Chronocules

by D. G. Compton

  her”

  “Don’t be bitchy, Liza." More in anger now than sorrow. “He spends his money as he wishes, as he has every right to. As he has every right to.”

  Perhaps she had gone too far. It was comforting to have been checked, for otherwise she would have gone further. Not that she showed it

  “Bitchy? My God...”

  “You re tired, Liza.”

  “That’s what people always say. I’m perfectly all right.” ^

  “You’re tired, and this is a very anxious time for you. More so than for any of us. Professor Kravchensky expects a great deal of you.

  “No more than I’m glad to give."

  “Of course. I know that. I’m not a fool, Liza."

  He was so quiet and old-fashioned. He made her say old-fashioned things. In spite of everything she would have liked to cry on his shoulder, and, when she had cried, to take him away somewhere dark where he wouldn’t be shy, and undress him, and sex with him. It would be the nicest, most impossible way out of their present tensions.

  Bees buzzed. The garden smelled of wallflowers and lavender. An old movie. She might have kissed him had he not leaned forward at that moment to get up, so that their noses collided. It became more like an old movie all the time.

  “I’ll fix it with the professor,” she said. “A lump of

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  lead that disappears is always impressive. Well set it up this morning.”

  “Thank you.” He stood before her, gave a little bow. “I’m truly sorry to waste his time with such things, but it can’t be helped. . . . And I meant what I said about you. You’re complicated, Liza. Perhaps the most complicated girl in the whole Village.

  The dissolve line. He walked quickly away, before he could be involved in explanations. Through the wicket gate and along the street, waving as he disappeared behind next door’s lilac tree. Except that next door and next door and the next door after that were all phony fronts on the single mass of the laboratory. What the hell did he know of women and their complications?

  She hunched herself crossly on the end of her bench, hands in the pockets of her white coat as if she were cold. It was a hell of a time, a hell of a time for all women. . . . On account of jobs and pills and education and muscular development they were no longer to be cosseted. On account of nakedness and articles on clitoral stimulation in the Reader’s Digest they were no longer objects of mystery and awe. On account of there being fewer men than women, so that the men were able to pick and choose, they were no longer the receivers of male attention but the mirrors of male vanity. On account of their autonomy they dared not need moral support or comfort. On account of over-population they denied themselves the ample families that often lay at the heart of their desires. And when they did have children their conditioning forced them, ignoring the advice of child psychiatrists, to abandon them as soon as possible in favor of jobs as lawyers, politicians, statisticians and child psychiatrists.

  In return they gained their own banlr accounts, their own mortgages, their own names after marriage, and a

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  substantial increase in the number of women’s public lavatories. It was a hell of a time for all women.

  Liza Simmons stayed sitting on the garden bench for some minutes, letting her mind slip away into tiredness and muddle and general irritation. Eventually she found a point of focus: David Silberstein. She could hate him for looking at his watch instead of at her tits, and for giving her the very ungrateful task of passing on his orders—however obliquely phrased—to Professor Krav- chensky. The professor would be made very angry. It took time to reset the pulse generator and the accelerators to a narrow inorganic spectrum. Once set, they could be used for nothing else. All experimental work in tiie laboratory would stop. And there was so little time. The world galloped away around them and there was so little time.

  It didn’t make sense. If Manny Littlejohn were really growing restive would he be pleased if because of him the program was set back even by so much as half an hour? And all for a pointless charade? Ignoring the pointless charade everywhere about her, Liza Simmons decided he wouldn’t. He couldn’t be so stupid. She returned to the laboratory to help Professor Kravchensky set up his next experiment.

  “My dear child, where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” He obviously hadn’t moved from his desk. Perhaps he’d sought her under the accumulated layers of paper. “And for Mr. Silberstein. Where is Mr. Silberstein?”

  “He left a few minutes ago. I think he had to get back to his office.”

  “Odd. I never noticed him leave. . . . My wife is quite right—I ought to notice things more.” He stared at her, dutifully noticing her perhaps for the first time in weeks. Liza wished he wouldn’t. The things that

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  tended to happen when he noticed her Were none of them pleasant. “I wonder why he came? Perhaps he wanted something.”

  “If he had wanted something, wouldn’t he have told you?”

  “How pert you are today, Liza. Of course he would.”

  The subject successfully annihilated, he moved on without a break.

  “Go to Workshops, child. Bring back another of these chairs. Just tell Daniel we need something to sit on— he’s very niggardly about c.u. subjects. And bring back a roll of chronomic filter medium. I think I can see a way of lessening the reentry impact. And on your way, child, consider the possibility of ascribing a new value to big C. Deriving it from chronomic drag coefficients, maybe. I’ve been roughing out some new equations.”

  He stared at her, his period of noticing over, seeing v for a nose, two B’s for ears, a — for a mouth, and + signs for eyes. She took her log-table legs back down the stairs and up the Village street. If his wife only knew what sad gymnastics noticing people sometimes led to, she’d never say another word.

  Liza served the professor so uncomplainingly for the unrecognized reason that, brilliant as he was, she herself was equally brilliant. In that context service was an act of respect between equals. It was also the only way of learning what Professor Kravchensky had to teach. She walked briskly up past the Post Office and turned left into a narrow alley between fuchsia-topped walls. Sickly ballerinas, pink with purple knickers, brushed her face. New values for big C slid similarly by, forcing themselves similarly onto her attention and being similarly disregarded. Her mind was on other things. She was approaching Workshops by the side entrance so as not to run into David Silberstein. He was a beaten track

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  man. He would aslc her if she had spoken to Professor Kravchensky about the experiment. She hadn’t, and she didn’t intend to.

  It was ten-thirty, and in Workshops the Trade Union men were having their mid-moming break. The motor unit for the spare rescue boat was in for repair, also some relay units from the lab, and somebody’s coffee grinder. Beyond the machine shop, Woodwork was cluttered with pieces of new desks for the Village school. Liza found the Workshops Supervisor in his proofed office, doing nothing, his feet on the desk. She’d come at just the right time. She liked Daniel: they’d sexed in the past and, though nothing special (was it ever special?), they’d had fun. She’d sort out all the complications built up by her gauche talk with David Silberstein.

  She remembered that after sex Daniel was always sleepy. In that condition he’d give her all the chairs for Professor Kravchensky she wanted.

  “Daniel! How are you? Fainting from over-work?” He jumped, dropping the sheaf of papers that had been propped against his knees.

  “Blast you, Liza. Why don’t you knock?”

  “You were asleep.”

  “I was not.”

  "Supposing I’d been the Founder?”

  “I’d have heard you half a mile away. All work- real work—stops when the Founder’s around. It’s the Village Band, rockets, calisthenics
on the lawn, conducted tours of the Checking Department.”

  He tried to pick up the papers without taking his feet off the comfortable top of the desk. Liza came forward and tickled his creased instep.

  “You sound very bitter, Dan.”

  “Look, Liza”—he twitched irritably—“if Kravchensky’s sent you here, the answer’s no.”

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  “No what?”

  “No thank you. No coffee pots, no umbrellas, no chairs, no ornamental inkstands, no clocks, no embroidered slippers. I’ve had a memo. If it’s artifacts he’s after, I’m afraid he’s out of luck. Tell him to try out his bloody chronomic unity on detritus from the beach.”

  “You’re vile. Anyway, he’s sent me for a roll of filter medium.” The other could come later. Daniel, at thirty- five, liked juvenile chat. “So pimples to you.”

  He took his feet down, and began casually making out an indent form. He was a handsome man. Although in a managerial position he avoided the managerial image by going in for a beard and intricate body painting. He also wore a chic shoulder holster for wallet and handkerchief and pens. She liked a man who took trouble, who had pectoral muscles and used them to advantage.

  “One roll of filter medium.” He scribbled a signature. “That’s a legitimate indent. I’ll get one of the men to dial it from stock.”

  “There’s no hurry.” She took off her white coat, hung it behind the door, and sat on the edge of his desk. “It’s the men’s break time. Also it’s a lovely morning. I thought

  it might be fun if we—”

  “Tell me, Liza”—he made a business of putting the top back on his pen—“tell me what the professor finds so special about artifacts. I’m sorry if I sounded bloody- minded, but I can’t see why he doesn’t use just anything. At least till he’s reasonably sure he won’t write the stuff off.”

  Liza leaned forward and smoothed the already smooth hair on his chest. In another decade she would have straightened his already straight tie. Daniel let her, at the same time distancing himself from the implication of temporary ownership.

  “He’s worried, Daniel.” She pretended not to notice,

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  answered his question because there was plenty of time for both. “There’s always a danger of overshooting. The whole question of timing re-entry is very difficult. There are subjects we’ve lost altogether. They may turn up at any minute, or not till long after we’re all dead and gone. He doesn’t want the future suddenly getting lumps of detritus off the beach. It wouldn’t be polite. Surely you can see that?”

  She left the desk and went pointlessly to the water cooler. Without clothing the display rituals were more difficult. She drew a cup of water she didn’t want.

  “If he was paying the bills,” Daniel said petulantly, “perhaps he’d see things differently. I have to justify my accounts. An entry called ‘Good Manners’ just isn’t enough.”

  “There’s another thing. The future will judge us by the things we send. The things we use will be ambassadors for a whole way of life.”

  “Then if we were honest we’d send shit. We’d send poisons and garbage and shit.”

  She was being taken further from her intention. She drank the water she didn’t want and threw the cup down the chute.

  “You need to relax, Dan. There’s two sides to any society, even ours. On a morning like this you need to take things easy. You’re free for the next twenty minutes. It’d do us both good if we sexed a little.”

  “It might. . . .” He stretched, and began to get up. Then he thought better of it. “But I’d really rather talk for a bit.”

  “What about?”

  Sex-talk was seldom used. Habituation had killed its effectiveness. It was odd that nerve endings took so much longer to get bored than mind endings. She perched on the arm of Daniel’s chair.

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  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “What do any of us really want to talk about? We who aren’t in on what’s really happening up in that lab

  of yours.”

  “You read the professor’s reports.”

  “Do me a favor. He was in government service for years before he came to us. If there was one thing that taught him it was how to write ten pages of nothing at all.”

  “Where do you get the designs for*your body painting, Daniel? I love the shading on the shoulders.”

  “Don’t change the subject. For God’s sake, Liza, all of us here in the Village, we’re here for one reason only. We want out. He shouldn’t put us off with handouts. We’re worried. We’ve a right to know.”

  “Honestly, Dan, you wouldn’t understand the full situation, even if it were explained to you. It’s far too technical.”

  “I’m no fool. Why not try me? I’ve read my chronomic theory. Why not try me?”

  She placed her hand on his stomach, her middle finger in his navel. He’d shaved the top edge of his pubic hair into points. She revolved her middle finger, pressing each of the points of hair in turn, as if they were keys on a computer console.

  “I’ll do my best to explain. Though you probably won’t be half so worried after we’ve sexed.”

  He took her hand away and held it gently, tactfully. She’d rung up + operator error +

  “Another time, Liz. I’ve already had a couple with Sarah, and three in the middle of the morning make me so sleepy I don’t get anything done.”

  Sarah was his assistant. Liza registered—and denied —an extraordinary hark-back, a feeling of jealousy.

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  "You know best. I just thought it might be fun. There’ll be plenty of other times.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  "Of course I don’t mind. You’ve your work to do, same as anyone else.”

  She ought to mind. He stood up, put his arms loverlike around her, and she responded, prodding him with knobby nipples. Six prods and against her belly his penis was still disinterested. He lost heart.

  “You see, Liza? Nothing but a piece of chewed string.”

  She tried to take the chewed string in her hand but he moved away.

  “It’s all so unfair, Liz. That Sarah can have a couple with me, and then go straight off and have another. And all I can do is make excuses to you about having work to do. . . . It’s humiliating. It puts men at such a disadvantage. The continual hard-ons of old-fashioned pornography are so much hogwash. You ask any man.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Daniel.”

  “Not to you women it doesn’t. It feeds your sense of power.” He leaned on the desk, his back to her, flexing his muscles in a compensatory manner. “You can sex yourselves cross-eyed. But me, I’m at the mercy of an old, unwanted banana. It’s just not fair.”

  He was getting female sexuality all wrong, perhaps on purpose. The rights of man often needed twisted arguments.

  “It’s not true, Dan, that women can—”

  “And then, to cap it all, you’re kind to me.” She didn’t remember being kind. “That’s the final insult. I suppose it’s what you’re taught in your lectures: ‘Be kind to the poor things, you may need them again later.’ So you’re kind. Kind and understanding. Always so bloody kind. ...”

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  She couldn’t tell him, but what her lecturer had really said was that once they reached the stage where kindness was necessary it was already too late. (It was the need to make such subtle points that had necessitated the reintroduction of separate sex education.) “Behind every erection, girls,” the lecturer had said, “behind every erection is a male ego. Nurture it, girls. The male ego is a tender plant, but it can throw forth a mighty flower.” The lecturer was more given to rhetoric than was wholly suitable. Liza decided to try a little last-minute nurturing.

  “You’re wrong, Daniel. I wasn’t being kind. I was
simply hiding my jealousy of Sarah.” Admitting it to him, but not to herself. “You don’t realize what you do to me.”

  She was afraid she’d overdone things but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t listening. He was winding himself up.

  “Anyway, what are we? Animals in cages—bored, despairing, always in heat, sitting in comers sucking our sexual thumbs. Twiddling our sexual fingers. Picking our sexual noses. Scratching our sexual armpits.”

  He was wronger with every word he spoke. Frighteningly wrong. In sex only the simple, ancient things mattered, so her lecturer had said. (The simple, ancient thing between his legs, the simple, ancient thing between hers?) All the rest, the civilizing process, was trimmed away, leaving people at their most beautiful. He was so wrong.... Wasn’t he?

  “Regarding our sexual navels. Bored stiff, that’s what we are, Liza. Bored stiff. . . .” He half-turned suddenly, watching her around his whiskers. “Except me. And I’m bored limp. And that’s the final degradation.”

  He waited to see how he was doing. Liza smiled uncertainly. She hoped he’d been joking all along. He put

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  his naked arm around her naked shoulders, irretrievably, irritatingly unclish.

  “Don’t look so worried, Liz. I’ve tumesced, and now I’m done. It was lovely....”

  He returned to his desk and sat down. He smiled at her encouragingly. But the room was rancid with the defiance that follows an,act of cowardice.

  “Now, Liz, suppose you tell me what Professor K. really sent you over for? Any little assistant could have fetched a roll of filter medium. He could’ve phoned for it himself. Tell me what he’s really after.”

  “Another chair.” She felt fourteen. She fetched her coat from the back of the door and put it on. He’d been wrong. She knew he’d been wrong. She knew it till her head ached with the effort. “He wants another of those elmwood chairs. Do you think you could possibly manage it?”

  “Don’t plead with me, girl.” But she wanted to. If she pleaded life was simple, a matter of recognizable relationships. “Tell me to go to hell. My job is to provide your department with anything and everything you want. Tell me to go to hell.”