Fireball

by John Christopher

  Brad didn’t answer. It was roughly spherical, eight or ten feet across, blindingly white—a whiteness of sunlight reflected dazzlingly from mist or ice. Except that there was no sun. It appeared to float a foot or so above the ground. Thunder growled, and a heavy drop of rain splashed Simon’s face. He said: “It’s what they call a fireball, isn’t it? I’ve read about them.”

  The progress had slowed and now halted. It hovered a dozen feet away from them. That was some relief, but he still didn’t like the look of it. He was trying to reassure himself by adding: “A form of ball lightning. Quite harmless.”

  Brad said slowly: “I guess it has to be ball lightning. Only ball lightning’s supposed to be coloured—red or yellow. And nothing so big—no more than inches across.”

  He took a step forward.

  Simon, alarmed, said: “I’d watch it. Even if it is supposed to be harmless, I wouldn’t try interfering with it.”

  “Whatever it is,” Brad said, “I doubt we’ll ever see anything like it again. I want to see it close up.”

  The huge ball did not move, but Simon’s hairs still prickled. It could be static electricity causing that, but it could also be the same old-fashioned cowardice which had sent Tarka streaking for home.

  Brad continued advancing. For Simon, the thought of Tarka produced the attractive thought that he was responsible for her and maybe ought to go after her and make sure she was all right. The prospect of explaining that to Brad later was something he liked rather less. Or he could just stand his ground, while Brad went forward and investigated. And then listen to Brad’s report on it?

  He made a conscious, sweating effort to move his feet, and followed Brad. The fireball stayed on the same spot, but he had a feeling, as much from intuition as from anything he could actually see, that it was spinning on its axis. And somehow inside the dazzling white there seemed to be colours—hundreds and thousands of tiny winking jewels. He said uneasily: “It’s quite pretty.”

  He wasn’t sure what happened next—whether the sphere moved like a lightning stroke towards them, or suddenly expanded. There was a weird sensation of rapid motion and absolute stillness at the same time and a quivering in his body as though every joint and every muscle were being violently twitched. He thought, with detachment: So this is what it’s like being electrocuted. Then all the white was black.

  2

  IT WAS LIKE AWAKENING FROM sleep by being tossed into a cold bath. The sensation of stinging wetness was so vivid that Simon put a hand to his face and was surprised to find both dry. There had been a moment of unconsciousness, but it seemed no more than a moment, with the recollection of what had happened immediately before it intense and real. As real as the present awareness of lying on the ground, where he must have fallen.

  The fireball? There was no sign of it. He looked around him into an ordinary wood on an ordinary hot grey afternoon. Brad? Yes, Brad was there behind him, getting to his feet. Simon stood up, too. His muscles trembled slightly but obeyed him. He turned round to look properly at Brad, a deliberate act. No, there was nothing wrong with him. He lifted his right arm, clenching the fist tight. As far as he could tell, anyway. He asked tentatively: “Brad?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure. The ball hit us, I guess. You okay?”

  “Yes. You?”

  Brad nodded. “It must be true they’re harmless. Or maybe we just lucked out. Static electricity does funny things.”

  Simon remembered the first intimation of something out of place: the dog’s panic flight. Turning to look in the direction she’d gone, he was aware of another jolt, but mental, not physical. There was no path. He was standing on unmarked, rough ground in the middle of the wood. But where in the wood? That vast spreading tree, its gnarled trunk several feet across, had not been there. He would have noticed it. Trying to keep the nervousness out of his voice, he said: “Where are we?”

  “That’s what I was starting to wonder.” Brad reached up to an overhanging branch and shook it, as though testing its reality. “Not where we were when we got hit.”

  “That’s crazy!” He hesitated. “Some sort of dream?”

  Brad let go of the branch. He came towards Simon and, before Simon realized what was happening, had given him a short punch, jolting rather than painful, to the ribs. He grinned.

  “That feel like a dream?”

  “But what . . . ?”

  “Maybe a freak atmospheric condition. You read about those rains of frogs from the sky? We got picked up and then dumped. In another part of the wood.”

  Simon looked up at the sky. “No wind then. Or now.”

  “But in between? I was out. Not long, I guess, but how would I know? And you?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “Long enough, maybe, for some kind of updraft to lift us.”

  “And set us down again, both in the same spot, without a bruise?”

  Brad shrugged. “You have a better explanation?”

  “It would make as much sense to have been taken—I don’t know—to another planet or something.”

  “Not to me, it wouldn’t.” Brad was emphatic. “A planet with an atmosphere as near the same as ours as makes no difference? And flora. That’s a good old-fashioned oak tree.” He pointed. “Complete with squirrel.”

  It was sound reasoning, but did not affect the feeling of total strangeness, of dislocation from reality, which had been growing rather than diminishing since he picked himself up. Simon looked about him. A normal sky, an ordinary wood. The squirrel had halted on an upper branch of the oak and was brushing whiskers with paws. Well, one would be strange, dislocated, after getting knocked out by some weird electrical thing and physically shifted around by an even weirder typhoon. He said: “I suppose we might as well try getting back.”

  “Yes. Back where, though? We don’t have any idea whereabouts in the wood we are. Do you know?”

  “No. But the wood’s not large. And once we’re out of it, I’ll know where I am. Even if we come out on the far side.”

  Brad nodded. “I guess that figures. So lead on. You’re the trailblazer.”

  They had originally been walking uphill, so Simon set off down; the wood covered the crest of a hill, so down had to be right, like following water. It wasn’t particularly easy going. There were places where they had to struggle through undergrowth, or skirt it. Altogether the wood was far denser than he recalled, but he didn’t know the southern part very well. And they seemed to have been travelling longer than he would have expected without coming to open country. Brad commented on that eventually.

  “Could we be circling, do you think?”

  It was not offered critically, but it annoyed him. He said shortly: “No.”

  “A small wood, you said.”

  “It’s deceptive. Save your breath.”

  Brad obediently stayed silent, but Simon was starting to worry again. They should have been clear of the trees by now, in whichever direction they were heading. He pressed on faster, with Brad slogging after him. Were the trees thinner over on the left, and was that a glimpse of open sky? He headed that way. Definitely thinner, and more sky. They pushed through the last few feet and stood in the open, the wood behind them, grassland in front. Sheep grazed in the distance.

  The only trouble was, he hadn’t the faintest notion where they were. The wood, he knew, was surrounded on three sides by built-up areas, with open country to the south. But the lie of the land was wrong for the southern outskirts, and for that matter where were Ruckton church and the village?

  “Anywhere you know?” Brad asked.

  An innocent question, but he resented it. He stared about him without answering. Brad went on: “If it moved us from one part of the wood to another, I suppose it could just as well have taken us further. To another wood. Another country even. You think those sheep could be Australian?”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I know. But I’m starting not to
be able to tell the ridiculous from the normal.” Brad drew a deep breath. “Well, wherever we are, I guess we might as well keep moving. We’re bound to get to some place with people if we walk far enough.”

  There was more woodland on the far side of the open land, ahead and to the left, but only occasional clumps of trees to the right. Brad set off that way, and after a brief hesitation Simon followed him. They approached sheep, which first stared at them and then moved away. They seemed to be on the small side, but had quite large black horns. The ground continued to open out. They were coming down into a valley, and he saw the distant gleam of a river. Something tugged at his memory and then was lost.

  “Head for the river,” Brad said.

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  What he had really meant, Simon realized, was why do as you say? What gives you the right to make the decisions? He was only a stranger in this country. Providing, of course, this was England. He looked all around again and saw them, about a quarter of a mile back but heading this way. Horsemen—five or six.

  He took Brad’s arm and gestured. Brad said with relief: “Great! People. They can tell us where we are and the right road to somewhere.”

  They were oddly dressed, Simon noticed. It was difficult to pick out the details of clothing at this distance, but it didn’t look right. Not the casual hacking gear you would expect to see in the Home Counties, certainly. Some kind of cloaks?

  He said: “As long as we can be sure the natives are friendly. Can we?”

  Brad paused. “I get you. Might be an idea to duck back among the trees and watch this bunch go past?”

  They started moving quietly uphill. There was a rise of ground which would soon cut them off from the view of the horsemen, provided they had not already been spotted. Then there was a cry, unintelligible but sounding peremptory. Simon looked back as they automatically quickened step. The horsemen had changed direction to follow them. And they had urged their animals into a canter.

  Brad had seen it, too. He said: “Run for it! Into the wood . . .”

  Simon did not need telling. He pounded uphill, ahead of Brad. He could hear cries from their pursuers and felt the beat of hooves on the ground. The edge of the wood was about fifty yards away—a long fifty yards with the horsemen closing in.

  Brad was falling behind. Simon thought about slowing to let him catch up, but fear kept him running hard; another glance back had shown an arm raised and a glint of what looked horribly like a sword. Then he heard a grunt and looked round to see Brad trip and fall heavily.

  Simon was almost at the trees, and the horsemen were near enough for him to hear the panting of the horses as well as the shouts of the riders. He ran on, and branches whipped his face. He pushed through bushes and heard a clamour behind him. But the din lessened bit by bit as he struggled on through the undergrowth. When at last he leaned, gasping, against the trunk of a tree to get his breath back, he could hear no other sound apart from birds.

  • • •

  Simon gave it a long time, at least half an hour, before he started cautiously picking his way back through the wood, and he frequently stopped to listen. The final dozen or so yards to the point where the trees ended he took very warily indeed. When he poked his head out at last, it was in the half expectation of hearing a triumphant cry and seeing a menacing figure in front of him. There was nothing but the empty slope, grazing sheep, the river in the distance. No horsemen, and no Brad.

  He sat down on the grass and thought about that. He couldn’t possibly have saved him. If he had stopped and turned back . . . by the time he had reached Brad the horsemen would have been on top of both of them. What help would it have been to Brad for him to be caught as well? There was no flaw in the argument. All the same, going over it again didn’t make him feel any better.

  What had happened to Brad anyway? They hadn’t killed him, or if they had, they must have taken the body with them. Actually the place where he had entered the wood, where Brad had fallen, was a bit further up the slope. He got to his feet and went there, examining the ground closely. No sign of blood. Perhaps the horsemen had been friendly; perhaps he’d been a fool to run away. He remembered the glint of steel; they hadn’t looked friendly. And if they’d merely stopped to pass the time of day and tell Brad the way to the nearest railway station, Brad would have come into the wood and called him.

  For that matter, where were they? Brad’s notion of their having been transported by some atmospheric freak seemed less and less reasonable. Horsemen waving swords on the fringes of Greater London—or anywhere in Great Britain . . . unless they had dropped in a spot where a film or TV company was on location, it was crazy. And there was no sign of cameras or a film crew. Not Britain, then. Not Europe or America, either. Somewhere remote, like Afghanistan? But how, and why?

  It had to be the fireball that had caused it. Not by picking them up and putting them down, like a playful typhoon, but in some quite different way. A gateway? Could they have passed through it and come out in a different place? But a place where you got run down by barbarous-looking horsemen with swords. Place—or time? A gateway to the past. Or maybe to the future, and a new Dark Age after the world had blown itself up as thoroughly as some people had suggested it might.

  Simon shook his head, unhappy and bewildered. Compared with either of those, the notion of being transported across just a few thousand miles to Afghanistan seemed both more likely and overwhelmingly attractive. He looked down to the valley. Time had been passing while all this was going on. It was getting towards evening; the sun, though obscured by thick cloud, must be well down in the sky. Dusk and then night were not far off, and there must be a better place than this in which to face them.

  He set off in the direction Brad had chosen earlier—towards the river. He slogged on, becoming aware as he did so of the growing pangs of hunger. Lunch was a long time back—or a thousand years in the future? He closed his mind to that and walked faster.

  The river was further away than he had imagined, but he reached it at last. This was a river untouched by man, swirling and gurgling and lapping against marshy banks. A trout rose to take a late fly under a rapidly darkening sky. Which way? When in doubt, downstream. Not that he felt it was likely to make any difference. He was tired and hungry, and very depressed.

  Dusk thickened. It would be night soon, a night without yellow windows or streetlamps or even the cold beams of car headlights. Without paved roads and sidewalks, too. He slipped in a patch of mud and recovered himself on one knee. The river, almost invisible, had a melancholy, unfriendly sound.

  He had almost gone past before he saw it—a squat, low building on his right. He hesitated only briefly before turning away from the river to investigate. His fingers found stone, and then a flat roof, within his reach. Not a house, not big enough for a stable even. But there was a kind of window: unglassed, an aperture only. Simon peered inside. A light flickered, a candle he thought at first, then saw it was a primitive form of oil lamp. It stood on a stone slab, and other things stood beside it: rough pottery plates bearing a round loaf, slices of meat, fruit.

  Hunger overcame caution. He whispered: “Anyone there?” No reply, no sound at all from the shadows inside. His stomach growled at him. If he reached in, past the lamp, he could grab the loaf. He had almost done that when his arm brushed the lamp. It skittered off the slab, crashed to the stone floor, and went out.

  Simon stood still, his heart pounding. If there had been anybody inside, that would have roused him. Nothing happened; he could hear only the distant noise of the river. That food . . . he could no longer see it, but he knew where it was. The window was just about wide enough to crawl through. He did so, feeling for the stone table and finding it. And the loaf . . . He tore it in half and broke bits off to chew. The bread was coarse and dry, but satisfying for all that. He found the meat, too; it tasted like cold pork. His hand touched something else, an earthenware jug, and when he lifted it, it gurgled. He tried it caut
iously. Wine! A bit on the sour side, but it quenched his thirst. After eating an apple, he was quite full. And very tired. There was obviously no point in trying to go on further in the dark; he might as well bed down here. There were stone flags under his feet, but when he probed a little further, the surface was more yielding. Beaten earth, he guessed. Not exactly a feather bed, but weariness made a good mattress. He curled himself up on the ground. He wondered again where he was—or when—and what had happened to Brad; but not for long before he fell asleep.

  His sleep was heavy. When he awoke, it was to a lancing brightness; he opened his eyes and immediately closed them against the dazzle of early sunlight. Shielding with his hand, he was aware of the sun’s rays streaming in through the small window.

  He took in his surroundings. It was a single room, about twelve feet square and no more than seven or eight feet high. Around the walls oblong stone boxes were stacked on shelves in tiers. The only furnishings were the stone table on which were the remains of the food he had eaten and another longer stone table carrying one of the boxes. There was a sickly, sweetish smell; he had been aware of it last night, but it seemed much stronger now.

  Simon got to his feet and went to the table with the box. It was between five and six feet long, two or three feet across, a couple of feet in depth. The top was open, but a lid of stone, rimmed with what looked like lead, lay beside it.

  Inside the box was a statue, or rather a kind of high relief; the surround was white stone, but a human figure rose out of the centre. It was the effigy of a sleeping woman, hands folded on her breast, dressed in a white robe. Behind her head were ranged small jars and glass bottles with silver tops, a comb and silver-backed brush. Weird, he thought. He put a finger to the white surround. It wasn’t stone but something softer. Plaster of paris?

  The figure had been brilliantly carved. In the dimness, the folds of the robe looked like real cloth. And the curve of the pale cheek . . . a youngish woman, in her twenties probably, and pretty. He touched the cheek with his finger, too, and at once whipped it away, in horror. That wasn’t stone either. It had indented under the light pressure of his finger: not stone, but cold dead flesh.