Froomb!

by John Lymington

  She held out the paper to him.

  “I went for a long walk. This is the early edition, David. You ought to look at it.”

  “That bloody twisting rag!” he sneered. “Keep it, Ann.” “Just look at the headlines,” she insisted, and held the paper up before his face.

  He read:

  MYSTERY OF MISSING EXPLORER John Brunt Disappears on Visit to Science Ministry

  He pushed the paper down and looked at her white face. “What made you walk so early?” he said. “Three a.m.” “The air is nice and fresh at that time,” she said. She threw the paper on to the chair in which Packard had slept. “So they’re really on the track now, David. There’ll be no hushing anything up after that.”

  “I didn’t want any publicity,” he said.

  “How can you avoid it?”

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  “I mean, for when he comes back to life,” he said smoothly-

  She stared.

  “Do you really think that’s still going to happen?”

  He straightened. “Of course it’s going to happen! What do you think I’ve been through all this for?”

  She eyed him levelly, then looked away at the empty chair in its crystal case.

  “Well, you can’t wait till this afternoon now, David. You won’t have the chance. There’ll be reporters from nine A.M., and the police from nine-thirty. This is a challenge to them. Hoskins knows. He found John’s clothes in the cupboard in the corner.”

  Packard grinned.

  “You mean that half backed Prodnose has been here

  while I was out?”

  “He called on me at two,” Ann said quietly. “That’s why I decided to go for a walk and get some fresh air. Hoskins has a case that John came between you and me and that’s why you killed him. The experiment, he says, will be secondary to the main motive.”

  “How did he find you? I couldn’t.”

  “Did you try, David?” She softened.

  “Of course I tried, you stupid oaf!” he said disgustedly. “Perhaps you should have done the same as Hoskins. He had me followed.”

  “Insolent bastard! But it’s a comfort to know he’s not

  after you, Ann.”

  “But he is after you, David. He’s gathered a lot of evidence now.”

  He laughed and sat down on the paper in the chair. “Well, well! Here I carry out an experiment for the education of mankind and get hanged. The rest experiment with blowing up half the world and get clapped. It shows you. It’s the spectacular that people like.”

  “You’re still worried about Blackout?”

  “Of course, it’s a little disturbing.”

  “Oh, don’t start the satire now,” she said angrily. “It’s too late.”

  “You’ve come back in a pretty foul temper,” he said. “I’ve come to save a dog from drowning.”

  Packard gave an explosive whistle. “That was the ricochet.”

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  “The sleep must have done you good. But when you’ve quite gathered your senses, what are you going to do?”

  He stuck his hands into his pockets and began walking up and down the avenue, staring at the plastic floor.

  “The calculations said it wouldn’t be any good under twenty-four hours,” he said.

  “We’re past the time for calculations. We’ve got to face reality now. If you don’t bring John back, the only calculation will be the length of your life in weeks.” She looked at him stonily. “I wouldn’t like that.”

  He stopped by her, put his hand on her arm and squeezed it.

  “Silly old Ann,” he said. He let go and turned away. “I’ve had such a lot to talk about.”

  “Let’s get some tea,” she said.

  He followed her out to the flat. He was not so frightened then. Even as he went he felt that now she had come back he could somehow stall them off until four o’clock in the afternoon.

  She switched on the tea-maker. He stared out over the city, a layer of pearls set in deep, black, rumpled velvet, peaceful, serene. He saw it begin to glow within its dark richness, and grow bright with fire. He turned away abruptly. “My nerves are whittling,” he said.

  “Take something.”

  “Not me. I invented the bloody things, or nearly.” “You must bring him back now, David. You must!”

  “Is that why you’ve come back, sweetie,” he said, taking her in his arms and crushing her against him. “Just to get your own way?”

  She resisted angrily, but he was strong and she relaxed. “You must do it, David!”

  “Don’t you realize that if that dream was a sign, it’s more important than ever to wait?”

  “Dreams! Dreams can mean anything!”

  “I don’t often dream that kind of thing.”

  “But it’s been in your head for months. You mustn’t be surprised that it’s turned up now.”

  “Suppose he was getting in touch with me? Suppose he put that dream there?”

  “David, you’re persuading yourself!”

  “People often read the future in dreams. It’s one of the

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  few things we have managed to prove. This could be an

  omen.”

  “It could be, David. Nothing’s impossible—except—” her voice became quick, angry, “—trying to put off a gang of determined Service chiefs by quoting dreams at them! That is impossible!”

  She pushed herself out of his arms and turned to the tea-

  maker.

  “No, but if we wait until John comes back and corroborates it—”

  “Yes, indeed!” she said. She turned and showed her teeth as she spoke bitingly. “But the Defense meeting is at ten a.M. tomorrow, and you propose to wait till four!”

  “I’ve got to prove there’s something beyond!”

  “But if you bring him back to life, surely that’s enough of an achievement? Why do you want to prove there’s something beyond?”

  His voice became suddenly quiet, almost soft.

  “Because, you see, it seems to me it’s the only hope.”

  She stared.

  “The only hope for what?” She spoke slowly, watching him.

  “For the lot of us, the brilliants and the damned, the sentimental and the stupid—everyone!”

  “I don’t understand, David. If you bring him back alive even after all these hours, surely that’s enough for an achievement?”

  “I’m not out for records,” he said, showing his teeth. “I’m doing this for a purpose, a purpose that I’ve had most of my life.”

  “Go on, go on!” she said, shrugging. “Get it off your chest. Tell me why you must wait if it isn’t that you’re an obstinate, bullheaded bore.”

  “I may be a b, but not all those,” he said. “This started when I chucked theology and turned to science, and I was only a boy at Cambridge.”

  “Because you found you couldn’t believe.”

  “I’ve never stopped believing,” he said fiercely. “It was because I believed and could see the way my brother was going away from people, that I was frightened. It seemed that the church was dividing itself from people, and science was taking God away from them. It terrified me. I felt I had to try and do something. So I joined the enemy. I went

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  into science to challenge it to disprove what I believed. It never did. It never can do. It is Man, using science to suit his own standards, who distorts the truth. I think that perhaps he chooses science because he thinks he can conquer it, make it work for him, while he can’t do either with God.

  “But he can’t understand science either. We overpriced our brains and they couldn’t match up to the sale any more than they could face up to God. The more I worked the more I saw half discovered discovieries pile up. From that lot it seemed to me we were taking those bits which benefited greed, lust for power, satisfaction of pride, and good out- and-out sloth. Anything that could give us money, save us labo
r, glorify our personal or national image, these were the discoveries most favored.

  “The great American cartoonist called it Froomb. That was a true state for many years, but even Froomb is not the end if the steering remains. You might avoid the precipice, turn the car over, skid on your head but still live. But greed and power, pride and sheer damn laziness have taken the pins out of the steering, too.

  “It seemed to me that something ought to be done, something found to redirect the runaway if it were possible. The only possibility lay beyond a man-made world.

  “I told John Brunt that what I wanted to find was evidence, irrefutable evidence, that there is something more to life than living in aimless frustration and dying in fear of nothing.

  “If he comes back with that proof, then we’ve got something to work on for the future. The desperate need of belief will begin to be filled, enough perhaps to redirect the screaming runaway before we run into Limbo and the frontiers of Hell.”

  “If he doesn’t?” she said, after a long pause.

  “It still won’t prove me wrong. The work that I’ve done may be wrong in principle, but it forms a base that others can jump from. And someone will—provided he is left the chance to do it.”

  “You have the Weltzschmerz,” she said. “Things aren’t so bad!”

  “You’re stupid, Ann!”

  “Well, suppose the impossible happens, he comes back having been wherever you think there is to go. Is anyone going to believe him? Isn’t your story of Christ a legend of

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  disbelief? Is John Brunt going to succeed where the other man failed? He might get more immediate publicity, but the more immediate it is the quicker it will bum out.”

  “I’m not aiming to produce a God! This might show men which way to go, act as a guide, shove him back on the road after years of wandering in the bogs. Give him something to go on for, some aim instead of aimlessly trying to race Jones. The point is, Ann, he doesn’t believe in a God he can’t imagine any more. He doesn’t believe in Jesus. But he does believe in science, because science has given him things which, God help him, he values. Well, if science can give him this one last thing it could jolt him out of the viciousness he’s been ground into by the boot heel of national hysteria. He would have a chance, anyhow, to think. It would—”

  He stopped and laughed shortly.

  “What’s the good? How can I convert the unconvertible? You don’t believe. You’re one of the moderns. I’m a throwback.”

  “But you’ve said yourself, all these millions of people have come from other forms of life which have existed on this world since the beginning. From gas to vegetation, vegetation to fish, fish to animals, animals to man. You’ve told me that. How do you fit that with a God and the rest of it? It’s all—”

  “You stop so soon,” he said. “The development was as you said. In a chain, like that. But the point of interest is that there is no sign we can find that any further change is going to come. It’s as if we reached an ultimate stage of development. There is no further to go in mortal things. The only way on is beyond this physical stage.”

  “And you think they are all gathering in Heaven, the people who have lived on this world before us, and those dying now? How can you imagine such a place—such numbers? It’s—”

  “Fewer people have ever been bom, than there are particles in a man’s boot heel. Imagine that, and Heaven is a possibility. You have the common error of seeing man as big, but he’s very, very small in every dimension, including the fourth. . . . It’s getting light.”

  He went to the window again.

  “So Hoskins thinks you’re my mistress,” he said. He turned and smiled at her. “Well, it’s an idea. I’m very fond of you.

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  Pd like to say marry, but I couldn’t very well. The miserable truth is, I’m on my way down.”

  For a moment she heard an idiot jangle of talk which she had heard over the years, accidental hearings in the restroom, the restaurant: “Poor Miss Gill. I wouldn’t be career for anything or anybody. Specially him. She must be crazy, just keeping on. I wouldn’t. I’d get married. She’s left it too late.”

  She flushed.

  “What do you mean—way down?”

  “Don’t snarl. I’m not being awkward. But I’ve made up my mind. I’m resigning. Dicky has weathercocked about Flightend and I’m not standing for that. Blackout has got me by the throat. It’s going to let go. I’m going to make it let go tomorrow morning. I’m already being accused of spoiling American prestige, and hindering the Defense Ministry, so it won’t make all that difference to me. The sad thing is I feel it might make all that difference to the common, vulgar little man, and if there’s one thing I hate it’s the possibility of being identified with mercy missions. Specially when the poor sod won’t know I succeeded if I do.”

  She watched him, her heart beating fast.

  “Suppose your guess is right about John Brunt.-Supposing he has gone somewhere where he can see the answer. Isn’t it worth bringing him back now, before the meeting tomorrow? You might know for certain then!”

  He looked out of the window. Dawn colored the sky far down over the edge of the Estuary, streaking in splendid radii from a hidden sun.

  “David, you can oppose Flightend and Dicky and Blackout—you can win, too. But while you’ve a dead man on your hands there is nothing at all that you can do!”

  “Yes, there is,” he said. “I can wait!”

  -5

  Richard Wayling was awake at that time, talking on a direct line with Moscow. He never quite trusted conversa

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  tions when the interpreter was at the other end, but as he was at home in bed he had no choice.

  “I do not quite understand the objection,” he said, speaking slowly and clearly. “You are aware that this is taking place in the United States, not here? . . . Yes, rest assured I am sympathetic to any possible danger to your trawler fleets at present fishing off the coasts of the United States ... Of course. However, this is a direct matter for the United States government—But I do not see that we could use our influence to postpone this project. I must assume that all reasonable precautions have been taken . . .”

  Slowly he got out of bed as the voice rattled on, often speaking to a background voice in Russian.

  “You say that Professor Packard is objecting to it?” The Prime Minister ran fingers across his brow as one trying to dispel some illusion. “I confess I hadn’t heard of such an objection. When? . . . Oh, you have information that an American Senator made the statement before returning to America—” Incredulous, he watched the tapes slowly rolling beyond the telephone. “I am not personally aware of what the Senator said.”

  He did not ask if the Senator had been overheard in some public place.

  The voice went on.

  “I respect the opinions of my Ministers, but I am not necessarily responsible for them,” said Wayling stiffly. “Yes, I am aware that Professor Packard is an old friend of your Prime Minister. All I say is that I knew nothing of this. Very well . . . Yes. My compliments to the Prime Minister.” He replaced the phone, grabbed his dressing-gown and went out to the bathroom.

  As he washed his mouth he wondered what kind of diplomatic twist this was. It was normal for the Soviets to object before big defense exercises, but it was always done in a blaze of publicity. Wayling had not come across a hot line talk about such things before. It seemed almost friendly.

  Refreshed, he went back to his bedroom and got on to Parson-Jones, the Foreign Secretary.

  “I know nothing of any objection,” replied the Secretary, gruffly. “Why make it to us? We’re not doing it here.” “Well, they weren’t bawling,” said Wayling. “In fact, as I think of it they seemed a little bit jittery. Is that possible?” “Well, as you know, they have been more worried about

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  the Chinese than the Americans for a long time past. So I can’t se
e any reason why they should be nervous. Why did Packard shoot his mouth off, anyway?”

  “He didn’t. It was the Senator.”

  “Packard must have shot first. It’s time he was put on a lead, with due respect to you, sir. I expect he’s the one that’s jittery. It seems certain now that he murdered John Brunt—”

  “What!”

  “You know, that experiment—”

  Wayling hardly heard, he was thinking so hard. Murder

  was devastating. As Parson-Jones spoke he remembered Packard asking about a private experiment. He could not remember the details. Something about a space travel, by electronics—Oh, Heaven!

  “Do you mean the space experiment went wrong?” Wayling asked.

  “No, he deliberately killed a man.”

  “But who? What man?”

  “The explorer, John Brunt. You must have heard he’s disappeared?”

  Yes, yes, he had heard something about it, but had attached no great importance to it. Now it swelled up like a giant in a nightmare. Packard, upon whom he had depended, whom he had trusted—In spite of his personal warning—

  Desperately he tried to talk and think of different things.

  “Yes, he did mention. But I had no idea. No idea at all. I must see him. I must see him at once.”

  At the other end Parson-Jones was not too drunk to realize that the ball was in the wheel now. He rang Lorrell- more.

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  ■Seven

  -1

  He held the hot lantern, the smell of its dowsing pungent on the still air. She gripped his arm tightly, drawing him back toward the stairs. The darkness seemed complete after the yellow light of the lamp had gone.

  “How do you know?” He spoke close to her ear.

  “I heard them whisper.”

  He felt the wall beside him. He touched the frame of the dining-room door where he had got the port.

  “Stay there and don’t move,” he whispered.

  He went through the doorway. The stars shone on the grimy glass of the window, making a lighter patch of gray in the shadows. He crossed the floor to the window and stood there, close to the side of it. The outline of the trees was clear against the sky. He could see the paler shade of the overgrown drive, and saw someone move quickly across it. He did not mistake the long, lithe shadow, the tigerish strength of the outline. Again he felt the chill of fear at the sight of her.