New Writings in SF 9 - [Anthology] Read online

  He got the car back on the track and, shortly after, back on the main road to London. They were only a half mile from the town centre and had taken three miles and fifty minutes to get there, but they were out of the main snarl of Framley. Though he could see multi-coloured mounds dotted over the countryside like slagheaps.

  The opposite lane was choked with lorries. It was clearer his side, but he still had to obey the injunction to go slow. The lorries were going at the same snail’s pace.

  Five miles out he pulled into a layby. He breathed easier. There were no alien stacks in the countryside around or ahead of them.

  “Well?” said Gwen.

  “All right.” He lit a cigarette. “Did you notice the names on those lorries?”

  “Names?” She looked puzzled.

  “Half of them belong to junk merchants.”

  “I don’t see------”

  “Don’t you? Nor has anybody else yet. Except these lads who are pouring into Framley looking for pickings. That’s what all these things are. Not gifts—junk. This race in another dimension has found a nice solution to a problem that’s been bothering us more and more. They’ve found a perfect place to dump their scrap.”

  “But—can’t they do the same as we do? Don’t we melt things down to use again ?”

  “If it was as easy as that, we wouldn’t have any problem. Don’t you remember that copse we came across when we went for a walk in the country round Framley? Looked like a poet’s dream from outside. Inside, it was a pile of old cookers, fridges, dumped cars. Things not worth anybody’s while reclaiming.”

  “But these things—they aren’t machines.”

  “All right, they’re off cuts. Of some unimaginable manufacturing processes. There was plenty of industrial scrap too in that copse, between the rusting cars and the other worn-out machines. Now these creatures have found a way through we’ve probably got their worn-out machines to come.”

  “I see.” She paused, her face anxious. “That’s not all, Bryan, is it? That’s not enough to make you change your mind about getting out of Framley.”

  He hesitated. “No, that’s not all. I don’t like speaking of it. It isn’t a fact. Only a hunch—but I’ve got a horrible feeling it’s the truth.”

  “What, Bryan—what?”

  “Well—if this is junk, it’s junk from a civilization far in advance of ours. One that’s got the same problems we have—only bigger. A mass civilization that would make ours look like a peasant economy by comparison. Mass production isn’t an isolated phenomenon, a game a few bright boys play on machines. Mass production implies mass consumption, and mass consumption implies ... mass population. Now they’ve found a place to dump their junk, what’s to stop them sending over their surplus population?”

  He threw his cigarette away and restarted the engine.

  “Beware of the Greeks bearing gifts. Even if these things had been gifts ...”

  He had said he would explain, and he had explained. He didn’t finish his sentence ... not aloud. But it ran on in his brain:

  Even if they had been gifts. But how would they treat the inhabitants of a junk heap?

  And as he engaged gear his hand started to shake. Only slightly at first.

  <>

  * * * *

  THE LONG MEMORY

  by William Spencer

  The computer’s memory was a long one. In fact, it could see all in the City, hear all and even tell all to Harben its attendant—but Harben’s mind was another thing altogether,..

  * * * *

  The light was dim in Harben’s tiny recording booth. He sat as usual, hunched forward, intent on the data screens, muttering almost soundlessly to himself.

  There was just enough room for him to crouch between the control consoles and monitor panels. His little recording cubicle was far down in the depths of the earth, buried deep below ground level, if it could be said that there was any longer a “ground level”. The gigantic City, throbbing far above his head, towered loftily into the air and burrowed deep underground in its endless search for more space to spread itself.

  Hemmed in as he was by equipment, Harben could just manage to turn his head, if he really wanted to, or stretch out his arms to reach the controls. But much more than that he could not do. Apparatus crowded him in on all sides. He was like an astronaut in one of those early primitive spacecraft, jam-packed with essential, bulky gear.

  Some people might have found the situation oppressive ... even claustrophobic. But Harben loved his work. That was the main thing, he told himself. If he simply had to get out, there was always the escape hatch behind him. All he had to do was press a button and wait ninety seconds while his chair rotated slowly backwards. Then by wriggling and squirming he could squeeze himself with an effort into the long narrow tunnel. Along this he had to crawl for about three hours, like a pot-holer in the darkness, to reach the escalator leading to the upper levels.

  Perhaps it was fortunate that Harben was a short, slightly built person. He was not exactly a dwarf, but certainly undersized. That saved a little more vital space.

  Of course Headquarters had many times tried to persuade him to accept more spacious working quarters. They’d offered him a roomy, well-lit office which he could pace around when things got too much for him. Or even a little rest-room or lounge. It was decent of them to make the gesture. But they knew, and Harben knew, that it was no more than a gesture. Underneath their generous, lavish offer and Harben’s polite, briefly-worded refusal, there lay the bitter realities which everyone knew made any improvement impossible. What dominated all other considerations, all planning, was the relentless pressure on space of the Records themselves.

  Every day the space needed for the Records increased. The spools lay row upon row, snugly nestling against each other in the long automatic racks which permitted highspeed consultation of any section of any spool. Every day, something like a hundred thousand new racks were filled with newly recorded spools. And every few days a huge new storage building or underground cavern had to be brought into commission, to house the next crop of spools.

  The space requirement for Records was now far and away the most important factor in City planning. The ever-multiplying spools steadily ate into the space allotted to the human population. Harben had seen, in his monitoring of life on the upper levels, the new flats being built to replace those which had been pulled down to make way for Records storage depots. The flats were smaller than ever before. They allowed each inhabitant only a fraction of the space considered to be the absolute human minimum only five years ago. Desperate little rat-holes they were ... but necessarily so. The Records must have priority, that much was obvious to everyone.

  And the unpalatable reality had to be faced that things were going to get even worse in the future. So much was clear, to Harben if to no one else.

  He was in serious mood as he went on with the dictation of his monthly report to Headquarters.

  Phrases shaped themselves in his mind, words arranged themselves in order, and thoughtfully he spoke them into the slender microphone poised like an insect’s antenna below his chin. He became a little breathless and found it an effort to articulate clearly, after being alone and mute for so long:

  “The tape now being used is 0.1 micron wide and, with data accumulating at the present rate, storage-space requirements are increasing at the rate of 2 cubic kilometres per week.”

  That should give them something to chew on, Harben thought wryly. Two cubic kilometres per week was over a hundred cubic kilometres per year. But they didn’t need a computer to work that out.

  “With the additional stereo monitoring of supersonic frequencies, plus 3-D infrared surveillance, required under new Statute from the first of next month, it is estimated that storage requirements will increase by at least twenty cubic kilometres per year.”

  Good. Let Headquarters mull that over.

  It was obvious, really, even before they brought in the new channels.

&n
bsp; Place a colour TV camera and stereo sound mikes in every room in every building in the City. Place one in every doorway, at every junction, every few metres along every roadway and walkway at every level. Suspend cameras in mid-air. Watch everything, from every angle, record every movement of everybody, every instant. Capture every word spoken, casual or profound, trivial or tragic, gay or gruesome. Record at all moments the expression on everyone’s face. See what they are doing, and how, and with whom. All that is obviously going to call for a lot of recording tape, and a lot of space in which to store the completed tape, with its priceless irreplaceable record.

  Harben switched off the message-channel for a moment to ponder his next sentence. He liked to end his reports on a thoughtful note. Possibly even in a somewhat philosophical vein. It helped to round off what otherwise tended to be a rather forbidding mass of facts and figures.

  In a few minutes he had composed his thoughts, and began dictating again, but more slowly:

  “Paragraph. From time to time, in the past, there have been improvements in the packing density of information. It may be worth considering what further achievements are likely in this direction.

  “Improvements have almost invariably been made by reducing the cross-section of the recording tape. At present our standard recording tape is a filament which measures 0.1 micron wide by o-oo8 micron thick. This replaced, three years ago, the previous standard, which was more than double these dimensions.”

  Harben cleared his throat rather nervously. Now came the piece he’d long been brooding over. The punch-line of his report:

  “It may be interesting to speculate on the ultimate possible packing density of information. It is thought that the limit will be reached when we have a recording filament which is only one molecule in cross-section. In other words it will consist of a string of single molecules joined end to end.

  “It is clear that a physically viable tape could not be less than one molecule thick. Each bit of information would then be recorded by an individual molecule polarized in one direction or the other.”

  Harben rubbed his chin with satisfaction. Good, that. One molecule thick. Kind of a continuous whisker. Give them something to work on. However, it didn’t do to let Headquarters get too optimistic. One had to be careful, or some starry-eyed theorist would run away with the impression that the storage problem was licked.

  The next thing one knew, they would be adding extra channels to the monitoring spectrum. So perhaps he’d better end his report on a note of caution:

  “A hypothetical filament as slender as this, if it proved technically possible, would represent a considerable economy in cross-section, compared with the present filament. However the gain would be less than at first appears.

  “Since each bit of information would consist of a single molecule polarized in one direction or the other, information could be stored only in binary form. The present filament, on the other hand, permits recording in analogue form, with the result that in principle more information can be stored in a given length of tape. This difference in the form of the recording would offset to a considerable extent the gain resulting from reduced cross-section.”

  Harben switched off the message channel and chuckled. He felt he had the H.Q. people in a cleft stick. They were mostly non-technical. Loads of paper qualifications, of course, but no real grasp.

  He pictured them running to consult their own research boys about his report. A fat lot of good that would do them. His reasoning was sound, his conclusions were valid and there was no way round them.

  Now for the final sting in the tail of his report. A last twist of the knife. He switched on again.

  “It would thus appear that we are working close to the ultimate packing density for information, and any gain from thinner filaments would be quickly swallowed up by the absolute daily increase in information. Furthermore, much space would be required for converters to translate existing information to the new standard.

  “Finally, if it were felt necessary to monitor more channels, for example in the ultraviolet or X-ray bands, this could completely wipe out any temporary gain from the adoption of a more slender filament. End.”

  There, he’d said it. Harben reached forward and switched off the message channel with a gesture of finality, almost with a flourish.

  All right. He’d told them. Perhaps he’d gone too far this time. If they didn’t like the tone of his reports, they could always replace him. But he reckoned they wouldn’t find it too easy to locate someone else who would stay cooped up, day after day, week after week, in this rabbit-hutch.

  He’d meant to get in that stab about monitoring extra bands, come what may. Let them know (not know, but get a very faint inkling of the trouble he’d been caused, by their completely arbitrary decision to include supersonic and infrared bands in the spectrum of monitored frequencies. The new equipment he’d had to order at short notice. The almost fantastic ingenuity needed to fit the extra gear into the available space. Nobody at Headquarters appreciated any of these difficulties. They simply issued their pompous orders and then sat back in their plumply padded chairs and waited for the results to come in.

  Harben passed the back of his hand wearily across his brow. Sometimes, these days, he felt tired. Perhaps it was all getting too much for him, what with all the reorganization and worry caused by the new bands. Perhaps he really needed to be replaced ...

  Also, nowadays, there were these blurred zones in his mind. It was as though there were something indistinct on the edge of his mind that he was trying to get clear, but couldn’t quite bring into focus. He suspected, although he couldn’t produce any evidence for it, that there were blank periods in his consciousness that he couldn’t account for. It was almost as though, for hours at a time, he had nodded asleep.

  But no, that was impossible. Harben, like ninety-five per cent of his fellow citizens, had undergone the rather simple operation which made sleep and (in the ordinary sense) food, unnecessary. He drew his energy directly from the electric circuits which powered the monitoring equipment. He was only a rather more complex zone of the involved electronic circuitry that surrounded him.

  So now, perhaps, he had better get on with it, and do some monitoring. Harben flicked a switch, and an entire panel of the idle screens in front of him flashed into life. The muted babble of a score of conversations blended together in his ears. Harben could, at will, bring forward any one conversation to the threshold of audibility, if it sounded interesting.

  And very often it did sound interesting. That was the fascination of his job: to be able to peer into human life at every level, to see into every room, overhear every whisper, every word spoken in boredom or tenderness, in anger or passion.

  Of course, in theory, he was supposed simply to check correct operation of the monitoring equipment throughout the City. That was what he was there for. But the system was largely self-correcting, and any major breakdown would have been instantly notified to him by the automatic circuits.

  So he was free to be a wandering will-o’-the-wisp: to be here, there and everywhere, fleeting from one end of the City to the other as the mood took him.

  There he was, effectively a prisoner within the enormous network of recording equipment, wedged in with kilometre upon kilometre of spools of recording tightly packed in the long racks, stretching in every direction, a solid block of information denser than honey in a well-stocked hive. There, somewhere near the centre, he sat hemmed in, scarcely able to move. So it seemed. But in reality he was everywhere, he was at every street-corner, in every doorway, in every room. He heard and saw everything, if he wished. And he could move with the speed of thought from one end of the City to the other, passing through closed doors as easily as a phantom, ascending and descending to every level at will.

  He could even move through time. In the serried ranks of the Records lay everything that had happened since the very beginning, back to those earliest years when the monitoring was first started. No recording w
as ever destroyed, no ripple of significance erased, nothing faded from the huge memory.

  In a matter of moments he could recapture any instant, any incident, from those innumerable past years. He could bring it back to life, glowing vividly on the coloured screens, and review it from many different angles simultaneously. So there were certain moments of time, vintage moments as it were, which he loved to revisit and re-live. Hunched in his little chair, he trembled with emotion as he participated vicariously in some moment when life seemed to declare itself, to be lived vividly and to the full.

  Then, the secrets he knew. Sometimes he would follow the activities of the same person for days. Shamelessly. There was no escape from his all-seeing eyes, his eavesdropping ears. His victim, totally unaware of being the object of such thoroughgoing scrutiny, would lay bare the pattern of his life.