Rollerball (Commander Shaw Book 17)

by Philip McCutchan

  Some of us were facing it. When I reached the trench site I found the troops working flat out and not on time-and-a-half either. There was a sapper colonel in charge, his combat uniform mud-covered. I asked about the length and depth.

  “Twenty feet deep,” he told me. “One hundred yards in length, fifteen feet across. Bearing in mind that thing’s vital statistics — ”

  “About right,” I said. “It’ll have a job to climb out, that’s for sure.”

  “Suppose it fell into a rock crevice in the normal course of events?”

  “You mean the Japs will have provided for that. They may. But we have to do something, try anything that looks like having the smallest chance.” I paused. “I was thinking about after we’ve trapped it. Any ideas, Colonel?”

  He wiped his face, leaving a fresh trail of mud. The daylight had gone long since and the men were working under floods; it was a satanic scene of mud and machinery. “Destruction?” the colonel asked.

  I nodded. “Just in case it has burrowing powers. I’m after total inhibition if possible.”

  He said, “Yes, Brigade thought about that too. I can set charges.”

  “Don’t forget the disease, the bacteria.”

  “If we’re going to destroy it, that’s — ”

  “Sure,” I said. “But an explosion might not destroy the bacteria, or not all of them.” I had the man-made ones in mind, but basically I doubted if Rollerball could be breached at all except possibly by something nuclear. We all knew the guns had had no effect. The colonel said he had also brought flame throwers; I said, unkindly, that he might as well have brought his cigarette lighter.

  The work went on, the displaced earth being piled on top of the southern lip of the trench to give Rollerball the maximum depth. When it was in, the colonel suggested, the earth could be bulldozed back on top and the heavy equipment moved into place in an attempt to hold it. I reckoned that was about all we could do. I also reckoned that if Dr Seiko could see our efforts he might well be laughing like a drain …

  Soon after my talk with the sapper colonel we heard the approach, the by now customary crunch as Rollerball met the tarmac in places, the interruption of sound as its straight route took it into fields on the bends of the road; and then it was seen coming into the perimeter of the lights, huge, black, flanged, deadly, simply pressing on regardless, unseeing but alive with its programming.

  I held my breath as the monster lumbered slowly up, carving a deep, wide swathe in the trodden mud. All army vehicles had been moved out of its way, and the soldiers were pressing back, staring, as it went past towards the lip of the trench. As it reached it, there was a whirring sound and it rocked a little, backwards and forwards on the brink.

  The colonel said, “The bloody thing’s stopping!”

  It was. It held itself poised for a matter of seconds then it seemed to swivel on its axis and it moved sideways, then swivelled again and turned a number of complete circles on the spot, sinking as it did so and still whirring somewhere inside. My limbs felt weak, too weak for me to move. The sapper was staring incredulously, a tic twitching the corners of his mouth. Even his moustache seemed to stand on end. Then, its circling movement evidently completed, Rollerball lifted clear and moved on again, but moved westerly along the lip of the trench until it had cleared the gap, after which it resumed its southerly course, heading for the perimeter of the lights.

  “I’m buggered,” the colonel said. He was shaking like a leaf. “What did that? Some sort of sensory perception?”

  “I can’t suggest anything else,” I said. “It seems almost human.”

  We followed Rollerball. The trench had been dug some distance back from the weak-roofed underground intersection and the thing might yet drop through into the fissure. It didn’t; it lumbered on. It was a partial victory. I wondered if the deflection caused by the trench had thrown off its programmed brain, wondered if it would miss the next and last intersection. Doubtful: if the brain was sensitive enough to make it avoid the trench it shouldn’t have much difficulty in getting back on course again as it moved farther south. With the colonel I walked back to the spot where Rollerball had done its in situ circling. That spot was like a shallow bomb crater, about four feet deep, with the sides broken where the flanges had dragged forward when it got on the move again. The ground in the crater’s centre was a mass of circular ruts where Rollerball had been twisting.

  “Look,” the colonel said. He pointed down and I looked. There was something on that rutted mud — a deposit, yellowish white. I stared at it. It had a dry look yet at the same time a damp one — I can’t explain more precisely than that. And it looked to me as though it was growing. It could only have come from Rollerball, but how? I thought again about those little balls, and the emanation of tetradoxin.

  I asked, “Have you a medical officer with you?”

  “No,” the colonel answered. “I can have one called up — ”

  “No time,” I said. “I’ll go on guesswork. I believe that stuff’s a fungus — Fusarium Sporotrichoides. It’s a job for your flame throwers after all, just as fast as possible.”

  I wondered if something had gone wrong internally. I doubted if Rollerball was meant to shed en route; and I also wondered, as in the case of the small balls, how the stuff could be extruded through the metal. As yet there was no answer to that; but the deposit taught us all something important: the flame throwers failed to kill the spores. They went on multiplying. When buried with some spadefuls of earth they seeped out from under, extending in several trails like slow-moving, thickening snakes. It was a frightening sight and after that no time was lost in sending out a radio call for a medic. I didn’t wait for him because in the meantime a mobile had come in from Hawick with word for me that chummy had been tailed to the village of Drumsheugh just east of the A68 not far from Camptown. He had entered a house and within a minute had emerged with another man and a woman who answered Felicity’s description. That was when he had picked up the tail. Having spotted it, both men had reacted very' fast. Chummy’s new companion had opened fire with an automatic rifle, shattering the unmarked car’s windscreen and the plain clothes driver’s head, wounding the other policeman in the shoulder.

  Chummy had made his getaway and I was back where I had started, but I intended to take a look at the house in Drumsheugh, which was currently ringed with police from Hawick.

  *

  When I drove up, the police had made an entry on my radioed instructions but they had drawn a blank: there was no-one in residence and the inference was that until chummy’s arrival Felicity had been under guard of just the one man. I spoke to the wounded plain clothes man, a detective sergeant, who was being attended by a doctor on the spot; he wasn’t badly hurt, little more than a graze as it turned out. I asked him what sort of state Miss Mandrake had been in.

  He pursed his lips. “Physically OK, sir. Walking well enough, but kind of … not ticking over if you follow.”

  “Doped?”

  He nodded. “Yes, that’s what I think.”

  I had no option but to leave it at that. Chummy’s car was known and road blocks had been set up. Fighting down my anxieties, I went into the house for a full-scale check. Already the fingerprint boys were at work. It was a small house, two rooms downstairs in addition to the ‘usual offices’ and three minute bedrooms opening off a small, square landing upstairs. It was remotely situated; Drumsheugh was called a village by courtesy only. Four houses all told, no shop, no pub, and the houses widely scattered. Apart from this house, cottages was a better word; and there was a farmhouse, the police said, three-quarters of a mile up the road.

  I made a thorough search, not really knowing what I was looking for. Just something to give me a picture, anything that would lead on somewhere. I found nothing beyond a lingering smell of Felicity’s scent; I’d bought it for her at an expensive little place in Knightsbridge. It brought back memories that had to be crushed down.

  After the search I said, �
�Well, that’s it. Thanks for your help.”

  The CID man gave me a sharp look. “You all right, sir?”

  I said, “I’m fine, just bloody tired.”

  “Aye, you’d do well to get some kip. You’ll think better after. Where are you heading, sir?”

  I said, “I’ve made no provision, but I’m going to take your advice. Sleep. Can you fix me up?”

  He said he could; I wanted to be handy for reports and ready for action and a shakedown in the nick would suit me fine. I wasn’t needed in Edinburgh. I drove to the nick and I’d only just got my head down when the army medic reported in person and told me he was flummoxed. He confirmed Fusarium Sporotrichoides but believed — he had yet to make laboratory tests — that the spores were not exhibiting the normal characteristics. For one thing, their evident flame-resisting qualities. I told him what Seiko had told me: that he was using man-made bacteria.

  “Fungus isn’t bacteria,” the medic pointed out. “But I see what you mean.”

  “Does it make sense?”

  He was doubtful but non-committal. I don’t think he’d been qualified long; he was a captain RAMC and the cloth pips on the shoulder straps of his jersey looked new. He said he would be making his tests as soon as he could and meanwhile the fungus area was being cordoned off; and then I went back to sleep. I was a damn sight more tired than I’d suspected. I had Felicity on my mind but even that didn’t keep me awake. No more reports of anything at all came in during the night and they let me sleep on. When I woke it was seven a.m. and it was snowing hard and there was a row going on somewhere near at hand. It turned out to be two drunks stating a complaint of having been arrested after no more than a bottle of whisky apiece. I felt a lot more constructive mentally, the more so after the nick turned on porridge followed by fried bacon and eggs with plenty of strong, hot coffee. I lit a cigarette with the coffee and inhaled deeply and to hell with the do-gooders and the prim faces that sit in smoking carriages on trains and glare at the smokers while occupying the seats that smokers in non-smoking compartments would give their eye teeth for. I thought about them savagely as I puffed; I was in a savage mood because of Felicity and my own guilt feelings for having wasted time in sleep. Then I remembered Max in London and I called Focal House to make a full report — Max wasn’t there to take it himself and I gathered he’d been called urgently to the Defence Ministry because of the fungus leak from Rollerball. Max’s secretary told me that things were getting very bad in London. The oppressive aura of fear was creating crime and there had been riots and looting, and once again seething crowds attempting to storm along Whitehall into Downing Street. The mounted police were having a hard time of it in crowd control and the troops had even been forced to fire plastic bullets over the heads of demonstrators. There had to be demonstrators, I supposed angrily, someone had always to demonstrate and be a bloody nuisance to everyone else, but to demonstrate against Rollerball was about the most lunatic thing I’d ever heard of.

  I wondered to what extent the public would panic when the real threat leaked. Maybe it would steady them; war was real and you could be expected to demonstrate against it, however uselessly, but Rollerball … well, I could understand the panic at all events. When I’d finished the call the station sergeant came along and said briskly he’d been looking at the newspapers. “Anything about the fungus?” I asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Press behaving itself?”

  “I’d doubt that. It’s just that security’s been kept for once. And there’s the election, of course.”

  I stared at him, blankly. “Election? Is that still going on … and is anyone interested now?”

  He grinned. “Yes, indeed they are. Each of the parties has a way of dealing with the trouble.”

  I went on staring. “Have they really? Even the SDP?”

  “All of them,” the sergeant said. He left the papers with me and I scanned them briefly. Yes, they all had a policy — Tories, Labour, SDP and Liberals, Communists, National Front and all the fringe and/or lunatic parties. I’d never read such concentrated bullshit in my life and began to wonder if Britain was too crazy to be really worth all the hassle. Rollerball looked like sinking us before the election in any case.

  *

  No reports came in as regards chummy. Obviously he’d got clear in time to avoid the road blocks. The BBC chipped into the programmes now and then to give reports on Rollerball and at eight-fifteen I was on the road again, heading down into Cumbria. Rollerball not having gone down into the earth via the intersection near Hawick, that left only Kirkby Stephen. I wanted to be on station as it were in good time before Rollerball’s arrival, just to see what if anything showed in the neighbourhood. There was another reason for my journey and that was the handover of the drafts and credits. I just might pick chummy up there; and the rendezvous which in fact wasn’t to be a rendezvous was not all that far from Kirkby Stephen — near enough for me to see a possible bright spot: with the promissory notes or whatever collected, and Rollerball down into the earth’s crust en route for the Kola Peninsula, Felicity just might become superfluous. Might. There was, of course, another angle: she might be held until Seiko’s agents in Switzerland and the Middle East had collected the cash. Just as an extra to the continuing threat of Rollerball.

  I reached Kirkby Stephen at eleven-thirty. I found an air of brittle calm. The local populace had no knowledge that Rollerball was, in my view anyway, about to enter the earth near their little town. It was known, of course, that the area was on the route that Rollerball would take, but the track was to pass about a mile to the east of the town itself. As yet there was time in hand: Rollerball was due to make its appearance by my reckoning in around fourteen hours — say at one a.m. next day. That was zero hour. In the meantime — by four this afternoon — the British Government’s package was to be deposited in Arkengarthdale. And it would be; I had ascertained that en route, calling Focal House from police HQ in Appleby. Max and the cabinet wets, an unlikely alliance really, had won the day. The PM was said to be chewing carpets.

  I had time in hand to take a look at the expected spot for Rollerball to sink. Following my ordnance map, I drove as far as I could and then walked the rest, crunching over lying snow. Using my map and compass bearings, I found the spot with fair precision — near enough, anyway. It was over the side of a hill east of the small collection of cottages that made up the village of Nateby. It was on high ground right enough like everywhere else around Kirkby Stephen, but the weak ceiling also ran high with the hills, as I knew from my researches into geological matters on that last occasion. Rollerball wouldn’t have too long a drop. I took a long look, wondering, racking my brains for something that would halt the thing. If that trench south of Hawick hadn’t, nothing would; and I started on the trudge back to the car. I’d nearly reached it when I saw an Army staff car drive up and two officers get out.

  I went up to them and identified myself. One was a major, the other a captain, both of them being sappers. They had come from Catterick.

  “Any special reason?” I asked.

  They knew all about Rollerball. “Just for a look-see,” the major, whose name was Jackson, said. “I’ve got an idea or two. May work, may not. Can you add to my store of knowledge about this thin crust or whatever it is?”

  I told him all I knew. I said the actual intersection was believed to be fairly small, a sort of cross-roads beneath the earth. He had been informed about the trench and the sad fact that it hadn’t worked. He said there was a better prospect.

  “It’s so simple,” he said, and it was — or might be. “We build a bridge. How do you expect Rollerball to do its dig-in?”

  I told him it would probably use its flanges to batter away at the weak ceiling, remaining stationary while it did it. That, and its sheer weight. He nodded briskly and I went back to the subterranean intersection area with him. A bridge should have been thought of earlier. The sappers can build them pretty fast.

  *


  I drove out of Nateby, scattering some hens pecking around for food outside the cottages and watched by a number of children busy with snowballs. A small crowd had collected by the cars; the Army insignia on the staff car was of much interest in the circumstances and a lot of questions were asked, questions that we deflected with easy assurances that didn’t impress the sceptical Cumbrians. There was a natural tension around as I left, and the faces looked drawn with worry. They weren’t certain, those people, that Rollerball would stand as well clear of the buildings as we said, and of course they had all devoured the newspapers and the stories of what had happened and was happening right down the backbone of northern Britain.

  I took the high road down to Muker. I was forced to take it slow, especially on the bends. The road wound steeply down a fellside. The surface was narrow and crumbly at the edges and there were long drops to my right and there Was snow drifted up against the rock on my left. I was pre-occupied with the idea of bridge-building. Major Jackson was going to try it; he had driven back to Catterick after promising he would have his sappers on the road with their equipment and prefabricated bridge sections during the afternoon. He believed he could do it in the time and his only doubt had been that it was going to be tricky to get the bridge built at precisely the right angle for Rollerball to mount it. For my part I reckoned all they needed to do would be to ensure a wide straddle though there was certainly the chance that Rollerball might sniff it out like it had the trench — yet there were differences that might help us: the bridge would be an extension of Rollerball’s track, not a gaping hole. Jackson would bring in a team of geologists who would get to work with their instruments and give him an accurate picture of just where the weak point was situated beneath the surface. My doubt was that I just didn’t believe any prefabricated bridge would take the strain. However, nothing would be lost by making the attempt.