The Egg-Shaped Thing

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  “Tell me exactly.”

  “I can’t. I don’t know. It’s a feeling…I think partly because of how safe this flat of Tesh’s seems to be. It makes something inside me let up, and then it’s open to the primitive feeling of horror that it doesn’t usually have time to admit. Does that sound crazy?”

  “Not crazy.”

  “James, something’s building up. Isn’t it? Or can you say firmly that it’s not?”

  I felt useless. I hadn’t admitted it to myself but I was as scared as she was. I could think of no words that weren’t utter clichés, and because of this I did not try to utter them.

  She watched me carefully; and I thought that in some odd way she was reassured simply by my restraint. For she said: “I like the way you stand.”

  “I never felt more useless in my life. I don’t know any sweeping words of wisdom.”

  She came up to me, smiling. “I like the way you don’t say them.” And she held on to me tightly, for a moment. “I’ve found the clue to Tesh’s secret Other Self,” said Nicola. “Look!”

  She’s been going through the stack of records. The top dozen or so had titles which involved every possible combination of the general theme: Secret Songs for Lovers. Songs of Secret Love. Love and Song in Secret. You could go on for ever, and they did.

  Then suddenly, guiltily hidden away at the bottom of the stack, there they were: Gustav Holst’s The Planets; Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. I; Brahms’ Piano Trio in C Minor…

  “And,” said Nicola, as if she were a secretary for a Senate Committee acting on behalf of McCarthy himself, “miniature scores!”

  “The man’s found out,” I said, “and what’s more, these scores are quite carefully cued — in red ink!!”

  “Shall I phone the press and expose him?”

  “Yes, the blackguard! On the other hand, you’d better not,” I said. “The whole matter is much too serious…”

  It was the way she looked, just then; so gentle, so delicate…her fingers splayed-out so exquisitely across the record-sleeve she was busily studying…

  Bits only, of this…

  She: “Did you see what Tesh left in the kitchen?”

  “Dirty dishes?”

  “Something else, too, darling…”

  Her hand in mine, achingly responsive.

  “See?”

  They were primroses.

  I tried to say something smart about them. But my voice had gone soft. I hadn’t meant it to.

  She: “That’s the Brahms in you when you meant the Cole Porter.”

  “I refuse,” I said, “to be unfair on Cole Porter. And if he’d met you he would have written something wonderful. Something even more marvellous than In the Still of the Night…”

  “Which is like a hymn,” she said.

  “Which is like a hymn.”

  “You can’t afford to have a meal sent in.”

  “I know. But really I’m unspeakably corny. You see, people as beautiful as you don’t come into ordinary people’s lives. So I have to make myself less ordinary. Would it embarrass you if I said I had an inferiority complex?”

  “That’s not for you to decide, James. You’ve had too much of Muggard Road, and tin roofs and late buses and stale-smelling carpets…That’s why you want to order in food.”

  “And not only food! To complete my magic dream, there has to be champagne. Otherwise I won’t believe it…It would be something too remote, too unlike life. I’d wake up at the wrong moment, destroy with my cynicism, doubt with my endless row of defeats…”

  “I haven’t seen one single act on your part, or heard one single phrase, which makes me think you’re even capable of defeat.”

  “Don’t you know you’ve changed me?”

  “You’re frightening me, James. So much responsibility?”

  “No. Resurgence of strength. It’s different. Whatever you do, you’ve already assured it. That is what cannot be changed.”

  She: “But you’ll never forgive me.”

  “For what?”

  “For not saying: T think it’s time I went home’; for not saying: ‘We’ve only known each other a few days’; for not saying: ‘I’m not…”

  “Not a member of the clan of the McPhonies? Not a professional virgin? Not a bitch of a cock-teaser?”

  “And what,” asked Nicola, “would you have to apologize for?”

  “For being thoroughly bawdy when I should have been ethereal.”

  “You were ethereal by being bawdy.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m serious. Obviously you’ve worried all your life about being vulgar. Reluctant to use certain words, to do certain things in bed…wondering if all the time they might be kinky.” Her lips parted wide. She closed her eyes.

  Huge lashes, yet neat, exactly parallel, exquisitely precise in their dark belonging to each other.

  A sigh.

  Me: “What are you thinking?”

  “About dinner.”

  “I love you,” she said, “because you’re not good in bed. I couldn’t say that if you had an image. Images shatter.”

  “All the same,” I said, pouring wine, “I think you’d better explain that remark!”

  “I can, easily. The way you light a cigarette, for instance. It’s all wrong. There’s no decisive snap of a lighter, a faultless, first-time flame. The snip-snap! of a gold cigarette case. The pack was all crumpled, you strike your matches the wrong way…you make it all matter so little and mean so much. It’s the cigarette you want, not the impression you create. In bed, you’re somehow always leaning on the wrong elbow…In a funny way it makes me feel far wickeder than if it had all been cleverly done.”

  “No man can be clever,” I said, “with someone he desires so much. It’s like rowing toward a light, far out to sea. You’re not conscious of splashing the oars. You only know you cannot wait to arrive. Perfection on your part is meaningless because that which you seek is perfection itself and your means of achieving the journey cannot possibly compare.”

  “All the same, James, your boat is remarkably seaworthy!”

  “No. It’s you who make the waters so calm. I can do nothing, except pay my homage to your beauty. Don’t you see? The male has nothing to do. He is helpless in the presence of the woman he adores.”

  “Then you’ve learned to be simple.”

  “But how right you are to say that I’ve learned it. I’ve learned never to boast. That takes time. Lust does not exist. You see, I’ve grown out of the stallion complex, and now I am learning to adore. In fun, I dominate; in defence, I chasten; in truth, I worship.”

  “Darling James! — after that, why should I worry if you’d like to see me in a pair of boy’s pyjamas? I think it’s a delicious idea! But you must promise not to fight private fears; because I refuse to be a statistic for other peoples’ neurotic suspicions. You will buy me some; and you will tell the assistant who they’re for. And if she doesn’t understand, tell her to wear a pair for her husband to see her in. It’s the contrast, darling. You go tell Freud that!”

  “You have wicked, Eastern ideas,” I said.

  “It was you who had that one, darling.”

  “How sweet it was of Tesh,” said Nicola, “to think of the primroses.”

  “I shall now cover you in them.”

  “The funny thing is,” she said sleepily, “that’s the wickedest idea of all. I just can’t think of anything naughtier. Just to be covered in primroses.”

  Stage Three

  Chapter Eight

  Nicola was sound asleep when it began. I was not.

  Had I been in my own flat up at Trasgate there would have been yellowish street lighting coming through the gap where the curtains failed to meet. You pulled them hard, with an irritable flick of the wrist at the last moment and with luck the gap would be less than an inch. No such discrepancy flawed the curtain arrangements here: overlapped on their mono-railway, and operated with an urbane tug at the tassels at the end, Tesh’s curtains wor
ked with the efficiency of a front-cloth at the Palladium.

  So that there was only the luminous dial of my watch.

  It lay on the table on my side of the bed; and for one of those complicated reasons to do with perception, it was my ears — not my eyes — which were alerted. The ticking seemed to come in waves, growing louder and softer, as if deliberately attracting attention.

  I gazed for a while on the uncommunicative face. Thirty-one minutes past something. The ‘thirty-one’ part seemed significant. I had no idea why.

  A few inches from me, sweet-scented and curled embryo-like, lay the most adorable creature on earth. Yet I felt petrified by an unnamed fear. My eyes were not on the watch; but darted about the room in search of some embodiment of the terror that convulsed me. I could find none; until I slowly began to realize that at times I could see a great deal better than I should. The luminescence from my wristwatch was responsible.

  Pulsing, the ghostly greenish haze rose to a gaseous climax every five seconds or so, each crescendo slightly greater than the one before. On the first, I could make out the contour of the bedside lamp…next, the mirror-edge of the dressing-table…soon, the chrome door-lever.

  It took me some time before I realized a phone was ringing somewhere.

  Even longer to realize that the phone-rings were synchronized with the pulsing glow of that bewitched luminous dial.

  Whatever it was, the electromagnetic energy was linked to impulses coming along the phoneline.

  I managed to get the hell out of that bedroom without waking Nicola and made a dash for the phone. This was the normal one, next to the Stereo in the sitting-room. I yanked the receiver off the rest.

  “Tesh?” A girl’s voice. I thought I knew it, couldn’t place her for a moment. “Tesh?”

  “No, it’s James Fulbright. Who is this?”

  There was a sort of sob. “Oh, I…This is Daphne.”

  The girl in the Stook.

  “Where’s Tesh?” she demanded.

  “You won’t reach him just now,” I said, clumsily feeling about for a cigarette. “What the hell is the matter?”

  “Oh God! Tesh phoned me from the flat yesterday and…”

  “I’m afraid you can’t reach him just now.”

  “For Christ sake I must.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She wouldn’t answer this, but said suddenly: “You don’t sound the same.”

  “The same as what?”

  “As in the Stook. Your voice is racing. Going fast, somehow. Like a record running at the wrong speed…” She seemed confused, rambling. I couldn’t concentrate. If only she’d come up with some facts. But she wouldn’t listen to my questions, just seemed — desperately — to want to talk, so I let her. I had left my watch on the bedroom table — I was much more concerned with that.

  But I didn’t miss the bit about the road signs.

  “What sort of road signs?” I snapped.

  “‘No entry’ signs.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s a group of rocks and then the dead trees. But every lane is marked ‘no entry’. The place is cut off.”

  “What place?”

  She said: “I’ll tell Tesh. Not you.”

  Try as I might, I couldn’t tie her down.

  One thing I could see, however. If you want to wipe a place clean off the map, it is better by far to confuse people with one-way systems that don’t work than mark it a prohibited area.

  I was convinced, of course, that she was talking about Moorbridge.

  I said: “I’m going to phone Tesh immediately and have him call you back.”

  “Warn him Guy is here. And the others.”

  “What others?”

  Voices in the background now. She said: “They’re coming. I must hang up.”

  “Daphne! What’s the number?”

  But the line had gone dead.

  Without thinking I dashed back to the bedroom. Nicola stirred, but didn’t wake up.

  My wristwatch was still on the bedside table and though I had to get used to the darkness I thought that the glow had gone back to about normal.

  And this was when I should have guessed what I was up against; for the luminescence phenomenon, coupled as it was with something Daphne’s end of the phone, was in some ways analogous to Relativity — though totally out of context.

  Wherever Daphne was, the egg-shaped thing was — for that was the source of disturbance. There are no rocks or dead trees in Trasgate; but there would be in Cumberland, and that was where the K.L.K. lab was, across the valley (Tesh had said) from the old establishment at Moorbridge.

  What, then, was the egg doing? — and what was it going to do?

  If I’d really asked myself this question calmly I would have thought about the processes that make it possible for a luminous watch to glow in the dark and I should have pondered the statistical basis upon which radiation is released. I should then have asked myself an apparently nonsensical question. I should have asked this: if you toss a coin in the air, why shouldn’t it come down heads a thousand times in succession?

  Well it just doesn’t. Normally. Because of statistics.

  But what is a ‘statistic?’

  A ‘statistic’ is something you have figured out over a period of time.

  To be more exact, it is something that occurs in the spatial environment around us over a period of time, which you then subsequently analyse, in order to predict.

  If a hen lays twenty-one eggs over a period of six weeks you can calculate statistically that it should go on laying one egg every other day on average. Here you simply divide the number of days (forty-two) by the total number of eggs so far (twenty-one) and get the answer ‘two’ which means two days per egg — one egg every two days. On average.

  Uranium does not lay eggs; but it shoots out bits of itself and is therefore ‘radioactive’. On average, one lump always shoots out a significant number of bits in a given time, and over such a period we can measure its radioactivity.

  But the tossed coin, and the lump of uranium — and for that matter the luminous dial of my watch — behave like that if Time/Space is normal and no one has dented it.

  Why do they behave like that?

  They behave like that for absolutely no reason at all, except that’s the way things are.

  The way things are, a luminous watch does not give off bright green light in regular, throbbing pulses that synchronize with the telephone bell.

  But supposing that during the period you are observing it the Spacial environment gets bent, and the Time gets squashed-in or stretched-out?…I was to see this fantastic process virtually taking place, before long. For what Brundash and the rest had done, in their original experiment, was simply to change the way things were — and little had they realized the extent to which they had achieved it.

  *

  The events of the night were snowballing fast. After the incident with the wristwatch and Daphne’s call I had telephoned Tesh on the green Secrephone.

  Tesh confirmed my suspicion that they might somehow have taken the egg-shaped thing up to Moorbridge. “But how,” I asked, “did they get away from Trasgate without your knowing? Didn’t your security people know?”

  “I agree,” said Tesh, “they should have. There were enough of them there.”

  “Well, surely to God it’s easy enough to spot a bloody great van leaving a factory?”

  “Not,” said Tesh, “if the entire security guard happen to fall asleep at precisely the same time.”

  I said: “This is the wrong time of night for jokes.”

  “It’s no joke. The sleep was induced — statistically.”

  I thought this over carefully. “You’re saying they have a measure of control over the egg? — that at will they can cause a fluctuation in the law of averages on demand?”

  Tesh asked flatly: “Are you saying it’s impossible?”

  I said nothing to this.

  Tesh went on: “Davvitt and C
o. are clearly in a hell of a panic. They’re trying everything in succession and clearly they realize that whatever control they have over that thing is diminishing rapidly.”

  “But why go to Moorbridge?”

  “Because at the K.L.K. place up there they have the largest linear accelerator in Western Europe” — a linear accelerator is a machine for smashing atoms by the million.

  “Too bad I didn’t know,” I said sarcastically. Here was just another secret that made it incredibly difficult to plot possible events. I failed to see, though, just how the firing of a few billion protons could do them any good. I said: “It can’t work. They’re not thinking clearly. If the outside effects of that egg are statistical, then the resolution of the situation must lie in something you can calculate. If they’re trying to fire protons — say, for instance — at anti-protons, something of that sort, then the quantity fired would have to relate to the degree of disturbance. Yet in an accelerator you can’t guarantee how many direct hits you might score on particles billions of times smaller than the head of a pin.”

  “How on earth would you make a computation which would make sense out of a rearrangement of the laws of chance?”

  I said: “There must be some way of measuring it.”

  “Why? Just because you need something it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily there”

  I said: “But there’s something somewhere which we’ve left out! Must be! Whatever is contained inside the egg it can’t conceivably be responsible, as a source of power, for the events taking place at such long range. It must be reacting on something, and that something is reacting back on the egg.”

  “How did you arrive at that?”

  “By talking on the phone to Daphne,” I said. “Try it.”

  *

  He did. And I’ve seldom known a change in a man quite like it.

  He stammered: “Look, James. We’ve got to get there! I mean but fast!”

  “What happened?”

  He pulled himself up. “Something must have happened when you were on the phone to her, too. It did, didn’t it? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought it possible I might have imagined it. I wanted to check.”

  “Using me! Do you know what happened? — I got through all right…I mean the number started ringing the other end. I could hear the ringing tone.”