Most of Su-Mueng’s shift had already gone. He was about to follow them when a young man, a few years older than himself, stopped by with a smile.
“Hello, Su-Mueng. There’s nothing much doing in my section today. Got anything you’d like me to be getting on with?”
Su-Mueng hesitated. He had been finding his current job interesting and had intended returning tomorrow to continue it – had, in fact, been postponing the final stage of his other project so as to be able to complete it. He glanced down at the half finished assembly of finely-machined components: a new type of calibrator for some unguessable instrument wanted in the Upper Retort.
“Oh, all right. You can carry on with this,” he said resignedly. He pulled out the spec sheets and explained the details and where he’d got to. “There’s no hurry,” he added. “Deadline’s more than a month away.”
The other man nodded, looking eagerly over the work. “It’s always like that on these slow cycles. I hate it when we’re so slack.”
Su-Mueng walked away and discarded his work-gown in the locker room, washing his hands and face and using a refresher spray on himself. The hormone-laden mist settled on his skin and in his nostrils, making him feel fresher and brighter and washing away the weariness that comes from long hours of effort.
Then he strode away and down spiral staircases to the elevators, a slim, elegant youth. His mind began to buzz with thoughts and the excitement of his secret rebellion… but in the elevator that sped towards his domestic level he encountered Li Kim, an old friend he knew from training school, who pressed him to enjoy a short game of ping-pong. Not being able to think of a good reason to refuse, Su-Mueng left the elevator with him and they proceeded together to the nearest recreation hall.
Kim invoked two cans of beer from a dispenser and handed Su-Mueng one. They strolled through a gallery of gaming machines, then past the entrances to the theatres. Further on there was a thumping noise against the wall from some fast-action physical game in progress – batball, most likely.
Ping-pong, Su-Mueng thought. That’s what we get down here. They don’t play ping-pong in the Upper Retort. By Almighty Time, the games they play there!
But even ping-pong, the way it was played in Retort City, was interesting enough, workers’ game or no. They secured a table and Su-Mueng took up his bat. The table was concave, like a wide, shallow bowl, divided by a thin screen of aluminium. Li Kim drained his beer, grinned, took up the ball and served.
They sent the ball ricocheting back and forth a few times. Kim was good, as Su-Mueng had discovered on many past occasions. The curved surface, of course, made a quick eye and hand all the more necessary; but that was not all.
Su-Mueng almost missed a return, just caught it, and hammered the ball over the left-hand side of the screen.
On crossing the divide it vanished in midair.
Kim vanished, too. But an instant later the ball came rocketing back at Su-Mueng and Kim, also, sprang back into view at the centre of the table.
This development demonstrated the speciality of Retort City: the ability to manipulate time. The table was divided into time-zones each of whose present moment was marginally out of phase with the others. More than quick reflexes were required – one needed to be almost psychic to anticipate where the ball would be returned from, or when. The phases could be adjusted so as to give a longer or shorter time difference, or more esoterically, rotated so that, for instance, the ball would be returned to the left and mysteriously come back from the right. It was even possible for the ball to be returned before it had been delivered.
And it was easy for the workmen of the Lower Retort to be technically extravagant with such toys. Technology was, after all, their life.
Kim was in fine form, flashing in and out of existence faster than Su-Mueng could follow or anticipate him. He might have done better if his mind had been on the game, but as it was his moves were confused with other thoughts. Kim won the first match and stood grinning at him.
“Same again?”
Su-Mueng laid down his bat. “Some other time, maybe. I don’t think it’s an even contest the way I’m playing today.”
“Time-chess then? Each row on a different time gradient?”
Su-Mueng shook his head. Time-chess required such concentration, such a phenomenal memory, that he wouldn’t have stood a chance.
“Oh. You want to relax more, maybe? A show? Or some girls?”
“Thanks, Kim, but there’s something I want to attend to at home. I think I’ll be getting along.”
“Sure. Don’t let me stop you. Well, in that case I’ll be getting along, too.”
Kim waved him a cheery good-bye and went bounding toward the gaudy awning of a trampoline emporium. Su-Mueng left the leisure area and continued on his way home.
Kim could never understand, he thought, what was on his mind. And his intentions would have left him aghast. Probably no one but himself could understand, and that went for either side of the divided city. People never did understand what was outside their experience, and for everyone but himself the other retort up – or, in the reverse case, down – the shaft was little more than a theoretical concept.…
The elevator swept down, past endless tiers of factories and workshops, past amusement emporiums and domestic precincts. Finally Su-Mueng left the elevator and made his way through a maze of tiny streets until he came to a neat little house merging with a dozen others in a jumbled, interlocking design. He put his thumbprint to the key and went inside.
His grandfather sat at a table drinking a glass of fizzy mineral water. He was not really so very much older than Su-Mueng (so demonstrating another aspect of Retort City’s mastery over time); to be precise he was twenty-six years older.
Su-Mueng gave him a perfunctory greeting, drew a meal from the dispenser, sat down and began to eat the synthesised rice, curried chicken and bamboo shoots.
“Interesting job today?” his grandfather asked, eyeing him speculatively. Su-Mueng nodded abstractedly. “Not bad.” It still surprised him, even ten years after, how much casual conversation in the Lower Retort centred on work. The social system really did function as it was meant to: everybody down here had an obsessive interest in production, in making things. He was interested, too – after all, it was interesting – but with him that was not all. He did not neglect the wider vision that was denied to these… servants.…
He shovelled down the food and sat back, brooding. His grandfather switched on the wall screen. A technician was explaining how to set up a time delay circuit – a circuit that really did delay time, running a tiny fraction of the travelling “now” through a recurrent phase. Su-Mueng, already familiar with the technique, looked on without interest. Later there would be crude dramas, comedy shows, and so forth.
His resentment welled up. “You should see the kind of thing they screen in the Upper Retort,” he suddenly said, loudly.
With a faint groan his grandfather turned to him, smiling derisively. “You’re not going to start that again, are you?”
“But, Grandfather, wouldn’t you like to see what it’s like up there?” Su-Mueng asked. “Believe me, it’s so different. They live so much better than we do… everything’s so luxurious. You ought to see it.”