by John Brunner
“Thank goodness for that!” Kneller exclaimed. “So we don’t need to worry after all. A minute or two at subzero temperatures like today’s, and– Campbell, look out!”
Hector whirled, and was just in time to catch the landlady as she slumped in a dead faint.
VII
As he shrugged out of his greatcoat, heavy with damp, Lance-Corporal Stevens caught a snatch of news being read over a radio playing in the orderly-room.
“–described as ‘disastrous’ by the manager of one of London’s largest department-stores today. In the hope of making up lost business at the last minute many shops will remain open for an extra two hours on Christmas Eve–”
–No skin off my nose, thank goodness. That’s my lot until after the holiday. Christ, I’m really looking forward to going home, in spite of all the arguments I’m bound to have with the old man!
He pushed open the orderly-room door and had taken two strides across the floor before he realised there was an officer present: the Church of England chaplain, to be exact, talking to the staff sergeant in charge. Belatedly Stevens threw up a salute, which the chaplain acknowledged with his usual vague smile and wave.
“Just a moment, sir, if you don’t mind,” the staff sergeant muttered, and went on more loudly, “So there you are, Stevens! Took your time over it today, didn’t you?”
“Well, staff, there was an awful lot of traffic–”
“Never mind the excuses! Double on over to the armoury and collect your rifle, and then pack your kit. And be quick about it!”
Stevens stared at him blankly.
“Don’t just stand there as though you’d grown roots! Acting Lance you may be, but on the strength it says you’re headquarters platoon runner for C company and you’re coming to Glasgow with the rest of us. It’s nearly five already and we have to be at RAF Uxbridge at six-thirty. Buses leave in forty minutes, and if you’re late I shall personally–”
But Stevens had departed at a run.
“Now where were we, sir?” the staff sergeant continued. “Oh, yes. Arrangements for notifying next of kin.”
“I really think it’s too bad of Brother Bradshaw to have kept us hanging about the way he did,” fretted Lady Washgrave, seated at her elegant escritoire and poring over the seemingly endless pile of papers which the last postal delivery before Christmas had produced. “Having to overprint all our Crusade leaflets–print those special stickers and add them to our posters–telephone all the newspapers and amend the wording of our advertisements … I do wish he had had the simple courtesy to give us a little more notice!”
Tarquin Drew, who had actually had to take care of the tasks she was describing, was discreetly silent.
“Still …” Lady Washgrave gathered herself together; she had never done anything so unladylike as to pull herself together since she discovered the quite indecent meaning of the phrase “to pull a bird”. “One must admit it is very encouraging to see how we are appealing to the hearts and minds of the public who are disillusioned with the fruits of permissivity.” She leafed through some of the Christmas presents she had received on behalf of the Campaign: a thousand pounds from that nice Mr Filbone who was having such trouble with strikers at his factory in Scotland, fifty pence from “A Sympathetic Pensioner”, with apologies that it was all she could afford, a sampler sewn by pupils at a convent school, and others and others far too numerous to take in all at once.
Not that even at this season of good-will the whole of the post was of that nature. Here was the umpteenth complaint about a BBC serial based on the life of a jazz musician called Morton who when a mere teenager had played the piano in a brothel (disgusting!), and a book whose heroine, so the sender claimed, was “no better than a tart”, and an excerpt from a so-called marriage manual which recommended practices so revolting they had almost put her off her lunch.
“Tarquin, kindly bring me a glass of sherry,” she said at last. “I believe I shall need it to help me finish my stint today.”
“Of course, milady, right away.”
“Oh, it’s going to be a wonderful Christmas!” Harry Bott exclaimed to the children clustered around his knees: three of the four, the youngest still being a toddler and currently lying down in his cot. He took another sip from his mug of Guinness and wiped away the moustache of foam it donated to him. “Tomorrow we’re going to see Uncle Joe in his big house, and there’ll be presents for you all and a lovely tree with lots of lights on it, and–oh, lots of marvellous things! Are you looking forward to it?”
“Oh, yes!” chorused the children, who were very fond of their father because in spite of sometimes being irritable he was always producing toys and gifts for them which other kids’ parents swore they could not afford.
“And, come to think of it”–he looked at his oldest son Patrick–“you’re being confirmed next Easter, aren’t you? So maybe you ought to come to midnight Mass with us. See what you’re letting yourself in for. What do you think, Vee?”
“What?” Busy pegging out baby-clothes on a line across the kitchen ceiling, too damp from the spin-drier not to be aired before re-use.
“Oh, what a fiddle-face! What’s wrong with you, woman? Let’s have a smile now and then! Christmas is supposed to be a happy time!”
For a long moment she stared at him; then she let fall the blouse she was holding and rushed weeping from the room.
“Oh, well, if that’s how she feels …” Harry said with a shrug. “Here, Pat, give me some more Guinness, will you?”
Valentine Crawford stared dully at the screen of the TV, which was currently showing the Pope addressing a huge crowd of unemployed in Rome; banners bearing words he could understand even without speaking Italian bobbed over the people’s heads, demanding lavore and giustizia! The sound, of course, was not turned up. The room was crowded, and a record-player was blasting away, and people were dancing frantically and sometimes getting entangled in the. paper streamers that decorated, the ceiling, and in the kitchen next door the women were busy readying cold fried fish and sweet-potato pie and rum-and-Coke was flowing by the gallon, and he was thoroughly miserable in the midst of all the frenetic artificial gaiety.
“Val!” Suddenly materialising before him, Cissy, looking gorgeous in her best party-dress–all the more so because it had been last year’s best dress, too, and since then she had grown in some interesting places. “Don’t just sit dere, man, looking like someone done t’ief yo’ savings! Come an’ dance with me!”
–And don’t you come the island-talk with me. I know as well as you do you were born right here in England same as I was …
But that wasn’t fair. Faking a smile, he nodded and rose and later, for a while, he was able to join in the game of make-believe that everybody was sharing, the pretence that tomorrow everything would really be all right and it would be possible to walk down the street without buckra bastards spitting at your feet and buckra busies stopping and searching you on principle.
Not to mention buckra bitches accusing you of rape.
“Good news for you, Chief,” Sergeant Epton said as David Sawyer entered the office which they shared.
“Such as what?” Sawyer countered sourly. It was not quite as cold as it had been last week, but the sky was still shedding intermittent sleet, so that every time the wind did drop back below freezing-point the streets acquired a fresh glaze of ice, which was bound to lead to record accident-levels over Christmas …
–Christ, I think I’m going to resign one of these days. What’s on my score-card for this month? Mostly, the poor bastards I arrested at that orgy we raided. When I think of the stag-party we held for Inspector Hawker when he was getting married … But of course that was just after I joined, and things were different then. Better, maybe. Can the social climate really have turned over this quickly? Yes, I suppose it can. After all, it only took twenty years from Edwardian tea-gowns to flappers’ skirts, knee-high, and less than that from the “new look” to the minidress … We’re bounc
ing back and forth like table-tennis balls, free and easy one moment, scared of ourselves the next, and having to invoke Divine Law or some other outside principle to help us make our minds up. But I wish I could pick up some real villains! I wish they’d let me! I don’t want to be a monitor of private morals! I want to be a thief-taker, I want to see pushers and racketeers behind bars!
–And murderers.
“The Post murder,” Epton said. “You can relax over Christmas. It’s being looked after at top level, and they don’t want us involved any more.”
“What?”
Epton stared at him in surprise. “Chief, I thought you’d be pleased! I mean, it’s the first murder on our patch in nearly a year, isn’t it? A black mark on the map!” He pointed at the unsolved-crimes chart; it had sprouted even more coloured pins. “But now it’s no longer our pigeon.”
–The bastards!
Sawyer clenched his fists. It was one thing to call in the Yard murder squad; that was routine, and done even by provincial police forces, because Scotland Yard boasted the most experienced detectives in the country, whose advice was always welcome. It was something else again to write the local force out of a murder investigation completely, as though they were too incompetent to be involved.
But, aloud, he forced out, “Yes–yes, that does mean we shall have a better chance to enjoy Christmas.”
“It’s a load off my mind, anyway,” Epton grunted.
Sawyer hesitated. Suddenly he said, “Brian, tell me something. Who do you think did more harm in the world–Hitler, or Don Juan?”
“What?”
“You heard me!”
“Of course I did! But … Hitler or who?”
–Should have known better than to ask such a question of Brian, a pillar of his local Baptist church.
“Never mind.” Turning wearily away. “Merry Christmas!”
“Professor Kneller–Dr Randolph?” A smooth-voiced aide appearing at the door of the panelled anteroom where they had been required to wait. “The Home Secretary will see you now. If you would kindly come with me …?”
Randolph was doing his best to preserve a polite demeanour. After twenty minutes’ waiting, Kneller had abandoned all pretence Temperamentally he was the more irascible of the two, and now he was into his fifties he felt entitled.
However, he contrived a formal nod of acknowledgement as the Right Honourable Henry Charkall-Phelps, PC, MP, rose and accorded them a frosty greeting, followed by an invitation to sit down on lavishly padded leather chairs facing his broad desk. He was thin, with a pinched face and pursed lips, and his brown hair was receding towards his crown. He wore traditional City clothing, black jacket and pin-striped trousers. His tie too was black. The sole concession to ornament which he allowed himself was a Moral Pollution pin in gold on his left lapel, but even that was half the size of the regular kind.
He was not alone. Apart from the aide who had escorted Kneller and Randolph into the room, two other men were present. One was stout, with a ginger moustache, and even before he was introduced the visitors had recognised him from his pictures on TV and in the papers: Detective Chief Superintendent Owsley, assigned to head the investigation into Maurice Post’s death. The other, a man of about thirty-five with his hair cut short and his face almost aggressively cleanshaven, wore an RAF blazer and matching tie, and was identified merely as Dr Gifford, no explanation being given for his presence.
There were more nods.
“Well, gentlemen!” Charkall-Phelps planted his elbows on his desk and set his fingertips together. “While I regret having to call you here on the eve of the Christmas holiday–and would indeed myself far rather be at home with my family!–certain aspects of the case of your late colleague Dr Post’s tragic demise, which have been drawn to my attention, leave me no alternative course.” He looked severely at Kneller and Randolph, his manner that of a headmaster before whom two unruly pupils had been brought up for circulating a petition demanding his dismissal.
Kneller snorted. “Such as–?” he countered.
“Such as the fact that apparently you have been experimenting behind locked doors and in secret with a substance of wholly unknown potential!”
“Where better to keep such a substance than behind locked doors? And what’s the point of announcing it until we’ve studied its properties in detail?”
Randolph failed to stifle a chuckle; Kneller had scored a fine debating-point on the first exchange.
Charkall-Phelps was not amused. His narrow lips firmed into a dead straight line for a moment; then he rasped, “But you don’t deny that that’s what you’ve been doing! And what is more–what is far more–according to your own findings Dr Post was himself infected with this substance!”
“It’s quite true that we found traces of VC in his body at the post-mortem,” Kneller conceded after a brief hesitation.
“Is it not also true that he abstracted a quantity of the substance from your laboratory?” Charkall-Phelps persisted.
“If you’re referring to the capsules found near his body, they were very probably not the source of what we found in his tissues,” Kneller snapped. “Our best assumption is that owing to the volatility of the supportive medium in which we keep VC–”
“Professor!” Charkall-Phelps broke in. “I am not interested in your theorising. I am very interested in the safety of the public at large. It is a fact, and please don’t waste time by contradicting me, that both in Dr Post’s body and in his pocket a quantity of VC was taken from your laboratories and released to the world. There can be no repetition of any such–such oversight, to use the most tactful term. I might justifiably employ a stronger one. I might, for example, say that never before have I encountered such a blend of scientific arrogance and rash incompetence.”
Kneller turned perfectly white. “So you brought us here to pillory us, did you? I might have guessed, knowing how often at Moral Pollution meetings you’ve referred to people like us as blasphemous meddlers!”
“Professor, don’t attempt to make this a question of personalities. There’s a matter of principle at stake. While it’s true that ordinarily regulations governing research are administered through the Department of the Environment, they do have the force of law, and since the Home Office is the ministry the police come under, when it’s a crime as grave as murder which brings the facts to light it’s my plain duty to take action. I did not call you here to ‘pillory’ you, but to inform you that you are required to make your records available to Dr Gifford for study and evaluation!”
Randolph snapped his fingers. “Gifford! I thought you looked familiar! Are you S. G. W. Gifford? Porton Down Microbiological Research Centre?”
The man in the blazer inclined his head. “Formerly, yes. Currently I’m attached to the Home Office, of course.”
“But you have no authority to–!” Randolph was on his feet now.
“Dr Randolph, we have excellent grounds for intervening,” Charkall-Phelps cut in. “If you would cast your mind back to a certain contract you undertook for the Ministry of Defence, which involved techniques for mass-producing a novel type of antibiotic and which was financed by public funds …? Ah, I see you do recall it. Good. Then the matter is settled. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am very busy. Merry Christmas to you both!”
VIII
“Ruth! Ruth, that is you, I know! I recognise your breathing!”
The quiet words roused her from the pile of cushions she had used to improvise a bed. The room was in total darkness, because she had drawn the curtains tight against the cold outside; though the snow of last week had mostly given way to hail and sleet, it was still freezing hard every night.
“Malcolm! You finally woke up!” She snatched a robe around her and by touch located the switch that controlled the nearest light. Shaded to the point where it was not a shock to her eyes, it showed her his face as he rolled over in the bed: pale, unshaven, but visibly less tense than she knew her own to be. “How do you feel?”
> “I … I feel pretty good. Very relaxed. Very rested. But I’m starving hungry!”
And then in sudden astonishment: “But what the hell are you doing here, anyway?”
Rising, padding towards him barefoot and pausing only to turn on the electric heater, she parried, “That’s a good sign, anyhow.”
And, one step from his side, her self-control failed, and she fell forward on her knees, clutching at him.
“Malcolm, thank heaven you are all right! I’ve been so–so terrified!”
“What?” Raising himself on his elbow, he stared at her. “Why? I told you: I feel fine. I feel as though I’ve slept for days on end … Oh, lord.” With abrupt fearful realisation. “I have, haven’t I? I mean literally!”
Drawing back a fraction, she glanced at the bedside clock and nodded. “Yes, Malcolm. It’s now about five-twenty a.m. on December twenty-seventh.”
“I’ve slept clear through Christmas?” Appalled, he made to throw back the covers and jump from the bed; she caught his shoulders and made him lean back on the pillows again.
“You stay right where you are!” she ordered.
Yielding, seeming weak, he said, “But why aren’t you with your brother in Kent? That’s where you said you were going!”
“I … I decided not to go.” Shivering a little, she reached out one arm to turn the heater so that its blast of warmth came at her directly, but with her other hand maintained her grasp of him as though half afraid he might melt into the air.
“I can see that!” he retorted. “But when I flaked out I … Have you been looking after me all the time?”
“Billy spelled me. He didn’t have anywhere special to go. And if you’re worried about the scandal, there’s no need. Mary’s away, Len’s away, Reggie’s away … We’ve had the place to ourselves.”