Collision with Chronos

There could be little to stop him now. He continued worming his way through the time-control apparatus, and finally was able to switch off his gadget altogether. But here he came to a slight difficulty. There were no maps or schematics of the Upper Retort available where he had been living for the past ten years. He had hoped that the receiving area would be, to some extent, a mirror image of the delivery area and that therefore there would be a descending staircase in a corresponding position to the one he had come up by. But where was it?

He searched, and located, not a staircase, but a small riding platform. This took him beyond the region defined by the metal girdle; he was in the Leisure Retort.

Below him stretched the retort’s receiving area for all the goods supplied by the city’s willing slaves. It was a shunting yard pretty much like the one he had left, except that everything appeared to be under cybernetic control and the canisters were already being broken open, their contents being transferred to smaller trolleys for dispatch to ten thousand different destinations.

Su-Mueng swung himself down from a gantry and strode confidently forward. He had nothing to fear. No one would stop him or question his presence; no one questioned anyone in the Leisure Retort.

And as he walked he already noticed, with a feeling of excitement, the difference between here and the place he had just left. The air was different; he had ceased to notice, during his long years as a worker, that everywhere in the Production Retort the air smelled faintly of oil and namelessly subtle industrial substances. Here there was only a faint suggestion of perfumes, of anything that pleased the senses.

Many times he had reconstructed in his mind the layout of the retort. He decided that he would not delay, but proceed immediately to execute his mission.

The next half hour was, to him, delirious. He passed through the gorgeous gardens and concourses that had grown faint in his memory. Past the people who went calmly, serenely, about their unhurried business – unfettered by any regime or timetable, but given to the abstracted, civilised pursuits of art and philosophy, of every kind of cultured subtlety. Here was life at the peak of refinement, a life incomprehensible to those in the Production Retort who had not been educated to appreciate it. But Su-Mueng had been so educated, and then it had been torn from him. As the aura of the Leisure Retort seeped into him his existence down below began to fade to the aspect of a dream. … Su-Mueng pulled himself together. He could not say how long he might manage to stay here, and he was bent on a task that to him was of great importance.

He entered a quiet part of the retort that was used chiefly as a precinct of government. No one accosted him as he walked through the fresh-scented corridors, decorated in shades of orange and lime green, that led to a group of apartments terrible to his memory: the place where his father was incarcerated.

Ten years ago he had witnessed the beginning of Hueh Shao’s imprisonment. The Retributive Council had ordered that horror, in acknowledgement of the seriousness of his offence. Su-Mueng was not surprised to find the environs deserted; all would shun such a place.

The lock on the door was a simple one, though it could not be opened from the inside. Su-Mueng took a small device from his carrying sash, and after a little experimenting sprung it. Stepping inside, he found himself in a glass-walled foyer looking into the offender’s prison: a dwelling-place something like that in which Su-Mueng and his grandfather had lived, but larger and much, much more luxurious. It appeared to be untenanted. Su-Mueng examined a panel set into the rear wall of the foyer, replete with strip-dials, access sockets and so forth. He took his time-phase controller out of the bag he carried, waved it in front of the panel and observed the interior of the glass vessels, touching one or two of the external studs.

Then he picked up a microphone and spoke into it, trying to keep his voice calm and unemotional.

“Honoured father,” he said. “I know that you can see me, although I cannot see you. I am your son, Su-Mueng. I have returned to release you, if I can.”

He put down the microphone and returned to the wall panel; on one end of the model city was a metal plate which he placed against the panel. Magnetic bubbles circulated in the plate, inducing control currents in the apparatus within the wall.