by John Wyndham
I went back and sat down again beside Sally. That picture certainly had spoilt things – ‘Councillor’s Wife’! Naturally she wanted to know what I’d seen on the paper, and I had to sharpen up a few lies to cut my way out of that one.
We sat on awhile, feeling gloomy, saying nothing.
A platform went by, labelled:
Trouble-free Culture – Get Educated in Modern Comfort
We watched it glide away through the railings and into the traffic.
‘Maybe it’s time we moved,’ I suggested.
‘Yes,’ agreed Sally, dully.
We walked back towards her place, me still wishing that I had been able to see the date on that paper.
‘You wouldn’t,’ I asked her casually, ‘you wouldn’t happen to know any Councillors?’
She looked surprised.
‘Well – there’s Mr Falmer,’ she said, rather doubtfully.
‘He’d be a – a youngish man?’ I inquired, off-handedly.
‘Why, no. He’s ever so old – as a matter of fact, it’s really his wife I know.’
‘Ah!’ I said. ‘You don’t know any of the younger ones?’
‘I’m afraid not. Why?’
I put over a line about a situation like this needing young men of ideas.
‘Young men of ideas don’t have to be councillors,’ she remarked, looking at me.
Maybe, as I said, she doesn’t go much on logic, but she has her own ways of making a fellow feel better. I’d have felt better still if I had had some ideas, though.
The next day found public indignation right up the scale again. It seems there had been an evening service going on in All Saints’ Church. The vicar had ascended his pulpit and was just drawing breath for a brief sermon when a platform labelled:
Was Gt Gt Granddad one of the Boys? – Our £1 Trip may Show you
floated in through the north wall and slid to a stop in front of the lectern. The vicar stared at it for some seconds in silence, then he crashed his fist down on his reading desk.
‘This,’ he boomed. ‘This is intolerable! We shall wait until this object is removed.’
He remained motionless, glaring at it. The congregation glared with him.
The tourists on the platform had an air of waiting for the show to begin. When nothing happened they started passing round bottles and fruit to while away the time. The vicar maintained his stony glare. When still nothing happened the tourists began to get bored. The young men tickled the girls, and the girls giggled them on. Several of them began to urge the man at the front end of their craft. After a bit he nodded, and the platform slid away through the south wall.
It was the first point our side had ever scored. The vicar mopped his brow, cleared his throat, and then extemporized the address of his life, on the subject of ‘The Cities of the Plain’.
But no matter how influential the tops that were blowing, there was still nothing getting done about it. There were schemes, of course. Jimmy had one of them: it concerned either ultra-high or infra-low frequencies that were going to shudder the projections of the tourists to bits. Perhaps something along those lines might have been worked out sometime, but it was a quicker kind of cure that we were needing; and it is damned difficult to know what you can do about something which is virtually no more than a three-dimensional movie portrait unless you can think up some way of fouling its transmission. All its functions are going on not where you see it, but in some unknown place where the origin is – so how do you get at it? What you are actually seeing doesn’t feel, doesn’t eat, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t sleep … It was while I was considering what it actually does do that I had my idea. It struck me all of a heap – so simple. I grabbed my hat and took off for the Town Hall.
By this time the daily processions of sizzling citizens, threateners, and cranks had made them pretty cautious about callers there, but I worked through at last to a man who got interested, though doubtful.
‘No one’s going to like that much,’ he said.
‘No one’s meant to like it. But it couldn’t be much worse than this – and it’s likely to do local trade a bit of good, too,’ I pointed out.
He brightened a bit at that. I pressed on:
‘After all, the Mayor has his restaurants, and the pubs’ll be all for it, too.’
‘You’ve got a point there,’ he admitted. ‘Very well, we’ll put it to them. Come along.’
For the whole of three days we worked hard on it. On the fourth we went into action. Soon after daylight there were gangs out on all the roads fixing barriers at the municipal limits, and when they’d done that they put up big white boards lettered in red:
WESTWICH
THE CITY THAT LOOKS AHEAD
COME AND SEE
IT’S BEYOND THE MINUTE – NEWER THAN TOMORROW
SEE
THE WONDER CITY OF THE AGE
TOLL (Non-Residents) 2/6
The same morning the television permission was revoked, and the national papers carried large display advertisements:
COLOSSAL! – UNIQUE! – EDUCATIONAL!
WESTWICH
presents the only authentic
FUTURAMATIC SPECTACLE
WANT TO KNOW:
What Your Great Great Granddaughter will Wear?
How Your Great Great Grandson will Look?
Next Century’s Styles?
How Customs will Change?
COME TO WESTWICH AND SEE FOR YOURSELF
THE OFFER OF THE AGES
THE FUTURE FOR 2/6
We reckoned that with the publicity there had been already there’d be no need for more detail than that – though we ran some more specialized advertisements in the picture dailies:
WESTWICH
GIRLS! GIRLS!! GIRLS!!!
THE SHAPES TO COME
SAUCY FASHIONS–CUTE WAYS
ASTONISHING–AUTHENTIC–UNCENSORED
GLAMOUR GALORE FOR 2/6
and so on. We bought enough space to get it mentioned in the news columns in order to help those who like to think they are doing things for sociological, psychological, and other intellectual reasons.
And they came.
There had been quite a few looking in to see the sights before, but now they learned that it was something worth charging money for the figures jumped right up – and the more they went up, the gloomier the Council Treasurer got because we hadn’t made it five shillings, or even ten.
After a couple of days we had to take over all vacant lots, and some fields further out, for car parks, and people were parking far enough out to need a special bus service to bring them in. The streets became so full of crowds stooging around greeting any of Pawley’s platforms or tourists with whistles, jeers, and catcalls, that local citizens simply stayed indoors and did their smouldering there.
The Treasurer began to worry now over whether we’d be liable for Entertainment Tax. The list of protests to the Mayor grew longer each day, but he was so busy arranging special convoys of food and beer for his restaurants that he had little time to worry about them. Nevertheless, after a few days of it I started to wonder whether Pawley wasn’t going to see us out, after all. The tourists didn’t care for it much, one could see, and it must have interfered a lot with their prize-hunts, but it hadn’t cured them of wandering about all over the place, and now we had the addition of thousands of trippers whooping it up with pandemonium for most of the night. Tempers all round were getting short enough for real trouble to break out.
Then, on the sixth night, when several of us were just beginning to wonder whether it might not be wiser to clear out of Westwich for a bit, the first crack showed – a man at the Town Hall rang me up to say he had seen several platforms with empty seats on them.
The next night I went down to one of their regular routes to see for myself. I found a large, well-lubricated crowd already there, exchanging cracks and jostling and shoving, but we hadn’t long to wait. A platform slid out on a slant through the front of the Coronati
on Café, and the label on it read:
CHARM & ROMANCE OF 20TH CENTURY – 15/-
and there were half a dozen empty seats, at that.
The arrival of the platform brought a well-supported Bronx cheer, and a shrilling of whistles. The driver remained indifferent as he steered straight through the crowds. His passengers looked less certain of themselves. Some of them did their best to play up; they giggled, made motions of returning slap for slap and grimace for grimace with the crowd to start with. Possibly it was as well that the tourist girls couldn’t hear the things the crowd was shouting to them, but some of the gestures were clear enough. It couldn’t have been a lot of fun gliding straight into the men who were making them. By the time the platform was clear of the crowd and disappearing through the front of the Bon Marché pretty well all the tourists had given up pretending that it was; some of them were looking a little sick. By the expression on several of the faces I reckoned that Pawley might be going to have a tough time explaining the culture aspect of it to a deputation somewhere.
The next night there were more empty seats than full ones, and someone reported that the price had come down to 10s.
The night after that they did not show up at all, and we all had a busy time with the job of returning the half-crowns, and refusing claims for wasted petrol.
And the next night they didn’t come, either; or the one after that; so then all we had to do was to pitch into the job of cleaning up Westwich, and the affair was practically over – apart from the longer-term business of living down the reputation the place had been getting lately.
At least, we say it’s over. Jimmy, however, maintains that that is probably only the way it looks from here. According to him, all they had to do was to modify out the visibility factor that was causing the trouble, so it’s possible that they are still touring around here – and other places.
Well, I suppose he could be right. Perhaps that fellow Pawley, whoever he is, or will be, has a chain of his funfairs operating all round the world and all through history at this very moment. But we don’t know – and, as long as he keeps them out of sight, I don’t know that we care a lot, either.
Pawley has been dealt with as far as we are concerned. He was a case for desperate measures; even the vicar of All Saints’ appreciated that; and undoubtedly he had a point to make when he began his address of thanksgiving with: ‘Paradoxical, my friends, paradoxical can be the workings of vulgarity …’
Once it was settled I was able to make time to go round and see Sally again. I found her looking brighter than she’d been for weeks, and lovelier on account of it. She seemed pleased to see me, too.
‘Hullo, Jerry,’ she said. ‘I’ve just been reading in the paper how you organized the plan for getting rid of them. I think it was just wonderful of you.’
A little time ago I’d probably have taken that for a cue, but it was no trigger now. I sort of kept on seeing her with her arms full of twins, and wondering in a dead-inside way how they got there.
‘There wasn’t a lot to it, darling,’ I told her modestly. ‘Anyone else might have hit on the idea.’
‘That’s as maybe – but a whole lot of people don’t think so. And I’ll tell you another thing I heard today. They’re going to ask you to stand for the Council, Jerry.’
‘Me on the Council. That’d be a big laugh –’ I began. Then I stopped suddenly. ‘If – I mean, would that mean I’d be called “Councillor”?’ I asked her.
‘Why – well, yes, I suppose so,’ she said, looking puzzled.
Things shimmered a bit.
‘Er – Sally, darling – er, sweetheart, there’s – er – something I’ve been trying to get round to saying to you for quite a time …’ I began.
Opposite Number
Seeing the couple when I did was simply a matter of chance. Probably I should have run across them just a little later, anyway, but the results could have been quite different. It simply happened that I turned into the cross-corridor when they were up the other end of it, with their backs towards me, and I noticed them peering up and down the far main-passage in the manner of people making sure that the coast was clear. Jean I recognized at once; even the distant glimpse of her profile was enough. Of the man, with his back towards me, I registered only that there was something familiar about him.
But for the furtive, scouting look about them I doubt whether I should have paid much attention – at least, I should not have followed them – but once I had noticed that, it occurred to me that there was only one place they could have come from, and that was old Whetstone’s room – it is still known as ‘old Whetstone’s room’ although he died more than two years ago.
There wasn’t any reason why Jean shouldn’t go there if she wanted to. After all, since Whetstone was her father, all the stuff in the room is, legally speaking, hers – although in point of fact it just stays there under dustsheets because nobody has liked to start taking it to pieces. The old man was always greatly respected for his work – his official work in the labs up above, and although he was undoubtedly a bit – well, let’s say obsessed, by his own project, and in spite of the fact that the project never did, nor ever seemed likely to do, what he wanted it to; yet, somehow, his prestige still protects the room and the apparatus. It is a kind of temporary memorial to him.
Besides, there is an idea among the several of us who helped him at different times that he really was on to something. There were some results, of a kind, enough, anyway, to suggest that if the old mule hadn’t been so stubborn on his own theory he might have got somewhere by following them up. So this feeling, that some day someone with the time and inclination might find something there, has helped in keeping the room and the stuff just as he left it.
But I couldn’t imagine any reason why Jean should want to be furtive about visiting the room – except, of course, that whoever her companion was, he wasn’t her husband …
I shall have to admit that when I turned off my intended way and followed them, it was out of sheer snooping curiosity. After all, it was Jean, not anybody else, and I couldn’t imagine her having the kind of hole and corner affair that had to be conducted in a dusty workroom among sheet-shrouded apparatus; so why … ?
When I looked round the corner they were well along the passage; not exactly furtive now, but still circumspect. I noticed him catch her hand, and press it encouragingly. I let them get round the next corner, and followed.
When I reached the door they were half-way across the quadrangle in the direction of the canteen; not furtive at all now, but looking about them at all the people in sight as though they might be searching for someone. I was still too far off to identify the man. They went into the canteen, and I followed.
They hadn’t sat down at a table; they were standing a little way up the hall, with their backs to me, and from the way they were turning their heads there could be no doubt that they were searching. One or two people waved to them, and they waved back, but they didn’t go to join them.
I began to feel a little foolish – and a trifle mean, too. Indeed, their business was none of mine, and there was nothing whatever clandestine about them now. I had just made up my mind to go back out when I caught my first good look at the man’s face, in one of the wall-mirrors. There was something quite startlingly familiar about it, yet I failed to place it immediately: in fact, several seconds must have elapsed before I realized that it was the face I was accustomed to see every morning while I shaved.
The likeness was so exact that I sat down on the nearest chair, with an odd weakness in my knees, and feeling, for some reason I didn’t understand, a little scared.
He was still looking over the other people. If he had seen me through the looking-glass he’d not been interested. They both walked slowly on up the room, searching it as they went. Finally, they left by the door at the other end. I slipped back by the door behind me, and worked round the outside of the building. They had come to a stop on the gravel spread, a few yards from the door,
and were deep in discussion.
I was tempted to go up to them, but – well, it was some time since Jean and I had been on chatting terms: and there is something rather fatuous about the idea of going up to a perfect stranger simply to announce: ‘I say, you look just like me, you know!’ So I waited.
Presently they came to a decision, and turned along the path that leads to the main gate. Jean was pointing things out, and seemed amused by them, though I couldn’t see why they should amuse her. She moved closer to him, and linked her arm in his as they walked along.
I must say I considered that unwise. The Pleybell Research Institute holds together one of those intraregarding, not to say ingrowing, communities where nothing is missed. The unemployed wives can follow scents that would baffle a bloodhound, and the turn of an eye, let alone a hand on the arm, is enough to start people building law courts in the air. The gesture, though possibly innocent, became almost flamboyant bravado in our milieu. I was not the only one to observe it. Indeed, people seemed to be in a rather observing mood that afternoon: several of them gave me an intense and rather puzzled look as we met.
Outside the gates the pair turned left, and I let them get a little further ahead – not that it greatly mattered, for even if Jean should look back and notice me, what more natural than that I should be found on a part of my regular homeward route? They had just turned the second corner to the right, which is that of the road in which my house stands, when there came a thudding of feet behind me, and a voice gasping: ‘Mr Ruddle! Mr Ruddle, sir!’ I turned to find one of the lab messengers. Through gasps he said: