THE WRONG END OF TIME BY JOHN BRUNNER

Hasty conferences, a couple of treaties, the firing of a few scapegoats, and the definition of spheres of influence

not very sharply,- because the parties were always jockeying for advantage-had led to the present formally courteous accommodation, which was being strengthened as in both major countries the effects of fourth- and fifth-genera-

tion commitment were felt. A little confidence in your ancestors’ achievements could work wonders.

And in your own achievements, too. He’d had a bad moment yesterday evening when Lora insisted on dragging that black into the photo with Prexy. Of course, she’d done it in order to embarrass him, just as she’d put on that dress she knew he loathed. Yet, as he’d realized a second later, everyone present who had kids of the same age, including Prexy-for what he was worth-would have sympathised instead of being repelled. It was a kind of in-group status symbol nowadays for teenagers to keep up this family-scale guerrilla warfare. Pour ‘Spater les bourgeois! But sooner or later they’d learn that the minds of the bourgeois had been blown long before they were born.

So, if anything, her grand gesture, inviting this black to the party and parading around with him for hours on end, was more likely to have reinforced than weakened his coverl

Though naturally it would make sense to have security double-check the boy . . .

Now then: What about this question of the alien ship? What did they imagine, Back There, that he could do? He’d made all the suggestions to Sheklov that he could think of on the spur of the moment: financing some sort of hypothetical study of the problem, for example, under the guise of training in, management initiative, along the lines of courses he’d heard of many years ago that were given to industrial designers, You invented an imaginary race with three legs, or sonar instead of eyes, or living underwater, and told the students to equip this species with transport and accommodation. But this, although he personally regarded it as an inspiration because it was perfectly feasible to ask some bright young people, “How do we trade with contraterrene creatures?,” apparently meant nothing to Sheklov. He kept talking about “an attitude of mind.”

Have to go over this again in detail. Say after lunch in the den. Give the room another sweep for bugs first, naturally. But right now

;t Pressure that had been building up in his bladder since he awoke finally drove Turpin out of bed.

There appeared to be a ritual about Sunday in the Turpin household. Sheklov hoped fervently that he wouldn’t have to endure it more than once. But apparently Mrs. Turpin’s mother insisted on it. Her name was Gleewood, but that had not been the maiden name of Mrs. Turpin. There had been some divorces-a fact that did not in the least surprise him.

Not wishing to seem discourteous, he accepted Mrs. Gleewood’s invitation to join her and her daughter in the living-room and watch Rev. Powell’s nationally-networked service at noon-the “lip service,” as someone had caustically termed it during last night’s party. Peter, looking haggard, came too, several minutes after it started. That triggered off a lecture from his grandmother concerning the disgracefully casual attitude of young people to religion. Then she asked where Lora was, and Peter answered sharply, “Lying on her bed in a drunken stupor-where else?”

Which gave an excuse for another and longer blast. Sheklov sat there wishing the floor would open and swallow him, while Mrs. Turpin-Sophie, as she insisted he call her-simply sat with glacial calmness, sipping a rapid succession of gin atomics brought by Estelle. To reinforce his cover, Sheklov had intended to talk a little with the maid in the family’s hearing about their supposedly shared homeland; so far, however, the girl had absolutely refused to be drawn.

It had crossed his mind, very vaguely, that she might not be Canadian herself, but the only reason he could think of for pretending to be was if she was wanted for a criminal offence, and had changed her identity to one that could hot be too closely investigated. The Canadians were efficiently unco-operative when it came to answering inquiries from the States about their citizeas.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *