New Writings in SF 6 - [Anthology]

by Ed By John Carnell

  He felt it move. Saw the quick flash of it from the tail of his eye, ducked. The wind from it lifted his hair. It spun back; he jinked, started to run. Wasn’t quick enough. The end of the wood thudded into his chest, it felt like the blow had stopped his heart.

  The Little One.... The Little One throws things....

  He doubled again knowing he couldn’t win. Couldn’t fight ... this. A blow across the back fetched him to his knees. It came again, over the base of the spine. And again, bang, into his ribs.

  Bang....

  Bang, bang....

  His breath was sobbing. There was a huge sickness, there were stars, flashings, Anne, please.... Car was close now, he was fumbling at the cockpit cover. Something sailed past. A clang on metal; he grabbed, there was a wrenching, his palm tore agonizingly. He was in the car fighting with the ignition, key wouldn’t fit, wouldn’t turn, wrong key. ... He saw the missile swooping end-on, jerked his head back behind the screen, flung his hands up ... the last blow blotted out the carpark and the moon.

  * * * *

  A paleness, filtering between his eyelids. He opened them fractionally, felt how his brain, photo-sensitive, reacted to light with pain. He lay still while the throbbing eased. Then he sat up. The pain came back, exploding downward into his body. Ribs, hips.... He groaned, put a hand to his face. A scraping, and more pain. He saw dimly the flesh on the palm was ragged, splinters were showing. He shut his eyes again, squeezed, opened them, waited while gliding images fused. The roofs of buildings showed in dawn light, the tall hogs-back of the cinema. White ice glitter in front of him was the broken edge of the windshield, glass was strewn across the bonnet of the car, in her cockpit. He swore uselessly and looked round. No sign of the plank.

  His jaw felt nearly broken. He fumbled with the rear view mirror, turned it till he could see. Cheek and chin were grazed; the plank would have smashed his face, it had missed when he jerked his head. Blood had run down his neck in an untidy stripe, spread a brown finger-shaped stain into the collar of his shirt. He put his head in his hands, sat still awhile. Felt a little steadier, groped for his cigarettes.

  The man was standing beside him before he realized. He felt the aura, half turned, saw the dark blue of the uniform, froze, still holding the match. He tried to speak. His mouth felt like it was full of felt. “I...” he said. “I ... a stone. Afterwards ... didn’t feel so good....”

  “I see, sir....” The policeman had his thumbs hooked in his pocket flaps, he was rocking gently on his heels. “This your car, sir?”

  “I ... yes....”

  “Made a bit of a mess of it haven’t you? Got your licence with you by any chance?”

  He stared up, trapped, and saw the eyes. Long somehow, like the eyes of a cat. Almond-shaped and hazel. His throat worked as he swallowed. The eyes, and the face.... He’d seen the face before. Three times. He licked his mouth. “I’ll ... go,” he said. “Go. I ... had enough, officer. Don’t want any more....”

  He’d done the right thing. The man stepped away, strange eyes dancing. “Yes, sir, I should if I were you. I’m just walking round the block now. When I get back ... don’t be here, will you ?” He turned on his heel and moved off.

  The cigarette smoke tasted bitter. Jimmy threw the cigarette away, switched on the ignition. His hand shook when he touched the key. He revved the engine, brushed remnants of glass from the windscreen edge, drove out of the park. His mind was blank.

  The town was still sleeping and quiet. He turned left at the traffic lights, crossed the Starr. Saw the fairground way off, rides jacketed with green tarpaulins. He reached the dual carriageway and opened up a little, heading for Midhampton ten miles away.

  The airblast from the broken screen cleared his head; when he reached the town he could think again. He found a carpark with toilets open, washed his face, picked the worst of the splinters from his hand. There was a sweater in the car, he put it on. It had a polo neck that hid the marks on his shirt. He went back to the washroom mirror. His face was pale and the grazes showed brightly, but it was the best he could do. He went looking for a garage.

  He’d been anticipating trouble of some sort, he was carrying fifty quid in his wallet for emergencies. He found a Standard-Triumph agency, hung round till they opened, told them a tale and left them working on the TR4. He got himself breakfast; he didn’t feel like food, but he thought he ought to eat. They had trouble locating a spare screen, it was mid-afternoon before they were through. He filled his tank, paid them and took the car out on to the road. Turned the bonnet north for Warwell.

  It was like the dream repeating again. Same lane, winding between tall hedges; the same girl moving along it. She was walking listlessly, head down, jacket over her shoulder and handbag swinging. He’d pulled the car out of sight in a gateway, she was abreast of it before she saw him. She stopped and put a hand to her throat. Her mouth opened and shut but right then she was bad at making noises.

  “Yeah,” he said. “And on the third day, he rose again. Only I couldn’t wait. Sorry, Anne....”

  She tried to run then, but he was too quick, he’d been expecting that. He caught her wrist, spun; she thumped on the grass bank, her hair flew across her face. “You know,” he said, “I must like this sort of life. Great when the pain goes off....”

  She was wriggling. “Please, Jimmy ... hurting ...”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know....”

  “They let you ... let you g-get away....”

  “But now they want me. They know, don’t they, they know I’m back, you just told them....”

  “Jimmy....”

  “Didn’t you?” He was bending her wrist. “Didn’t you tell them, Anne?”

  “Hurting,” she said “Please.... Hurting, please....” She was trying to squirm round her arm.

  “I’ll break it...”

  “I can’t stop them....” She was nearly screaming. “They’re ... inside, all the time ... they ... make me walk, talk, do ... things ... can’t ... hold them out, I can’t....”

  “Who are they:...”

  She started to whimper.

  “It’s OK,” he said. “Anne don’t, it’s OK, please don’t, it’s OK....” He let her go and she rolled away from him, lay curled up with her shoulders working. “They ... want you,” she said. “I’ve got to tell you.”

  He lifted her, gently. “Anne,” he said. “Who are they?”

  She hung her head and panted. “They’re ... everybody. Paul, and John T-Taverner from the Bull ... And David, Johnny, the Round Table ... Hazel, Maureen, they’re in the Inner Wheel...” She looked up, eyes tear-bright. “You were best with the women,” she said. “You knew about them all the time....”

  He stayed quiet, letting the words sink in. The imagery of the dreams, the thing his brain had tried to tell him. Phrases heard or seen, cast back as monstrous parables.... He swore, very softly. “God,” he said. “Isn’t there a thing in this town that’s clean ... ?” Then he picked her up the rest of the way and started leading her towards the car. “Anne, I think you’d better tell me now. Everything you know....”

  * * * *

  Six

  The house looked upstream from the tip of a little wooded island; he’d seen it many times on evening walks, a bone face peering along the Starr. The sun was setting now in a blaze of orange, sheets of colour flooding across the river. The house was silhouetted; lights burned in some of the windows, they shone pale against the glow. On the far bank the steam fair rumbled, organ sounds drifted across the river and the scents of electricity and crushed grass. A metalled drive wound to the bank. There was an open space, cars were parked. Among them a black XK.

  There was a spidery bridge. He walked across it holding Anne by the wrist. Their footsteps sounded loud in the quiet. The door of the house was unlatched; the girl opened it and stepped inside. He followed her into a cool hall. White and blue tiles covered the floor, there was a carved Swiss umbrella stand, a bowl of flowers. A faint lavender scent pervaded t
he place.

  He felt hollow now, somewhere inside him anger and fear were mixed. He climbed a stairway; a stag’s head watched down mournfully from the landing. Anne stopped outside a door. From inside Strong heard a hum of voices; and there was something else, a tenseness, a strangeness that touched him like a warm breeze prickling his scalp. The questing power of their minds....

  The girl was swallowing, twisting her hands. He squeezed her elbow and opened the door. She walked through and he followed her, stood while the door closed itself behind him. He saw a white room, tall windows burning with the sunset light. Grouped chairs, a polished table. Faces watched him; and there was quiet.

  These were no Rotarians. He saw Johnny at the back there and the Little One, next to them a man who’d served him petrol at the Central. The landlord of the Bull, the policeman who had checked him that morning. A porter, a little old lady; a girl with good legs and burning-red hair....

  He knew them all from what she’d told him. In the timeless time while he stared and they watched back he heard her voice again, hurt and stumbling, as she sat in the car.

  “Paul’s the ... leader, if there is a leader. Paul owns the house, the big house on the island. It’s Paul that makes the ... the things, the things that run. ...”

  “It’s all right,” he had said. “Go on.”

  “He’s an ... accountant, he’s quite well off. They’re all ... different, they all do different things. Don’s a policeman and there’s Albert, he’s Albrecht really, he’s half German, he works in a b-bank, he’s the one who can make things ... rot, die, he makes the dreams.... And Gerry sends them, Gerry and Maureen. Gerry’s an electrician, Maureen works in the t-telephone exchange....”

  “Then you’re all telepaths,” he said.

  “We’re all ... different.” She was still crying, not wiping at the tears. They fell steadily, splashing her wrists, running down her throat. Somehow it was like watching somebody bleed. “Different?” he said.

  “Yes.... The Little One, Hazel, she’s the ... hands....”

  “She hates me.”

  “No....”

  “Tried to kill me. She wants me dead....”

  “No,” she said. “She ... doesn’t care what happens to you, Jimmy. As long as it’s funny....”

  “Johnny runs a television shop, he helps her....” She started to pant again. “Jimmy, I was ... seeing for them. In the carpark. I couldn’t help it, they’d got hold of me, all of them...”

  “In the carpark,” he said. “It’s all right now, stop....”

  “I’m their ... eyes,” she said. “Oh, can’t you see how useless it is Jimmy, they won’t let me go. They can’t....”

  “Softly,” he said. “Anne, how did they all come here? How could it have happened?”

  “I ... don’t know. I know about you and me, but the others.... It’s a sort of drift, one comes and another and ... we can just tell....”

  “You thought I was one, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “No...oh, I don’t know . .. Paul said to ... give you things, anything. Make you happy. Afterwards, when we couldn’t ... speak to you. He said it was best. But it didn’t work....”

  “Paul’s a smart cookie,” he said. “Give a man everything, that’s the way to stop him thinking. It rots him ... I’m just too crossgrained, old Roley would have been the same. Still a few of us about.”

  “It knew you knew about it,” she said. “It was watching you, all the time....”

  “It?”

  “There aren’t any words,” she said desperately. “Not to ... say what it’s like. It, us, the whole thing....”

  “The Gestalt,” he said. “The Wheel. I was dreaming about a Wheel.”

  “Yes....” Biting her lip, hands fluttering. “Like a ... person, eyes and brain and ... legs and arms, the whole lot sort of adding up like an Indian statue.... You could feel it, Jimmy, I knew you could, I knew it wouldn’t work when they tried to ... make you like everybody else, I t-tried to say ... Jimmy that’s what’s so important, it’s like ... well an animal somehow, I mean it isn’t people, not just us....”

  “I know,” he said softly. “It’s all right Anne, don’t cry any more. I know. It’s the Wheel....”

  He walked forward across the carpet. It seemed it was time for an extravagant gesture, something crazy. This was a thing you read about, laughed over, a thing that could never happen. It was the impossible, walking and talking. It had happened, here.

  He smiled and clicked his heels, bowed stiffly from the waist. He said “Homo Superior, I presume....”

  The river glided, the sky turned from orange to summer night blue. Bats moved over the island, a heron came in to land, stood for a while by the bank like an old stone imitation of a bird. Jimmy Strong talked. He described his life, and the chain of events that had brought him to Warwell. They listened, and watched. They fetched him whisky, a bottle of smooth Glen Grant, and a glass, and everything was very civilized. “Go on,” said the man called Paul time and again. “Go on....”

  Paul. Lined pink tortoise-face below wavy silver hair, well-cut suit in a brown pinstripe. Paul had dignity. When Jimmy finally ended he leaned back and pulled at his chin, nodding. “I see,” he said. “Yes, I see....”

  A long wait. Then the accountant started to speak again, musingly. “There have been others like you,” he said. “Sometimes I think our ... skills are latent in every thinking brain.” He smiled thinly, not in humour. “A few have managed to integrate themselves with us. As you can see. The rest.... We have managed to make them content.”

  “Great,” said Strong brutally. “Keep a man on the nest till his knees start to bend, feed him beer till it comes out of his ears.... I just love,” he said, “your public spirit....”

  From somewhere, a giggle.

  Jimmy felt the quick choking rise of rage, kept his eyes from the corner where the Little One sat watching him blue and rapturous. Fought the impulse he had to take her by the throat and squeeze and watch the eyes change at last with the knowledge of death.

  Paul shook his head. “No,” he said carefully. “That has not been our way. It mustn’t be yours.” On the table in front of him was a bone paperknife; he picked it up and toyed with it, turning it in his fingers. “Mr. Strong,” he said, “you will not be appeased. Yet you are not one of us. What are we to do with you?”

  Jimmy looked across to where Anne was sitting mute, hands gripped between her knees and eyes on the carpet. He said coldly, “You’ll do nothing with me. You have nothing to do with me.” He reached his proposition. “Miss Nielson. She’s had enough. I want to buy her out.”

  A silence that deepened. Then, “I see,” said Paul again blandly. He steepled his finger and peered at Jimmy. There was no reading his eyes. “Mr. Strong, your ... manner has at least the virtue of honesty. I must try to match your forthrightness.” For an instant his tongue touched and moistened his lips. “How much is she worth to you?”

  Useless to barter. Jimmy knew in this room his brain was clear glass; the answer that had formed there had already been read. He listened to his own voice speaking steadily. It said, “All I’ve got.”

  Still the charade. “How much is that?”

  Sharp intake of breath from Anne. Jimmy swallowed. “Eleven thousand,” he said. “And the car. Call it eleven five.” He asked himself, Pop, have I done it right? Is this a good way to spend your life? The quietness inside him was its own answer. The words were out now, and he still didn’t care....

  The snigger came again. Paul glanced behind him and the noise stopped. He turned back to Jimmy. He said vaguely, “How payable?”

  “Any charity you care to name. Come gentlemen, you own the bloody town. These things can be arranged....”

  “Eleven thousand pounds,” said Paul. His eyes focused, he shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “She belongs with us.”

  “But she hates your guts....”

  “An over-dramatization, I think,” sa
id the accountant mildly. “Anne?”

  No answer.

  “Anne!”

  She jumped like she’d been stung. “Paul I... yes....”

  Jimmy was on his feet and glaring. “Whatever you did,” he said gently, “Don’t do it again. . . .”

  Silence.

  Anne said miserably “I can’t be b-bargained for Jimmy. I’m not a horse.”

  “What were you doing to her?” asked Strong. “The night I nearly killed her?” The Little One spoke up chirpily. “We wanted to do a little job,” she said. “Johnny and me. But she was naughty....”

  The rage in Jimmy was misting his sight. “So you sicked Big Brother on her,” he said. “Because she wouldn’t help you stir dirt.” He rounded on Paul. “Call that belonging?”