by John Creasey
He had never seen her face light up as it had when she had set eyes on Reggie Maddern.
There was a faint buzz and a green light showed in a panel by the side of his desk. He pressed a button on the side of the chair.
‘Yes?’
‘There are nineteen sheep station areas and two small towns, one in Queensland and one in Western Australia, where there are no reported pregnancies. One group of sheep stations is attended by the Flying Doctor service, and they have just been comparing notes.’
‘I see,’ Palfrey replied, gruffly. ‘What is the grand total of affected areas?’
‘One thousand and seventeen, sir, all rural, covering a total population of about three and a quarter million people,’ the man reported.
One thousand and seventeen areas were affected. My God! The plague was everywhere.
Three quarters of a million women at least must be affected.
All his anxiety, his disquiet, his fears, came back until his mind was in turmoil.
One thousand and seventeen . . .
Joyce was a long time bringing Maddern in – perhaps fifteen minutes hadn’t been long enough for him to have a bath and to get into a change of clothes. Palfrey, in this fresh mood of anxiety, veered his thoughts towards another aspect of the situation: the Press Release. Where had it come from? Obviously from someone who knew the truth, but not one of the Master’s men; he had been desperately anxious to keep the facts secret. Palfrey had little doubt that they had been waiting until there was a fait accompli: a worldwide situation against which there could be no defence. As it was, over a period of a few months in a thousand and seventeen different parts of the world, no woman had conceived.
But not a single report suggested that there had been continence; there was not the slightest hint of impotence among the men in the areas affected, according to test cases checked by general medical practitioners. The sex life of husbands and wives appeared to have been normal.
Who had released that report?
Very few people had the knowledge, of course. But several had, in Middlecombe – King, the Superintendent of Police, many of the council, Maddern.
Maddern . . .
Palfrey leaned over to a small, mobile filing cabinet and took out the file on Maddern. Since Palfrey had heard of the phenomenon he had had all the doctors screened, and although a few of them did not stand up well to the screening, Maddern did. He led a celibate life, too. Now and again he would go to the city and spend a few hours with a prostitute, but he had no regular association with any woman. His patients and his friends had implicit faith and trust in him. His hobbies were simple – reading, gardening, driving. He dabbled a little in archaeology but for the most part was dedicated to his work.
A flash thought passed through Palfrey’s mind: dedicated, as Joyce was dedicated?
The thought faded.
Since the television broadcast, Palfrey had detailed agents and consulted the Special Branch of the C.I.D. to investigate the source of the leakage. Early reports had proved that it had not been sent out by the South West Press Agency but the Agency’s paper had been used. That suggested someone in the Middlecombe area.
Maddern?
Or Simister? Or any one of the doctors who had been at that conference? How little had been known when he had first gone to Middlecombe!
He put Maddern’s file aside, noticing that it had been prepared by Joyce, and pushed the cabinet away as there came a tap at the door. Joyce came in with Maddern, and Palfrey was startled. Maddern was dressed in a suit which could have been made for him, was freshly shaven, his rather rebellious hair was fluffy and attractive after the ducking.
‘I lent him my hair-dryer,’ Joyce explained lightly. ‘I hope we haven’t been too long.’ She was flushed. Her grey eyes were very bright, and her pleasant features, unusually reserved in repose, were lit up by some inner fire he had never seen in her before. It was almost as if she were suddenly happy. Happy! Could they possibly know each other? Could strangers, meeting, have such an effect on one another? If she and Maddern were old friends, why hadn’t she told him so?
Joyce and Maddern together . . . Good Lord! Joyce Morgan and Reginald Maddern. Oh, it was fanciful but there was a curious similarity of sound in the names.
All this passed through his mind as he said, ‘Glad you took enough time—What will you have to drink, Reggie?—Are you sure—Coffee, then.’
‘I’ve ordered some,’ said Joyce.
‘Good. Very good.’ Palfrey was undoubtedly non-plussed by his own thoughts but he quickly disciplined himself. ‘I’ve seen a report of the attack on the helicopter,’ he went on. ‘And on your flight. A small, rocket-shaped aircraft got on your tail just west of Bath and followed you all the way. The same aircraft attacked you and then went off in an almost vertical path at very high speed.’
Maddern, sitting in a small armchair, said, ‘You had me followed?’
‘Of course.’
‘Could the attack have been stopped?’ Maddern demanded quite sharply.
‘I don’t see how it could,’ Palfrey began.
Maddern, speaking with a new kind of authority, asked as sharply, ‘You mean you wanted to have the other aircraft shadowed so much that you took a chance on it attacking the helicopter?’
‘That’s it,’ admitted Palfrey.
‘The pilot died,’ stated Maddern, flatly.
They sat in silence for a few moments, and Palfrey had a strange feeling that Joyce had ranged herself with Maddern. Physically, she was closer to the other man and was watching him, Palfrey. Could there be a slightly hostile expression in her eyes? Could she be disapproving of what he had done?
She had often disagreed, over the years.
She had disagreed today, feeling that the truth should be told; had Maddern really believed that, too?
‘Yes,’ Palfrey said at last. ‘The pilot was killed. You could have been, too. Every time I go outside this dungeon I am in acute danger. If one thinks in terms of the death of individuals in this business, one would go mad. We have a bigger, a much bigger problem on our hands than we dreamt, and we have to try to solve it. If we die in the attempt—’ He shrugged, smiling faintly. He put his right hand to his hair, but withdrew it quickly. Sometimes he became acutely conscious of this mannerism and determined to check it, but he never succeeded in checking it for long. ‘I asked you to come because I wanted you to know how far we’ve got. We’ve seen these capsules or rockets several times, now. Those we’ve captured have caught fire and been burnt right out. But reports keep coming in. I wanted to show you these headquarters to make you understand how fully we are equipped. To let you see and if necessary tell the Master about our strength and the fact that we now know that over a thousand areas are affected. Until you’d seen these headquarters you couldn’t have talked with any authority to the Master.’ He paused, only to go on, ‘Has Joyce told you how widespread this is?’
‘No,’ interposed Joyce, quickly. ‘Only that it’s much worse than we’d thought.’
‘Over a thousand places are affected,’ Palfrey repeated. ‘At the last count, one thousand and seventeen. And so far, there’s not the slightest indication how the affected areas were selected or how the effect was confined within certain boundaries.’
He stopped.
Gradually, an expression akin to horror crept into Maddern’s eyes. Joyce was startled but not shocked, but as the significance of Palfrey’s words struck home, Maddern was shocked . . . appalled.
They were sitting silently when an elderly woman came in with coffee, chocolate and plain biscuits, cream and sugar. She put the tray on to a table by Joyce’s side and went out. Neither Joyce nor Maddern appeared to notice it.
Slowly, Maddern asked, ‘Are they evenly distributed?’
‘There have been none reported from Moscow or any
of the iron curtain countries,’ Palfrey answered. ‘Otherwise, they are pretty evenly distributed.’
‘So they—they can contaminate any area?’ Maddern remarked huskily.
‘Yes. Undoubtedly a point they will rub in when they start talking terms,’ Palfrey said. ‘Reggie, the rocket or capsule which followed you was the first one we’ve seen in flight. Once we knew what it was, we had to try to follow it, no matter what the risk.’ When Maddern simply nodded, Palfrey went on, ‘Will you tell me again what Azran said?’
After a pause, Maddern repeated the story virtually word for word. Palfrey, the words of the tape recorder fresh in his mind, knew that there was little more than difference of emphasis and of phrase in the recital. Maddern didn’t repeat it as if he had learned the words off by heart; just as if it were recollection.
‘And you think we should let Azran go,’ Palfrey said.
‘Sap, it goes without saying,’ interpolated Joyce.
‘I certainly do,’ replied Maddern.
‘And you don’t think she should be followed?’
‘I feel even more sure of that, after the helicopter incident,’ answered Maddern. ‘Whoever followed would be observed. It would be a waste of time to try to prevent that. Whereas if Azran could talk to the man called the Master she might persuade him that everyone working against him isn’t necessarily a mortal enemy. And if she could persuade him to let me go to see him—’
‘Would you still go?’
‘Of course I would!’
‘Not forgetting what little chance there would be of coming back?’
‘You should know that wouldn’t affect me,’ said Maddern, irritably. ‘Palfrey, the main question is whether you will let Azran go without having her followed. I don’t want to hear all that nonsense about a great responsibility to mankind. Any word given under pressure can be broken at will. I—’ He broke off, as if searching for a phrase, and then clapped his hands together with a loud sound as he went on, ‘I’ve a strong feeling that she’s honest. That she has a sense of integrity as simple as a child’s. That if I were to make her a promise, and broke it, she would never forgive me. And I’ve a feeling, also, that she’s a friend.’
Then, he turned to Joyce and said one of the strangest things Palfrey had ever heard, and at this moment, totally unexpected.
‘It’s much the same as I feel with Joyce, here. I’d never met her until today, knew nothing about her, didn’t know she existed, but I feel that I’ve known her all my life and can trust her absolutely. Nothing would make me let her down, nothing would persuade me to let Azran down. If I promised she wouldn’t be followed but couldn’t be sure because of you, I’d tell her so.’
He fell silent, but he was leaning forward in his chair, as if beseechingly.
And Joyce leaned forward, too.
‘Let her go, Sap,’ she urged. ‘Let her go and don’t have her followed.’ When Palfrey did not immediately respond, she leaned forward and began to pour out coffee, matter of fact and yet very intent at the same time. ‘She comes and goes in a kind of space craft which we can’t follow no matter how we try. She may come in a rocket fired from the other side of the world, not from space, but we couldn’t follow that, either. If you let the girl go and keep faith with her, there is some kind of chance. If you don’t, there isn’t.’
She handed Palfrey his coffee and added, ‘Let her go, Sap. I beg you to.’
Chapter Fourteen
THE CLINIC
Palfrey thought: The simple truth is that the girl Azran is the only contact we have with the man she calls the Master, and if I let her go, we’ll lose all contact. On the other hand if I keep her, I might throw away any possibility of coming to terms. And he thought: Talk of coming to terms is all very well but I doubt if the Master intends to – this has all the hallmarks of an ultimatum of such overwhelming force that we can’t really reject it without disaster.
And letting Azran go might strengthen the slender thread of contact.
He studied the set faces in front of him, sensed a measure of condemnation in Joyce’s – in Joyce’s – and of despair in Maddern’s, for Maddern did not expect to have his way. From the beginning of this affair Palfrey had faced a choice in which the wrong decision could lead to disaster and he was facing the ultimate choice now.
Abruptly, he said, ‘We’ll let her go.’
Maddern sprang to his feet in obvious relief. Joyce actually moved across and kissed Palfrey on the cheek. Another change came to her, swift as light, a mood of unmistakable excitement. The idea that these two knew each other returned, in spite of Joyce’s explanation, and another thought followed, that whether they were old acquaintances or not, it would be a good thing for them to spend some time together.
‘The quicker we start, the better,’ Maddern enthused.
‘It certainly will be. Joyce, why don’t you go down to Middlecombe with him?’ Palfrey suggested.
There was no doubt at all of the pleasure in her eyes or the deep satisfaction in Maddern’s.
‘I’ll need twenty minutes to arrange the duty rota and to get a few things together,’ Joyce said. ‘I must fly!’
And she practically flew out of the room!
Palfrey and Maddern found themselves laughing. They did not sober until Palfrey took Maddern to the Operations Room, where reports were still coming in. Here, the full force of the danger struck savagely. The total number of areas now affected was one thousand and forty-one, and the places from which they came were shown with little redheaded pins on an enormous wall map. A small man with a big head brought a different report, ‘No trace at all of the unidentified craft which destroyed the helicopter, sir.’
‘I was afraid of that,’ Palfrey said, and thought: Letting Maddern go really seems the only hope.
As they stood by the giant computer a card came out of one of the mouths; the operator who picked it up said, ‘Kelepur, near Benares, India.’ Then his voice sharpened. ‘There’s been some trouble there, sir. A family planning clinic has been attacked and set on fire and the nurses in charge and all the staff have been killed.’
Lal Singh was an elderly doctor who had studied in Bombay under the British Raj. Even early in his life his experiences and his work harassed and troubled him and made him sick to the heart. For he lived, and brought up his small family, in the country town of Kelepur. In this almost exclusively Hindu area, the winters were blessedly cool, especially at night, but the summer heat was always to be dreaded.
What he most feared was the poverty, the near-famine, and the masses of children, many of whom were born to only a few years of gnawing hunger pains, each day their bony limbs and skeleton frames becoming thinner and thinner.
Kelepur was far, in miles, from any big city.
About a hundred miles to the north was the great city of Benares, on the sacred Ganges, where one might wash away sins and be blessed by the Gods, but where one could never heal the body. Few of the people of Kelepur had made the pilgrimage, but all longed to. The villagers sole diet was a little rice and some wheat, one scant meal a day, at most. They lived in tiny huts, not truly houses, in the shadow of the Palace of the Maharajah of Kelepur. There were several wells, each worked by men or boys and a donkey. There were sacred cows roaming the streets, there were Hindu Temples and a Buddhist shrine, and there was a market where everything the people needed could be bought or bartered for. The food, the gay cottons, the rare silks for the few wealthy, the alloy for their beautiful ornaments came from Benares, and the ebony for the local carvings came from Bengal.
And there were the carpets.
The Maharajah’s Palace had been converted into a carpet factory, where most of the women wove the wool and the goats’ hair and the cotton fibres into carpets of rare beauty and design. Kelepur carpets, once all hand woven, were now made partly on old-fashioned machines from Birmingh
am, in England, and from Russia. So there was some wealth, some trade in the district, for the sheep and the goats were reared locally, and a local cotton crop was used increasingly for clothing and sheeting for export to the West.
But for one thing, Kelepur could have been quite wealthy; certainly there would have been little poverty but for that one thing – the children.
They spawned, it seemed, as the minutes passed. Always babies and more babies and more babies still. The women who bore the children grew old in a generation. Their looks failed them and their flesh and their wombs wasted away. As soon as they could serve any purpose their children worked – at cotton picking, at wool-gathering, in the oven-hot factories, or tending the sheep and the goats.
And they died.
Once, Lal Singh took a census of the children and checked how many were alive a year later to the day. Of every hundred, sixty-nine survived. There was the great ghat where all bodies were burned and it seemed that the funeral pyre never really died. At times it was almost impossible to buy the wood with which to make the fire hot enough to burn the skeletal bodies.
The middle-aged and the old died too – often of starvation.
Many years ago, Lal Singh had said to himself, in tones of great despair, ‘If only there were not the children. Not so many children.’
One summer day an American doctor with a team of social workers spent a few days in Kelepur, and for the first time, Lal Singh heard of contraception. It seemed to him one of the most wonderful discoveries ever made by man. He was asked if he would help to run a clinic to teach the people about birth control, and gladly he accepted. First, he had to learn himself. Next, he had to overcome his own and his women nurses’ reluctance to discuss sex. Then he had to call a few men together and talk to them, while the nurses talked to the women.
Most of the women reacted in one way – with pure joy.
Most of the men reacted suspiciously.