Collision with Chronos

He would never be made to believe that his father deserved the punishment that had been inflicted on him. The Retributive Council had sentenced him to solitary confinement in past time. He was out-synched – his personal “now-moment” back-graded to minutes, possibly only to a few tens of seconds, behind the common “now-moment” of the Leisure Retort. His solitude could not have been more complete, and was scarcely mitigated by the concession that he was not permanently confined to his apartments – being permitted during certain periods to wander within a restricted area – for everyone’s time was ahead of his; he could see them, but they could not see him, or hear him, or respond to him. He was like a ghost, moving among people who ignored him.

The mind of man, thought Su-Mueng, could not have devised a crueller exile.

The lights within the glass bottle flickered and raced. Suddenly the apartment shimmered and the artificially retarded time-field was abolished. There stood Hueh Shao, staring at him amazed, but like Su-Mueng forcing himself to adopt an attitude of dignified restraint.

The ex-minister bore a strong resemblance to his own father in the Production Retort – they were, in fact, of about the same age, a little under fifty – but the similarity was modified by the difference between the customs of the respective communities. He wore a long, wispy goatee beard and neatly cultivated mustachios that dropped down on either side of his mouth. The eyebrows were plucked, curved upward at their outer ends, and showed traces of cosmetic. The greying hair was carefully combed back, but was considerably longer than the cropped style affected down below.

He continued staring with steady eyes while Su-Mueng unlocked the inner door and stepped into the apartment.

“My son,” he said, “what foolishness is this?”

And Su-Mueng stared back, unable to speak, unable to explain what foolishness it was. Incredibly, his thoughts had never ranged beyond this moment: the moment when he set the old man free. His father, a revered elder individual of intelligence and resourcefulness, would surely know what to do, his subliminal thoughts had told him.

Only now did he realise that those thoughts were the thoughts of a ten-year-old boy, arrested at the moment when the law had torn him away from that father. His childish adoration had never died. And only now, as he faced Hueh Shao, did it come home to him that his father was as helpless and resourceless as himself.

6

A hush fell on the gathering in a quiet room in a derelict back street. Sobrie Oblomot stared at the tabletop, slightly embarrassed by the sympathy he felt emanating from the others.

“Sorry, Oblomot,” the Chairman said, somewhat awkwardly. “But at least your brother died like a comrade. Went out with a bang. And took four Titans with him.”

“That’s not as self-sacrificing as it sounds,” said Sobrie stiffly. “I’d commit suicide as well, rather than face what those bastards have waiting in Bupolbloc Two.”

The Group Leader from Kansorn nodded. “The Titans have been coming down hard lately. I admit I wake up sweating sometimes. I never go without my s-grenade, either.”

“I concur,” said the man sitting next to him. He wore a mask and spoke through a voice modifier, being a person of such public prominence, and besides this of such importance to the League, that his anonymity was deemed essential.

“The League is reeling under the Titans’ blows,” he said. “Nearly three hundred people arrested in the past few months. The antipodean networks are practically destroyed. If this continues I fear for our whole cause.”

The depression of the League members was palpable. The Chairman shuffled his feet and spoke more forcefully.

“There is less cause for alarm than many of you think,” he told them. “The reprisals are a sign of our growing strength, not of our weakness. Remember what a low ebb we were at twenty years ago – at one time the Panhumanic League was down to about fifty members.” He smiled ruefully. “Its very name was a joke. That was during the wars. But, after a long period of peace, we’ve been able to expand our activities and increase our influence. It was inevitable that there would be a Titan reaction to our successes.”

“That’s true,” the Kansorn Group Leader said. “Our only problem is how we’re going to meet it. Everything depends on our riding out the storm.”

The Chairman nodded. “And that brings me to the main item of our remaining business. At the last meeting it was suggested that League membership should be barred to people of mixed blood. The reason for this, you will remember, was to protect our public image” – he spoke as if the words were distasteful to him – “so that we should not be characterised, as we have been, as an organisation of ‘squalid freaks and sub-men’. I take it we have all considered the motion?”