Cold War in a Country Garden

by Lindsay Gutteridge

  “You have seen our little menagerie. Let us have another talk. We will return to your box.”

  The giant hand removed the cage and replaced it with the transporter. They stepped on. Dilke clutched the bar, his eyes fixed on the gleaming microscope column as they sank to the table. He stepped on to the table top like a sleep-walker and walked stiffly towards the cigarette pack which lay two hundred paces away. A rack of test-tubes towered above it; the coloured liquids which they contained sparkled coldly in the sun; little clouds of cottonwool lodged in the tops of the tubes. Beside the rack lay a nickle-plated hypodermic syringe with a needle like a gun barrel, its shining surface picked up the sunlight, broke it into stars and threw them into Dilke’s face.

  A sudden sharp, prolonged hiss stopped Dilke.

  He looked back. Batzar had his eye to a crack in the wall of a wooden crate similar in size to the centipede cage, but without a mesh front. The gaps in Batzar’s teeth showed in a wide grin; he called Dilke back with a vigorous signal of his hand and then jabbed a forefinger at the peep-hole. Placing his eye obediently to the hole Dilke found that he was looking through the back of a cage— the cage front was covered in flyscreen wire, finer than that imprisoning the centipede, its bars showed black against the light which shone in. The sun threw a crisscross of shadows on the cage. Dilke’s vision slowly recovered from the effect of the sunlight bounced off the hypodermic needle and became accustomed to the dazzling network pattern in the cage.

  Suddenly he saw the figure.

  It was silhouetted, motionless, pressed against the cage front. Its arms were raised, its hands gripped the bars. It faced outwards but its head was slightly turned— listening.

  Three heavy blows struck with the flat of Batzar’s hand on the side of the cage sent a reverberating roar through its interior. Dilke leapt back, but not before he had seen the figure jerk, drop its arms and start to run. In the side of the cage was a door which was locked with a heavy wooden beam dropped into a metal socket. At a sign from Batzar, Dilke lifted the pivoted beam and they walked into the cage. The prisoner had run to the corner farthest from the door and was standing there, one palm against the wall, the other hand pressed to the base of her throat.

  The prisoner was a Negress.

  She stood stiff and motionless. She was naked, and the bars threw geometric shadows across her body and on to the wall behind her.

  Batzar pointed at the floor before him and the girl hurried forward and stood with her arms stiffly at her sides. They were thin, elegant hands which shook with sudden tremors. She was tall, and her body, like her hands, was thin; her breasts, though small, were full and her buttocks had a characteristic Negro prominence. She had high cheekbones and flared nostrils, her skin was blue-black, her lips and nipples deep purple.

  Her eyes were wide and fixed on Batzar’s face.

  Batzar said, “What do you think of her? We got her from the university. We are doing some lab-tests on her. It is a new approach to miniaturizing—injections instead of drugs. It is very fast and I am pleased with the results till now. No allergies. You see, she has even kept her hair!” he grinned coarsely. The gesture of his hand took in the hair on her head and the black triangle at her groin. The girl’s eyes widened still more, showing a rim of white around the pupil of each eye. “We may breed to microsize; it may give us more consistency. But the female reproductive system is a complex one and we want to be sure that there are no bad side-effects… and we are not sure about sterility. This black will give us an indication… we will have her ovaries out tomorrow.”

  The girl’s eyes closed, and to stop the sudden spasm of shaking in her hands she locked the fingers together in front of her body.

  The lecture was over and they left the cage; Batzar tilted the beam and it swung round and fell with a crash into its socket. Dilke carried with him the picture he had glimpsed before the door slammed shut; the girl standing in the middle of the huge cage, her hands clasped, her head dropped forward on her breast. They walked towards the cigarette pack and when they had entered Batzar closed the door and leaned his back against it.

  5

  “Let me be simple about this,” Batzar said. “We will now speak plainly to each other. I want you to answer my questions about things which you must know.” He tilted his head sideways, his eyes stared, his brow contracted and he spoke in an undertone. “I want you to understand that it is important to me personally that you answer my questions.”

  Batzar’s capricious shifts of mood—from extrovert friendliness to malevolence to quiet earnestness disturbed Dilke. Suddenly, and for the first time, the thought came to him: is he sane?

  Sweat ran down from Dilke’s armpits.

  “If you do not answer me I will feed you to the centipedes—you would like to be a centipede’s dinner?” The threat was almost jocular—the ghastly levity filled Dilke with sick forboding. “No. It is not nice, your friend did not like it. I will not hesitate to do the same things to you. You must tell me everything.”

  His manner became brisk. “These are the things you. must tell me: Why you are here? Where is the third man? Where are your miniaturizing drugs made? How long have your people been working on miniaturizing? Have you had much allergy in your subjects? How is your technical equipment made—I want particularly to know this thing —you must tell me where it is made and how it is made —particularly the radio.”

  Batzar said slowly and distinctly, “If you do not tell me these things I will have done to you the things that was done to your friend. You will be tied and lowered to the centipedes on a rope. It is a horrible and very painful way to die. But there is no big hurry,” he reassured, “you will stay here till morning. Think about your answers tonight. I have shown you the stick—here is the carrot,” he smiled complacently at his command of the English vernacular. “I am now going to Marshal Volsk; he is not pleased about his hand but I might persuade him to let you keep your life—if you talk to me.” Pause.

  “Remember the centipedes.” Pause.

  “I will go now.”

  He straightened himself and half turned to the door, his bow still aimed at Dilke’s belly.

  A slick of cold sweat shone on Dilke’s forehead. His shoulders suddenly sagged. His head dropped. He said almost inaudibly: “If I… perhaps I could…” he turned towards the platform… “the transmitter is…” he searched for words… “inside the transmitter it has…”

  Batzar became very still—his eyes were very attentative and he leaned forward to catch the stammered words.

  “Inside the transmitter…” Dilke’s hand stretched out for the radio transmitter… “it has…” he lifted the compact instrument to show to Batzar. But the hand which held it did not pause in its movement; it travelled on in a tight arc of rapidly increasing velocity. Dilke’s whole body stiffened into one solid unit which spun on the toes of his left foot—he curled away from the crossbow like a banderillero avoiding the horns of a bull—the radio exploded high , up on the side of the big bald man’s head with a sound of splintered glass and crushed metal.

  The crossbow bolt thudded into the side of the polystyrene platform and vanished.

  Novi Batzar fell as if hit by a humane killer. His legs splayed out, his eyes shut in a tight grimace, his teeth clenched. Mathew Dilke’s left knee smashed up into the face of the falling man, his arms flying out as a counterbalance, “For Olsen!” he snarled.

  Dilke’s legs shook and he leaned, panting, against the platform till the thudding of his heart quietened. Then he dragged Batzar on to the platform, rolled him into the middle of the three depressions and clipped the lap and shoulder straps across his body. Pulling each arm sideways he attached straps from each of the flanking harnesses to the thick wrists and jerked them tight.

  Dilke knelt beside the bound figure, a deep cleft of thought between his brows; he stretched out a hand and placed it on the chest of Novi Batzar—the brown skin on the back of his hand almost matched the skin of the tanned body. He crouch
ed for a time, staring at his hand on the big torso, and then he leapt off the platform to the floor and went methodically through his pockets. In the flap-pockets of his windcheater he found a biro and a pad and the remains of his ration pack; in his hip pocket he found a roll of film—he tucked them all into a map case. He unzipped the yellow cheater and dropped it to the floor, loosened the belt of his trousers and stepped out of them, stripped off his vest and pants: his body was only a shade paler than Batzar’s.

  Putting the map case and the one remaining radio transmitter to one side, he swept the rest of the gear— cameras, lenses, binoculars—off the platform and hammered them into the floor with the butt of the crossbow. He destroyed the big Marconi and climbed up to smash the electric clock.

  The chambers of the bow were empty; Batzar had fired the last bolt. He smashed the useless weapon against the corner of the refrigerator. He picked up the transmitter and the map case and stood for a moment amongst the litter of cast-off clothing and shattered machinery. He glanced back from the doorway at the strapped-down figure; its head to one side, its arms flung wide. Its left temple and eye were puffed and swollen, and a split followed the upper ridge of the eye socket like a scarlet eyebrow. Batzar’s mouth hung open, strings of saliva hung from his jaw; but for the heaving of his chest and the hoarse intake of breath in his throat he could have been a dead man.

  Satan crucified.

  Dilke opened the door an eye’s width. Heat and boredom had put the guard to sleep. He sat tilted in his chair, the peak of his cap shading his eyes. Dilke ran to the cage, unlocked the door and entered. The girl crouched in a corner.

  “Do you speak English?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Come with me.”

  She followed him out of the cage across the open ground and on to the platform of the transporter. He took her arm and led her to the middle of the painted circle. “Sit here,” he pointed. “You will not be seen against the black.”

  Her face showed no sign of comprehension but she sat down with her knees drawn up, clasping them with her arms. Dilke placed himself between her and the guard. He swallowed twice; took a lungful of air; brought thumb, forefinger and the tip of his tongue together and whistled. The long rising sound brought the obedient hand down; it raised the transporter from the table. Two shrill blasts and it shot vertically into the air, flattened out and headed for the big office. The Rumanian Buffalo Bill on the pack diminished and was left behind as if seen from a fast-moving plane.

  In ten seconds they were out of the building and in three more they had landed on the table under the arbour of vines.

  It was too easy.

  The guard stood back to wait for the arrival of Marshal Volsk, his eyes blinking in the late evening sun which shone through the vine leaves. The Negress had fallen on her side and lay curled up, her heels tucked in and her forehead on her knees. Dilke touched her lightly and she stood up.

  They stepped down on to the cool surface of the table.

  “Run,” he said. The vine cast shifting shadows and they ran through them to the shelter of leaves which lay across the end of the table; the girl gradually outdistanced him, the pale soles of her feet flashing in the sunlight.

  The acrid smell of half-smoked cigars hung under the leaves. They clambered down the vine, ran through the rank jungle of nettles and out on to the plains beyond. Dilke had only one thought: to put distance between themselves and the house.

  The ground over which they travelled was the area used as a vehicle park. The surface was churned up and powdered by tank tracks and truck wheels; in parts there were ridges and huge boulders; stretches of it had been flattened and smoothed out by the wind. It was a desert.

  Dilke ran till it was almost dark, the girl following closely. He found a cave-like recess at the base of a clod of earth. In it they spent the night, it gave shelter from the wind, but it was bitterly cold and they got little sleep. During his periods of wakefulness Dilke’s mind worked wearily at the problem of escaping to England.

  The escape drill—return to the cigarette box, make contact with the agents in Bucharest, wait to be picked up—was now impossible. He crouched in the dark trying to think of a way to make a rendezvous with the Volkswagen. When morning came he spread out his maps on the ground. The aerial photograph had a numbered grid marked on it and he searched to find an intersection of two lines which fell on the roadway near the camp; if the radio transmitter was working; if he could send a message to Bucharest via London; if the agents in Bucharest had an identical map—then he might be able to fix a meeting place with them. But he could see no way of pinpointing such a place.

  They breakfasted on the last of the survival rations and set out again across the plain; the girl still followed silent and close to the preoccupied man.

  The sun blazed on the white desert. The heat was stifling, at midday they came upon a winding creek along the bottom of which flowed a shallow stream. They climbed down the eroded side of the creek and drank; Dilke knelt in the shallows and splashed water on to his sweating body. He heard a distant shout. The Negress was staring past him in the direction from which they had come. He jumped up and looked back. A man stood on the edge of the creek, his head was turned from them, he waved a hand and shouted again. One—two—three other men joined him: powerful, naked and hairless; physically they were almost replicas of Batzar. But their heights varied greatly. For a moment Dilke thought that their differences in size were illusory—a trick of perspective—then he realized that the smallest man was only three millimetres high, the tallest was a giant of nine millimetres.

  A fifth man appeared; he held a big black dog on a chain, his left eye was swollen shut, a purple bruise darkened the eye socket and shaded off into the brow and cheek.

  It was Batzar.

  Dilke and the black girl turned and ran through the water, the spray glittered around them in the sunlight, their pursuers shouted, ran along the edge of the creek and found a pathway down. Beyond the creek a flat plain stretched to the horizon. Dilke and the girl ran—at first swiftly, then more slowly and doggedly. Dilke looked back; the five men were running fast and easily behind them. Batzar led, with the dog pulling eagerly at the leash; they had gained a lot of ground. Dilke’s breath laboured, sweat blinded him. There was a dull ache in the small of his back; only fear kept him going. They had reached a part of the plain which was uneven and pockmarked with dusty craters. The balance tipped between Dilke’s fear of capture and the torture in his lungs and limbs. He could run no more.

  “Run on!” he gasped and he stopped and faced about. He stood panting in the dust on the edge of a crater and prepared for his last fight. The crater lay between him and his pursuers. Batzar and the dog were the first to reach its rim; the man started to follow Dilke round the crater but the dog in its eagerness took the direct route, it jerked at the lead and pulled its master down the slope. The rest of the men followed; they slid in a cloud of dust down the crater side and scrambled up the inclined face towards Dilke. Batzar released the dog so that he could climb more easily; as it came snarling over the edge Dilke kicked it hard in the throat. The beast choked and hurtled back on to the climbing men, they tumbled backwards in a heap with the howling dog on top.

  Dilke turned to run again when he heard—among the angry shouts and curses—a shriek. It was not just a scream of pain but the scream of a man filled with insane fear. The crater bottom, filled with struggling bodies, suddenly heaved up in a flurry of sand and rocks. The men and the dog began to sink down into the pit, turning and twisting and screaming as if they were descending into a giant meat grinder. Dilke saw the steady rhythmical flash of the horns of the ant lion.

  There was a sound like that of sticks being broken.

  He was stiff with horror.

  These men he had hated and feared were transformed by their agony and terror into creatures for whom he felt a sick compassion.

  The ant lion took minutes to drag them below the surface. The last face to g
o was that of Novi Batzar. His head swung wearily; a bubble appeared at one nostril and multiplied, growing like a froth of crimson detergent. He gave a deep, grunting cough and belched blood. He was silent and dead before the polished globe of his head disappeared. A forest of arms trailed behind the sinking bodies until only the hand of the biggest man was left; the fingers stretched and quivered and then relaxed, the hand fell forward on the slack wrist and slid out of sight.

  PART FOUR

  1

  Dilke knelt in the sand, overcome by the appalling thing he had seen. He averted his head from the smooth, still crater; the black girl crouched behind him. She had not seen the deaths but she had heard the demented howling of the men and the dog and seen Dilke’s paralysed horror. Her eyes were wide with shock and fear; she had retrieved the map case and the transmitter from where Dilke had dropped them and she clutched them to her. Dilke went to her and took the case and the transmitter; she dropped her head, and her body shook uncontrollably—in a little while he gently touched her shoulder and she stood up and waited for him to move. He looked northwards into the desert and then back in the direction they had come. There seemed no future in the north and he instinctively felt that there would be no further pursuit. He ran his tongue over his cracked lips.

  “Let’s go back to the creek.”

  They came again to the stream. Dilke drank and then sat in the shadow of he creek bank with the aerial photograph before him.

  In a little while he began to laugh silently. The stress of the events of the last two days and the fear of pursuit had inhibited his thinking—now he saw in his more relaxed state of mind that the solution was simple: the pickup point was down at the lower left of the photograph. There, where the western and southern perimeter fences joined at right angles, was a corner post set in concrete. He picked up the transmitter; its side was dented and its speaker grille was cracked; he shook it and a shower of sand fell out; he placed it to his ear and heard a faint sound like waves in a seashell. When he depressed the “action” button he could hear no hiss of static—but imagined that the background noise of the stream would mask it. He gazed at the scene before him and collected his thoughts.