked for a passport. I took a deep breath, looked at my watch — 4.35, the second-hand prancing round towards forty seconds — and nodded vigorously. Nothing happened, except that my heart was pounding sonorously away. The door opened and another of the staff came in. ‘Welcome to you,’ he said. ‘Welcome to your first run, your first edition.’

  ‘It didn’t work,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, it did. You’re in the catageon now. Never seen me before, have you?’

  ‘I suppose not. I thought you ... Weren’t you out there a minute or two ago?’ (Now I came to look at him, his scarlet plaque was the wrong shape; it was square.)

  ‘I was out there, yes, but not Down Under. You’re in the other world now, boy. You’ve made it. This is the Developer end of your world’s convertron. Come and have a drink. I expect you could do with one.’

  ‘I was expecting to feel dizzy, hear a bang or something.’

  ‘I know; they all do first time. I’ve been back and forth a couple of times now. You get used to it. By the way, be careful what you say about the two worlds. Most of the reception committee are ananthropes, but one or two — with yellow labels, you know — are catanthropes. To them, this is the real world, and the one you came from is reversed. Better stick to neutral terms. We usually call the other universe Down Under, or Over There, or La Zone, and to say “printing” is safer than “printing off” and “reprinting”. Come and meet my three editions — or should I say reppies?’ He winked. ‘Oh, a minute — these bags. Bring ‘em along here. Now open them and lay them on that metal shelf, with your mac. The machine will unpack them, then it will check the contents with your lists and repack. Won’t take long. You’ll collect at the other side of this wall after the party.’

  The outer chamber was devoid of the gadgets it had had when I arrived, and empty of everyone else. I began to believe. As we went out into the corridor a sort of crematorium hatch swallowed the shelf with my bags and mac.

  The ‘party’ was in a large room just beyond. Over a dozen people, three of them women, were standing around, some with drinks already in their hands. ‘Fact is, couple here got engaged, so we’re throwing a little celebration. So you’ve got company this round.’ And he introduced me. There were four Sams, red 1 to 4; three Johns, yellow zero to 2; two Mays, yellow zero and 1; Harry, red 1, who seemed to be engaged to Fay, red 1; and two Jims, red 2 and 3. All their badges (and my new friend’s badge) were square, not round. My new friend himself was Frank red 2, and numbers 1, 3 and 4 were also there.

  ‘Do I get a badge?’ I said.

  ‘No, only con and recon staff get them. Here’s your drink. To your future!’ And he winked and went off.

  ‘I suppose,’ I said, finding myself facing the two miniskirted Mays, ‘one of you’s been Down Under for a time.’

  The two girls giggled inanely. ‘Yes, and the other’s going too.’

  ‘I just left my reprint behind so I had a parallel situation,’ I said, accepting my second drink, something short like the first.

  ‘Parallel times never
greet,’ said May zero (at least it sounded like that) and flounced off, leaving May 1 contemplating me quizzically. ‘I hope you’ll have profited by your stay,’ she said cryptically, and with a slightly acidulated smile slid off at a tangent.

  The drink was powerful all right. I attended to it for some moments, then found my eye caught by my Frank 2. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘you look a bit lost. Don’t worry about the future. You’re kipping with us for the present, and we’ll give you the gen tomorrow. Just now we’re off the hook a bit for once.’

  ‘I’m rather at sea. Can’t seem to speak the language, somehow.’

  ‘No, well, life here takes a little getting used to. Keep your ears open and your mouth shut among the natives at present. Anything you want cleared up from your pre-print briefing, by the way?’