The Doomsday Carrier

by Victor Canning

  A violent wave of nausea rose in her. The door key in her hand, she fainted, collapsing to the floor. The door swung back and was held partly open by her legs which lay across the threshold.

  Charlie heard the thud of her body on the floor. He stopped drumming and lay listening. All the movements and sounds made in his quarters were familiar to him, the click of keys in locks, the soft sighing of self-closing doors and the sound of footsteps—always quickly recognised—in the vestibule between the doors. There was no further sound of doors opening or shutting. He picked up a straw and chewed at it. After a moment or two he went out into the solarium and ambled on all fours over to the water basin. He pressed the porcelain button and sucked at the water as it ran. Turning away he saw Jean’s body lying beside the partly open door. He went across to her and squeezed through the open door space above her legs. Squatting on his heels he looked into her face. Her eyes were closed. He put out a long, hard-skinned finger and touched her face. When she made no move he gave two or three anxious sounding panting hoots and then turned and left her.

  Going up to the large cupboard he rose on his hind legs and rattled at the handle. Now and then the people who looked after him, he knew from experience and watching, kept a few titbits in there for him . . . a banana, or onions of which he was fond. Unable to open the door, he gave the panel a frustrated smack. Grumbling to himself he went past the cupboard and sat down in the recess made by the angle of its side with the main wall. He sat with arms locked across his chest and rocked himself gently, watching Jean’s head which he could just see.

  Five minutes later Jean came round. She slowly sat up, the barred door closing quietly behind her as she drew her legs forward. Her head was swimming and her stomach began to heave with a swift attack of nausea. Dimly, hardly knowing what she was doing, but realizing that in a few moments she would be violently sick and wanted to reach the cloakroom, she climbed to her feet. One hand across her eyes and forehead to steady the throbbing in her head, she stumbled across to the main door, the key still in her right hand. She leant against it, fumbled the key in the lock and turned it with only one desire in her . . . to get to the cloakroom quickly and be sick. She pushed the door wide and went through swaying as she walked, one hand out to steady herself against the wall.

  As the door started to swing slowly back, Charlie rose and slipped through it. He ambled down the corridor on all fours, his body swinging with a gentle roll, following Jean. She turned into the cloakroom a few yards ahead of him and the door closed. Charlie sat on his bottom in front of the door, raised his head and gave a few rapid grunts. Then he turned and, seeing the door of the administration office opposite open, he went in, his grunts ceasing. He went to a chair below the window and looked out and blew a series of hoos through his pouting lips. Then, seeing that the top half of the window was partly open, he climbed on to the sill, pulled himself up and squeezed through the opening and dropped to the ground outside.

  Without any hurry he ambled along, the back of his hands just touching the ground, the sun burning the rich dark brown fur of his pelt, across a lawn and into a small shrubbery of flowering viburnums. On the other side of the shrubbery he came out on to the path that ran all the way around the inside of the perimeter fence. Talking to himself in low, excited grunts and little pouting sounds of pleasure, he climbed the tall stout-meshed wire fence easily, balanced himself on the barbed-wire stranded overhang—designed to keep people out not in—and jumped the sixteen feet to the ground easily.

  Without any idea where he was going and, in fact, with no desire to go anywhere in particular, content solely with this new freedom, he went slowly across the downland and was soon out of sight of the perimeter fence and Research Station buildings. Above him the larks were singing and the warm air was full of the scent of thyme and marjoram. As he walked he caught two copper-coloured grasshoppers and ate them.

  Five minutes later he came to a spinney of tall beech trees. He climbed thirty feet up one of the inside trees, settled himself into a fork and, lying back with his legs crossed, reached out and gathered a handful of the silky green leaves. Chewing the leaves into a moist wad in his mouth he looked around him. High summer lay over all the land and the sky was pearl grey with heat haze. Through a gap in the trees Charlie watched the movement of distant cars on a main road. Beyond the road a narrow river threw loops of silver between meadows studded with the resting, cud-chewing shapes of black-and-white cows. A large caterpillar crawled up the smooth bark of the tree trunk. Charlie picked it off and put it in his mouth to flavour the leaves. As he chewed contentedly he scratched absently at the slight irritation that came from the small shaven patch at the top of his right arm where he had been injected. Then he began to drum against the tree trunk with one hand faster than he had ever done in his quarters and opening his mouth wide, displaying all his teeth, the wad lodged in the pouch of his cheek, he called loudly waa-waa-waa.

  * * * *

  Charles Armstrong, the Scientific Coordinator of the Fadledean Reasearch Station, fiddled with the half-empty glass of whisky on the desk before him as he listened to the Director of Micro-Biological Research on the telephone. Armstrong was an amiable man who believed in taking no chances and no extreme initiatives. Outside of his official sphere he led a happy life with his wife and his two children and allowed them to exploit and manipulate him so long as they did not interfere with his chief pastimes of golf and shooting. One of his recurring dreams was of himself winning the British Open Championship as an amateur. His handicap was sixteen and never likely to be lower. As a micro-biologist of international reputation his eminence in this sphere also gave him dreams—from most of which he woke in a cold sweat—but he had learnt to live with them. He was fifty, plump, almost bald and his cheeks were crested with little tufts of grey-white hair.

  As his Director spoke to him he made notes from time to time on the pad beside the whisky. Now and then he managed a small sip of whisky which he knew at this moment he damned well needed. Because of what the Director called ‘the sensitive areas concerned’, practically all action was being taken out of his hands, certainly concerning anything that had to be done outside the perimeter of the Station and absolutely regarding any communication with the civil or police authorities. Armstrong congratulated himself that—after the Station guards had reported that there was no sign of Charlie in the camp—he had stayed his hand in the act of reaching for the telephone to call the police. Thank God for that. . . No mention of Charlie’s escape must as yet go beyond the Station. The outside world was for others to worry about. The Director ran on detailing the immediate steps which he had taken, steps he was confident would see Charlie back in the laboratory very soon. That night, maybe. He sounded very sure of himself and made one of his weak jokes at which Armstrong dutifully laughed faintly—knowing that whatever happened there would always be a stout umbrella above the Director to shelter him from the storm. But against himself, even if Charlie came ambling back with a cheerful grin on his face in the next hour, Armstrong knew there would always be a black mark simply because he had not been able to forsee the one chance in a million which had freed Charlie. That damned Jean . . .

  The Director finished, “So just sit tight and look after your own little plot. If you get a call from the military then cooperate to the limit. As far as the police and the public are, if ever, concerned . . . well, all that will be handled from the holy of holies. However, I’m sure that once Charlie is spotted a bunch of bananas will bring him to heel.”

  Armstrong put the receiver down, picked up the whisky glass and drained it. Well, he just bloody well hoped the Director was right because if not the balloon would go up. He flicked his intercom and asked his secretary to send in Miss Blackwell.

  When Jean came in he nodded her to a chair and then pretended to occupy himself with his notes for a while to give himself time to decide how to handle her. He liked her and, indeed, there had been the odd times when, satisfying a timid sensuality, he ha
d imagined her naked and himself making love to her. At the moment as she sat waiting for him she prompted no such fantasy. She was the one who had poised a sword above his head. If there was real trouble he knew that it would come right back to him. From the corner of his eye he saw her fiddling nervously with the ring on her engagement finger. Security had checked the man and had found nothing against him . . . George Somebody-or-the-Other, the proprietor of a prosperous engineering firm . . . well-heeled, well-liked, sociable . . . hardly her type, he would have thought. Security would have done better to have checked her past medical record . . . a chance in a bloody million.

  He pushed his notes away, looked up and in his official no-nonsense laboratory voice said, “I’ve just been speaking to the Director. Staff not on duty are being recalled at once. All project staff will sleep here until further notice. Except for essential family messages—which must be cleared through me and telephoned in my presence—there will be no communication with anyone outside the Station. Does that pose any immediate problems for you?”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Good. Nothing is being said to the police or the public at the moment. The whole thing is in the hands of the military area command. There will be a discreet and wide troop cordon centred on this Station and also a helicopter search while the light lasts. That’s one reason why you have to be on hand. Charlie comes to you more readily than to anyone else.”

  “Yes, I know.” She spoke briefly, knowing that was all he wanted, guessing his mood and knowing that she was entirely to blame for it. But Charlie had a mind of his own. No matter what bond she had built with him over the past months Charlie had never been free from his quarters, or other quarters for years. Sudden freedom changed people, and it might change Charlie.

  Armstrong stood up and moved uneasily to the window. His back to her he said, “The Director, naturally, wants a report on the whole business. I want you to write your own report—in the fullest detail—on what happened. And I want to send it off tomorrow morning.” He swung round suddenly and shook his head at her. “Christ, Jean—you could really have put the cat among the pigeons!”

  “I’m sorry . . . But this isn’t the African jungle. There’s no possibility that Charlie could stay free long—”

  Armstrong smacked a hand on his bald head and said, “Don’t talk about possibilities. There was no possibility that Charlie could escape. We went over everything. . . and then the million to one chance happens!”

  He went across the room, picked up his whisky glass, and opened a cupboard door. As he filled his glass he said in a suddenly changed tone of voice, “You like a drink?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You’re all right now?”

  “Yes, thank you.” She knew he was making a peace overture. He was a decent man. Knowing what Charlie’s escape already had and—with bad luck—might still further involve him in, knowing how much his professional reputation meant to him, she realized that it was a gesture that would never have come from one in fifty of his superiors in the Ministry.

  He turned, eyed her for a moment, glass in hand and then shrugged his shoulders. He said, “I was going to blast hell out of you. Almost looked forward to it.” He grinned ruefully and sat down at his desk. “No point though. It’s happened. Let’s assume it will all be sewn up without trouble. Meantime, I’d like to know about this fainting business.”

  She said uneasily, “Well . . . when I was much younger, a schoolgirl and two or three times in my early twenties, if I got over-excited or very much upset I would faint—right out of the blue. But it hasn’t happened to me for years and years. I thought I’d outgrown it.”

  “Did you mention this at your medical when you came here?”

  “No. It had gone completely from my mind. I wasn’t asked the question specifically.”

  Armstrong sighed. The question would be asked in future. For a moment he had a vivid picture of the things that might happen if someone had a sudden fainting fit during some of the tricky moments of working here. He said, “Were you under any exceptional stress or emotion today?”

  For a while there was no answer. Watching her, sitting there, cool in her blue dress, the sunlight through the window raising high points on her dark hair, he wondered if the stress might have come from a swift attack of conscience or self-repugnance. Everyone had them at times . . . people who couldn’t handle them soon left. Others learned to live with them. The need for national survival and self-defence in these times had bred a new morality. He saw the lift of her shoulders as she breathed deeply. Then flatly she said, “You altered the schedule this morning and Charlie was injected at ten-thirty instead of two-thirty. The duty periods were rearranged, which gave me an unexpected few hours free this afternoon. I went down to Salisbury to do some shopping and to tidy my flat. Then, although I’d already told George that I wouldn’t be seeing him, I thought I’d give him a surprise . . .”

  Armstrong listened as she went on baldly telling the story, wondering why on earth this damned George could not have been content with the prize he already had. If he had been George . . .

  Jean finished. “I was perfectly calm about it all. Just frozen up inside. Then as I opened the barred door in Charlie’s quarters to leave—it hit me.”

  Armstrong said quietly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was going to drag this kind of thing from you.”

  “You’re entitled to know. Do you want me to put it in my report?”

  After a moment’s consideration, Armstrong said gently, liking her, feeling sorry for her, and knowing that when all this was over she would have to go, “Yes, Jean—you must put it all in.”

  Jean stood up, grateful for his kindness and wanting to repay it somehow. She said, “I’ll go and start it now. But surely as far as Charlie is concerned there’s no need to worry? He can’t possibly stay free for three weeks in this country, can he? It’s not possible.”

  Suddenly, forgetting her personal problem and his sympathy for her, Armstrong said brutally, “We didn’t think it was possible for Charlie to escape—but he bloody well has! So anything is possible. I don’t have to tell you that if Charlie does stay free long enough what kind of walking time bomb he will become!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  CAPTAIN HECTOR STEVENS, Royal Corps of Signals, temporarily attached to the Army School of Aviation in Wiltshire for an advanced flying course in helicopters, with a Sergeant Observer by his side, swung his machine gently into a wide turn and levelled out at three hundred feet along the third leg of the sector which had been allotted to him. As he flew he whistled gently through his teeth and listened to the network chatter coming through his earphones, his eyes watching the ground passing below.

  He had two more sectors to fly before dark—and they would take all that time—in a search for a chimpanzee, codename Charlie, male, which had escaped—so rumour already had it—from the Research Station at Fadledean. If so, it was a damned good place to escape from he would have thought, for man or beast. Not that he would ever have said so in the Mess. He knew when to keep his mouth shut. If the animal were seen, report location and keep under observation. A rum place Fadledean and some rum goings on if you believed everything that rumheads said. Personally he believed nothing unless it was in one of the manuals or came from the mouth of a superior officer. Keep your mouth shut, your private thoughts to yourself and your ambition daily burnished—that way lay promotion. So, he told himself, the fact that he was in a rush operation to search for a chimpanzee with God-knows-how-many helicopters in the air and ground patrols, R/T trucks and all the rest spread out for miles around might make this chimpanzee no ordinary chimpanzee; there was not the slightest speculation in him about the special nature of the animal. Which was sensible, he knew, because after the animal had been captured none of the other pilots and observers in the air now, or the troops below, would be made any the wiser about the reason for the animal’s importance. Why plague yourself with questions which would never have any an
swers? Idle.

  The small chalk-stream he was following curved through a meadow mottled with kingcups and yellow patches of flowering iris, long streaks of green weed marbling its flow. Here and there a line of willows or alders overhung the bright water. A man on the bank fishing looked up and waved to them as they passed over. Not a friendly wave, Captain Stevens guessed. Get that something-something thing out of here. Bloody racket. He grinned to himself and took the machine down a hundred feet as they approached a ragged wood of poplars and ash trees through which the river ran. He quartered over it slowly and at the far end dropped down to close above tree level, the rotors setting the topmost branches waving and tossing. If VIP Charlie-boy was anywhere up in them, he thought, he would be a stout number not to be flushed by the noise and the wind storm which was setting twigs and leaves scattering into the air. He took the machine twice over the wood fast and then went up a hundred feet and hung watching the verges. A pair of magpies—two for joy—and a rocketing cock pheasant went away, but nothing else moved.

  Stevens went to normal search level and cruised slowly down the stream. Beyond Salisbury the setting sun hung low like a red ball, shimmering in its own heat haze, the great pointed shaft of the cathedral spire a raised black stiletto against its glare. Somewhere down there was the girl he had been taking out to dinner tonight. Tough titty, old man . . . still, plenty of other girls, plenty of other nights. Get your priorities right, old boy . . . more to be got from being the first to spot old Charlie than there was to be had in the back seat of a car . . .

  As the sound of the helicopter died away Charlie—who after months in his quarters at Fadledean was well used to the sight and sound of low-flying army helicopters—ambled out of the wood and crossed the stream by a wooden footbridge. He made a quick snatch at a dragon fly that neared him, missed it, and went on chattering softly to himself. A narrow path lead up the valley side along the edge of a field of tall wheat. Gharlie pulled off some of the unripe heads and began to chew them into a moist wad. He moved along easily on all fours, hidden from sight by the growing wheat, hands touching the ground, lightly taking his weight.