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So was Foyles. My heart beat excitedly as I passed the robot doorman searching outgoing customers. Eagerly, I ran from counter to counter.
Book fashions had altered surprisingly little. Although novels were mainly royal octavo and technical books demy 16mo in two volumes, they were still printed on nothing more exotic than paper.
Good paper, too (there was no war on, obviously!). Even the same dear old typefaces greeted me, although I spotted a new letter in the alphabet, a cross between an ‘a’ and a ‘y’.
The Collected Works of Angus Wilson in 22 volumes hypnotised me. It cost nine poundels. Alas, I had no poundels! My eyes floated over novel titles. His Dear Dead Body, In What Mad Ecstasy? Too Soon the Plebiscite. Not much change there …
Dust jacket art was impressive. Nearly every one looked fit for framing, to my bulging eyes. I glanced at a blurb. ‘This absorbing account of the ages when our ancestors travelled by railway trains holds the reader in an iron track all its own. Every chapter sizzles with steamy excitement – not a sleeper among them. Once you pick up this saga of a man who commuted …’ I dropped it, plus ça change …
But the quote came from the Mirror Literary Supplement. What fantastic revolution in taste did that denote?
Even more tantalising were the technical books. Teach Yourself Astrogravitics – there was a counter full of that. Current bestsellers: Third-Stage Mutation, published by Harwell University. Cybernetics in the Home, Through the Time Barrier and Lunar Fungi and Quasi-grasses. And what were Venusian Calatapods?
Many publishers’ names were new, although most of the old ones still seemed to be going strong. I could see nothing of Blank and Blank, rather to my pleasure – I had always hoped they would expire since they rejected a modest little treatise on money I had written.
What quaint story, I wondered, lay behind the name Jonathan Carp. Or was it merely a pronunciation change?
I sighed. The Encyclopaedia Britannica was still in 48 volumes. Knowledge was still accumulating.
Biographies also accumulated. Abide the Question, One Final Thing – the usual kind of title. And then I jumped! A memoir by John Fluffstone, 1950–2027. It must, it couldn’t, it must be my infant son, Johnny! Fluffstone is not such a common name, and the dates fitted. And the title – ThatOld Rip, Father: or, The Naked and the Dud. Tenth edition, too!
My hour was up! Indeed, I was almost late. I burst out of the door, dodging the robot, and bolted down the street …
He was just climbing into the time machine.
‘Hey!’ I called wildly. ‘Hey! If you will take me back to 1953, I promise not to mention those books you stole from Albert’s.’
It was hardly a tactful way of cadging a lift. I admit I was upset. But the fellow smiled and said, ‘Jump in.’
I did so.
‘Those books were not stolen,’ he said casually. ‘I’m a bookseller. I left a small gold nugget for them. It’s tedious I know, but we have different currencies, then and now.’
‘Why didn’t you make yourself known to Albert?’ I asked accusingly. ‘He’s always helpful.’
He flipped up his lapel, revealing a hidden badge. On it were the initials ABA.
‘Not – not the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association?’ I gasped.
He nodded grimly. ‘We’re a secret organisation these days,’ he said. ‘There have been two major wars since your time. All the old books have gone up in smoke. Our only source of supply is the past. It’s illegal, of course – police after us night and day.’
‘I see. You have come back a century for supplies? It seems very underhand.’
‘We’d never see a Golden Cockerel otherwise,’ he said sadly. ‘Besides, a chap has to live.’
‘OK I won’t say anything,’ I promised. How did I know what weapons he could produce if driven too far?
‘Right. Hold on.’ The lever flipped, the dials crawled … back to 1953.
Wordlessly, I made my way back to the bank.
As you see, I did not keep my word; somehow it hardly seems binding – after all, the fellow will not be born for 50 years yet.
You do not believe this? Doubters may call and inspect a little volume I pocketed with few qualms; it provides complete proof for my statements. It is published by Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd, 2052. It is called The Observer’s Book of Spaceships.
Criminal Record (#ua815ad74-2779-5bdb-b562-676a2205949e)
This must all be written down quickly while I have the chance. Let me see how it began … Yes, the gramophone record and the smoof. Only two days ago – don’t bother to check that word; I will repeat it: smoof. Only two days ago – my name’s Curly Kelledew, by the way, and I’d better try and think straight.
Are you fortunate enough to know Cambridge? One of my favourite haunts there is Curry Passage. It boasts three very similar, very satisfactory junk shops (over the three doors the word ‘junk’ is spelt A-N-T-I-Q-U-E-S). This particular afternoon, I made a find – quite accidentally. I had already bought a three-foot Chinese junk with a high prow and a real lateen sail that I thought would amuse a nephew of mine, and a little eighteenth-century milkmaid in china that was purely for my own gratification, and was just turning to go. Then I saw the pile of records behind a chest.
I put down the junk and the china maid, and began to shuffle through the pile. They were a mixed bunch, some 78s, some LPs, sold probably by hard-up undergraduates at the end of the Trinity term. Jazz – several Louis Armstrongs for those who liked him – dance, Stravinsky, a cracked ‘Prize Song’ and – I breathed faster! – Borodin’s Second Symphony, the Coates recording that is now out of the catalogue. It was in an album, neat and new. I scrutinised the first record, and it looked as if it had never been played. The shop had no player, but the price was low; I wanted that symphony, so I paid my money and carted the album off with the junk and the figurine.
That was how I got it! The next afternoon, Sunday, Harry Crossway came round as usual. That’s my definition of a friend, a man you work with all the week and are glad to see on Sundays. After a drink, after he had admired the little porcelain breasts swelling beneath the porcelain bodice, I pulled out the Borodin. We had the first movement on before I got the second record out of its envelope. I knew at once that it was odd, although it bore the correct red labels in the middle; when I touched them, they peeled off easily.
We were left with a chocolate-coloured freak twice as fat as the usual record, only one side grooved and those grooves highly extraordinary looking. Of course, I should have noticed it in the shop, but in my excitement I had only glanced at the labels and that had been sufficient. Clearly, I had been had!
I stated my irritation in very certain terms, and spent five minutes stamping round my room. Only when I had calmed a little did Harry say, in an interested voice: ‘Do you mind if I try this on the table, Curly?’
Harry and I work for Cambridge’s biggest radio firm, on the experimental side. Discs, tapes, short wave, TV – plain and coloured – we are paid to tackle them all, well paid. Next time you hear of a crease-innoculator on the new TV cameras, think of Harry and Curly, the proud parents. All of which I mention merely to explain why one wall of my lounge is covered with amplifiers and what-have-you and the bureau is full of electric tackle. All my equipment is home assembled, an improvement on the commercial variety. Even so, we did not get anything out of the mystery record. The turntable seemed unable to hold it; it slipped beneath the light pick-up. For one thing, the hole in the middle of the disc was not round but shaped like a star with sixteen points; for another, the groove seemed to be separated by a smooth groove of fair width on which the needle had no grip. We left it, and played ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ instead.
But when Harry had gone, I picked the thick disc up again and re-examined it. On the blank side was a small panel. It yielded to my exploratory fingernail and slid up. Underneath was a label which read:
POLICE VIDEOFILE B/l191214/AAA
– –
INTERPLANETARY
– –
Cat: Ganymede-Eros-Earth-Venus
Cr: Sabotage. Timesliding. Murder.
Type: Humanoid Venusian experiment: smoof.
Name: Above type use only generic name, smoof.
Filed –/viii/14/305
Rev. 2/xii/12/309
When I had read it, I re-read it. Then I re-read it. Catching sight of myself in a mirror, I saw my features were suffused with an expression of blank imbecility. ‘What’s a smoof?’ I asked the dolt.
‘A humanoid Venusian experiment,’ it replied.
Was the disc a joke of some sort? And what was a videofile? And what was a videofile doing in my room? I put it on the turntable again and started it up. But again came the trouble of dodging the smooth groove; that one being the wider, into that one the sapphire generally went. Finally I succeeded in hitting the other groove.
There was a high and rapid babble of sound, together with a rasping noise. I switched off smartly. There was no reason why it should have worked. Then it occurred to me that at 78 revs I might have played it too fast. I switched on at 33 1/3. Now the babble resolved itself into a high, fast voice; but still that horrible rasp. Again I switched off. Possibly the sapphire was overrunning the grooves; somewhere I had a finer one on a lighter pickup. After searching excitedly through three littered drawers, I found it and attached it. Breathless, setting the speed still slower, I tried again.
This time I had it! I had, to be accurate, a number of things. I soon gathered this disc was only the sound-track for a sort of film. And I knew the police report was no joke; it threw sidelights, tantalising and confusing, on a complex future world. It threw a searching light on to a smoof that made my hair stand on end …
Next day I smuggled the disc down to the works, carefully avoided Harry Crossway, and took a few plates of it under the X-ray apparatus they use for checking valves, etc.
The X-rays revealed an interior that looked at first about as complicated to me as a watch would have done to a primitive who had only just stumbled on to the use of a wheel. But the harder I looked, the more convinced I became that the disc was some sort of television receiver. There were, for instance, the normal horizontal and vertical deflecting systems employed in today’s circuits, although infinitely better packed and planned.
The thin spiral that we had called our ‘smooth groove’ proved to be a vast number of separate but linked rectangular plates. They were made of a glass that seemed infinitely strong and thin. And then I had an idea, and locked myself away from mortal men for a day. Oh, one thing I ought to mention. Foolishly – curiosity plays deadly tricks on a man! – I inserted an ad. in the local paper. It read: ‘Smoofs welcome here. No spoofs.’ And my address. Facetious to the last, that’s me.
When I had inserted that ad. I did not fully believe. But at the end of that day and night of figuring, swearing and tinkering, I emerged believing all too fully. I felt grey; I felt bald; I felt scared. With a shaking hand, I phoned Harry. He was still at the workshop, but at the sound of my voice he said he would be over at once. While I waited, I took a drink and composed myself.
Very shortly I heard Harry letting himself in. He climbed the stairs, entered, and said, handing me a note: ‘This was tucked in your letter flap.’ Then he exclaimed: ‘What have you got here?’ and went over to my gadgets on the side-table.
‘Is this what you called me over for?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Huh! You sounded so excited, I brought my revolver over just in case.’
‘We may need it yet,’ I answered dazedly, my eyes scanning the note he had brought up. It was a reply to my advert. It merely said: ‘I shall be at your house at nine o’clock. Set no traps. Smoof.’
‘Oh Lord!’ I whispered. It was ten past eight. Outside, the street lamps were on. It was very still.
‘What’s all the mystery?’ Harry asked impatiently. In some ways he is a queer fellow. Slow and methodical in his work, yet otherwise reckless – a round peg with a square hole somewhere inside him.
It seemed best to tell him everything if he was to be involved in the affair. I crossed to the apparatus. I had a large cathode ray tube resting in front of the radiogram and connected to a specially doctored image orthicon that was clamped to an extremely clumsy bit of mechanism. This last gadget was merely a long-running clockwork motor that moved my image orthicon slowly in towards the centre of the record, keeping its neck constantly in – touching, in fact – the smooth groove.
‘I’m going to play that disc to you now, Harry – on this.’
‘You got it to work?’ he asked.
‘Yes. It’s a telefile from the police records in some future time.’ I paused for comment, but he made none.
‘How far in the future I don’t know. Perhaps two hundred years … not less. You’ll be able to judge. You’ll see vast technical ability going hand in hand with the death of conscience – the sort of thing a pessimist might predict today. Not that there’s much room on this record for more than guesses, which seems to make it more hauntingly dreadful; and although I’ve got it to work, it doesn’t work well.’
‘Surprised you got it to work at all!’ he said.
‘I don’t know. Supposing Edison got hold of one of our present-day recordings. He’d soon fathom it.’
‘You’re some Edison!’
I dimpled modestly and said: ‘Thank you. Actually it’s quite simple. At least, my part of it is. Up to a point, in fact, the whole thing is easily understandable, if not duplicatable, by modern knowledge.’
‘Up to which point?’ Scepticism in his voice.
‘Harry, we’ve got hold of a television record from the future. It’s certainly more compendious for short documents than a roll of film. The unusual feature in it is a frozen signal. It seems the signal is shot from transmitter into a storage valve circuit; or perhaps the ability lies in the transmitter, in which case duplication will be more difficult – I’ll have it all worked out, if it takes a lifetime. If I’ve got a lifetime …’
‘Go on about the record.’
‘Oh yes. I’ve had to take the turntable pin off the radiogram and install an insulated cog in its place, over which the record just fits. As you can see, two brushes are in permanent contact with the top of the cog; they’re plugged into a transformer off the mains, so that a permanent current of 40 volts is fed into the record as it revolves. Shall I switch on?’
He did not know what was coming and his scientific interest was aroused, so he said – still clinging to disbelief: ‘What sort of a circuit have you got inside the record?’
As I described, I sketched on a bit of paper. ‘Some of the wiring I cannot understand,’ I confessed. ‘The frozen signal feeds to a video amplifier and then splits into restorer circuits – you’ll see if you don’t think them the sweetest little jobs you’ve ever set eyes on! – and the ordinary synchronising separator and horizontal and vertical deflecting circuits (which, by the way, are self-controlled on a fluid-drive principle).
‘Here the two circuits join onto what acts, as far as I can see, as the hind part of an image orthicon. There’s a photocathode to take the light image and a quite ordinary electron lens system which focuses the electrons on to the target, the target being this superfine ‘film’ glass which is our smooth groove. From then on it’s all my own work. As you can see, I’ve broken down one of our image orthicons and fixed it up so that when the turntable turns the fine-mesh screen is touching the smooth groove the whole time.’
‘In other words, you’ve got half the image orthicon in the record and the rest outside?’
‘Exactly. Unfortunately it meant a much smaller fine-mesh screen to get in the groove, so that the signal is chopped. However, you’ll see enough to get a good scare. From there, it’s plain sailing. These are the leads to the cathode ray tube – ’
‘What about your sound circuit?’ he asked.
‘Same as normal – our normal. Grooves run between the video grooves. They’re insulated, of course. Featherweight pickup. Twenty-eight revs per minute. I’ve just had to put a little boost on the amplifier. Shall I switch on?’ My palms were sweating.
Harry stared blankly out of the window and whispered to himself: ‘A television recording!’ Then he said: ‘Seems a funny thing to want to have.’
‘It comes from a funny civilisation,’ I answered.
‘Switch on,’ he said.
The screen came alive with a shot of the police station in which the evidence on the smoof had been gathered. What a station it was, an ugly saucer-shaped metal affair built into and round the asteroid Eros, which had been pressed into a new orbit to swing it as far out as Jupiter and as near in as Mercury. Lord, but it looked dismal – and half-finished. Perhaps, after all, I had not fixed the disc up too well, because we got a flicker of stills, some discontinuous, and most with a shower of ‘noise’ across them, so that you could not help getting the idea that our descendants were slipshod, imagination outriding inclination, invention outpacing execution.
We flicked inside the Eros station. Dirt, peeling walls, and a great bank of instruments a block long, before which a broken-nosed officer slouched. ‘Exterminate der wrongdoer!’ he said, as a voice announced him as High Space-Dick Hagger. He had been in charge of this smoof’s case since –
Grimy sheds that only on this second showing I realised to be dwelling quarters. This time I caught a name too. Bristol. Pronounced Brissol. Or perhaps it was Brussels, after all. Either way – ugh! Just a lot of giant shanties with ugly plumbing, stretching out to a mile-wide desert, after which they began again and spread to the horizon. The desert was a landing-ground for rockets after their long supersonic glide in from space. We saw one come in – and plough straight into the shanties. Explosion. Fire. ‘Dis was smoof work,’ said the terse commentator.
We saw the shanties up again. There was a shot of the inside of somewhere, and then more shanties; they flickered – vanished, and there was a forest there instead. ‘More smoof work. Time-sliding …’
‘Good for them!’ I whispered. Those trees were the first bit of beauty we had seen.
Venus next. A human settlement, half underground, on a mountain range. Clouds, desolation. The commentary was desperately hard to follow, the language sounding like some kind of verbal shorthand. We were evidently having a flashback. Men crawled in the muck of a ravine, erecting more buildings, drilling, blasting, and all the while weighed down with space suits. ‘Foul atmosphere. Carbon doxide n’ bacillae,’ the commentary grunted.
Inside this outpost, we saw colonists living like animals and scientists living like tramps. Atomic lighting and straw beds. A crude sort of vivisection was going on – and the subjects were human beings. A snow shower of static blurred the image. Then we were peering from the outpost across the dreary gulches of Venus. A chain of human beings passed the window in single file. They were poorly clad and wore no space suits; a close-up showed us, sickeningly, why. They could breathe the unbreathable Venusian air. An operation had been performed; their nostrils were blocked with living flesh, and a complex, multi-flanged nose was grafted into their windpipes.
‘So were first, smots created,’ said the commentator. ‘Dey never returned. Dey multiplied in hidden recesses o’ planet. Some o’ dem cross-bred with true Venusians and formed smoofs. Smot and smoof greatest menace …’
We were shown pithily just what a menace they were. They started as a new race without background or tradition, loathing the planet that was now their home, but with the knowledge of hate and of the weapons of science, to which they speedily added a few kinks of their own. In five generations they had space travel and in seven they had split the space-time band and were able, in space, to travel for some distance back and forward in time. Our commentator barked an explanation of all this that seemed to consist mainly of formulae, but it was obvious that humanity had been unable to duplicate the discovery of the semi-human race. Fortunately, the smot and smoof were able to time travel only from space, which meant that their big, rickety spaceships moved a century back and then released a scout which could blast down and land, wreaking what havoc it could, and later rejoin its parent ship; but the warp effect involved was only operative in free space and by the enormous nuclear directors that needed a giant vessel to carry them. So the police forces of Earth, spread out in grim fortresses over the whole barbarous ring of inner planets, were given sitting targets – provided the targets would sit in the present.
Under a state of affairs where your yesterday might hourly be cut from under you or your future be already shattered, humanity and its concerns suffered a staggering blow. Ethics, logic, the sane comforts of a continuous memory, were now swept away. Rigid martial law was universally declared, air, army and space forces turned into an ubiquitous police force.
Harry and I sat helpless before this glimpse into chaos, where tomorrow flickered helplessly to keep up with the brutal revision of yesterday. It was by these stab-in-the-back methods that Bristol or Brussels was demolished, and other centres followed the same fate. The forces of the smoof seemed to be spreading destruction everywhere; the only hope for man was that the semi-humans seemed to have run into another race in their future who possessed weapons the smoof could not withstand.
We saw a smoof ship captured by Earth’s police, and its crew, with one exception, massacred without mercy on the spot, the exception, a smoof of some importance, being taken to Eros station. He was the subject of our criminal file; his wan, noseless features slid across the screen. There was an interval – an explosion – the station crumbled into ruin – smoofs appeared from a giant ship visible through a gaping hole – the hole disappeared, the station re-integrated – the smoofs vanished – reappeared – were shot down – vanished. Timesliding – an earthquake in human metabolism. The scene blurred and trembled, filmed crazily from a high angle on automatic; Hollywood’s patient art of focus and composition has been lost in this dizzy totalitarian future. Abruptly, there was nothing.
‘Time lines crossed?’ Harry asked from a wrinkled face.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It comes on again in a minute.’
