The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s. Brian Aldiss

of a sudden, he was back in the tiny station bar, arguing with Colbey. Back in the middle of a drink, in the middle of a sentence.

      … even if it is ruining the station, it is the only way of saving mankind’s sanity. The virus capsules will be shot down into the atmosphere and spread slowly and evenly over all the earth …’ (They had only been jerked back about eleven hours this time, he estimated: this scene was taking place on Monday evening).

      ‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted Colbey impatiently. ‘But these psycho-biologists don’t know for sure when the effects of the virus will wear off. Supposing they don’t wear off and for the rest of his days man has to live with a slowed metabolism? Supposing that?’ He smacked his hand triumphantly on the table top. George recalled the gesture all too well.

      ‘And if they don’t try something soon, civilisation will crack anyway. This virus is a sort of last gamble,’ George said – George’s lips said, while something on the fringe of his mind wept at the fourth repetition of this scene. Thinking with that fringe was like looking at an object on which the eye is not focused: a poor substitute for direct scrutiny. He wrestled with despair while he argued and Colbey argued back.

      George was a little runt of a man, a third grade electric engineer with trouble at home. He did not like symphonies, or authorities, or opinions which differed from his own. But he had enough sense, after four play-backs, to know he was about to make a fool of himself. Each time, that fringe area grew more ashamed. He could hardly sit it through again: yet he had no option.

      ‘These psycho-biol boys are forced to make this gamble, I tell you,’ he heard himself say angrily.

      A tall man with a long rectangular face detached himself from the bar and made towards their table. By the uneasy way he managed the quarter G he had not been in twenty-four orbit long. He was one of the Breakdown organisation and George disliked him on sight.

      The tall man lowered himself into a chair and said, ‘I couldn’t help hearing what you two fellows were saying – you kept getting louder all the time. No offence, but you’re both a little off the tracks.’

      George ran a hand up the stubble that reached to the crown of his head and asked, deliberately roughing his voice (why did he have to use that trick?): ‘Like how do you mean, bud?’

      ‘The distribution of this virus is in no way a gamble,’ the other said. His name was Anderson Gray and he had a quiet, pedantic way of talking that at once irritated George, ever on the watch for signs of superiority in others. ‘The virus itself was developed in low-grav labs several years ago. Its label is perikaryon naphridia IIy 244 – ’

      ‘No need to pull the Latin on us – we just fix fuses,’ Colbey growled.

      ‘It has a complex inner structure,’ the Breakdowner continued, as if reciting, ‘and on contact with the human system it heads for the neurons, where it proceeds to dry out and govern the moisture in the perikaryon or cell-body. The only objective physical effect is an illusion of thirst, but at the same time the transfer of impulses across the synapses of the nerve-cells is greatly slowed. In short, the virus lowers the metabolism rate – and only by living at a much lower pitch can we survive the present storm without mass neurosis.’

      ‘Thanks for the speech. You ought to stand for Parliament,’ George said rudely. ‘But why do you say “storm”? You mean the Great Time Hiccup.’

      The tall man gave him a level, tolerant stare.

      ‘I prefer the more correct term,’ he explained.

      Colbey said, ‘He can see you were born ignorant, George,’ and guffawed. Ruffling George was one of Colbey’s favourite pastimes.

      George sucked the rest of his drink out of its closed glass and said, ‘You go ahead with your neurosis, Joe. I may be ignorant but I’m sane.’ (Now he was saying it for the fourth time, he no longer believed it.)

      And the tall man answered quietly, ‘Yes, one of the aspects of the problem that most concerns us is that if the virus fails it will be the sensitive and intelligent portion of the world who will crack first.’

      The cold way in which he said it – George leaned forward and hit him across the mouth with a tough fist. (He exerted the fringe of his mind to the utmost, trying to stop the blow, but his arm travelled as eagerly the fourth time as it had the first.)

      ‘Mind if I sit this one out?’ Colbey cried, delighted at the incident, as the other two flung back their stools and stood up. (How much sickness fitted close under his delight this fourth time?)

      All over the planet, business as yet went on outwardly as usual. Vehicles were still moving, tradition kept the wheels turning. But as consciousness was folded back and back upon itself, more and more links broke in the chain of organisation. There were numberless examples of broken people whose behaviour could be classified ‘sane’ only by courtesy of the rigor mortis effect of the time throwback: when past flowed back into present the damage would show …

      A battered shooting brake stopped with a sigh and a straggling man climbed out onto the deserted highway to view a flat rear tyre. Instead of tackling it, he sat and waited for a lift; the fringes of his mind screamed at a delay that he knew would mean a lost job – but irrevocably this scene must be re-enacted. Beyond the road, an old woman in a rickety bungalow sat by her husband. He lay panting on a couch. Already she had watched out his life three times; within her, as she rigidly waited, something gibbered and wept but had no release. Everywhere … repetition …

      Anderson Gray sat up in his foam bed and stretched. A tail-end of pleasant dream vanished into a never-to-be-rediscovered pocket as he recalled the Time Hiccup. As the phrase crossed his thoughts, he put a hand up to his lip. It felt five times its normal size, and he recalled the squabble with the electrician the night before. Well, he should have looked after his own business.

      It was 05.40 Tuesday – early shift. That belligerent electrician would by now be crawling between skins, rigging the virus release apparatus. Today was Breakdown Day. And, the fringe of his mind mentioned, they were almost up to where the last Time jolt-back had occurred.

      He was shaving when Dick Proust came in, blithe as a berry. The thick lip drew some sarcastic banter, and then suddenly the past caught up again with the present, and they were living over unused time. Everyone on the station knew it: the sensation was unmistakable – a return to sanity, a sense of freedom, a hope, a confluence of personality.

      Dick cheered and observed, ‘These throw-backs will make philosophers of us all! It makes you see all too vividly the insignificance of human action when you have to repeat the slightest gesture, willy-nilly. Heigh-ho for the life of a cabbage!’

      Anderson dropped his shaving kit, swore joyously and grabbed a piece of paper.

      ‘Come here, Dick,’ he called. ‘Let’s chart this latest freak of the storm while there’s the chance. You’ll see what I mean when I say the situation is getting worse.’

      He drew neat, parallel lines down the page to represent two-hourly divisions of Monday and Tuesday. Between eighteen hundred and twenty hundred hours Monday, he struck a thicker line.

      ‘That’s purely personal,’ he said wryly. ‘It represents the time I got my lip improved. It’ll serve as a landmark.’

      Across the page he drew a horizontal line.

      ‘That’s our flow of consciousness.’

      Just after oh-two on Tuesday, he stopped the line.

      ‘That was where we ran into the first of this series of jerk-backs – hiccups if you like. From sleep we were whipped back to eleven a.m. Monday – as nasty an awakening as ever I knew.’

      As he talked, he drew in a second horizontal line under the first, commencing at eleven and running forward to oh-four Tuesday.

      ‘There we were jerked back again, into mid-Monday afternoon. That session lasted till just after oh-six fifteen Tuesday. So we come to the final – we hope! – jerk-back.’