Caltraps of Time (18 page)

‘I thought you
disapproved
of doppels in general?’

‘Only for the layman,’ said our guide, ‘because of the shock and the complications. For the con boys it’s meat and drink. They reissue as much as possible, and team up here, after short runs in one world or the other. The psychotron effect makes for efficiency and know-how in convertronics
and
conversion sociology. So long as your runs aren’t too long — it all adds to
anno domini.
The more reprints on this ana side, working together in teams (and ditto on the other side of course) the more efficiently they work and the more info we can pool. Five years back they’d have said we create a dialogue with the catageon. Now we call it a resonance. Yes, a resonance. It’s quite a relevant term. Reprints together are like twins, multiple twins: they know without speaking what their other reps mean, except for really new info, something really negentropic, so they can get on faster. We don’t talk of doppels and buzzes in here, as a matter of fact; we call them boings — impactions if you like. Impactions is the formal term. Every time a new reprint comes through it’s a boing, or reboing. How many reppies do you make, Phils?’

‘Twenty, it was. Only, six of them are out on a job, two went and re-edited into the Yonder, and five are somewhere round the works,’ murmured four nearly identical men of about thirty years of age, in unison. The other three copies stayed silent.

‘The “stock” Phil, what we call Phil Zero, is that quiet one in the corner — I think,’ said our guide. ‘Oh yes — that’s him with Nought on a red badge. The rest are true reppies.’

‘I don’t see any women.’

‘No, well, domesticated types don’t print off. Families don’t print off, much, at all. Too hippy a life. As for the other types of women, well, it’d be a bit disruptive for us. Especially with all those reppies about; who would pair off with who? They work well as agents in the field, do women, but not as convertron staff. So you don’t see them around here, except for the occasional one printing-off, or reprinting. We have a resident nurse or two, of course.’

‘How can I get along in the other world? It strikes me I still know next to nothing about it.’

‘Oh it’s all more or less like this one. We’re printing off a carbon copy of your dossier now. The computer’ll formulate optimum life ways, and the reception committee’ll fix you up with info. You can’t put a foot wrong. Anyway it’s all happened, so you
won’t
put a foot wrong, will he, Fitch One?’

‘It was all right.’

‘Still, I suppose I may as well say, better keep clear of your firm, in your home town. There’ll be an analogue of your firm over there, probably, and very likely an analogue of you. We want to avoid these pseudo-doppels or transpactions as we call them, even more than ordinary doppels. They can be very dicey, very dicey indeed.’

‘I’m still pretty vague about the whole set-up.’

‘You mean the conversion business, or what?’

‘The whole thing: the other world, the business of what time you get into which way, when they started this business, and so on.’

The man George sat me down again, pulled up a stool, and went into a long rehash, more or less like my double’s talk on the previous Saturday, but in more detail. ‘Suppose I refuse to come back? Suppose I like it there?’

‘You won’t stay on,’ said Deutero-Fitch quietly. ‘Remember, I
remember
what you did, because you were me. You’ll be ready for reprinting at a certain moment. It all happened.’

‘Time’s up now,’ said George One, the guide. ‘Come on now. Sure you have everything? Yes, well, in here.’ And he led the way into a central chamber made apparently of opaque plastic walls, but walls about three feet thick. A great chunk of clear glass or transparent plastic occupied the top half of a massive door which swung out. Three television cameras surveyed the scene from near the roof. The lighting was brilliant. I had expected all sorts of machinery, perhaps a sort of electric chair, but the place was bare except for grilles in the ceiling and floor, through which a fierce gale blew, and a sort of arty-crafty fairy-like, almost psychedelic construction in the centre, like a frame for a TV pop singer.

‘Why’s there such a hell of a draught?’

‘To replace the printed-off air in the focus, of course. Not to mention the printed-off bods. Otherwise there’d be a sort of implosion each time.’

‘Oh, the air goes with me! That’s great!’

‘At Development, the reception end, you know, they suck the air out instead.’

‘Do I lie down or what?’

‘No, just walk inside that egg-shaped frame. That’s the focus. Take your stuff in with you. When you’re ready, making sure all your fingers and toes and luggage and hair and so on are tucked inside it, just nod and we’ll print you off. Don’t bother to stand still or even hold your breath — so long as you keep inside.’

‘What’ll it feel like?’

‘You won’t feel a thing — honest!’ And he and Deutero-Fitch walked out. The door ‘bonged’ to.

Four delicately curving, narrow arms or ribs of plastic, meeting overhead below the roof but touching the floor well out, enclosed a space like a slender egg nearly forty feet high and nearly flat at the base (a little depression, perhaps twenty feet in diameter, on the tiled floor). This base was solidly covered with the same plastic. I stepped through between two arms, placed my cases one to left of my feet and one to right, folded my plastic mac and laid it on one case, took out my wallet and the chequebook, made sure everything was all right, and replaced them. I almost looked for a passport. I took a deep breath, looked at my watch — 4.35, the second-hand prancing round towards forty seconds — and nodded vigorously. Nothing happened, except that my heart was pounding sonorously away. The door opened and another of the staff came in. ‘Welcome to you,’ he said. ‘Welcome to your first run, your first edition.’

‘It didn’t work,’ I said.

‘Oh yes, it did. You’re in the catageon now. Never seen me before, have you?’

‘I suppose not. I thought you ... Weren’t you out there a minute or two ago?’ (Now I came to look at him, his scarlet plaque was the wrong shape; it was square.)

‘I was out there, yes, but not Down Under. You’re in the other world now, boy. You’ve made it. This is the Developer end of your world’s convertron. Come and have a drink. I expect you could do with one.’

‘I was expecting to feel dizzy, hear a bang or something.’

‘I know; they all do first time. I’ve been back and forth a couple of times now. You get used to it. By the way, be careful what you say about the two worlds. Most of the reception committee are ananthropes, but one or two — with yellow labels, you know — are catanthropes. To them, this is the real world, and the one you came from is reversed. Better stick to neutral terms.
We
usually call the other universe Down Under, or Over There, or
La Zone,
and to say “printing” is safer than “printing off” and “reprinting”. Come and meet my three editions — or should I say reppies?’ He winked. ‘Oh, a minute — these bags. Bring ‘em along here. Now open them and lay them on that metal shelf, with your mac. The machine will unpack them, then it will check the contents with your lists and repack. Won’t take long. You’ll collect at the other side of this wall after the party.’

The outer chamber was devoid of the gadgets it had had when I arrived, and empty of everyone else. I began to believe. As we went out into the corridor a sort of crematorium hatch swallowed the shelf with my bags and mac.

The ‘party’ was in a large room just beyond. Over a dozen people, three of them women, were standing around, some with drinks already in their hands. ‘Fact is, couple here got engaged, so we’re throwing a little celebration. So you’ve got company this round.’ And he introduced me. There were four Sams, red 1 to 4; three Johns, yellow zero to 2; two Mays, yellow zero and 1; Harry, red 1, who seemed to be engaged to Fay, red 1; and two Jims, red 2 and 3. All
their
badges (and my new friend’s badge) were square, not round. My new friend himself was Frank red 2, and numbers 1, 3 and 4 were also there.

‘Do I get a badge?’ I said.

‘No, only con and recon staff get them. Here’s your drink. To your future!’ And he winked and went off.

‘I suppose,’ I said, finding myself facing the two miniskirted Mays, ‘one of you’s been Down Under for a time.’

The two girls giggled inanely. ‘Yes, and the other’s going too.’

‘I just left my reprint behind so I had a parallel situation,’ I said, accepting my second drink, something short like the first.

‘Parallel times never greet,’ said May zero (at least it sounded like that) and flounced off, leaving May 1 contemplating me quizzically. ‘I hope you’ll have profited by your stay,’ she said cryptically, and with a slightly acidulated smile slid off at a tangent.

The drink was powerful all right. I attended to it for some moments, then found my eye caught by my Frank 2. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘you look a bit lost. Don’t worry about the future. You’re kipping with us for the present, and we’ll give you the gen tomorrow. Just now we’re off the hook a bit for once.’

‘I’m rather at sea. Can’t seem to speak the language, somehow.’

‘No, well, life here takes a little getting used to. Keep your ears open and your mouth shut among the natives at present. Anything you want cleared up from your pre-print briefing, by the way?’

‘Someone said something about Ovay Shtoyzer. How do you spell it?’

‘Sh, not so loud. The yellow boys might be hurt.
O, w, e, h; S, t, e, u, s,
double
o
-umlaut. He wasn’t exactly a shining example. Over here we prefer to call it a slinger: you know, you hurl the sling twice round your head and let go the third time round. It’s a graphic metaphor.’

‘Where’s the other convertron? They said there were two got built. Is it in here?’

‘Yes, what Down Under would call the reconvertron, to go back to them, is in another part of the building.’

‘No, I mean the, er, primary one, both ways.’

‘Oh, the primary con-recon pair won’t get built yet. Not till 1989. The anageon pair don’t even get built till 1990, so the catacosm will really be the first of the two universes to start this thing going — as far as we know, that is. Yes, it makes you think, doesn’t it! Anyway they aren’t going to be here, they’ll be about two hundred miles away.’

‘Funny Britain thought of it first.’

‘Bri— Oh I
see
what you mean. Well, did it? We don’t know. Erm, Japan, and even the, er, States, may have some, they say. But no one knows. It’s all kept so hush-hush. No one’s telling, if there are any elsewhere.’

I downed a third drink and began to feel better. Frank drifted off again. The party began to spin. Someone, I think it was John yellow zero, a big man like the other two, was teasing the engaged girl Fay. ‘Wait till you try the milk-round, girl, wait till you start this multi-printing lark. That’ll corrupt you!’ he boomed; ‘ “Gomorrah, and Gomorrah, and Gomorrah, creeps o’er this pretty face from Fay to Fay.” ‘ Laughter from the other two girls.

One of the reds, Sam 4 I think, came over and said he’d show me my quarters presently. He had a crinkled, wise sort of face; a man of fifty or so (at that stage we didn’t consider anyone over forty half-dead). We chatted of this and that, mainly my past interests, but I don’t recall much about it. I had a fourth drink, or it could have been a fifth. After a bit he fell silent and I heard, back to back close behind me, the same booming voice as before. It appeared to be intoning ‘ “These ragmen have I roared against, my Bruins.” ‘

‘There you go,’ said someone else, ‘quoting again. Who said that?’

‘D. S. Herriot, you palestine!’

I shook my ears a bit. The drink seemed to have got into them, unless this joker had a twisted mind. Decidedly I’d had enough. ‘I’m kind of tired — do you think I could collect my bags and go to ground now? If it’s not taking you off too soon?’

‘Fine. There’s your bags on that shelf, shut and ready. Oh, and a mac. Just down this passage, now.’ And he conducted me by the arm down a long corridor which seemed to taper into nothing (walled in metal and without cameras, I think), and finally let me in at a door marked 136 (at least that’s what it said next day). It had hot and cold, and every mod con was round the corner. ‘Ring if you want anything, ring twice in the morning for breakfast — about 8 a.m. Pleasant dreams!’ And he was gone. The bags were okay, as far as I could focus them, better packed than I could manage, but in the same basic order. I switched on the wall radio. Something that sounded not unlike the climax of Ravel’s
Bolero
came from it. At the end a voice said, ‘That was the overture to
La Ragazza se Lagna,
“The Heaving Bagpipes”, by Tetrazzini.’ I switched off hastily and had a long, long drink of water from the tap. It wasn’t long before I was in bed and asleep.

Next morning, with a slightly thick head, I faced the reception committee. The two Mays had gone, I was glad to see; and the booming John yellow zero, though he was there, wasn’t booming any more. Fay was there at one end and her fiancé at the other. Sam 4 seemed to be presiding.

‘Well, Fitch,’ he said, ‘the computer must have taken to you; it thinks you’d do best as a computer programmer in the town. The place it had in mind uses the same language as your firm’s Over There had. Does that appeal?’

‘It’ll do all right for the present,’ I found myself saying. ‘I’ve certainly thought of sticking to programming work there. My firm’s way of treating its computer was a bit amateurish, but they were coming to rely on me. How do I get taken on in this place you speak of?’