2

Thursday 16 July 1987

16 July; nine-thirty in the morning.

Colley sat at his desk contemplating his calendar.

It was exactly a year since he had heard that Chaite had been killed. But what does 'exactly a year' mean? Colley wondered. What about 29 February? 'They' gave us leap seconds to tidy up nature; and what is it measured relative to? Is the earth a little in front of where it was, or a little behind?

    And now he was standing outside the solar system, seeing the earth with a thin line indicating its elliptical orbit, basking in a busy flurry of man-made satellites, the moon calmly controlling the tides, the other planets dimly unimportant.

    Colley's time manifested itself as a solid mechanical model in which he fitted firmly in place, a player in a desmodromic drama, the great celestial wheels synchronised by the connecting rods of Chronos, a cerulean symphony, an orchestrated orrery - he could almost hear the music of the spheres. Now his thoughts somehow controlled the earth; he saw it oscillate uncertainly on its line, not knowing how to run.

    Then, in a dizzy swoop as instantaneous as it was everlasting his extraterrestrial self crossed that great void and entered his corporeal body with an almost palpable jolt, and there he was sitting at his desk, contemplating his calendar.

He drew forth the drawer where he kept his Chaiteana - a few notes, holiday postcards - all in Chaite's hand ('not so much spidery; more harvest manic' he'd said); a G-string (guitar!); some little rubber bands; a picture of Chaite whom he had loved luxuriously - never uxoriously - mock schmock, innocuous worse luck, held back by tact, restrained by training.

    Chaite ... how he had missed her ... how he had felt the void that Chaite, killed, had filled. So Colley turned over the ana he knew so well, over which he had lingered less as the months passed, Chaite crystallising in his mind's eye in idealised form, a cerebral shade as the terrible ache in his bereaved body slowly subsided.

    For Colley, Chaite would always be twenty-eight years old, although it was thirty years since she had been born. A Chaite older than twenty eight could now never be; it was inconceivable. He recalled a paragraph he had seen in the paper that very morning:

                 SKELETON DATED

The skeleton found last week by workmen excavating in Marketstreet, Addercote, has been examined by pathologists at St Mary's hospital. A spokesperson said today that the skeleton was of a woman of about thirty, and was over 2,000 years old.                 

Ambivalently, that woman was both thirty and two thousand years old. Had Chaite lived, thought Colley - were we both to have lived - she would have been sixty when I was seventy. And yet, when I'm seventy, Chaite will still be twenty eight.

The day after Chaite's death, Colley had been tortured by the thought that 24 hours before he could have called Chaite; spent the day with her - perhaps averted her death by doing so.

even he was not so tortured or tortuous as to need to extract mileage from that.

'Perhaps it's as well we can't see into the future ... [Colley had said, in one of his interminable conversations with Chaite during the pleasing pain of his obsession] ... and yet ... time cannot run in two directions at once. In the world in which we find ourselves, the cup falls from the table; from our past experience of falling cups we suspect it will shatter on the floor, but sometimes we catch it; sometimes it bounces; then we are surprised and amused - perhaps because it has defied the norm'

Chaite thought about that one: 'So ... were time to run the other way, "shattered" pieces would assemble themselves on the floor and rise to the table. And yet, when the pieces started to assemble, we could never be sure what they would become - we wouldn't always know what they were "meant" to be. Once again, our experience might lead us to suspect what'd happen, but time would have to advance before we could be sure'

Colley became excited: 'Does this imply some sort of reverse gravity - enabling things to rise to some level (such as the table) after assembly? In our present system, Mother Geonature (she of things inanimate) is busy increasing the entropy; Mother Bionature (she of animals and plants) is busy defying her sister'

'Isn't it all this that makes life seem so improbable? All the millions of ways things could be, and yet they've chosen one - or one has been chosen - which has enabled them to reproduce themselves and to evolve until they've produced what seems to be that pinnacle of creation - man - who is (presumably) nearer to understanding what it's all about than is any other type of living creature'

'So ... plants and animals developed hand in hand (as it were), the forces driving them enabling the evolution of structures whose purpose couldn't possibly be known until they were up and running ...'

'Yes ... unless by some divine plan'

'Is it right to question this? Does the whole unlikely saga of evolution - or perhaps it's special creation? - speak for the existence of God?'

Chaite thought: 'Well ... only this pinnacle of creation could begin to appreciate God ... so perhaps God after all did create man in His own image as a ready-made fan club? Or has evolution taken its course and presently reached a being which has the nous to suss out what's happening - and postulate God?'

earlier necessity was for a maker, defender, redeemer and friend rather than a panaceal answer to the meaning of everything?'

They fell silent again. Colley picked up the time theme: 'So time runs in the direction it does, and Bionature defies Geonature; Geonature respects entropy; Bionature scorns it. And if time ran the other way, evolution would become devolution. And what would this do for life?'

'Well ... this could explain the evolution of structures whose purpose couldn't possibly be known until they were up and running. If they devolved, of course, their purpose would be plain from the first'

'As things are, birth seems a reasonable starting point; we're born, grow up, and at some usually unpredictable and unspecified time we die. In reverse, how would losing one's experience, getting smaller and smaller, and popping into the womb work?'

'Surely there'd be no surprise there? ... But I bet you'd have the same sense of loss at a birth. Anyway ... you'd get used to the continual stream of coffins emerging from crematorium and graveyard, being opened ...'

'By overgivers?'

'... and "giving birth" - or perhaps "taking death"? And would we increte food and exgest it? …'

'It sounds disgusting ...'

'… and think of the scene in the pub on a Saturday night ...'

'I don't want to ... ugh!'

Colley thought again: 'All right, then ... what about the dustmen bringing bags of what we call rubbish every week, to be unpacked ... you'd need selective reverse gravity there, to get the tea-leaves out ...'

'I still don't like it very much. Can't you think of something nice?'

'Well ... concerts would be rather fun, wouldn't they? And motor racing?'

'What about benefactors arriving at banks and safe deposits in fast cars, and rushing in with sacks of money and valuables ... coming home and finding that you had a television and video, and that your jewellery box was filled?'

'Ah ... but what would you think about phobanthropists ... taking all that money from hospices, and universities, and the third world in order to reconstruct their millions?

'Surgeons standing by waiting for the excinerator to produce diseased organs to incise?'

'Hedgehogs - rabbits - cats on the roads ...'

(which wouldn't hold good in "reverse" time), or does it mean that lots of things that happen now are "nice"?'

'Do we have to think of everything "happening backwards"? ... will people walk and talk backwards ... would it be exactly like running a film backwards ... or ... ?'

That gave them some food for thought.

So they had carried on. And yet ... could they have seen into the future? Could they have analysed what they were saying and become prescient? What about the manner of Chaite's death - was that pure coincidence in the light of another conversation they had had? Or is it just that so many things happen that it would be odder still if there were no coincidences?

They had been talking about the chances of things happening, and Colley had introduced personal and statistical ways of looking at things.

'How do you mean?' asked Chaite.

'Well, suppose you're invading the Normandy Beaches, tumbling out of personnel carriers, running up to your first position, guns firing at you from all around'

'Not from all around, surely? ... [literal Chaite] ... Your own people wouldn't be firing up the beach at you, would they?'

'No - but you know what I mean. You're under fire, shells bursting all around - it's all like stock footage on the telly. Now, if you think that one of the projectiles has your name written on it, you'll be scared fartless'

'Well?'

'Well, if you look at it that only 30 per cent of your force will be hit (or whatever the statistic is), and that therefore 70 per cent will get through and you're more likely - ipso facto - to be in that 70 per cent; if, in other words, you flip from the personal to the statistical point of view it ought to make you feel a lot better'

'How do you know?'

Colley tried to imagine himself in battle: 'I don't - I just said you ought to feel better. If only you can remember to think that way in the heat of the moment. I've always thought that if I had to go into battle that's what I'd think. It's like bravery'

'When you do something and everyone says "how brave" because they're looking at it from the outside. But while it's going on you're just doing what you've got to do ...'

'A man's got to do what a man's got to do?'

'Exactly - people laugh at that phrase because it's become a cliché, but it's what I'm talking about. But of course the borderline between bravery and foolhardiness is very unclear - I bet more people get medals for unthinking foolhardiness than for conscious bravery'

'It's all to do with being in the right place at the right time - or the wrong place at the wrong time ...'

'Or the right place at the wrong time or the wrong place at the right time'

'That's enough place and time - Ed'

Colley thought about place and time. Then: 'There can't be anything "right" or "wrong" about the place and the time. You are where you are because of where you were just before. If you're moving, your speed and direction determine where you're going to be. And if you're stationary, that's where you are'

'In which case it's only the time dimension which is moving on'

'Precisely. So as far as two objects meeting is concerned ... the bullet does have your name written on it, doesn't it? Yes ... so far, I've only thought of this in connection with accidents'

Chaite was curious: 'What sort of accidents?'

'Travelling - road - accidents. I sometimes think of two - or even more - people setting out from different places at different times, and they're set to crash into one another but of course they don't know it'

'You're thinking of one starting from Newcastle and the other from Carlisle and they meet on the A69?'

'Yes, that's the sort of thing'

'But most crashes aren't like that - head on - surely there are crashes at T-junctions ... and when someone runs into the back of the car in front ... and lorries toppling on top of you ...'

'Well, I'm sure my principle still holds good. If someone chooses to pull out from a T-junction when someone else is on a collision course that's very much an example of the place where you're going to be being governed by the place where you were'

'It doesn't seem as dramatically inevitable as the Newcastle-Carlisle crash'

'What happens if someone crashes into a stationary object. A lorry ... or a wall ... or a tree?'

'I suppose that, as far as the stationary object is concerned, it must be all in time rather than in space. The object's just standing there waiting - without knowing, of course. But you've chosen three interesting things there. The lorry presumably was driven to where it is, and is expecting to drive away again. So it's only temporary. The wall is presumably built for a purpose - someone has chosen where to put it to make a boundary, or to be aesthetically pleasing, or to be part of a house. Its presence is more permanent - a different sort of chance'

'And the tree may be where a bird happened to drop its seed, or it got carried there in the mud on someone's wellies, or whatever'

'Yes - and its survival is threatened at every stage - being eaten as a seed, or a tender sapling, or uprooted to make way for the wall, or knocked over by the lorry. But it's this statistical thing again. Fish lay millions of eggs in order to ensure that there'll go on being enough fish. You can't say which eggs will survive - just that it's one in a million or whatever it is. But the strange thing is that there seems to be some force which ensures that the appropriate number gets through'

'It happens in all sorts of apparently less critical circumstances - leaves falling off trees, bubbles going up in fizzy drinks, customers visiting a cafeteria. I think there must be some sort of overall controlling force. If we think about it, we'll see that it governs ... probably everything ... if not directly, then at second hand. The driving force of the universe. And it must be amazingly accurate in its timing - think of radioactive half-life, for example'

Later, Colley had come across a question posed by Arthur Koestler: 'How does a radioactive element know what its half-life is?'

He fell to thinking about this statistically at the atomic level, and was drawn to the conclusion that the passage of time is somehow a sub-atomic phenomenon. Atomic masers keep time (at 1.42GHz) correct to one second in 1.7 million years. How you measured this, he didn't know. Once again, he had the feeling that he was on the threshold of a complete understanding of the universe ... and once again the secret eluded him.

Time fast, time slow.

the morning gone?' … 'This week seems to have been going on for ever' … 'Hours crawl; years fly' - Old Chinese proverb.

Time getting faster as you get older ... Colley had found the secret of that one: assume that you develop full awareness at the age of two; then when you are six, you have four years to remember ... so the year between six and seven is one quarter of your aware life. The year between 32 and 33 is one thirtieth of your aware life. The year between 62 and 63 is one sixtieth of your aware life. And so on ... no wonder that the years roll by - on ever-better-lubricated bearings.

Hours don't seem to suffer from this problem ... [Chaite had said] … and what about the slow-motion timing of an accident - you know what's going to happen, and yet you're powerless to do anything about it'