Caltraps of Time (19 page)

‘Oh, we’ll fix that up for you. We’ve got contacts in a lot of firms, including that one. We’ll recommend you as a trainee programmer. Here’s your false past, in these papers, in case someone asks you. Our computer worked that out too. We have to do that sort of thing, as it wouldn’t do for the general public to know about time-reversal and convertronics in this era.’

I took the papers, intending to swot through them at the first opportunity. ‘When do I apply?’

‘Oh, not for a few days, I expect. We’ll fix up an interview for you. Meanwhile you’d better stay with us for a bit, until you can find your way around. Maybe we can fix up lodgings for you.’

‘Isn’t it all plain sailing? I could fix myself up, I should think.’

‘Not quite,’ said Frank 3, unexpectedly striking in. ‘You need to get acclimatized. It isn’t exactly identical with Down Under, you know. But you’ll pick it up. We would have gone into it last night, only we had this party. This morning I’m afraid we have to sandwich you in between two committees, so there isn’t enough time for details.’

‘You’ll pick it up,’ echoed Franks 1, 2 and 4. Johns zero to 2 were busy taking notes. So were one or two others. I suddenly thought of the jury in
Alice in Wonderland
and wanted to laugh. However, the rest of the interview, such as it was, went off easily enough. One or two people asked questions. Then Frank 2 spoke up. ‘I think you’ll do. But remember, this isn’t the universe you’re used to. We speak English here, and the basic world history and structure are the same, down to quite little details. Only some of our mental outlook here is subtly different. That’s why you need to be cautious at first.’

‘Yes,’ said John 2 suddenly, sounding just like John zero, boom and all.
‘La Zone
has some quiddities of onlook which you’ll have to shed before you can fit in here.’

‘What sort of difference is there?’

‘Hard to explain,’ said Frank 1, ‘but you’ll find out soon enough. Anyway, we wish you good luck. You’re a reasonably flexible fellow; perhaps you’ll settle here eventually.’

I looked at him but kept my mouth shut. Evidently my dossier hadn’t mentioned that I had been introduced to the convertron by my own first reissue; or the information had failed to make an impression on Frank 1; or he didn’t want to bring it up in front of the catanthropes.

‘Well, thank you, everybody.’ I got out at last, and shook hands all round.

Next day I was introduced to the outside world by Frank 2. This cata-convertron-reconvertron Centre proved to be inside a huge factory building. Frank had got me a map of the town, which (I suppose) was the same in gross as its counterpart (whose identity I am determined to keep to myself) on
this
earth, but the fact that the ana-warehouse was a cata-factory was an indication that everything was not the same, and anyway I wasn’t familiar with the ana-town either. Everything looked like industrial urban England of the 1960s, however: grimy brick, streets littered with paper, grey skies, damp, hurry, every third person with a smoker’s cough. We lunched together at a cafeteria, and afterwards Frank had to rush back, but left me, equipped with my map, to find my way home later. I wandered around ...

The news vendor’s placard announcing LIMA HAS THE MEGABON-TOMB and his cry which sounded suspiciously like ‘Nightal tale!’ shook me somewhat. I bought the paper, got to a park, and started to read it. The first thing that caught my eye was a column averring that Councillor Fishalls stated that negotiations had been opened with the Industry of Foul and Pure. Then there was something about the Chancellor’s Taxal Pusilly. There was also a bit about fuel rationing. TWO MERITAN DIVISIONS FOR NIET-FARM? asked a headline. Further down its column, I learnt that a Niet-Bom explosion had wrecked a motel. The thing about Lima’s megabon-tomb was tucked away in a back page. Riots in King-Kong.

Trembling, I got up and walked rapidly through the park. I was ordered off the paths, which were certainly highly swept and garnished, by an official. ‘Can’t you read?’ he said. There were indeed notices, KEEP TO THE GRASS, and almost everyone was doing so. It was much more pleasant, and the grass seemed to stand up to it well. I saw now that the seats were all on the lawns and off the few paths, which seemed to be purely ornamental. In fact, now I came to look at it, entrances were all grass-covered. What I had taken for gravel paths, but which did not lead to the edges at all, ran round in elegant curves and circles.

After crossing the park, I found myself by a magazine stall. Copies of
Hunch, Ova, Good Horsecoping, The State Newsman, Boater, Parry-Snatch, L’Illumination, Arabella, Sie & Wir, Confianza, Chime and Chide, Live, Dime, Height of Pry, Charade, The Amateur Porno-grapher, Men Lonely, House and Bound, The Scientific Armenian, The Sly Nuditist, The Agronomist
and
The Psychedelegraph
met my eye. On impulse I bought
The Psychedelegraph,
a colourful parade of rather mysterious revelations; its language foxed me. My map included bus routes, and once I had grasped that the rule of the road was right except for buses, whose routes ran down the middle of the larger streets like an old-fashioned American railroad, I was able to locate the proper place to get a bus, and even to get off at the right stop but one. (The drivers’ seats were all on the right, by the way, which must have made passing difficult.) I crept back into the Developing Side canteen in the cata-con-recon Centre, and had some tea. I still had my reading matter.

The canteen had the radio news on. There was more about Niet-Farm. Lima, which turned out to rhyme with rhymer, might well, it said, have the ‘megabon tomb’, which was pronounced like bun and Tom.

I sought an interview with Frank 2, but he was on duty. I didn’t run into him till after supper, when he was hurrying down a corridor. ‘Look here,’ I said, trotting along beside him, ‘I don’t think I can take it here. This world is crazy.’

‘Not crazy, just different. No crazier than Over There, at any rate — only in a different way. You stick it out. You’ll get the hang of it. We ought to have given you a fuller interview the night before; it was that party. But you’ll adjust. Can’t stop now. Sorry, old man.’

I had another early night, but my dreams were a turmoil and I kept on waking up.

Next day I wandered out. I couldn’t stand any more shocks of that sort, so I looked the other way whenever I passed a newspaper man. I only had one bad turn that morning: when a van passed me with — —, Shoplifters, Ltd on it. After another cafeteria lunch I suddenly got an idea. I went into a bookshop (there in the entrance were
Ova, House and Bound, Hunch
and the rest: I shuddered) and went in. After a bit I thought I had found the section I wanted; but no, it said
Fictionaries.
Finally I found a corner labelled
Book-of-the-Words.
There they were:
Inglish Lexicon,
most of them were called. I selected a large one, then ranging further, got hold of a phrase book ‘for alienists’. I managed to discover their prices and to pay for them. Then I went straight home and studied, and studied, and studied.

I got them to postpone my interview for my job for three weeks, on the official pretext of difficulties at my present employment (a fictitious journalism job). I went to the same bookshop and got another of these books on ‘Inglish’ for ‘alienists’ (which evidently meant foreigners). At the end of a fortnight I thought I had some idea of how to get along without putting my foot in it, if not actually how to win friends and influence people. I started to talk to passengers in the bus, table-sharers in restaurants, seat-sharers in the park — timidly at first, later with more confidence. No one actually assaulted me, though I got some queer looks. Occasionally, however, my confidence got a bit of a bump — as when I saw the news that Le Gôde had vetoed Tribain’s joining the Modern Carcass.

Well, I got my interview, and a pad at a place up the road. I got the job, to my surprise; perhaps there was a shortage of programmers. Most of the time I was on my own, so I hadn’t much difficulty with the catanthropic English (or Inglish). After a bit I struck up a mild friendship with a guy named Zoe (the
e
was silent) (and there was nothing kinky about him), who worked in the same firm. We used to have meals together at the same cafeteria, round the corner.

‘You know, Fitch, I’ve been reading some of that stuff in
The Scientific Armenian,’
he said one lunch. ‘They state time runs backwards as good as forwards, and some of those particles — hypatomic ones, I mean — are truly running backwards.’

‘Do they now? What else do they say — state, I mean?’

‘They state there might be another universum, justly like ours, only running backward. The patacosm, they baptized it.’

‘Oh ... what do they call — name — this one, then?’

‘The paracosm. The contra-particles in this world are particles strayed over out of the patacosm, they state.’

‘Paracosm and patacosm. I see.’

‘Fascinating stuff. Only I don’t see how they may ever tell if it’s truth. You know, they state one day we might be able to enter the patacosm and disappear out of this one, whenever we liked.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, that’s why they name it the Faustaean universum —
F, a, u, s, t, a, e, a, n;
you know the nurtury rhyme:

Doctor Fausta

Went to Glausta

In a power of pain;

He fell through a bubble,

Turned into his double

And never was seen again.’

‘Well, well! Come in useful, if you were in some trouble.’

‘You mean, if you could get into the other universum?’

‘That’s what I was thinking.’

‘That’s what the rhyme would mean, if it applied. But in effect I think that’s a piece of science-fancy, really. Getting into the other universum, I mean. You know, there’s a deal of science-fancy in what scienticists state nowadays.’

‘I’d like to see that article.’

‘Aykay, I’ll let you have it tomorrow.’

I changed the subject. When I got hold of the magazine, I got quite a shock. The nurtury rhyme was quoted in small print in a footnote. There were a few sly suggestions about passage from one universum to the other. The reference, via the rhyme, to a bubble, and to a double, may have been pure chance, but it looked as though someone was trailing bait, hinting at the reconvertron business, perhaps in order to get potential recruits, or else clients who would pay. The nursery rhyme was a bursary rhyme. (Hell, the catageon was corrupting my thinking!) Anyway, it isn’t Gloucester in Britain, I can assure you, the town where the ana-convertron-reconvertron is. Honest. I noted the author was actually a Meritan, jotted down his name and university. Perhaps, on second thoughts, he was signalling the location of a Meritan con-recon?

Meanwhile the Meritans continued unsuccessfully to pour men, flightcraft, ‘tombs’, ‘battilery’, small arms, pukatives, defiorants and ingenderflam into Niet-Farm. The Niet-Bom continued to butcher villages. The warring states of Hegirea, unanimously blaming Tribain for their dissension, cut off her fuel supplies. General Dayassa alleged that black mercenaries had ‘tombed’ the Yegmev. Yellow-versus-Pink riots broke out in Meritan cities. It was believed that outrages against Tribish diplomes in Lima were inspired by an agent from Tuba, last seen in Albion. Millions of Green Knights (teenagers) all over Lima, plastering slogans over every available building surface (and several human surfaces), destroyed most of the ancient historical monuments and more of the records, shouting the historical Thought of Meritan Chairman Lord: ‘History is Bunk’. Reports from Cape Hennessy were that plants sent round the moon in a capsule returned growing in a spiral; the cost of this latter project was ten times that of the annual aid sent from Merita to the under-enveloped countries. M. Dabrey at his trial criticized Tribish economic policy. The Union of Rational Teachers in Tribain called for a work-to-rule in selected areas. Railway staff in Tribain refused to supervise passengers’ meals. ‘Pilot-Radio’ stations, hovering over Tribain, were declared illegal. There was another round of outrages in the Creator District of Eden.

Once, on a visit to the Reception Centre, I asked Frank 4 why the great big world outside seemed, if possible, even crazier than affairs at home in Tribain, which, even if they appeared a bit dotty now and then, more or less made a sense of their own. In general, you see, despite those oddities, the ordinary run of home news was really much as it always is in my own familiar Britain, in broad outlines: the usual go-slows, strikes, official and unofficial, the usual threats of violence, the usual aggressive protests against aggression, the usual number of children murdered by sex maniacs, young women strangled and/or assaulted, old women battered and robbed, babies and dogs starved or beaten up, telephone booths wrecked, cemeteries desecrated, schools ransacked, trains derailed, cars smashed up, hold-ups. And this was reflected in what I could perceive around me too; with my ear to the ground, I sensed everywhere the normal indifference to the inconvenience of other human beings or the sufferings of the unfortunate. I noticed everywhere the usual louts (rich or poor) excreting litter, the usual graffiti, pornographic or political, the usual din, the usual dinginess and muck, the usual disregard for anything but money and sensation. Just the normal human pattern, same as back home. But when it came to the news of foreign goings-on, that seemed to me to exhibit a lunacy of an altogether higher order. (Litter was ‘cast-offs’; graffiti were ‘escrementi’.)

‘It’s a relativistic distortion, a sort of redshift. The further away from your immediate neighbourhood and experience, the swifter things seem to recede from normalcy. The deflexion towards insanity is a function of distance — of alienation, if you’ll pardon the transcosmic pun. If you’d printed off in Lima, for instance, no doubt the goings-on in Tribain would appear to be pure madness compared to what was happening around you. Mind you, editions printed out from the catageon find just the same distortions Down Under. They can get along with their immediate ana-surroundings; but the outer world seems more lunatic the further they look. You ask the Johns!’