‘True. You simply make application to the local Security office.’
‘I shall do that.’
A purring note now, ‘Why not? But you should become acquainted with your country first. A fair trial, eh? Say for a year or so. Then perhaps something could be arranged. If you still wish it.’
The speaker smiled. Matthews took his meaning perfectly.
‘Meanwhile you have interesting things to tell us. In particular we are interested in the telepathic abilities of Commander Raft.’
At once the situation was ridiculous; Matthews laughed his head off while the dead stares waited. ‘All this, for something that doesn’t exist!’
‘We think differently.’
‘Then I don’t know a damned thing about it.’
‘Perhaps, but there will be significant details not ordered in your mind – the things you don’t know you know. We need those from you.’
‘For Christ’s sake! I can’t—’
Interruption – savage, forceful, overbearing. ‘You will!’
Matthew’s black belt was more than an academic qualification and the ethical considerations which hedged it about were annulled by the situation; also, karate was unknown in the new world, where even boxing was a crude sport constructed from old and faulty memories. He killed four of them before a fool found a target for his slow, astonished gun.
The bullet took Matthews between the eyes.
There was a dreadful, frightened silence while the doctor came aft to examine the wound and confirm that resurrection was out of the question, that the brain was ruined.
The silence turned on the man who had killed New York Soviet’s entry to the new secrets, and closed round him while the fool put the barrel in his mouth, shuddered twice in fear of the unknown and blew the back of his head out.
Nobody ever did find out what happened to Streich.
Chapter Four
Heathcote’s Gangoil
… all that lies ahead is our image of the future, which means our collective image of how our collective actions are going to work out.
Brian W. Aldiss: The Shape of Further Things
1
The room was a concrete cell in a concrete hive, but reasonably furnished and warm with unobtrusive diffused heating.
The young man with the touched-up blond hair and plucked eyebrows and formidable muscles said, ‘Underground? Where else would a sub-social organisation be? Joke? No? One can but try. Actually we’re inside a mountain and half-way up it.’
Flippancy, Lindley judged, would be second nature to Francis, who carried mild homosexual excesses without the self-consciousness which could make them irritating and otherwise was probably just an ebullient young man in a young man’s enchantment with gaiety.
‘We didn’t build it.’ Shrug to disclaim responsibility for austere ambience. ‘It’s an old hidey-hole, a sort of super-bomb-shelter, though it’s hard to imagine it being efficient against anyone who meant business.’ Pensive pursing of lips for ancestral foolishness. ‘But it’s hard to imagine you being only eight years younger at the time it was built, too.’ Quizzical eyebrow.
Alice sat apart, inattentive, immersed in misery. Lindley’s instinct was to attempt comfort but as yet he could only guess at what troubled her. He concentrated on Francis.
‘What was it? A parliamentary refuge?’ In the eighties every major government had some such bolt-hole, as though a bureaucracy might persist unscathed though its country crumbled around it.
‘No, no; it was for old John. John Heathcote – you know about him? Then you know that he was terribly important because of his discoveries so when things blew up, or even before, they shifted him and his work underground – that is the government did – and kept him out of sight. So when the world fell to pieces here was old John like a grub in a tunnel, carrying on regardless. They had food and what-have-you for years.’
And that was the simple fact of Heathcote’s retirement out of humanity and into history. ‘Where is “here”?’
Eyebrows arched at heaven. ‘Ask me another; I don’t know. I suppose the pilots and The Lady and a couple of higher-ups all know, but the rest of us come, and go in sealed transport; we’re quite clueless. All part of the big hush-hush of course; I’d bet even the pilots have hypno-blocks that will stop anything short of synaptic surgery. When you think about it secrecy is terribly simple.’
The speech decoration was just that – decoration. Behind it was bleak watchfulness.
‘In my day you wouldn’t have lasted a month. Your secrecy is built on worldwide naïvety. That’s my whole impression of this age so far: naïvety equipped with dangerous playthings.’
The eyebrows, essential to communication, bent in distaste. ‘All complex and suspicious, weren’t you? Think of this as a new adolescence, growing from first principles, and don’t use down-putting descriptions.’
‘Naïvety,’ Lindley repeated, ‘and it will destroy you all, here and outside.’
‘Well, perhaps we’ll need a touch of your old-fashioned deviousness before we’re through. You’re the one who wouldn’t take sides for old Jackson, aren’t you? You’ll be able to make up your mind here. At least some of us know what we’re about, which is more than you can say for the mess outside. That should appeal to you.’
‘Albert’s murder doesn’t appeal.’
The shapely but very capable hands caressed the folds of the scarlet sarong and the lips curled slightly. ‘You placed a tremendous value on human life, didn’t you? Protected the individual like mad while you slaughtered whole populations. We’ve put an end to that sort of hypocrisy. Does it matter if an individual lives or dies? We like living, but everybody’s replaceable. It’s the race that matters.’
‘Clone philosophy?’
‘Them!’ He made it sound like spitting, then added grudgingly, ‘But they do point up the unimportance of unit survival.’
‘Heil Hitler!’
‘Eh?’
‘An invocation to an old god. He’d have loved you.’
Alice broke out of silence, crying, ‘They shouldn’t have killed him! They didn’t have to.’
‘Safety precaution, darling. Or so they tell me.’
She muttered, ‘It was wrong,’ then burst out loudly, ‘I wish I’d never had anything to do with this. Never!’
Francis inspected her keenly. ‘You sound as though your conditioning has broken. Never mind, duckie, the therapists will fix you up.’
She wilted to near collapse, whispering, ‘Conditioning! Oh, no!’
‘’Fraid, yes! It’s always a bit of a shock when you find out. But the boys will tidy you up, never fear.’
Anguish and the after-terror of violation closed round her; she shrank.
Despite pity, Lindley found himself speculating on possible techniques ‘they’ might use in shoring-up a personality which now might easily tip into paranoia or fall all the way down into catatonia. Some suppression of memory would be needed. Could they do that? Or would they go about it the crude way, directed by a computer, reconstructing personality so that the new dominant would regard the old emotions as ill-generated and inefficient? Either method would be vulnerable to deep synaptic linkages …
A muted chime sounded in the ceiling and a voice spoke: ‘Francis.’
‘Here, sweetheart.’
The voice asked disgustedly, ‘Don’t you ever let up? The Lady is ready for Lindley.’
‘Better an honest queen than stud to that decrepit bag,’ Francis said and smiled serenely as the ceiling breathed anger. ‘Mister Lindley, the old girl’s waiting for you. Miss White, you stay here and I’ll arrange for your therapy.’
She cried out of a face contorted in despair, ‘I want to die!’
Perhaps she really meant the idiot cry for death; at any rate Francis patted her shoulder and gave what may have been his version of compassion. ‘Don’t be a silly girl. You can’t carry on with your insides all of a mucky dither. This way, Doctor Lindley. Or is it Pro
fessor or some such?’
A long corridor split the centre of the complex, severe in enclosing concrete, but in this section austerity vanished with an exotic flourish. Deep, lush, crimson pile ran a hundred yards into the mountainside between walls covered with paintings and between stands and display cases of ornaments and figurines.
Not quite believing what he saw, Lindley reached to take up a fat vase in black and red ochres, then withdrew it with the realisation that if it was indeed what it seemed it was twenty-five centuries old and infinitely precious.
Francis surveyed him lazily. ‘You can touch if you like; we’ve quite a few of them. There’s a big old museum down the road a bit from the Security barrack in Melbourne Town and the old bitch had a lot of stuff brought in here during the crack-up period. Greek, that one’s supposed to be.’
‘It is.’
‘You sound all awestruck, like The Lady when she’s having one of her culture fits.’
Lifting his eyes, Lindley tried to take in the extent of the treasure on the walls that were packed rather than hung with paintings. His grasp of the history of the Collapse was minimal, but on this evidence there must have been a lengthy time when the country could be ransacked at will by those with the transport and fuel. Just reach and grab – and how many collections of splendour were pilfered, broken up, defaced by amateurs or totally destroyed? If The Lady with cultural fits had saved a little, then praise to her.
Then he saw that not only the country had been ratted, but the world. The terrifying last of Van Gogh’s self-portraits brought him up standing.
Francis cocked his head. ‘You like?’
‘Like? Are you mad? Surely not the original?’
‘Why not? This stuff comes from all over the place.’ The face – powerful, valiant in the knowledge of insanity, poised against swirling blue flame-shapes of fear and illusion – wavered in his amazement while Francis chattered amicably on ‘A bit out of touch, that one, wouldn’t you say? Not my idea of art, but what the hell? There hasn’t been much incitement to develop an artistic philosophy since the Collapse, now has there? Come on; you can look later.’
Lindley’s eyes roamed in wonder. Olympia – The Bridge At Arles – two Rembrandt self-portraits and the Man In A Golden Helmet – the Blue Boy – an obvious Canaletto he could not place … It was enough to blind all sense.
Taste? No, no taste, but a jackdaw collection of works safely known as critically impeccable.
‘Now, she really loves these.’ Francis flicked an incredulous finger at two colourful portraits painted with an almost caricaturist dwelling on characteristics. ‘Some forgotten politician – and I think the old dear in this one made cosmetics. Pretty bloody, aren’t they?’
‘No; they’re very fine.’
‘Oh? Well, I give up.’
Helena Rubinstein and Sir Robert Menzies might have sneered at their retreating backs, but Lindley thought that if Dobell’s astringent visions represented The Lady’s attitudes and appreciations he might expect arrogance and egoism and much theatricality, the commonplaces of corrupt power. And not to forget her attraction to Van Gogh in the flower of decay.
They came to a door set in a small alcove with benches round its walls. ‘Nobody waiting,’ Francis said. ‘Sometimes they pack the place like flies.’ He put his head round the door and called out, ‘Here’s your psycho-boy, sweetie. He’s nice in his disagreeable way and he likes the artwork.’
An impatient female voice spat from within, ‘I don’t need a court jester every hour of the day. Send him in and get out.’
Francis withdrew, unruffled. ‘She’s got a shitty on. In you go, but watch it, duckie – she’s the last of the red-hot man-eaters.’
Her voice told him more than Francis’s warning; as the door closed behind him he was able to assure himself in an encompassing glance that he was taking part in someone’s personal delusion.
Forewarned and seeking a technique, he deliberately failed to see the preposterous figure on the couch. With calculated insolence, designed at least in part to cover his uncertainties, he concentrated on the other contents of the room.
It was another art gallery, furnished as a luxurious salon, with as central feature Tiepolo’s enormous canvas of Cleopatra’s Banquet – one of great art’s greater vulgarities, voluptuous, relaxed with a contemptuous power, attractive to a specific type of mind.
On a small table before the couch was laid a silver tea service of some antiquity; a faint thread of steam curled from the spout of the teapot. Tea, freshly made; so erratically homely. What might he do to earn a taste of it? He could not identify the china but it was delicate stuff, porcelain and heavily gilt.
‘Do you appreciate a fine service? It is two centuries old.’
He did not answer or look at her but contemplated the two husky men leaning against the farther wall, dressed in brilliant kilts. They were clone-brothers of Raft.
A personal attendance of decorative beefcake? A preference for oddities as older autocrats had collected dwarfs and idiots? A self-indulgent flaunting of possessions and quaintery?
‘You’re damned rude,’ she said, sounding interested rather than insulted.
He allowed himself another survey of the walls (how the devil had they managed to get the Tiepolo through the doors?) before he answered, ‘You don’t seem to have the Mona Lisa.’
‘I never liked it.’ Throwaway line: I could have had it if I wished.
He looked straight at her. The Lady who collected art and had been able to pillage the centuries while humanity clung to the shreds of existence was unhealthily overweight; she was not gross, but that would come. For the present she was pink and white rolling flesh with great unsupported breasts; she wore a humorously tiny cache-sexe mostly for display of a diamond placed with the infallible bad taste of the unrestrainedly opulent, and lolled on the Recamier couch like a baroque courtesan. Rubens would have delighted in her though not she perhaps in Rubens, for he could not remember that master of the peaches and cream school of feminity in the corridor gallery. She flaunted nudity. Sexual defiance or sexual frustration? Lindley was alert to the viciousness possible in a mind attempting to outface physical decay.
She would be, he thought, about forty, then revised his estimate to a superbly preserved fifty. Then, studying her face, all estimates fell apart; he could only imagine her as one who had reached a final decadent bloom and there put a stop to time. The bio-surgeons had been at work.
‘Don’t gape like a hayseed. Sit down.’
He sat carefully on a frail-looking chair (Queen Anne? He was not ‘up’ on furniture) and asked, ‘And who the hell might you be?’
She chuckled. ‘Sassy, eh? They call me The Lady.’
‘I suppose you have a given name?’
‘That’s my damned business. They call me “old bitch” and “fat tart” but to my face – and to you – I am The Lady.’ Her eyes picked at him with a matching of his own insolence. ‘You’re a skinny piece for a hero of far stars, aren’t you? Are you fit for female company after forty years of male monasticism? Or did you comfort each other?’
‘We didn’t.’ In fact he was less than sure of two of them but had not considered it his business to meddle with the inevitable.
‘No? Then don’t let your hot gaze play over me; you’re not my type.’
He could risk a little contempt for a sexual guttersnipe; he hadn’t been brought so far to be chopped down for entertainment. Already he doubted her leadership, was unable to see her as more than a possible figurehead, of what use he could not imagine; nothing of her could command loyalty or admiration. She was simply a mannerless trollop with an unbridled tongue.
He said, ‘Nor you mine. I don’t take to vulgar bitches.’
It won him only a heaving of outsize breasts in brassy laughter. ‘The Lady is socially above insult and she doesn’t react to a psychiatrist’s pinprick. Would you like tea?’
And perhaps the boys will join us for a hand of bridge? ‘I wo
uld like it.’
‘You can say little things like “thank you” without straining your integrity.’
‘Thank you.’
She rose to pour, handling her bulk with elastic ease; she was almost attractive in her ageless, overblown way. His nose told him this was China tea; so she could reach into that supposedly closed area. He must not let the surface of aggressive stupidity betray him into underestimating her potential.
‘What do you want of me?’
‘I, nothing. John wants you.’
‘Heathcote?’
‘So you know who he is?’
‘Only that he’s a remnant of the scientific past.’
‘Marvellous description! I like it. Remnant!’ She quivered, rippling this time with real laughter, unforced, and he fancied she could laugh at miseries and cripples. ‘You’ll understand when you meet him. He thinks you may be able to explain Albert’s disturbing behaviour. After all, a rogue clone-brother is a contradiction in terms.’
‘With a little thought he could explain it himself.’ The eyes of the – serfs? wardens? bodyguards? – were fixed on him expectantly but he saw no need to supply them with gratuitous information.
The Lady, with her back to them, did not appear aware of their possible interest. She rippled again, gasping a little. ‘Poor John isn’t quite himself, you might say, when it comes to explaining things.’ Then she did recall her attendants and looked to them for applause of her wit. They smiled dutifully but plainly did not appreciate humour which concealed a double edge. ‘For myself,’ she said, ‘I was just curious to have a look at you.’
‘To decide my possible usefulness?’
‘If any.’
‘Forget it.’
‘A manipulative psychiatrist with already some experience of our capabilities should realise that the decision doesn’t rest with him.’
A feral point to her. No argument was possible, but he must seek information where he could, and attack might gain more from her than questions. Casual attack. Like so: ‘Regarding decisions, it was a mistake to have Albert killed.’
Beloved Son Page 17