Collision with Chronos

“Interesting job today?” his grandfather asked, eyeing him speculatively. Su-Mueng nodded abstractedly. “Not bad.” It still surprised him, even ten years after, how much casual conversation in the Lower Retort centred on work. The social system really did function as it was meant to: everybody down here had an obsessive interest in production, in making things. He was interested, too – after all, it was interesting – but with him that was not all. He did not neglect the wider vision that was denied to these … servants. …

He shovelled down the food and sat back, brooding. His grandfather switched on the wall screen. A technician was explaining how to set up a time delay circuit – a circuit that really did delay time, running a tiny fraction of the travelling “now” through a recurrent phase. Su-Mueng, already familiar with the technique, looked on without interest. Later there would be crude dramas, comedy shows, and so forth.

His resentment welled up. “You should see the kind of thing they screen in the Upper Retort,” he suddenly said, loudly.

With a faint groan his grandfather turned to him, smiling derisively. “You’re not going to start that again, are you?”

“But, Grandfather, wouldn’t you like to see what it’s like up there?” Su-Mueng asked. “Believe me, it’s so different. They live so much better than we do … everything’s so luxurious. You ought to see it.”

The older man laughed gently, tolerantly. “Your father certainly has something to answer for,” he chuckled. “You tell me they live better – I don’t think so.” He made a wry face. “No work, nothing really productive. Life would seem useless. I like it better here.”

Yes, Su-Mueng reflected, that was precisely the secret of how the system was able to perpetuate itself: neither side of the split city envied the other. The inhabitants of the Leisure Retort were scarcely aware of the workers who served them, and the workers, in their turn, regarded the participants in the aesthetic leisure culture as idle drones who would probably have been happier doing something useful.

One might have expected that over the passage of centuries some sort of resentment would have built up. But Retort City had neatly circumvented this possibility, by the practice known as the Alternation of Generations – a weirdly democratic principle that for cunning and ingenuity was probably unique. For while the work and leisure classes were strictly segregated, their separation was on a non-hereditary basis. Each babe was taken from its mother a few hours after birth and transported to the opposite retort, usually to be reared by its paternal grandmother – who previously had surrendered her own child … now the babe’s father or mother.

The arrangement was made even more perfect by virtue of the fact that the double exchange could be made simultaneously, even though in real terms a time lag of decades was obviously involved. This was because of the flexible phasing of the two retorts in time. On the same day that a couple parted with their new-born child, they received that child’s own offspring … their grandchild.

It all had a simple, basic ethic: a man might be fated to spend his entire life in the Production Retort, but he had the satisfaction of knowing that his children enjoyed the luxury and sophistication of the Leisure Retort. Conversely, an inhabitant of the Leisure Retort who was obliged to send his children to a life of work and discipline in the Lower Retort was compensated by being able to educate his grandchildren in their stead.

In practice, however, such a rationalisation was unnecessary. Family attachments were weak; people harboured no feelings for the children they never saw, and experienced neither envy nor pity in regard to their lot. In centuries there had been no questioning of the social order, and very few defections.

“Come, now,” Su-Mueng’s grandfather chided, noticing his continuing long face. “Life’s all right here, isn’t it? Don’t worry your head about life up there. Let them live it. This is good enough for me.”

Su-Mueng didn’t answer. Yes, he thought, it all ran perfectly – as long as the two cultures never met.

Which was why it didn’t run perfectly with him.

For he was a product of one of those few defections, the only one, to his knowledge, in recent years.

His father was Hueh Shao, once an official of high rank – a cabinet minister, Su-Mueng believed – in the Leisure Retort. There must have been something badly maladjusted about Hueh Shao, for in a society where for centuries everyone had been faultlessly conditioned into accepting the long-established custom, he had been unable to bear the thought of sending his newborn son down into the Lower Retort. He had broken the law, secretly keeping the babe and representing it as his grandson sent up from below.