Caltraps of Time (13 page)

The emigrants were duly selected and shot off into the unknown. A rate of 10,000 a day was achieved, which exceeded Flatch’s own logistics researchers’ forecast by a factor of ten, but was still an insignificant offset to the birthrate. Four years later, years of intense negotiation and effort, one thousand batteries of Shunters were up and the rate (improved for each) now totalled thirty world-million a day. Eventually Naverson, a prematurely elderly man at seventy, had 7,000 million leave each day through 30,000 batteries, dispersed over the margins of the habitable globe, a rate which might be expected to drain off nearly the current birthrate-excess. It was a real achievement to have reached this plateau, thought Naverson.

The Shunter complexes were nearly all sited on poorly populated highlands away from the warren-edges, where vast reception camps could be set up and where the migrants, when they passed through, would be able to survey the lowlands as they held their first councils. The scenes in the gigantic Reception Areas — as each accepted family with its minimal goods was admitted, documented, inoculated, made up on basic rations, weapons, tools, camped on its bench for two days, was re-checked for infection, was herded on, passed through, was corralled in the polygonal eight-storey intra-coil chamber, and, with some 20,000 other individuals, a herd of goats, and a lot of equipment, shot off into the unknown — would have electrified an Eichmann, at such an
Endlösung
to end all
Endlösungen.
But it was a
Dies Irae
minus the wrath. The countless hosts arrived, if not actually singing, at any rate chattering, to stream through their gates, not of pearl, but of palladium; and if they held hands as they saw the last of this continuum, that was only to be expected.

Naverson, on whom the strain of the great operation was telling, had a curious dream about this time. He was talking to Flatch (who was already dead in fact) and saying, ‘We are attenuating local world-line reality, riddling it, fractionating it. Previously 104 gradients dense, so to speak. Now only one. Emigrant populations burrowing structure. Won’t survive 1/ 10,000 rarefaction much longer.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Flatch and at that moment the whole inhabited surface-region of Terra comploded, like a termite-infested building. Naverson woke up with pounding heart, sweating, dry-tongued, to hear the visiphone alarm calling. It was ‘morning’, but he had slept in.

‘Nev!’ said the figure of Misk Howla (Hatch’s successor; today he would have been Methexis Ulvelaej). ‘Nev! Something up. Unexplained population figures, not down enough. A lot of illegal squatting empty marginal dwelling spaces. Have they all come back?’

‘Impossible,’ said Naverson, then he paused. ‘Check births, origins, genes if necessary, computerwise.’

‘Why?’

‘Check first.’

Ten days later the computer complexes gave up their answer: up to 15 per cent of the world population (concentrated near the new dwelling spaces on the warren margins) were unexplained, with no known origin. Their gene-type percentages gave a picture which was partly identical with that of the local population, but partly composed of puzzling variants which, or in proportions which, the computers were quite unable to match.

‘Know why, Misk?’ whispered old Naverson to the young Population Director in the dazzling privacy of the Directorial office, lit by real sunlight through real glass on the edge of a warren by the Ahaggar Mountains. ‘Know why? The other gradients aren’t void or uninhabited; they are full! Just like us, more or less, probably. Our time-universe is only one among millions, perhaps infinite number. They’ve hit on our method approximately same time-point.’

Misk, an impulsive man, jumped through the window, 278 storeys up.

Naverson, who knew Misk’s staff well now, took over Population’s end of the problem and in another week had further details: the immigrant-sending gradients were all steeper; there were several thousands of them known to be sending at the moment, though rates and numbers were likely to increase. The sending chambers were not identical with his own, or in the same places, but created new populations in similar marginal areas. The immigrants had found themselves in a populous world where they had been expecting an empty one; however, they had made the best of a bad job and, being enterprising, broke up their chamber-storeys, scattered, infiltrated the mass, occupied vacant cells in the warren-margins, and had evaded detection for some years.

Three months later a series of strange short-lived virus epidemics, beginning near the Alpine and Rocky Mountains margins, seized 60 per cent of the American and European population, and killed 25 per cent of those they struck. In spite of the television propaganda, the survivors blamed the ‘invaders’, and any unvouched newcomers to a warren district were butchered from then on, including the children. Later, actual Shuntee batches were found by out-labour gangs, sometimes still in their multi-storey capsules, and a fight to the death would ensue with such weapons as came to hand. Naverson pictured the same fate fallen and befalling, and to befall, his own shuntees ... At seventy-five, he had reached retiring age. Worn out, he died, a disappointed man, in the grey winter of 2395 a few months later, leaving the Worlds to struggle with their monstrous burden.

In February ad 2021 in the same continuum, just before the Second World Famine, the newscasts were full of the death of Naverson Builth, the brilliant young researcher struck down by a once-famous accident at the great accelerator, who had lived on in a permanent coma for forty-nine years, kept alive by modern medical science ... It was
his
reality which had been fractionated by infra-hypo-subquark shunt.

<>

~ * ~

Psychosmosis

‘One has succumbed in the house by Thorn Thicket, Little Ness,’ said Tan, rapidly and shamefacedly, meeting the chunky fellow on the edge of the swamp where Ness had been trapping for some days.

‘One of their old ones?’

‘No, no, it is the one who was the wife of Kemm; she had a sudden illness.’

‘Ah,’ breathed Ness, ‘then we shall have two new namings — or are the wife of Nant and the second daughter of Big Ness already named again?’

‘No — it happened an hour ago. You are in time to hear.’

‘This was a troublesome death, then — but we shall have fun at the naming-feasts.’

Little Ness found that he was breathing rather quickly. It had been on the tip of his tongue to ask Tan casually ‘And how is —?’, for he was interested in Big Ness’s nubile younger daughter. A narrow escape.

The house of Kemm and his parents and old aunts was carefully bypassed by everyone. It had a black cloth stuck on two stakes across its entrance. Nant and Big Ness had seen the way things were going for a day or two and held secret councils in their houses, so they were ready when the black cloth appeared. Since Nant’s wife and Big Ness’s second daughter had the same name as Kemm’s second wife, they must be renamed at once. As a precaution, Nant had taken to addressing his wife as ‘wife’ at first. She had settled finally for Mara, which faintly recalled her old name, and Big Ness had persuaded his daughter that Nura (which was even closer) would do for her; though he shunned saying or even daring to think so, it recalled his dead wife’s name too, which had the same
u-
vowel as well as all the other sounds. A quarter of an hour after Little Ness had heard the news from Tan, Nant and his wife paraded round the settlements banging an old dish and calling out ‘Nant’s wife is Mara. Come to the feast tonight!’ Everyone began to mutter ‘Mara, Mara, Mara’ to themselves to memorize the name. Ten minutes behind them Big Ness and his family came hitting two spoons together and shouting ‘Big Ness’s second daughter is Nura — come and see us tonight.’ The hearers muttered ‘Nu-
u
ra, Nu-
u
ra.’ and debated which house to visit first. They thought there would be more amusement to be had at Nant’s house later, on the whole.

Little Ness, however, decided to call first on Nant, so as to have the rest of the evening with the girl whom he must now, with some distaste, think of as Nura. What a name! There he found Nura herself paying a token visit and sliding down her first drink of the evening. They greeted each other selfconsciously and remained rather ill at ease. Little Ness did not like to criticize the name directly, but Nura knew instinctively what was wrong. Kemm, walking like a man in a dream, came in on the arm of the doctor, hoarsely greeted Mara by name and touched the proffered (and nearly empty) cup with his lips. Then he and the doctor walked off to Big Ness’s, and the company breathed more freely. Presently the doctor, Sull, came in again alone. Everyone knew he had taken Kemm back home. (Parents and aunts were bedridden.) Sull downed several drinks quickly and began to tell one bawdy story after another. Mara and Nura nodded at one another and, escorted by Little Ness (who would now rather have heard the stories) made their way in the bat-haunted dusk to Big Ness’s house. As they entered, the dark beauty, Forna, arm entwined with that of Heft (her husband Freth was safely off at Nant’s house) was saying loudly ‘Don’t know
how
we managed in the dull old days.’ After a drink, Mara went back on the arm of Big Ness, while Tark, his eldest son, played host for the time being.

Little Ness, in whom the drinks were beginning to work, would have liked to get Nura on her own, but it was impossible tonight. He stayed to the end, to keep an eye on her, and somewhere in the early morning bade her an amorous farewell outside and lurched homeward. His father was snoring, having got away before midnight from the party.

The doctor, Sull, woken an hour or two later by the owls and a rumbling stomach, squinted at the moon, mixed himself a strong tonic, and crept out without waking Skenna. He made his way in the moonlight with a second draught to Kemm’s house, stole in without disturbing the old folk, shook Kemm by the shoulder but found him rigidly awake, made him drink the draught, and with him laid the body on the cart at the back. In two hours, during which neither spoke, they reached the lip of the volcano. The grey dawn was touching the summit as they tipped up the cart and shot the body down the hot cindery slope. Sull, after returning the cart, brought Kemm on to his own house, where Skenna gave both men breakfast in silence. Then, as Sull had his rounds to make, she started to take Kemm home. They had not gone far before a confused outcry broke out. Presently a youth came running up. ‘Mara’s husband is gone!’ he shouted and sped on.

Nant had spent an uneasy night (or rather, early morning), his brain muddied with alcohol and vague disquiet caused by the too-eager manner of Surt towards Mara that evening. As they stirred in the early rays of the sun he groaned and, out of half-sleep, began:

‘I say, Nira —’

Mara shuddered fully awake to find her husband gone. She knew what had happened. A scream formed in her throat. She staggered up, snatching at a cloth. Half a dozen frowzy heads appeared at house doors and windows. ‘He’s gone! He’s gone! He said it!’ and she collapsed on the ground, beginning a continuously fluctuating moan.

No one came near, but disturbing news was carried frantically from house to house. Fortunately no one had been awake enough to comment on last night’s party. Surt, whose interest in Mara was indeed active, decided to keep out of the way, to bide his time. He went fishing for the day.

The sobbing, writhing girl was ignored, with revulsion, by everyone in the community, except, after half an hour, by the doctor. Sull came striding down, sat her up, slapped her vigorously across both cheeks, forced a drink down her throat, and then tried to take her to her parents’ house. She shook free and stumbled inside her own door. An hour later her mother, on her way to market, peered inside but did not speak or go in.

That night, exhausted, Mara drifted asleep, only to meet her husband in vivid dreams. He was smiling at her, pulling her along by the arms, leading her down imaginary valleys, up imaginary hillsides. In the morning she woke to the empty reality and in ultimate desperation, as one who falls on a sword, spoke his name. Sull on his rounds found a silent house and, guessing what had happened, warned the community that ‘The wife who was named but was unlucky is now gone too: a double vanishment.’

~ * ~

As the syllable ‘Nant!’ closed in her mouth, Mara felt as it were an edge cleave her brain, a white pang, then she found herself without transition lying on a steeply falling fern-clad slope, facing the morning sun. The slope was like nothing she knew in waking life: the only hilly country in the Land had been the bare sides of the volcano. Woods and great folded hillsides spread below and across from her. The air was brisk. A wind was pouring down the slope. Gulls called. A squirrel chittered at her from a tree behind her, one of several dotted about the hillside. Voices singing and chattering sounded faintly to south. After a minute Mara clambered unsteadily towards the voices. Among some trees she came across a group of people, several of whom she knew. There was a middle-aged man who had vanished three years ago, at a feast, shortly after one of his friends had died. There was a girl whose lover had vanished after his brother’s death, and who herself vanished shortly thereafter. With the girl was her lover. All nameless now to the People.

‘Nira!’ called the three joyfully. It was her first name, changed yesterday. But
they
did not vanish. The three left the group and surrounded her.

‘You have crossed!’ said the girl. ‘Nant is here. He has been calling you all day and all night. You are here at last; you are one of the Invokers now. Yes, he is waiting for you. Let us take you down to him — it is only a mile or so.’