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The occupants numbered ten humans, plus a very efficient computer. The ship was built by the Dissident Nations – those who could not or would not enter the World Government umbrella offered by the Cap-Comm Treaty. Most of the structure was Japanese-made, except the computer, which was a Danish model, an IMRA40, and the engines, which were Yugo-Hungarian.
Most of the crew were American. Four of them were conscious, while the rest lay in semi-deep, just three degrees Kelvin above BAZ (Biochemical Activity Zero), conserving air, nutrients, and power.
Of the four who retained, to varying degrees, that peculiar state called by its possessors ‘full consciousness’, we have met one before – Dr Glamis Fevertrees, last seen with Zoomer arranged tastefully about her feet. She still wore his pendant round her neck.
Also conscious was the cool, dapper, and scholarly Professor Jules de l’Isle-Evens, once a high-ranking scientific adviser to the EEC in Brussels before the EEC signed on with Cap-Comm, whereupon de l’Isle-Evens, an independent man, had joined the D.N.
The other two aware crew-members were Guy Gisbone, who, like many other technical men, had been involved with the massive Operation Sex-Trigger under the aegis of Auden Chaplain, before WWIII; and the perky and spotty Dimittis, who was referred to – not always behind his back – as ‘the cabin-boy’.
All four were busy. None was happy.
Doomwitch was the first D.N. spy-bell to be launched, whereas the Cap-Comm powers had virtually the free run of space. Its appointed task was to maintain constant watch and chart of all Cap-Comm space-going operations and feed them back to Tokyo, the new D.N. capital. But it had been detected by enemy posts near Jupiter almost before taking up position.
The enmity between Cap-Comm and D.N. was not yet formalised by anything so crass as a war-footing – indeed, nations still remained embarrassed at finding themselves on the opposing side to nations with whom they had been allied in WWIII, only three years before. But a state of tension existed, which the unscrupulous para-combine of Smix-Smith took full advantage of.
Guy Gisbone and the glamorous Dr Glamis lay on couches on their stomachs – not the most comfortable of positions for Gisbone, a well-fleshed man with plenty of belly – surveying the trajectories of shipping in the region of Mars. They had six monitors to watch, most of them filled with blank space most of the time, any one of which could have its contents switched to one of two larger screens if the contents proved important enough.
The profusion of screens caused a certain amount of headache. In addition, Jupiter, as omnipresent to Doomwitch as a hunch on a hunchback’s shoulder, was causing a static storm – Jupiter IV being in transit – and distorting images.
In the lab behind the observation bay in which Glamis and Gisbone were working, Jules de l’Isle-Evens sat with lightbrush and screen, working on an arachnoid-like polygraph, the coordinates of which he was plotting from a notebook.
Dimittis was cooking flapjacks.
All four joined in their computer-song.
GLAMIS
The inter-reactions of the biosphere
Proceeding at their statutory pace
Produced an ocean-vat of amino-acid.
From there the stages, difficult but placid,
That led us upwards to the human race
Are now deterministically clear.
JULES
The next step onwards has an equal clarity.
Like ripples on a lake-face interlocking,
Each stage becomes more complex than the last,
Governed by mathematic law. Thus, fast,
We recognise the new scheme time is clocking;
Computers have with mankind now gained parity.
QUARTET
Yes, this is the riddle that peasants and commuters
Put to each other in Nineteen Nine Nine
As they dig up their fields or they drive in a line –
As they slump by their holocubes or go to dine out –
Yes, this is the riddle that peasants and commuters
Put to themselves in that terrible moment of doubt –
‘Are we compos mentis enough for computers?’
GISBONE
The biochemic interweaving force
That we call Nature, aeons back devised,
From cell and jell, computers light enough
To work effectively and fast, be tough,
And utilize a power-source micro-sized –
Computers called the human brain, of course.
DIMITTIS
Their brains began to take the world and mark it
For conquest by platoons of eager tools.
The latest tool – how clever can you get?! –
Thinks clearer, faster, than the brains do yet.
In truth, it makes them all look floundering fools:
They gone and priced themselves out of the market!
QUARTET
Yes, this is the riddle that girls, boys, and neuters
Put to each other in Nineteen Nine Nine
As they look to the future and try to divine
If it’s worth procreating or even mating this year –
Yes, this is the riddle that girls, boys, and neuters
Put to themselves in that terrible moment of fear –
‘Are we compos mentis enough for computers?’
Glamis restored a lock of hair to its correct position and turned again to her screens. Combinationist politician’s hostess during her first marriage, priestess in the Swinging Church of Jesus Christ’s Free Will during her second, subjective manipulationist in defiance mensiatry during her third, now she was a jill-of-all-trades in the expanding post-war world during her final divorce.
She looked good, younger than her sister Loomis, and with slightly less reptile ancestry under the eyes.
‘It appears to be a Smix-Smith tight-beam traveller on Six,’ she told Gisbone, rattling off coordinates and switching magnifications.
‘Got it,’ Gisbone said. A faint dotted trace arced across his screen, with blackness behind it. Then the whole picture broke and flared into colour. All the other screens before them did the same. They were confronted by a row of late Kandinskis.
‘Switch to L-Beam,’ said the computer calmly. Even on the alternate system, the Kandinskis remained, vibrating vigorously.
Gisbone had already hit the alarm button.
Glamis locked her monitor and switched to tape. She rolled over to Gisbone’s couch to watch, or help if necessary.
De l’Isle-Evens let the cobweb graph ride on into darkness and switched his own link through to the observation panel.
Dimittis allowed a flapjack to burn and, swallowing another, ran through from the galley.
‘Check chronology!’ Gisbone gasped.
‘Checking,’ de l’Isle-Evens said quietly.
They watched the battle on the screen – momentarily, until a metal mouth spat copy and spoke.
‘Chronology check. Space-time coordinates X on Alpha. Date line variant, dip minus zero zero eight three forty-one gaffs. Trace-subject now subjectivated at Western time 1999, March twenty, thirteen twenty-one hours.’
They didn’t even waste time looking at each other. De l’lsle-Evens was rattling on the master-terminal.
‘That’s it,’ he said, reading off the passing figures from his screen. ‘It’s another time-prolapse. The Smix-Smith tight-beam traveller we were tagging has disappeared, together with its surrounding continuum … minus 008341 gaffs … that’s – here it is –’
Dimittis had got there first, using his greasy fingers.
‘The ship prolapsed two years, eight months, and a bit,’ he read out. ‘The slip is on the increase.’
‘Two and two-thirds years! Okay, that’s it …’
The watchers rose from their couches, their faces sober. Behind them, disregarded, little encapsuled lives gestured under the glazed jelly surfaces of the monitors. The four of them moved into the lab. Glamis sucked her generous lower lip. Nobody spoke. Their life-forces flowed out, mingled with the banal hum of sophisticated machineries, spread to join the enveloping currencies of the universe.
‘Someone had better put it into words,’ Gisbone said. ‘This is the second time. We can’t write this off as some unaccountable electronic fault. We can’t blame this one on Jupiter playing up …’
He had to force himself to go on. ‘For reasons we have yet to discover, aberrations are developing in the universe time-flow. The hitherto uninterrupted, ceaseless, remorseless flow of time is disrupted …’
‘At least the disruption appears to be extremely localised,’ Dimittis said.
Glamis gave a laugh with a hint of hysteria in it. ‘For God’s sake, let’s not start adjusting to such a – an unutterable situation!’
‘Besides, this extreme localisation, if it goes on, may prove to be the most uncomfortable feature of the phenomenon,’ de l’Isle-Evens said, thoughtfully.
‘How come?’
‘Well, if we all – the entire solar system nexus – aberrated backwards on the time-scale, we’d experience little practical effect, surely? The star-fields would change if the backward shift were really enormous but, if the shift were slight – just a few years – why, then it might be extremely hard to detect any effect from such an aberration.’
‘Say, think of that, imagine the whole solar system slipping back in time to the beginning of the universe … And nobody even noticing … What a song you could make out of that idea!’
‘Dimittis, stick to the point,’ de l’Isle-Evens said severely. ‘Besides, there is evidence to suggest that the system would – were such an unlikely event to occur – the system would not long survive bombardments of proto-radiations.’
Brushing this idle speculation aside, Gisbone said, ‘In any event, we can’t stay here. We have the proof that this unprecedented event is happening; that a Smix-Smith ship got zocked back in time before our eyes. We must take the proof to earth and present it to the D.N. Congress – the forthcoming meeting at Friendship might be a useful opportunity. If anything can be done, it must be done before – Well, we don’t dare guess what sort of madness might seize people if this temporal deterioration continues.’
‘Agreed, we must try to get in touch with the right people,’ Glamis said. ‘But I can guess what has caused this time prolapse – as I suspect you can. World War III, of course. For five years, all the big powers shot holes in space and thought nothing of it. Their immense nuclear disturbances ruptured the fabric of space-time – not just space but interrelated time as well. This is the ultimate in pollution – mankind’s pollution of the whole continuum!’
It did not need a psychiatrist to understand why there was an odd ring of triumph in her voice. We feel good when our worst fears have been confirmed. Temporarily, at least.
The ruin of the space-time universe was enough to make every last right-thinking conservationist cheer, as they went, slipping, falling, plummeting back into their own histories, shrieking ‘I told you so-o-o-o-o …’
The crew of the Doomwitch stood around, each perhaps wishing that it had been his or her turn in semi-deep when this happened. They would have to go back to earth in the flesh to bear convincingly tidings of such weight, gloom, and eccentricity. Yet all of them on the station, stiffs included, were renegades – worse, neutrals – hunted by one feuding party or another of the thousand ragged-nerved splinter groups left bobbing in the wake of the Big War. The fun wasn’t going to be fun.
‘Well,’ said Guy Gisbone, hitching his trousers.
The alarm buzzed, raising vibrations along the sutures of their skulls.
Glamis was the first back to the screens.
‘Oh, the holy ruptured everlasting scab-devouring sainthoods!’ she exclaimed.
Every screen was showing Kandinski, continuous performance.
The terminals were mouthing babble.
Loudspeakers squeaked and gibbered.
Metallic mouths spat read-outs of unmitigated jabber-wocky.
‘This just has to mean –’ she said.
‘It can’t mean –’ Gisbone said.
