New Writings in SF 28 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Kenneth Bulmer

  It is easy to say now that he was sixty-four years old last year and still working, when most of his age, certainly most veterans, were dead. Without hindsight it seemed suicidal: a frightening sign of weakness in a useful citizen. And when permission was refused he went to the panel and got a medical clearance on therapeutic grounds.

  It is unnerving when a man directly responsible for the food supply to half a million people is given such a lethal therapy. It suggests terrible disease; more terribly it suggests a diseased mind. But the world doesn’t foster serenity, and we put up with each others’ twitches when we can. When the food still came it was easy to shut one’s eyes to the walks. And Mr. Coombes was quite controlled; he had even married, although his wife was a shorthaul pilot so they weren’t together too much. His wife was young then, but they had no children.

  For nearly twenty years of careful routine he lived in the same two rooms on this block. The routine was enlivened daily by the climb across the highway, and threatened by signs of age, but the only erratic element in it was the presence of his wife, who came and went according to uncertain schedules, and for whom his feelings must at least have been ambiguous. I won’t say that he seemed content, but at least he did not seem distressed. He functioned efficiently.

  He disappeared last autumn when he was walking home one evening. People do disappear: quite a number according to the civil guard. Probably most of them just leave and join the migrant work pool. Maybe a few manage to forge identity seals and merge back into the State. Some must be dead: accidentally obliterated in a block clearance perhaps, or washed away in the gulley. People suicide in the gulleys, everyone knows, and their bodies are filtered out and identified and rendered down; but they don’t find them all.

  I think Mr. Coombes had too much sense to join the pool at his age, and he was certainly too scrupulous to forge a seal. I don’t think he killed himself either, and I know he would never have chosen to die in a gulley.

  I worry about him. There is no sensible reason to suppose that anything unusual happened to him; it is only unusual that he survived the walks for so long. He probably just died and was tidied away by a servitor. We sent out a couple of search parties who found nothing, and after three months there was a memorial meeting, and his wife filed for insurance and was moved away to a room at the port. Mr. Coombes’ deputy took over at the plant, and although we haven’t had a sweet ration for six months we are eating quite well.

  * * * *

  I worry about him I suppose because of the landing last spring. He was the main witness: the only witness who got a close look, and it left him disturbed and unlike himself. During the summer he was excitable, sullen, almost garrulous. He would sometimes interrupt quite different discussions to talk about the landing, and we prepared to pull in our belts. I may have given the impression that he did talk a lot about himself, but you must remember that I knew him for a long time. I picked up a lot of his history from odd references and by inference, but I might have seen the landing myself: he told us so often what he did, what he saw, what he felt.

  At seventeen thirty one on the day of the landing he was in the highway, half-way up a ten metre ladder which connected a surviving section of pedestrian way with a makeshift catwalk. His feet were bare, because it gave him an illusion of safety to know that he could grip with toes and fingers as he climbed, and the sandals stuffed in the pocket of his coat swung as he moved and bumped against his shins. He knew it was seventeen thirty one because the rusty metal under his hand began to vibrate slightly, and a chip of concrete worked loose from the pillar he was climbing, bounced on a girder, and dropped away below. He thought if he hurried he might reach the catwalk before the super came over, but after a few rungs dust began to pour down the face of the pillar and he decided to hang on where he was. He clasped the ladder, half shut his eyes, and listened to the wheeze of a transport bedding down for the blow. He saw the whole pillar shake and then a slam of sound plucked at him and the ladder or the pillar moved. He could feel the grind of staples pulling from their mounts, but before he had time to be afraid the sound ebbed to a roar of wind and the wind died, and he could hear the transport again heaving off its rail. It started to move, scraped its rail with a wild screech, stopped, gasped, and heaved again, then swung past him in a cloud of dust. He could see people through the sealed windows all crushed indifferently together: talking quite happily or peering out at the highway, and instead of emphasizing his own freedom the sight seemed to enfold him. Friends near the windows recognized him and waved and cheered: he could see their mouths open wide then slowly close, their hands slap the glass above their heads, drawing him to them. He closed his eyes and when he opened them the transport had gone. He started to climb again, very carefully because the ladder shifted every time he moved.

  The catwalk was very beautiful: a sliver of translucent crystal clipped at one end to the ladder head and at the other, fifteen metres away, to the parapet of a bombed underpass. It was SPEC surplus: used because it was available and the right length, and one of its characteristics was a low friction surface. A metal handrail had been fixed to one side of it, but over the years two crewmen had slipped and fallen, so later a length of cable had been slung across above head height.

  Mr. Coombes reached up for the cable with both hands and side-stepped towards the distant parapet with careful poise, balancing his weight above the board. He had no faith in his ability to haul himself to safety by hand if he lost his foothold. Some way above him were the speed rails and below him was a long drop to ground level. Several days of high winds had cleared the air, and although he could not see the ground road he could just discern the dark line of the Northampton gulley. Set between the high rails and the gulley, and bounded by the plant to the west and Southern Diversified to the east, were the Midlands throughways and the through rail, local roads and rails, the plant sidings and loading bays, and all the shunts and crossovers of the Bedford intersection. Embedded in the web were the ruins of abandoned systems: bombed flyovers and obsolete tube lines crumbled away, rotten but entrenched. They were shored up by scaffolding and site cast casings, and in turn they shored up systems still in use, but hardly less dilapidated.

  The highway is all metal and concrete and simple plastics; only the speed rails use organics and they should be quite separate. There are two threads running from south to north and north to south, high above the whole mess. Their struts are rooted in the earth, which should take the full shock of the supers and leave the highway undisturbed; but at Hockliff the struts have grown into parts of the highway, to strengthen it, so when a super comes over everything trembles.

  He had crossed daily for years, and because nothing ever quite collapsed he usually ignored the signals of decay. But sometimes on the catwalk, where he was most aware of his vulnerability, he saw danger and was afraid. He saw it as he looked down at the gulley, and stood with his eyes closed to gather courage. He had opened his eyes and was about to move again when he felt himself fall. He still clutched the cable above his head and his toes still clenched on the crystal board, but he knew he was falling and the high rails above him were falling too. Everything was toppling soundlessly inwards so slowly that he could see no movement, and he said those words in his mind: there is no movement, there is no movement; knowing that the words were true, but not believing them.

  Perhaps he would have fallen if the vertigo had lasted for more than a few seconds, but it passed and he was left clinging to his perch with everything as it had been. A mist of rain eddied round him.

  When he had crossed the rest of the catwalk and reached the remains of the Bryant underpass he walked out to what had been the middle of the middle lane; eased himself down; and sat there on the roadway for a while, listening to the cars on the road above and the juggers far below: comforted for once because they were customary sounds.

  He had no fear of heights. After a while he climbed carefully down to ground level, but his caution was deliberate. His impulse was to
let go, to float, to fall. He had schooled himself to accept stiff joints and unresponsive muscles and failing judgment, but had counted on warning signals. Now all his senses together had slipped out of his control and might go again and it was too abrupt. By the time he reached the ground he was shaking and didn’t know whether it was shock or some fresh sign of disintegration.

  * * * *

  He found a cat in the storm drain under the Bedford ground level filter. But now it was dark, and as always the drain was filled with the shaking roar of juggers on the filter road. It was a big drain-more like a tunnel, but he had to crouch over as he walked through it, and as he reached the outlet his hand brushed against fur and his bare foot kicked involuntarily and pushed something live into the diffuse light of the passing traffic. The animal sprawled loosely where he had kicked it, lying as if it was drugged, but when he touched it gently with his toe it winced and scrabbled aimlessly for a moment against the rough concrete, then lay still again.

  He took his sandals out of his pocket and dropped them to the ground, then shuffled them on to his feet without bending. He touched the cat again with the edge of his sandal, but this time it hardly moved. He knelt down reluctantly, and lifted it gently into his arms. It lay with its eyes slightly open: a small plump animal with torn ears. It looked wrong, almost boneless. He thought it was dying.

  It was difficult to get up again with both hands occupied, and he almost put the cat down again and abandoned it. But he was ashamed to leave it there to die. He held it with one arm, pushed against the damp wall of the drain with the other, and managed to stagger to his feet. He could take it over to the guardpost at Diversified and leave it with them.

  He crawled back through the drain and went along the bank of the filter, looking for a gap in the Diversified fence. The bank was in shadow, only dimly lit by the lights of the ground filter reflected from the higher roads. The evening air was still quite clear though, and he could see the teeth along the top of the ten metre fence.

  He was stopped by the hulk of a jugger, which had run off the road and done its best to climb the fence. The forward unit was draped over the sagging mesh, nose up as if it was trying to take off. The rear unit was actually balanced vertically behind it, nose down in the ditch, and he saw as he came closer that the end left on the road had simply been lifted clear with a couple of cables hitched to an overhead gantry. One part of the twisted fence had lifted away from its moorings and he stepped under it and round the heavy shadow of the suspended transport into the compound.

  He had seen a service tunnel which should take him towards the guardpost, and he went back and walked through it by the light of a roadcleaner which rattled along behind him too slowly to be much of a danger. The servitor turned away down a side tunnel just as he emerged into a cleared site, and he was left quite suddenly in silence looking across the great canyon of bared earth confined by high blank walls.

  It was quite unexpected. The canyon stretched away ahead of him so far that he could not see the far wall, and was hundreds of metres wide - almost as wide as its walls were high. He realized that the huge servitor parked in the corner nearest to him was a recycling unit: he had come across a block clearance in the few hours between dissolving and moulding. There were lights behind him in the mouth of the tunnel, and a roadway dewed with rain led out across the open space towards a vague glow of light which must be the same tunnel continuing. The rest of the vast plain was mud and stones. He could imagine it lapping the sealed walls.

  The earth was only an infill of course. There was a stamp of half-dissolved plastic pushing from the soil at his feet, which must be a load point founded on a deep shelter platform. The deep shelter would spread under the soil just as the blocks spread above it. Still, the soil was real. He walked forward along the roadway into the darkness and stood there entranced, still holding the damaged animal unthinkingly.

  There was a sound.

  A short way away below the road another fragment of pillar had been left upright, and in its shadow something with a thin high voice was saying, or singing, ‘La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-’ on one note, quietly.

  ‘La-la-la-la-la-la-la.’ Silence.

  ‘L-l-l-l-lll.’ A squeak. Silence.

  ‘Hhhhaaaaaaa ... Hhhhhhaaaaa ... Hhhhhhhaaa.’ Silence. Hallo?

  ‘Hallo?’ said Mr. Coombes.

  ‘Nnnnnnnn. Nnnnnnn.’

  ‘Hallo?’

  ‘Nnn-Nnn-Nn.’ No?

  He scrambled down from the roadway onto the black earth and walked towards the stump of pillar.

  ‘Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr’ trilled the voice sweetly. Perhaps it was alarmed. Perhaps it was growling. Perhaps it did not know he was there. He stopped and peered into the dark. He could just see the uneven ground where he stood, and the edge of the wet road behind him showed as a line of light, but below the stump was black dark, and the source of the voice was engulfed.

  ‘Hhhhaa... Hhhha...’ breathed the voice, and in concert the cat breathed: air shrilled in its throat and its ribs juddered under his thumb. He touched it helplessly, willing it to die.

  It seemed to him as he stood that the dark became less dark, and then that it stayed black but was flecked with transitory points of light. And then it was black again for a moment, and then a single white flare expanded within reach of his fingers, died, flared again, and drifted away to the pillar. He followed it. Far away someone shouted and shouted again. He heard the shouts and their echoes, then a shouted reply and its echo and its echo; then a sector bell began to ring insistently, hardly audible at this distance. He heard the sounds and echoes of alarm, but he listened to the small voice, which went ‘Sssssssss ... Sssssssssss’ with the tiny sibilance of a whisper, and he looked at what he had supposed was a load point, where the white light shone on rock. Not on plastic but on creature rock, veined with green.

  The voice said ‘Vul. Vul. Vul!’ With emphatic precision.

  Afterwards his memory of the incident was flawed, and for at least a week he insisted that everything had happened on the plant roof, before he had left for home. He rebuilt his memory about the clear image of black flaking rock: faceted and glinting in the strange light, and about the unexpected feel of it when he reached out and nervously caressed it: that it was not smooth but gritty, even as it shone.

  There is no clear account of what happened next. The group of guards who raised the alarm were too far away to see more than a suggestion of light. There had been radio interference on their spyviews, and its source was at least in the direction of the light, which faded away while they were still gathering at the far tunnel entrance. When they reached Mr. Coombes he was lying unconscious in the mud. They scanned the area before they carried him away to the post, but saw nothing notable. When they were questioned later they were reasonably certain that there had been no rock, no load point, no animal in the area.

  Mr. Coombes was only certain of the rock. He could remember touching its solid crumbling surface, and he could remember believing that the cat was dead. By then he could only see light without definition, which pervaded everything. His own body seemed to have vanished into light. The cat’s tortured breathing had eased and he could feel it lying soft and relaxed in his arm, and then he just felt that it was dead. There was no obvious change: only the sense of dead weight. Even if his memory of the moment was sound he could only remember an impression, and soon after that he lost all sensation: even the light became indistinguishable from dark and his hands touched nothing and he stood on nothing and did not know whether what he heard was silence or some unrecognizable blaze of sound.

  The first aid kit at the guardpost malfunctioned and soaked him in Destroy, which woke him up, but he was confused and only remembered slowly and imperfectly. SPEC set up a big investigation and held up the recycling for three days while they ran every sort of test on the site and found nothing. People as far away as Crater claimed that they had felt a moment of dizziness at about seventeen-thirty, and five civil guards agreed that ther
e was some kind of light on the site, but there was only Mr. Coombes’ account for the rest.

  Most people believed him, and I think SPEC was still interested, but his story had no pattern to it, and no place in the patterns of our experience. Interest faded, and it has probably been filed away with all the other trivia like cahias and ESP: things which may well occur, but which cannot be codified and exploited.

  He remembered the final message of the voice in a dream, months later - long after he had pieced together the other fragments. ‘He was dreaming of something else when the voice said ‘Vul parahannis’ very clearly and fluently in its small monotone, and he woke up. He believed then that he remembered it, but he may only have remembered an earlier dream.