Chronocules Read online

  Joseph leaned against the counter, the better to support his laughter. He thrust the newspaper at the O.C., struggling for breath.

  “Harmless to human beings—that’s what I like. Doesn’t it make you feel better, O.S.? Doesn’t it?”

  He stirred in David Silberstein a vast, unreasoning hatred. He would have to go. He was too familiar. He had no sense of what was fitting. And his mind was sick.

  “Don’t look so strict, O.S. Me, either I laugh, or”— suddenly he became very still—“or I hang myself.”

  The moment lasted, silence pricking David’s skin. He was ashamed. In the kitchens behind the shop someone clattered dishes. On David’s hands was the sweat of his anger, now cold. Everybody coped as best he could. Joseph turned away, shrugged his huge round shoulders.

  “And then,” he said, “then who would there be to cook for your distinguished visitor?”

  The O.S. was grateful for his modulation, for a new theme in a different key. He didn’t know how he could ever have managed it himself.

  “A distinguished visitor, Joseph? Who told you that?” “The Color Sergeant’s dog runs very fast, O.S. And he is a special friend of mine.”

  David was being asked politely to mind his own business. He didn’t press the matter, but attempted instead a little jest of his own.

  “Then no doubt the Color Sergeant’s dog will have told you just what’s needed?”

  “Certainly he has. It is to be a triumph, a meal fit for a king. And at the same time”—Joseph wagged a ponderous finger—“at the same time it is to have the ap

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  pearance of an improvisation, a meal thrown together quite at a moment’s notice. The sort of meal a resourceful chef prepares for an unexpected guest of honor.”

  “The Color Sergeant’s dog is well informed, Joseph. I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  As the O.S. left Joseph was searching behind the counter for a pair of scissors. He was papering his family’s living room with newspaper cuttings. Two and a half walls of the Doom Room were filled already.

  David Silberstein called next at the Workshops. No special preparation was necessary there, but the Chief Technician was also conductor of the Village Band. David wanted to be sure that all its members had their instruments on hand, ready at a moment’s notice. Their repertoire, as was suitable in a village band, was limited but enthusiastic.

  From the Workshops David went to the Crew Room. It was a visit that had to be faced. As he had hoped, he was in time to catch the six crew members all together at their morning conversation session. They, assembled daily for an hour’s undirected talk with their Training Supervisor, their Athletics Coach, and the Village psychiatrist, before separating to their individual teaching machines and television sets. Enrolled in the University of the Air, they were between them taking courses in:

  Applied Medicine Chemistry

  Comparative Religion Logic

  Mathematics, Pure and Applied Modern History Social Anthropology World Literature

  Business Management

  Communications Theory

  Linguistics

  Logistics

  Micro-biology

  Nuclear Physics

  Sociology

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  In addition their Training Supervisor, a retired diplomat, gray and distinguished, a man David Silberstein disliked intensely for no really good reason, gave lectures in etiquette, deportment, sincerity, international humor, and public speaking. Besides all this they had a stiff program of physical culture and training periods in the world’s major games.

  Their undirected conversation sessions, therefore, were an essential part of the course, counteracting any tendencies toward isolation or neglect of the more homely aspects of human relationships.

  The noise in the Crew Room was deafening. David Silberstein had entered unnoticed, grateful for a time for adjustment, a time in which to gather courage. In the presence of the crew members he felt dangerously diminished, insufficient, hardly justifiable. Three brilliant young men, positive, bronzed, muscular, of outstanding beauty, and three brilliant young women in their own ways equally remarkable, they changed him at once from a perfectly adequate middle-aged man into a sickly, weak-minded, sexless dotard, an insult to to the human race. Even his clothes—in other contexts charmingly old-fashioned and, even in such weather, suitable to his generation—seemed an admission of failure. As if he were ashamed to go naked. Which he was.

  In the presence of the crew members he tried to stand straighter, to deepen his voice, to frown with the high seriousness of his position. All this might well be making him appear a worse fool than ever. But he’d never know, so superb were the crew members’ manners.

  The Training Supervisor noticed him at last, waved, smiled . . . it was a smile that made David feel better, that made him feel wanted and useful and important.

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  An expert smile. Realizing this, he at once felt worse again, unwanted and useless and negligible.

  “Come in, O.S.” He already was in. “It’s good to see you. I’d suggest you drop over more often if I didn’t know how busy you are. Still, you’re here now. Take a pew. Make yourself at home.”

  David was pressed gently down into a deep, red leather chair-couch.

  “I won’t interrupt the crew, O.S. This hour is so important to them. They rush around it like dogs suddenly let out on a wide sandy beach.”

  The phrase, typical of Sir Edwin, was irritating. Because it was so apt? David Silberstein battled with his prejudices. He reminded himself, as he had done so many times before, that it was not fair to hold against a man the fact that he was so very, very, very likeable. . . . He made an effort.

  “They do you credit, Sir Edwin. They do humanity credit.”

  And indeed they did, especially in the nakedness that rested so unattractively on most. Perhaps the T.S. himself—though he never showed it—had qualms when he saw himself beside them. Not a young man, no longer with flesh enough quite to fill out his skin, surely so much better clothed?

  “Of course,” the T.S. was saying, “the important thing is not to regard them as mere lumps of meat. Nor yet as mind/body complexes. They’re people. Individuals. They have failings—indeed, we cultivate failings. Perfection would be boring, oppressive even.”

  He leaned back on his chair-couch and crossed his legs. David Silberstein caught himself noticing what painful displacements of the male anatomy were caused by such a simple act. He looked away quickly. Perhaps he was sick, body-fixated, suffering from genital obses-

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  sion, fetishism even. He gazed controlledly around the Crew Room, able to see by an effort of intellect only faces and hands . . . no nasty breasts or bellies, nipples or pubic hair. Which was just as sick. Sometimes even the words embarrassed him. One day he must screw himself up to having a quiet word with the Village psychiatrist.

  “Quite so, Sir Edwin.” David had no idea what the other man had been saying. “I agree with you completely.” ^

  The crossed legs jiggled and crunched. Things were said, drowned by the effort of not looking. A reply became due.

  “I wish I could stay, Sir Edwin. Hang around and watch the training program ...”

  Perhaps if he liked the man he wouldn’t object so much to the buckled skin of his—God, the word was unthinkable even. He must get away, wash out his mind with sunlight and hills.

  “Unfortunately”—he struggled to his feet—“unfortunately I have a lot to do this morning. I just called in to make a . . . suggestion.”

  The T.S. also had risen, but elegantly, and with distinction, and was now standing sideways so that David Silberstein could not help seeing the stitching of his chair-couch embossed in the skin of his arse. Arse? What was David Silberstein coming to? What was the world coming to?
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  “It might be a good thing, Sir Edwin, if the Crew Members kept themselves ready for a^session of physical culture at very short notice sometime during the next two or three days . . .” He kept talking, not thinking about arse, just talking. After all, what he had to say was important. “Tell them not to get so wrapped up in their studies that they don’t hear the warning bell.”

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  The T.S. looked at him shrewdly. His was a face that in an earlier period might have been ironically mona- cled. He might not enjoy the friendship of the Color Sergeant’s dog (did he enjoy anyone’s?), but he was well able to make his own connections.

  “It’s a very fine sight,” he said, “the Crew exercising on the Village Green. Particularly reassuring to those easily impressed by physique and innately suspicious of intellect. I hope it stays fine for . .. him.”

  The Crew Members had been aware of David’s presence for some minutes. Now they detected—without seeming to be impolitely on the watch—that he was about to leave. They crowded around him, telling him things, inquiring after his health, making him feel welcome, jostling each other cheerfully. A faint odor of reproduction 4711 rose from the naked assembly.

  “Did you hear how Isaac won the long jump yesterday?”

  “He used to be the worst. But the worst. And Vill. Psych, says he’s done it without unbalancing his S.P.Q.” “That’s French for Sense of Proportion Quotient, Mr. Silberstein. We fight jargon but we never win.”

  “You should have seen Isaac after the race. Crosseyed. He says the effort’s given him piles.”

  “We often think of you, Mr. Silberstein, sitting up there alone in your office. Things must seem so worrying. You should get out more, have more fun. Everything’s going to be fine. Really fine. . ..”

  And Isaac himself, silent, scuffing his toe on the floor, bashful for the least obvious reason. They had such beauty, such enthusiasm, such intelligence, such hope. What right had they to any of it?

  David Silberstein excused himself as soon as was polite. It wasn’t his physique that they diminished, it was his mind. The nature of their hope was something he

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  could not understand: it was unalloyed, sharp-edged, acute, where his was leaden, adjustable. Yet they were not fools. Neither, he believed, was he. But they pointed the ambivalence of his position in the Village, the anomalies in his reasoning. He excused himself as soon as was polite.

  On the way to the laboratory—his final call that morning—he passed Roses Varco fishing off the village quay. He paused to watch. Roses wore one of the foreman’s old check shirts, a pair of the site engineer’s discarded suit trousers, and the coordinating architect’s rubber sneakers, worn through by both his big toes. He had a long willow rod, and cast his float and hook harmoniously out across the still water. The float made itself the center of a little wave theory diagram on the surface, then settled into smug immobility. Roses also ceased to have any need to be other than still. Although he could only have arrived there some ten minutes before, he looked as if he had been on the edge of the quay since the day it was built.

  Nine or ten inches below the surface of the water a small worm drowned slowly on a hook, and fish occasionally crept up silently to observe its movements. It was possible, though not likely, that one of these fish might happen to eat the worm. It was also possible— though even less likely—that in doing so the fish might catch itself irreparably upon the hook and thus end up as Roses’ breakfast. . . . David Silberstein lingered in the shadow of the laboratory, fascinated. The sight was preposterous, paleolithic; its detailing so perfect (hook, cord, rod, clothes, even Roses’ mill-pond of a face) that it was hard to believe it wasn’t a sociologist’s reconstruction. Roses could have cleared the entire creek of fish within half an hour if he’d cared to go to Stores and draw the appropriate equipment: sonar nets, electrical

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  pulse fields, strobe attractors. He chose Instead to sit, on the quay, in the early morning sun, and watch—or not watch, for surely his eyes were now closed—a red plastic ball drift here and there, edging slowly closer and closer on the rising tide till it came to shallow water and grounded, the worm on the hook beneath dying the while from the excitement of it all.

  If he stayed there the whole morning and did not catch a fish he would be mildly disappointed. If, on the other hand, he caught several he would be mildly surprised. David Silberstein was very glad of Roses. He walked to the edge of the quay and sat down beside him. Contact was made.

  “Fishing?”

  “Ax.” Roses smiled. He liked questions he could answer. “That’s right.”

  “Going after the mullet?”

  “That’s right”

  “Wouldn’t you do better using a net?”

  David Silberstein, no fisherman, had heard this somewhere, that traditionally one went after mullet with a net. He collected such items in case one day they might be useful. Roses was unimpressed.

  “Course you would. Get a netful, no time at all.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “Don’t want no netful. Just one. Maybe two. Fresh. That’s the way.... Sides, net needs mending.”

  And besides, thought David Silberstein, at least half of any fish would be diseased.

  “What if you don’t get any?” He spoke sharply, irritated not by Roses but by his own thoughts. “What if you don’t get any?”

  “Bound to. Tes a long day. If her don’- come in the morning, her’ll come in the afternoon.”

  “But what if she doesn’t?”

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  “Her always do.”

  And perhaps she always would. Perhaps—though it was a sentimental thought frowned on by almost fifty- one percent of David Silberstein—perhaps there were some people not even the Universe could bear to fail. He came near to putting his arm around Roses and hugging him. But Roses—British, Nonconformist, bred in the forties—would not have approved. So they sat instead, silent, side by side in the morning sun and watched —or did not watch, for surely their eyes were now closed—a red plastic ball drift here and there, edging slowly closer and closer on the rising tide till it came to shallow water and grounded, the worm on the hook beneath dying the while from the excitement of it all.

  The sun was very warm. David Silberstein swung his legs, gently kicking his heels on the green-gray stone of the quay. In the breathing air, between the mossy thighs of the hills, at the silent beginning of the first and last and every day, he could contain creation/ encompass it, and yet be no more than its tiniest particle. Roses farted peacefully at his side. Life was life.

  And an item in this life was Manny Littlejohn.

  “What are you planning to do today, Roses?”

  Sometimes he took off up into the woods behind the Village for hours- at a stretch. Manny wouldn’t like that. Manny would like to see him around, doing his job, being the village idiot.

  “Fish till I catch something,” Roses said.

  “And after that?”

  “After that... ? After that I’ll be busy enough.”

  “Something nice planned then?

  “This and that.”

  Roses wasn’t secretive. Neither was he evasive. He always answered every question openly, to the best of his ability. He just didn’t babble.

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  "Where d you reckon on doing it?”

  “Right here.”

  David Silberstein sighed, stared down into the gently moving water. An enviable sort of busy-ness. ... He stood up.

  “I’ll be getting along.”

  “Wouldn’ mind your job,” Roses said. “All them cups of coffee you get give.”

  When David Silberstein reached the laboratory it was indeed coffee time. Professor Kravchensky was standing by the machine, a reel of computer tape in one hand and an
earthenware mug in the other. (They had a potter in the Village, part time, doubling it with protective clothing design, in a little shop near the pub on Fore Street.) The professor stood and held his mug and scuttled. Even when quite motionless, Professor Kravchensky gave the impression of wishing he were somewhere else, preferably invisible. In David Silberstein whatever euphoria had lingered from his talk with Roses immediately departed. Professor Kravchensky scuttled, he himself scuttled, the whole Village (except for Roses) scuttled. That was what they were there for. For purposes of scuttling. Following the inspiration of that arch-scuttler, Emmanuel Littlejohn, they applied their own considerable intellects and his own considerable fortune to the problem, with the sad wisdom of rats, of how best to scuttle. How, and perhaps more particularly, where.

  The professor saw him and ran across. He transferred the mug from his right hand into David’s left, shook hands, and then took the mug back.

  “My dear fellow . . .” He shuffled to and fro. “There’s nothing wrong, is there? Your visit, I mean, there’s nothing wrong? More than usual?”

  He read no newspapers and watched no television.

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  In the race he was conducting with the outside world he rejected intellectually any detailed information as to how his opponent was doing. Thus he was always in an emotional turmoil, begging for something he claimed he was better without. He looked at David Silberstein over the rim of his mug. He was not drinking, merely hiding.

  “No, don’t tell me. I know what’s happening, without all the squalid details. And in my work I make progress. The sun is shining. It’s good to be alive on God’s good earth. That’s all we know or need to know.”

  He ran to his assistant, gave her the reel of tape.

  “Acceleration sequence for experiment 3376. Ready to start, I think. You’ve prepared the subject?”

  Without waiting for Liza to reply he turned back to his visitor.

  “You’ll find this impressive. We’ve mastered take-out completely, even with the organics. Great improvement on our last little demonstration, I seem to remember. But I should have offered you some coffee. Liza, coffee for Mr. Silberstein.”