Ann went to him, quiet, urgent.
“Bring him back now,” she said.
He was too far gone in his thinking to hear her.
“Suppose they hear him, and he admits he did nothing to stop it, that he in stupid sin went on with the tide of ease and moral decay, throwing death about for the sake of a penny on a cabbage. Supposing he says that? What will they do to him? Suppose they condemn him, send him to Hell, we may never get him back again.”
“Why are you so bloody religious?” she cried. “These places don’t exist. There’s no Heaven no Hell. You die! That’s what’s happened to him. He’s dead, but you could bring him back. When he comes back, he won’t know any more than he did before. Why let this tension go on? Why go on with a crazy experiment just because you’re jealous of the church?” She stopped herself in a moment of revelation.
He looked up at her.
“You don’t really think that, do you?” he said, hurt. “But I worked for years on that project. Every damn moment that I had I spent on it. Why the hell should I be jealous of the church? Might as well be jealous of a dodo.”
“If you believed that, you wouldn’t have done it,” she said. “All the way through the years you’ve spent on it, you’ve been driven by one thing. You want to believe the old things. The more men find out, the more helpless, the more idiotic they find they really are. You feel it. That’s why you went on with this. But this isn’t the way to do it, David. Look at the failures you’re having everywhere now. Side-effects, you call it. It isn’t side-effects at all. It’s sheer bloody ignorance. This is the same. You’re risking your own life for what might be nothing more than just an elaborate murder.”
“No! It isn’t that. You know it isn’t that!”
“Bring him back, then, David!” She was cahn, pleading.
He was shocked by her expression and turned away. “No! Not after all that. No. It’s only a few hours to go.”
“But he isn’t even there!” She pointed to the door of the
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laboratory. “You don’t watch. You let those robots go on recording nothing at all. There’s nothing to record. He’s dead. And you’ll die, too, if you don’t bring him back!”
He got up and strode to the drink table.
“The hell with you, Ann,” he said, pouring. “You try everything. It’s because of the boy. You don’t care for the experiment. It’s the boy! You want him back, that’s all!” She stayed silent in hurt astonishment.
“You’re a fool, David. You don’t mean that.”
He came near and patted her bottom offhandedly. “Well, all right, no, I don’t,” he said, going by to the window again.
There was a pause. She watched him.
“Have you got the feeling you want to get out of there and fly away?” she said.
He looked back and laughed shortly. “By God, how well you read me, Ann.”
“I know how you feel, David," she said. “There’s this awful Blackout business, and now Flightend—that’s utterly horrible. And John Brunt. You can’t stop the other two, David. They’ve gone too far and they’re not your doing. But Brunt you can stop worrying about now.”
“You worm your little way around till you come back where you started,” he said in mock admiration. “I wondered when it was going to come to the punch line, that speech. Once again for the last time, I won’t spoil the experiment. It’s something I’ve dreamed of since Cambridge. Something I had to do, something that someone, someday has got to prove. I’m proving it, Ann. It must have time.”
“But what good can it do?”
“It can make ’em believe again,” he said.
“But supposing it isn’t like that at all? That it’s just another form of life altogether, looking down on this, if you like, as the old ideas. What benefit can it be to anybody?” “Suppose it looked down and could see what was happening?” he said quickly. “Supposing John Brunt saw what was going to happen with Blackout? Wouldn’t that be of value?”
“Would it? But supposing you could see the future through John, what could you do to stop the future happening?” “The theory of Time misses your beautiful head,” he said. “I don’t know anything about it, and I don’t want to. All I know is that you’ve killed him and that some people are
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trying to prove murder against you, David. Do you really think it’s worth that risk to, perhaps, find out nothing? Suppose the longer you leave him the less chance you have of bringing him back?”
“I have calculated exactly,” he said angrily.
“You have! But you’re always complaining that calculations are going beyond the point of sense! Several times lately you’ve proved that some side-effects were due to unseen possibilities in mathematical progressions. How can you go on believing a calculation now that your life depends on it?”
“1 know this one is right because it starts from a simple base—death! 1 know—”
“David!” She stood erect, firm, her soft cheeks flushing, her eyes brilliant. “I’m going to ask you for the last time. Bring him back now, or I promise you that you’ll never see me again.”
He felt his blood run out, his bowels dissolve in fear of sudden loss. The vision of life’s long corridor suddenly emptied of all richness and he saw cold and decay and felt all warmth running out between his fingers.
He looked at her. She saw his face and for a moment her heart stilled with the tension of hope.
“You wouldn’t do that,” he said huskily.
The tension grew.
“I mean it, David,” she said, her voice trembling.
Suddenly he stuffed his hands into his pockets and turned away.
“Go to the devil!” he shouted. “You can’t bribe me like that!”
He became still, listening, then swung round as the door slammed. He started forward, then stopped. He felt suddenly bewildered. The intercom began to buzz. It was like a hornet round his head. He snicked the switch to stop its hum.
“Mr. Hoskins is here, sir. Hallo? Mr. Hoskins is here, sir .... Oh, good night, Miss Gill. Are you all right? Okay. Sorry . . . Sir? Hallo?”
Packard ripped his bow tie and unfixed his collar. He wondered why he had a dinner jacket on, and remembered he had been going to supper with Ann.
“Yes, yes, all right!” he shouted in sudden fury. “Send him in!”
As Hoskins came in, Packard waved a hand.
“Come on. Insinuate your way into a chair, matey. I’m
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just in the mood for charnel house chitchat . . . What are
the latest figures?”
Hoskins told him.
“Great God!” Packard said, shocked. “The situation is shambular. What’s been done?”
“Sale’s been forbidden, but there’s such a lot of the stuff out. Warnings are out, of course.”
“I’ve had a flash there’s no antidote.”
“You couldn’t dish one out anyway. There’s a near panic up in that area. They’ve rushed in doctors from outside, but there’s nothing much they can do except stop sheer panic. People are dying all over the place, in the streets, in cars, in the lanes, in buses—It’s a plague.”
“Why suddenly?” Packard said, staring into the distance. “Why suddenly? It could only be a side-effect, perhaps due to a critical storage period. That’s a possibility, but we can’t tell. Well, thank you, jolly harbinger. Every time I see you I feel my bowels are holding up my suspenders.”
Hoskins grinned.
“I understand this stop on Flightend has caused a great financial upheaval, sir,” he said.
“The financial side of Flightend is a matter of complete imbuggerance to me,” said Packard. “What I most fear is having to stand up in the House and say that these poor devils weren’t poisoned but suffered a temporary imbalance of metabolism by an unsympathetic agent—from which they died, writhing.”
Packard rounded his big desk,
trying not to look at the door where she had gone out. For a moment he felt a childish wish to burst into tears and yell the place down. “Have a drink,” he said.
“Thank you.” When he had got it, Hoskins said, “I suppose you’ve heard no more of Brunt?”
“No.”
“We’ve lost track completely. He came here and then vanished.”
“I have a private way, you know. That’s my flat through there. There is a small lift beyond. It’s a very essential part of a busy Minister’s doghouse.”
“Yes. It could have been that.”
“If you intend to ask me questions you have asked before in . the hope they won’t match earlier answers, I shall disappoint you. I am going out. I am going to have a little
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time to myself. I am sick of Flightend, sick of everybody. So forgive me before I’m sick on you.”
“I understand, sir. I get like that myself. Do you know what I do? I imagine myself down by the Lyn where it washes over the rocks, and the trees drag in it, and the trout and salmon come jumping up, and the sun catches the water and splits it into rainbows. All you can smell is sweet, fresh stuff, and you are all alone except for that geyser down in the bushes waiting for you to go so he can chuck a grenade into the pool and poach stunned salmon.”
“You’re just bloody twisted,” said Packard, and laughed. “I’ve been there when there wasn’t a grenade chucker for miles. Of course, it was out of season.”
Hoskins liked that, and laughed. All the time he laughed he watched, and as he went out he switched off the electric lock on the office door and joked about poaching big fish.
2
In those days the benefits of gambling on the Stock Exchange had been extended to the masses by closing on Monday and opening on Saturday. There was, therefore, a closing quotation for ABAC, the holding group for Flightend after the news of Packard’s shut-down on the product.
Lorrellmore knew where to find useful people. He had a catalogue of their haunts, habits and weaknesses, which led him to each as he wanted.
He found Sir Edward Rugeley sitting at a steel and glass bar drinking large gins. Lorrellmore came to his side, sat down and signaled the barman.
“You heard about that stop on Flightend?” Lorrellmore said, apparently casually.
“Heard about it!” Sir Edward’s neck bulged over his collar, as if trying to burst it apart. “Have you seen closing prices? We’re challenging Gilt Edge for rock bottom. Heard about it! Jesus! Who let that one through?”
“Packard,” said Lorrellmore. “Signed it himself. Most unusual. He must be up to something.” He drank gracefully,
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savoring the dryness of the gin before pouring in a gush of angostura from the bottle left to his hand.
“Packard?” Sir Edward said curiously. “You’re joking!” “Not so. The stop came direct from the Ministry.” “What’s on then?” Sir Edward’s tone betrayed his common ancestry. “He’s not gone in with Ryssal Chemicals, has he?” “I don’t know what he’s interested in,” said Lorrellmore lazily. “All I know is he got a wire saying a lot of people drank the stuff or something, and died like flies, to coin a phrase.”
“Drank it?” Sir Edward said, eyes popping. “What the effing hell for? Drank it? You must be joking!”
“Let’s not split hairs,” said Lorrellmore. “They’re dead.” “Yes, but it’s only a few,” Sir Edward said. “Two or three thousand, I heard. Just bloody unlucky, that’s all. I should think it got in the water somehow.”
“It did that, poisoned the cattle, and apparently if you touch the carcasses you get poisoned.”
“Well, we knew that before, didn’t we? Whose bloody fault was it it got into the water? Not ours, was it? I nearly had a fit when that quotation came through on the tape. It could put us down the drain, especially if it gets out about these people dying. I mean, all the products are based on that stuff—what’s the name?”
“It’s an alphabet long,” Lorrellmore said. “Anyhow, you take all reasonable precautions. You can’t help it if somebody puts their head in one of your gas ovens—”
“That’s another division,” said Sir Edward, missing the point.
“It’s the same thing.”
“I never did trust that Packard chap,” said Sir Edward, staring at distant bottles. “Too bouncy. Too sure of himself.” “He’s froomb,” said Lorrellmore, his casualness very marked.
Sir Edward looked at him and frowned.
“People have been saying that a long time,” he said gruffly. “Well, this time he’s got no fluid left,” said Lorrellmore. “This isn’t a leak, it’s a gush.”
Sir Edward leaned close, and Lorrellmore instinctively drew back with a slight grimace that might have been caused by a rotten smell.
“What do you know?” the knight queried.
“I’ve heard—” Lorrellmore twirled his glass. “I’ve heard
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that he’s murdered somebody in cold blood, just for the sake of an experiment.”
Sir Edward’s eyes grew small, and he gripped his lordship’s arm.
“You sure?” he snarled.
“I’m not wasting my time, Rugeley,” Lorrellmore said angrily. “Let go!” He smoothed his sleeve and adjusted his amount of cuff.
“But if he did that we could press him to take back that stop chit. You don’t know how much of the bloody stuff we’ve got in the tanks. Millions of gallons. It doesn’t bear thinking of. We can’t stop the line now. We made a full commitment—If we can force Packard—”
“If we can get rid of him!” Lorrellmore interrupted. “Now look here, this missing fellow is John Brunt.”
“That globetrotter?”
“Yes.” Lorrellmore became strangely earnest. “Your newspaper tomorrow morning should carry banners, ‘Where is John Brunt? What happened to famous explorer? Mysterious disappearance in Science Ministry!’ and so on. Tell your staff to work it up. Marshall’s on to this, but he’s creeping around like a frightened bug. What we’ve got to do is blast it forth. Trumpets at the walls of Jericho. The connection is the Prime Minister. He knows. Suggest he’s in it. You know the kind of persuasion I mean. Get rid of that pair and we’re all set fair. I will personally guarantee you that.”
Sir Edward finished his drink, sat back and whistled. Then he started to laugh, mainly from relief.
“Sometimes I wonder what the public would think if they knew what led them by the nose,” he said.
“They wouldn’t think,” said Lorrellmore, and pushed his empty glass across the counter. “Get the Editor-in-chief of yours—Hansen. He’s the most brilliant angler I know. And I mean slants, not fish.”
-3
“If you remember me,” said John, “then you probably know what happened since my father died.”/
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She sat down on the bench beside him.
‘1 don’t know what happened,” she said. “It was all so quick.”
“Quick! It looks as if it was about a hundred years!” She shrugged. “Time doesn’t count any more. If you look at the clock in the church tower you’ll see it doesn’t move.” He looked up.
“It may be stopped.”
“It’s wound every week. And you won’t see any clock
moving. Watch and you’ll see.”
“Tell me what happened,” he said impatiently.
She made a cradle of her fingers and looked down at it. “There was another man at the inn after your father. Things got very bad. Hardly anyone came to stay at the inn. The man went out to work, farming with cows. I used to hear them talk. Something bad was happening outside this area, and trade wasn’t coming in any more.”
“What was happening?”
“They didn’t know, and after a while villagers became too frightened to go out and see.”
“Go out where?”
“They said out. They understood each other.”
&nbs
p; “Did you ever hear them talk about war?”
“Many times they talked about war.” She looked at him with big, placid eyes. “But that was before your father went.” “Oh I see. Well, did they talk about a bomb?”
“No.”
“Was it a plague, then?”
“I don’t know. But they were frightened to go out of the village and soon they were frightened to let a stranger in, if one wanted to come. Soon there were no more strangers. There was a man who used to come a lot to the inn, a farmer called Bassington.”
“I remember him well,” John said, warming up. “He and father used to work together. They made a gimmick of eggs from free-run chicken, natural fed beef, lamb, and nothing but natural manure on the vegetables. Everybody else was using chemical manures and sprays and fattening injections, tenderizing pills and God knows what. As if the food was basically bad and had to be poisoned into shape. My father didn’t agree with it. I didn’t really bother. I was always hungry . . .” He felt sad again. “And all that business was lost?”
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“Because people didn’t come,” she said. “It wasn’t the other man’s fault. Bassington tried to help him. They used to talk a lot, but the innkeeper was determined to kill himself. He wouldn’t be helped. He’d got some disease of the brain. He wouldn’t be helped. He wanted disaster . . .”
She did not go on, though the listener waited. “Bassington was a gentleman farmer,” said John at last. “He owned this estate. He was the squire. I remember him, a big chap with a red face, striding along with a half dozen dogs, stopping the traffic and yapping and wagging. He collected every illegitimate dog ever bom in this village that people didn’t want. He was a good man. What happened to him?” “He was arrested and taken away. We never saw him again.”
“Why was he arrested?”
“I don’t know. Some people came to take over the estate, I don’t know why. He refused and there was some trouble. Then he was taken away. He never came back.”
He stared at her and the image of old Bassington faded before another, far less pleasant.
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