Caltraps of Time (17 page)

‘You mean, you mean, there’s a lot of people switching from one universe to the other?’

‘That’s it. They are. As I was going to say, if you print off, as they call it, at, say, 1970, then 1970 is the year you find yourself in, or rather the anti-particle you that corresponds to you, what we call your edition. In fact you find yourself at the identical point of time, down to the identical attosecond, as it were. Only, when you “reprint”, that is, when you come back here again, you reprint at the same old angle, so to speak. Suppose you print off at 1970, and then live on through the catageon for six years up till 1976, and decide to reprint back into this world; the year you come back to as a reissue as we call it, is 1964, six years earlier. You’ve been going backwards for six years. (For people who start off from the catacosm, it’s just the other way round, they print off at the same time point, but reprint
n
units earlier.) Now meanwhile, you’ve perhaps met up with guys who printed off in 1973, say, and landed in 1973 in the catageon. Once you know the ropes, you can contact guys back here who maybe lived there as editions, say ten years, suppose from 1973 to 1983, then reprinted back to — 1963, it would be. If you play your cards right they tell you everything they know. Besides, you get a new slant on things just through living through them twice, as it were. One way or another, you get a sort of boosting effect; we call it the psychotron effect. The convertron boys — where you print off, you know — give you a bit of gen, of course, because everything’s not quite the same, in that world. But it’s near enough. History, current affairs, names — it’s all pretty close to ours.’

‘How long has all this been going on?’

‘The primary convertron won’t get built in this world till 1990. But a lot of scientists will go over then as first editions and stay twenty, thirty, forty years. Then they came back forty years older from the year 2030 in the catageon via the 1989 AD primary reconvertron there, into the year 1950 here. They lay low here and formed a gang of eggheads and built the secondary convertron here round about 1960. In some ways it’s better than our primary will be. Most “printers” avoid doppels like the plague — doppels, that’s “buzzes”, I mean meeting your original self. But I thought I’d risk it and let you in on the secret (anyway I had to, because that’s how it happened to us). You are me, only minus a year of experience as a cata, and another year working some things out as a psychotronized ana. You’re going to print off, when you get used to the idea, and sample the catageon as a first edition, before reprinting as me. The secondary reconvertron went up about 1961 in the catageon, so we’ve been able to reprint as anageon reissues ever since.’

‘How do I know I
will
go over?’

‘Because I remember going over. I couldn’t resist it. Don’t forget, I am you, only a little older. Have some more coffee, it’ll help you think.’

‘Will it help me stay sane? Thanks — black, for God’s sake, and no sugar this time. My God ...’

‘Pass us the biscuits. I remember I — you — did, they’re in that cupboard, had to remind me — you — where they were.’

‘Okay. Did you remember me dropping one like that?’

‘I dropped one, yes. Well now, we’ve got the weekend to work out details and you can ask me questions. I think it’s about 5 a.m. we get to bed, and we have brunch tomorrow about 11 ... I get dizzy myself sometimes. They warned me about doppels ... You get a touch of flu on Sunday night and recover about Tuesday, really a piece of luck, because
that
gives
us time to make the switch before your office knows you’re okay again.’

‘Oh, I get flu, do I? Thanks!’

‘Not at all! Delighted! Then we’ll travel to the convertron and print you off.’

‘What’s all this print-off business?’

‘Printing off is what happens to you in the convertron. Your particles here are all replicated by anti-particles in the catageon, the reverse-time earth, making another you, which we call an edition. Your own particles disappear in the machine. As the new edition is an exact copy of you, only going backwards in time, it’s the same personal age as you. Of course it has the same memories and personality. Now, as I was saying, owing to some principle they haven’t yet fathomed (or if they have I never picked it up) you always print off, from whichever world, onto the same point of time, every time you do it, even if you go round and round. But you always
reprint
from the other world into your original world, onto a point of time as far back from your point of view as you have lived through in the other world. There’s a lack of time symmetry in this business, it seems. I spent about a year as an edition, then when I reprinted and became a reissue, as we call it, I found myself a year back in time from when I (or you) printed off, that is, from about now. I’ve been swanning around for a lot of that time, after working some things out with the convertron boys. Finally I came and did a doppel on you. Got it?’

‘Dimly. What’s the point of all this switching about? What’s wrong with this world?’

‘Plenty, when you think about it. Isn’t there, now? Would there be all these protest marches and unrest and so on, if there wasn’t? A lot of people get fed up with this world, and when they get to hear about this conversion business, fancy trying the other. It’s a brain drain in effect. Some of them decide to come back, like us. Some go round and round, gaining ideas all the time, each time round, more voltage, the psychotronic effect. Then again, some people are dumping unwanted goods by persuading the convertron squad to print them off — have to pay heavily for transport to dump, of course, or to market; and there is a tight limit to the volume you can print at a time. And they have to document your antecedents and addresses, in case an SOS of some sort comes up and a rescue operation has to be mounted from one universe to the other. (Messages are easily printed off, of course.) They did an Eichmann kidnapping once on an ex-Nazi who had got over.’

He spoke like a sleepwalker. Not like a
sleeptalker,
no! Everything he said was crisp. But like an automaton. A kindly automaton. Easily, though, and with no suggestion of urgency. He seemed to wait for me. That was it. He knew what I was going to say and how long I was going to take over it, how long everything was going to take. He’d seen the play before — as me. At the moment when this thought hit me he opened his eyes (he had them lightly closed) and smiled at me. He knew what I was thinking. A goose goose-stepped on my grave and I shuddered, but a sort of relaxation communicated itself to me and from then on I floated easily along.

And so we went on. At one point I asked him, ‘What’ll you do for a living?’

‘I’ll have your job when you’re gone. They won’t notice — at first. Later they’ll say “Fitch is a new man these days.” I expect I shall look for a better job. Can’t keep slogging on at the same ground — “Me that have been where I’ve been.”‘

About five in the morning it was, before we crawled into bed. After a late meal on Sunday morning we took things easy, especially as I was feeling groggy. By Monday morning I was lousy and the other fellow went to the call box to tip them off at work I had a spot of flu. It wasn’t so much flu as shock. He nursed me a bit, and by Tuesday I was much better, though everything seemed a bit dreamy and unreal. I’d swallowed his talk hook, line and sinker by now, so when Wednesday came round and I felt okay he was able to get me packed up with a couple of cases, let me draw out fifty pounds from the bank to add to the notes he’d brought back from the other world — reprints with a vengeance! — and took me by rail to a town about fifty or a hundred miles off, which I am not going to name for obvious reasons. After that we took a taxi, then did some walking with the cases, and finished up by an old warehouse.

The entrance was dingy and unremarkable, but the inside must have been worked on a lot. Wooden panelling, probably three-ply, covered the walls and ceilings. The latter, however, were dotted with television cameras facing down the corridors. The floors were of cork tiles. Fluorescent lighting tubes ran continuously along the angle between ceiling and wall. The main warehouse rooms seemed to have been split into a lot of small rooms with soundproof dividing walls, aerated by an elaborate system of ducts and fans, and lit by more fluorescent tubes. The seats were of metal tubing, springy and nestable. Some sort of intercom murmured incomprehensible messages everywhere. Possibly they were in technical jargon. One hall of vast size (a large chop out of a warehouse space) was ‘the gymnasium. Lots of the boys here never get out. They’ve got to keep fit. Next door’s an indoor tennis court. Beyond, there’s a squash court.’

Finally we stopped by a large door marked prelims. The door opened silently as we stopped, a voice said, ‘Come in,’ and in we stepped. Opposite the door began an open corridor. A couch or soft bench made of unit seats backed against the right-hand wall of the room, facing a metal chair and desk on the left. On the desk were a pair of phones, an intercom grid, some switches and what looked like a desk notebook but grey and glassy. Behind the desk sat a stocky, smiling individual of about forty. My double called him George One. Somewhat to my surprise I took to him at once and was immediately at ease. I spoke to my double privately a little later about this. ‘It’s his professional charisma,’ he said quietly, ‘but all the same, he’s a regular guy.’

‘Well, you’re going to sample the reverse-time world,’ George One said. ‘I hope you enjoy it. You have three hundred pounds with you, I believe, including your own fifty pounds?’

‘What’s your fare for the, er, switch?’ I found myself saying.

‘No fare at all. We are a non-profit-making organization; or rather, I should say, our profits come from another type of client. Besides, as a result of your loop, we have gained certain services from Fitch One here. In fact we are in a position to make you a small loan, which your reprint here will repay in his own time if necessary. We can let you have — now let us see — and he flipped over a bunch of documents on the desk, which I now realized comprised my dossier, and wrote with a wired-up stylus on the notebook thing, which immediately turned his movements into luminous marks ‘- three hundred cata-pounds in five-pound notes, in return for your fifty ana-pounds. Yes, your reprint repaid us two hundred and fifty pounds here last year. The other two-fifty cata-pounds are out of his own — your own — earnings in the cata-future. Here’s our contribution. Yes, quite genuine. No forgeries! Any little trifling difference in appearance is an ana-cata difference.’ And he handed over a wad. ‘You’ll need it; or at least, you won’t spend all of it, as we know now, but it’ll give you more security. Pay it into — what bank was it, Fitch One?’

‘Benchley’s,’ said my opposite number. ‘There’s a branch in this town in the Yonder. Mocklington Street, near the corner of Lime Square.’ I noted it down. Funny, I’d never heard of Benchley’s. But I supposed it was all right.

‘What do I do for a job?’

‘With that money you can make do for quite a bit, but still. What job, Fitch One?’

‘Apply at Number 63 Godwick Avenue — the second floor.

~ * ~

The third week. They gave me a programming job. I stayed in the development side of the anaconvertron centre at first.’

‘This buzzing has its compensations,
I
can see — for the buzzee, at any rate,’ said the other man, smiling. ‘But mind you don’t try a “Steusöö”!’

‘What’s a shtoyzer when it’s at home?’

‘Oweh Steusöö did one a few years back. You may say he created the form. He belonged to the catacosm; he was, as we say, a catanthrope. He found himself confronted by a double doppel,
two
doppelgangers, when he’d never heard of reverse time or anything. He was on a bender at the time, so he took it in his stride. They all three got plastered, or so he thought, fell in with a joker who took them along to the reconvertron, that’s the cataconvertron, and all four did a reprint together, or rather it was a print-off (what
they
call a print-out) because he was a catanthrope and so was the fourth fellow. Then all four of them went on another binge in
this
world, and this joker got them reprinting, except that one of them refused. The other joker must have stuck around, but no one knows whether he reprinted or stayed on in this world. Well, after Oweh had done the milk-round three times in three characters as it were, with them (it took an hour or so at a time, sobering up a little, because he drank less each time round) he stayed put in this world, in fact he was the edition that refused to reprint. Now he’s Harvey Stoyce, the Centre’s tame petrol attendant just round the corner, and quite happy except when dead sober. Better if you open the petrol cap yourself.’

‘What sort of a name is Ovay Shtoyzer? Sounds German or something.’

‘It
is
German, of a sort.’ An indefinable expression appeared on his face. ‘But he was naturalized English even as a cata. Well now, it’s time to meet the boys and get on with it. First of all, let me assure you, you won’t
notice
the switching process, so you can stop looking worried. It’s all as easy as falling off a log, and a lot more pleasant.’

He led the way down the corridor.

‘I thought there was a lot of preliminary screening?’ I murmured to my double.

‘Not in your case, thanks to me. I’ve prepared the ground, computer and all.’

A large hall with various consoles and panels round the perimeter opened out at the end of the corridor. About thirty men stood or sat around, some gazing into panels, some moving levers, some chatting. Most turned and looked at us. Here I had a shock. There were twins, triplets, quadruplets, multiplets. Hardly an untwinned face amongst them. A bunch of identicals standing together were distinguished, I noticed, by round scarlet plaques or badges about three inches across, on their lapels, each with a different number, 1,2,3, and so on, in white. A few had yellowish-green plaques of the same shape, with black numbers. Then I realized. These must be some of those reissues that my double had told me about. But why so many, and why all together?