Cold War in a Country Garden

by Lindsay Gutteridge

  Dilke had found a fortress.

  3

  He slept under a shard of broken plant-pot and woke to see the sun striking across the front of the towering box. It was transformed by the morning light into a building of Byzantine splendour, the marquetry sparkling with yellow and rich reds and greens, the lock a glittering gold. Its beauty stunned Dilke for a moment, then he scrambled over the coarse sacking and started to climb. The box was twelve inches high, the side up which he climbed lay back at a slight angle and the cracks between the wood inlays gave easy foot-holds. In places, whole sections of inlay had fallen out, leaving ledges along which he could walk. The thought of finding a safe place to live exhilarated him and soon he reached the threshold of the lock and climbed over its edge.

  The thick cover over the keyhole was immovable: the runners on which it rested were choked with rubble. He dug at it with his hands, but quickly realized that without some sort of tool he would be unable to free the door. He sat down, his legs dangling over the edge of the platform and looked for something suitable. The jam-jars on the shelves above him were full of nails and seashells and the seeds of plants. There was a packet of lump sugar next to an enamelled mug and a mouth organ; the old man must have spent a lot of time in here.

  Dilke looked down to the floor. A tobacco tin full of panel pins had fallen from a shelf and burst open, scattering the nails over a wide area. They were like miniature crowbars: pointed at one end, with blunt heads at the other. He climbed down and picked out a pin which was as long as he was tall. He hefted it in his hand, pleased with its weight and rigidity; then as he turned to start the climb back to the lock he saw a pool of oil which had leaked from a can. He filled an empty seed-case with the oil, which had the consistency of cart-grease, and he returned with the bar and the grease to his lock. He cleared the door-runners, greased them, and, inserting the bar behind the thick brass door, he pulled on it till the veins stood out on his arms and neck.

  Slowly the slab of metal moved, it moved more easily as it travelled on to the oiled surface and suddenly the aperture of the keyhole appeared; he strained at the lever until the slit was wide enough to admit his body. It was like the inside of an old mill, the huge beams and springs were covered with yellow dust. For years a key had been inserted and turned, particles of metal had been scraped off and they coated the lock mechanism and lay in drifts along the walls of the chamber. He ran his hand along a beam and examined the glittering metal on his palm.

  He was exultant. He laughed aloud and, slapping his dusty hands together, he sprang out on to the platform. He cupped his hands around his mouth and whooped down the length of the shed.

  This was a turning point. The world was still full of monstrous terrors, but looking down on the shed floor from his high shelf he thought for the first time that he might survive. His thoughts and efforts had been so much concentrated on entering the lock that he had not thought of food. Late afternoon found him with a place to sleep in safety but without supper to fill his belly. He made a quick excursion to the floor and foraged along the dust-filled cracks between the boards. Amongst the debris he found seeds which had spilled from jars and packets: turnip, tomato, radish, lettuce seeds; they ranged from the size of coconuts to the size of pumpkins and he split some open with a bar. Their flesh was fibrous and rather dry but his hunger was sharp and he was glad to carry some up to his shelf where he sat chewing and watching the night shift of insects appear. Cockroaches came out from the sacking at the foot of his tower and he heard the first peevish whine of a mosquito in the black roof.

  Dilke kicked the chewed remnants of food over the edge of the platform and recalled his last briefing from the Head of Laboratories. “After miniaturization, watch your diet, Captain Dilke. These drugs have been rigorously lab tested and I think we’ve got the side effects ironed out, but you may have trouble if your diet is imbalanced. Take adequate protein. Go easy on sugars.

  Dilke wondered how aphid’s milk and turnip seeds would figure on his diet sheet. He felt a sudden desire for a smoke to round off the day and he promised himself that tomorrow he would look for tobacco; the old man must surely have been a smoker and there might be fragments of tobacco on some of the shelves. At dusk he entered the chamber and slid the door shut. He fell asleep with the muffled noise of insect traffic outside.

  In the following days Dilke had no trouble finding food and drink: the seeds of plants were plentiful and water ran from a leaking barrel outside the hut. He shared the stream with his insect neighbours, approaching it warily, watching for predators.

  A packet of carrot seeds had fallen to the floor. It leaned against the shed wall, the huge picture of carrots like a colossal sign-painting on the front of an Odeon. The packet had been opened, and then closed with a rusting paper-clip; it advertised last year’s programme, “Carter’s Tested Seeds: Golden Glory Carrots”. Her Majesty had given her approval with a coat of arms twice the height of Dilke. Dampness and mildew had rotted the packet and Golden Glory had germinated. The pale shoots which pierced the paper were tender and as thick as Dilke’s arm: he found them palatable. He also experimented with insect flesh: eggs and pupa and insects the size of hares. Inside the homy exteriors of these creatures he found a white flesh not unlike lobster meat. Sitting one afternoon on the sunlit platform, he cracked open the brittle casing of an insect’s leg. The raw meat within was unappetizing but he chewed stolidly and gazed out into the shed. The sun struck hot through the shed window and across the floor. A vinegar bottle lay on its side and its lens-like base concentrated the light into an incandescent spot inside the bottle.

  A barbecue!

  He descended to the shed floor and killing an insect with his bar he carried it up to the neck of the bottle. A current of hot air met him when he got into the bottle neck. He climbed down a tangle of spider’s web which lay in the neck and looped down into the interior. It was an old web from last winter, the furnace-like heat had driven the spider out and dehydrated its web so that it was no longer sticky. Dilke approached the point of heat and prodded the dead insect into its centre. Shielding his face with his arm he watched it: the creature seemed to come alive under the heat, its body and limbs jerked spasmodically, and after a while a bubbling fluid oozed from its joints. It smelt good and when he raked it out and broke open its casing it tasted succulent. He burnt his fingers in his impatience, and while waiting for the carcase to cool he tried the experiment of setting fire to a length of web. It smouldered and glowed, throwing off a quantity of black smoke. He carried back to his fortress the remains of the carcase and the burning rope, the smoke slowly drifting up the side of the box with him as he climbed from ledge to ledge. He broke off fragments of the wood veneer with a crowbar, piled them in the corner of the lock facia and set them alight. He sat till it was quite dark enjoying the novelty of a warm fire and a hot dinner. When moths, which were attracted to the spot of light, endangered both Dilke and his fire by gusts from their huge wings he moved it inside and closed the door, leaving a narrow gap to ventilate the chamber. He went to sleep gazing up at the flames glinting on the brass ceiling.

  Dilke’s days now went in a routine way: replenish the fire, using wood from the inlays and the husks of seeds; go down to the water barrel to drink and to wash; carry seeds back to the lock for breakfast; hunt down edible insects and barbecue them.

  One day he observed a cockroach laying her eggs. She deposited them in flimsy containers which slowly hardened into stiff, brown cases. He followed her closely, ripped open a delicate sheath while it was still soft, then carried off eggs to the fire on the platform and cooked them in hot ashes.

  The prodigality of nature in miniature set him thinking of the riches available to a race of his own size. To a man three hundred times smaller than his natural size, the earth would be three hundred times bigger; three hundred times richer.

  As he ate he pictured a world of micro-people. Great harvests of insects eggs and plant seeds. New and as yet unknown sorts of food,
the spores of moulds, the larger bacteria. Living inside fruit and vegetable like worms in the apple core, although that diet would be monotonous. A subterranean society, a take-over of the nests and the aphid herds of ants. The eviction of termites from their huge stalagmite buildings: ready-made skyscrapers, renovated, with cell walls removed to enlarge the chambers and with lifts installed. The hanging tree nests of wasps, a dividing wall down the middle, one half left for the insects to store their honey, the other for humans with access through the partition to the stored food.

  Dilke finished his meal and leaned back against the sun-warmed door.

  Living as parasites in the bodies of animals, elephants and the larger cattle. Thousands of humans living in an elephant, adjusting to its movements like sailors at sea. Whole societies living beneath the skin of a bull, anaesthetizing the area to prevent the irritation which would cause the animal to scratch and destroy the parasite cities. Surrounded by a storehouse of living protein, the flesh and the blood of their host. Feeding their sewage into the veins of the creature to filter through to the animal’s main sewer.

  Animals living placid and uneventful lives would make the best city states; they could be domesticated by giant humans, moronic, but literate enough to take instructions and living in superstitious fear of their little masters, terrified of their power to hurt and punish them, to poison their food and attack the sensitive tissues of their eyes and ears whilst they slept. They could protect as well as herd the docile elephants and cattle, hunting down carnivores which by killing a host animal would destroy a whole society of micro-humans; the eating of one bullock by one tiger could bring death to hundreds of people. The gross overgrown giants would be slave labourers on a gargantuan scale; quarrying and building and tilling the soil…

  “Miniaturizing can save us from the major twentieth-century threat—overpopulation.”

  Dilke remembered the long, intense face of Professor Mathis.

  “This work we are doing is classified, Captain Dilke, though God knows why! You have been sent to me because you are in the secrets business and your experience fits you for the job—we want a trained communicator to give us a feedback of information. If you agree to help with this project your department has agreed to free you.” Mathis had removed his glasses and massaged an eye socket with a bony forefinger. Twill be frank. We have perfected the technique on laboratory animals, but you would be the first man to be miniaturized. You would be the first man in a pioneer group, the first of a new society in which famine and territorial wars will be unknown…”

  Dilke’s memories were interrupted by the scrabbling of a wood louse which had been attracted to the base of the tower by the remnants of his meal. After snuffling in the coarse sacking, it started to climb the towering wall. Dilke kicked oyer one of the piles of stones which he had placed on the ledge, neat as water melons in a greengrocer’s shop, to scare off climbing insects. They bounced down, peppering the foraging louse which lost its footing and dropped between the sacking mesh.

  He had not kicked the stones down out of fear—he did not now think that every insect was dangerous—he had been curious to see what the louse would do, its panic amused him. He picked up a boulder in both hands and lobbed it out in a curve. It diminished in size till it vanished through the mesh, and he saw the sacking shake as the wood louse ran off under cover.

  He stood up and stretched and looked out over the floor of the shed; his whole body was now tanned brown, hardened by exposure to heat and cold. He knew that the dangers which threatened him in this micro-world he could face rationally.

  Dilke suddenly realized that the first part of his mission was completed. It was time to get in touch with Department 7a.

  PART TWO

  1

  Dilke started his journey before sunrise. Shutting the door to the chamber and climbing down the front of the box, his hands and feet finding their way in the dark along the familiar ledges, he picked up a bar from amongst those which littered the floor and shouldered it. When he walked out from under the door the night wind had dropped, the moon and stars glittered in the lightening sky. Some thin clouds on the horizon glowed with pink light from the rising sun. It was going to be a hot day.

  Dilke walked into one of the misty avenues of carrots and started his long march. He took his time, thinking of the message that he was going to send, pausing to watch the sun as it blazed over the horizon, fascinated by the inexorable opening of the awakening flowers. He changed the bar from shoulder to shoulder to ease its weight; though it was an encumbrance and had limited use as a weapon he felt comforted by its heavy, cold feel. By mid-morning he had reached his garden, leaving the plantation and plains and rough country of the allotment behind him. At noon he came to the rim of the rockery and he slid down its steep slopes and entered his house through a crack between the closed French windows.

  This room in which he had lived, with its tufted carpet and Swedish furniture, now seemed impersonal and remote to him. He passed the wilting castor oil plant and walked through the forest of pillars which were the legs of the table and chairs from which he had once dined. He reached the edge of the carpet; the pile was head-high, its uneven surface covered with curling tendrils which tripped him. The way to his study lay diagonally across the carpet but he chose to take the long way on the teak surround.

  On his study floor, beneath the desk, they had left a torch battery resting on a six-inch plastic tile. Dilke climbed up and found a miniature Morse transmitter cemented to the surface of the tile and wired to the battery. Despite its small size the instrument was, in Dilke’s eyes, as big and crude as a dump truck. The rocker arm was chest-high and to operate it he had to lean on it with all his weight. At three forty-five by the wall clock he spelt out the slow, slow, quick, quick, slow of his code signature: “Double O point two five”, followed by the departmental cypher.

  Slowly and laboriously: 00.25 CALLING DEPARTMENT 7a. PREPARE TO TAKE MESSAGE 0700 HOURS TOMORROW—he had lost count of days and dates. He repeated the message at half-hourly intervals till ten o’clock.

  Throughout the day Dilke’s thoughts had returned to the subject of weaponry: primitive weapons like spears would be inadequate against insects. Something more powerful like a skindiver’s harpoon-gun? No, the velocity would be insufficient. But the crossbow principle was a good one, with the right design he might even make one from existing materials. Insects bodies were walking Meccano sets: tubes, thongs, joints, levers…

  He remembered a display of medieval crossbows in the British Museum… if he could have one as a guide… He fell asleep beside the transmitter. He slept fitfully and dreamt that he was squinting along the sights of a huge, smoking machine-gun, vintage 1918, hosing down a battalion of ants which streamed over the rim of the rockery.

  His dream merged with reality: the rattle of the gun became a chattering message from the morse receiver: DEPT 7a TO 00.25… DEPT 7a TO 00.25… DEPT 7a TO 00.25… ACKNOWLEDGE… DEPT…

  To stop the clatter Dilke replied: 00.25 TO DEPT 7a. STAND BY TILL… he glanced at the wall clock, 0715 HRS. That gave him fifteen minutes to compose his message.

  At seven fifteen he began his report. 00.25 REPORTING TO DEPT 7a. MISSION SUCCESSFUL. SURVIVAL PROVED POSSIBLE. COMMENCE SECOND STAGE. DELIVER EQUIPMENT AND PERSONNEL AS FOLLOWS ONE ENTOMOLOGIST. ONE PORTABLE TWO-WAY RADIO. TWO MACHETES. PHOTOGRAPHS OF ALL BRIT MUS CROSSBOWS BOTH DISMANTLED AND ASSEMBLED. CROSSBOW PHOTOGRAPHS TO BE ONE THREE HUNDREDTH SIZE. DELIVER TO THIS ADDRESS. WINDOW SEAT. WILL CONTACT YOU FOR DELIVERY DATE THREE DAY’S TIME, END OF MESSAGE. GIVE SLOW REPEAT.

  It took him thirty minutes to spell it out and his chest and arms ached with the strain. The repeat came back in sixty seconds.

  Dilke spent the next three days pottering about his house. He discovered a good route from the floor to the window seat: an inclined footway along the wire to the indoor TV aerial. He looked for hours at his garden through the huge picture window. The view was the same one he had so often seen before he w
as miniaturized; he could almost forget that he was now only 0.25” tall. But there were signs in the house and the garden of the change that had taken place: the lawn had not been cut for a month, dust lay thick on the wide window seat, the glass was streaked and spotted with dirt and a spider had set up house in a corner of the window-frame. He could never look at the garden in the same way again: his eyes now searched for alternative ways up the face of the rockery, the hollyhocks he knew to be bigger than redwoods, and he dared not walk along the western edge of the lawn for fear of soldier ants.

  Promptly on time on the third morning the receiver rattled out its message from Intelligence.

  It gave the date of message transmission. It promised to expedite his order. It gave the date of delivery. It signed off.

  Dilke would have his new man and his equipment in three weeks. He decided to return to the place he now thought of as home: the lock chamber in the box in the allotment hut. For three weeks he slept, drank, ate and explored the hut, climbing its walls and wandering along its shelves. He found a box full of fishing gear: huge coils of line, gigantic hooks, lead weights as big as barges. On too big a scale to be useful to Dilke, but he searched for and found some nylon line of one-pound breaking strain, some size twenty fresh-water hooks and some split-shot leads twice as big as his head. The line was rather too heavy for a climbing-rope but he hitched one end to a nail head and dropped the coil over the shelf edge, it hit the ground with a thud and spilled out in loops and curls across the floor. He manhandled two hooks and half a dozen shots to the edge of the shelf and sent them crashing after the rope; then he climbed down. He left the hooks and lead weights lying but he burned through the rope and made it up into coils. One he tied to a bar inside the chamber letting it hang down to the floor of the shed: an alternative way to climb the face of the box, and a way to haul things up to the platform. The other coils he stored neatly in the chamber.