As the arrival time of the new micro-man came nearer Dilke became restless. On the evening before his journey to meet him he looked at the bare quarters, trying to see them through the eyes of a newcomer; then he tidied up the platform and chamber and threw out the rubbish which had accumulated. He took an evening walk to the shed door and looked northwards towards the house beyond the ridge. The sun set behind the plantation; he wished it was morning so that he could start the journey.
2
Dilke set out before dawn, bar on shoulder, a coil of rope round his chest. This time he travelled without pausing to watch the sun rise or the flowers open. He entered through the French windows, travelled under the dying castor oil plant and hurried up the inclined TV wire.
This was to be his first meeting with a man for almost two months. He had faced the hazards of this enormous frontier world stoically and the need to survive had fixed his attention on day-to-day problems. It had been a solitary life and he had felt no need for a companion. But now he was excited at the prospect of meeting one and eager to see what sort of man he would be.
The sun struck Dilke in the eyes when his head came above the level of the window seat. Then he saw the man stretched out, his hands behind his head, lying on a bundle of coarse blankets. He was surrounded by a clutter of gear, like a student begging a lift to the South of France. He lay with crossed legs and stared up at a spider which crouched in its funnel web above his head. Dilke watched the spider apprehensively until it slowly backed into the shadow of the web’s entrance. He caught his breath with relief, then felt a stir of exasperation at the man’s casual posture.
Dilke walked forward.
The man sat up slowly and clambered to his feet. He was tall, lanky, and bony shouldered. Under a flop of dark hair his eyes were young and friendly, his long face wore a smile. He extended his right hand, “Mr Dilke, I presume.”
Dilke’s face was stiff.
What the hell had they done now? He had asked for a man and they’d sent him a fatuous boy. What good was this fine sprig to him? He must be barely twenty-one; wet out of university.
Dilke’s expectations died a death. He seethed at this latest idiocy of head office.
“My name is Henry Scott-Milne.”
It bloody would be!
Dilke shook the hand perfunctorily and then picked up some of the gear and moved it away from the vicinity of the web. Scott-Milne brought along the rest of the equipment, put it down, and stood and looked expectantly at Dilke, He was perplexed by Dilke’s manner but he retained his expression of easy goodwill. Dilke looked blankly at the equipment, fighting down his anger, but finally said, “Well, let’s check over the stuff.” Scott-Milne bent quickly to the bundle of blankets, pulled at a slipknot, jerked the end of a blanket and out rolled two heavy machetes; Dilke’s expression brightened. He picked up one of them, it was all steel, from handle to tip; rather blunt, but that could soon be mended. He held it high and dropped it, point first; it clunked into the wood and remained standing erect.
“The radio?”
Scott-Milne unwrapped a plastic bag. The radio was primitive and not very portable but it would be a sight better than the Morse tapper. While Dilke was turning over the radio in his hands, Scott-Milne untied a large portfolio. He opened it out flat revealing the first of a pile of photographs of crossbows. He dug to the bottom of the pile, extracted a sheet and offered it to Dilke. “Oh,” he smiled, “I should have shown you this before. My credentials.”
The sheet was a microfilmed letter from head office, the characters as big as eggs. There was a short introduction in officialese from Major Price, Head of Department 7a, followed by a potted biography of Scott-Milne.
While Dilke read them, the subject of the notes quietly laid out the crossbow photographs in a row.
Name: Henry Scott-Milne.
Code Number: 00.25/2.
Age: 25 years.
Birthplace: Bath, England.
Education: Summerhill. Cambridge.
Honours Degrees: Zoology. Mathematics.
Rowing Blue.
Family Background: Father—Professor William Scott-Milne—Biologist.
Grandfather—Joseph Scott-Milne—associate of T. H. Huxley.
The family has a distinguished scholastic history with special interest in science and biology.
General Notes: Published first book, Social Insects and their Ecological Niche, when seventeen. Has lectured extensively.
Zoologist at Cambridge.
Antarctic Expeditions: 1965,1968.
Dilke looked up from the letter.
The crossbows were printed on thick sheets of transparent acetate and Scott-Milne had propped them against the window so that the images could be seen against the light and he crouched with his back to Dilke examining one of them.
The last of Dilke’s anger ebbed away leaving a residue of embarrassment.
He was searching for words to make amends for his churlish manner when the young man turned and said, “Fascinating pictures; but what are they for?”
“That’s something we can talk about later,” said Dilke, “but first of all, Henry, if you find me a bit unsociable, then please put it down to the fact that I’ve been living alone—one gets a bit hermit-like.”
Scott-Milne made deprecating noises.
“My name is Mathew, call me Mat if you like. Let me tell you what I’ve been doing here…”
If they had started immediately they might have made the journey back to the shack before night but Dilke put off the journey till next day, giving himself time to find out more about Henry Scott-Milne and prepare him for his new life.
His companion was eager to see this microscopic world from the inside; his knowledge was clearly encyclopaedic, like that of an older man, yet his enthusiasm and his humour were those of an undergraduate. Dilke needed someone whose knowledge of micro-life would enable him to work out a survival code based on pre-knowledge rather than hit-and-miss experience; but he also needed a man who could fend for himself.
Scott-Milne’s Antarctic trips interested Dilke and he questioned him about his part in them. As zoologist Scott-Milne had found himself in charge of the dogs and he had fed them on seal-meat. So his duties as zoologist and entomologist had widened to include those of dog-keeper and butcher—and part-time cook. As they talked on into the evening Dilke’s spirits rose with each new indication of Henry Scott-Milne’s resourcefulness.
Dilke described some of his own experiences. Pointing through the window at the now darkening landscape he traced for Scott-Milne the route through his garden and into the allotment. When it was quite dark they lay rolled in the coarse blankets.
Dilke’s conversational barrier was now down; seven weeks of solitude had built up a head of talk which he now dissipated by describing all that had happened to him since his miniaturization.
They lay cocooned in blankets, looking through the window at the night sky. Mathew Dilke luxuriated in the sensations of blanket warmth and companionship.
He described his pursuit and capture by ants and his escape from their nest. Scott-Milne’s excitement grew as he listened; ant life was his special subject and he repeatedly interrupted Dilke’s narrative to question him. Clearly, if Dilke had offered to take him to the ant colony Henry Scott-Milne would have been happy to go immediately.
His knowledge of and respect for ants became clear as he described them: the age of the species, their diversity, the complexity of their societies, the subtleties of their intellect. He described their farming methods; the aphid dairy farms; the cultivation of soil near the nests and the growing of seed-bearing plants on this ground; the storing of leaves in the nests on which moulds grew which then became food for the colony.
Dilke was disarmed by Scott-Milne’s lack of affectation: he used a language which was almost self-consciously free of jargon and technical terms. The words “bugs” and “ladybirds” and “hoppers” occurred frequently.
“Did you know, Mathew, that a
nts have been going for thirty-five million years? That’s nearly thirty-five times as long as man has been on earth. Ants are perhaps the most ubiquitous creatures alive: they range over the whole world between extreme Arctic and Antarctic.” At last they slept.
Dilke awoke and rolled out of his blanket. Henry lay, his head tucked down, only his mop of hair showing. Dilke knew that the drugs could have a depressant effect so he left him to sleep. He quietly packed their gear, roping up the portfolio and rolling the radio in his blanket. Henry was wakened by the rasping sound of one machete blade being sharpened against the other. He lay for a minute and watched Dilke. The big brown man had jammed the point of one of the heavy knives in a crack in the wood and gripped the handle between his knees. He was bent double over the knife, grinding the other machete along it with the long, purposeful sweeps that Henry had seen used by primitive men like Eskimos and aborigines.
The younger man was suddenly conscious of the pallor of his own skin; he felt a touch of apprehension about the future, and he felt drained of conversation after last night’s talking marathon.
The rhythmic sound of sharpening had an hypnotic effect and he felt his eyelids drooping. He shook his head and worked with his knuckles to clear his eyes of sleep.
“Hello,” he called.
Dilke turned and grinned. “It’s a great day.” He spoke with a stage Irish accent. “Would you care for a walk in the garden?”
They shared out the kit. Dilke devised a rope harness for the portfolio and carried it on his back. The wind that blew over the edge of the rockery caught the portfolio and gave him some trouble but he walked at an angle till they came to the shelter of the daisy forest. The forest had changed since he first ran through it. The grass blades and daisies now towered high overhead, the grass cuttings which had littered the ground had decayed or been carried away by insects. It was free of debris underfoot and they walked in file between the daisy stalks, Dilke leading, and chopping at them as he went with his new knife. The machete swung in arcs, the dappled sunlight flashing off its honed edge. The blade bit into the stalks with a thud and Dilke freed it with a jerk of the wrist, celebrating his pleasure in his new weapon by leaving a trail of wounded daisies.
They made a detour across the ant lion plain to avoid a party of hunting ants and entered the carrot patch. They toiled up the slope, the ropes holding the heavy portfolio cut into Dilke’s shoulders. Henry followed one pace behind, carrying the radio; it was heavy and the long walk had tired him, an ache started in the small of his back.
Both men sweated profusely. A breeze caught them as they came over a rise in the ground, blowing gently through the green carrot tops, and Dilke stopped for a moment to enjoy it. Leaning forward against the weight of his burden he looked down the curving rows of plants, like an avenue of trees bordering a country road. Round the curve of the road he saw a flash of red between the foliage; they stepped forward again and were enveloped by the heat lying in the valleys. As they reached the bottom of the slope Dilke raised his eyes from the rough track and saw something which stopped him in midstride. A London double-decker bus. It was standing with its front stuck out into the avenue as if about to turn in from a side-road.
The sweat ran into Dilke’s eyes and he blinked and rubbed it away impatiently with his forearm. He heard an exclamation behind him and a thud as Henry dropped his pack.
ROUTE 73: Park Lane/Marble/Arch/Oxford Circus.
SSSCHWEPPESSSS was crudely screen-printed along its side.
Both men stood staring at the red bus, then Dilke took slow steps towards it.
Henry was completely disoriented, his eyes wide, like a man in the grip of hallucinations.
Through the windows of the lower deck they saw a sudden movement.
The illusion was complete: a No. 73 bus—with passengers—turning into a main road. But the engine made no sound and there was something wrong with the scale of the bus and something odd about its proportions.
Dilke approached it as though it might explode in his face; then he dropped the pack from his back, laid back his head and gave a shout of laughter.
Henry watched with astonishment; Dilke staggered to the bus side and hit it with the handle of his machete. Each blow made a dull thud and a dozen infant spiders scuttled out of the rear entrance and ran like monkeys up the nearest carrot.
The bus was solid lead.
Henry followed Dilke into its interior, it was a hollow shell with walls battleship thick; collapsed bubbles of soft metal pitted its smooth surface. On the outside, a thick ridge of metal ran down the centre of the bus casting where the two halves of the mould had met.
Now all was clear, and they could fit this crude facsimile into their scheme of things; they lay down to rest. For the first time Henry Scott-Milne truly knew how small he was: smaller—much smaller—than a child’s toy. He turned his head and looked at Mathew Dilke who lay with closed eyes, chewing at a fibre of grass; unperturbed. Scott-Milne felt reassured.
When they reached the hut it was sunset. Dilke was tired and Scott-Milne exhausted. They left the heavier things at the bottom of the box, Dilke climbed ahead with the blankets and his machete and the younger man climbed behind him. The fire was out, the chamber was cold, they wrapped their blankets about them and fell asleep.
Next day Dilke was gratified by Henry’s enthusiasm for his quarters (“Not so much a penthouse more a bed-sit”) and for the routine that he had devised. He took Henry on a tour: down the face of the box to bathe and drink at the stream, out to the hut threshold to look across the forest of carrots through which they had travelled the previous day. And at midday when the sun was at its height he initiated him into the wonder of his solar barbecue.
After dining off grilled leg of earwig they climbed the box front and relit the fire on the platform, and while Dilke fiddled with the radio Henry searched the floor near the base of the tower for fuel; fragments of wood, dried seeds and brittle cast-off insect cases. He hauled them up to the platform with the rope and stacked them near the fire.
The radio transmitter was silent, Dilke undid the primitive catches which held the back in place and poked around inside until he was rewarded by a burst of static. Though its system was rudimentary and its finish was crude the radio now functioned and next morning Dilke spoke to the controller of Department 7a.
Major Maurice Price sounded just as he had before Dilke had been miniaturized. As they talked Dilke saw in his imagination the major’s face: malaria-yellow skin, thick black eyebrows, clipped scrubby moustache covering the whole of his long top lip. A filing-cabinet warrior who held a season ticket to every Business Efficiency Exhibition, had two girls keeping a wall-to-wall Critical Path Analysis Chart up to date, and was called “Prim Price” behind his back because of a spinsterish concern for procedural trivialities. He kept a rack of pipes on his desk to show that he was a thinking man: Dilke had never liked him.
Dilke dictated a cable to Mr. William Olsen, Assistant Senior Game Warden, Kenya Game Reserve, Kenya. It was an invitation to see big game of a sort Olsen had never seen before, it asked for his help and invited him to contact Major Price for further information. And, to Price, Dilke vouched for Olsen’s background and character and asked him to do all he could to persuade Olsen to join Scott-Milne and himself.
Both men then got down to making a crossbow. They chose from the crossbow pictures the bow with the simplest construction and set out to copy it in the materials which they had to hand. The spine and stock of the bow were made from a fine-grained piece of wooden inlay from the box front; Dilke roughly shaped it with a machete and then smoothed it with the file-like edge of an insect’s leg. They utilized a curved section from the inside of a wood louse for the arch of the bow, and the bowstring was made from a piece of monofilament fishing-line about one and a half millimetres long.
The getting of the bow’s arch demonstrated Henry’s entomological knowledge and his skill as a butcher.
Amongst the discarded leftovers ben
eath a spider’s web they found several insect parts which were suitable in size and shape for the bow; but when bent to test their resilience they snapped under pressure, the material had lost its moisture content and had become brittle. Henry identified them as parts of a wood louse and they searched for one of the right size to give them a piece which was not dehydrated. They followed a solitary louse trundling down the shed floor till it led to a herd cropping off a mildewed newspaper in a dark corner of the shed. The lice were packed close together, their blue-black backs touching, their pale legs moving slowly as they pastured on the News of the World. Henry picked out one about four millimetres long and strode through the herd towards it. The lice scattered in alarm and Henry ran beside the one he had chosen, gripped it under the edge of its curved armour-plating and neatly jerked it on to its back. The creature promptly curled into a ball and Henry forced the blade of his machete between the plates of its belly. The legs of the upturned louse raced frantically, it fell open as if a hinge had been broken and after Henry had slaughtered it he cut from its carcase the part which they needed for the crossbow. Dilke was impressed by his adroitness and found that the fresh-killed beast had provided a bow spring which was the right size and had the necessary resilience.
Having finished their bow they set off with some excitement next morning to try it out. Concealing themselves near the stream which ran from the water butt they waited for a suitable victim.
Cold War in a Country Garden Page 3