And then that other voice. Softer than the rest. Different in tone and volume. Gentle even. But how had the gentle voice survived in the wilderness that was Mapel Street? Among the taunts and howls and bawling threats of mutual vengeance. The clubs, the bottles and the guns.
‘Give him to me. I’ll take care of him.’
He had never known who the woman was in those early days who had washed and fed and cared for him. Women had not lived long in Mapel Street in the twenty-fifties, nor men either. Had she also been a Prior, a bearer of the chromosome? How many Priors had there been at any one time anywhere? With him the strain would have died perhaps because it would have died with her also. Perhaps there had never been more than one in any generation anywhere in the world. Had she, a Mapel Street prostitute, known herself, for all the squalor of her life, unique? Sensed, as a Prior must do, that he, Ed Kale, was of her kind and needed life? Her care for a short while. Cared for until he was old enough to steal, to fight, to bludgeon his way to the top of any society in which an accident of birth had brought him?
She had gone, the first kind, gentle woman and there had been others after her. Fat and noisy, smelling of sweat and dirt, plying their trade for food and drink and drugs. Dying in the gutters, beaten down in the gang fights for territory, dying of anything, almost, except old age.
It had been like that in Downtown London in those days. Anarchy. Mob against mob. Gang against gang. Until he had grown to manhood and taken charge. It was said now that gangland London was better organized than its law-abiding counterpart across the Thames, the great automated mass-producing goose that laid the golden eggs. Banishing its misfits, its unemployed and unemployable, its unwanted sons to that other world across the river. Paying its tribute as the price of peace and waste-disposal of its human garbage.
In the old days, undisciplined mobs had been content with small, sporadic raids across the bridges, led by men whose heads were thicker than their cudgels. Looting the less prosperous, less well defended areas, short of arms, short of ammunition, short of everything but lice and vermin; scampering home when the Fuzz appeared in strength. No unity. No organization. No strong hand at the helm, wielding undisputed power. No one of the stature, mental and physical, rising from the blue-print of the Prior chromosome. Himself.
‘I’m king of the underworld!’ he said.
The girl on the couch yawned, and, reaching up, pulled at a strip of wall-paper, hanging, yellowed and mildewed above her head. It peeled downwards, the plaster adhering, leaving a patch of dusty concrete the size and shape of a man’s chest.
‘So what?’ she asked.
He swung to the couch and lifted her with one hand bodily by the nape of her smock. He thrust his beard against her face until all she could see of him was his deep-set eyes and the high arch of his thick-matted, jet-black brows.
‘I’m king of the underworld!’ he whispered.
‘O.K.!’ she said, ‘O.K.! O.K.! O.K.! So who’s saying you’re not? What you want me to do - cheer?’
He tossed her down on to the palliasse and stood, hands on hips, staring at her moodily, pleased at her easy composure and lack of fear of him. She was a China-doll girl and yet the pink and white of her was moulded sharp and positive along the jaw and the prim lines at her lips’ ends were etched more by severity than by smiles. She was small-breasted, short and slight, would have passed unnoticed in a crowd, but very decidedly, she was his girl. He turned and rested his elbows on the window ledge staring out through the broken panes over the crumbling sprawl of the downtown city below.
‘I’m bored,’ he said.
‘Yeah - aren’t we all?’
‘I’m boss,’ he said. ‘I’m the uncrowned head of all gangland south-London slums. Look at my empire! I hold the entire law-abiding north to ransom. I keep my vassals this side of the water and the clean-faced, faceless bastards over there pay me tribute. Danegeld, that’s what they pay me. And every ragged oaf in every mob is paid by me. More than they ever got by honest thieving and crooked murder before I took the job in hand. I’m boss, I tell you! I’m king! - But, Sal - it’s not enough. It’s small. It’s mean. It’s dirty. I want out, Sally Blunt! I want far away, far-off bigger things than this.’
He heard her laugh, low, soft, like a cat chuckling as it purred.
‘Cross the bridges,’ she said, ‘and they’d have your balls for breakfast. They’re them and we’re us. You’ve enough to do here, come the next palace revolution, the small-pox or the plague.’
‘The plague can take the lot of them,’ he growled. ‘There’s something out there - over there. Something I have to do - somewhere I have to go to.’
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Because I’m a Prior!’
* * * *
‘Oh my God!’ she yawned. ‘Not that again. Come you got to kill someone. Come you’re bored. Why? Because you’re a Prior. What’s a Prior? What is all this Prior business anyway?’
He wanted to tell her. He had never before tried to explain to anyone what only he and a handful of geneticists knew about himself and the giants of history and the human race. The origins of mankind. Moses, Alexander, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, Attila the Hun. The refracted chromosome, dominant with tiny stature - Hitler and Napoleon. The two divergent strains, the warrior and the meek and - dotted here and there in every age, the restless, alien Priors.
‘It’s like dogs,’ he told her. ‘You know about dogs?’
He leaned back against the window, turning the ball of his great, hairy fist in the horned palm of his hand, biting at the upturned tufts of his beard.
‘What about dogs?’
‘What we call a dog evolved from the two different species - the jackal and the wolf. They were quite unlike to start with; but in the end they became just dogs and unless you knew what to look for, you couldn’t tell them apart. The chow came from the jackal, the collie came from the wolf.’
‘Just fancy! And what’s that got to do with the rest of us? You came from a big hairy gorilla called Rastus and I came from a Persian cat?’
‘It’s got this to do with it. We, the human race, or, rather - you, the human race, - are just like the dogs. Everyone we now call people started off as two quite different things. The origins are still there in the genes. About a million years ago it was. Out of the basic stem, two quite separate primates evolved. One was a fierce, weapon bearing carnivore whilst the other was herbivorous, peaceable and got along quietly on his own. Australopithecus and Zijanthropus. We’ve got them now all over the world. The toughies and the mildies. Fortunately for the world, there’s a lot more mildies - the Y chromosome. 99 per cent of the world would never go to war if the 1 per cent factor didn’t lead them on to it. If you want to know which is which, spit in a man’s eye and you’ll find out. The X factor will kick you in the crotch and the Y will take out a clean white handkerchief, wish you good afternoon and call the Fuzz. The wolf and the jackal. Man and the otherman.’
‘You don’t say!’ she asked. ‘And which are you? A jackal or a wolf?’
‘Neither!’ He brought his fist and palm together with a crack like breaking bones. ‘I am what I am. At the time when both breeds of hominid were still half ape, the Priors came. Five men only. The Z factor in their chromosomes. One single ship, lost on its way among the stars. Four died on landing. One only survived. They worshipped him as God. He interbred and in the end he died. But all the Gods in all the world, all man’s ideas of God, stem from that one stranger from another, different place.’
‘What place?’ she asked.
‘Out there!’ he gestured wearily over the grey, smoke-laden sky. ‘Somewhere out there. I know the place. Every Prior must know the place. At least, he must know there is a place. There is no direction in a world than turns and a sun that moves. It’s there somewhere and not so very far away. We shall know it when the time comes.’
‘A million years, you said?’ She yawned, but there was a glimmer of interest in her eyes. �
�How little oaks from mighty acorns grow! Your oak seems a long time hatching.’
He threw himself down in a brown upholstered chair, the springs and canvas tape protruding through the slits. Head thrown back, he stared at her with his deep, black, eyes.
‘The Z factor is eternal,’ he said at last.
‘How many of you are there? And do they all look like you? God help them in their hour of need.’
‘There was one Prior among ten million hominids. Once the proportion may have been the same. Now, the strain is refracted, pure Priors come once in every generation at the most. Yes - they are like me. They must master or they die.’
‘Sounds like you need your chromosome right now.’
‘Would that be another revolution down below or have the Martians landed?’
* * * *
Two
She joined him at the window as the first shots rang out and puffs of concrete perwizzed from the walls and the last pane of glass shattered. The street below was filling from either end with two mobs having contrary objectives, whilst from the side alleys reinforcements joined whichever side happened to be passing at the time. Others, caught between the front lines, formed a third force of their own until it was impossible to tell which of the three was gaining the upper hand and less still, the direction in which any one at a given time was moving.
‘Mayhem,’ she said. ‘Just like the old days.’
‘Here they come!’
A group, breaking away from the main battleground headed for the block, the leader holding a sub-machine gun by the barrel and whirling it around his head like a copter at speed.
‘Who’s that?’ Kale said. ‘Do we know him?’
She lifted a rifle down from a nail in the wall and, sighting it along the window ledge, picked off three members of the party before they gained the entrance and passed out of sight into the building.
‘No.’ She shook her head. Tommy Murduck’ll be behind it whoever they are. Tommy’s been wanting a go at the imperial crown for some time now. Ever since he started to fancy me as imperial queen.
‘Shall I blast them when they come in or do you want them all to yourself?’
‘I’ll take them,’ he ordered. ‘I’ve a liking for bare hands when it comes to mutiny.’
‘Well, go easy on the heroics,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you dead. I never did fancy Murduck and its me he wants. That thick lip of his gets an erection every time he looks at me.’
The door burst open and the four survivors of the raiding party exploded into the room behind their leader, now with the machine gun under his arm and his finger on the trigger.
‘Right, Kale!’ he shouted. ‘This is for you, boy!’ He raised the barrel.
‘With that thing?’ Kale laughed. ‘Just try it! Look at the safety catch, Mac!’
The gun-toter dropped his eyes only for a second but it was long enough. The knife whistled and caught him in the throat. Before he could fall, Eddie Kale had charged, lifted him bodily as a battering ram and swept the other three against the wall. Two heads smashed together. The third man, falling, was kicked senseless before he could touch the ground. One by one, he carried them to the window and pitched them into the milling crowd below. There was suddenly complete silence as the opposing sides backed away, faces upturned towards the great bearded figure now straddling the sill and presenting himself as a target for anyone with the courage left to try his luck.
‘Good old Eddie!’ someone shouted.
One or two more took up the cry and soon they were all chanting the same slogan. Waving their cudgels and assorted weaponry they began to disperse. Backwards at first, like subjects leaving the presence of their king and then breaking into groups and disappearing up the side-alleys from whence they had come. In ten minutes the street was peaceable and deserted. Only an occasional cry rose from bands reforming in yards and courts behind distant walls to re-tell and re-live the excitement of the short-lived revolution.
‘Good old Eddie!’ the voices echoed.
A moan or a scream or two from the wounded left lying on the side-walks and then the comforting sound of organization and order returning. The crunching wheels of the dead carts, the cheerful voices of the attendants, Ed’s own private army come tidying the streets and wheeling the human garbage away for emptying in the Thames.
‘The fun’s over.’ She uncorked a bottle of Scotch and poured a good measure into two tumblers extracted from a pile of dishes in the sink. ‘I’d slit Tommy Murduck’s throat for this.’
‘Yep,’ he agreed. ‘You’re right about Tom. But I need him. He’s a good X chrom type. Notice he never showed his face although he’d stirred them all up behind the scenes? That’s the good old 21st century australopithecine. He’s good executive material and he’ll do as he’s told as long as I’m firmly in the saddle.’
‘What about me when you’re not in the saddle?’ she wanted to know.
He put his hands on her shoulders and ran his thumbs along the line of her jaw, smooth and straight above a long and slender neck. He slipped a finger over the pursed lips and tickled the upturned snub of her nose.
‘I’ll be around for a while yet,’ he promised her. ‘And if they wheel me away one day, you’re a good X chrom yourself. I wouldn’t be in Tommy Murduck’s shoes if you took to the small of his back for a target.’
Tommy Murduck was there in the doorway, short and squat, a Tommygun slung over his left shoulder and the stub of a cigar in his mouth. There was, Eddie noticed, a certain erect quality about his lip, tilting the cigar butt upwards like a chimpanzee dubiously exploring an under-ripe banana.
‘You O.K. then, boss? That’s fine. Just fine.’
‘I’ve got a mind,’ Eddie said. ‘I’ve got a mind to take that shooting piece and wrap it three times round your fat little neck.’
* * * *
‘But you ain’t going to,’ Tommy told him, sitting himself in a basket chair by the door and taking the gun carefully from his shoulder, barrel first, to avoid suspicion. ‘Because beating me up won’t do no more than let off your steam. And without me, who’ve you got to hold the fort any time you like to take a trip out into the great big world across the water?’
Eddie sat at the table, facing him, turning his glass thoughtfully in his hand. He felt Sal’s fingers on his shoulder and, without looking up, he raised his free hand and held them by the tips.
‘When would I be wanting to take a trip into the great big world?’
‘I dunno,’ Tommy’s eyes were sleepy under their thick, heavy lids. They were indeterminate eyes, he noticed, the whites yellowish and merging with the veined green of the iris. They seemed permanently averted and out of focus.
‘What’s on your mind?’ he asked sharply.
‘He’s up to something, Eddie,’ she whispered. ‘Slit his damn throat for him before it hatches.’
‘I thought,’ Tommy said, wearily, as if addressing a point on the floor half-way between them. ‘I thought you might be taking up the challenge. Of course, you’re quite right not to, if it’s right you’re not, but, knowing you, I thought it was likely in your line of country as you might say.’
‘Shut up Tommy!’ He felt her fingers tighten in his hand. “You’re heading for trouble!’
‘What challenge is this?’
‘Don’t tell him!’ she said. He knew, when she withdrew her hand sharply, she was going for the holster strapped to her thigh and he caught her wrist in time.
‘Go on, Tommy,’ he said.
‘Of course, you don’t read the papers, do you?’ Tom withdrew his cigar and stubbed it carefully on the arm of the chair, ‘You wouldn’t know about this flight to Barnard’s Star?’
‘Barnard’s Star!’ he repeated sharply. There was something stirring inside him. A yearning. The cold ice of moonlight on a river. A woman - the shape of a woman somewhere among the trees. A great void with no end but the distant shimmering of a single light.
‘I warn you, Tommy!’ Sal breat
hed. ‘I’ll kill you if you say a word more.’
Tommy Murduck ran a finger around the folds of his neck where they spread over the collar of his old khaki jacket. He lifted his head and his eyes looked in their direction; but still opaque, moist and out of focus.
‘The trouble with you, Ed, is,’ he said, ‘you’ve got too soft a spot for women. Do you want to know about Barnard’s Star, or is Sal the boss here? She’s got a lot to say for herself, has Sal.’
Eddie lunged across the room and swung him from the chair with both hands grasping the lapels of his coat. Thumping him against the wall, he held him, his short legs dangling a foot above the floor.
‘Anyone’s boss I say is boss,’ he said. ‘And if Sal wants to carve you up, Sal can carve you. No one spikes at Sal while I’m still breathing.’
‘O.K.,’ Murduck gasped. ‘O.K. - so I’ll be going. You don’t want to know. I thought you did, that’s all.’
New Writings in SF 29 - [Anthology] Page 5