Beyond Control Read online

  “Why?” shouted Foster. “What’s magic about chronoscopy?”

  Araman said, “That’s the way it is. We cannot allow further developments in the field. My own job is, primarily, to make sure of that, and I intend to do my job. Unfortunately, I had no knowledge, nor did anyone in the department, that the optics of pseudo-gravity fields had such immediate application to chronoscopy. Score one for general ignorance, but henceforward research will be steered properly in that respect, too.”

  Foster said, “That won’t help. Something else may apply that neither you nor I dream of. All science hangs together. It’s one piece. If you want to stop one part, you’ve got to stop it all.”

  “No doubt that is true,” said Araman, “in theory. On the practical side, however, we have managed quite well to hold chronoscopy down to the original Sterbinski level for fifty years. Having caught you in time, Dr. Foster, we hope to continue doing so indefinitely. And we wouldn’t have come this close to disaster, either, if I had accepted Dr. Potterley at something more than face value.”

  He turned toward the historian and lifted his eyebrows in a kind of humorous self-deprecation. “I’m afraid, sir, that I dismissed you as a history professor and no more on the occasion of our first interview. Had I done my job properly and checked on you, this would not have happened.”

  Foster said abruptly, “Is anyone allowed to use the government chronoscope?”

  “No one outside our division under any pretext. I say that since it is obvious to me that you have already guessed as much. I warn you, though, that any repetition of that fact will be a criminal, not an ethical, offense.”

  “And your chronoscope doesn’t go back more than a hundred twenty-five years or so, does it?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Then your bulletin with its stories of time viewing ancient times is a hoax?”

  Araman said coolly, “With the knowledge you now have, it is obvious you know that for a certainty. However, I confirm your remark. The monthly bulletin is a hoax.”

  “In that case,” said Foster, “I will not promise to suppress my knowledge of chronoscopy. If you wish to arrest me, go ahead. My defense at the trial will be enough to destroy the vicious card house of directed research and bring it tumbling down. Directing research is one thing; suppressing it and depriving mankind of its benefits is quite another.”

  Araman said, “Oh, let’s get something straight, Dr. Foster. If you do not co-operate, you will go to jail directly. You will not see a lawyer, you will not be charged, you will not have a trial. You will simply stay in jail.”

  “Oh, no,” said Foster, “you’re bluffing. This is not the twentieth century, you know.”

  There was a stir outside the office, the clatter of feet, a high-pitched shout that Foster was sure he recognized. The door crashed open, the lock splintering, the three intertwined figures stumbled in.

  As they did so, one of the men raised a blaster and brought its butt down hard on the skull of another.

  There was a whoosh of expiring air, and the one whose head had been struck went limp.

  “Uncle Ralph!” cried Foster.

  Araman frowned. “Put him down in that chair,” he ordered, “and get some water.”

  Ralph Nimmo, rubbing his head with a gingerly sort of disgust, said, “There was no need to get rough, Araman.” Araman said, “The guard should have been rough sooner and kept you out of here, Nimmo. You’d have been better off.”

  “You know each other?” asked Foster.

  “I’ve had dealings with the man,” said Nimmo, still rubbing. “If he’s here in your office, nephew, you’re in trouble.”

  “And you, too,” said Araman angrily. “I know Dr. Foster consulted you on neutrinics literature.”

  Nimmo corrugated his forehead, then straightened it with a wince as though the action had brought pain. “So?” he said. “What else do you know about me?”

  “We will know everything about you soon enough. Meanwhile, that one item is enough to implicate you. What are you doing here?”

  “My dear Dr. Araman,” said Nimmo, some of his jauntiness restored, “day before yesterday, my jackass of a nephew called me. He had placed some mysterious information—”

  “Don’t tell him! Don’t say anything!” cried Foster. Araman glanced at him coldly. “We know all about it, Dr. Foster. The safety-deposit box has been opened and its contents removed.”

  “But how can you know—” Foster’s voice died away in a kind of furious frustration.

  “Anyway,” said Nimmo, “I decided the net must be closing around him and, after I took care of a few items, I came down to tell him to get off this thing he’s doing. It’s not worth his career.”

  “Does that mean you know what he’s doing?” asked Araman.

  “He never told me,” said Nimmo, “but I’m a science writer with a hell of a lot of experience. I know which side of an atom is electronified. The boy, Foster, specializes in pseudo-gravitic optics and coached me on the stuff himself. He got me to get him a textbook on neutrinics and I kind of ship-viewed it myself before handing it over. I can put the two together. He asked me to get him certain pieces of physical equipment, and that was evidence, too. Stop me if I’m wrong, but my nephew has built a semiportable, low-power chronoscope. Yes, or—yes?”

  “Yes.” Araman reached thoughtfully for a cigarette and paid no attention to Dr. Potterley (watching silently, as though all were a dream), who shied away, gasping, from the white cylinder. “Another mistake for me. I ought to resign. I should have put tabs on you, too, Nimmo, instead of concentrating too hard on Potterley and Foster. I didn’t have much time, of course, and you’ve ended up safely here, but that doesn’t excuse me. You’re under arrest, Nimmo.”

  “What for?” demanded the science writer. “Unauthorized research.”

  “I wasn’t doing any. I can’t, not being a registered scientist. And even if I did, it’s not a criminal offense.” Foster said savagely, “No use, Uncle Ralph. This bureaucrat is making his own laws.”

  “Like what?” demanded Nimmo.

  “Like life imprisonment without trial.”

  “Nuts,” said Nimmo. “This isn’t the twentieth cen—”

  “I tried that,” said Foster. “It doesn’t bother him.”

  “Well, nuts,” shouted Nimmo. “Look here, Araman. My nephew and I have relatives who haven’t lost touch with us, you know. The professor has some also, I imagine. You can’t just make us disappear. There’d be questions and a scandal. This isn’t the twentieth century. So if you’re trying to scare us, it isn’t working.”

  The cigarette snapped between Araman’s fingers and he tossed it away violently. He said, “Damn it, I don’t know what to do. It’s never been like this before . . . Look! You three fools know nothing of what you’re trying to do. You understand nothing. Will you listen to me?”

  “Oh, we’ll listen,” said Nimmo grimly.

  (Foster sat silently, eyes angry, lips compressed. Potterley’s hands writhed like two intertwined snakes.)

  Araman said, “The past to you is the dead past. If any of you have discussed the matter, it’s dollars to nickels you’ve used that phrase. The dead past. If you knew how many times I’ve heard those three words, you’d choke on them, too.

  “When people think of the past, they think of it as dead, far away and gone, long ago. We encourage them to think so. When we report time viewing, we always talk of views centuries in the past, even though you gentlemen know seeing more than a century or so is impossible. People accept it. The past means Greece, Rome, Carthage, Egypt, the Stone Age. The deader, the better.

  “Now you three know a century or a little more is the limit, so what does the past mean to you? Your youth. Your first girl. Your dead mother. Twenty years ago. Thirty years ago. Fifty years ago. The deader, the better . . . But when does the past really begin?”

  He paused in anger. The others stared at him and Nimmo stirred uneasily.

  “Well,�
�� said Araman, “when did it begin? A year ago? Five minutes ago? One second ago? Isn’t it obvious that the past begins an instant ago? The dead past is just another name for the living present. What if you focus the chronoscope in the past of one-hundredth of a second ago? Aren’t you watching the present? Does it begin to sink in?”

  Nimmo said, “Damnation.”

  “Damnation,” mimicked Araman. “After Potterley came to me with his story night before last, how do you suppose I checked up on both of you? I did it with the chronoscope, spotting key moments to the very instant of the present.”

  “And that’s how you knew about the safety-deposit box?” said Foster.

  “And every other important fact. Now what do you suppose would happen if we let news of a home chronoscope get out? People might start out by watching their youth, their parents and so on, but it wouldn’t be long before they’d catch on to the possibilities. The housewife will forget her poor, dead mother and take to watching her neighbor at home and her husband at the office. The businessman will watch his competitor; the employer his employee.

  “There will be no such thing as privacy. The party line, the prying eye behind the curtain will be nothing compared to it. The video stars will be closely watched at all times by everyone. Every man his own peeping Tom, and there’ll be no getting away from the watcher. Even darkness will be no escape because chronoscopy can be adjusted to the infrared, and human figures can be seen by their own body heat. The figures will be fuzzy, of course, and the surroundings will be dark, but that will make the titillation of it all the greater, perhaps . . . Hmp, the men in charge of the machine now experiment sometimes in spite of the regulations against it.”

  Nimmo seemed sick. “You can always forbid private manufacture—”

  Araman turned on him fiercely. “You can, but do you expect it to do good? Can you legislate successfully against drinking, smoking, adultery or gossiping over the back fence? And this mixture of nosiness and prurience will have a worse grip on humanity than any of those. Good Lord, in a thousand years of trying we haven’t even been able to wipe out the heroin traffic, and you talk about legislating against a device for watching anyone you please at any time you please that can be built in a home workshop.”

  Foster said suddenly, “I won’t publish.”

  Potterley burst out, half in sobs, “None of us will talk. I regret—”

  Nimmo broke in. “You said you didn’t tab me on the chronoscope, Araman.”

  “No time,” said Araman wearily. “Things don’t move any faster on the chronoscope than in real life. You can’t speed it up like the film in a book viewer. We spent a full twenty-four hours trying to catch the important moments during the last six months of Potterley and Foster. There was no time for anything else and it was enough.”

  “It wasn’t,” said Nimmo.

  “What are you talking about?” There was a sudden infinite alarm on Araman’s face.

  “I told you my nephew, Jonas, had called me to say he had put important information in a safety-deposit box. He acted as though he were in trouble. He’s my nephew. I had to try to get him off the spot. It took a while, then I came here to tell him what I had done. I told you when I got here, just after your man conked me that I had taken care of a few items.”

  “What? For Heaven’s sake—”

  “Just this: I sent the details of the portable chronoscope off to half a dozen of my regular publicity outlets.”

  Not a word. Not a sound. Not a breath. They were all past any demonstration.

  “Don’t stare like that,” cried Nimmo. “Don’t you see my point? I had popular publication rights. Jonas will admit that. I knew he couldn’t publish scientifically in any legal way. I was sure he was planning to publish illegally and was preparing the safety-deposit box for that reason. I thought if I put through the details prematurely, all the responsibility would be mine. His career would be saved. And if I was deprived of my science-writing license as a result, my exclusive possession of the “chronometric data would set me up for life. Jonas would be angry, I expected that, but I could explain the motive and we would split the take fifty-fifty . . . Don’t stare at me like that. How did I know—”

  “Nobody knew anything,” said Araman bitterly, “but you all just took it for granted that the government was stupidly bureaucratic, vicious, tyrannical, given to suppressing research for the hell of it. It never occurred to any of you that we were trying to protect mankind as best we could.”

  “Don’t sit there talking,” wailed Potterley. “Get the names of the people who were told—”

  “Too late,” said Nimmo, shrugging. “They’ve had better than a day. There’s been time for the word to spread. My outfits will have called any number of physicists to check my data before going on with it and they’ll call one another to pass on the news. Once scientists put neutrinics and pseudo-gravities together, home chronoscopy becomes obvious. Before the week is out, five hundred people will know how to build a small chronoscope, and how will you catch them all?” His plum cheeks sagged. “I suppose there’s no way of putting the mushroom cloud back into that nice shiny uranium sphere.”

  Araman stood up. “We’ll try, Potterley, but I agree with Nimmo. It’s too late. What kind of a world we’ll have from now on I don’t know, I can’t tell, but the world we know has been destroyed completely. Until now, every custom, every habit, every tiniest way of life has always taken a certain amount of privacy for granted, but that’s all gone now.”

  He saluted each of the three with elaborate formality. “You have created a new world among the three of you. I congratulate you. Happy goldfish bowl to you, to me, to everyone, and may each of you fry in hell forever. Arrest rescinded.”

  ROBERT SILVERBERG, a former president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, has won two Hugo awards and in 1970 received the Nebula Award for the best science-fiction short story of the year. He has written a number of highly regarded science-fiction novels, and his short stories have appeared in all the leading science-fiction magazines. Mr. Silverberg and his wife live in Oakland, California.

  Mr. Silverberg is the editor of three other Nelson science-fiction anthologies—The Science Fiction Bestiary, Worlds of Maybe, and Mind to Mind, and is a contributor to The Day the Sun Stood Still: Three Original novellas of Science Fiction.