Froomb!

by John Lymington

  He shut the book and looked around him. And all this had happened years ago. How many years ago? Fifty, sixty, a hunched?

  He got up, staring at the broken window, and the stars glittering beyond the church and the high elms. The air was still. You could ride to the farthest star just by looking at it until, the solid things fell away around you.

  A star where everything would be dead. Where people had lived through a brief cycle and melted away into the dust of their cooling world. A million generations of men in a cycle of life and death, amounting to no more than a flash of time in the burning emptiness of the universe.

  “Mankind can live only while their world is dying,” Packard

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  said. “While it was in full life it was a burning mass of gas, when it began to die life came in the cooling of the body, and soon it will be dead and nothing more remain.”

  The voice seemed real, so John shouted in reply.

  “No. That isn’t true. You’ve proved it isn’t true! There is something more—!”

  “Where are you?” Packard said slowly. “Where are you, John Brunt?”

  In desperation John looked round the shadowy walls, but he was alone. Then he realized the voice had not come through his ears but through his brain. The voice, clear and recognizable, speaking and searching.

  “He must be dreaming,” John muttered. “That’s one of the things he said about the time belts. You could change time any night in a dream, but you couldn’t hold it. Because when you dream your soul goes out in limitless travel, but your body stays in bed.”

  He shut his eyes, tried to concentrate, wishing, “Packard, talk to me again. Packard! Talk to me! I’ve something to tell you!”

  In the night he heard the building settling, restless in its sleep, the creaking of tired muscles faintly moving. He did not hear Packard again.

  He put out the candle, and then suddenly he realized what this whole moment of life really meant.

  He knew now what would happen. He alone, of all the millions, knew what would happen at midnight on the eighteenth. And if he were told, Packard would know why it would happen.

  If he were told, Packard would know what mistake the computers had made and multiplied. Packard would know. Packard was in the position to tell, call for a check to be made, and the final countdown stayed. Packard could do that.

  Packard might save the world, if he could be told.

  Packard meant to bring him back at sixteen hundred hours GMT on the eighteenth. That was the time agreed, the time he had set the clocks for. If John Brunt was back by then, the error might be found.

  But if he could get back before, the countdown might never start. Packard had said something about there being a crucial point in the countdown, beyond which the operation could not be stopped. John Brunt did not know when that

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  might be, but the sooner he got back the more chance there was of stopping the operation.

  But Packard wouldn’t move before the time unless something went wrong. Was there a way of getting back without Packard?

  He stared at the stars through the window. Whatever the time-change in human affairs, Packard would be under those same stars. They would not have changed. Packard must be under them somewhere. Packard spoke just now. He said something John Brunt had not heard him say before. Said something under the stars, the same stars . . .

  He stared at one, and his sight traveled along the beam until the room around him faded. There was whispering, and the rushing sound of moving air, as if he floated and little winds touched his hair.

  Packard, Packard! He kept repeating the name in his head, straining to make the star hear it, reflect it somewhere, beam it back to wherever Packard was.

  He could hear Packard speaking again, but it was a long way off, speaking, thundering . . .

  “They don’t know. They ignored Bowen over a decade ago, when he started the theory that meteors were coming in from space, causing rain and storms and mental instability. Lovell emphasized it back in 1964, in The Sunday Times of March that year he said ‘strange and inexplicable links appear to be emerging between lunar phase, rainfall, meteoric impact, magnetic storms and mental disturbances.’ But Lovell, like Bowen, was ignored by the very fools who used the assumption “which led to the confident but erroneous prediction that the Starfish explosion would have only a negligible and temporary effect on the radiation zones,’ as Lovell wrote after.

  “They were wrong. They have been wrong a dozen times since, and we, too. The further we go the more numerous our mistakes become. What would be the result if we were wrong this time? What do you think it might be?”

  Sweat ran down John Brunt’s face as he stared at the star and tried to say it.

  “The burning earth, the burning sky, the dust bowls, the volcano of debris sucked up a hundred miles in the tormented mass of rising water, the chemical reduction of living people to bloody vapor rushing up into the arch of the heavens . . .”

  He strained to tell, but all the time the ghost voice of

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  Packard went on: “This sudden searing flash of life—not human life—not animal life—but the life of complete destruction! I ask you to think upon this scene that no one can say will not happen tomorrow. A vast heavenward column running across a continent in pillars of devastating fire rushing upward from the disintegration of the very earth itself, a mass of searing flame, of water, of wood and brick and debris and bloody vapor from a hundred million people blasted apart in the final triumph of ignorance . . .”

  The voice was coming and going spasmodically, mixed with utter nonsense. John heard him call Ann, Ann, then conjure a weird picture of people writhing in torture on the pavements of a town’s streets. There were spasmodic alarms of Packard being followed, pursued through some dark place where the thud of following feet were like distant bombs falling ...

  Then the feeling of unreality was gone. The room was around him again. He turned very suddenly as he heard someone come into the room. He saw the pale shape in the starlight.

  “It’s you, isn’t it, love? What are you doing in here? I saw a light. I knew it was you. Nobody ever comes here now.”

  Her hand took his arm. He felt the warmth of life flow through him again. It was as if in that book he had lived through a kind of death that, even with his experience, he had not known. A death that achieved nothing. A gathering of useless death, like the dust in the saucer of the candlestick.

  “What’s the matter, love? You’re trembling. Did they hurt you? Did they?”

  “No. They didn’t hurt me.”

  He waited a moment before he said, “Helen, I want you to help me.”

  She moved her body back from him but still held his arms.

  “What?”

  “When I was a boy,” he said, “the inn was haunted.”

  “There’s a ghost,” she said. “You see her sometimes.”

  ‘We used to call her Edna.”

  She laughed. “That’s silly. She doesn’t do any harm. But they say there’s one up at the Hall—goodness, love! That one frightens them out. They don’t use it any more. They pretended it was because some old mine or something was shifting under the house and making noises, like, but my grandmother always said it was old Mr. Bassington come

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  back.” She laughed again. “It’s funny what old people say.” “Helen, I want to go up there!”

  ‘To the Hall? But it’s all locked up. Nobody goes there.” “Who has the keys?”

  “They’re in Petra’s office. Hanging up.”

  “Will you get them for me?”

  She hesitated. When she spoke her voice was very quiet. “Why do you want them, love?”

  “I must go to the Hall.”

  “But why, love?”

  Because he wanted to find a way of getting back to Packard and leaving her; though he did not want to leave her, the two events were strictly inse
parable. His tension became suddenly tinged with sadness, almost an unwillingness to leave her. The feeling he had for her was violent, deep and strange. The only time he remembered the beginnings of such feelings was with Helen Murphy. He remembered the appalling emptiness that had followed when she had been sent away. It had seemed like the end of the world, as if his body had been sucked dry of everything but a sickening ache. Tears had done nothing, and beating on the pillow had only hurt. Everywhere he had gone in the village he had felt her near, and the ache had grown worse, knowing she had gone. He had waited at the sweetshop, at the church gate, in the little cave by the river where they had caught fish on strings and pins, waiting for the miracle to happen. But she had never come back. And all the years that had passed had not taken with them the emptiness of that small world whenever he remembered it.

  He felt this was Helen over again. The same feelings stirred in him, the same emptiness lurked over her shoulder, the pain of loss that he had known before.

  Had he to go back? Could he change anything if he did? What was the good? How could you change the future? It had to happen, hadn’t it? Already to John Brunt it was the past, and the past could never be changed. So what could he do if he could get back?

  Yet he did know what was going to happen to that world— his world. It might be possible for something to be done. The future was a part of Time, and we weren’t sure just how time worked.

  “All right, love,” she said. “If you want them. Don’t worry so much!”

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  She let go his arms and went out of the room. He heard her little movements going away from him and felt a sudden urge to run out and stop her. He stayed there, the wish ringing in his head.

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  ■Six

  --1

  They saw no one. The lights of the village twinkled yellow in the purple dusk. Thin smoke trails rose vertically into the still air from the gathering of cottages and the inn. Here and there fireflies sparked in the night, like things that lived to give that one brief gleam, then fell in blackness. They heard crickets clicking in the hedges, and now and then the scream of an owl. Ahead of them the Hall, with its shelter of elms, stood blackish gray, stars reflecting sometimes in the black staring windows of the upper floors-.

  She stopped. He pulled her on.

  “It looks creepy!” she whispered.

  “It’s all right,” he said. He held the big keys in his hand, gripping them hard in case he should lose them in the dark.

  He was a young boy again; he and Helen Murphy. It had been a dare. They had to break into the Hall and get an old walking stick from Bassington’s study as a proof. But Bas- sington had come back suddenly and- found them . . .

  At the steps, she held back again. The building towered against the stars, windows frowning at the distance.

  “Nobody comes here,” she said desperately. “Nobody comes here any more! Come away, love. It might be true it’s going to fall into the mine—”

  He went up the steps. With a gasp she ran after him and cuddled his arm tightly as he felt the key into the lock. It grunted as it turned. He felt her shiver against him.

  “It’s all right,” he said and pushed the door open. It creaked, and the lantern from the stable wall began to clank slightly in her hand.

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  He pulled her hard and she gasped as she followed him into the darkness and bumped up against him. He caught her.

  “Steady!” he said.

  “I’m frightened!” she said, and giggled.

  “I’ll strike a match.”

  “No! Don’t let go of me!”

  “All right.” He fumbled clumsily with the matches while she clung to his arm, tense with fear and excitement. The small light flared blindingly in the darkness. She held up the lantern. He opened it and lit the wick. The light grew like the swelling of a strange sound, triumphant, beating back the terrors of the dark. He saw her eager, excited face, her big eyes on him, and he felt as he had done with the first Helen, the rising excitement of danger and new discoveries, deliberately challenging the terrors of the dark.

  “What’re you going to do. love?” she whispered, clinging hard, but not so frightened now.

  With his free arm he lifted the lantern high and looked toward the stairs as they smiled their way up, gradually vanishing, step by step, into the shadows, like the Cheshire cat. There was an absolute silence there, as if even the beetles were still.

  “Bassington!” His voice shattered the quiet and echoed in the empty rooms and the passages: “Bassington. Bassington, Bassington!” growing smaller, farther off, then dying.

  She went very stiff. “Why did you do that? Goodness! It gave me a fright!”

  “I want to see if Bassington is here,” he said.

  “But he died. He died, love!” she said urgently. “He died when grandma was a girl. He won’t be here now!”

  “We’ll find out,” he said. “Don’t be frightened. We’re going to explore.”

  With her clutching his arm to her breast, they walked slowly through the dusty emptiness, the light sliding across the dark ceilings of room after room of the ground floor, the shadows running like the beetles. Again and again he called out Bassington’s name. The echoes answered.

  They came back into the hall, between the door and the stairs.

  “There,” she said eagerly. “He’s not here. I told you, love. Let’s go. He isn’t here.”

  “Bassington! I need your help!”

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  The man appeared at the top of the stairs, looking down, just as John Brunt remembered him.

  “Why have you come here?” Bassington said.

  “Come on, love,” said Helen, quickly, “Let’s go. Come on.”

  Bassington began to come down the stairs slowly, staring toward the light.

  “Do you remember me?” John Brunt said.

  Helen looked sharply at him, her eyes big in surprise.

  “Of course I do, love! Whatever question is that?” She dug him in the chest with her finger. “What are you looking at?” She looked at the empty stairs and back to John. “Goodness you do look funny, love. Are you all right?”

  He squeezed her arm against him. “Quiet! I can see something. Don’t speak.” He felt her tremble.

  Bassington came to the bottom of the stairs and stopped, his big, heavy features frowning toward Brunt. He stuffed his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets.

  “Yes.” His powerful, breathy voice was the same as it had been, but John Brunt realized that he was hearing it, not on the air, but through his brain. “I remember you. Your father was here. Did you know that, man?”

  “No. I didn’t know that.”

  She pulled his arm. “I wish you wouldn’t talk to yourself like that. It gives me the creeps.”

  He looked at her briefly, and shook his head.

  “Can’t you feel that something’s here?” he asked quickly.

  “Yes!” She gasped out the word and clutched his arm tightly between her breasts with both hands. “Oh, please let’s go! Please, please!”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m with you. It’s all right while I’m with you, but I must stay. I must stay!”

  She put her face into his shoulder, hiding her eyes. She gave a little moan and shuddered, but then was still, clutching his arm as if it was the last thing in life to hold on to.

  “No need to talk aloud to me,” Bassington said.

  John nodded and stroked the girl’s hand.

  “I’m sorry to see you here, boy,” Bassington said. “It’s a damn long wait, I tell you. Your father died long before me, but he’s only just gone. I’m still here. You need a lot of patience. Plenty of time to think of what you did.” He pursed his thick lips, and then sat down on the stairs, his thumbs still in his waistcoat pockets.

  “Father has gone on?” John asked.

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  “At last.” Bassington sighed. “Of cours
e, everybody has to go through it, sooner or later. It’s the violent ones that have to wait.” Bassington’s bright blue eyes glinted in the light, his big head cocked. “Your father died in an accident. You remember that. I went very suddenly, too. But what happened to you?”

  As John began to tell him, Helen shivered against his

  shoulder.

  “I did it deliberately,” he told Bassington.

  “Felo de se?” Bassington straightened his back in surprise. “You never looked that kind of a fellow, damn me! I thought I knew you pretty well.”

  “We all kill ourselves, no matter what way we use,” John Brunt said. “But I did it—for an experiment.”

  “It’s a final kind of an experiment,” Bassington said, and then chuckled breathily. “Shouldn’t have thought of trying it myself. The proofs not worth much.”

  “This is an experiment,” John said. “They hope to take me back.”

  Very slowly, Bassington’s brows knitted. “Damn! I remember something about that. How long after your father died?”

  “About eight years.”

  “Yes, that would be it. Damn me, in the light of what came after I forgot it all. I didn’t connect you with that. I was alive then, you know. I kept on for quite a time. There’s no rota in this business. You just come in anyhow. Time, you see, isn’t here any more. It could be an hour that passes— or seventy years. It’s all the same . . . But you’re different. You’re with me right enough, but that girl can touch you. You’ve got substance. You’ve got a big problem coming. You can’t die officially with your body on. The only body you can have is that one people keep in their memories, and that vibration stays around the place where you used to be known, where you lived, mostly. Of course, you see me. You can touch me, because you get the sensation of touch in your fingers. But look at the girl. She can’t touch me. She’s not one of us. She can’t see or hear me, just feels something eerie’s going on. That’s all she can do. Some sensitive people can see me, or hear me, but not many. Yet she can feel you, hear you. I don’t see how you’ll go on from here. You can’t go through with a body, you know. That’s the meaning of the rich man going into Heaven. It just means he doesn’t