by Wayward
I sat on a horsehair chesterfield before the leaping flames, glad of the warmth of the open fire. I looked around at the books and maps that lined the walls, noting dozens of volumes on travel, natural history and horticulture.
Edward returned ten minutes later bearing a tray laden with Earl Grey in a bone china teapot and a plate of thick cheddar sandwiches.
We chatted as we ate. He asked about my work, the latest advances in the anti-malaria drugs we were producing and their efficacy in sub-Saharan Africa. He asked after the health of my mother, and smiled when I said that she was hale and hearty. We chatted amicably for a while, as if Edward were an old friend with whom I was reacquainting myself after an interval of mere months.
~
“You must be curious as to why I wrote to you,” said Edward.
He had suggested, after afternoon tea, that we take a turn around the grounds of Halford Hall.
Dusk was thickening in the west, with a deep cobalt following the cerise blaze of the sunset. The ground was iron hard underfoot and we strode along a rutted lane, our boots occasionally crunching into puddles paned with ice.
Edward still wore only his indoor tweeds, and carried a stick which he swung rather than leaned upon. For a man who had badly injured his leg at the age of twenty, he walked with hardly a limp. I cast the odd glance at his craggy profile, attempting to see it as the face of a seventy year old.
I nodded. “Just a little,” I said. “And curious about... what happened in Norway, too. And why you didn’t contact my mother.”
He turned his aquiline face to stare at me. “You didn’t tell Agatha about the letter?” he asked sternly.
“Of course not.”
“Good. It would only... complicate matters.”
We strode on. Shadowy spruce attended our hike like an honour guard. I cleared my throat and asked again, “What happened in Norway, Edward?”
He took a long breath. “I wouldn’t have done what I did unless I had the very best of reasons. I was aware, as I was organising my escape, that in doing so I would hurt – grievously hurt – a good many people, principally your mother. I gave thanks that my own parents had passed on.”
I stopped in the sunken lane and stared at him. He paused too and turned to me. I said, “You planned it. You said ‘escape’. But... but what on earth were you fleeing?”
He began walking again. I caught up with him. Gazing ahead like a sea captain staring down a storm, he said, “There were organisations which wished to take my life. I was better off dead, in their eyes – a state of affairs in which I had no desire to collude.”
I smiled at his antiquated terminology. “You make it sound like a spy thriller.”
He smiled at me. “It does sound rather melodramatic, doesn’t it? But there’s no other way it might be described. Certain parties wanted me dead, and the only way to elude them was to affect my disappearance.”
I allowed a few seconds to elapse as we paced onwards. “And might I ask why?”
“I possessed something which they would rather I did not possess, something which I’d taken to them hoping in my naivety they’d be able to use it to... to the advantage of all humankind.”
“If you don’t mind me saying, Edward, you’re talking in riddles.”
He raised his face to the skies and laughed. “No doubt I am,” he said. “But I will explain. Come, this way, and I’ll show you where it all started.”
And quick as a fox, before I could question him further, he stepped from the lane and slipped through the undergrowth which grew in profusion between the sentinel trees.
I followed, more than a little intrigued. He was striding ahead through woodland, perhaps managed at one time but now in disarray. Elm and spruce proliferated, with dense growth of fern and bramble packed between.
“Edward, would you mind telling me...” I said five minutes later, then stopped.
We had arrived at a clearing in the forest.
Edward had come prepared. He fished a torch from a pocket of his tweed jacket and played it around the clearing. I made out a patch of blackened forest which looked as if a great bonfire had scorched the land not long ago.
“When I was twenty,” he said, “I walked these woods regularly, managing the land, cropping the undergrowth.”
I stared at him. “Nineteen fifty,” I said. “The explosion...”
He stared at the blackened clearing, his gaze distant.
After a minute, he said, “I admire what you do at Equable-Pharm, Gordon. I like to think that altruism – something I too possessed in my twenties – runs in your blood as well. What greater work is there, on this benighted Earth, than to attempt to help one’s fellow man? And yet there are those who would work to thwart such aims.”
“Edward,” I said gently, “what happened?”
“I was walking here one morning, passing through the forest...” His voice shook. I sensed that he was emotionally fragile in those seconds, that looking into the past, and considering the incident which had maimed him, had roused demons more mental than physical.
“There was an explosion,” I said. “My mother said that you were experimenting.”
He waved this away. “A story concocted by my father to explain how I appeared, blood-covered, on his doorstep.”
I jumped to the obvious conclusion, “You can’t recall the events of that morning. The explosion, the trauma, affected your memory?”
“I recall every second of what happened. I recall who I met, what they said... But I couldn’t – and didn’t – breathe a word of it to anyone. Hence my father’s story of boyish experiments.”
“What did happen?”
He stepped further into the clearing, knelt and reached out to crumble to blacked soil between his fingers.
“I was visited by a miracle,” Edward said softly. He stood. “Come back to the house and I’ll show you.”
Without further hesitation he strode into the gathering gloom.
~
We entered the house through the front door and Edward led me across an echoing hallway that could have served as the set for a gothic horror film. Cobwebs festooned the high ceiling, and several balustrades were missing from the staircase that wound up from the dusty marble foyer.
“Through here,” he said, opening a small door at the far end of the hall. He switched on a light to reveal a tiny cubby hole from which stone steps descended into stygian gloom. An icy breeze emanated from below, piercing me.
“A miracle…?”
Silent, he led the way. We climbed down a narrow flight of stairs as worn as old butchers’ blocks. The cold intensified as we passed into the cellar. The temperature was much lower than that outside.
We came to a stone corridor and, our footsteps echoing, set off on what turned out to be a long trek. Dusty forty watt bulbs illuminated the gloom. A minute later I asked, “Edward, just where are you taking me?”
I reckoned that we were travelling at right angles to the façade of the house, and that by now we had walked to a point beyond the kitchen garden where I had met Edward two hours earlier.
He turned briefly and said, “To the ice garden, Gordon.”
“The ice garden?” I repeated.
At last we stopped before a timber door set into a stone wall. To one side of the door stood an incongruous coat-stand bearing two strange-looking garments: one-piece suits fashioned from a bulky, padded material.
Edward unhooked a suit and passed it to me. “Put this on. It’s cold in there. I could perhaps get away without using the refrigeration unit in winter, but not in summer and autumn.”
Wondering what on earth he was talking about, I took the suit and climbed into it. The front fastened with a big, old fashioned zip. Edward donned one identical in design to mine, though a couple of sizes larger.
He glanced at me, gave a crooked half-smile at my evident mystification, and turned a massive key in the lock. Placing his shoulder against the door, he eased it open.
Instan
tly a freezing wind whistled out, taking my breath away. I stepped back, shocked; it was as if he had opened a portal onto the North Pole.
He stepped inside and, cautiously, I followed.
I gave an involuntary gasp, and not merely at the lung-shrivelling cold that prevailed within the chamber.
We were in a vast subterranean room perhaps a hundred metres long by fifty wide. I looked up and saw a series of skylights in the ceiling. It was some seconds before I recognised the timber-framed skylights as the cloches which extended beyond the kitchen garden.
I dropped my gaze to what grew beneath this acreage of glass.
In ten long, raised beds, extending the length of the chamber, were hundreds… no, thousands, of squat silver-grey plants, each the size of a football. They were oblate, with lethal-looking spines protruding from their skins and topped by a ring of purple fronds like cilia.
I turned and stared at Edward. He was trying to hide a smile. “Have you ever beheld their like, Gordon?”
I shook my head. “No. No, of course not. What… just what are they?”
His gaze slipped from me and ranged across the plantation. “These plants are responsible for my being here today,” he said in hushed tones. “Or, rather, a derivative of the plants.”
In silence, side by side, we walked down an aisle between the raised beds. Aside from the intense cold, something else filled the air, an acrid, astringent aroma like a cross between gunpowder and cayenne pepper.
“It’s minus twenty down here,” Edward said. “The plants would tolerate a temperature no higher than zero. Believe me, in years gone by it has taxed all my ingenuity, as well as my finances, to maintain the requisite growing conditions.”
“You said that these plants, or a derivative of these plants, are responsible for you being here today. What on earth do you mean by that?”
Edward was silent for a time, his steely gaze taking in icy growths.
He turned to me and said. “Look at me, Gordon. What do you see? Do you see someone who is seventy years old?”
“I see someone I would guess is no older than forty.”
He nodded. “Just so. And it is these plants that maintain my relative youth. For the past forty-five years I have extracted a chemical from their sap, distilling it, and injecting it in monthly doses. The effects are quite remarkable. I have suffered not the slightest illness in all that time.”
I stared at him, wanting to believe his claim despite my natural scepticism, which counselled caution.
He went on, detailing the compounds he’d utilised, and I was taken aback by the authority with which he spoke.
“The plants are responsible for my extended life, no doubt, but they were almost the cause of my early demise.”
“The dosage...?” I began. “In the early days you experimented, almost got it wrong?”
He laughed at this. “Nothing of the sort,” he said. “My mistake was in trying to share the secret of my remarkable discovery with the world.”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Edward.”
“Once I had distilled the active compound,” he said, “and proved its efficacy, I decided that the world had to know of its remarkable properties. I was no fool, even at the tender age of twenty-five. I knew the dangers of giving the secret to just one drug company. I would be handing that business free rein to print money, to market the drug at exorbitant prices which only the rich might afford. So I contacted half a dozen of the biggest pharmaceutical concerns and laid before them my discovery.”
I said, “They could have gone into partnership, produced an elixir for all.” I stopped. “But of course they didn’t.”
“I was no fool, Gordon, but I was not wise enough to foresee quite what a hornet’s nest my discovery would stir up. I was not, then, cynical enough, perhaps, to fully estimate the degree of greed in the world.”
I murmured, “What happened?” knowing what his answer would be.
“In retrospect I can see that they would work to suppress the dissemination of the drug. It was a panacea, a cure if not for all our ills, then for many… If the compound was readily available, then the drug companies, with a vested interest in the ill-health of humanity, would stand to lose millions, billions. So…”
He paused.
I said, “So they arranged, between them, to have you… removed.”
He nodded, his lips compressed in a bitter expression. “They hired an assassin to shoot me dead in London. Only pure luck ensured my survival. A friend of mine, who worked in the pharmaceutical industry, got wind of their schemes and forewarned me of a second attempt, which is when I set about fabricating my disappearance. I effectively vanished in 1960, and returned to England only after many years.
“Since then I have worked to propagate my plants… I had but three specimens in the early days. I assumed a new identity and moved around the world, always living in cold climes, fearful of my life and even more fearful that I might lose my precious crop.
“Ten years ago I saw that Halford Hall was on the market, and since I was confident that my life was no longer in danger, I decided to return to my roots and set up this… the ice garden.”
A silence came between us while I digested his words. At last I asked, in a small voice, “And the reason you have contacted me now?”
It was a while before he replied. “The majority of humankind, the vast majority of the down-trodden, the have-nots, need our help, Gordon.” He turned to me, held up a hand to stay my words, and went on, “I have been taking a keen interest in your business. I have even taken the liberty of contacting friends and acquaintances of yours, building up, if you like, a dossier of your deeds, attempting to ascertain your character. I became convinced that you were the very person to approach on this… sensitive matter.”
I laughed nervously. “I don’t know what to say.”
He went on, “It will not be a smooth road. There will be opposition along the way. And the benefits of the drug itself will have their own, not wholly advantageous, ramifications. The dilemma of a growing population enjoying hitherto unknown good health…” He gestured. “But I am confident that these are problems which we, the human race, will overcome. I am an optimist, Gordon.”
My head swirled. I looked around for a place to sit down, and finding none sank onto my haunches. I looked up at Edward. “I don’t want to sound sceptical, but I’ll need to run some tests, to ensure to my own satisfaction the efficacy of…”
He interrupted, “I understand entirely, and wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“And I would need to have you undergo a comprehensive medical.”
He nodded again. “Of course, Gordon.”
I thought of something else, and said, “It is an elixir, Edward – but just how effective?”
He laughed. “It’s not an immortality serum, if that’s what you were wondering. I estimate that I might enjoy good health for another thirty or forty years.”
I considered his earlier words. “And as you say, it wouldn’t be a smooth road. There are those who would say that the last thing the world needs now is a wonder drug.”
He smiled at me. “But you are not one of those people, Gordon.”
I considered a world whose citizens need not fear the depredations of disease...
I stood up, taking a deep breath as I stared across the serried ranks of the ice garden.
“Of course, I need to know how you… how you came by these plants.” I stared at him. “Just where did they come from?”
“Ah, now that is another story in itself. But, as I said earlier, one which began out there in the woods, with the ‘explosion’, as my father would have it. I suggest I tell you over a drink, Gordon. Shall we adjourn to the house? I might not feel the cold quite as you do, but even so…”
We left the ice garden, climbed from our insulated suits, and retraced our steps back along the corridor. Minutes later we were in the library, thawing before the blazing fire.
~
Edw
ard poured two generous measures of single malt.
He said, “Do you believe in miracles, Gordon? Tell me, do you believe in fairies, or in beings from another dimension, or even…” he smiled at this, “… in aliens?”
I laughed. “After what you told me today...” I began.
He stared at me seriously. “Fifty years ago,” he said, “ I came upon a craft in the woods. I thought at first that it was a crashed plane, but on investigation...” He paused, then went on, “It was a fantastical device, a weird amalgam of metal and the biological, but badly damaged. In the wreckage I found a... a creature. A small being, hideously injured.”
Edward stared at me, as if daring me to disbelieve him, and his voice shook as he said, “It spoke to me, Gordon. God knows how it was able to, what with the extent of its injuries and the fact that it was... was not human. I have wondered since if it did indeed communicate with words, or if it somehow projected the sense of its thoughts directly into my head.” He waved this aside. “At any rate, it told me that it was a courier between the stars, and that its vehicle had malfunctioned. It urged me to rescue its cargo, and then stand well back while it detonated a charge that would erase all evidence of its arrival upon our planet. But before it did this, it relayed to me some of its cargo’s remarkable properties.”
He paused, his gaze distant, and then laughed. “I remonstrated with the creature, saying that if I could drag it from the wreckage and summon help... But it said that it was beyond salvation, and that its technology must not fall into the wrong hands. It was happy to bequeath the alandah, it said, but no more... So I found the frozen carry case in which the alandah were stored, and was in the process of dragging it through the woods when the remains of the star-craft exploded. I was unfortunate indeed that a shard of metal found my leg.”
He was interrupted by the shrill summons of my mobile.
“Excuse me one moment,” I said. Dazed, I rose from the chesterfield, paced to the far end of the library and took the call.
It was Danbridge. “Gordon...” He sounded breathless. “Sorry to beard you like this. I’ve just heard from Maltravers. They’re putting on the pressure.”