by Colin Kapp
‘You should get so lucky!’ said Manalone. ‘The programme’s three times the length for a start. Get lost, Victor! I don’t want to know any more about your fifth-rate operations. If you want a programme, go hire yourself a programmer from the labour pool.’
Blackman’s mocking smile was completely undeterred. ‘Programmers I already have. What I need is production programme expertise – and that’s what you’ve got. I know you’re the best man in the country because my old Sigma Eleven is producing things now that even its manufacturers never claimed for it.’
‘Whatever the scrap-yard charged you for your Sigma Eleven, you were cheated. They should have paid you to take it away. And that goes for the rest of the junk you operate. You don’t want production expertise – far kinder you have a damn good fire.’
‘Harsh words, Manny boy. Fortunately I know you don’t mean them. I’ll offer you five thousand for the full set of new software. That’s my last offer, and I may go broke because of it.’
‘Do that small thing,’ said Manalone. ‘Can’t you get it through your thick skull that it isn’t a matter of the price.’
‘Six thousand.’
‘You don’t listen to a damn thing I say!’
‘What are you saying, Manny? You don’t like money? You can’t tell me you can keep an ultra-expensive pet like Sandra happy on peanuts. She must be costing you a fortune.’
‘All I’m saying is I don’t like your organization or your methods. No programme, Victor, and that’s final. So stay out of my hair!’
Manalone cut the connection and decided it was time to go out for a stroll before Blackman thought up a new line of approach. As usual, his exchange with Blackman had put him in a good humour, and, leaving his cape on the rack, he walked out into the soft sunshine dressed only in his informal leisurewear. At the Chichester Road he had intended turning right, but a glance towards Elbridge gave him an idea and set him on a different course of action. The sight of the huge excavators in action on the site made him again curious about the past and its systematic prohibition.
Watching the progress on the site was a common pastime for many of those dispossessed of work either partly or completely by high-level automation. Manalone had been to the site a few times before, watching the gigantic machines churning the soil like feverish moles driven by an inescapable compulsion to reduce every feature of the landscape to a common muddy plain. Later, when the deeply milled ground had settled, the builders would come and cover everything with concrete and erect their close-planned and incredibly unimaginative spires of steel and ceramic. Maximum-population-density housing was a soul-destroying concept, but it now occurred to Manalone that the exercise might also have a second function. Where the great machines had dug and where the concrete had been poured – there the elements of the past had been irretrievably shattered and then locked down certainly beyond the reach of the next three generations.
As he approached the excavators, Manalone found himself viewing their function in a very different way from hitherto. Formerly he had marvelled at the vast cutting wheels, the diamond-tipped teeth, and the tremendous motors which drove the cutters unhesitatingly through bricks, rock, soil and stones alike to the depth of several men. Now he was watching only the way the teeth pulverized and broke the raised material, allowing no fragment to remain which was larger than a clenched fist. The cutters were currently working down to a bed of wet flints and sand. The hundred or so workers attending the operation paid no attention to him as he worked his way to the very edge of the trench to obtain a better view. To the workmen, it was just simply a job; only Manalone read any significance into the rasp and rattle of the flintstones as they were shattered by the diamond teeth.
‘Manalone, could the past have been so terrible that they need deliberately grind it down before they cover it with concrete? Or is it here and now that’s so terrible that they daren’t allow comparison?’
There was no answer to the question. The former housing estate on the area had been demolished to make way for the maximum-population-density housing which was now to be established, and traces of even older roads and tracks were being dredged up and destroyed by the remorseless wheels.
‘The past is usually buried by Mankind’s inability to communicate it accurately from one generation to the next – and by geological events and atmospheric fallout. But here the process is a deliberate one: the suppression of knowledge, rendering illegal the investigation of the past – and making its future interpretation impossible by grinding and attrition. If this policy goes to completion, the human race might as well have achieved spontaneous gestation yesterday.
‘Somebody is working desperately hard to conceal something which doesn’t appear even to exist. You’re a problem-solver, Manalone, and you’re watching clues being actively destroyed by the minute. Today you’ve a chance to get the answers: tomorrow this will be the site of nothing.’
Manalone watched as the wheels bit into an area of ancient, buried tarmac on a rubble base. On impulse he glanced at the sweep-hand on his watch and he timed the measured progress of the cutters whilst he paced out the distance. Casually the answer was not informative, since the excavator had apparently struck an old road at an oblique angle, and the cross-cut took far longer than he had supposed. Filing the results into a mnemonic key for future reference and subsequent evaluation, he turned his consideration to the site as a whole, afraid that in his attention to detail he might be missing the obvious. There were four other excavators working and a total of about five hundred men, but the only thing he saw which was worthy of note was a distant observer with field-glasses apparently watching the operations from the vicinity of the Chichester Road. Or was it himself who was being so carefully observed?
‘Watch it, Manalone! You’re developing a persecution complex!’
He dismissed the idea of being watched, mainly because he could do little about it anyway, and followed the sight-seers’ usual route on past the excavators to the levellers, and from the levellers to the compactors, and finally along the rutted track which led past the wire-protected compounds and back towards the Chichester Road. It would be an exceptional pair of field-glasses, he reasoned, which could tell the nature of the thoughts which were churning through his mind.
9
Manalone and the Unlikely Labourer
Now that he looked closely he could see that the site compounds were more heavily protected than he had assumed. They were three in number: the one he was approaching being a parking place for the excavators and similar large machines, and the second and third were the store compound and site barracks respectively. Whilst the outer fences were made of conventional welded mesh, he discerned now an inner fence containing steel barbs of more than usual spitefulness. However, the thing which stopped Manalone in his tracks lay between the two boundaries – a thin rail of exposed high-tension cable supported on long, green, insulating stakes.
The shock of the realization hit him almost with the force of a physical blow. Since the compound was merely a machine park and had otherwise only a few rough wooden huts inside the enclosure, such precautions seemed to be taking security to rather a wild extreme. Protection against vandals and the clumsily curious was a legitimate endeavour, but to insert an unmarked death-trap into the defences betrayed a zealousness not usually associated with civil engineering.
He was still puzzling over this feature when he came abreast of the gateway leading into the parking enclosure. A small hut functioned as a gatehouse, and he glanced into it casually as he passed the entry spur. Instead of the civilian gatekeeper he had expected, the trim grey lines of a uniform caused him to look away lest he should attract attention, but his glance was not so brief that he missed the short carbine hanging from the shoulder.
‘Armed police, indeed, to guard a civil engineering site. Keep walking, Manalone. You seem to be playing in the wrong league!’
Prudence dictated that he did not pass the remaining compounds too closely on his
way back to the road. Closer observation could have told him nothing that he had not already guessed. He had heard of the establishment of CALF, the Civil Auxiliary Labour Force, much heralded by the Ministry of Reconstruction as a scheme for providing work for many thousands of unemployed and hastening the housing reconstruction programme. What had not come over well on the recruiting posters was the fact that CALF was a paramilitary if not a military organization.
‘So much for civil engineering, Manalone! The problem is not that CALF have armed police and electrified fences. The question is why do they need them.’
His new route took him across a wide tract of recently milled ground to the very edge of the Chichester Road, where a solitary labourer was clearing hedge-shrubs and small trees from the bank in preparation for the entry of a new road to the site. Since the results of these labours also provided the only reasonable exit, it was towards this gap that Manalone directed his path.
The solitary labourer was the thing that next took his attention. The fellow was using a self-powered tool to cut through what had once been a thickset hedge. However as he cut, he turned constantly to examine the ground he had cleared, and to probe it with a stick. As Manalone approached he noted that the labourer was even more unlikely than his curious activity suggested. A shock of silvery hair surrounded the pallid whiteness of an old and truly aristocratic face, and the bearing and approach were those of an academic hobbyist.
Manalone noted these things with half an eye and had actually gained footing on the main road before an intuitive association stopped him dead and made him turn again. From the expression on the labourer’s face he could see that the fellow had recognized him before his own mental processes had put together the unlikely web of circumstance and features which made identification possible.
He went back, hesitantly.
‘Professor Oman – you remember me? Manalone?’
‘I don’t know you. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Pierce Oman, one-time professor of history, cast a frantic glance in the direction of the watcher on the road.
‘Don’t worry!’ said Manalone, grasping the nature of the man’s alarm. ‘I won’t compromise you. I can guess the situation. But what the hell brings you to this?’
Oman cast him a despairing look. ‘Where else could I be? Only here, watching the rape of history.’
Manalone approached him closely, sensing that his presence was an acute embarrassment to the old man.
‘Look, Professor, is there somewhere we could talk?’
‘No!’ Oman’s frail reply was almost a cry of agony. ‘Manalone, go away before they see us talking.’
Manalone stood his ground. This old and waxen man with coveralls ripped by the thickset hawthorn undoubtedly held clues to many of the answers he was seeking. To make a visual play for the benefit of the watcher, he pointed first right and then left along the main road, and Pierce Oman, divining his intention, made a similar play of giving directional advice.
‘I’ll go when you give me an answer, Professor. I know what they’re destroying here – all I need to know is why.’
On impulse Oman fished in a coverall pocket and pulled out a crumpled paper bag containing something hard. Manalone transferred it straight to his own pocket without looking at it. The thing inside the paper bag felt like a twisted bone …
‘The answer’s there,’ said Oman. ‘Don’t look back, don’t come back. If they find what I’ve given you, they’ll kill me.’
Manalone kept walking. The incident had shaken him severely. His acquaintanceship with Pierce Oman had been short and a long time ago, but sufficient to leave him with a considerable respect for the old historian’s academic ability. To see the same man now forced to the point of labouring with his hands in order even to remain near to the site of the elimination of history, was something that stirred Manalone in bitter resentment of the Establishment.
‘But don’t start tilting at windmills, Manalone. If they could break a man like Pierce Oman, don’t be too sure they can’t break you too. Better first find out whom you’re fighting and what you’re fighting for.’
The package in his pocket worried him. His leisurewear did not carry the voluminous pockets of his cloak, and he felt the bulge was conspicuous. He longed to take the package out and examine it, but he was sure the old man’s life might be jeopardized if he was discovered with the forbidden object near the site. He restrained his curiosity until he had completed the long walk home. Once inside his own walls he breathed a sigh of relief to find that Sandra was not home. Then he pulled out the packet, and with trembling fingers he took out the enigmatic object which Pierce Oman had valued as being equal to his life.
It was a perfectly unremarkable glazed earthenware handle, presumably broken from a cheap teapot …
He could have wept with disappointment. ‘Try again, Manalone! They don’t kill Professors of history for giving away pieces of broken teaset. Or do they? Is Oman mad? Or are you mad … or is it the rest of the world that’s come unhinged? Impossible films, unlikely statistics, improbable conspiracies, illegal disciplines … and teapot handles. Alice in Wonderland would have loved this!’
For a long time he turned the broken ceramic fragment over with his fingers, trying to draw more information from it. When its cheap, cracked glaze and dirty fracture refused to give him any more than a sense of frustration, he dropped the article into a filing cabinet. Then he went to the leisure-space and turned on the television to relax the pressures on his mind.
He tuned in to a party political broadcast, part of the campaign series before the imminent election. Alex Stormtrop, leader of the New Party in opposition to the governing United Technocrats, was outlining the tenets of his policy. Manalone was singularly unimpressed.
‘Jupiter! To hear him talk you’d think that politicians actually controlled things. The poor idiots in reality are merely a baffled rearguard trying to legislate changes in the social environment brought about by advances in technology made anything from ten to a hundred years ago. Henry Ford had a greater impact on the shape of society than all the politicians who ever lived.
‘Which brings us to an interesting conclusion, Manalone. The current rash of problems with which you’re involved may be nothing more than manifestations of the Establishment groping to deal with the effects of a major technical advance. The question is: which technology, and where did it advance to?’
Six hours later an autram brought Sandra home. From the narcotic glaze of her expression she must be judged to have had a good day. Manalone helped her into bed, then stood for a long while marvelling at the perfect form of her features and the glorious gold of her hair. Objectively he was trying to analyse his own feeling towards her. He loved her, yes, but there was something else – pride of possession. As Victor Blackman had suggested, she was an ultra-expensive pet. Finally Manalone came very close to tears.
10
Manalone and the Elective Non-event
Manalone’s notion that the root cause of the mystery was related to a technological rather than political phenomenon received no further support for several days. However, the suspicion hardened into a certainty the more he thought about it. No amount of political discourse could possibly affect either gravity or momentum in the way he had seen it displayed in the film.
‘Could it be, Manalone, not that the film was impossible but that it was truly representative of its time? What if it’s the physical world itself that has changed?’
The question was easy to refute. Physical laws were not amenable to repeal by committee. The acceleration due to gravity was as reasonably constant as one could expect from the dynamic nature of its origin, and science was not going to have much new to say on momentum for quite a few years yet.
‘But if the physical world has changed, why are they going to so much trouble to obscure the past to prevent comparison? Manalone, this is becoming insane! How do you fit teapot handles into an equation?’
; The concept of teapot handles gave him an idea. He was beginning to appreciate now both the reality and the scale of Raper’s postulated national conspiracy. A conspiracy of such magnitude must certainly involve the government – and now, on the eve of a general election, that particular government might easily be put out of office. Manalone began to haunt the television channels, listening to the currently dominant United Technocrats trying to defend their past actions, and hearing the counterclaims of the powerful New Party promising economic and sociological miracles. It was all very superficial and banal.
This in itself was surprising. He had anticipated being able to detect a veiled apprehension in the ranks of the Technocrats, who, if their bid for continuing power failed, must surely leave the bones of the conspiracy exposed to the new administration. He had also expected to find concealed anticipation in the leaders of the New Party, who must surely have stumbled at some time against the web of Security, and would be eager for the opportunity to peer behind the curious screens to see what mysteries they contained. Manalone found no trace of anxiety or anticipation in their political manoeuvres, and, no matter how he searched, the great conspiracy could not be observed to exist.
‘Which is ridiculous, Manalone! You’re a complete political non-runner, yet given half an hour of national television coverage you could damn the Technocrat administration permanently by simply reciting what you know. It doesn’t seem possible that the New Party is unaware of what is going on. Yet they decline to make political capital out of it.’
Almost unbelievingly he listened to the old political tirades, the excuses, the allegations, whilst knowing with a dreadful certainty that nearby an ex-professor of history was in the centre of a situation which should have been a political bomb. The expenditure on Security forces alone could have been an issue which would have fetched down the existing government. This glossing-over of the really vital areas of government administration mainly confirmed his suspicions of the communal value of the political animal, and left him with a cold and helpless anger. If the free-election system could not protect the public from gross abuse – then what, in the name of creation, could?