The Anti-Death League

by Kingsley Amis

  "Going round firing off those rifles, you mean. That might blow him up instead."

  "Not firing them. Brandishing them. Shaping up to fire them."

  "There's something about that idea that doesn't feel right."

  "What's wrong with it?"

  "I don't know. It just doesn't feel right."

  "It would have the merit of putting those bloody guns to some use."

  Ross-Donaldson looked severe. "They've been put to use already," he said.

  "Have they? Two practice shots? It's a funny sort of exercise, this."

  "They're studying effect. There's nothing special to learn about the actual firing. What matters is what happens at the far end."

  "That's where Venables comes in, I suppose."

  "Shall we have another game? I think we've got time."

  "All right. I mean he didn't come in at all at the briefing. Venables didn't."

  "That was mere technics. He's a technologies man."

  "Cut."

  "Have some more champagne."

  In the second game Hunter did much better, being taken down for only a trifle over fifteen pounds. By the time Ross-Donaldson had finished writing in his notebook a runner had arrived with the message that the exercise had been completed. He had no information about the success or failure of Leonard's search.

  "But we'd have heard soon enough if he'd caught him."

  "Agreed. I must go and supervise the loading. And there are warning notices to be posted round the target area."

  "What for? I thought the stuff was supposed to be more or less non-radioactive."

  "Regulations, Hunter. Thank you very much for the game. You really should set about training that memory of yours. It can be done, you know."

  "I dare say it can. I'll take you on at backgammon later."

  While the stores were being loaded, Leonard's car came bumping up the track and stopped near Hunter. Its owner got out slowly. There was a tear in his trousers large enough to show a knee smeared with dirt and a little dried blood, and his shirt was stained with dried sweat. He looked silently at Hunter.

  "Don't worry, Brian. You've got enough on him now, haven't you?"

  "Not for an arrest. Only to make him a red suspect."

  "Well, that sounds pretty good."

  "Not good enough. You don't happen to know if there's any sherry anywhere, do you?"

  "Not for certain, but I very much doubt if there's any within reach. Try some of this."

  Hunter offered his water-container.

  "What is it?"

  "Never mind what it is. It's very good for you and that's all you need to know."

  "Mm. Thanks." Leonard drank. "My God, I hope it is good for me."

  "What's happened to Best, do you think?"

  "Don't ask me. He must have gone to ground somewhere and then got out somehow."

  "I see. But he can't have walked all the way here from the asylum, can he? He must have driven part of the way. Why don't you put a watch on his car?"

  "I would if I knew where it was. I've left a section out looking for it. I had a man detailed to follow him on a scooter, but the scooter had a flat tire. I shall get a rocket from my master for that."

  "Make sure you accelerate it when you pass it on. Well, well. You don't strike it very lucky, do you, Brian?"

  "Things are bound to turn my way soon. I just know they will."

  Eventually the convoy was ready. After an unaccountable delay of unexpectedly short duration it moved off. Hunter was driving behind the second of the two lorries full of infantrymen that enclosed the stores vehicle. At his side was the quartermaster-sergeant who worked under him. They had reached the point where the track joined the road and traveled a few hundred yards more when the lorry in front stopped suddenly. Hunter pulled up. After a few moments he heard shouting somewhere ahead.

  "More fun and games," said the QMS.

  "Let's see what's up. Come on, Q."

  The deep ditch on one side of the road and the bank on the other made it difficult to get round the lorry. When they managed it, they saw the stores vehicle leaning slightly over to one side with one front wheel overhanging the ditch and considerable flames coming out of its engine, the cover of which was raised. Half a dozen men ran about in the roadway calling to one another.

  "Shut the bloody lid."

  "Bugger's stuck."

  "Where's that bloody fire-extinguisher?"

  "Bugger's stuck."

  "Get the major out before she goes up."

  "Bugger won't move."

  The QMS turned and hurried towards the lorry behind. Hunter went to the cab of the burning vehicle, where Venables was sitting in the passenger's seat reading a sheaf of typescript.

  "I think I must advise you to vacate your seat, Major. This truck is on fire."

  "So I see. But there are present a more than adequate number of persons well qualified to deal with the matter. Let them extinguish the flames."

  "The windshield may shatter at any moment. You'd do better out here in the road."

  "I am unable to leave. The door on this side is jammed against the hedge."

  "Come out this way. Get a move on, Major."

  "My name is Venables. Oh, very well."

  By the time Hunter had got Venables out of the cab Leonard had appeared. Making his way to the scene must have cost him some effort. A button had come off his jacket and there was a fresh scratch on his cheek. He too had begun shouting.

  "Get the stores off quick. Everybody on it. Unload the stores."

  The lane was now jammed with soldiery, but some response to Leonard's order was soon made. Two men let down the tailboard and began shifting the arms and ammunition, much less gently than at the original unloading that morning. The fire itself, though now firmly established in the fore part of the vehicle, attracted less interest. Two rifles and a box of ammunition were in the roadway before the QMS could push his way through with a fire-extinguisher and start playing it on the flames. They died down reluctantly at first, then, when a driver ran up and applied a second extinguisher, were rapidly quenched. A murmur of relief arose. At that moment Hunter, who had been gazing into the thick woods bordering the road, grabbed Leonard's arm.

  "Brian-look. There. Did you see him?"

  "Who? Where?"

  "Best. By that tree with the ivy on it. He turned and ran when he saw me looking at him. I'm almost sure it was him."

  Leonard did not hesitate. He pulled a whistle from his pocket at the end of its lanyard and blew a great blast. Silence fell at once.

  "Optimus is in this wood," he yelled. "I want him caught. Everybody on it. Move. At the double. I want the wood swept from end to end. Get going, everybody. And I mean everybody. Drivers, batmen, the lot. I said move."

  When the first group of men, swearing unfeignedly, had jumped the ditch and begun pushing through the undergrowth, Leonard turned to the QMS.

  "Well done, Q. Now I want you to go and take my car and drive up to the rest of the convoy and say what's happened. They're probably only a few hundred yards ahead. Report to the Adjutant. Quick about it."

  "Right, sir."

  The QMS departed. Leonard leaped the ditch and crashed and shouted his way out of sight. Hunter looked round for Venables, who proved to be sitting in the remains of the cab of the vehicle reading his typescript. He looked up uninterestedly as Hunter crossed in front of him and entered the wood in his turn.

  After half an hour or so Hunter decided he had had enough of dirtying his uniform and being bitten by insects. His head was aching. He had seen no sign of Best, nor even of Leonard. The only people he had found in the wood were two infantrymen having a quiet smoke in the middle of a particularly dense thicket. These he pretended not to have seen. He took his time about returning to the road.

  Within another half-hour Leonard and his men had returned empty-handed, the stores had been reloaded and a tow fixed up for the stores vehicle, and the convoy was on the move again.

  Dr. Best
watched it go.

  Part Three

  Operation Apollo

  ABOUT nine hours later Churchill was lying awake in bed with one arm round Catharine's waist and the other behind her shoulders. Every minute or so he listened carefully to her breathing. It remained deep and steady, and she had not moved for what he thought was a long time, but he had no idea whether she was asleep or not. She had said she had taken a sleeping-pill. The bedside alarm-clock was set for seven-thirty, when the two of them would get up and dress, doing so together for the first time, and drive over to the hospital in the town. Here, after Catharine had been admitted, Churchill was to have an interview with the doctor in charge of her case, an arrangement made without reference to her. Then he would return to camp, arriving there an hour or more after his pass was due to expire. He felt this would not matter.

  He turned his thoughts back to the previous evening, not because he hoped to establish anything about it, but because the unmistakable fact of its having taken place reassured him. Every so often, perhaps when he momentarily came closest to falling asleep, he was visited by the illusion that he and Catharine had moved off the track of ordinary existence into an autonomous, self-sealing pocket of fear and helplessness. Among the advancing and retreating blankets of color which his eyes imposed on the darkness he had several times seen, or imagined he had seen, a geometrical replica of the lethal node he had described to Hunter. It was in the form of a broad horizontal disc, vague and granular at the periphery, thickening towards the middle. Through the exact center a taut vertical thread ran both ways to mathematical infinity. You entered the node, or it moved across you, until you arrived at the thread. Thereafter, instead of moving or seeming to move on towards the farther edge of the disc, you could only move up or down the thread. Presumably if your motion across the disc were along a chord instead of along the diameter you could continue to travel laterally until you reached the far side of the circumference and emerged. Hunter, Ayscue, Naidu, Pearce, Lucy were traveling along chords at varying distances from the center. But Catharine had been on the diameter and had reached the center and the thread. And so he too, Churchill, Lieutenant James Churchill of the Blue Howards, was on the thread.

  Hunter had arrived at the house just as Churchill, Catharine and Lucy were finishing, or abandoning, the meal of cold roast beef, pickles and potato salad that Mrs. Stoker had prepared for them. There had been some talk of the later phases of Exercise Nabob and speculation about the role of Dr. Best. Only when an account of the events in the lane came round for the second time in a quarter of an hour had it occurred to Churchill how drunk Hunter was. He was paler than Churchill had ever seen him before and was evidently unable to sit still, leaning forward in his chair and continually stroking and kneading the outsides of his thighs, jumping up from time to time and going over to tap without result at the bars of Sadie's cage. Nobody had taken up his suggestion of a round of whist and eventually he had fallen silent, except for an occasional muttered remark in praise of the drink he was drinking or of drink in general. But his presence had made the circle less totally withdrawn and chilly, less committed to, as it seemed, smoothing over some unforgivable lapse or sitting out an episode of supreme boredom.

  Catharine had sat in a corner of the couch with her feet tucked up under her and her arms clasped round her knees, as if avoiding unnecessary movement. Her hair looked darker than usual. Every time she caught Churchill's eye, or Lucy's, she smiled briefly and drew her chin inwards. When she smiled, a part of the inner surface of her lower lip became visible in a way he thought he had not seen before, although he was not certain. She had refused drinks and cigarettes, but had eaten a fair amount of the beef and pickles.

  "How are you feeling?" he had asked her.

  "Oh, not too bad. Except it's a shame I've got to be such a misery. You know, having to be sat with like somebody's mother-in-law. There doesn't seem to be any way of organizing this part. It'll be different tomorrow. Everything'll be done for me then. Not for you, though. I expect you'll find yourself doing a lot of drinking. But try not to do too much of it on your own. Try to stick to Max."

  "Yes. Would you like to go for a drive?"

  "No thank you, darling. I think I'll do better here, where I can see you and the others. You have another drink now and keep Max company."

  "Are you sure you won't?"

  "I seem to have lost the taste for it in a funny way. Just as well when you come to think of it. But then it never has done much for me, drink. It's a man's thing really, I expect."

  "I wish there were something I could get you."

  "I know you'd get it for me if there were. Darling, if you don't mind terribly I think I'll go to bed now. I'm a bit tired."

  "I'll come with you."

  "You're off, are you?" Hunter had risen to his feet with remarkable agility. "Look after yourself, darling."

  He had kissed Catharine. Lucy had come forward.

  "I'll see you off in the morning."

  "You're not to bother, love."

  "Cathy, it's no bother."

  "I'd sooner, honestly."

  "Well, if you're sure…"

  The two women had embraced and clung together for some moments.

  "I'll be in to see you as soon as they'll let me."

  "Good night, my dear boy. You know where to find me when you get back to camp."

  "Good night, Max. Thanks for coming along this evening."

  Catharine and Churchill had gone up by the front stairs, past the tapestry and along the corridor to her bedroom. A half-filled suitcase had been standing open on the chest of drawers. Only a brush and comb had been lying on the dressing-table. When she left him to go to the bathroom, he had stood at the window. A sky haze saw to it that there was almost nothing to see, and there was nothing to hear, whereas usually, at this time, hardly five minutes would have gone by without lights advancing or retreating along the drive, car engines being started or switched off, voices, footsteps on the gravel. He had wondered how long it would be before Lucy's visitors resumed their calls, and reflected that Ross-Donaldson would have known the answer to that; at least, would have had a firm answer ready, with reasons. How was he spending his evenings nowadays? Churchill had grinned briefly.

  Two minutes later, he and Catharine had started undressing as hastily as they had ever done when impatient to make love, but this time they had not faced each other. He had been about to get into bed when she said his name. He had turned to her.

  "Look at me," she had said. "You know, just in case."

  He had gone over to her and they had kissed. She had trembled for a moment, and when she stopped she had still been stiff in his arms.

  "I love you," he had said.

  "I know. And I love you."

  They had stood together a little longer. Then she had said, "Let's go to sleep now. You set the alarm."

  In bed she had turned away from him at once and he had been grateful, because he would not have been able to make love to her and had been dreading her expectation of it. About a quarter of an hour later they had heard Hunter drive away from the front of the house. Just after that she had asked for the light to be turned out, saying she thought she would sleep better in the dark.

  Every time he reached this point in his thoughts, Churchill found it harder to begin again at Hunter's arrival. The body lying against his seemed to call more and more urgently for action on his part, but he could conceive of none that would be relevant. Love had turned out to be action in a way that had gone on surprising him: he had always assumed it to be a process followed by a state. But now, the very thing that made action so necessary made it impossible. On the thread in the center of the node, nothing mattered but being on the thread, nothing else could be thought about except by a tiny, remote, artificially maintained corner of the mind. As soon as he had put matters to himself like this, that corner was overrun. What was in store for Catharine-not the hospital bed and the anaesthetics, not the trolley and the table and the surgeon
s, but the ultimate-became all that there was and was going to be.

  He felt the bodily mechanism that controls respiration switch itself off like an electric light. It soon proved to be useless, indeed misleading, to go on trying to breathe according to that dimly remembered earlier rhythm. He took in air and exhaled it and let his lungs stay idle until they should need more. But after a long time they still seemed not to need any, and he thought he had better breathe in again. When he did, he found he had no idea when to stop. There was a kind of corner ahead beyond which he would be able to breathe out as when yawning or sighing. He had still not reached it when his lungs turned out to have no room for more air. When he had stayed like that for a while without any discomfort or particular impulse to breathe out, he voluntarily breathed out. He failed to recognize the point at which he usually stopped doing this. It was a slightly less warm night than of late, but he felt sweat break out on his chest. He tried vainly to keep still.

  "Are you all right?" asked Catharine, speaking with an immediate clarity that showed him she had not been asleep.

  Panting a little, he reached out of bed and switched on the light.

  "We've got to talk," he said.

  "Good. I was afraid we were never going to. Can I have a cigarette?"

  The act of producing and lighting one for each of them cheered him a little.

  "I've been wanting to say things to you," he said, "but then I didn't want to, I didn't see how I could, apart from stuff that didn't count about how are you getting on and don't worry too much, because I didn't want to frighten you. But of course I suppose that was silly. But I couldn't think of a way of really saying anything at all that wouldn't be to do with frightening things."

  "You couldn't have thought of anything that would have made me more frightened than I have been or frightened in an extra way. I must have thought of more ways of being it than you have, because it's me it's happening to. There are ways I wouldn't know how to describe, not even to you. And that's saying something, isn't it? Really, I'd hardly have believed this, but I haven't been able to remember what they were, some of them, for whole parts of today. I've been sort of separating things out."