So! That need not be a laudable survival, though he loved the man in his fashion. ‘Touching the century.’
‘I thought as much, and a man that age would stand out like a beacon. So he has been in hiding for some forty years; the clone doesn’t know where, geographically, only that the place is called Gangoil. There is no such place name in computer records.’ He was taken aback by Raft’s shout of laughter. ‘Have I made a joke?’
‘No, but old John has. Nearly two centuries ago a novelist named Trollope visited Australia and wrote a novella about the country called Harry Heathcote Of Gangoil, and John’s second name is Harold. He doted on Trollope and he was that sort of gentle old bird who fancies little literary jokes and mild mysteries, so when anyone asked where he lived he would tell them Gangoil. And it was true, because Gangoil was the name of his farm, his laboratory, three houses at different times and anything else he felt like labelling, like a hen roost or a kennel. Wherever he is, is Gangoil. You might as well have been told, “Out there somewhere”.’
Jackson was disgusted. ‘Your gentle old bird is avian dynamite. But was he so gentle? How did he respond when you argued against his experiments?’
‘Not at all. He believed in the essential niceness of man and a planetful of evidence never dented his trust. Do you know what his farm was? A sanctuary for sick and wounded animals, to be cared for and released. He talked to kangaroos and swore they understood him. He was no history changer.’
‘Then someone else has him and his work. Our clone specimen knows practically nothing. What we got from him was a semi-religious garble of brotherhood and understanding: start a philosophy of togetherness, bring the world together in a unity and love will find a way. He knew nothing of the project to replace Ian, which smells of secrets within secrets; he knew of the landing field gathering but seemed to think it was a clone welcome for you.’ He had a moment’s satisfaction from Raft’s exasperation. ‘You should hear the rest from Ian.’
‘How is he?’
‘Arms, nose, one leg and five ribs broken. Kidneys bruised. It’s a wonder he wasn’t killed. Have you finished eating? We’ll go to him.’
‘After all that can he be visited?’
‘Why not? He’s had anti-shock treatment and a hypnotherapist is handling the pain; it’s too generalised for acupuncture.’
The gate sentry, informed of the minor paradox of an identified uniform on an unidentified but vouched-for body, counted them out and murmured, ‘Goodnight, sir and madam.’ Lindley snickered. They turned left on the footpath, towards the centre of the town.
It was a clear night, the trailing edge of a hot day which had scarcely registered in Lindley’s mind as the new Earth closed round him. He looked expectantly about, enjoying what had become a rarity in the old cities, an avenue sheltered by trees. His mind was at peace yet a worm gnawed in the dark; it was too warm for the uniform but there had been some insistence that he wear it because a danger threatened and it could protect him. He stopped, seeking the danger.
‘I shouldn’t be out.’
Alice White – he was not sure what he was doing in her company – said, ‘Don’t be foolish,’ and tugged his arm.
In the summer night was a sound of voices, unintelligibly massed, not far away and rising and approaching.
‘They said …’ They hadn’t actually said anything, but this uniform had a significance and he fancied menace in the nearing voices.
‘It doesn’t matter what they said.’
She spoke always in that hectoring fashion as though he was resisting her, which he was not. He did not like it, but if she said the voices didn’t matter, that was that. But he resented her thoroughly and would cheerfully have told her to get to hell away from him had he been able to – to what? Raise the initiative? It was easier to be led.
The noise took on personality. Along the footpath towards them came a crowd of youngsters, gay with colour and incredibly noisy and boisterous, like drunks in full throat before the downbeat struck. He thought they were not drunk, however, and there were others on the far side of the road. Old memories warned of violence snuffling after a focus of rage.
‘What’s this lot up to?’
Her hand tightened on his sleeve. ‘Kids on the spree, enjoying themselves.’
She was lying, inexpertly and inefficiently, but he could do nothing about that; he could resent but could not act upon the resentment; an incomprehensible inhibition restrained him. He said uneasily, ‘A mob of kids like that used to mean get inside and stay there till they go.’
The sound became more intelligible as they approached and what he heard spurred his unease. Not words troubled him for there were no words, only an emotional slur of throats chanting. Slogans? Ritual? In any case, dangerous. ‘This mob’s nasty.’
‘Just young and lusty.,’
The contradiction released him a little. ‘No! This is anger and bad business.’
The fool girl said, ‘Of course not.’ Then, with that dogmatic, blustering tactic, ‘They’re happy sounds.’
‘Don’t be so damned stupid.’
Had he been watching her he would have seen her panic as she realised her incompetence. Never, the instruction had been, say anything that contradicts the evidence of the senses. He heard her gasp of distress but was intent on what lay ahead. He watched their advance, absorbed the zombie litany with no meaning beyond the stiffening of intent, and recalled the dreadful teenagers of the final generation of protest. Then Alice took charge in that grating voice, overriding instinct with command.
‘We’ll walk straight through them. They won’t touch us. I know more about this than you do. They won’t see us.’
So she knew more. He believed because he had to and was bizarrely aware that he had to, as though there were two of him, and one walked aside and watched. But which?
‘Walk!’ she ordered, and he walked.
The wave of bawling boys and screaming girls rolled upon them, incantation and threat view-hallooing ahead of them. Alice’s hand trembled on his arm and this contradiction of her certainty opened a slit window in his mind; his sense of divided personality rose as fear and he would have stopped her if her voice had not overruled him.
‘They won’t harm us. Keep going!’
He did because he must; the window closed.
And the wave divided to let them through.
Shrieking, bellowing, it split with robot precision. Robot! There was the word. Things with a purpose, ignoring all else. He took in distorted faces and staring eyes and knew what was the matter. Then the sound rolled away from them as if a freak storm had broken and passed.
‘They’re drugged!’
‘Of co—’ About to say, ‘Of course not’, she changed it to a snapped, ‘Forget about it.’
That order was not easily obeyed but he did his best by forcing his mind to other things. But matters were not right in his thought and his puzzlement grew as a conviction broke surface that he was behaving like a fool. No, in a manner uncharacteristic of James Lindley. And yet …
She said, ‘There’s a spot on your uniform. Wait.’
She rubbed at the cloth, laughing, and he laughed with her, not knowing why but helplessly following the cue to create the scene and did not feel the gentle tug under the lapel as she defused the overall.
‘That’s better. Come on.’
‘Where are we going?’
She answered with a gasp of recklessness, ‘To Gangoil.’
‘What’s that?’
Her voice cracked with relief as she told him, ‘The land of dreams come true.’
Behind and above them something roared dully in the night.
‘Aircraft?’
‘A dragonfly. Like your hovercars but better.’
They walked on and she was quiet, thinking of the dragonfly which would pick them up when its work was done, and of what that work was and that she had got him out of the building only narrowly in time. And that at any moment Raft would be dead, if not
already. And, disturbingly, that she was doing something she should not, as though her mind played her tricks.
In the warmth the dining-room windows were open. While they talked there had been small sounds in the night, a footstep or two, an occasional voice, a sough of wind in the courtyard trees. Jackson, facing the window, had noticed with a fraction of his attention Alice White go out on the arm of some Tech he did not recognise from the back. Raft had his back to them.
Now there began, quietly borne, a distant sound, a human sound, swelling, forming a rough pattern as it approached – a river of feet on pavement. Jackson frowned. Raft, alert to danger in an unpredictable era, watched his face.
As if a signal had been given, voices were raised, many voices, all at once yelling. It was the noise of a mob, a wordless enmity both had heard earlier in the day, and it was close at hand.
Jackson pushed back his chair, grunting an old man’s anger, seeming less apprehensive than furious. Raft bypassed inessentials to ask, ‘Is the barrack guarded?’
‘A few civil police in the yards and store areas. Token only. Security doesn’t do guard duties.’
The bloody élite preferred to sweat the lower orders, Raft thought as both of them went to the nearest window. The sound of the mob grew shattering and came from no one direction; the building was being converged on.
Jackson said through his teeth, ‘We have never needed sentries,’ then asked, ‘Clone?’
‘No. None near here.’
Two grey police uniforms appeared running in the lighted courtyard and Jackson screamed at them to take cover. They raced for the walls, tugging at their guns, and disappeared in tree shadow as a surge of figures swept to the wide gates. And halted. Like a chorus line mid-stage, poised for the entrance of the star, they halted.
Raft, uneasy but phlegmatic, observed them curiously. They were all young, very young; teenagers. Dressed in a medley of styles and colours – peacocks, hummingbirds. And baboons’ arses, he thought in revulsion against omnipresent, cynical fancy dress.
Within the gates they yelled. Few words, only undifferentiated sounds. He noticed that though they bellowed and shrieked from still positions their eyes swept the courtyard, seeking … objective? resistance? victim?
Gazes focused on the window and arms pointed. They were recognised and named, no doubt of it, but there was no move forward. The taint of rehearsal was heavy over it all. Someone taught violence to the peaceful, making a sick joke of an idealist’s world.
Tearing the night with uproar they waited. For what?
He knew soon enough.
Something rushed out of distant darkness and hovered overhead with a purring of engines. Jackson put his head through the window and muttered, ‘Dragonfly,’ and withdrew sharply as brilliant light flooded down. The two policemen had been joined by others and stood stark as gallows-meat in the glare. The youngsters moved as they had moved at the airfield, to both sides as more poured in behind them; the grouping was choreographed, stagily unreal. The alarmed police began shooting, and not with gas. They might have done better to use gas; Raft knew them for certainty to be dead men.
He heard Jackson, his voice breaking, ‘Hypnotics! They’re loaded with them.’
Then the scene vanished.
Nothing changed within the dining-room, but outside the window light, mob, courtyard, even the stars winked out of existence and the uproar ceased in mid-note. The eerie cessation of sound was terrifying more than the darkness outside; beyond the window ledge no universe existed; they stood unprotected at the edge of ultimate space.
‘Blinded!’ It was a disgusted sound; the old man exhibited a spectrum of emotions but fear was not among them. He had probably earned his disastrous leadership.
‘What?’
‘Back from the window! We’ve been blinded. An energy-damping curtain.’ He grumbled, gnawing at his problems, ‘That takes a lot of power.’ He walked, muttering, to the hall entrance and opened it on blackness, and again to the kitchen. ‘Just a circle round this room. It’s you they want.’
‘Why not you?’
‘What use would I be? They might make something of you now the Campion move has failed. And all this diversion! They must want you alive.’
Raft was not so sure of that. ‘What can we do?’
‘We, nothing. The place is full of Techs on duty call; they’ll start something very quickly. But those bastards out there will have to be fast, too; they can’t maintain a long blind with only a mobile generator.’
They waited, chilled by the knowledge of undetectable movement all round them. Raft asked the central question, ‘Who knows we are in this room?’
‘The waiter.’
‘No, this wasn’t organised in the short time since he left us. Whom did you tell we would be here?’
Their voices dropped flatly in the baffled air.
‘Only my sec—’ He stopped, devastated. ‘No!’
‘The White girl? Why not? Treachery can only come from within; only a friend can harm you.’
He thought, ‘The clone does not kill!’ but no clone-members were out there and he had thought of a reason why he might be wanted dead.
The proof came unexpectedly.
A hand emerged weirdly from the blackness, detached, fluttering, feeling along the window ledge, locating itself. It stopped, rested; it had groped an eerie passage through the blind and now knew where it was. A face showed briefly like a mask with no head behind it, swept dull, drugged eyes over him and vanished. The hand flickered and a small object, whizzing in flight, came through the window and skidded on the floor.
It was a plain white card. Together they bent over it to read the printing in large black capitals: COMMANDER ALBERT RAFT.
‘Threat? Ultimatum? Or just a valentine?’ Raft stooped to it and Jackson prevented him.
‘Paper can be treated with skin-absorbent hypnotics. There’s a simple test; put some salt in a glass of water.’
Raft went back to their table, reaching for the cruet, and for a moment was sheltered behind Jackson as the Ombudsman covered his hand with a handkerchief and took up the card.
The air cracked apart with the sound. The explosion, incredible from so light a wafer, blew the old man in two.
Raft, drenched in Jackson’s blood and spattered with his flesh, was flung across the table and on to the floor beyond it. Reflexes spared no time in thought. He was on his feet and running for the door while his ears still reverberated with the blast.
Expecting death he plunged at full speed into the darkness and cannoned painfully into a body. He kicked sweepingly and successfully at its legs and stamped on its collapsing bulk. Someone touched him from the side; he felt, found an arm and broke it.
In this terrible place without sound or direction he turned to his right, towards what he hoped was the interior of the building, found the wall and felt his way along it, ready to fight at a touch.
Abruptly the blind lifted and the air racketed noise. He glimpsed colourful clothing grouped round the diningroom door and two heaps on the floor, one still, one moaning. He ran. Round the first corner and across an empty lounge that filled as he ran. From doors and passageways Security men poured, in uniform and undress and practically no dress at all, guns already firing past him.
A black-clad arm brought him to unwilling halt. ‘All right now, Commander. We can deal with it.’
Full of the reason he should be wanted dead Raft gasped, ‘The Commissioner! Campion! I’ve got to see him at once.’
The Security man – it was the Senior Tech from Columbus – steadied him. ‘Take it easy. We can look after this lot.’
Briefly there were guns in the outside night while he panted and cursed restraint. Then quiet.
‘This lot! They don’t matter.’ He took breath and said with all his force, ‘What’s in the balance is your whole simple-minded world. Take me to Campion!’ The Tech hesitated still. ‘Now! Now!’
3
Sick wards had changed littl
e; more colour but the same essential bareness and the same aura of stillness and antisepsis.
‘Blood! You’re soaked in it!’
It was Campion’s voice, straining through battered lips, and Campion was an unholy sight, unrecognisable under bandages, both arms and a leg in plaster, the visible flesh blackened and swollen; even the patch of red hair flaunting from the crown was a ragged flag.
‘Not mine.’ Raft knew he must look like a slaughtered beast; the old man had come literally to pieces, spraying over him. He found now that he was bruised and aching; he had been flung about six feet and was lucky to have escaped broken bones.
‘What has happened? The noise?’ Campion’s lips fumbled but his tone was lively and concerned.
‘Another mob of kids. They wanted to kill me.’
The lips, twisting, may have smiled. Or may not. ‘No luck, I see.’
‘No.’ The words defied him to speak them; he heard Campion calling the man ‘Dad’ and saw Jackson’s battened-down affection and his mouth rebelled.
Behind him the Senior Tech said, ‘Tell him. He isn’t in shock. He has to know.’
Cautious phrases would not do. ‘They got Jackson.’ Long silence became unbearable. Whatever the Ombudsman had been and done, his dream had been genuine, worth an epitaph. ‘The people he lived for killed him. He was trying to protect me.’
Campion cried helplessly in his mummy wrappings. With a feeling different from anything in his experience Raft took out his crumpled handkerchief and wiped the anguished eyes. Campion shook his head weakly and Raft said, ‘I have the right to help,’ and found himself mumbling more than he had intended in a random attempt to divert, perhaps to replace loss. ‘I’m probably your grandfather, you know.’
The lips made a meaningless sound. Raft hadn’t meant to say it so soon; said, at this moment, it seemed trivial.
‘Is that possible?’ Campion’s voice was under control, cooled by training and dedication.
‘Yes. We’ll work it out later. There are more urgent things.’
‘Tell me about Dad.’
He told briefly. ‘But he was mistaken; they wanted me dead.’
Beloved Son Page 14