Mutant 59

by Kit Pedler

  Back in the tunnel, the uniformed motorman was speaking into a telephone handset above a signal:

  ‘No, it was at green. Anyway the “train stop” bled the brakes – no, it worked all right – what, yeah, I’ll come up.’

  He replaced the receiver and trudged along the track towards the station, complaining to himself and scanning the thick cable leashes coursing along the tunnel wall sagging slightly between their supports. He stopped and sniffed, wrinkling his face in disgust. He peered again at the thick knotted wires and then his expression slowly changed to complete disbelief.

  In front of him, a section of the cables was covered by a glistening wet mass of multi-coloured viscous slime dripping slowly away on the track beneath. In some places bare copper gleamed red in the dim light, in others the slime was partly covered by a thin rind of wet foam undulating and writhing as the bubbles burst and reformed.

  For a minute he stood staring and then turned and ran stumbling back to the signal telephone.

  Holland sat in his office holding his stomach and wincing. On the table in front of him was a small bottle of white indigestion mixture and a glass of water. He poured some of the liquid into the water, stirred it with a pencil and drank it down with a single disgusted gulp. After a few seconds he belched and looked anxiously towards the open door to see whether his secretary had heard.

  The phone rang, he picked it up.

  ‘Hello, yes, oh, Slayter? Lionel, how are you? Bernard Holland here. Look, something important’s come up, I think it may have something to do with our problem. There’s been a signal failure in the tube – no – I’ll explain later. I wonder if – what – oh really – where – who did you say I know? Can you come over here right away – yes, I’m in the office – no reason why not – bring him along by all means – yes, as soon as you can – see you in about fifteen minutes.’ Holding the phone, he pressed the receiver rest down, let it go immediately and started to re-dial.

  Holland’s office was thick with tobacco smoke and empty coffee cups were stacked in a pile on a shelf. Myers was sitting on the window sill, sucking at an empty pipe. Slayter and Holland were intently listening to Gerrard: ‘Let’s recap, on what we’ve got.’ He tapped off the points with a finger on the palm of his hand:

  ‘First, we’ve got the Heathrow crash: a fuel monitor unit goes and we find insulation failed inside a metal box and there wasn’t enough heat to’ve burnt it off inside the box, right?’ The others nodded, listening cautiously.

  ‘Second,’ Gerrard pointed to Slayter, ‘you told us that a computer component failed in your traffic control system and again there was an incomprehensible insulation failure in one component.’

  Holland interrupted: ‘We don’t know that caused the road disaster.’

  ‘Irrelevant,’ said Myers, ‘I agree we don’t know whether it caused the mess, but we do know the component failed, correct?’

  Gerrard continued excitedly: ‘Exactly, we know it failed. Two units, two manufacturers, a common cause.’

  ‘No,’ Myers gestured with his pipe. ‘Don’t think there’s much mileage in that. You’re indulging in an “all dogs are mammals” argument, you can’t make the assumption …’

  Gerrard smiled: ‘I can always try …’

  Holland frowned impatiently: ‘Let me short cut what you’re getting at – Aminostyrene – you’re saying the plastic is the common factor, aren’t you?’

  Gerrard nodded: ‘So it’s long odds but …’

  Myers snorted: ‘No odds at all, circumstantial speculation – in any case, who ever heard of a plastic breaking down in that sort of way. Some of them get fatigued – plasticizers evaporate and they crack – but they don’t just disappear.’

  Gerrard persisted: ‘Supposing there was a change in Aminostyrene. Bear with me for a moment, a change which made it more heat sensitive.’

  Slayter cut in: ‘There wasn’t any fire in the computer failure, only in the air crash.’

  Myers lumbered to his feet, cracking his knuckles with impatience: ‘Of course! Dr Gerrard, we’re not going to get any more forward with this sort of Sherlock Holmes stuff – sorry, no disrespect – but we must try for a fact or two. You said your people were working on the robot. When can we expect some data?’

  ‘I’m going back now,’ Gerrard replied. ‘I should have something in a day or so …’ He broke off as the phone rang. Holland picked it up:

  ‘Hello, yes Holland here, who? Oh yes – I think I do, yes we met at the Army & Navy – yes – no I’m not alone, I’ve got Myers here from the Board of Trade – er, Slayter from MOT and a Dr Gerrard – what? – yes, Dr Gerrard, he’s representing a private consortium – the Kramer group.’

  There was a long pause as he listened intently, his face grave. The others were motionless, looking intently at his face for clues. Finally he said:

  ‘How much may I tell them at this stage – I see.’

  He looked at Gerrard directly, ‘Yes, I’ll cope with that – right, goodbye.’ He put the phone down, they could all feel his embarrassment.

  He spoke quickly: ‘Dr Gerrard, something very important has come up. I’m afraid we’ll have to stop our discussion.’

  Gerrard looked at his watch: ‘OK, I’m going. I’ll let you know as soon as we have anything.’

  ‘What’s going …’ Myers began. Holland waved him to silence.

  ‘Thank you very much for sparing us your time, Dr Gerrard, we’ll no doubt be in touch in a few days.’

  Gerrard started to say something but abandoned it, shook hands with each of them and went out. Holland immediately took charge.

  ‘That was Whiting on the phone – er – one thing I have to clear up, you’re both signatories of the Official Secrets Act obviously.’ They both nodded. ‘Well, our security ratings are being sent over to Admiralty now – it’s only a matter of form really – they need us over there right away.’

  ‘You wouldn’t tell us just what the hell is going on would you?’ Slayter said irritably.

  ‘I only know what he told me,’ Holland replied. ‘It appears that HMS Triton – our first Poseidon sub – has been lost with all hands somewhere west of Arran.’

  If you walk through the centre of Admiralty Arch, down the Mall towards Buckingham Palace, keeping to the centre of the road and, after you have gone approximately eighty yards, you stop in the centre of the road, you are, in fact, standing over one of the most secret rooms in the whole of Britain. Not standing directly on its ceiling because it is eighty-five feet below the surface of the road.

  To get to it, you go into an ornate mahogany and brass room in a nearby Admiralty office and present a rectangle of plastic to a rather asexually pretty secretary, who, after asking you to wait, takes the plastic sheet to a small data terminal in an adjoining room and allows a distant computer to paw over your personal properties, imprinted in ferromagnetic powder embedded in the plastic. Finally, after a few seconds, the teleprint to one side of the terminal clatters briefly, ejecting a short roll of paper with coded numbers with green flickering numeral groups on a read-out screen over the terminal and makes the initial decision to admit you or to reject you. She enjoys her job.

  If the computer tells her to admit you, she guides you with her expressionless charm to a dark wooden door and presses a button beside it, a light glows by the button and the door opens. Behind the door are two uniformed Naval Police and you are surprised to see that they are both armed and carrying respirators in bags over their shoulders. As they guide you through the door, the nineteenth-century charm of the office is at once replaced by the bare grey-painted concrete of the war industry. Ahead is a lift door.

  While you wait by the lift, there is a soundless flash of light beside a camera lens protruding from the wall at one side of the lift, recording your presence.

  Holland, Myers and Slayter had been taken down by Commodore Whiting who had arranged emergency computer check-out of their security clearance before their arrival.

 
Down below in the white painted corridor, their footsteps had made no sound on the shining rubber floor. Ahead of them was a large notice reading – ‘Vet card A holders only’.

  Beyond the guards by the notice, they had just been able to catch a glimpse of computers, massive control consoles and a great wall map, showing the oceans in white and the land masses in green.

  Whiting had politely diverted them before reaching the guards and they now sat in his office listening intently as he explained: ‘As you know, the Polaris and Poseidon fleets have a strict list of conditions under which they can break radio-silence while at sea. These are really confined to the weekly crew-to-family transmissions and a number of strategic conditions …’

  ‘What are they?’ Myers said.

  ‘Sorry,’ Whiting said, shaking his head ‘we work on the “need to know” basis here. Anyway, they aren’t strictly relevant.’ He stopped, a little put out by his own brusqueness. ‘Actually, it might surprise you to learn that there are some parts of this operation which I don’t know anything about myself – I have “no need to know”.’

  ‘So the fiendish enemy can’t pull your toe nails out and make you tell all,’ Myers joked.

  ‘Something like that,’ Whiting replied, but he didn’t smile.

  ‘To go on, Triton came through on an emergency low frequency we have reserved for …’

  ‘Certain strategic conditions,’ Slayter put in mildly.

  ‘Er – quite, she gave us a fix – in deep water west of Arran, she was at the end of her fifty-day cruise, going into Gareloch – due to dock the following morning, as a matter of fact, when we received a series of transmissions. I won’t bother you with the details, but briefly they reported a cascading series of failures. First in the hydrovane control system, then in the missile guidance onboard computers and finally in the control room itself. Apparently a fire broke out in the main navigation control console.’

  ‘Don’t quite follow,’ Holland said.

  ‘You will in a minute,’ Whiting went on. ‘The duty radio officer has a requirement to transmit to land base any system failures. Well, earlier in the day, he had reported a fault in the inertial navigation system – due, he said, and I quote: “to a number of control loops going on open circuit”.’

  Myers sat hunched in his chair. ‘Open circuit – I begin to see – insulation or switching failure!’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ Whiting continued. ‘He also gave a brief account of similar failures in the hydrovane controls and the missile range computers. The final transmissions are excessively unpleasant, there appears to have been considerable – er – confusion and panic, then nothing – nothing at all.’

  As he finished talking lamely, he looked slowly round almost seeking help. They were all imagining the sudden – rending – water-rushing death of 183 officers and men – the great steel hulk – an almost perfectly designed submarine microcosm of warmth and security, plummeting down through the dark cold water. The implosion of the hull round the nuclear pile and sixteen multiple warhead Poseidon missiles.

  For a long time nobody spoke. It was Myers who broke the silence: ‘Progressive control failure and then …’

  ‘Did the hull implode?’ Holland asked.

  ‘Not sure,’ Whiting replied. ‘We’ve three rescue vessels in the area, but it’s too deep for onboard rescue chutes to work and there’s a force-eight blowing at the moment. All we can do is to wait and take deep water radiation counts.’

  ‘Will you be able to get down?’ Holland asked.

  ‘Only with the Aluminaut and only if the weather eases off.’

  ‘There’s no hope?’

  ‘Almost none – no, none at all really,’ Whiting looked away. ‘Tony Marsden – the skipper … we were at Dartmouth together …’ He recovered his manner and went on: ‘I’ve heard about the possible mechanisms involved in the road disaster and also in the Heathrow crash.’ He nodded at Myers who replied testily:

  ‘I don’t know how the hell you managed …’

  Whiting was now fully in command: ‘Mr Myers, there is already full Cabinet involvement in this – I assure you – there are fully authorized channels for us to know. As I see it, we have insulation failure in Knightsbridge, at Heathrow and very probably on board Triton.’

  After five years of marriage, Anne Kramer realized that she was still in awe of her husband. In the early years of their courtship and marriage he had been like a friendly giant. In many ways he resembled her father, an austere man with a fierce but desiccated intellect, restlessly trapped in the colonial civil service.

  She had been in equal awe of Kramer since they first met, and the fact that this formidable intellect was actually fond of her and wanted to marry her, seemed in some way to make up for the past and reconcile her need for the remote dead figure of her father.

  During the first year they had been immensely happy. Kramer had turned all his energies towards her and their marriage, illuminating every corner of her existence with his imagination and filling her life completely. Then came the trip to Canada and immediately afterwards the creation of the Consultancy in London.

  The change had been gradual. At first it was the demands of work and she had been proud to share the load with him. Then, he had been proud of her interest and grateful for her help. They had created the structure of the group together. She had attended all the initial sessions making coffee, typing reports.

  She searched back in her mind to try and imagine the exact moment when the change had begun.

  She was lying in bed, the pain in her bruised shoulder now reduced to a dull throb. She had been waiting for Kramer to return home since seven o’clock. It was now 2 AM and there was no sign of him, no phone call, nothing. He had promised to return home early. They had planned a quiet dinner at a new Javanese restaurant and a late visit to the Players’ Theatre.

  It was not the first time. It had been the pattern of their life together for something like two years now, she reflected. But this was to have been an occasion; it was the anniversary of the first time they had met, under somewhat spectacular circumstances, in the hall of the old League of Nations in Geneva, both attending a scientific conference.

  When he did get back, she knew he would offer no explanation, no apology. His work came first and his work must never be questioned, nor must he.

  She had been trying to probe the point at which the Consultancy and, though she couldn’t quite say it clearly to herself, the marriage also had begun to lose its initial inspiration. Perhaps it was Wright and his plastic inventions. Until then they had been expecting an exciting but unprofitable future as a small nucleus of scientists thinking out global problems.

  They were all, it seemed, dedicated to the idea that science could work for people and not just be an isolated intellectual exercise. The impetus for the development of this new science – a science for people, had mainly come from Kramer, come from his deep erudition and philosophical wisdom.

  Now, almost overnight, the chance had come to make the group immensely profitable and the go-ahead concern it was today. Wright had joined them with his new plastic – Aminostyrene. Kramer had seized it as a chance to provide a solid financial base for their other ventures, but gradually the plastic research had overshadowed and choked off practically all the other work of the group. Now his new projects were almost entirely commercial. The new spirit of science, which had excited them all, had gone.

  That evening, waiting up for him, tired, aching and hungry, she had nerved herself to do something which she had never even contemplated before.

  She had gone into his study, opened his desk, the holy of holies, which even their cleaner was not allowed to touch, and had taken a letter from the top drawer. It was now under her pillow and for the last three hours she had been nerving herself to open it.

  She had recognized the writing. After Kramer’s last trip to Canada, there had been a flood of correspondence from various contacts, friends and acquaintances out there.
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br />   Gradually, as the months passed, these dwindled, leaving one persistent correspondent, a woman. The letters had continued for the last two years fairly regularly, and on one occasion, she had plucked up courage to ask him who they were from.

  He had laughed and told her that they were from a rather butch professor of chemistry at South Saskatchewan University, A very North American lady with powerful shoulders, and a voice like a bull moose in the rutting season. She had smiled and accepted this. They never showed curiosity about each other’s letters or private lives and Kramer had a vast correspondence from all over the world.

  Finally, the letters had started coming from various European capitals and, that morning, by the second post after Kramer had left, this one had arrived, postmarked Cambridge. And, that evening, feeling as guilty as Judas, she had taken it into the kitchen, carefully steamed open the flap and placed it open on the table ready to read.

  She could not bring herself to read it. She had sat there looking at it, occasionally pacing the room, but her sense of guilt was too strong. Finally, she had taken it to her bedroom and put it under the pillow. If he hadn’t got back by twelve o’clock, she told herself, she’d read it. Twelve o’clock had given place to one o’clock and the ultimatum had been lifted. Now it was two o’clock and still the letter remained unread.

  There was a slight noise downstairs in the living-room and she started up in bed twisting her shoulder slightly in the process. She listened intently in the darkened room, but the sound didn’t recur.

  They had a large overweight tom cat called Archimedes who still thought of himself as a slim young kitten seeking passage through various objects and ornaments quite unsuited to his middle age spread.

  It was probably him.

  She leant back in bed again, her shoulder aching intolerably. Suddenly, almost uncontrollably, she began to cry, feeling acutely sorry for herself. She felt alone and abandoned in the vast bed in the huge empty flat.