“You said that time didn’t matter!”
“What do you want, a guided tour of infinity? You must gain that by your own efforts. As to time, why, time flexes in and out. Sometimes a moment is a million years, sometimes an afternoon is a moment. Now I have business, dear drinking buddies, and the cup is empty. I wish you well. Go gently, as the poet says. And since no one will believe you back home, don’t bother trying to tell them, eh? Just, go gently. Then you’ll soon be back, by the front door.”
Tossing Death into the air, Lai skipped off on tiptoes, fluttering its wings. Becoming airborne, the being glided ineptly through the doorway, banging one wing against the jamb. Jim thought he heard it swear before it disappeared.
“So long, angel,” Weinberger called after it. “Nice meeting you.”
Death buzzed them. It darted ahead, it returned coaxingly. The other Deaths took wing and dived to catch at the men’s clothes and hair, pulling them.
“And here’s the bum’s rush, out of infinity. Okay, okay, we’re going.”
The two men began walking, then trotting, then running, nagged by Deaths which were pestering them like starlings mobbing a couple of owls. The faster they ran, the further away the other end of the hall seemed to become, the vaster the floor space, the higher the domed ceiling. Either the room was swelling to enormous proportions, or else they were shrinking. The two men were so tiny now that they had lost all weight and were flying along above the floor.
What floor? What walls? Space extended around them indefinitely: space of a pearly hue. Far ahead bulged a wall of white fog . . . The Deaths had ceased their harrying tactics by now and were flying wing in a V-formation like migrating ducks, with the little Death-guide at the forward point. The void was smoothly empty. Soon the wall of fog ahead began to resolve itself into innumerable jostling coloured specks . . .
Jim sat up, with a groan. He felt as though he had been dragged through a briar patch by the hair.
Weinberger also opened his eyes. Immediately he pointed a finger at the roof.
“It’s keeping watch.”
“I don’t see anything . . .Oh. Wait.” Something red flickered vaguely up there, almost beyond vision. Jim shook his head. He couldn’t see it any longer.
“It’s there.”
“Maybe.”
“If you let it be there, it’s there.”
“Our guardian angel?”
“No, Lai was the angel. That thing’s just a self-propelled feather from Lai’s wings. Knotted up into a creature. I think there are two of them up there.”
Whatever Lai had said about time flexing in and out, by now it was late afternoon. The batteries of the cassette player had run down. The rain had quit lashing the lake. Earth and sky had unmixed. Once again, clouds definitely belonged in the sky; and as the clouds drifted by, they broke apart so that ragged patches of sunlight ran across the dull waters outside like searchlight beams hunting for the shack. But with no interest in finding it, only in picking out arbitrary stencil shapes.
Jim stared up at the place where the little Deaths either lurked, or did not lurk. Really, he couldn’t be sure — and staring hardly helped him see them. Obviously the corner of Weinberger’s eye was more acute than Jim’s.
“Do you know something, Nathan? I believe we’ve run out of reasons for escaping.”
“Because we’ve been where we wanted to go?”
Jim nodded. “And what could we tell our ‘friends’ over the border now? ‘Hey, if you get squashed by a train or electrocuted, you’ll go to Hell! Play it safe, and you’ll reach the free spaces. Play it dangerous, and that’s that, baby.’ That’s no philosophy for a world.”
“You have a point, old drinking buddy. Where would people get the spunk to create anything half-way imaginative after they were dead? Lai forgot to mention that.”
“Right. He was just worried in case we all killed ourselves quickly and quietly. Which is precisely what we ought to arrange for ourselves!”
“What?”
“I don’t mean right now. I don’t mean we should shoot ourselves. I guess the adrenalin begins pumping when you’re faced by a gun. Fight-or-flight sets in, and the death pheromone hasn't got a look in. No, we should get back to Egremont — back to the House. We'll apply for immediate euthanasia, you and I. Don't you see the logic of it, knowing what we do? I'll take this straight to Menotti. He can't refuse an Application Absolute, backed by both client and guide. And I certify you well and truly guided, Nathan.” Jim grinned crookedly. “Me too. At least fifty miles well guided . . . which is a bit of a nuisance.”
“What about Resnick?”
“Ah yes, your public appearance . . . Sally Costello must have told Menotti about that scheme, even if Resnick didn't. I think I can put it to Menotti that Resnick is simply serving his own ego — and what's more, that it would actually do horrible harm to the House and all the other Houses to set you up on your hind legs on a platform. Some of the things you'd say would really blow the roof off everything! What things? Well, we aren't telling. Leave 'em puzzled. Leave Resnick bewildered. Serve him right.”
“He might put the cage together again, just to find out?”
“Alice Huron would never let him. Besides, you control the world supply of the pheromone.”
Weinberger lifted the dispenser flask, still dangling from the fishing line.
“Not any more. Nobody does. It's all gone.” He licked his lips. “Like they say, I'll take the secret with me to the grave.''
“You agree, then?”
“I guess so. I could hardly suspect you of some cunning scheme to guide me all the way through the countryside back to my own deathbed.”
“Oh, Nathan.”
“Just joking, old buddy. I realize that you're heading for your deathbed too. Shall we make a start? It'll take us two or three days.”
“It won't, if they're still flying around looking for us. Waving a red flag from a treetop mightn't do much good, but I bet you that a nice smokey fire will attract some attention! It's a bit closed in here for that — we ought to be on higher ground. They won't bother parachuting the troops in if we’re jumping up and down beside a bonfire, waving to them. They’ll send a helicopter. We’ll ride back in style. Let’s eat, then we can decide about starting back.”
“I need sugar. I want something sweet.”
Jim dug into his valise and produced a large can of peach slices with a bright, sunny label.
Weinberger swilled the last of the syrup out of the can, and set it down neatly.
“There’s one thing we never found out. Aren’t Lai and his crew aiming to do anything tough about the crystal fog? Can’t they smash it up or something? We should have asked. But we got the bum’s rush.”
Jim considered.
“It sounded to me more as though they were just keeping it in check — ecologically. Maybe the crystal cells crack up after a few million subjective years? So people do get out again. Maybe the whole thing reaches a population climax and dies down? I have a sneaking suspicion that the fog’s no worse for Lai and company than a patch of weeds in the back of the flower border is for us. They hold their garden parties on the lawn. True, the weeds can spread like wildfire ...”
“Lai was a nicer fellow than that.”
“But if the crystals are natives of that region, how do they come to be there in the first place? Ecologically speaking? Prey and predator relationship, oh sure — but maybe the fog preys particularly on sick souls, unhealthy souls, ones that aren’t mature enough? Like an antibody or phagocyte. Perhaps it keeps unspace clean by catching those souls and binding on to them and purging them in purgatories? Lately, it’s gotten out of hand — and it’s all our fault.”
“How?”
Jim sucked his fingers then wiped them dry on his trousers. “Once, if you were half-way wise you could get through the fog. Or simply because the fog was thinner, you could. But all of a sudden we overpopulated the world, then we killed a billion people in a flash. T
hey all got in each other’s way. The fog soaked them up, dividing and redividing like nuclear fission. Now it’s so dense that it traps everyone whom the little Deaths can’t reach in time.
It’s going to take us a long time to know all the answers to the ecology of unspace.”
“The angels know them. The dead aliens.”
“And we’re just juniors. Not graduates of Death.”
“Not yet!”
“The Earth is our kindergarten. That’s why Lai doesn’t want us all to kill ourselves.”
“But we will,” grinned Weinberger.
“Right. Client and guide no longer — but partners in dying.” Outside of the glassless window the sky had half cleared and the clouds which remained were being stained by a fine sunset. With luck, this might be the last earthly sunset they ever saw. They had seen enough sunsets in their lives, Jim thought, to imagine many finer ones hereafter.
Jim made up his mind.
“We’ll stay here tonight. The ground’ll be damp outside. There’s no sense in catching our death of cold.”
“I told you, you don’t catch cold —!”
Jim grinned raffishly. “Nor do you catch Death. Death catches us. We hope.”
“I don’t feel sleepy.”
“You never do. But you might as well enjoy the experience while it lasts.”
“Yeah, I wonder whether the dead sleep? I hope they don’t. Though Lai said he felt sleepy when the booze hit him.”
“One thing the dead certainly do is dream. Wide awake. And they share their dreams around.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
They came upon a forest road around mid-morning. Though they were heading southwards again, they found it impossible to retrace the exact route by which they had come. The rain — or simply the act of turning around to face in the opposite direction — seemed to have washed out the half-remembered landmarks of the earlier journey. They had wandered to the east.
They followed the rough road steadily uphill through trees for the best part of an hour, till they saw the top of a firetower rising above the pines.
“Just the 3-05!“ Jim rubbed his hands together, as though to start a fire in them.
The flretower stood in half an acre of cleared ground; it was a high wooden pylon with a cabin perched on top. Windows looked out over the forest in all four directions, and a roofed verandah ran around, open to the wind. Overhead, the thin whip of an aerial ticked back and forth. Access was by way of a rung ladder up the inside of the pylon, to a trap door in the bottom of the cabin.
They climbed up.
The cabin was deserted. Its battery radio had been removed, along with any fire-spotting equipment. But there were bunks and a table and two chairs, and a steel waste bucket.
“They only man these at high risk times,” said Weinberger. “Early summer, midsummer. It’s too late in the season now.”
A cupboard yielded a paraffin lamp containing some fuel, an open packet of rye crispbread which tasted like straw by now, and half a dozen well-thumbed erotic paperbacks.
Stepping out on to the verandah, Jim walked about appreciating the view, storing it in his memory as raw material for worlds as yet uninvented. Despite intrusive crags and peaks it was not utterly unlike the view in Weinberger’s scene-screen back at the House. Southward lay Egremont, Lake Tulane and all the deciduous trees of the valley flanks which would spread a rug of red and gold against the green . . . but they were too far away.
They carried the two chairs out on to the verandah, placing them at the south-east corner where they could talk to each other while scanning half the sky. Jim brought out the waste bucket, the reservoir base of the lamp, and all the paperbacks.
Back inside, he upended his valise on the table, tipping everything out. He dropped the empty bag through the trapdoor and followed it, down the ladder.
By the time he got back to the verandah, lugging a bag stuffed with grass and sticks and broken branches, Weinberger was already well engrossed in one of the novels, chuckling to himself.
“Here’s one fire they weren’t aiming to put out!*’
“Hey, you’re supposed to be watching the sky.”
“Good peripheral vision, Jim: that’s what got me into this — I guess it can get me out of it, too.”
Sacrificing the least appealing of the paperbacks, page by scrumpled page, Jim half filled the bucket and tamped the paper down with sticks and straw. Then, tilting back his chair and planting his feet on the rail, he too settled himself to read a novel. He kept one eye on the horizon. The book he had picked up was entitled House of Lust. It was unlike any work he had scanned before, but he had to admit that it had its passing attractions. Though was it quite the proper reading matter before he launched himself into the afterlife?
He had just reached chapter four when Weinberger said, “Hey!”
Jim followed his finger. There in the south was the white speck of a monoplane. Presently a_faint droning reached their ears.
“Not yet. . . Ah, go to it!”
Jim poured the paraffin into the bucket and dropped in a lighted match. He fed in wads of grass and pine cones; smoke billowed up around the verandah. He dropped the novels in one by one, then relieved Weinberger of his reading matter and pitched that in too. It was a brief fire but a dirty one.
“Here it comes!”
The two men leaned out, waving.
The white Peace Service monoplane circled the firetower twice, then waggled its wings and headed back towards the south.
They settled down to wait.
“Nothing to read now,” grumbled Weinberger. “Just as it was getting interesting, too!”
An hour later they heard a thin chattering whirr. Again, Weinberger was the first to spot the flying speck.
“Chopper! You were right, Jim.”
The helicopter sped across the forest towards the tower, trimming the trees like an upside-down lawn mower. If it hit a treetop, thought Jim, and crashed in a ball of flames then its riders would end up trapped in the crystal fog through no fault of their own . . .
The helicopter neared, slowed and hovered. The two men waved.
Something — a tube — poked out of an open perspex window. A sharp crack sounded. Immediately splinters of wood flew from the verandah rail. A few of these splinters stabbed Jim’s left hand.
As both men dived for the cabin door, the south-facing window shattered.
Inside, they crouched.
“Those were bullets, Jim!”
“I didn't think they were dried peas."
“They're trying to kill us — by surprise! If they do that . . . we'll never find our way through the fog. We'll be encysted.''
Weinberger stared up at the roof in anguish.
“My little Death,'' he cried, “where are you? We need you now!''
But there was nothing up there.
“Shit, why are they shooting? Bullets! Violence! How can it happen?"
“You're a fine one to talk."
“There was a reason for shooting Harper — even if it was the wrong reason. How can they shoot us down like vermin? What's their reason?"
“Revenge."
“Official revenge?"
Jim puzzled at the splinters in his hand, but they were too impacted to pull out. How could there be such a thing as official revenge? That puzzled him too.
A shot hit the roof.
“What lousy shooting! Where do they think we are? Hanging on the ceiling?"
Pulling the gun from his pocket, Jim remembered to slip off the safety catch.
“I'll scare them."
“Wait: you ought to hold that in both hands to steady it. Like this." As Weinberger mimed, he seemed to be praying. To the little Deaths, which had deserted them.
“When you shot Harper, you didn't —"
“He was closer."
“Have we any right to send our own worst enemy —?"
“They aren't worrying."
Jim stuck his head around the window frame. The
helicopter hovered side-on about fifty feet away, rocking slightly.
Jim saw who held the rifle: a rifle equipped with sights.
It was Noel Resnick.
The helicopter pilot was Toni Bekker.
Briefly, Jim and Resnick stared at each other, recognizing each other perfectly well. Resnick ducked his head, to sight the rifle. One eye closed in what seemed to be a broad wink.
Jumping in front of the window, holding the gun in both hands, Jim fired once, twice — at the man, not the machine.
Resnick fired too.
Both men missed. Jim even missed the helicopter entirely. It was a duel of incompetents.
Bekker pulled the helicopter back another fifty feet. Another rifle slug hit the cabin inaccurately.
“That’s Resnick with the rifle,” said Jim, taking shelter again. ‘ The pilot is the very same man from the Octagon who gave me this damn gun. He’s Resnick's man.**
“Resnick?’’ Weinberger shouted the name as though the breeze would hear and pass his protest on, whereupon Resnick would realize that he was misbehaving. “Isn’t he forfeiting all right to be a Master?**
“Isn’t Bekker disqualifying himself as a Peace Officer? I see it all now! Alice Huron sent them out. ‘Don’t come back without a scalp, Noel, or I’ll withdraw your privileges. The chalet, MaryAnn, the lot. I’ll break you. That’s it. They’re going to say we fired on them. They’re going to make out that we were only pretending to give up peacefully. But actually we wanted to lure them here so that we could shoot them down!”
Jim jumped up and pumped another bullet through the broken window. It flew wild.
“Save your shots, man.”
“ ‘This is the final test, Noel darling, to see if you can become a Controller like me! Will you commit an utter crime, to bind you to our ranks?’ It’s an initiation test.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“The real, secret Controllers. I never told you about those.”
“Too late now, Jim. Save your shots. We need some covering fire while we get out of here. That’s what they used to call it: covering fire. You listen to me: the whole of the Egremont House can’t possibly be in on this — nor the whole Octagon, either! We have to give ourselves up to ordinary officers. We’ve got to get out of here and reach Egremont on foot.”
Watson, Ian - Novel 10 Page 17