The Anti-Death League

by Kingsley Amis

  "I'm sure I will be. I can't take it in at the moment."

  "I understand. I felt like that too at first."

  After a short pause, Leonard said, "What's going to happen to me?"

  "Well, there I'm afraid we'll have to follow through rather. There'll be nothing too public. A court of inquiry that'll recommend your discharge with dishonor. Purely a formality, entirely for the benefit of the Chinese. Well, very largely for their benefit. We'll see it doesn't get to the Press or anything, so your chances in civilian life won't be affected. And… you've a reward to come. As soon as it's safe, perhaps in eighteen months' time, a fictitious relative of yours is going to die and leave you about two thousand pounds. Net. After death duties."

  "That's quite generous, isn't it? Two thousand pounds for being the biggest bloody fool the Service could lay their hands on."

  "I shouldn't look at it like that if I were you. As I told you, you were selected for your inexperience. You were also isolated. Somebody had to do it. When the project first took shape there was a school of thought favoring the officer in your role being fully informed of the true state of events and aims, but I was able to argue successfully that the continuous deception called for would be an intolerable strain. The alternative was somebody of your general type-conscientious, not excessively imaginative, predictable-to be kept in ignorance. You were chosen. You did what was expected of you. You've nothing to be ashamed of."

  "I've everything to be ashamed of."

  Sighing, Ross-Donaldson stood up and settled his clothing into position. Leonard also rose.

  "I think, if I may say so, Leonard, you'll quite likely do better outside the Service. I doubt if you'd ever have become a top-flight Security officer. You're too interested in people."

  "I don't know a thing about them," said Leonard.

  He put on his hat, saluted-smartly and turned away. Ross-Donaldson shrugged his shoulders.

  More than an hour went by befoie Leonard began to feel in the least degree better. On leaving Ross-Donaldson's office he decided that he needed sherry just as much as he needed Lucy, and sherry was nearer. But before entering the Mess doorway he stopped. It was only nine-fifty and he disliked the idea of being caught drinking at such an hour by a brother-officer, or indeed of being caught doing anything at any foreseeable hour by a brother-officer. After a moment's thought, he drove down to the village and bought a bottle of Murillo Hermanos' Manzanilla off Eames, who was just opening the White Hart. While he was waiting for it to be wrapped, Leonard got Anne to serve him with a glass of whatever was nearest. This proved to be a sweetish South African wine which vanished without trace before even getting as far as his breakfast had done.

  His gloom persisted during his drive to Lucy's and changed direction slightly at the suspicious, even hostile, way she greeted him.

  "What's the matter?" he asked as he stood in the portico. "What have I done?"

  She glared at him. "What are you doing here? I told you not to come over."

  "I thought that only meant the evenings. I've just come to see you. I've got some free time. I'll go away if you like."

  Her glare lessened. "You're not after James?"

  "James? Why should I be after him? Is he here?"

  "You're a sort of policeman, aren't you? Yes, he's upstairs."

  "What for? I don't understand."

  He understood better within about ten minutes, by which time he and Lucy were sitting in the shade of an oak-tree on the unkempt lawn outside the drawing-room. As she talked, she sipped a weak gin and tonic. He had two glasses of sherry inside him, a third in his hand, and the bottle beside his deck-chair. For one reason or another, he had forgotten about being gloomy.

  "I should have been informed, really, I suppose," he said at one point. "But it doesn't matter now."

  "No, this whole business is much more important."

  "And he hasn't eaten or drunk a thing?" he asked when Lucy had finished her account.

  "He won't eat. He doesn't even want to smoke. Willie's got him to drink a glass or two of water."

  "What about, you know, going to the lavatory?"

  "Willie's taken him I think three times. The last time he had to more or less carry him. To the little lavatory, that is. He hasn't been to the big lavatory. He's sort of shutting down completely. Here's Willie."

  Ayscue came over to them across the sunlit grass. He nodded unsmilingly to Leonard, refused a drink, sat down in a third chair and began rubbing his eyes slowly. He was pale and unshaven.

  "Anything?" asked Lucy.

  "No change. Except perhaps a little for the worse. It's getting harder to tell whether he's asleep or not."

  "You ought to get some sleep yourself."

  "I might as well. I'm not doing any good up there. You've come to take him back, I imagine," he added accusingly to Leonard.

  "No. Brian just wanted to see me. I've been telling him about it all. You want to help, don't you, Brian?"

  "I don't see what I can do if you two can't do anything."

  "Brian," said Ayscue. His manner had become more friendly. "What will happen to him if you and I dress him and take him back? From the Security point of view, I mean."

  Leonard knew that the canceling of Operation Apollo would not lead to any remission of the checks and restraints on those concerned in it, at any rate for some time. He guessed that his chiefs would not permit to be at large an individual in possession of such vital secrets who had clearly become unstable mentally.

  "They'll lock him up," he said.

  "That's what I thought. Brian, I want to ask you something important. I think James has got more on his mind than he says. Than he said he had when he was still talking. I think it's this Operation Apollo. I think he can't face it. I know all war is dreadful, but whatever this is must be quite unusually dreadful. I want you to tell me if I'm right. Just that and no more."

  "Yes," said Leonard. "You're right."

  "Yes. He's fallen into a state of hating God, you see, Brian. That's bad enough. But I think he's lost faith in everything else too. In the world. He's against it all."

  "I think I understand. Will you excuse me? I'll be back later."

  He went off towards the house. Before going inside he looked round at the other two, Ayscue in his rumpled khaki, leaning back now as if asleep, Lucy in her spotless white dress that shone in the sun, sitting forward with her arms clasped round her knees. Then he entered and hurried upstairs to the room where Churchill was lying with his eyes shut. Leonard went and knelt by the bed.

  "James. This is Brian Leonard. I know you're worrying about Operation Apollo. Well, you needn't any more. It's off. It's been canceled. You haven't got to do it. You're free. It's all over. Operation Apollo has been canceled."

  Churchill made no move. He hardly seemed to be breathing.

  Leonard cleared his throat and said in a caricatured military tone, "Official message for Lieutenant James Churchill, Blue Howards. Top secret. Operation Apollo is hereby canceled, repeat canceled, effective forthwith. Acknowledge. Message ends."

  This too had no effect. Leonard rose to his feet and stood thinking. After a short while he went out and downstairs, left the house by the front door, got into his car and drove away.

  The two on the lawn heard him go. Ayscue stirred irritably.

  "Where's he off to?" he said. "Gone to turn out the Brigade of Guards, I expect, or something equally helpful."

  "That isn't very nice of you, Willie."

  "I'm sorry. He's a very decent man, I agree. But a very foolish one. He's never asked himself a serious question in his life. He knows no more about the way things work than he did when he was fourteen."

  "I don't think that's quite right either."

  "Perhaps not. I'm not really on form today. I think I'll go and have a he-down on the sofa. Could you look in on James occasionally?"

  "I'll sit by him, don't you worry."

  Lucy took an illustrated magazine to Churchill's bedside, but she too wa
s underslept, and in a few minutes she nodded off, half awakening from time to time and changing position in her chair. She awoke completely when two vehicles began to pull up below the window. The first, she saw when she looked, was Leonard's car, and Leonard was getting out of it. The second was an ambulance. The driver got out and went to the rear door. Very soon Catharine appeared, followed by a bespectacled young man in a dark suit who was glancing impatiently about. Lucy hurried downstairs.

  "Darling," she said, embracing Catharine in the hall, "what's happened? Are you out or what?"

  "Only for an hour or two. This is Dr. Galton, who's come to look after me."

  The young man nodded briefly and turned at once to Leonard.

  "You can have forty minutes," he said in a high-pitched but commanding voice, "after which I shall see to it that Mrs. Casement takes whatever suitable light refreshment is available here and then immediately returns to hospital."

  "Thank you," said Leonard. "That's quite acceptable."

  "It had better be. I hope you know what you're doing."

  "So you said earlier, doctor. You can rest assured that I do."

  "Can I see James?" asked Catharine.

  "There isn't much time," said Leonard. "Seeing him may be more effective if you listen to what I have to tell you first. Let's go out on to the lawn. We can't be overheard there."

  They went, leaving the doctor pacing the hall.

  "How are you, Cathy?" asked Lucy. "How is everything?"

  "Fine. No snags. Everything under control."

  "How did he get you out? Brian, how did you get her out?"

  "Never mind that for now. The important thing is James."

  "He's not too bad, is he?" asked Catharine. "He's not really so awfully bad, is he?"

  "He's sort of withdrawn into himself," said Leonard. "But I think you'll be able to get him out of it. I've got no experience of these things, but from what I gather from Lucy here and Willie Ayscue part of why James is like this is because of what's been happening to you, Mrs. Casement. I don't know how much-"

  "Catharine."

  "Catharine. Well, that's part of it. The other part comes from this thing called Operation Apollo he was getting ready to be sent on. I'm going to tell you about that now. It won't take long."

  They reached the chairs under the oak-tree and sat down.

  "This means I shall have to break the Official Secrets Act," he went on. "And if the information gets out there might be a war. So I want you both to promise me that you won't pass on what I'm going to tell you to a living soul."

  The two women looked at each other.

  "But aren't you terribly risking we'll break our promise?" asked Lucy.

  "No. I want you to hear this so you can help Catharine, and I know you're all right. And James loves you, Catharine, so you're all right too. So there isn't any risk. Do you both promise?"

  "Yes," they said.

  He gave them a much edited account of his interview with Ross-Donaldson earlier that morning. At the end of it he studied Catharine, whom he had seen for the first time an hour before. He could find no trace of illness, pain or fear about her, only of tension under control. He admired the straightness of her mouth. Leaning forward in his chair, he said emphatically, but he hoped not too loudly,

  "So the big point is, Catharine, that James would never have had to go and make all those people die. But he still thinks he's got to. So do the other officers in his position, just for the time being. We're supposed to wait for orders saying it's all right to tell them. But when the others are told, they'll listen, they'll understand. But James has taken the whole idea of Operation Apollo much harder than they have, because of you. I suppose it's as if he can't see anything but death anywhere. I think in that state any of us might get withdrawn. Anyway, the result is it's no use telling James the show's been canceled, because he won't listen. I've tried him. That's to say he won't listen to anybody ordinary. I think you're the only one he'll listen to, because he loves you. But if you're going to get through to him you've got to understand exactly what's in his mind, and that means you've got to hear exactly what he thinks he's going to have to do.

  "Apollo was the Greek god of the sun, and of music, and of agriculture and other things. He was also the god of disease. The sender of plagues. I think calling the Operation after him was meant as some sort of twisted clue to the Chinese. What James and the others have been training to do was spreading a plague in the Chinese army, and probably in China too. Each man was going to be given a small party of local helpers and be stuck in a hideout near a Chinese line of communication. They were to wait until they could safely ambush just one Chinese soldier carrying mail, say, or a couple of chaps in a lorry, and knock them out with a gas that would keep them unconscious for three hours or so. Then they give them the plague and disappear. The Chinese blokes come to, feeling perfectly okay, and continue their journey to the fighting areas or back to their base. Nothing happens for about ten days, by which time scores of them have had the same treatment. Then they start their symptoms.

  "It was decided that these symptoms ought to be as unpleasant as possible so as to have the maximum psychological effect. Ordinary plagues weren't good enough from that point of view. Fever, inflamed glands, delirium, difficulty in speaking and walking. Nothing much out of the way there. Our bacteriologists found they couldn't get as far as they wanted with just improving the existing plagues. But plagues are so handy, because they're so easily passed on. So they decided to start at the other end, with a more unpleasant disease that wasn't a plague that they'd tinker about with until it could be transmitted like a plague. Finally a scientist called Venables came up with something he'd managed to make just about as infectious as what's called pneumonic plague, and in the same way: in your breath, in droplets, like the common cold. They found this out two or three years ago, by the way, and kept it by them. It was all ready when they needed it.

  "Well, what Venables had invented was a form of hydrophobia. That's what you get when a mad dog bites you. Only now you could get it off somebody's breath. Some people say it's the most extreme form of suffering. A man who's caught it starts off with feeling very depressed and frightened. There'd be plenty of that when you'd seen your friends die of it. Then the man gets very agitated and can't breathe properly. But the main point is that he gets very thirsty, only he chokes and has convulsions whenever he tries to drink. Or when he sees water, or hears it being poured, or thinks of it. Or when there's a draught or somebody touches him. Or a lot of other things. In between he breathes with a sort of barking sound and snaps his jaws. He has four or five days of that. Then he dies. It's an odd thing, but just before he dies he can breathe and drink and swallow perfectly well.

  "Each detachment on Operation Apollo was to be issued with a number of small plastic tents just big enough for one person. The idea was that you put your unconscious Chinaman in there and sealed it up. Then you turned on a tank full of air which had water droplets in it, and the droplets had the hydrophobia virus in them. You gave the chap a couple of hours of it, took him out, stuck him back in the cab of his lorry, and moved off to another area. The chances of him developing hydrophobia were better than ninety per cent. Oh, there is an antidote thing, but they'd never have been able to get it made and distributed in time to make any difference.

  "Anyway, that's what James thinks he's got to go and do."

  Catharine sat on for a few moments, then rose to her feet.

  "I think I'll go and see James now," she said, and went.

  "I hope it works," said Leonard.

  "Brian, you didn't tell the people at the hospital any of that, did you?"

  "Of course not. I got by on bluff and luck. I talked about international crises and secret weapons and spies. The luck came when they telephoned Whitehall and my master was out. There was only a junior on the desk and I soon settled him. Even then I don't think I'd have managed it if the doctor hadn't made the mistake of admitting that there wasn't any likeli
hood of Catharine's health suffering by this trip. I'm afraid she was very bewildered until I got a couple of minutes alone with her. What a marvelous girl she is. She'll bring it off if anyone can."

  "Brian, what will happen when your master finds out what you've been up to with the ambulance and everything?"

  "He'll be so angry he won't be able to speak. For a minute or two. He'll speak then all right."

  "Don't you mind?"

  "Well, it had to be done, hadn't it? And I've got the sack anyway. Already."

  Leonard picked up his sherry bottle and uncorked it.

  "Brian."

  "Yes?"

  "If you've got the sack, can you stay the night?"

  "Oh yes, please, Lucy."

  By now Catharine was with Churchill. After some effort, she arranged things so that she was able to put her arms round him and take his head on her lap. Twice she raised him so that his face was near hers. Both times she looked into his face very longingly, though without managing to see in it more than she could have recognized at first glance. She felt not at all sure of being able to do what she had found she must do. When she spoke, she tried to use her mouth and lips so that they would put the words into exactly the right shape to penetrate the barrier of his hearing and reach him, reach the person she knew was there.

  "Dearest James. I haven't got to tell you who this is, have I? Because all the most important part of you doesn't need to be told. It couldn't ever forget. Little James. We said it was all right to say that. You've always listened to everything I've ever said to you. You're to go on listening now.

  "First there's me. I've had the operation. It all went off all right. Everybody's very pleased with me. I'm afraid there are bits of me missing now. But that's something you're not going to mind as much as all that. Not as much as you expected to. There's not everything gone from there. And they've promised me it isn't going to look horrible. I believe them, because they're very good. You don't know how good they are. Now they say I've got to have a lot of treatment which I shan't like at all. I'll have to keep going to hospital for a few weeks while I'm having it. But that's all right, because you'll be able to see me the rest of the time. Yes you will. You're going to. And they say I've got a good chance, because they took it so terrifically early. That's thanks to you, that they managed to do that. A good chance. You gave me a good chance.