Froomb!

by John Lymington

  206

  He talked wildly. She could not hear him in the din. He dragged her out of the pews and they began to run to the little room behind the organ. The fire and the streaming waves of color through the window made the stone columns appear to move I around them, like strange soldiers forming patterns on the/floor.

  They came ihto the little room. He looked up to the skylight where the moving glare of flares reflected only from the sky. The line of light from the torches was being cut by the edge of the lean-to roof. They would not be seen if they got up there now.

  He began to drag chairs under the skylight.

  “You remember,” he panted. “But this time when you get up there, run up the roof. We’ve got to get along it to the tower. Once you’re in the tower you’ll be all right. Right?”

  She nodded and threw her arms round his neck, kissing his face desperately.

  “I’m frightened, love!” she said, pressing hard against him. “I’m frightened!”

  .“So am I! But I love you. I love you, Helen, no matter what. You understand, don’t you? You understand?”

  She kissed him once more, nodded and let go. He swung her up on to the chair column, and she scrambled up to the skylight. As she opened it a tide of savage sounds gushed down upon them like an attack. The torchlight glowed and wavered in the high sky beyond the tower.

  He heard Bassington’s voice whisper in his head, repeating! “That body . . . that body . . . perhaps you will have to be killed again. ...”

  She clambered through the opening.

  “Don’t fall the other way!” He almost burst his lungs shouting. In his memory he could see her go tumbling down the slope, skirts flying, giggling with the thrill of it, right into the teeth of the mob.

  His body weakened as he saw her straighten and stand apparently out of the vertical, but firmly against the sky. He clambered up the tottering chairs, like going up the ribs of a skeleton. As his face came into the open air he felt heat on his skin, heat of fire, of burning tar, smoldering wood, the heat of wild mankind.

  He crouched there beside her on the old lead, feeling the timber beneath it pulsing and trembling to the roar of hate.

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  For a moment he was still, sickened by it. Then he turned and grabbed her hand.

  “Up the slope to the tower!” he shouted in her ear.

  She nodded. They got on to the ancient stone tiles of the church roof, rough with the ages, twisted and curled like oyster shells, thick wet moss scratching away on their fingers. The slope was appallingly steep, rearing into the sky, it seemed, hundreds of feet above. The squat tower stood at the end, a crazy place of weird angles, changing color as its faces caught the fires from below.

  They crawled upward, scratching, slipping, struggling to cross the great sloping desert to the almost unattainable peak of the mountainous tower. Foot by foot they crawled on, human insects on a toppling slope, no longer hearing the thunder of destruction below, nor seeing the movement of flames, all senses lost in a tunnel-like world of concentration, at the end of which stood the tower.

  Twice she slipped. He grabbed out and caught her with a violence that made her scream. The nightmare of her rolling over and over down the slope would not go from him. Once he held her still for more than a minute, frightened to let her go on.

  The howling of the mob intensified and diminished as if now it was being led by some sight which roused sudden yells of fury, then allowed moments of respite. The church beneath them was afire from end to end, and its growing flames licked the primitive passions of the pursuers.

  Suddenly the vast plain of the roof seemed to shrink, and the tower stood in a mighty pile ahead of them, rearing into the sky above all threats, unconquerable.

  He shouted in her ear.

  “Can you make it now? Get in through the bell vent there. That slot. Can you make it?”

  “Yes.” She clung to the slope desperately. “Yes! Come on!”

  “I’m going back,” he shouted. “Show some of the others. That crowd couldn’t take the tower. They couldn’t take it. They couldn’t bum it down. I’m going to fetch the others.”

  “No!” She screamed suddenly. “No! The crowd will kill you!”

  “They can’t kill me!” he yelled. “They can’t kill me! You go on!”

  “No!”

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  She dung to the slope. He began to turn and move downward again. He felt a movement beneath him, a quiet, smooth undulation, like the swell on a calm sea. Around him he could hear the stones creaking and scratching above the fury of the crowd. The creaking became a cracking. He was feeling the sounds through his body. The roof, rotten with the years of decay and the burrowing of a million beetles, was collapsing.

  He reached out as she screamed. He grabbed her hand. Right through every bone and nerve the cracking of the roof shrilled as if his own bones were crumbling within him. He grasped her hand. The roaring grew around them, enfolding them like a great shroud of sound, smothering their senses to all else.

  The desert of the stones caved, was riven with a great crack that spread into a crater through which flames suddenly shot up, as if the Devil was released from Hell at last.

  6

  Packard unlocked the switch. He looked round at the watchers, still in the soft, greenish light.

  “You look like a lot of fish!” he said angrily.

  “That’s all right,” said Hoskins. “I’m used to bit parts.”

  His arrival with a warrant had tipped the scales of Packard’s indecision. The matter had to be proved now or not at all.

  Wayling half looked away, as if fearing what he might see. Parker stared at the crystal-cased chair, the aimless activity of the instruments and the screens. His hands were fists in his pockets. Ann leaned back against a computer cabinet, looking at the floor, trying to tame the wild beating of her heart.

  The master clock stood at four-twenty. The chair inside its crystal case looked sinister, a plastic beast crouching.

  A single bead of sweat ran down the side of Packard’s jaw, but his big hand was steady as he threw the switch. Nothing happened. There was no change in the even humming of electrical circuits, the odd squiggles on the screens,

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  the steady readings on the meters, the soft mush on the loudspeakers.

  Ann gave a violent shiver. Parker toook her arm in a strong, steady hand, his eyes on the chair. Wayling’s jaw stretched tense, as if he had died grinning. Hoskins licked his lips and swallowed.

  “Is anything happening?” he said hoarsely,

  Packard did not reply, his face was turned to the instrument readings.

  A needle began to kick. Packard’s big body slumped a little forward. His hand on the switch became tense and rigid. The mush in the speakers began to hiss, then fade, hiss then fade, like sea on a shingle beach.

  “Good God!” Parker cried out. “There’s a hand!”

  Slowly, glasslike at first, a hand appeared on the chair arm, gripping the end of it, a right hand. Upon the steel floor below the chair leg the sole of a foot darkened the metal, then built into shape, transparent as a jellyfish, forming a foot, then running up slowly into a shin.

  Against the back of the chair a spine formed, rising. A crystal skull grew out of it, eyeless, horrible.

  Ann screamed and put her hand over her mouth. Hoskins blasphemed violently. Wayling trembled, his eyes standing like eggs.

  The skeleton formed, sometimes fleshed already, and strips of rag hung on limbs, as materialization grew more rapid. Slowly the man formed, grew solid, a color flowed through the still, sitting figure inside the glass case. Tears streamed down Ann’s face.

  At last the screens came to life and showed the shivering, appalled little group of people standing in the avenue between the steel-cased miracle-makers.

  Packard was still in the chair, watching his instruments.

  “John Brunt!” Wayling’s voice rattl
ed in his throat.

  Hoskins took a step forward, wrist twitching.

  “He’s dead,” he said.

  Packard watched the instruments. The temperature reading was steady, the suspension-vacuum correct. There was no heartbeat record. The temperature began to rise. Somewhere in the cabinets automatic switches began to click like crickets. The seashore rhythm of the speakers grew faster, flicking peaks of mush, like driving alongside a paling fence.

  There was a movement inside the case. The stiff neck

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  of John Brunt grew slack, the head dropped forward on to his chest.

  "Oh my God, my God!” Ann whispered.

  Packard’s knuckles were white as he gripped the switch. The screens showed the feet of the group now that the open-eyed head had fallen forward.

  Suddenly the pictures stopped.

  “He’s dead all right,” Hoskins said quietly.

  “Wait a minute!” Parker said quickly. “He’s shut his eyes. Look! They’re opening again!”

  The pictures of the group of feet came back to the screen. John Brunt had shut his eyes and reopened them. John Brunt was alive. His seashore hiss of the speakers became whispers.

  “What’s this now? What’s this now? Shooting up. . . I’ll burst. It’s too bright.”

  John Brunt started, his body went rigid, his head jerked up. He stared wildly out through the case. Packard swung his own chair round, got up and walked away from his miracle.

  Automatically, electronic robots began to adjust the air, the temperature, the muscular return of power. The case swung up.

  John Brunt leaned on one arm of the chair and covered

  his face with his hands. He muttered something, but the speakers gave confused words, mixed sounds like cross- winds.

  Wayling’s tension slackened off suddenly. Packard turned and came back to the chair.

  “Congratulations, David!” Wayling said. “You’ve done it! Our troubles—” he waved a hand flat across the air, “— are over!”

  Packard did not even look round. He stared down at John’s bent head.

  “How do you feel?” Packard said gruffly.

  John took his hand from his face and looked up.

  “I feel I climbed fifty thousand feet in two seconds,” he said. His voice croaked like a frog’s. “Hell! you’ve ruined my voice, you old sod!” He laughed and tears ran down his cheeks.

  Packard gripped his shoulder.

  Wayling turned and went out of the laboratory. Hoskins drew back, watching from a distance down the avenue.

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  “He’s done it,” Ann whispered. “He’s done it!”

  “Yup.” Parker let her arm go and wiped his face with a handkerchief. “Well, I never saw anything like that before. This is the first time, the first time ever in the world. What a man. What courage, the pair of them.” He laughed. “Heck! I’ve been through an emotional experience.”

  John Brunt hauled himself up from the chair. He was unsteady, but he grinned as he fell against Packard.

  “You need a bracer,” Packard said.

  “I want some tea,” John Brunt said. “Hot, strong tea. Fm so dry I can hardly swallow.”

  Ann turned and hurried out, back to the flat.

  “What happened?” Packard said, softly, his voice quivering.

  John Brunt shook his head.

  “Can’t remember a thing,” he croaked. “Not a bloody thing.”

  Packard’s face looked white and lined in the greenish light.

  “Go with him to the flat, Park,” Packard said.

  “Sure.” He went out with the once-dead man.

  Packard went to Hoskins.

  “You’d better take the warrent back,” he said. There was no smile on his face as he followed Hoskins out to the office.

  “Glad to,” Hoskins said, at the door. “This time. But you’ll probably do it again.”

  He laughed. Packard gave a grin which died as soon as he shut the door. He hurried back into the flat. John Brunt sprawled on the big settee. Parker stood back to the window and the dawn rising along the river.

  Packard drove his hands into his pockets, pushed his belly out and let his big head drop to his chest as he watched John Brunt.

  “So it failed,” he said gruffly.

  “I’m in a bit of a buzz,” John said, shutting his eyes. “I must have traveled a long way. Where the hell was it?”

  “Can’t you remember anything at all?”

  “I just feel as if I’ve woken up,” John said.

  “No fringe dream?” said Parker.

  “I’ve got a headache,” John said, and frowned. “Head, head, head. What’s that?” He stared at the carpet pattern.

  Ann came in with fresh tea.

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  “Head,” John Brunt repeated, and held his own with both hands.

  The scientists watched him. Ann gave him tea and he smiled as he took it. He drank gratefully, hot as it was.

  “No plastic,” he said, cheerfully, and then frowned again. “Head. No! just a minute. Something I had to remember.

  I had to, I had to. . .” He looked up, his eyes bright and snapped his fingers. “A progression with two heads. Does that make sense?”

  Packard scowled. Parker stared.

  “Sound like a monster,” said Ann.

  “A progression,” said Parker. “Mathematical it must be. With two heads. That’s more than a monster, it’s a political cartoon!”

  Packard pulled up a chair and sat himself aggressively in front of John Brunt.

  “Do you know what you mean?” he asked.

  “I mean a progression with two heads!” said John Brunt.

  “And this modest piece of insanity is all that you’ve brought back from Heaven?” shouted Packard.

  “I must have thought it was important, I suppose. How else would I have brought that back?”

  “Well, you’ve brought something back,” said Packard, pulling himself closer. “So somewhere in that ivory occiput lies the rest of it. It may be senseless, hut it’s a sign.”

  “A progression,” said Parker, “has a start and a finish, a base and a head. It cannot have two heads. It can only progress in one direction, which is the meaning of the word.

  He took some tea and drank it thoughtfully.

  “It’s nonsense,” said Packard, staring at him.

  “He said plastic when he drank the tea,” said Ann.

  Packard spread his knees and put his big hands on them.

  “Plastic tea,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “How did you know about this plastic food suggestion?”

  “Plastic food?” John Brunt said. “What a revolting idea!”

  “You’ve never heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “I’m glad of that,” said Packard. “It was put up by a firm a little while ago. I turned it down. The results of that kind of thing could be dangerous. . . . You sure you haven’t heard of it?”

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  “I could never forget a horror like that,” promised John

  Brunt

  Parker sat down near Packard and watched the traveler.

  “He’s never heard of it yet it was a natural when he said it,” Parker said. “You must have connected it with tea or a drink. Do they have plastic tea in Heaven? Does tea or coffee ring any bells?”

  “It must refer to the future!” Packard said suddenly and slapped his knee. “If we stop fighting it, it’s bound to come, that kind of food. But it isn’t here yet, and it’s a long way off. So it must be in the future. Now listen. . .”

  Packard took his jacket off and threw it across the room.

  By eight a.m., they were as dry-voiced as John Brunt and had succeeded only in disturbing the mists that blocked the present from his experience in death. Sometimes a strange word was spoken by him which seemed to have no connection with his life till then, but they could not tie it to anythi
ng.

  “I suppose it’s death, having been near it,” John Brunt said at one point. “But my memories of childhood, the village, my father, the pub he had—they’re very strong and frequent. Sort of thing a drowning man sees.”

  “Did you have this memory-phase before you died?” Parker asked.

  “No, it’s since.”

  “That’s arse about face,” said Packard. “You mean you find it strong now as if you’re going to die? That’s a reverse progression. Oh hell! don’t say Heaven was in the

  past!”

  Parker looked at his notes.

  “There’s the plastic tea,” he said.

  “But there were witches, too,” Packard said. “That hardly seems in the future.”

  “Witch hunts come any time,” said Parker.

  “Hanging from a tree,” said John Brunt suddenly.

  “Who?” said Packard.

  “You! Scientists!” shouted John.

  A doubt in Packard’s mind connected with another.

  “Come with me,” he said, and dragged himself out of the chair, stiff after the hours of intense probing.

  “Lynch mobs,” said John, following.

  They went with him across his big office and into the television room. The screens still glowed in color, two still marked “Waiting.” On the right one a white rocket stood

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  in a glare of floodlights with trucks moving around its base and men, very small by comparison. Next to it another rocket, floodlit, was being hoisted up to the vertical position. Cricket voices whispered from the speakers. A third showed a similar stage taking place in the darkness. The fourth showed a rocket standing at its tower, gathering dusk of rich purple cloaking the sky toward the West, with lights, beaming reddish-orange, springing out on the trucks and temporary huts sprawling on the plateau.

  Two men watched the scenes intently. Packard watched John Brunt.

  “Where is it?” Brunt said.

  “America,” said Packard.

  “But that’s—” John stumbled.