New Writings in SF 29 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Keith Bulmer

  Sidney Latham took in his situation at once and knew that it was not a simple one. He felt cross at first, and put upon; the fact that he had no recording device, not even pen and paper, weighed heavily. He collected pebbles from the path, fragments of grass, leaves, an acorn, and squirrelled them away in his pockets. He became uncomfortably aware of his clothes for the first time in years: ordinary gear, brown corduroy two-piece with a battle jacket. Old-fashioned according to Verity... but not old-fashioned enough.

  He stepped off the path into shadow as four horsemen rode in at the main gate; their combined noise and bulk had the impact of a juggernaut. Harness clashed; harsh accents cut the night air; an answering shout went up from the hall. A groom led a saddled horse within a metre of the tips of Professor Latham’s synthetic suede boots. A faint luminosity inside the hall ... how could they read in such a light... resolved into a blaze of torches on the steps.

  Half a dozen men and women came running up in the moonlight and stood at the very edge of the lawn. One old biddy was wiping her hands on her apron. With a curious fluttering in his solar plexus the Professor moved closer in the shadow. From the back of the little group of servants he saw a man vault into the saddle of his ghostly dapple-grey; then, to a burst of unintelligible cheering, the whole troop wheeled and moved off at a noisy trot.

  The lawn began to clear and the Professor strolled as calmly as he could to a round walk. He stared at the burnished face of the new sundial.

  ‘Sir?’

  He looked at the two children warily. The boy was younger than his sister and seemed to be wearing a nightshirt under his cloak. The girl, about twelve, said in a polite tone something that might have been:

  ‘Are you Glenster’s chaplain?’

  ‘No,’ said the Professor, firmly. ‘I am a wandering scholar.’

  The boy laughed out loud, presumably at his voice and accent, but his sister squeezed his hand. The boy said, trying to make amends and still in barely intelligible English:

  ‘M’fether’s declared fer Crummle.’

  The Professor laid a hand on the cold metal of the sundial.

  ‘For Crummle?’ he repeated. ‘I wish him ... er ... godspeed.’

  A lucky hit. The children beamed.

  ‘Sir...’ asked the girl suddenly. ‘How far off are the sun and moon?’

  All three of them raised their eyes to the heavens; the Professor stared at the moon, the virgin moon, with an acute sense of longing. Not even a camera to record the position of the stars.

  ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘the moon is...’

  He looked down again at these two innocent faces and discovered for the first time in his life a piece of knowledge which he dared not impart. The difficulties that hedged him in were hardly scientific ... social then? or psychological? He could not burden the children ... he could not, for the life of him, reel off the figures that were on the tip of his tongue.

  ‘The moon is much nearer than the sun,’ he temporized. ‘Do you know the shape of the world?’

  ‘It is a globe,’ said the boy. ‘Orbis mundi.’

  ‘Braggart!’ snapped the girl.

  ‘The moon is many thousands of miles away,’ said Professor Latham. ‘And some say ... some say that the sun is many millions of miles distant.’

  He could not swear that they understood his speech. A woman began calling from the front of the hall and as the children ran off across the new grass the Professor experienced a slight dizziness, as if the earth were moving under his feet.

  * * * *

  Six

  Verity had dozed off for a few minutes thinking of the tree, how smooth the trunk had been, a pinkish brown column, before it learned to differentiate. She heard footsteps in the courtyard, voices that penetrated her light sleep. She sat up in alarm and went to the window. A powerful flashlight played over the old espalier trees on the wall of the herbarium: Adamson and Charles Curthoys. She tried the door of her room and was not surprised to find it locked. Where was Ed Grey? What made him go along with Security and lock her door? She could not repress a surge of panic: Adamson had been carrying a hatchet.

  She went round the room with slow dexterity; her clothes and equipment had been stowed in five places. She went out hand over hand into the courtyard, then reeled in the grapnel. The western gardens were dark; she had only one difficult area to traverse - a sprint across the front of the hall. Now Verity ran from tree to tree, touching the bark, unable to control her anxiety. Beside the east wing she looked up, searching until she was quite sure of the location, under the balcony. She stood still, among the leaves, catching her breath. Are you there? Can you save yourself? There is a Security Alert... But the tree was gone.

  Verity stared up at the balcony, letting the seconds pass; she felt numb and foolish. Her panic had gone; she experienced a distinct sense of anti-climax, as if she had succeeded in proving some difficult proposition false instead of true. She was self-conscious: she saw herself standing in the old garden in her absurd green catsuit, hung with the accoutrements of a saboteur. A twig snapped, there was a distinct groan... a heavy body rustled the bushes close beside her.

  Verity could not move; the forces of gravity tugged at her ankles, her feet were firmly planted ... a woman turning into a tree.

  ‘Are you there?’

  She was hardly aware of speaking the words aloud.

  ‘Cold!’ said Ed Grey loudly in her ear. ‘Sensation of cold. Is that you? Soles of the feet sensitive, painful. Help me ... Ensnared with flowers I fall on grass.’

  Verity could not move; the forces of gravity tugged at her spread.

  ‘Ed...? Where are your clothes?’

  ‘Voice control is difficult.’ It was a whisper. ‘Is that you? You feel so warm.’

  She ran her hands deliberately over his shoulders, the strong neck muscles, the features of his face and his hair, softer than she remembered, more like squirrel fur. Verity experienced the confirmation of her hypothesis.

  ‘Shut your eyes,’ she ordered. ‘You’re safe. I’ll help you.’

  She pulled the eyelids down and played her pencil flashlight over his face, which was Ed Grey’s face, and on down, over his whole body.

  ‘I can see you,’ his eyelids fluttered. ‘The pupils are contracting.’

  ‘You have done very well,’ said Verity faintly. ‘Where’s Ed?’

  ‘Unconscious. Two metres away behind a bush with thorns.’

  ‘Is he hurt?’

  ‘His systems are functioning normally.’

  ‘Stay where you are...’

  ‘Wait!’

  The eyes were dark and glistening. She remembered how the squirrel learned to differentiate, how the tips of its ears became darker.

  ‘When I stand close to you I feel sensations of warmth and pleasure. They come from a region of the brain I am completing ...’

  ‘The pituitary?’ suggested Verity.

  ‘I begin to understand your poetry much better.’

  She disengaged herself gently and found Ed Grey lying in a foetal position behind a rosebush. He had a bump on the head but his systems were functioning normally. She found the magnum, the minicorder, the listening device; she shone the torch on his flushed, childishly handsome face. Ed Grey was a security agent. Verity could make nothing of his disloyalty. She removed his shoes, his socks and his track suit in the cause of science.

  She had a sense of false haste, slow motion. It was very difficult to dress another adult.

  We have to hurry. Now the other foot. Security men ... the robot... they’re out after you

  ‘Calm yourself.’ He laid a hand on her head.

  ‘Please!’ said Verity. ‘We don’t have much time.’

  ‘Time? All that we need. The others have too much.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Imagine a circle... Come, set me on a comfortable path.’

  She led him through the trees.

  ‘How shall we travel?’ he asked. ‘Where shall we go
?’

  ‘We’ll take Brewster’s Electra,’ said Verity. ‘I can fix the switches. We’ll go to the nearest Greenworld contact point and I’ll get through to H.Q. Unless Adamson...’

  ‘Brewster and Adamson are in the laboratory,’ he said. ‘They are marooned in the present. They dare not come out.’

  ‘But my father and Charles Curthoys... have you harmed them?’

  ‘By no means. Trust me. I’ll explain presently.’

  They came out on to the unclipped lawn beside the old sundial; the sky had been overcast but now the cloud was lifting. A few stars were to be seen. He took Verity’s hands with that smooth control which characterized all his movements.

  ‘Even long lives are precarious,’ he said. ‘Yet we must come. We insist on these experiences.’

  Verity could only stare at him and touch his face. He began to speak more softly:

  ‘My Love is of a birth as rare

  As ‘tis for object strange and high:

  It was begotten by despair

  Upon impossibility.’

  * * * *

  Seven

  The Professor woke Curthoys at four-thirty with a cup of tea. The two men were quite alone in the house; they were camping out in the laboratory. Hewbry Hall was entirely given over to ghosts and shadows: children, servants, Ed Grey in his underwear, Adamson rendered inarticulate.

  ‘This was the day?’ inquired Latham.

  ‘I’m positive,’ said Curthoys. ‘It has been a long six weeks.’

  He picked up a torch and nipped off, half-dressed, to the bathroom. The lab generators were shut down; operations at the hall had been suspended; the grants had not been renewed.

  The Professor drank his own tea at the work bench and listened to news broadcasts.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘No, yes ... not on our project,’ said the Old Man. ‘Verity and her people are in the news. Their new leader...’

  ‘Andrew Green.’

  ‘Green is flourishing unchecked,’ said the Professor. ‘Plastered all over the media.’

  ‘Even with the beard,’ said Curthoys, ‘he looks like Ed Grey.’

  ‘Why should we doubt that it is Ed Grey?’ rapped the Professor. ‘Infiltrating. Turning his coat. Grey was given a bad time by his masters following that alert. Where did he go from here?’

  ‘He flew home and dropped out,’ said Curthoys. “You know that Green is a different proposition.’

  ‘Green is a will-o-the-wisp!’ cried the Professor. ‘A walking hypothesis ...’

  He sighed.

  ‘I hope Verity is taking careful notes.’

  ‘Sidney... I’m certain there’s no danger...’

  ‘Don’t pester me, Charles!’ the Old Man shook his head. ‘My dilemma, insofar as I have one, is very ancient. How would you like your daughter to cohabit with one?’

  Time was getting on; Curthoys checked the pockets of his Macduff and handed the Professor a rucksack of spare clothing.

  ‘You had no problems refuelling the chopper?’

  ‘None,’ said the Professor. ‘Surveillance is at a standstill. NSO have lost interest since that monstrous shake-down.’

  ‘Tore the place to pieces,’ agreed Curthoys. ‘And there was poor Adamson ...’

  They were both silent, thinking of Adamson.

  ‘Brewster ...?’ asked the Old Man. ‘Where did you say again?’

  ‘Working a metal detector in the Channel tunnel,’ said Curthoys heavily. ‘The Dieppe passenger terminal.’

  They walked through the laboratory side by side.

  ‘Charles,’ said the Professor. ‘I want you to know that I’m extremely grateful. You withheld information ... made this excursion possible.’

  ‘It was a subjective experience,’ said Curthoys, pleased. ‘I told them I lost some hours. Suddenly found it was morning.’

  ‘But you knew ...’

  ‘Yes, I knew what day it was,’ said Curthoys. ‘And of course I made no mention of Jenkinson.’

  ‘Whoever it was...’ admitted the Professor,

  ‘At any rate he was driving to Littlemarsh.’

  The Professor took from his pocket a wrinkled, blackened object that could have been an acorn; he rolled it between his fingers.

  ‘These experiences...’ said the Professor. ‘These apparent experiences...’

  ‘You’ve never told me yours in any detail,’ said Curthoys, wryly.

  ‘I believe there is something didactic ... or do I mean hortatory... in each one.’

  ‘Littlemarsh completes the grid,’ said Curthoys.

  ‘With a slight adjustment.’

  ‘Any plans? If we do anticipate?’

  The Professor looked wildly at Curthoys.

  ‘We have nothing to lose!’ he said. ‘I am prepared to lie down at the very brink of the pit ... to obtain a further specimen.’

  He drew his eyebrows together.

  ‘How much this would have interested Adamson.’

  They shook hands in the vast, empty kitchen: Professor Latham set off up the back stairs towards the helipad on the roof. He turned back.

  ‘Positive about the day?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ said Curthoys. ‘I told you how it stuck in my mind.’

  ‘Of course. Happy Birthday, Charles.’

  Curthoys crossed the flagged courtyard and opened the squealing gate into the herbarium. He took a zigzag path over the sage lawn and a wet tree-branch caught him full in the face, raising his adrenalin. He opened the door and marched on angrily into the orchard. It had definitely turned cold. He dug his hands into the pockets of his Macduff and trudged through the trees. The sky was quite light now. He had to hurry... light growing in the sky... in the distance a solitary cock heralded the dawn.

  <>

  * * * *

  THE Z FACTOR

  Ernest Hill

  Eddie Kale might be king of the dumping ground that made democracy viable, a powerful and dangerous man in his own world; but that millennia-old chromosome, inherited from a mother he had seen flung onto the dead-cart, itched away at him demanding he fulfil a destiny never hatched on this Earth.

  * * * *

  Eddie Kale remembered the day he was born as clearly as yesterday. His mother had died in the street. A prostitute, of course. They had all been prostitutes in Mapel Street in those days. There had been some sort of a fight and he’d slipped into the world unnoticed whilst the mobs were loading their casualties on to handcarts and wheeling them away. He remembered lying among broken bottles on a wet sidewalk and a rough hand closing around him, lifting him, swinging him in the air. The cart was there with his late mother sprawled among the rest, her hair tousled and bloody and her legs hanging over the tail-board. He no longer knew how it was the memory of the cart was still with him nor how he had understood the voices that were part of the general noise. A melody on the orchestration of the screams. He knew.

  He knew with the certainty of all those with the Z factor in their chromosomes. The tall ones. The tall in stature and in intellect with antecedents not of this world. The Priors. The dominant strain from the beginning of men’s time on earth. The strange ones who must lead, dominate or die. He knew even at this moment of his birth that this was so. That he, muddied and blooded in the gutter an arm’s length from the dead-cart, carried in his blood-stream the Z factor from the Prior race. That he, unique among the bearers of the Y’s and X’s, was about to be extinguished. Tossed into the cart and wheeled away and that with him the strain would die. The hand and the arm moved and he heard again the woman’s voice.

  ‘It’s Bertha’s kid! Bertha’s popped her brat!’

  ‘You want him?’ the man with the big hand had asked.

  ‘Who? - Me? What would I want with Bertha’s brat? Got a room-full as it is.’