Caltraps of Time

by David I. Masson

  I was going off for a fortnight with Cat — it was now summer — but unfortunately about this time the Forward-Drivers having lost so many by-selections, they decided to work to rule and the country came to a standstill again. We hired an autobil, however, and got away. We had to go far north to find a beach (which is what we fancied) without tar, jellyfish, or three-families-two-transistors-and-an-ice-cream-van to the square yard. We struck lucky for the weather, too, which is more than all the other millions on Tribain’s shores did.

  When we got back I found an unknown Circadian had assassinated Dr John Wycliffe Queen, and President Thompson had cancelled his visit to Monolulu. Gimson had reshuffled the Tribish Caballist. Racism was suspected when the driver of a train was killed by a stone flung over a bridge, because two of the passengers in the train happened to be coloured. The death penalty was proposed for genocide, defined as killing a person whose genetic skin colouring differs from one’s own. The Government staged a sit-in in the House of Lords. A minor canon was fasting in the Great Hall of a northern university in order to demonstrate against the oppression of students by university authorities in general. Twenty-five university staff and their wives and families ‘took over’ (as Look Forth put it, meaning, squatted obstructively in) a Students’ Union for a week, in protest against the students’ political victimization of a visiting right-wing speaker; some of the papers forgot to report that 300 of their staff colleagues had signed a document deploring this takeover. A university porter who washed a painted slogan off a wall was accused of Fascist brutality on this account: ‘It’s a clear case of moral violence!’ shouted twenty Anarchists, mostly from other institutions, interrupting a concert held in aid of spastics, so that the audience of 500 had to go home and their money was refunded. Following the collapse of the tripartite Gallic Revolution, reactivist leader Manuel Lohn-Bandit from Paname was invited to Tribain by the TBC and government, to confer with militant leaders from other countries. At the height of his triumph in the Caledonian binaries for the Meritan Presidency, popular Roddy Hennessy was shot dead by an Assyrian who wished to celebrate the anniversary of the Philistine Jehad; the Divided Nations immediately cancelled their debate on Philistine. Monaphra said they would shoot down any plane that dared to bring food supplies to the starving Negentran infants. Meritan children of fourteen were forbidden to buy revolvers except by mail order, despite an outcry from the Bring Back John Birch Order of Bison, the Man a Minute Militiamen’s Klan, and the Drum-Minorettes of the Meritan Revelation. In Tribain the biochemical warfare establishment at Towton Bourne began holding visitors’ days, and members of the public were invited to ‘adopt’ a guinea pig or a rabbit there. Among Crussian movres and counter-movres, popular President Dutschke, said the headlines, was given a ‘blank cheque’ in Prague.

  I went over to Cat’s flat one evening soon after and found a note saying she’d be out for an hour, please wait. (May was away for a month.) I played a few records and after a bit got bored and started rearranging the furniture. Then I thought I’d shunt the bookcase sideways a bit that May and John had pushed against the cupboard the other day. I thought I could manage it on my own, and as I heaved vainly at one end, one of the cupboard doors swung open. There was some grey packing paper inside, but no shelves. The paper was rather roughly shoved up behind the cupboard doors and it half fell over.

  The whole cupboard was full from front to back and from floor to ceiling with gold ingots.

  I revolved a few things in my mind. Thoria, May, John, the thin man and the big man at John’s party, the telephoning and the packing in John’s bedroom then; John’s remarks about the Crippen Paxton and crime not paying in the con-recon business; the gold crises in the world, the catageon anyway (didn’t know what might be going on in the anageon in the same time-section). After a bit of thought I put everything carefully back, bookcase door and all, and left Cat a note to say I couldn’t stay. I wanted to think things out for a bit. Looked like she was being fooled by May, who was probably in the plot.

  By about 11 p.m., after walking round and round and round, I thought I had better let Cat into the secret, and I went back to the flat. I could see there was a light on in her bedroom so I let myself in quietly, not to cause a scandal and so on. She’ll be reading in bed, I thought, I’ll give her a nice surprise. I opened the door softly.

  There was no doubt what she and John were doing on the bed.

  Somehow or other I found myself in my place — I’d slipped out softly and hailed a passing taxier, I suppose — and ringing up Frank 2 at the con-recon, after their switchboard had got it into their head who I was. Yes, he said, I could come over right away; he was on duty all night. I felt I trusted him. I’d kept the taxier waiting while I packed and left a cheque. In half an hour I was closeted with him. I told him everything I knew; he did a lot of telephoning and intercom speaking, then he drew up an affidavit and got me to sign it. He said they would stage an ‘accident’ or a ‘nervous breakdown’ for my place of work, and reprint me back to the anageon. I mean, I’d had it as far as this universe was concerned. He said they’d had their suspicions something was going on, but the Johns had charge of that side of things. He said he thought they must have been doing a ‘perpetual-motion spin’ with the gold, reselling and rebuying the same gold and continually printing it across from one universe to the other and back again. All sorts of jugglery.

  Frank 2 got me and my stuff in the egg frame they had at that side, with two copies of my affidavit and his own signed comments appended. ‘We’ll stop the gold drain racket pretty quickly,’ he said, ‘and as to your personal life, you’ll have to write this off to experience. You’ll come up fighting in a month or two. Not all girls are tarts, you know.’

  ‘Can I do anything to help?’

  ‘No, keep your nose out of it; there’s murder and worse on the fringe of this sort of business.’

  ‘But what’ll I do for a life? There’s my ur-doppel, I can’t dog him for a year.’

  ‘Fitch zero, you mean? Stay around with the con-recon boys Down Under for six months or so. Show these documents to George 1 — that’s the man who briefed you in their prelim-room. (He won’t know you, because he’s a year younger than he was then, of course, but that won’t matter.) Don’t show them to anyone else, and don’t say why you came back. I think I know who the Johns’ opposite numbers are, but I won’t tell you. Better be on your guard against everyone but George. Do what he tells you, and after a few months you can travel around and see the world before boinging Fitch zero, so you can indoctrinate him and close the loop.’

  And that’s what I did. More dead than alive, about five in the morning, I reprinted back here. I said could I see George 1 before going off, and they said he was asleep, so I camped out in his office till seven o’clock, when he showed up and woke me up. I told him the whole tale. He nipped off with my documents, sending in some brandy and hot coffee nearly treacly with sugar, which saved my life. When he came back two hours later he said they couldn’t disturb the temporal pattern, so they would have to let things ride at this end for two years, but they had fixed up for the Centre Security boys to keep close tabs on every operation of the gang, and would meanwhile organize suitable counter-measures through world bankers and so on. As to my disappearance from the catageon, I had a good personal reason which John and Cat would guess at, and the best thing was to leave Frank 2 to run the catageon end, as a direct message would be two years too early.

  They gave me a job in the Centre. I got to know the organization pretty well. Naturally I’m not giving away any details in this write-up. I’m going to store it there or in my bank — haven’t decided which place. Hope it’s legible, finished off in this reporter’s notebook in the breeze. I had talks with George about the curious parallelism of the two worlds — of course I was living nearly an ana-year earlier than the cata-year I had known, but you could see what was in the wind, after the psychotron effect of my little loop. I had some theories about t
he whole set-up and George thinks there is something in them. Then I wangled a job as a roving reporter in Europe for six months, which redoubled my cynicism, I can tell you, and which also kept me away from proto-Fitch. Now I’m on that fell-walking tour which is going to start the cycle rolling. I’m sitting on that moor summit writing up my last notes, waiting for him to walk up the slope towards me. There he is, a speck on a track far below. He’ll be up in a quarter of an hour. When I talk with him later at his digs — my digs — I won’t tell him my project. Too confusing. I’ll just say, which will be true, that I’ll stay in on his firm for a bit. But I’ve greater ideas in mind, and I think the con-recon will finance them. Here’s my theory in a nutshell, before I stand up to watch him climb the slope. Here’s the psychotron effect as it seeded my brain:

  Shakespeare says:

  As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,

  They kill us for their sport.

  (or as I once heard it on the radio in the Yonder, where it was part of The Apophthegmata by Davy Jones:

  A s’prize to war-torn guys, I weep the sods

  Dave billed as not their sort);

  but it would be truer to say the ‘gods’ are psychopaths who put us, both ananthropes and catanthropes, through our antics, in order to fall about giggling. Nothing else can explain actions and attitudes so vicious, short-sighted, humourless, senseless and downright insane as we poor sap(ien)s indulge in. I intend to devote the rest of my life to finding out just who are these witless galvanizcrs of humanity, on both sides of the glass. Then perhaps we can be set free. (The gold gang will be mopped up a year after I rejoin, but that’s a mere detail ... So is the transcosmic ‘resonance’ we shall set up with the writer of that article in the catageon’s Scientific Armenian, if we can manage it.) I shall try, probably with George’s help, to promote a research project based on the convertron-reconvertron Centre. We shall feed in significant data from both universes into the con-recon computers, if we can buy enough time, and see if they can point a finger at our puppet-masters. As far as I can see at the moment, however, both Dr Fausta and Dr Faustus inhabit a world given over to devils; not the wickedest, not the greatest, not indeed traditional anti-Christian devils at all; merely the silliest: irresponsible flibbertigibbets, the nadirs of inanity, gnats of nothingness. These are our animators.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Take It or Leave It

  2000. 223. 08.42. Out of bed wrong side today. Trouble was, drier was cold. Following my shower, a freezing gale. Called up the man but took two hours to get through, and when I did get his ugly face on the screen he said it’ll be ten days till they can show up. Maggy says why not use the holiday wraps — towelling should absorb enough moisture if you rub and pat a bit — and pep the washroom up to 30. Suppose that’ll do. Have to. Then meanwhile the hairstyler got a bit cranky and aligned my second lock in front of my shoulder instead of the sine curve I’ve been used to, sod it. Johnny had to open his pharynx about it, too, young bug: ‘Your hair’s skew, Dad!’ Denise kidded me it was the sparrows. Maggy says I must have moved. One of these days I can tell, this is going to be. I hope you’re functioning anyway, sodding tape-set; play you back and see ... Good. And then when I pressed the news button I thought, I bet this’ll be black and so it was; this is, as black as they ever leak. As usual, the British news was cushy, only the exter news leaked much. Thousands dead in American riots, some of them fried by the cops and feds. (Ours only rinse, never heard of frying here.) Same thing in Japan and China and Russia, more or less. Between the lines, inter looked bad too: ‘The disorganization in Mersea is under active control. Prospective traffic from other megalopolises is advised to contact the police by prior call, during the next ten days.’ I’ve heard that one before. No motivation to visit in Mersea, luckily. Then the weathercast: why they have to keep the rain off the south and west and let it chuck it down all over Midlandia and the north I don’t know. I suppose the agric zones have to have their sun, but why at our expense? Depressing, I call it. All very well for the uppercrust with their ion fountains and their sunlighting.

  ~ * ~

  Another day. Looks like showers. Feels like showers, too, from the ache in my bones. Sun’s still up in the north at the day-ends, shouldn’t be summer’s end for a month or two. How you feeling, Maggy love?

  Well, stir the kids and see if they can’t find some hips. In spite of that cat last night, my innards are grumbling, dunno ‘bout yours ...

  Look sharp, John. That hedge’ll have something on it by now. Watch out for the Gibsons, though. Now they’ve settled in the old helicopter, their Larry goes prowling early, and he’s grown up real strong. I’ve seen him down that far. Couple of stones sent him off last time, but it won’t always, and if you and him was to meet up there suddenly on your own, I wouldn’t back you, boy. Take the big catapult and four, five stones, do for a cat as well if you see one. The old fence post’ll come in handy too. We’ll be OK, with the aerial and the branch.

  Wish my father had bought me a non-wind waterproof watch. It would have lasted through the river, and I’d know where we were so to speak. I think Mike Gibson must have one. Seen him looking at his wrist.

  Have to look out a new battery if it gets much colder. You don’t know how to start a fire properly, do you, Jane? Denise’ll show you next time. First cool day after a dry stretch, we’ll have one; some of the doors and chairs’ll burn nicely, on the drive. Keep the bugs away too, if we leave a bit smouldering on the porch; too many in already. So long as we can keep the ants out. Plug the crack in the door with clay, Denise, and open the other door if it gets hot.

  ~ * ~

  09.10. Johnny and Denise blasted off to the schoolab. Never guess they were fraternal twins if I didn’t know. The pre-inductee centre’s only five hundred metres off, but I worry sometimes. Jane’s infant centre doesn’t operate since the barons wrecked it the other night, but she looks in on edscreen here instead. Just now she’s working on her ‘tartriper’. This is what she used to call her talkwriter. She needs motivationing, though. According to Maggy it’s correctioning she wants; Maggy’s too hard on her.

  Maggy’s set the clensomat and called up the instruction program she’s on about now — what is it? Light-sculptation. I suppose this means she’ll be on at me to get her a light-sculptor for Christmas. It’s time I called up supplies, not to mention the programming for the old megastore. This batch has to be a bugged sample. Which reminds me: I have to check again for bugs on our own cartons; I don’t fancy guinea-pigging for other firms. Maggy doesn’t know all their little dodges yet. Then I’ll have to mission the megastore this afternoon, I suppose.

  I do hope Denise and Johnny are all right... No one would take them for fraternals, she images at least a year older, so we get all these disapproving stares when we’re togethering, from people that don’t have big families. Maggy decisioned to have Jane prior to her implant skinpill (she was getting allergic to the sniff method) — she said a third would keep the twins from fighting, when it grew up a bit, and it’s true they don’t resonate ... Someone actually propositioned Denise by paternoster three the other day. It’s these eyes, this height, this sexational hair. Took her for an inductee, shouldn’t wonder. Better than sexmurder, anyway.

  Time for calling the megastore. My sight-aid? Here ...

  ~ * ~

  That ceiling’s leaking. The rafter’s rotten above, I think. What say we look around for another pad? House-hunting’s hopeless, I know; places standing all occupied. Still, search around might turn up something. Don’t say anything to Jane; I’ll just have a wander, soon as John gets back.

  Isn’t that Mike Gibson up the hill? Coming through the old gap? Hope he hasn’t seen John. Denise, climb upstairs and have a look round. Give that whistle if you want me up. Hell, there goes another meal; I’d have hit it if I hadn’t been looking after Gibson; cats always shoot past the gate now. Try and get that thrush, Maggy, your aim’s better.<
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  ~ * ~

  10.05. Mail buzzer. First for six days. It was from Jim. A bit cagey, but clear Jessie’s not herself and something shorted with Bill. Jim never got this tape of mine, day 205, seems. It was the mail strike, I bet. I’ll try a remake. Reach him in five days, say. Or shall I just call him up?

  10.31. No good. Been trying half-hour now. Half the channels are this way nowadays. I wonder, now, would it be quicker just to transportation it and visit with him? Let’s see: the block; the transit, say half-hour; the integrator, say twenty min; the HVT, one hundred fifty kilometres, say half-hour with acse and dece; at his end it’s multimode — say another half. Half-hour visiting — or say hour with lunch. Be back mid-afternoon, look in the megastore, OK, Maggy ...

  10.41. She thought she could negative-pressure me, huh. No, I must mission him. Two-legs better. Calling-up’s hopeless, this channel. So long as he’s in. Can leave a notation, if he’s out. Take my notation-set, in case. Or get a spare one at a store his way: I’m not a nupe-watcher, if I’m shedding all this credit another nine pound won’t sink me. Even get a cassette and leave a tape after all. What’ll I get into? The yellow has this hole the time the barons — Maggy forgot to put it in the automend. No negentropy, this ma has; place is like a disability home. The old green, then. The red waywear, and carry floorwear, because he likes his floor cold. And sod it, I’ll take you; might want to record something while it’s hot, in transit. But Jim’s I’ll buy, if necessary. Set the responsomat for the megastore, in case. Be off in a micro.