Fade Out

by Patrick Tilley

  ‘All that does for me is conjure up a picture of a prehistoric Frankenstein,’ said Wedderkind.

  ‘That may not be far from the truth,’ said Wetherby. ‘I’ve often wondered about the origin of the prehistoric headhunting cults, and ritual human sacrifices – ripping out the heart and organs to offer to the Sun God. Maybe they were a sort of perverted homage, primitive imitations of surgical operations or autopsies, performed by the beings early Man knew as gods, as part of the control process – the search for the perfect mutation. Man could have been a lengthy process of trial and error.’

  ‘Al,’ said Brecetti. ‘Where this really belongs is in a paperback. No kidding, you’d sell a lot of copies. All these theories fall down on one point. Who helped the people who gave us a helping hand? Come on, now, the process had to start somewhere.’

  ‘Can you tell me where the universe started?’

  ‘That’s a low blow. Don’t dodge the question. If, as you say, gods taught us farming, animal husbandry, weaving, mathematics, and gave us the gift of language, where did they get this knowledge?’

  Wetherby waved his hand in the air. ‘It’s all part of a continuing process.’ He pointed at Collis. ‘Ray here believes that the sum total of knowledge in the universe is passing through this room like radio waves. We’re unable to receive it because our brains aren’t tuned in to the right wavelength.’

  ‘That’s not really an answer to my question,’ said Brecetti.

  ‘You’re not going to get one,’ said Wedderkind. ‘What kind of a universe does this missionary activity take place in, Al – Big Bang, Modified Steady State or Open?’

  ‘Big Bang…’ Wetherby pushed a lock of black hair back from his forehead. ‘I like the idea of a universe born out of the cataclysmic explosion of the primal atom, spreading out through the infinite depths of space for a brief moment of eternity… There are some wonderful lines I came across years ago – I never forgot the words, just the name of the man who wrote them. Far to the north, in the land called Svithjod, lies a black rock, one hundred miles high and one hundred miles wide. Once every ten thousand years, a little bird flies to the rock and sharpens its beak. When all the rock has been worn away, one second of one day of eternity will have gone by.’

  ‘That’s a telling image,’ admitted Connors. ‘But where did the primal atom come from?’

  ‘The previous universe,’ said Wetherby. ‘It expands to a certain point and then collapses back on itself. The entire material universe crushes together with colossal force and creates the next explosion. It goes on like that forever, expanding and contracting rhythmically like a giant heart, beating throughout eternity. Galaxies are created, stars, solar systems, planets cool, primitive life emerges, intelligent creatures evolve and eventually colonize and civilize other planets, orbiting other suns…’

  ‘And this colonizing, this teaching process, continues throughout the life span of the universe… and begins all over again in the next?’ asked Connors.

  Wetherby nodded. ‘It’s a continuing process. An infinite cycle of creation. I think we will even find that Phil’s Black Holes are part of this swallowing up process.’

  Brecetti looked at Connors. ‘These damn geographers are all the same, they stick their noses into everything.’

  Connors held out his coffee cup as Wedderkind did the rounds with the pot.

  ‘Sugar?’

  ‘No, I’ll take it straight this time. Al, a lot of the myths you mention also say that Man was once immortal. Was this an optional extra that was dropped on the later models? That may sound a little cynical. It’s not meant to be.’

  Wetherby smiled. ‘I think Man was once endowed with some extraordinary mental qualities he has since lost. We all know he’s not in such good physical shape as he used to be. Sight, smell, taste weakened, muscles atrophied. Ray has a theory about this that is tied up with the development of language.’

  ‘I don’t really think it’s relevant,’ said Collis.

  ‘Go ahead, Ray, you’re quite safe here,’ said Wedderkind. ‘There are no hairy engineers waiting to beat you on the head with their slide rules.’

  Collis paused reluctantly. ‘Well – the problem is that if you don’t subscribe to the basic beliefs, it tends to sound a little ridiculous.’

  ‘Try me,’ said Connors. ‘I dumped all my preconceived ideas overboard when this project started.’

  Collis swallowed. ‘Well – basically, I believe that our present concept of immortality springs from a distant folk memory of Man’s early state of grace. By folk memory, I mean a deep-rooted, instinctual memory – part of our genetic makeup that passes through countless generations. I believe there was a period, when Man first walked the Earth, when his whole being was permeated with what we term cosmic consciousness – universal knowledge, if you like – an awareness that the material state of the physical world he perceived about him was only one brief phase in the continuous cycle of creation, of which he was a part. Have I lost you?’

  ‘No, go on.’

  ‘Okay. I believe that he was also aware that this same cosmic consciousness permeated the whole world of nature. The rocks, the earth, the sea, the sky above his head. Man was in tune with his surroundings. Everything, in varying degrees, was alive as he was alive.’

  ‘And it was from a memory of this awareness that the later myths of forest, water, and mountain spirits came?’ asked Connors.

  ‘Yes. There must have been a point in time when this total awareness of and identification with other animate and inanimate objects began to fade. Man slipped from the spiritual into the material world. Perhaps through genetic changes – by chance, or deliberate mutation – the chain of RNA/DNA molecules lost the vital link. The coded message that endowed Man with this awareness. Once can imagine it, perhaps, as a key, without which crucial circuits in the brain remained locked. Inactive.’

  ‘It is certainly true that one of the universal themes of mythology is the losing of the message that would make Man immortal,’ said Wetherby.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Collis. ‘And Alan will also confirm that there is a growing mass of evidence indicating that highly developed societies flourished in the distant past without the art of writing. They may not even have needed language. I believe these people were telepathic. One has only to study language to realize, in spite of its beauty and complexity, what an amazingly imperfect tool it is. And despite all our studies and theories we still don’t know how language developed. I believe that as Man began to speak and write, he became less able to communicate. Gradually, the tremendous telepathic powers in his brain were shut off – or drained away. He no longer identified with the world around him. It became a hostile environment, peopled by dimly remembered spirits that were quickly classified into good and evil. The loss of this awareness meant that he no longer understood his part in the eternal process of creation. Immortality became a distant dream, part of a golden age long past to which he would never return. Man learned to read and write, but in cosmic terms, he became illiterate,’ Collis shrugged. ‘That’s basically it. I’m sorry it took so long. Most people usually find an urgent need to go to the john halfway through.’

  ‘Don’t be so defensive, it made sense to me.’ Connors stood up and looked at his watch. ‘My watch says bedtime, but the caffeine tells me the night’s still young.’

  ‘You can always race Arnold to the crater,’ said Brecetti.

  ‘Good night, Phil,’ said Wedderkind. ‘Next time you come, bring your own plastic cup.’

  Wetherby’s trailer was near Connors’. They walked along in the dark, and looked up at the star-studded sky.

  ‘I wonder which one Crusoe’s from…’ mused Wetherby.

  ‘I didn’t know Ray Collis was interested in all that stuff,’ said Connors. ‘How long has he been hooked on Rudolf Steiner?’

  ‘I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about it very much,’ said Wetherby. ‘Once you start mentioning the spiritual world, most people’s eyes start to glaz
e over.’

  ‘Yeah, well, there’re some really nutty ideas around. Ray made it sound simple enough, though I must admit, when anyone mentions cosmic consciousness, I feel like reaching for a baseball bat.’

  They arrived at the door of Connors’ trailer.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about Daniel Defoe’s story,’ said Wetherby. ‘Arnold was telling me how Crusoe got his code name.’

  ‘Yes, it was the President’s idea.’

  ‘Mmm… it’s interesting. Most people only remember the story as being about Crusoe and Friday, but there are more characters. In his twenty-seventh year on the island, Crusoe was joined by a Spaniard and another Negro – survivors of a shipwreck – and later by a captain, his mate, and a passenger. Their ship had been seized by the mutinous crew.’

  Connors felt a cold ball form in the pit of his stomach. ‘I’d forgotten about those other characters. So there were six of them…’

  ‘Plus Friday. They recapture the ship from the mutineers and sail back to England.’

  ‘And they all lived happily ever after – ’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Wetherby. ‘You’ve forgotten Part Two. Not many people read the sequel – it’s rather inferior. Eight years later, Crusoe returns with a priest, mechanics and sailors – and Friday, of course. He founds a Christian colony. Poor old Friday gets killed by the cannibals.’

  ‘Does Crusoe stay on the island?’ asked Connors.

  ‘No. After Friday’s death he goes back to England, and eventually dies.’

  ‘Ah… That’s interesting,’ said Connors. ‘It shows how carefully people read stories. I’d completely forgotten that there were more characters besides the cannibals, and I certainly didn’t know about the sequel.’

  ‘Yes…’ Wetherby rubbed his forehead. ‘It’s curious, I can’t think of what prompted me to give you such a pointless piece of information. Oh, well, perhaps it’ll come to me in the morning. Good night.’

  ‘Good night, Alan.’ Connors went into his trailer. The information may have seemed pointless to Wetherby, but it made chilling sense to Connors. He had had an odd feeling about that code name right from the start. Was it possible that they could be caught up in a space-age version of the story? If so, there were five more… characters due to appear. That really would be a bizarre twist of fate. And which bit of the story was taking place – Part One, where Crusoe’s aim was to get off the island? Or Part Two, when he returned to colonize it?

  He told himself the idea was too fantastic and tried to put it out of his mind. What’s in a name? The project could have been called ABLE, BAKER, or CHARLEY BROWN but it hadn’t. It had been called CRUSOE. And his gut reaction was a signal that his brain knew something it hadn’t told him yet.

  Wednesday/September 12

  CROW RIDGE/MONTANA

  Heartened by Friday’s apparent timidity, Max and Wedderkind hatched a kidnap plot. Now that the drilling was over, Max had reverted to his real job, which was to act as ‘front man’ in the Corporation’s dealings with outside contractors and local suppliers in nearby Miles City. Whenever possible, however, he preferred to stay up on the Ridge instead of down at the base camp, in the hope of seeing some action.

  Connors had been surprised to learn from Wetherby that Max had graduated with honours in geology, and that two of the other Texans had degrees in mining engineering. Their erudition was buried beneath a hefty layer of brawn. Three of them were even bigger than Max, and they all looked as if they had been raised on a steady diet of Saturday-night fistfights.

  When Connors had remarked on this one evening in the canteen, Gilligan, another of the engineers, had said, ‘You want to take a trip to Butte. The Swedes and the Irish there would make these guys look like marshmallows.’ The big mining town lay close up against the Rockies in western Montana. Gilligan had been born there, moving later to Seattle. Unless you were King Kong, Butte sounded like a good place to stay out of. Especially on a Saturday night.

  Marshmallows or not, besides being experienced wildcatters, Max and his Texans were expert in handling a wide range of mechanical mining and earth-moving equipment. It was this skill that Wedderkind planned to make use of.

  They waited until Friday came out for his morning walk. Then, when he was about two hundred yards from Crusoe, the Texans, under Max’s direction, surrounded him with four bulldozers. Friday shrank back to consider the situation, and his body slowly rotated through 360 degrees as his eye pod scanned the huge blades that had suddenly walled him in. There was a gap at each corner large enough for a man to slip through but too narrow for Friday. He clicked rapidly for about a minute, then attempted to climb up one of the blades. The move had been anticipated. The driver of the bulldozer jiggled the blade up and down and shook Friday off.

  Wedderkind and Connors stood on the shaking roof of the cab to watch what was happening. Despite his revulsion, Connors couldn’t resist a feeling of sympathy for Friday now that he was hemmed in and apparently helpless.

  Wedderkind called down to Max who was by the side of the cab, ‘Tell your boys to go easy, we don’t want to crush him.’

  Max relayed the message through cupped hands.

  Retreating from the first blade, Friday doggedly tried to climb the other three walls of his pen, and was shaken off. On the fourth attempt, he almost got over. The driver, a man called T-Bone, raised and lowered the blade in rapid succession as Friday balanced his body on top of the blade and tried to get his four left legs on to the hood of the bulldozer. His four right legs scrabbled over the blade, but each time it thumped back on the ground he lost his grip. In such a precarious position there was a real danger of Friday getting some of his legs crushed.

  Wedderkind looked around for Max but couldn’t see him. He waved at T-Bone and shouted, ‘Let him go – we’ll have to find some other way!’

  With the noise of all four engines T-Bone didn’t hear. Wedderkind called down to Spencer and while he was explaining what he wanted him to do, Max clambered up on to the hood of T-Bone’s bulldozer with a long wooden stake. As Friday rocked to and fro, Max got the stake underneath him and sent him tumbling backward off the top of the blade. Connors winced as Friday landed on his head with a sickening thud. For a few seconds, his eight legs waved feebly in the air. Then he folded them two at a time close in against his body, and lay there upside down.

  Wedderkind climbed off the top of the cab and ran forward along the hood. ‘What did you do that for?’ he shouted angrily.

  Max looked bewildered. ‘I thought the idea was to keep him inside.’

  ‘Yes, but not like that, you clumsy ape!’

  Max threw down the stake in disgust and turned to Connors with outspread hands. ‘What the hell did I do wrong?’

  Wedderkind squeezed through the gap between the right-angled blades of two bulldozers, followed by Spencer, Milsom, Neame, and Tomkin. Connors moved to the hood of the bulldozer on which he had been standing and looked down at Friday.

  After what was probably a quiet moment of reflection, Friday extended two of the retractable eyestalks set in the flat top of his body, and tipped it over on to one side. The two legs pinned underneath unfolded like scissor jacks, lifting his body sideways into the air. Pivoting upright, Friday put out his six other legs on the ground and raised himself up to his normal height. He shook the dust from his two eyestalks and retracted them.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Neame.

  ‘If we can get him to curl up and play dead,’ said Wedderkind, ‘we can scoop him up on the shovel of one of the small earthmovers, and take him down to the field lab. We should be able to get him through the door sideways – and once he’s in, unless he goes berserk, he’s going to have a hard time getting out.’

  Wedderkind called in some more people until there were twelve of them in a ring around Friday. As they closed in, he shrank down, and then folded his legs neatly against his body.

  The bulldozer facing Connors backed away and the earthmover took its place with Wedderk
ind standing behind Aaron, the driver. Aaron lowered the long-toothed shovel and edged forward. Max jumped down from the hood of the bulldozer and gave the signal to start biting dirt.

  Friday tilted sideways as the earth lifted beneath him. Max signalled to the opposing bulldozer to drop its blade into the earth and bring a pile forward to act as a buffer.

  Aaron freed the ragged wedge of earth that Friday was sitting on, and carefully angled it up clear of the ground. Spencer and Milsom packed some thick plastic foam sheeting behind Friday, then wrapped a length of thin rope several times around the shovel to make sure Friday didn’t fall out. Max signalled Aaron to lift it clear of their heads, then walked over to Connors and Wedderkind.

  ‘Okay, away you go.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Wedderkind. ‘I’m sorry I got upset back there. I thought you might have damaged him.’

  ‘What are you gonna do when you get him to the lab, give him a bowl of milk?’

  ‘Well, no, but if and when we decide to take him apart, the idea is to do it scientifically.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Max. ‘But if you run into any problems, tell me. One of the boys in my crew is an ace with a seven-pound hammer.’

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ said Wedderkind. He walked away.

  Max turned to Connors. ‘Lee Ryder…’ He picked up the wooden stake from the ground. ‘I was with him at this fair in Phoenix. He took twenty shots at a ’47 Buick. It looked like it’d been run over by a tank.’

  Connors smiled.

  ‘Okay, laugh.’

  ‘I’m not laughing, Max.’

  ‘Just tell me, how far have they got with their fancy instruments? Nowhere. Right?’

  ‘Be fair, there were problems when Crusoe was surrounded with a magnetic field and none of their gear was working. Also, I think the idea at the moment is to show we’re friendly.’