Brian Aldiss - Eighty Minute Hour

John Thunderbird Smith was one of the companalogs, a particularly terrible-looking creature owing to the glittering spodumene substance in its ocular proprioceptors and a certain graininess in its overall composition. (It had been known, when debate was most furious, to become just slightly, nastily, translucent, as if in grisly warning of what might happen to the rest of them.)

Taking the initiative immediately, Attica Saigon Smix said, ‘This is Full Emergency. Some of you are present here in person. Don’t let it occur again. Send dopples of some kind. You are not expendable.’ He wondered if any of them had found a bolt-hole as safe and undetectable as he and Loomis had done. ‘Let’s begin business.’

Before the words had separated from the carbon dioxide in Smix’s mouth, Thunderbird Smith said, ‘We must not leave Beta Suite until we have decided how to program C.C. best to meet the crisis.’

‘Which crisis is that?’ Sun Hat Sent, the Chinese delegate, inquired.

Briefly, with a human gesture of despair, Thunderbird Smith let his gaze rest in pleading on the oil portrait of Sir Noël Coward on the wall next to the Tiepolo.

‘The crisis, the new crisis we have code-named Operation Seventh Seal. You have summary sheets before you. They may be précised as follows, and I accept the deductions arrived at by C.C. in its AAA8334 circuits, the circuits dealing with malfunctions of the external world. During the War of Continuance, as most of us recall, certain thermonuclear components were employed in hand weapons upwards to full-scale multi-megaton aerial-descent devices. The most noteworthy of such devices delivered adjacent to this region was an old-fashioned but considerable device of a fission-fusion-fission type, targeted on the ground-area Iron Gates Dam, power-centre of the Yugoslav-Hungarian Dissident Powers.

‘That device was comparatively clean. Nevertheless, its fireball generated a temperature estimated at 500,500,000 degrees Celsius.

‘Later devices attained higher maxima, temperature-wise. The Operation Snowfire raids on Luna, in which the satellite was completely destructed, attained maxima somewhat in excess of one hundred times the Iron Gates device, being able to draw on a planetary core as an additional heat-boost.’

‘This is steam under the bridge – let’s get to the nitty-gritty, Smith,’ said Savro Palachinki, who had been old-fashioned enough to arrive in corpore sano .

With another agonised glance at the features of the man who had provided inspiration for the nomenclature of the chambers they were in, Thunderbird Smith continued, ‘This background is an integral part of the Seventh Seal emergency. In brief, improved devices developed towards war-end attained temperatures and pressures in excess of a thousand times those found at the heart of the sun. We are still living with – and in some unhappy cases dying with – the after-effects of these remarkable scientific achievements.’

The one woman at the table, Sue Fox, said, ‘At the risk of interrupting, Mr Thunderbird Smith, we should consider these aspects of the victorious peace as no longer worth discussion. After all, the cease-fire was signed over five years ago. As I have explained before, the radio-turbulences of spaceflight, the continued escalation of world temperature norms, the electrical storms, and of course the soaring cancer-death rate – in which we all take such a sympathetic interest – these after-effects of war, vexing though they may be, would nevertheless have manifested themselves, even if perhaps less dramatically, in the ordinary course of progress , war or no war. And we should therefore cease to keep harping on them!’

‘Sue’s right,’ Dwight Castle declared. It was the only thing he said all meeting.

Attica Saigon Smix saw that it was time he took over. By diving in before the woman stopped talking, he was on launch before Thunderbird Smith, who, being machine and therefore not quite human, remained silent.

‘We have harped on these things, these malfunctions of our biosphere, simply because they are now part of existence. Now we have to deal with a malfunction of one section of the environment about which we know remarkably little, whose functionings we have hitherto been privileged to take for granted: time. Time itself. The orderly function of time, just like the orderly function of space, has become at least partially inoperative through what you, Mrs Fox, chose to call “the ordinary course of progress”.’

‘C.C. is already working on the formulae of space-time displacement,’ Thunderbird Smith said. ‘Unfortunately, figures are scarce as yet. Positive proof of time-malfunction was provided by the disappearance of a spy-bell under observation near Jupiter in Code Area Conquest, its exact coordinates being known. Our reasons for believing that the spy-bell lapsed with the space surrounding it into a matrix hitherto regarded as past are set in Technical Appendix Two A before you. Please familiarise yourselves with the exposition.’

‘What other evidence have we that this highly unlikely state of affairs obtains?’ Savro Palachinki asked, biliously eyeing his way through the photostats of formulae before him. ‘How do we know this isn’t just C.C. chuntering to itself, with all due respect?’

‘We already take for granted other sorts of space opened up to us through the space-holes or warps caused by intensive gravitational thermonuclear disruption,’ Attica Saigon Smix said. ‘We must now face up to the fact that more than one time can exist simultaneously.’

‘Reports coming in confirm that remark,’ Thunderbird Smith said. ‘I am receiving formulations of them now.’ It did not stop him talking.

‘We believe we know exactly what phenomena in the physical world we are witnessing. Data are arriving to buttress the hypothesis. Thus it ever was in the history of scientific understanding. Right here in Beta Suite, only three days back, we discussed a report from State Swazi in Africa which announced that a Zulu War had broken out in Transvaal. The Zulu nation was being led by one Cetewayo. C.C. dismissed this at the time as unfounded, the factors being unbased in reality. It now seems as if a whole portion of South Africa has slipped back into the year 1879 or thereabouts.’

Chambers, standing behind Attica Saigon Smix, passed him a note. Smix read it out. The icterus index of his face was high. His hand trembled. ‘Gentlemen, Russian troops advancing through East Rumelia are strongly attacking the Ottoman Army outside Adrianople. This report is dated 18th January 1878… Where and what is or are East Rumelia, the Ottoman Army, and Adrianople?’

‘Russians! Russian troops? This concerns me!’ Savro Palachinki exclaimed, jumping up from the table. ‘I will send a dopple in my place as soon as inhumanly possible!’

Another note passed on from Chambers.

‘Gentlemen, control yourselves. Britain has invaded Afghanistan. Remember Britain?’

Someone else was jumping up and crying out.

Another note.

‘Please, gentlemen – the Khedive of Egypt has been deposed by the Sultan, whoever those persons may be, in a communiqué dated June, 1879.’

‘Carapace! It’s spreading!’ Sue Fox cried. ‘We’ll find ourselves in the last century before we know it!’

Another note handed forward by the unflustered Chambers.

‘Please, friends – order! Montenegro has occupied Dulcigno. Does anyone know where Dulcigno is? Or Montenegro? Please?’

‘C.C. will straighten matters out!’ John Thunderbird Smith called above the din. ‘These anomalies in the functioning of the natural order cannot be tolerated.’

His last words were lost in a general hubbub of alarm, as Attica Saigon Smix announced the outbreak of war in the Pacific, Chile against Bolivia and Peru.