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.He had hoped that the receiving area would be, to some extent, a mirror image of the delivery area and that therefore there would be a descending staircase in a corresponding position to the one he had come up by.But where was it?He searched, and located, not a staircase, but a small riding platform.This took him beyond the region defined by the metal girdle; he was in the Leisure Retort.Below him stretched the retort’s receiving area for all the goods supplied by the city’s willing slaves.It was a shunting yard pretty much like the one he had left, except that everything appeared to be under cybernetic control and the canisters were already being broken open, their contents being transferred to smaller trolleys for dispatch to ten thousand different destinations.Su-Mueng swung himself down from a gantry and strode confidently forward.He had nothing to fear.No one would stop him or question his presence; no one questioned anyone in the Leisure Retort.And as he walked he already noticed, with a feeling of excitement, the difference between here and the place he had just left.The air was different; he had ceased to notice, during his long years as a worker, that everywhere in the Production Retort the air smelled faintly of oil and namelessly subtle industrial substances.Here there was only a faint suggestion of perfumes, of anything that pleased the senses.Many times he had reconstructed in his mind the layout of the retort.He decided that he would not delay, but proceed immediately to execute his mission.The next half hour was, to him, delirious.He passed through the gorgeous gardens and concourses that had grown faint in his memory.Past the people who went calmly, serenely, about their unhurried business – unfettered by any regime or timetable, but given to the abstracted, civilised pursuits of art and philosophy, of every kind of cultured subtlety.Here was life at the peak of refinement, a life incomprehensible to those in the Production Retort who had not been educated to appreciate it.But Su-Mueng had been so educated, and then it had been torn from him.As the aura of the Leisure Retort seeped into him his existence down below began to fade to the aspect of a dream.… Su-Mueng pulled himself together.He could not say how long he might manage to stay here, and he was bent on a task that to him was of great importance.He entered a quiet part of the retort that was used chiefly as a precinct of government.No one accosted him as he walked through the fresh-scented corridors, decorated in shades of orange and lime green, that led to a group of apartments terrible to his memory: the place where his father was incarcerated.Ten years ago he had witnessed the beginning of Hueh Shao’s imprisonment.The Retributive Council had ordered that horror, in acknowledgement of the seriousness of his offence.Su-Mueng was not surprised to find the environs deserted; all would shun such a place.The lock on the door was a simple one, though it could not be opened from the inside.Su-Mueng took a small device from his carrying sash, and after a little experimenting sprung it.Stepping inside, he found himself in a glass-walled foyer looking into the offender’s prison: a dwelling-place something like that in which Su-Mueng and his grandfather had lived, but larger and much, much more luxurious.It appeared to be untenanted.Su-Mueng examined a panel set into the rear wall of the foyer, replete with strip-dials, access sockets and so forth.He took his time-phase controller out of the bag he carried, waved it in front of the panel and observed the interior of the glass vessels, touching one or two of the external studs.Then he picked up a microphone and spoke into it, trying to keep his voice calm and unemotional.“Honoured father,” he said.“I know that you can see me, although I cannot see you.I am your son, Su-Mueng.I have returned to release you, if I can.”He put down the microphone and returned to the wall panel; on one end of the model city was a metal plate which he placed against the panel.Magnetic bubbles circulated in the plate, inducing control currents in the apparatus within the wall.He would never be made to believe that his father deserved the punishment that had been inflicted on him.The Retributive Council had sentenced him to solitary confinement in past time.He was out-synched – his personal “now-moment” back-graded to minutes, possibly only to a few tens of seconds, behind the common “now-moment” of the Leisure Retort.His solitude could not have been more complete, and was scarcely mitigated by the concession that he was not permanently confined to his apartments – being permitted during certain periods to wander within a restricted area – for everyone’s time was ahead of his; he could see them, but they could not see him, or hear him, or respond to him.He was like a ghost, moving among people who ignored him.The mind of man, thought Su-Mueng, could not have devised a crueller exile.The lights within the glass bottle flickered and raced.Suddenly the apartment shimmered and the artificially retarded time-field was abolished.There stood Hueh Shao, staring at him amazed, but like Su-Mueng forcing himself to adopt an attitude of dignified restraint.The ex-minister bore a strong resemblance to his own father in the Production Retort – they were, in fact, of about the same age, a little under fifty – but the similarity was modified by the difference between the customs of the respective communities.He wore a long, wispy goatee beard and neatly cultivated mustachios that dropped down on either side of his mouth.The eyebrows were plucked, curved upward at their outer ends, and showed traces of cosmetic.The greying hair was carefully combed back, but was considerably longer than the cropped style affected down below.He continued staring with steady eyes while Su-Mueng unlocked the inner door and stepped into the apartment.“My son,” he said, “what foolishness is this?”And Su-Mueng stared back, unable to speak, unable to explain what foolishness it was.Incredibly, his thoughts had never ranged beyond this moment: the moment when he set the old man free.His father, a revered elder individual of intelligence and resourcefulness, would surely know what to do, his subliminal thoughts had told him.Only now did he realise that those thoughts were the thoughts of a ten-year-old boy, arrested at the moment when the law had torn him away from that father.His childish adoration had never died.And only now, as he faced Hueh Shao, did it come home to him that his father was as helpless and resourceless as himself.6A hush fell on the gathering in a quiet room in a derelict back street.Sobrie Oblomot stared at the tabletop, slightly embarrassed by the sympathy he felt emanating from the others.“Sorry, Oblomot,” the Chairman said, somewhat awkwardly.“But at least your brother died like a comrade.Went out with a bang.And took four Titans with him.”“That’s not as self-sacrificing as it sounds,” said Sobrie stiffly.“I’d commit suicide as well, rather than face what those bastards have waiting in Bupolbloc Two.”The Group Leader from Kansorn nodded.“The Titans have been coming down hard lately.I admit I wake up sweating sometimes.I never go without my s-grenade, either.”“I concur,” said the man sitting next to him.He wore a mask and spoke through a voice modifier, being a person of such public prominence, and besides this of such importance to the League, that his anonymity was deemed essential.“The League is reeling under the Titans’ blows,” he said.“Nearly three hundred people arrested in the past few months.The antipodean networks are practically destroyed.If this continues I fear for our whole cause.”The depression of the League members was palpable
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