Snow White and the Giants

by J. T. McIntosh

  "And all we can do is wait?" Dina saicL

  "All we can do is wait."

  By this time the town must be surrounded by half the firemen in England, and no doubt some progress in fighting the dying fire was being made. Water turned to steam would be drawing off a lot of heat from the scorched ground.

  Was there a chance, I wondered, that we'd be saved anyway? If the firemen were able to fight their way into the ravaged town, if they got anywhere near the stasis, we might live, independent of Miranda and the giants.

  I found myself hoping desperately. I wanted to live. I wanted Dina to live, now that she had something to live for.

  My grandstanding had been sincere enough. For selfish and unselfish reasons, the issue for me had come down to the fate of Trinity Hall and the people in it. I at least half believed that the giants couldn't afford to avert the fire, that they couldn't openly fight it, showing themselves fighting it, that perhaps they really had done all they could by secretly saving a few score of people whose bodies would not be missed.

  But somebody could easily have given the alarm at Trinity Hall. A stone through a window -- failure of lights -- smoke through the ventilation -- a tap on a door -- and all those people could be saved. I didn't think Miranda's river of time would be too much disturbed.

  I hadn't told Miranda, perhaps I didn't know then, all my own reasons for digging in my heels on this one thing. The really fundamental one was my own feeling of responsibility.

  No, I hadn't started the fire. I hadn't been careless or inefficient or venal. I had simply done my job the way I was told and expected to do my job. Nothing had been falsified, nothing hidden. Even on Trinity Hall itself my conscience wes clear. Fire officers want to make sure, whatever the cost -- that's their job. Insurance managers don't want fires, don't want to have to pay out, but they have to accept. a calculated risk -- that's theirs. If there's no fire risk, there can be no fire insurance.

  Yet accident conceives and gives birth to blame. 'We know it happened: why did it happen?' Millions of stable doors have been slammed after horses have bolted. What really happened in the library, anyway? In detail, Miranda didn't know. Were the alarms severed or switched off -- or were the wires which operated them burned or shorted by the fire itself? Nobody knew better than me that ultimately every additional safety device meant something more that could go wrong.

  Trinity Hall represented my hope of mental peace. If that didn't happen, if because of me that didn't happen, I believed I could live with the rest. I could be blamed, and feel in my heart that blame was unjust. A car driver who kills a child may never be able to get it out of his mind -- but if he knows he was not at fault, he can live with it.

  If I'd been able to say to Miranda "save those people," and she'd said "why of course, Val," it would have been nothing.

  But I had to put up my own life. I valued it. I wanted it. I put up my stake, and I made sure I couldn't welch.

  If the Trinity Hall youngsters and old folks were saved, I could be saved.

  "That's funny," said Dina.

  I paid no attention, still wrapped in my thoughts.

  "It's getting light," she said.

  She was right and she was wrong. It was getting light, but it wasn't funny. Not when the stasis disappeared.

  It was Hell.

  Fierce heat swept across the village green. The fire outside, by comparison with what it had been, was a mere glow of dying embers.

  And yet . . .

  My bare flesh withstood the heat for a moment, until it dried and cracked. I could feel, or thought I could feel, my blood beginning to boil. My hair crawled and I felt it singeing.

  In those long seconds of burning to death we looked around, while we could still see, in instinctive search for an avenue of escape. Men have found themselves in front of oven doors opened by mistake . . . for them, even if they die, the chance of flight, of saving themselves, at least exists. The fire has a source and a direction. If the heat is lethal at seven feet it may not be at fourteen, fifty, two hundred. Escape is a possibility.

  But there was nowhere for us to go. The heat was all round us, The coolest place was and would continue to be where we were, practically in the center of what had recently been a haven in the conflagration.

  Dina's white blouse slowly, steadily, went brown.

  Greg, without regaining consciousness, writhed and twisted like a plastic doll thrown into an open fire.

  We screamed.

  We couldn't breathe. The fire was using up all the oxygen.

  Long before we died, we couldn't see.

  We could still feel.

  I'd have been lucky, after all, to die on my way through the flames with Greg. Jota had been lucky. Then, in the blinding heat of the fire at its height, death came instantly.

  Now it was slow, though no less sure.

  Slowly, but inexorably, I died.

  And came to life again. Of course. It was only to be expected. With Miranda and the giants around, death wasn't death and you could never be sure of life.

  I still knew all that had happened. I knew and would always know what it was like to burn to death in the mere backwash of a great fire.

  Now I was unburned, as I had once before been unkilled. The stasis was still in position. Dina's blouse was still white. And Greg was quietly snoring.

  Standing over me was Miranda, once more taking off her fire-suit. She had dropped another at her feet.

  "Loops," I said drunkenly, "are enough to make a man loop the loop."

  "I was ten minutes too late," Miranda said. "But this time I could do something about it." She had a small machine in her hand, like a transistor radio.

  "Thank you very much," I said. "Now we can go through the whole thing again. Became I'm still as determined -- "

  "It's done," said Miranda.

  It took me several seconds to realize what she meant.

  "Trinity Hail?" I said at last.

  She nodded. "They agreed . . . Your life is necessary, Val. Perhaps Dina's too, we don't know. You had to be saved, far more than Jota had to be saved. In his case we guessed, in yours we know . . . "

  "The people in the hall?" I said.

  She shrugged. "We cut the electric current. There was panic. One girl and one old man have broken arms. But they all got out. Now -- you have fifteen minutes."

  She could be lying, of course. She could be bluffing to get Dina and me away safely, quite powerless, once the giants removed themselves, to take the kind of action which could change the world. Once we saved ourselves, the chance of bargaining was gone.

  I didn't think Miranda herself would lie. But she might easily have been told to return and do what she was doing, say what she was saying.

  I started putting on one of the suits. Dina, with a slight shrug, did the same. Miranda sighed in relief.

  "We're going past Trinity Hail," I said. "If the bodies are still there, I'm coming right back."

  This didn't worry Miranda. "As you like."

  "You've got what you want?" I said. "You're satisfied?"

  "Yes."

  "You're sure?" I looked down at Greg, who had not moved.

  "Yes. In my world there's already a big change. The Gift has disappeared. We don't know about the neutrals -- maybe they're not needed any more. Now hurry up and -- "

  The suits were on and sealed. "We'll hurry," I said. "Because I need time to get back here and take off my suit if necessary."

  "Goodby, Val," said Miranda.

  She turned away. She didn't speak to Dina.

  I think at the last she was afraid, more afraid than she had ever been before, that something would happen to wrest success from her grasp. She had never really expected success, not with Greg a member of the party. Now she was a big winner, dazed, with the ticket in her hand, waiting for the result of an objection.

  I looked down at Greg thoughtfully. Though he had never done a thing to endear himself to me, I found myself rather sorry for him. I said so.


  "He'll have psychiatric treatment," Miranda said. "Before, he'd have refused it. Now he can't."

  "You think he'll adjust?"

  "Why not? He's only fourteen."

  I blinked. I had never directly asked how old the giants were. I knew Miranda was thirty, but she was their teacher.

  "And the others?" I said. "You said Greg was in a younger class, didn't you?"

  "No. I said he was in a lower class. He's not very bright, you know. The others are . . . they're twelve." She had not looked at me since she said goodby.

  And that was how I left her -- terrified to speak to me again, to meet my eyes, in case I should say or do something that would bring everything tumbling about her ears.

  She even forgot to tell me to bury the suits afterwards.

  Dina and I made our way back through the dying fire. Trinity Hall was not easy to find: there was no pile of charred skeletons there any more. But we found it. I was satisfied.

  We went past the castle and the dump. It was still pretty dark. Clear of the fire we took off our suits and buried them iu a piece of dirty sacking I found in the dump, beyond the fire area.

  Knowing something of the progress of the fire, the giants had chosen a quite perfect base for their doorway in time, the copse, and an equally perfect route to it. Even now, when there must be thousands of people round the ashpit that was Shuteley, we were able to walk out of the town and along the river to the copse without being seen . . . the only roads or tracks were from the town, and they petered out at the dump and at Castle Hill. We did see a small party of men in blue suits examining the blockage of the river, but we were easily able to keep out of their sight.

  So they were all little giants of twelve, I thought. Well, it wasn't really astonishing. Already in 1966 girls were developing at eleven instead of fourteen or fifteen, and at twelve they could be five feet six, 150 pounds and 39-24-37. Boys were slower, but that was coming too.

  Dina didn't talk, and I was glad. I'd been bludgeoned physically and mentally for forty hours or so, I'd killed a couple of people and been killed once myself. I'd been shaken figuratively until my teeth rattled.

  I had felt too much or too little in the last forty hours. I hadn't been a hero, I hadn't been a villain. I hadn't been very clever and I hadn't been very stupid.

  But I was, I hoped and believed, ending up rather better than I had started. I was far more the master of my fate.

  We took the route along the bank that the giants must have taken. But there was no longer a bridge, and the boat was on the other side.

  "We'll have to swim," I said.

  Dina started taking off her clothes.

  "No," I said. "We don't want to leave anything here."

  "I didn't mean to leave my clothes. I'll carry them."

  "Just swim across as you are, Dina," I said wearily.

  She paid no attention. She took off her blouse, skirt, nylons and shoes and folded them into a neat bundle which she held clear of the water as she slipped into the river.

  In my exhausted state I came very close to an angry outburst, but managed to check it. This was the new Dina. She used to do exactly as I told her. Now I'd have to get used to her thinking for herself.

  I had a bundle, too, the fire-suits.

  I should have buried them that night. I should have done a lot of other things too.

  I didn't do any of them. I simply took off my pants, dried myself and went to bed, not even bothering to find out what, if anything, Dina was doing, not thinking about Sheila beyond taking note that she hadn't been back at the house.

  An arm shook me firmly, insistently. I opened my eyes reluctantly. It was 10:30 on the bedside dock.

  Sitting on my bed was a large, middie-aged man I didn't know. Yet his face wasn't entirely unfamiliar.

  "Mr. Mathers," he said, "I'm Chief Constable Wilson.

  Sorry to disturb you like this, but it's important."

  "Sheila?" I exclaimed, sitting up quickly.

  "Your wife is quite all right, Mr. Mathers. Doing a grand job, in fact. And I've seen your sister. She didn't want to let me in, but I persuaded her."

  I swung my legs out of bed.

  My nakedness in some other summer might have slightly surprised Wilson. As it was, it was nothing out of the ordinary.

  I put on a dressing-gown. "What do you want?" I asked bluntly.

  "Forgive the intrusion," he said. "There isn't time to do things the usual way -- "

  "Never mind that," I said. "What do you want?"

  "I'm just getting the picture, Mr. Mathers. You know about the fire, of course?"

  "Yes."

  He pantomimed surprise, and I thought: This man knows something.

  "You did?" he said. "You might have slept right through it, out here. I've seen one or two fire service people, the police, of course, some of the people who escaped . . . "

  "And now you're seeing me."

  "Yes. You haven't been in touch with your company yet, have you?"

  "No."

  He didn't say anything about the fire being tragic, fantastic, incredible -- these things were said in the first few minutes and then the situation was taken for granted.

  "Well, first . . . I gather you were out of town at a roadhouse when the fire began. You returned and found some firemen at the New Bridge. You gave them some advice -- good advice, I believe -- and then your wife did some very useful work with homeless people. After that you disappeared for the rest of the night. What happened, Mr. Mathers?"

  Without warning I was faced with a choice I hadn't foreseen.

  All through I had believed Miranda, on the whole.

  And now I faced the beginning of a situation which might mean ruin for Sheila and me and our children. Miranda said it did. I was going to be blamed for everything. My kids were going to grow up wanting to pretend I wasn't their father.

  I'd saved two hundred people at the Trinity Hall, but nobody knew I had saved them.

  Chief Constable Wilson was not here to cast the first stone. He was simply, as he said, getting a first impression of what had happened. He had heard what happened at the New Bridge, and perhaps that was all he had heard. He might easily have called on me merely because I had shown some presence of mind, had given Sheila a useful job to do, and had then gone off on my own, possibly with a purpose . . .

  But this was the start.

  I did not, however, have to let things simply take their course. I could take events by the scruff of the neck. If I did, it might mean ruin for Miranda's world. Her river of time might be blasted into an entirely different course. It might not be the best thing for me either. Nevertheless . . .

  I opened a cupboard and took out the fire-suits. "Ever seen anything like these before?" I asked.

  The die was cast. After I showed Chief Constable Wilson the fire-suits, I couldn't have retreated if I'd wanted to. Certainly they were not impressive to look at, though the baffling way they adjusted to any human body and the still more baffling way in which they sealed and unsealed themselves without buttons or zips or adhesive would make anyone sit up and take notice. But sooner or later somebody would have tested them in a fire, and then a bigger fire, and would finally have discovered that in such suits, people could walk through a furnace.

  I didn't want to draw back. Neither did I make any effort to advance.

  In the next few hectic hours I talked to a lot of people, of increasing importance -- and I started with the chief constable of the county. I didn't see Sheila or Dina. Too many people wanted to ask me questions.

  I told them about Maggie Hobson, and was the first to tell them she was dead. (It took days, of course, before even a preliminary casualty list could be drawn up.) I wasn't really shifting blame from me to her; I was telling them what they were going to decide for themselves.

  I told them a few more things about the fire, things I could not possibly have known in any way they considered "rational." I did not admit, nor did I deny, that I had been in Shuteley while the
blaze was at its height. They could hardly make me tell them anything they refused to believe . . .

  About Miranda and the giants I preserved a reticence which ensured that the most improbable facts were reluctantly accepted instead of rejected out of hand. I told them nothing; I admitted a few things under pressure.