Freefall

by Roderick Gordon

  “It does,” Dr. Burrows agreed. He cleared his throat, then said, “Can I ask where, exactly, this is?”

  “Where this is?” The man had been totting up the items but stopped to run his eyes over Dr. Burrows.

  “The name of the village?”

  “West Raynham,” the man replied, a little flummoxed.

  “West Raynham,” Dr. Burrows repeated several times, as if he was trying to remember if he’d heard of it before. “And what county is this?”

  “Norfolk … North Norfolk,” the man replied, now giving Will a curious look.

  “Been on the road a long time,” Dr. Burrows explained.

  “Ah,” the man nodded, ringing up the till.

  “And if we wanted to go to London, what would be the best way?” Dr. Burrows asked as he handed over a creased twenty-pound note.

  “By car?” the man said, as he straightened out the note between his stubby fingers and held it to the light to check the watermark. He seemed satisfied with it and placed it under the tray in the till.

  “No, by bus or train.”

  “Then you’d be wanting the nearest town — Fakenham — about six miles away.” The man pointed out the direction, then put his hand to his mouth as he coughed. He drew in several asthmatic breaths before he went on. “You can get a bus from there into Norwich and catch the train. Or there’s the coach twice a day from Fakenham to London — it’s slow, but it’s cheaper.”

  “The coach it is, then,” Dr. Burrows decided. “Thank you very much,” he said as took his change.

  Will was holding the door open for his father, who suddenly stopped, frowning as if he’d forgotten something. He turned to the man, who was still behind the counter. “By the way, there hasn’t been an epidemic here in England, has there, in the last couple of months?”

  “Epidemic?” Will heard the man ask.

  “Any outbreak of disease, with people dying?” Dr. Burrows clarified.

  “No, nothing like that,” the man replied in a considered way. “Nasty stomach bug going around, that’s all.”

  “Thought not. Thanks again,” Dr. Burrows said. As the door swung shut behind them, he leaned toward Will. “So much for a Styx plague cutting swaths through the population,” he whispered theatrically, as if he was daring to mention some terrible secret.

  “I didn’t say it had happened yet,” Will defended himself. “And it won’t if I have anything to do with it, and I have, with the phials I’ve got.”

  “No, quite,” Dr. Burrows said, without any conviction. “Still time to save the world.”

  Will let his father’s comments go, and they sat on a wall outside the shop, enjoying their purchases. As he savored every mouthful of the chips, washing them down with his Diet Coke, Will closed his eyes in bliss. “Never thought I’d miss the little things like this so much,” he said.

  Dr. Burrows was silent as he ate his bars of chocolate. “You can say that again,” he said as he swallowed down the last of them. Then he leaped off the wall. “Chocks away, old chap!” he announced exuberantly, sweeping his arm through the air. When Will just looked at him, he grinned idiotically, and added, “I’m joking, Will — don’t you get it? Chocks away — we were on an airfield — that’s what they do with old aircraft — take the chocks away from the wheels — and I’ve just eaten choccy! It’s a joke.”

  “Are you feeling all right, Dad?” Will asked. His father was behaving very oddly, and wasn’t usually one to make jokes.

  Dr. Burrows frowned. “I think I just had a sugar rush,” he admitted. “Might have overdone it.”

  “I think you might have,” Will said, easing himself off the wall.

  But Dr. Burrows was still buzzing and staunchly refused to investigate whether there was a bus they could catch to the nearby town. “Walk’ll do us good. Forward to Fakenham,” he declared bombastically, striding off through the rest of the village.

  When they finally arrived in Fakenham, hot and tired, they found it was market day. The traders were setting out their wares on their stalls and standing around sipping tea from styro-foam cups. Dr. Burrows found the stop where the coaches departed from, and scanned the timetable for the next one to London. They had a couple of hours to kill, and loitered around the main square as more and more people arrived for the market. As the area became increasingly crowded, Will felt decidedly uncomfortable. He kept looking over his shoulder, trying to check everyone out. But there were just too many of them.

  “Dad,” he said, flicking his thumb at a café up the road.

  “Why not? I’d kill for a cup of coffee,” Dr. Burrows agreed. He hesitated. “Will, be careful what you eat. You saw what happened to me,” he advised soberly. “We should avoid too much sugar or fat because we’re simply not used to it.” And despite Will’s pleas to have a full English breakfast, they only ordered toast and something to drink, then took a table in the corner of the café.

  People at other tables were glancing warily at them, not because of their olive drab army uniforms, which actually weren’t that out of place in the town, but because, Will assumed, of their extremely dirty and rather odd hairstyles. Will twiddled one of his white dreadlocks between his fingers as he studied his father’s spiky hair. Dr. Burrows did look like a time-expired punk rocker as he sat there, engrossed in his paper. Will leaned over to him. “Do you think we should do something about our hair? I reckon we might stick out a bit, and we don’t want the police on our backs, do we? Don’t forget we’re missing, as far as they’re concerned.”

  Dr. Burrows contemplated his son’s suggestion, then nodded. “Not a bad idea, Will,” he concluded. He went over to ask the lady behind the counter where the nearest barber’s was, and they headed for it.

  Will wasn’t too sure when his father asked the barber for a short back and sides for each of them, and even less so as he watched his long hair being shorn off in the mirror. However, when they were both done, their tidy new haircuts went quite nicely with their military clothing. The coach was on time, and they boarded it. But the journey was incredibly protracted; the coach seemed to be stopping at every town on the way, although Will and Dr. Burrows used the opportunity to catch up on their sleep. As they became stuck in traffic on the approach to London, Will half opened an eye and surveyed the rows of stationary cars and trucks in the other lanes, and the skyline of the city in the distance. “Too many people,” he mumbled drowsily, then went back to sleep.

  By midafternoon, the coach finally pulled up and the door opened with a pneumatic hiss.

  “Euston Station! Everyone out!” the driver shouted.

  “I’m never going to get used to this,” Will muttered as they made their way to the concourse at the front of the station, where hordes of people were milling around and they could hear the constant rumble of traffic from nearby Euston Road. Dr. Burrows didn’t seem to be concerned by it in the slightest.

  “Quick — that bus! It’ll take us to Highfield!” he exclaimed, pointing. Then he looked confused. “But where are all the double-deckers?”

  PART 5

  HIGHFIELD, AGAIN

  24

  AS THEY DISMBARKED from the bus in Highfield, Dr. Burrows unexpectedly turned down Main Street rather than up it. “Just want to take a quick look at the museum, Will,” he said.

  “Dad … it’s not safe. I don’t think we …,” Will started to object, but from the determined way his father was striding along with his chin in the air, he knew he was wasting his breath.

  Reaching the museum, Dr. Burrows went up the steps and pushed his way through the door, Will trailing a couple of paces behind.

  Will was just thinking that the main hall looked more brightly lit than he remembered as his father took a few steps, then stopped in his tracks. Dr. Burrows surveyed the scene in a somewhat proprietary manner until his gaze alighted on a far corner.

  “What’s all this over here?” he exclaimed, and immediately strode off again.

  His boots squeaked on the polished p
arquet flooring as he drew up sharply in front of a tall glass display case. In it, a mannequin sporting a Second World War infantry sapper’s uniform stood in all its glory. “But what’s become of my military display?” he muttered, casting around for the pair of battered showcases in which he’d arranged a disorganized jumble of tarnished buttons, regimental badges, and rusty ceremonial swords.

  Will made his way to a bank of new displays behind the mannequin. “Remembering Highfield’s Finest,” he read out loud as his father joined him. Together, they leaned over the sloping tops of the glass cases to study the ration and identity books, the gas masks and other wartime items, all beautifully labeled with names and explanations of their uses.

  Sucking in his breath, Dr. Burrows turned to regard a TV screen set into a brilliant white melamine console by the side of the new glass cases. “Press to activate,” he mumbled as he read the instructions on the screen and thrust a finger at it. It immediately began to play a sequence of black-and-white films, which looked like excerpts from old newsreels. The first scenes were at nighttime and showed firemen with hoses battling to put out blazing houses. “I remember those days so well, as though they were yesterday,” began an elderly, wavering voice. “My father was one of the first in Highfield to volunteer as an Air Raid Warden.”

  Will watched as scenes of the aftermath of the raid came on. In hazy sunlight, men in dusty uniforms were frantically picking over rubble strewn across pavements and the front gardens of houses. The commentary continued: “The heaviest bombing came in February 1942, when there was a direct hit on the Lyons Tea Rooms in the South Parade of shops. I remember it was packed with people having their lunch when the Germans dropped a land mine. It was just awful … the injured and the dead, everywhere. And there was another raid that night, even worse than the first.”

  Then Will watched a clip of a pair of old men just sitting on a couple of chairs in the remains of the ground floor of a house, staring blankly at the camera as they smoked. They looked exhausted, and defeated. He tried to imagine their suffering — not only had they lost their homes and all their belongings, but their wives and children had probably perished in the bombing. All of a sudden their plight touched Will — he found it very poignant, and was struck by the realization that whatever he’d gone through, it couldn’t be worse than what these men and many hundreds of thousands of others had faced in that war. He concentrated on the commentary again.

  “My father worked for two whole days and nights to find —”

  Dr. Burrows stopped the film with a jab at the screen.

  “I was watching that, Dad,” Will said. His father clucked and gave him a frosty look before stumping off toward the door at the far end of the hall, beyond which lay the archives and his old office.

  But just as Dr. Burrows reached the doorway, a young man stepped out and blocked his way.

  “I’m sorry, sir, you can’t go in there. It’s off-limits to the public,” the man said pleasantly but firmly. “Museum staff only, I’m afraid.” He was dressed in a smart blue suit with a lapel badge identifying him as CURATOR. He looked very young, even to Will’s eyes.

  “I am —” Dr. Burrows began and immediately halted as, unseen by the man, Will nudged his father in the small of the back.

  Dr. Burrows grunted, and the man took a step back. Will realized how odd his father must appear to him, with his old Navy duffle coat done up the neck, and the woolly hat pulled down low over his head.

  “Can I be of assistance, sir? I saw you were admiring our new interactive display — I’d be delighted to give you a guided tour of our other exhibits.” The young man glanced around the floor of the museum and lowered his voice as if he was confiding some vital secret to Dr. Burrows. “I’m afraid that many of them are rather unexceptional. You might have noticed that this museum is a little, er … how shall I put it … in need of modernization. It was badly neglected by the previous management.” He drew in a long breath as if preparing himself for a massive task. “But now that I’m at the helm, I intend to revamp the whole place with the help of some p-r-e-t-t-y substantial funding I’ve secured.”

  The man smiled, expecting an enthusiastic response from Dr. Burrows, but his smile evaporated as he got something altogether different.

  “I like it precisely the way it is,” Dr. Burrows said as if someone was strangling him.

  Will’s heart went out to his father. All Dr. Burrows’s work at the museum had been belittled in a few throwaway sentences. As Will watched him, Dr. Burrows’s head lowered and he seemed to deflate. Will wanted to say something, but he couldn’t think of the right words. What was so ironic was that his father had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

  With all the innumerable and outstanding discoveries he’d made in the Colony and the Deeps, Dr. Burrows would one day be lauded as a great explorer and scientist, perhaps the greatest of the century. But none of that seemed to matter to him right now, as he stood there, his shoulders bowed with disappointment. Will couldn’t understand why his father still seemed to care so much about this rather third-rate place, which could never hope to compete with the wealthier museums in central London.

  “A lot of time and effort was put into all these displays, you know,” Dr. Burrows said. “I think they’re very effective.”

  “Well, to each his own,” the young man replied defensively. “These days it’s a different game entirely. It’s all about interactivity and community involvement. The trick is to give the kids some buzzy new technology to get their attention, and also to pull in the local people by inviting them to participate in time capsules and the like. Yes, Interaction and Involvement spells Interest and Income. The ‘four I’s’ principle.”

  As Will scanned the hall, he wondered if the new curator’s vision would prove to be successful in Highfield. Perhaps this rather dusty and neglected museum was a true reflection of the heart of the borough.

  “So, do you live around here?” the curator asked, breaking the silence.

  “Sort of,” Dr. Burrows replied.

  “Well, if you’re interested, I’m always on the lookout for people to assist me with the running of the museum, you know, to help on —”

  “Weekends,” Dr. Burrows cut in. “Ah, yes, the Saturday squad.”

  The curator’s mood changed and he grinned, imagining he’d found a new recruit.

  “I assume you’ve got Major Joe signed up, and then there’ll be Pat Robbins, Jamie Dodd …,” Dr. Burrows said, “… and, I’ll bet, Franny Bartok.”

  The curator nodded at each name as Dr. Burrows reeled them off. Will had stepped to his father’s side and saw the twinkle in his eye as he continued to speak. He was definitely up to something.

  “And how could I forget the one and only Oscar Embers,” Dr. Burrows ended his list.

  “Oscar Embers?” The curator stopped nodding. “No, I don’t recall anyone of that name.”

  “No? Are you sure … he was a retired actor and always the most passionate and committed of the bunch.”

  The curator couldn’t help but notice the look that passed between Dr. Burrows and Will.

  “No, I’ve never come across him,” the curator said categorically, then narrowed his eyes as if he was becoming suspicious. “And can I ask you, sir, how you come to be so knowledgeable about my volunteers when I’ve never met you before?”

  “I was …,” Dr. Burrows began, but was interrupted by Will, who coughed loudly to warn his father not to say any more. “… I helped out your predecessor when he was here and, er, got to know him well.”

  “Ah, that would be Dr….,” the curator said, then frowned as he grasped for the name. “Bellows or Bustows, or something like that.”

  “Burrows, Dr. Burrows,” Dr. Burrows snapped.

  “Yes, that’s it. I assume you know the poor chap went missing — it was before I took over the reins here, so I’ve no idea what he was like.”

  “A very impressive man,” Dr. Burrows said tersely. “And now, I regret to
say, we have to be on our way.”

  “Are you sure I can’t give you a quick tour around the new exhibits?”

  “Maybe another time. Thank you, anyway, and good luck with your plans,” Dr. Burrows said as he turned smartly. He was muttering to himself, but it wasn’t until he was outside that he really let loose.

  “Interactive! Bah! That young just-out-of-university novice will burn buckets of money, and all for nothing. Then the museum will run short of funds and probably be closed down, and my collection will be mothballed for all eternity.” He stamped his foot on the pavement with such force that it echoed across the road.

  “Dad, just cool it, will you?” Will urged him, concerned that his father’s behavior was attracting unwanted attention. “I know why you were asking about Oscar Embers,” he said, attempting to distract his father by getting him on a new tack. “It is really weird that the curator hasn’t heard of him. He was always hanging around, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Burrows agreed, “very strange.”

  “So that twin was probably telling the truth about him being a Styx agent, and we should get the heck out of here. I tell you — we’re not safe in Highfield.”

  Dr. Burrows pursed his lips thoughtfully and suddenly stuck his finger in the air. “I know! Oscar must have died, before that new doofus took over,” he declared cheerfully. “After all, Oscar was no spring chicken! And there’s one way to find out if that’s what happened.”

  “How?” Will tried to ask, but his father strode off at full speed again.

  They headed up Main Street, pausing outside a shop that was in the process of being gutted by a team of builders. Dr. Burrows surveyed the old green-painted shelves, which had been torn out and piled on the pavement in front of the shop.

  “Clarke’s has gone. Is nothing sacred?” he said, referring to the old fruit and vegetable shop that had been there since anyone could remember. “That’s the supermarket chains for you!” he fumed. Will guessed immediately that there was more to the shop’s closure than that. He was on the point of telling his father about the Clarke brothers’ special relationship with the Colony, but decided against it. Dr. Burrows was having a hard enough time coping with what he already knew — Will didn’t want to make it any more complicated for him.