World in Eclipse

by William Dexter

  The first problem we tackled was a schedule of food production for the farm. This again was easy —

  from the advice point of view — for the Mercury's agricultural man had amassed a splendid filing system, and we turned the whole thing over to Primswood Farm.

  Arabin also arranged a workable system of communications between Primswood and Parkside, by installing radio phones at each place. For the time being, dry batteries would see us through, but we realised that the day would come when other power would have to be devised. That, however, fell into a bigger scheme — the provision of power for our workshops and homes.

  As well as the two-way radio phones, each centre kept a full log of the day's events, with duplicate copies that were passed on to the other centre. Runners from London and Primswood passed each other twice daily on this errand. It may not have been necessary, but the idea was designed to establish a regular communication for use in emergency.

  For the first week or so life moved lazily and amazingly comfortably. Then came news that we had been partly expecting, but which enlivened us to efforts for the future, none the less.

  Rachelle Karim announced that she was pregnant.

  We celebrated the news with a party, but the next day we settled down to serious thought.

  If there was going to be a future generation, we had to provide for it, and that meant more than simply supplying ourselves with enough food and comfort.

  My information bureau was set the task of learning all we could — and passing on the information to our mechanics — about water power. We spent days with the mechanics, both of them Virians of great talent, combing the library for workable schemes of providing power by "harnessing the tides," as Lord Fasting had so often and so glibly described the process.

  It had been a Fasting shibboleth in its time, this provision of power from the winds and the waters, but our Virians thought little of his experts' plans, which were to have made the country idle and rich in their day.

  Instead, they walked out thoughtfully after we had gone through all our material on the subject, and stood for a day watching the Thames from Blackfriars Bridge. They had a plan, they admitted, but it would need time to put it into operation. Arabin gave them all the time they wanted, inside two years, and offered all the manpower we could spare.

  However, the Virians, Alatto Skirr and Hani Skirr, brothers trained in Vulcanid mechanics, kept silent about their scheme for many weeks before laying it before us.

  Another necessary part of our activities, and a colossal task in itself, was the removal of those corpses we found in our Ways about the city. Fortunately, most of these were found to be disintegrated into the fine ash we had come to know so well, but there still remained the job of burning the clothing. It was distasteful work, but we had come to look upon it objectively, and did it with the best spirit we could muster.

  For two months every available person went about this unwholesome work, and in that time we had created a wonderful change in the appearance of the city streets. Underground, in the Tube stations, though, it was a sorry sight. Great droves of people had apparently taken refuge there, and we found their remains packed tightly along the platforms and corridors.

  To protect our health, we sealed each Tube station with the airtight doors provided under the Act of 1959. And as our scavenging work progressed, we took to dumping the bodies and clothing down the nearest Tube lifts. It seems — or would have seemed before the catastrophe that precipitated it — a callous way of disposing of the dead, but we carried it out with all possible reverence, and even conducted some sort of committal service over the bodies.

  At first, as we moved about the streets, whether walking or riding, we found the eerie empty atmosphere everywhere quite unnerving. We walked or rode in parties of two or more, rather than face the unpleasant thrill of walking along an empty street wondering... what would come round the next corner.

  I shall always remember the first trip I took alone in the streets. I had decided to walk to Fleet Street, and was making my way along the Strand, when there was a sudden rustle and a flurry from round the corner of Wellington Street, a few yards ahead of me.

  I stood, frozen with terror, as a cat sped out and across the road.

  Then it stopped, and collapsed into the thick dust.

  When I could muster the courage, I walked over to it — and saw a woman's fur necklet lying there. It had blown down the slope and a sudden gust had picked it up and flung it into the middle of the Strand.

  Then there was the dust. Everywhere — dust, thick dust.

  It was as soft as a carpet on a still day, but when the wind blew it became a blinding horror. It was hard to believe that this same dust had settled when London and the world were thickly populated, and had had to be cleared away each day by the road sweepers. Now there was nobody to sweep it except the wind. When rain fell, the dust turned to mud too thick to be carried away down the sewers.

  The dirt had settled on brick and glass, and to look into a shop window it was necessary to smear a clear patch. More than once I had found myself standing before a shop window admiring something inside, and wondering — actually wondering, with all the world's shops my property! — whether to have it. An unusual electric torch, advertised on the show card as having the new Ever Ready Condensed Longlife Batteries, caught my eye one morning, and I hesitated. Was it worth the £8 asked for it? The card said it would last ten years under guarantee, but wouldn't a simpler, cheaper model be more economical?

  I tried the door, which was locked, and thoughtfully I walked away. Ah, well! Door locked — no torch.

  Then I realised where — and when! — I was. I went back and kicked in the door and took the torch, after finding the requisite batteries on the shop's shelves.

  Torches were as necessary to us as clothing, for, without lights blazing out when we wanted them at the turn of a switch, we depended entirely on a source of light we could carry. Our homes had heavy battery lamps installed everywhere, for even in daylight there are many rooms in the London private hotel that must be illuminated. Even in the shops we raided for food, light was necessary. The thick coating of dust on the windows had long ago made them almost opaque.

  Early in our settlement, we had adopted an arbitrary calendar, and had tried, with the aid of sextant and star charts, to establish the exact period of the year. We made it out that we had landed at some time in July, and dated our affairs from July 3rd, which was, according to our solar and astronomical readings, the date of the Return. The time of day was easier to check, for we referred to the sundial in Kensington gardens, and had a daily radio check for the farm.

  The Virians, among themselves, used a calendar based on their own reckonings, which was a

  combination of Vulcanid mathematics and Terrestrial timing.

  They spoke, too, in their own language when talking to each other, but at other times they used the Terrestrial languages with which they were familiar. Most of them had been in constant touch with Terrestrials on Vulcan, and had long practice in speaking various Terrestrial languages.

  We had as mixed a batch of tongues among us as ever clattered unintelligibly anywhere. Several linguists were able to translate everything successfully though, with the exception of Chinese, and the crackling Blackfoot Indian dialect that the Indians spoke between themselves. However, these three usually conversed in normal American, and indeed, one of them, Harry Crow Eyes, had a degree from some Middle West University of which he was very proud.

  The Chinese, fortunately, both spoke English of sorts, as did the two Eskimos, who had been whipped up by a Disc while trekking to the Mission Station where they were employed.

  The women who kept house for us made a wonderful job of it. It may be thought that they had no worries, and that everything they wanted was there to be had for the picking, but there must have been endless problems to face.

  True, food was there in good supply, although for days we ate nothing but tinned stuff. Then — it was
a Sunday by our calendar, and we had decided to do as little work as possible on Sundays — then Harry Crow Eyes announced at breakfast that he was going fishing.

  We none of us paid any attention for a second until the realisation broke through — fresh fish!

  Inside half an hour we had all, except half a dozen left behind regretfully for household chores, piled into cars and were heading for Lillywhites, in South Regent Street. Inside the good old sports dealers'

  shop we made for the fishing counter, and under Harry's advice picked ourselves the best equipment we could find.

  We took a police launch from Westminster Bridge Pier, and a couple of respectable looking motor boats, and spent the day in the Thames estuary, returning in the late afternoon with more fish than we could eat in a week.

  Over supper that night we were more like children on holiday than poor wanderers on a deserted planet.

  It was this suddenly acquired habit of making Sunday a day for loafing about or going on excursions that brought us our greatest shock — and our best piece of news.

  I must now introduce a character whom I have not yet named — Lucille Paname. Lucille had been taken by a Disc when she was a tiny child. Her father had been an engineer on the Panama Canal, and she had been too young to know her surname, so had always been known by the name of the place she had lived in.

  By Terrestrial standards, she would be about eighteen when she first thrust herself — and thrust is the right word — on my notice. She had attached herself to me persistently, although at first, I fear, I had rebuffed her constantly.

  Then, at Parkside, she began to take a distinctly proprietorial interest in me, until at last I found it necessary for my peace of mind to defer to her. From then on, she rarely left me when we were not working.

  My acceptance of the position moderated her attentions, but she gave me to understand most distinctly that she would be Madame Grafton before she had finished with me. It may have been her Gallic, business-like approach to the matter that had put me off in the first place, but I later appreciated Lucille for the good, kind creature she was.

  On this particular Sunday, I had been pressed into service to take her to Primrose Hill, so that she could see the view of London spread out below her.

  We had climbed the hill and admired the view — which was wonderfully clear in the now smoke-free air — and were on our way home again when she took a desire to return through Regents Park. I could agree with her most heartily, for walking through the ankle-deep dust of the streets was a tiring matter, whereas the parks always seemed to absorb the dust into their surface.

  I explained to her as we came to the entrance of the Zoo that there, at one time, she could have seen the animals she so dimly remembered from her own days on Earth. She was at once eager to see the place, although she knew that all she would now see would be empty cages.

  We climbed over the turnstiles, which had been locked in the shut position, and crunched our way across a patch of gravel swept clean, momentarily, by the breeze. Our footsteps sounded unusually loud, and the crunching was almost a novel sensation to us, after ploughing through dust, grass, and mud for so many days.

  Then we heard another sound, that made us open our eyes in astonishment. It was a simple enough sound, but one we had not heard since the Return.

  We heard the "Moo" of a cow.

  And round a bend in the path came lumbering three great Highland cattle.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lucille was terrified. She had never seen cattle, that she could remember, and these three monsters, with their shaggy polls and wide-spreading horns, were very different from the pictures of cows she had seen.

  She stood stock-still, her fists clenched, and great sobbing breaths shaking her frame, as the beasts trotted up to us. I was not too sure of them, myself, but the shattering surprise of seeing living animals in a world of the dead kept me from making a dive for the turnstiles.

  The leading beast, though, chased away our fears as quickly as she would have chased us away, had we been able to run, and had she taken exception to us. She trotted up to me, lowing, and bent her great head and snuffled at my sandals. I stretched out a timid hand and scratched her poll, whereupon she rubbed her nose over my face in what can only be described as an affectionate greeting.

  The other two clustered round us, nuzzling us and lowing in obvious delight at seeing humans again.

  When she had conquered her fear, Lucille was delighted, and petted the beasts extravagantly.

  "Mais — comme elles sont belles! 'Sont des vaches, oui?" she chuckled, scratching the thick straw-coloured curls of the biggest animal.

  "Oui — elles sont des vaches — vaches Ecossaises," I told her, although at the time I was none too sure, so shaggy and unkempt were the beasts, whether they were "vaches" or "taureux"!

  Whether they were cows, bulls, or oxen, though, they were tame enough, and we talked delightedly of driving our three wonderful finds back to Parkside. When it came to the point, though, there was no driving to be done, for try as we would, we could not separate the animals from us. While I broke into the turnstile house to find a key to open the gates, one of them, a fine honey-coloured beast, obligingly broke the window still further by poking an inquisitive head and four feet of horns through.

  I found the key, and we also managed to discover forty or fifty feet of rope, but the cattle would have none of this. But there was no need, as I said, to tether them together, as they walked out of the gate joyfully, and Honey, as we christened the leader, stood breathing heavily down my neck as I locked the gate behind us.

  We each carried a broomstick, looted from the turnstile house, but this was more to make a show of driving our trio than for actual use, for the animals trotted alongside us most sociably.

  As we trudged down the Edgware Road and through Sussex Gardens to Lancaster Gate, we imagined the surprise we were going to spring upon Thomas Ludlam and the others at the farm when we delivered our little herd. Lucille was full of bright ideas of fresh milk for our coffee, and beefsteaks for every meal, and to avoid developing the argument on too biological a theme, I let her go on hoping.

  Perhaps, though . .. if only they weren't such shaggy beasts.. . Still, we should find out their sex soon enough — and no doubt they were well aware of it themselves.

  But long before we had reached Parkside, the uninhibited beasts disclosed their secret to us, and I was greatly rejoiced to learn that we had one bull and two cows on our hands.

  At Parkside there was a general turn-out to greet us, as Manuela, the wife of Isidore Lopez, had spotted us approaching as she leaned on an attic window sill. Never was there such a to-do! The poor beasts were terrified by the hullabaloo as the whooping throng surrounded them. They were fussed over, patted, scratched, pummelled in their well-upholstered ribs, and generally feted.

  Oddly enough, the animals took at once to the Virians, and shamelessly abandoned us to make up to them. Later, we learned more of the Virians' uncanny ability to commune — I am sure that is the appropriate word — with animals. It was that eerie streak of telepathy most of the Virians possessed that gave them their ascendancy over beasts of every kind they met.

  We all set to work then and there to construct a compound within the gates of the park, and installed the animals there. All night, off and on, they lowed and called to us, as though they wanted to make sure that mankind had not deserted them a second time.

  Arabin was out when we arrived, but when he returned, he was as madly excited as any of us. Then he fell quiet.

  "How did you find 'em, Denis?" he asked me.

  I told him that they had found us, and that we'd come straight back with them.

  "Come on — we're going back to the Zoo!" he said. "There may be others there. There may even be...

  men."

  We piled into cars and drove straight back to the Zoo, entering by the gates of which I now had the key.

  There in the dust and gravel were the marks of
our footsteps and those of the cattle. The latter wove a pattern over every path in the Gardens, and it was some long time before we tracked them down to their source.

  The animals, we found, had been living in an underground shelter, and their footmarks up and down the long ramp leading to it had beaten a regular path. We went down the ramp, wondering what we should find.

  At the bottom we passed through two great wooden doors, swinging in the breeze. In the darkness beyond, when we had turned on our torches, we saw another pair of doors, also opening out towards us.