Caltraps of Time (21 page)

Cat and I started dancing, and presently, when the crowd was thinning out a bit, I got her to come out with me. I got hold of a locomotor-taxier, and after driving around a bit took her home in it. She insisted on saying goodnight outside her flat, which she shared with May, apparently. I paid off the taxier, which had run up quite a bit of a fare, and walked home to simmer down and to register in my mind the whereabouts of Cat’s flat. We’d fixed up tomorrow night for a meal and dance.

Next morning the news said that jobless white Lenians with Hindi passports were being denied entry into Hindya because Hindyan food-supplies and educational facilities were already strained to breaking-point. Three white murderers were hung in Dodecanesia, in defiance of a royal reprieve in Tribain; Dodecanesia looked like becoming a commonwealth. Programme-news followed: Gerard M. Hopkins’s ‘Four Quartets’ plays,
Taking to a Scrounger,
were to be repeated, this time on TBC3.

Cat had obviously been to the hairpresser. She looked bewitching, but slightly alien, in a micro-shift of silver. The dance woke us up, though. Afterwards she asked me in (May was off that weekend) and left me for a moment while I stared, I remember, at a pretentious full-page advertisement in
We
for Starbuck Martyr Oloroso. We drank randies, however. Perhaps that was what got us into bed.

The next few weeks were a cross between a roller-coaster and being becalmed in a fog. Part of me kept going on the everyday material plane. The rest was fathoms deep. Meanwhile the outer world rolled on. There was an outbreak of congregational violence in Tribain, apparently intended to inhibit free speech. Mauretania celebrated her independence. There were Polovtzian riots. Grobnik won against Winchester United. The President of Sloczo-Chekhovia resigned. Gone for ever, hoped radio commentators, were the days of a mono-glyphic Ominoust flock under the commination of Crussia. There was a gold-selling panic, till the bankers took gold off the money-standard. Anti-war aggressioneers in Peyton Place kept thousands of police busy on several Sundays, while the criminals had a field day, stealing the treasures of St Paul’s and the House Guards. Jenkins resigned because of Brown’s swingeing budget, but remained Leader of the House. The proprietor of a Yoho ‘Donkey-Club’ was prosecuted for refusing to employ three coloured girls as ‘Neddy-Girls’. Euphonic plague spread in West Niet-Farm. A Germite plane landed mysteriously in a Clashire field and a rash of angina cases spread through Clashire hospitals. Hoof and snout reappeared in Tribain. Euan Parnell made a speech about ‘rivers of blood’ flowing through the campuses of Tribain, and a mob of London Doctors of Philosophy processed to Parliament to support him. What did I care! I was astride a dream. As for Thoria, she just dropped out of my life. Occasionally I saw May, with whom I now got on quite well. Once, turning up rather early at Cat’s flat (to which I now had a spare key), I found May and John apparently shunting the furniture around. They were just pushing a bookcase against the built-in cupboard, and looked rather bothered. I lent a hand. They said Cat and May had got tired of the cupboard and never used it anyway. Cat came in from outside and lifted an eyebrow, but said nothing. May and John vanished and we had the flat to ourselves.

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 the 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.