by Ian Watson
“Now there’s a good one! What I did to you? With you and the Power calling the tune between the two of you?” Thus further to hammer the wedge between herself and the others – and into that gap to insert himself. “I was used, girl. Used, and hurt. You hurt me. Andy here’s been hurt too – by closeness to you, Jen.”
“In that case, maybe the greater the distance between you and me the better!”
Andy stared at Jeni maniacally.
“Oh god god god,” moaned Nell. “We can’t start fighting over who’s to be a chief and who’s to be an Indian.”
“You listen to me, Gareth,” Mitzi cut through loud and clear. “You might be an old comrade – that doesn’t matter a shit. You’re a kid. So’s Andy. We can’t make this village work if we show any favouritism.”
“You…bitch. No wonder you couldn’t stay at Greenham in a genuine collective. Oh yes, I heard how you finked out. Jeni told me.”
“I didn’t tell it that way!”
Mitzi jabbed a finger at the boy. “You shut your cake-hole. I’m not interested in dredging muck. That’s all before. Now’s now. Those who are physically adult have to be in charge.”
“I fail to see why. The best thinkers should be – ”
“Cut it, titch!”
“Oh, so we’re a cupboard Stalinist, too?”
“Don’t know what you mean. Just don’t push it.” Mitzi’s hand had balled into a fist. She glanced at Jack for vindication. “Isn’t this what you meant, a minute ago?”
“Aye, an’ it’s startin’ aalready.”
“There could be another way,” Gareth resumed slyly. “All together under one banner with strong leadership and something like shop stewards to represent the work force – against management, in other words the Power. I’d gladly help out as a shop steward or convenor. Mediate with the labour force. Organize it.”
“Rabble-rouse, ye mean,” growled Jack. “An’ what yor talkin’ aboot is bein’ an overseer, not a bloody union official.”
“Oh well it would be a bloody union man, to you. Never unionized, were you? Blackleg carpenter, wasn’t it? Trucking around the whole country undercutting other workers’ jobs. Jeni told me.”
“Piss off!” Mitzi shrieked at Gareth, on the very brink of attack.
“You’ll regret this,” he warned softly. But he did back off. He melted away with crazy mute Andy into the naked juvenile mob.
“Right!” Mitzi hurled her words like skittles at the children. “The rest of you! Go to houses where real kids used to live! You know which houses. Get yourselves kitted out in kids’ clothes and footwear. Everyone report back to the village hall in half an hour. Sorry if this sounds brusque, but we’ve all got work to do if we’re to survive.”
“Brusque?” shouted out Ainsworth. “It’s downright sodding impertinent. Who do you think you are? This is our village, not yours. And we aren’t sodding children.”
“Oh but we are,” a young girl declared, stepping forward. Surely that was Mrs Vanderzee, who had taught part-time at the school. She sounded utterly authoritative. “We are all going to act obediently, just like children should. We are going to have to accept discipline just as if we are children. For the moment.” She turned around. “Is that perfectly clear to everyone?”
A few voices agreed, then a few more.
“Good! Now I shall collect clothes for Mrs Jackson and for those other girls who are looking after the babies. You’ll help me, Mrs Bennett. You too, Mrs Yardley. Now let’s all go and make ourselves decent.”
Nell sighed. “Thank goodness for that.”
Jeni asked, “Shall we go and see the vicar now?”
“What about them?” Bert jerked a thumb at where the babies they’d failed to save lay amidst the deliquescing sludge.
“Later,” said Jack. “Whether we like it or not, we’d best nip up te the chorch. Mebbe wor vicar’s heed’s given birth te a talkin’ canary, full o’ riddles an’ who’s-a-pretty-boy.”
Thirty-seven
Dire apprehension, worse than she’d ever felt, clutched Jeni as she forced herself to walk towards the porch of St Mary’s. The “miracle” was going to be blown away as lightly as any dandelion seed; she was sure of it.
Jack and Mitzi were putting on a bold, defiant face for the forthcoming interview, while Nell, who wanted to trust in some inherent natural goodness, had opted to stay behind to supervise the nursery in the pub. Bert’s doubts were audible. He was arguing softly with himself, hardly aware – or hardly caring – if the others heard his mumbles.
“May, isn’t it supposed to be? Not too late to sow main-crop spuds…the way the weather’s been lately…have to hand-sow the bloody seed tubers, Christ. Harvest in October…have to store ’em in clamps, I reckon….”
Yes, he was trying to compute their chances as parents and providers for the resurrected village.
“Hmm, swedes and turnips’ll wait till late June, July.” He cast a glance at the grey overcast. “Oh, what’s the use? Winter wheat’ll never get into ear.
“Still, on the other hand –”
Hand-sowing of potatoes. And of anything else. Harvesting by hand. Hard labour dawn till dusk, on starvation rations. How to conserve their food stocks? Employ a better-fed guard with a shotgun? And who would that be? Flog anyone who steals a potato? Thus ensuring a serfs’ rebellion…Half a dozen kids armed with tools could take on an adult and kill her, or him.
How long before someone like Mrs Jackson, with Gareth whispering in her ear, decided that the destruction of the world had been caused by adults; but she and the other villagers had been reborn as little children, innocent and presexual – therefore Melfort and the Earth should be purged of the last remaining grown-ups?
Perhaps the Power, the elder God, would accept a few human sacrifices with good grace and repay with fruitful fields, sleek cattle, plump hens. In another generation Jesus, Marx and company would have vanished forever. The demon-God would squat in the driving seat, absolutely real and present to Its flock.
Grim prospects, grim.
Still, reason might prevail. Civilization might continue. Apart from the one-time kids reborn as bleating babies, the Power had resurrected the people of Melfort with their adult memories intact.
Maybe the Power chose this course to top up its reservoir of potential pain and horror. With plenty of grown-up passions, traumas, jealousies, delusions, and squabbles on the boil, it could amuse itself quite a bit longer tormenting the population, couldn’t it? Until final starvation time, cannibalism time, the last hour of despair. It wouldn’t even need the few real grown-ups around to add piquancy. People reborn as children could suffer adult torments just as readily. More so, perhaps. They’d be more vulnerable physically.
“Though on the other hand,” muttered Bert. He’d need ten hands.
“Shh,” hushed Mitzi. She patted Bert, and he looked shamefaced.
“After ye,” Jack said to Jeni.
They filed into St Mary’s.
Inside the reliquary cage sat a white skull. A vile-smelling gruel had dripped from it; this was already drying, lacquering the base of the cage and the flagstone beneath.
A bare skull, without flesh or eyes or tongue. Just bone. Empty sockets. Grinning teeth. Ostrich egg of a cranium. Which neither saw nor heard nor spoke.
“It’s dead,” whispered Mitzi.
Jeni stretched a hand half towards the bars. Jack caught her wrist, though her heart wasn’t in completing the gesture.
“Leave it be.”
“Yes.”
“No more sermons. No more rantin’. No more advice. We’re on wor own, Aa think. To make and mend. It’ll still be aboot, Aa bet – but no more mouthpiece!” A crazy hope gleamed in Jack’s eyes. “We’ll lock the chorch. Nay bugger’ll step inside this cursed place, just in case.”
Bert shuffled, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“On the other hand – ”
“Howay, bonny lad! We’ve work to dee.”
Thirty-eight
Just as on the morning of the war, Jeni stood in the churchyard. Her work party were due to meet her in Church Lane, outside the gate. That morning they would proceed to Harry Blesworth’s farm to give the boy and his girl-wife a hand, though many hands hardly made light work. Despite a sound sleep from the glooming onwards till grey dawn – keeping good medieval hours – she still felt tired. Everyone felt tired. No tractors, no machines, just manual labour, child labour. Work and sleep. And work; during the past three weeks.
Maybe that was why Gareth hadn’t caused any trouble yet. Too tired. He was in her work party; her responsibility, her…punishment. Maybe Gareth was biding his time, building his strength, waiting for the inevitable cracks to widen as the remains of fodder and silage and formula feeds ran out, as the fields were picked bare, as more reborn lambs and calves and piglets were slaughtered, as some fowlpest ran riot.
Ah, he hadn’t made his move because the eating was still good. Roast runt piglet, barbecued ailing lamb. Problems she had never imagined now occupied her mind. Ainsworth’s porkers weren’t the hardiest breed for an outdoor life on poor diet. George Vaux had a few Saddlebacks which would have to be cross-bred. At least the majority of baby animals had seemed thoroughly weaned; just as well, seeing as there were no animal parents and human babies were consuming all available forms of milk powder. The lambs especially shouldn’t have had to rely on such grotty pasture; already there were victims of scouring and emaciation, sure sign of parasites picked up as larvae in a mouthful of grass. Just wait for the illthrift of summer – if any summer ever came – without much worm drench to administer. Just wait for keds, tics, blow-flies, and scab when the sheep dip ran out.
And what about next winter? Would they even see next winter? Would the Power allow some sort of seasons so that they could freeze as well as starve? Oh the everlasting greyness of it all! Nature had been reborn but sluggishly. Buds became miserable leaves reluctantly. Grass struggled up feebly. Vegetable seeds were producing yellow chlorotic wispy sprouts. Nor had it rained; water had to be hauled back-breakingly from the few sources, pushed in cans on carts to do little but dampen the dry earth. Yet who would wish for radioactive rain?
As she stared from that charnel hilltop beside the forbidden church, into the shrouding veil in the direction where Kerthrop had once been, suddenly there in the east a disc of light blossomed.
As once before, Jeni pissed herself. Terror clutched her heart. No time to run into the shadow of the tower!
The fireball had only been interrupted – frozen in time. Now it was set loose again to blind and blast and melt and burn to ashes. It was the start of the nuclear war all over again, the agonizing wreck of everything – finally this time, finally.
The Power had played its joker. She couldn’t see, she was on fire, consciousness was torn from her.
“Hi ho, hi ho, as off to work we go –!”
A smelly wet cloth dabbed her cheek. A black mass pushed against her. A rope whacked her leg.
Bess was licking her, nuzzling her to rouse her from her faint.
“…Hi-ho hi-ho hi-HO!”
She raised her head. Dwarfs were clustered by the churchyard gate. No, those weren’t dwarfs; they were her work party, of child villagers, with Gareth giving voice to wake her up. They were all staring at her. No, they weren’t. They were staring beyond her, and their faces were no longer glum but lit with joy.
Her jeans pressed the grass damply as if there were a dew. The dew was her own. As she got to her knees, still dizzy, and as Bess sniffed interestedly, she kept the urine patch turned away from their gaze. She hardly need have bothered. No one was looking at her. In the east the grey overcast had parted. The sun was a disc of trembling, dazzling liquid gold – at the end of a long tunnel. The tunnel bored for miles through turbulent dark murk, right up through the dingy poisoned atmosphere and stratosphere.
In the sudden, unfamiliar sunlight headstones and grass and trees and roofs all glowed with forgotten colours as if an old painting had newly been restored, stripped clean of years of muck. Well, maybe the painting was still dusty. Maybe it needed a rinse. Birds were beginning to sing. Lambs were baaing. Satisfied that she was well, Bess left her to run about in doggy ecstasy.
Jeni stood up. She understood.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she called. “Carry on to Church Hill Farm, will you? I’ll be along soon.”
Her crotch would dry in the sun presently, and she could rub the fabric with grass to confuse the stain.
Like Chinese magic flowers unfolding in a glass of water, buds were making up for lost time on the trees. Daisies were opening white faces in the grass. This, at last, was renewal – true, utter, wholesome renewal. Oh they would work with a will today, would her dwarfs! With nature burgeoning, probably they would be forced to work harder; if that was possible. However, now it was worthwhile. She tore up some grass and earth and rubbed at her jeans, which were already grimy. The dwarfs had departed.
She whistled. “Come along, Bess!”
Bess headed to heel. As the dog lumbered over the grave-soil where they had laid Sheri shallowly to rest, the turned earth convulsed. Something erupted from the low mound to grab hold of the labrador’s hind leg. Something flexible and yellow – the toilet-thing!
Bess yipped, stumbled, half turned – and howled as the yellow arm dragged with terrible strength, pulling her leg and haunch into the soil as if into quicksand, swallowing her up. Bess wallowed, clawing for purchase. Her frantic eyes locked with Jeni’s, begging. Already the dog was up to her midriff in churning dirt.
By the time Jeni reached her, Bess’s shoulders were disappearing. Only her head left, howling! Throwing herself down, Jeni gripped the dog’s ears uselessly. One ear slid from her grasp, then the other. Bess’s muzzle vanished; soil fell inward. As Jeni rolled clear, she heard a few last stifled howls from underground. The earth heaved as if chewing the dog, digesting it as fast as flowers and buds were opening. Now there was no dog.
Sheri’s grave belched, burped, was still.
The weather continues favourable, wrote Jeni.
But that was an understatement. The fact that there was weather at all was bliss, a daily blessing. Sunshine by day, sweet soaking rain that fell mostly by night – not to mention some sight of stars and moon. Occasional afternoon showers too. The Power had widened its sky-tunnel so that this looked less like the inside of a tornado. The tunnel swung slowly across the sky to track the sun till it set, then it swung back overnight to arrive in the east for dawn. Presumably the Power laundered and filtered the rain. Maybe it fetched the water from some time before the war, kidnapping clouds and squeezing them dry. Maybe it used water from deep underground or distilled from the depths of the ocean.
She wrote in biro in a school exercise book by the light of a single candle. Perhaps it was important to make a record while there were still pens and paper, dog tired though she was. Dog tired. (Oh Bess.) Maybe after she had filled a book or two the Power would arrange a spot of spontaneous combustion. (Don’t think of it.)
Earlier in the day little Celia Touchbrook was torn to shreds by a defunct combine harvester which suddenly roared into life in the yard where she was slaving. The combine became a devouring monster. It chopped Celia up and baled her obscenely as a block of meat and bone. Then it died again, blades dripping with her blood. Reverted to a heap of junk, its electrics buggered by the EM pulse from the Kerthrop warhead.
The Power was trying to resurrect some farm machines?
Oh no.
It killed Celia today, she wrote, because that’s its habit. It’s like some sick cunning madman who acts normal most of the time, who’s a good father, husband, charity worker, but who goes out now and then and rapes and strangles and mutilates. These are the tics of evil. Its fuel. That’s its language, in which it talks to us, its captive audience. Without whom, it would be nothing; so it claims. That’s what recharges its battery.
This is the razor blade b
uried in the cake of the miracle; but it’s the only cake in town.
Who will be cut up next? Who will be destroyed or mutilated or tormented? Someone surely. But not everyone. Not even many…for lives are precious to the Power.
The next victims might be animals. But not all animals. Not even many.
How soon? Some time. No way to tell.
Maybe in time the Power will learn to talk a different language; that’s Nell’s hope. Let’s hope for her sake she doesn’t try to teach it how.
How I wish people hadn’t learned to speak their own language of evil so fluently.
A is for Atom. B is for Bomb. C is for Cruise. D is for Deterrent. E is for Explosion. F is for Firestorm and Fallout.
I saw Mars tonight up the tunnel. I’m sure it was Mars, that red world which people could have gone to in another ten or twenty years – Americans and Russians both, together, challenged by and challenging a dead yet vastly wealthy universe. We’ll never go there now, or anywhere – except perhaps deeper into the haunted devilish medieval past.
And we are the lucky ones, the only ones left, sheltered by Evil from the nuclear storm which was more evil than Evil itself.
N is for Nuclear weapons. N is for Null, for Nothing, for Non-existence. And nuclear weapons no longer exist, either. Neither does life on Earth except in this one bewitched village.
I’m tired, I’m cursed, I’m still alive. A thump on the door! Mars shines, the candle burns, my heart beats fast.
If you've enjoyed this book and would like to read more great SF, you'll find literally thousands of classic Science Fiction & Fantasy titles through the SF Gateway.
For the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy …
For the most comprehensive collection of classic SF on the internet …
Visit the SF Gateway.
www.sfgateway.com
Also by Ian Watson
Novels
Under Heaven's Bridge (1981) (with Michael Bishop)