Ken spoke as if this fantastic theory was perfectly natural.
'Do you mean,' I asked, 'that when the call goes through the dead twin somehow takes over?'
Ken laughed. He walked so fast it was hard to keep up with him.
'Ghoulies and ghosties?' he queried. 'Good Lord, no! There's nothing left of poor Penny but electric energy, still attached to her living twin. That's why Niki makes such a useful guinea-pig.'
He glanced across at me, smiling.
'When I go,' he said, 'Mac plans to tap my energy too. Don't ask me how. I just don't know. But he's welcome to have a crack at it.'
We went on walking. The sour smell of stagnant water rose from the marsh on either side of us. The wind strengthened, flattening the reeds. The tower of Saxmere loomed ahead, hard and black against a russet sky.
I had the voice production unit functioning to my satisfaction within the next few days. We fed it with tape, programmed in advance as we had done at A.E.L., but the vocabulary was more extensive, consisting of a call signal 'This is Charon speaking… this is Charon speaking…' followed by a series of numbers, spoken with great clarity. Then came questions, most of them quite simple, such as, 'Are you O.K.?' 'Does anything bother you?', proceeding to statements of fact like, 'You are not with us. You are at Thirlwall. It is two years back. Tell us what you see,' and so on. My job was to control the precision of the voice, the programme was Mac's responsibility, and, if the questions and statements appeared inane to me, doubtless they made sound sense to him.
On Friday he told me that he considered Charon was ready for use the next day, and Robbie and Ken were warned for eleven a.m. Mac himself would be at the controls, and I was to watch. In the light of what I had already witnessed, I should have been fully prepared for what happened. Oddly enough, I was not. I took up my station in the adjoining lab, while Ken stretched himself out on the operating-table.
It's all right,' he said to me with a wink. 'Robbie isn't going to carve me up.'
There was a microphone in position above his head, with a lead going through to Charon 1. A yellow light for 'Stand-by' flashed on the wall. It changed to red. I saw Ken close his eyes. Then a voice came front Charon. 'This is Charon speaking…
This is Charon speaking.' The series of numbers followed, and, after a pause, the question, 'Are you O.K.?'
When Ken replied, 'Yes, I'm O.K.' I noticed that his voice lacked its usual buoyancy; it was flatter, pitched in a lower key. I glanced at Robbie; he handed me a slip of paper on which were written the words, 'He's under hypnosis'.
The penny dropped, and I realised for the first time the full importance of the sound unit and the reason for perfecting it. Ken had been conditioned to hypnosis by the electronic voice. The questions on the programme were not haphazard, they were taped for him. The implications of this were even more shocking to me than when I had seen the dog and the child obey the call signal from a distance. When Ken, jokingly, had spoken of 'going to work', this was what he had meant.
'Does anything bother you?' asked the voice.
There was a long pause before the answer, and when it came the tone was impatient, almost fretful.
'It's the hanging about. I want it to happen quickly. If it could be over and done with, then I wouldn't give a damn.'
I might have been standing by a confessional, and I understood now why my predecessor had turned in his job. I saw Robbie's eyes upon me; the demonstration had been staged not only to show Ken's co-operation under hypnosis, proved no doubt dozens of times already, but to test my nerve. The ordeal continued. Much of what Ken said made painful hearing. I don't want to repeat it here. It revealed the unconscious strain under which he lived, never outwardly apparent either to us or to himself.
The programme Mac used was not one I had heard before, and it ended with the words, 'You'll be all right, Ken. You aren't alone. We're with you every step of the way. O.K.?'
A faint smile passed over the quiet face.
'O.K.'
Then the numbers were repeated, in swifter sequence, ending with the words 'Wake up, Ken!'
The boy stretched himself, opened his eyes and sat up. He looked first at Robbie, then at me, and grinned.
'Did old Charon do his stuff?' he asked.
'One hundred per cent,' I answered, my voice falsely hearty. Ken slid off the operating table, his work for the morning done. I went through to Mac, standing by the controls.
'Thanks, Steve,' he said. 'You can appreciate the necessity for Charon 1 now. An electronic voice, plus a planned programme, eliminates emotion on our part, which will be essential when the time comes. That's the reason Ken has been conditioned to the machine. He responds very well. But better, of course, if the child is with him.'
'The child'?' I repeated.
'Yes,' he answered. 'Niki is an essential part of the experiment. She is conditioned to the voice too, and the pair of them chat away together as gay as crickets. They know nothing about it afterwards, naturally.' He paused, watching me closely as Robbie had done. 'Ken will almost certainly go into coma at the end. The child will be our only link with him then. Now, I suggest you borrow a car, drive into Thirlwall and buy yourself a drink.'
He turned away, craggy, imperturbable, suggesting a benevolent bird of prey.
I didn't go into Thirlwall. I walked out across the sand-dunes to the sea. There was nothing calm about it today. Turbulent and grey, it sank into troughs before breaking on the shingle with a roar. Miles away along the beach a group of U.S. Air Corps cadets were practising bugle calls. The shrill notes, the discordant sounds, drove towards me down the wind. For no reason at all the half-forgotten lines of a Negro spiritual kept repeating themselves over and over in my mind.
'He has the whole world in his hands,
He has the whole world in his hands…'
The demonstration was repeated, with varying programmes, every three days during the weeks that followed. Mac and I took it in turn at the controls. I soon grew accustomed to this, and the bizarre sessions became a matter of routine.
It was, as Mac had said, less painful when the child was present. Her father would bring her to the lab and leave her with us, Ken already in position and under control. The child would sit in a chair beside him, also with a microphone above her head to record her speech. She was told that Ken was asleep. Then, in her turn, she would receive the signal from Charon, and a different series of numbers from Ken's, after which she would be under control. The programme was different when the two were working together. Charon would take Ken back in time, to a period when he was the same age as Niki, saying, 'You are seven years old. Niki has come to play with you. She is your friend,' and a similar message would be given to the child, 'Ken has come to play with you. He is a boy of your age.'
The two would then chat together, without interruption from Charon, with the quite fantastic result-this had been built up during the past months, I gathered-that the pair were now close friends 'in time', hiding nothing from each other, playing imaginary games, exchanging ideas. Niki, backward and morose when conscious, was lively and gay under control. The taped conversations were checked after each session, to record the increasingly closer rapport between the two, and to act as guide for further programmes. Ken, when conscious, looked upon Niki as Janus's backward child, a sad little object of no interest. He was totally ignorant of what happened when under control. I was not so sure about Niki. Intuition seemed to draw her to him She would hang about him, if given the chance.
I asked Robbie what the Janus parents felt about the sessions. 'They'd do anything for Mac,' he told me, 'and they believe it may help Niki. The other twin was normal, you see.'
'Do they realise about Ken?'
'That he's going to die?' replied Robbie. 'They've been told, but I doubt if they understand. Who would, looking at him now?'
We were at the bar, and from where we stood we could see Ken and Mac engaged in a game of ping-pong in the room beyond.
Early in December
we had a scare. A letter came from the Ministry asking how the Saxmere experiments were going, and could they send someone down to have a look round? We had a consultation, the upshot of which was that I undertook to go up to London to choke them off. By this time I was wholeheartedly behind Mac in all he was doing, and during my brief stay in town I succeeded in satisfying the authorities in question that a visit at this moment would be premature, but we hoped to have something to show them before Christmas. Their interest, of course, lay in Charon 2's potentialities for blast; they knew nothing of Mac's intended project.
When I returned, alighting at Saxmere station in a very different mood from that of three months past, the Morris was waiting for me, but without Ken's cheerful face at the wheel. Janus had replaced him. He was never a talkative bloke, and he answered my question with a shrug.
'Ken's got a cold,' he said. 'Robbie's keeping him in bed as a precaution.'
I went straight to the boy's room on arrival. He looked a bit flushed, but was in his usual spirits, full of protests against Robbie.
'There's absolutely nothing the matter,' he said. 'I got wet feet stalking a bird down in the marsh.'
I sat with him awhile, joking about London and the Ministry, then went to report to Mac.
'Ken has some fever,' he said at once. 'Robbie's done a blood test. It's not too good.' He paused. 'This could be it.'
I felt suddenly chilled. After a moment I told him about London. He nodded briefly.
'Whatever happens,' he said, 'we can't have them here now.'
I found Robbie in the lab, busy with slides and a microscope. He was preoccupied, and hadn't much time for me.
'It's too soon to say yet,' he said. 'Another forty-eight hours should show one way or the other. There's an infection in the right lung. With leukaemia that could be fatal. Go and keep Ken amused.'
I took a portable gramophone along to the boy's bedroom. I suppose I put on about a dozen records, and he seemed quite cheerful. Later he dozed off and I sat there, wondering what to do. My mouth felt dry, and I kept swallowing. Something inside me kept saying, 'Don't let it happen.'
Conversation at dinner was forced. Mac talked about undergraduate days at Cambridge, while Robbie reminisced over past Rugby games-he'd played scrum-half for Guy's. I don't think I talked at all. I went along afterwards to say goodnight to Ken, but he was already asleep. Janus was sitting with him. Back in my room I flung myself on my bed and tried to read, but I couldn't concentrate. There was fog at sea, and every few minutes the fog-horn boomed from the lighthouse along the coast. There was no other sound.
Next morning Mac came to my room at a quarter to eight. 'Ken's worse,' he said. Robbie's going to try a blood transfusion. Janus will assist.' Janus was a trained orderly.
'What do you want me to do?' I asked.
'Help me get Charons 1 and 3 ready for action,' he said. 'If Ken doesn't respond, I may decide to put phase one of Operation Styx into effect. Mrs J. has been warned we may need the child.'
As I finished dressing I kept telling myself that this was the moment we had been training for all through the past two and a half months. It didn't help. I swallowed some coffee and went to the control room. The door to the lab was closed. They had Ken in there, giving him the blood transfusion. Mac and I worked over both Charons, seeing that everything functioned perfectly, and that there could be no hitch when the time came. Programmes, tapes, microphones, all were ready. After that it was a matter of standing by until Robbie came through with his report. We got it at about half-past twelve.
'Slight improvement.' They had taken him back to his room. We all had something to eat while Janus continued his watch over Ken. Today there was no question of forced conversation. The work on hand was the concern of all. I felt calmer, steadier. The morning's work had knocked me into shape. Mac proposed a game of ping-pong after lunch, and whereas the night before I would have felt aghast at the suggestion, today it seemed the right thing to do. Looking from the window, between games, I saw Niki wandering up and down with Mrs Janus, a strange, lost-looking little figure, filling a battered doll's pram with sticks and stones. She had been on the premises since ten o'clock.
At half-past four Robbie came into the sports-room. I could tell by his face that it was no good. He shook his head when Mac suggested another transfusion. It would be a waste of time, he told us.
'He's conscious?' asked Mac.
'Yes,' answered Robbie. 'I'll bring him through when you're ready.'
Mac and I went back to the control room. Phase two of Operation Styx consisted of bringing the operating table in here, placing it between the three Charons, and connecting up with an oxygen unit alongside. The microphones were already in position. We had done the manoeuvre often before, in practice runs, but today we beat our fastest time by two minutes.
'Good work,' said Mac.
The thought struck me that he had been looking forward to this moment for months, perhaps for years. He pressed the button to signal that we were ready, and in less than four minutes Robbie and Janus arrived with Ken on the trolley, and lifted him on to the table. I hardly recognised him. The eyes, usually so luminous, had almost disappeared into the sunken face. He looked bewildered. Mac quickly attached electrodes, one against each temple and others to his chest and neck, connecting him to Charon 3. Then he bent over the boy.
'It's all right,' he said. 'We've got you in the lab to do a few tests. Just relax, and you'll be fine.'
Ken stared up at Mac, and then he smiled. We all knew that this was the last we should see of his conscious self. It was, in fact, goodbye. Mac looked at me, and I put Charon 1 into operation, the voice ringing clear and true. 'This is Charon calling… This is Charon calling…' Ken closed his eyes. He was under hypnosis. Robbie stood beside him, finger on pulse. I set the programme in motion. We had numbered it X in the files, because it was different from the others.
'How do you feel, Ken?'
Even with the microphone close to his lips we could barely hear the answer. 'You know damn well how I feel.'
'Where are you, Ken?'
'I'm in the control room. Robbie's turned the heating off. I've got the idea now. It's to freeze me, like butcher's meat. Ask Robbie to bring back the heat…' There was a long pause, and then he said, 'I'm standing by a tunnel. It looks like a tunnel. It could be the wrong end of a telescope. the figures look so small… Tell Robbie to bring back the heat.'
Mac, who was beside me at the controls, made an adjustment, and we let the programme run without sound until it reached a certain point, when it was amplified once more to reach Ken.
'You are five years old, Ken. Tell us how you feel.'
There was a long pause and then, to my dismay, though I suppose I should have been prepared for it, Ken whimpered, 'I don't feel well. I don't want to play.'
Mac pressed a button, and the door at the far end opened. Janus pushed his daughter into the room, then closed the door again. Mac had her under control with her call-sign at once, and she did not see Ken on the table. She went and sat down in her chair and closed her eyes.
'Tell Ken you are here, Niki.'
I saw the child clutch the arms of her chair.
'Ken's sick,' she said. 'He's crying. He doesn't want to play.' The voice of Charon went ruthlessly on.
'Make Ken talk, Niki.'
'Ken won't talk,' said the child. 'He's going to say his prayers.' Ken's voice came faintly through the microphone to the loudspeakers. The words were gabbled, indistinct.
'Gen'ral Jesus, mekan mild,
Look'pon little child,
Pity my simple city,
Sofa me to come to thee
There was a long pause after this. Neither Ken nor Niki said anything. I kept my hands on the controls, ready to continue the programme when Mac nodded. Niki began drumming her feet on the floor. All at once she said, 'I shan't go down the tunnel after Ken. It's too dark.'
Robbie, watching his patient, looked up. 'He's gone into coma,' he said.
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Mac signalled to me to set Charon 1 in motion again.
'Go after Ken, Niki,' said the voice.
The child protested. 'It's black in there,' she said. She was nearly crying. She hunched herself in her chair and went through crawling motions. 'I don't want to go,' she said. 'It's too long, and Ken won't wait for me.'
She started to tremble all over. I looked across at Mac. He questioned Robbie with a glance.
'He won't come out of it,' Robbie said. 'It may last hours.'
Mac ordered the oxygen apparatus to be put into operation, and Robbie fixed the mask on Ken. Mac went over to Charon 3 and switched on the monitor display screen. He made some adjustments and nodded at me. 'I'll take over,' he said.
The child was still crying, but the next command from Charon 1 gave her no respite. 'Stay with Ken,' it said. 'Tell us what happens.'
I hoped Mac knew what he was doing. Suppose the child went into a coma too? Could he bring her back? Hunched in her chair, she was as still as Ken, and about as lifeless. Robbie told me to put blankets round her and feel her pulse. It was faint, but steady. Nothing happened for over an hour. We watched the flickering and erratic signals on the screen, as the electrodes transmitted Ken's weakening brain impulses. Still the child did not speak.
Later, much later, she stirred, then moved with a strange twisting motion. She crossed her arms over her breast, humping her knees. Her head dropped forward. I wondered if, like Ken, she was engaged in some childish prayer. Then I realised that her position was that of a foetus before birth. Personality had vanished from her face. She looked wizened, old.
Robbie said, 'He's going.'
Mac beckoned me to the controls, and Robbie bent over Ken with fingers on his pulse. The signals on the screen were fainter, and faltering, but suddenly they surged in a strong upward beat, and in the same instant Robbie said, 'It's all over. He's dead.'
Not After Midnight & Other Stories Page 28