Slime

by John Halkin

  In London that same night Alan Brewer had been enjoying dinner at the Garrick Club with an old friend from Fleet Street who was lucky enough to be a member. Between the two of them these dinners had become something of a private tradition. Tit for tat, in a way. Alan regularly invited his friend to appear on television programmes, thus making him a household name as well as supplementing his income, while in return he himself was taken to eat at the best club in London where together they explored the more expensive reaches of the wine list.

  All in all, it was a very satisfactory arrangement.

  On this occasion he decided to drive home via the Embankment, but found it crowded with cars and sightseers. He parked with difficulty and asked someone what it was all about.

  ‘Jellyfish,’ a girl said, giggling. ‘In the Thames.’

  There was no way he could push his way through that mass of people, so he went up on to Waterloo Bridge where he managed to squeeze between two Italian tourists and get to the rail. The tide was out, exposing a wide stretch of mud along the South Bank before the Festival Hall.

  It was thick with jellyfish, gently glowing like decorative lamps. They were the first Alan had seen with his own eyes, but he knew well enough what they could do to people. He felt sick at the sight of them.

  The crowd too was strangely silent, considering the number of people there. There was no panic; but no joy, either. A dark cloud of apprehension hung over them, and even the approaching police sirens seemed more subdued than usual.

  Returning to his car, he ran into a police superintendent he knew slightly through a TV documentary he’d made about the work of Scotland Yard. There were traffic jams at least as far as Cheyne Walk, he advised. Best avoid the river altogether.

  ‘Jellyfish?’ he added. ‘If you television people don’t know, who does?’

  It was almost as if the police blamed television for the jellyfish being there in the first place, Alan brooded as he sat tapping his fingers on the wheel, waiting for the car in front of him to move. All he’d asked was how far upriver the jellyfish had penetrated. From the answer, it was obvious the police had no idea. Well, the Thames was tidal at least as far as Richmond.

  So Richmond it was.

  He drove via Marylebone Road and Westway, staying clear of the river until he reached Kew Bridge where the telltale gaggle of sightseers and police cars told the same story. A couple of ambulances there too, but he didn’t stop to enquire the details.

  In the centre of Richmond on the slipway at the foot of Water Lane a cluster of jellyfish was observing the human goings-on around it with malevolent indifference. Alan used his press card to get past the outer cordon of police but it was not until he managed to have a word with the landlord of the pub beside the slipway that he was able to piece the story together. Business had been brisk that evening; after all, there weren’t many pubs about where customers could watch the jellyfish while supping their pints. No one had noticed the two teenagers tinkering with the parked cars, then scooping up jellyfish in the shadows farther along the river and dropping them on to the driving seats.

  That is, until the first driver got into his car.

  They’d called an ambulance, the landlord said, and the police; but who could tell if the poor sod would live or die? As for the two teenagers, at first no one had thought to look for them, what with the hysteria over the jellyfish in the cars and all that. Then someone spotted them, he couldn’t recall who. The boy was already dead, and the girl was now in hospital under sedation.

  ‘God, that lad’s face! I know it was his own stupid fault, the silly bugger, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. All the years I was in the army – Aden, the Mau Mau in Kenya, a spell in Korea – I never saw anything to equal that. Poor kid. I’d seen him around; and the girl. Been in here for a drink. Then he has to go and do something mind-blowing like that! It makes me wonder… Oh, I dunno.’

  15

  Extinction… extinction… extinction…

  Once again the message pulses out through the deep. Jellyfish shoals far off in the South Atlantic sense its meaning as clearly as those which arrive on Britain’s coasts with every tide. Their reaction is instinctive. Birth follows death as day follows night.

  Multiply…

  All life is part of the great cycle. The individual has no meaning outside the species. To ensure the species survives is the only purpose of existence.

  All hold the precious eggs within them; all spew out the seed-clouds to be ingested by others. For jellyfish are both male and female, programmed to continue that mystery which is life. The command is implicit.

  Multiply.

  16

  One after another, local authorities in holiday resorts all the way around the coast decided to clear the jellyfish hordes from their beaches by burning them. It was like cauterising a wound, one councillor said. Every evening the main television news bulletins carried pictures of surging flames and palls of thick smoke drifting above them.

  On the following tides more jellyfish arrived to replace the first wave, only to meet with the same fate. Kerosene was the usual weapon. Its stench carried on the prevailing winds and hardly anywhere in the country was free of it.

  Away from the holiday playgrounds other stretches of coast were equally affected, including tidal rivers and inlets. They remained for the most part untreated. Helicopter shots revealed mile upon mile of jellyfish, most dramatically at dusk when they bathed their entire surroundings in that sickly green light. While officials and politicians argued over what to do next, they lay there undisturbed save for the swooping seagulls.

  ‘I don’t approve of burning them,’ Jocelyn stated uncompromisingly as she spread a thin layer of honey over her toast.

  Jane stared at her sister in despair: how could she be so blind?

  At Alan Brewer’s request she was staying with Jocelyn and her husband Robin at their converted Somerset farmhouse high above the ‘jellyfish line’ – as one commentator put it – on a hill from which they enjoyed a panoramic view of the Bristol Channel. Her task – Alan’s own words – was ‘to keep an eye on the scientific end of the equation’, whatever that might mean. Jocelyn welcomed her visit. Her lab assistant was off with ’flu and she was short-handed. Jane was not so sure. On her local paper she was used to seeing her name in print every so often; she’d been a big fish, if only in a very small pond. What no one had told her was that in television a research assistant – glamorous though the title may sound – was no more than the smallest of sprats.

  Added to which, she now realised she’d been offered a contract merely because Tim had insisted. They’d been forced into it in order to land him as presenter.

  Once they had her signed up, they’d pushed her down to Somerset where she could do least harm, her only task being to write up page after page on the habits of jellyfish. Probably no one in the office read them, least of all the omnipotent Brewer. But they’d paid her money, which was something. Enough to restore the dour smile to her bank manager’s face and to get her Mini running again.

  Jocelyn crunched at her toast, oblivious of the smear of honey around her mouth. She was oblivious of most things, Jane mused, when her mind was on her creepy-crawlies. She was the oldest of the three of them – there was a middle sister, Barbie, who had married an Arab and now lived, divorced, in Australia – and had the same grey eyes. Her hair was a mess, always had been, and when she turned her head there was just the slightest trace already of a double chin. Not a bad figure though, considering she was over thirty and did nothing about it. Of the three, she was the most like their mother.

  The laboratory was in a couple of Nissen huts at the end of the field. She spent long hours there observing the jellyfish Jane had brought her, making endless notes, and never tired of explaining everything. Throughout the country a dozen or more institutes of marine biology were involved in studying the new jellyfish, but that didn’t seem to worry her in the least.

  As far as Jane could judge, her sister ha
d no competitive instinct whatsoever.

  The postman that morning had delivered yet another report from the Department of the Environment, listing the growing number of coastal resorts affected by jellyfish swarms and the steps being taken to help them. Not all areas were happy with the idea of roasting them alive, although it was generally agreed that fire caused less long-term ecological damage than spraying them first with a strong pesticide solution, or even detergent. Both methods had been suggested.

  Jocelyn snorted in disgust as she turned over the pages and, through a mouthful of toast, commented that in her opinion the authorities were mad. Worse than mad: criminal.

  ‘How would you deal with them, then?’ Jane demanded.

  ‘The authorities? Shoot the lot!’

  ‘The jellyfish, idiot! You’ve never actually seen what they can do to people. It’s not funny.’

  ‘Then people should keep away from them.’ She took another bite of toast, then licked her fingers. ‘I suppose that’s one bit of good your actor boyfriend did in his TV programme. At least he warned people to stay clear, although the way he did it was crazy. More likely to cause a panic than anything else. I hold him responsible for all this burning.’

  ‘He didn’t start it,’ Jane defended him coolly.

  The transmission date of Tim’s documentary had been brought forward to meet the sudden public demand for information triggered off by the mass assault of jellyfish. It had been a rush job, hastily cut together from whatever material was already in the can, but a big scoop for the company. It had certainly put Tim on the map again. The editor of that boobs-and-bums magazine had been on the phone to Jane that same evening, demanding the article she’d promised him. She’d upped the price, claiming she could get material on Tim no one else knew about, and agreed to an eight-day deadline.

  ‘I’ll do the breakfast things,’ she offered as Jocelyn piled the plates up by the sink. ‘You get down to the lab. I’ll join you there later if I’m not in the way.’

  ‘You’re not,’ Jocelyn assured her. ‘You can help me feed the pets. That’s if you’re not too squeamish.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can call jellyfish “pets”! Anything but!’

  Conscience didn’t come into it, she decided as she squirted washing-up liquid into the green plastic bowl. Not as far as Tim was concerned, at any rate. Whatever she wrote in her article, journalists were just as much part of the showbiz scene as Tim was himself. Magazines, television, the popular newspapers – they were so much entertainment eagerly lapped up by an insatiable public. She could write what she liked, or whatever she could sell, providing it was based on some sort of partial truth and wasn’t actionable.

  Gossip and glamour – that’s what paid, and she could forget waking up in the middle of the night to face her empty, aching loneliness. Personal feelings were irrelevant.

  She put the last of the dishes away, hung up the tea-towel and went into the living-room to phone. At first she tried the Totnes theatre where Tim’s wife worked, but there was no answer. Naturally, she thought as she glanced at her watch; it was not yet eight o’clock. Only farmers, factories and mad biologists started the day this early.

  On another page of her notebook she’d scribbled a number for Sue’s lodgings. She’d coaxed it out of the boy who’d answered the phone backstage the previous day after he’d explained that Sue was tied up ‘in rehearsal’. Jane had probed, and they’d had quite a chat. He was helping with the set, he told her; his first job.

  Jane found the number and dialled, letting it ring for some time. Eventually a sleepy male voice answered, slightly gruff.

  ‘Yeah?’

  Was Sue in, she enquired – adding sweetly that she was sorry to disturb him so early.

  ‘Sue! Phone, love!’

  Faintly in the background she could hear Sue’s voice calling back: ‘Can’t you take it, Mark? I’m all wet. Who is it, anyway?’

  ‘Some girl journalist. Want to interview you. Rang the theatre yesterday, she says.’

  ‘What about?’

  Jane made up a story about interviewing leading actresses at several of the regional theatres, and waited patiently while the man at the other end repeated it all. She wondered who he was. An actor in the same company, merely sharing lodgings? Or had she stumbled on something more interesting? Worth investigation anyhow, she decided. Just in case.

  ‘She’ll see you tomorrow afternoon at two,’ the man said. He’d a cold coming on, Jane now realised; that explained the gruffness. ‘At the stage door. It’s at the back of the theatre, opening on to the car park.’

  She thanked him and rang off. For a time she sat there staring speculatively at the phone, wondering how best to set about discovering who he was. Get there early in any case, she thought. Then she picked up the phone again to call Tim and check if all was in order for the magazine’s photographer who was expected down there that morning. It was.

  So when could she see him again? She was missing him. Couldn’t he manage a couple of days in Somerset? Surely he’d need to familiarise himself with her sister’s laboratory before they started work on the follow-up documentary Alan Brewer was planning?

  Jellyfish Mark Two, she called it. Son of Jellyfish.

  But his answer was non-committal. Not even a laugh. Then he said he had to rush.

  Of her proposed visit to Totnes and her appointment with his wife Sue, Jane said nothing. He could read about it when she sent him a copy of the magazine.

  She put the phone down. Time to help Jocelyn, she decided – not unwillingly, so long as the jellyfish were secure inside their glass tanks. Each time she looked at them she experienced that little frisson of fear, although she’d assured herself often enough there was now no way they could reach her. Collecting them in that cave had been an experience she never wished to go through again, but all that was behind her.

  ‘Oh, here already?’ Jocelyn looked up from her microscope. ‘I suppose it is about time we fed the little dears. I’ve a treat for some of them today.’

  The large glass-sided tanks were arranged in a single row down the centre of the Nissen hut, and spaced well apart. Each tank had its own heater and thermostat; over each was a dark plastic cover concealing soft lighting. The jellyfish avoided the sides. They favoured the centre of the tank. Almost as if – Jane always felt this, every time she saw them – they were aware they were being kept prisoner, and were moping over their fate. For the most part they were one to a ‘cell’, but across the end of the Nissen hut was a considerably larger tank, partly set into the floor, in which Jocelyn kept three jellyfish together.

  ‘Something special,’ she repeated briskly, leading the way there. ‘It’s an experiment, of course. Let me see if I can explain it to you.’

  Any other captive animal would become animated at feeding time, Jane thought as her sister went into the nutritional details. She had a picture in her mind of kennels: dogs barking and jumping up against the netting. Monkeys chattering excitedly. Even goldfish would peer inanely through the glass as if instinctively aware that something was about to happen. But the three jellyfish betrayed no sign of interest whatsoever.

  ‘As you know, the mouth of a jellyfish is a tube-like opening underneath the bell in the centre. They can eat practically anything living – plankton, tiny creatures, whatever comes their way. If it’s something bigger – a fish, say…’ Jocelyn paused to draw Jane’s attention to some photographs she’d pinned up on the wall ‘… the tentacles release a poison which paralyses it, and the fish is propelled towards the mouth and swallowed whole. As you can see here.’

  ‘Horrible!’ Jane shuddered. ‘Where did you get these pictures?’

  ‘This morning’s post.’

  ‘It’ll choke to death, that one.’ In the photograph, two thirds of the fish still protruded from the jellyfish’s mouth.

  ‘I think it probably did, which is how they got the picture,’ said Jocelyn soberly. ‘But your jellyfish are quite different.’

&
nbsp; ‘Don’t keep calling them mine!’ Jane burst out. As they reached the tank, one of them spread itself out to its complete disc. She found herself thinking of Tim again; he’d not even known he had a jellyfish draped over his hand, feeding on him. ‘They’re not mine. If you really want to know, I hate them.’

  ‘Sorry! The point is, if we’re to control them, we need to discover a bit more about them.’

  ‘I’m all on edge,’ Jane said apologetically with a rueful smile at her sister. ‘How are they different?’

  Jocelyn returned the smile. ‘Let’s give them something and find out.’ With Jane’s help she removed the cover from the tank.

  On a bench at the side of the hut was a square white plastic container. It looked exactly like the one Bill had always used for his sandwiches and which she’d hated because she could never forget it was his wife who’d cut them for him. Her fingers had packed them day after day. Jocelyn eased off the lid.

  ‘Rabbit,’ she said. ‘We’ll see how they react.’

  It was a skinned rabbit, the complete animal minus the head and paws. She scooped it up in her two hands, carried it across and dropped it in. Immediately Jane sensed a quickening of interest in the three jellyfish. Nothing obvious. They still gave the impression of drifting aimlessly in the water, and yet within a few seconds their tentacles had reached the dead meat.

  ‘They may reject it,’ Jocelyn warned her. ‘Quite a few predators refuse to touch meat they haven’t killed themselves.’

  But these jellyfish had no such inhibitions. Their tentacles explored the torso, then wandered over the fleshy part of the legs. Then they began to settle, spreading themselves gently over the meat like collapsing parachutes – one over a foreleg, a second across the breast, and the third taking the hind-quarters, overlapping each other amicably as they started the process of feeding.

  ‘They’re not trying to swallow it whole,’ Jocelyn pointed out. ‘We’ll check in a minute what they are doing with it.’