28
‘No — no, don’t look! ’ Liz was in bitter and terrified tears, trying desperately to avert Jean’s face from the awful sight on the floor over there; that staring and desiccated husk that had once been Edith Joynton. In the event, Jean clasped Liz to her, to still her hysterical weeping. They were all there now, all the personnel of the ice-box, attracted by the alarm, which Edith must herself have set off before she fell to the floor. It had stopped, and Devereaux rose from what remained of her, his face grey. ‘Beth?’ he queried.
Beth summoned up her resources. ‘Doctor Joynton was in fantasy. Director. I happened to look in here five minutes ago, and—’
‘Everything normal?’
‘Yes, Director.’
‘The fantasy gear? ...’
Devereaux’s eyes flickered round the room. While obviously deeply shocked in himself, he was remembering his position, consciously refusing to show any weakness. He gave a hard grunt. ‘Well — a fairly obvious diagnosis, I should have thought. Do I have to spell it out for anyone?’
‘No, Director,’ replied Bukov soberly.
‘Is it—’ Beth’s voice shook. ‘Is it the longevity drug?’
‘Yes, Beth,’ murmured Larry. ‘It’s failed.’
‘The longevity drug can’t fail! ’ Devereaux swung round on Larry. ‘Oh no. I checked the prescriptions on brain link to the computer this morning as usual, and they were all entirely accurate. So what’s the explanation, I wonder? Looks like more carelessness, doesn’t it? Criminal carelessness this time. I must inform you,’ he continued, ‘that I shall have to make a full report to the International Commission about this, and under the circumstances I shall have no choice but to treat it as a case of murder.’
His eyes strayed briefly back to Edith Joynton on the floor, then he turned rapidly and moved out of the room.
‘Please,’ said Bukov a little helplessly to the others. ‘I’ll attend to things here. The rest of you...’
They were grateful and sombrely went out.
In the corridor, the Director had paused, his brows knitted. As the others emerged, he turned and said, ‘Larry.’
‘Yes. Director?’
‘You’re relieved of all duties and confined to quarters until further notice.’
Larry gaped. ‘You don’t suspect me, sir?’
‘Whatever the fault, it could only have been yours,’ declared Devereaux forcibly. ‘If the prescriptions were correct, and they were, then the mistake must have occurred during manufacture. You have a watching brief over that.’
‘But I checked everything out against the instruction tapes, same as always.’
‘Be silent! ’ Devereaux could well have been working up into one of his rages again. ‘It was your error — your error. Is there anyone else you can think of who’d qualify as well? You’re not suggesting I could have had anything to do with Edith Joynton’s death?’
With the exception of Beth, who had the bad manners to look a little gratified, they were all stunned by this attack. Simon, who had simply been struck dumb by all that had happened, thought it uncalled for. But Liz, whose tears had dried, thought it well over the odds, and found to her surprise that she had the courage to say so.
‘That’s unfair,’ she cried. She moved to Devereaux. ‘Why don’t you all leave Larry alone? He hasn’t done anything wrong.’
‘How dare you speak to the Director like that,’ snapped Beth.
‘Oh, you,’ Liz ran on recklessly. ‘I’m not screwed up in things here like you are. I don’t have to bow down to little tin gods. I’m only here because—’
‘No, Liz,’ interposed Simon urgently. ‘Don’t say.’
‘I wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t—’
‘Stop it! ’ It was Jean. 'Stop it at once. Liz. No.’
There was a sudden strength in her, which indeed checked Liz. But it attracted Devereaux’s attention. He transferred his gaze to Jean.
‘Well,’ he said evenly. 'What’s all this about, I wonder? Your relationship with this volunteer seems extraordinarily close, Jean.’
‘Not close. Director.’ She improvised: ‘Liz and Simon were — unhappy when they first came here. I tried to be kind to them. They’re only children.’
'Is that all there is to it?’ asked Devereaux suspiciously. He looked elsewhere. ‘Beth?’
Beth paused a moment before speaking. Then she drew herself up and said: ‘I have to report that just before the alarm went. Director, these two volunteers were in your office again.’
Liz and Simon were both outraged by this, but the colour rose instantly to Devereaux’s face. He thrust himself at Simon, as though he could attack him.
'What is it you’re trying to do here?’ he cried.
‘What?’ ‘Nothing! Just find out things.’
‘What things?’
‘There’s plenty to find out, isn’t there?’
Simon’s slender supply of pluck was petering out, but he held the other’s gaze as bravely as he could. Devereaux calmed down, perhaps again not wishing to show weakness before his staff. ‘I see,’ he observed grimly. ‘It’s obvious I shall have to devote more attention to you two than I’d realized. You’ll be confined to quarters until further notice too.’ Then he thought again. ‘No, not to quarters — somewhere we can keep a constant eye on you. The Fantasy Room, Beth. Drop an electronic shield around them.’
Simon and Liz were puzzled by this, but Beth merely nodded curtly. Devereaux’s eyes drifted again to Jean, to Larry; then without another word he turned for his office. There was silence until he had disappeared.
'So what’s the score, Beth?’ asked Larry easily. ‘Do you think everything that goes wrong around here can be put down to — human error?’
‘Don’t talk to me, please, Larry,’ Beth rejoined stiffly. ‘You’re confined to quarters.’
‘I know.’ He grinned ruefully. ‘Untouchable at last. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Well, you got your wish.’
He started off down the corridor towards the living quarters, his shoulders hunched. Liz suddenly boiled over with rage and resentment.
‘I’ll never grow up to be like you,’ she shouted at Beth. ‘Never! ’
* * *
In the computer room, alone, Bukov was very busy. An outside observer might even have thought him obsessed, as he ran from bastion to control panel and back again, setting in motion a tape. At length he came to rest before a screen, pressing down appropriate controls. The screen crackled, then ran with a graph reading. It chattered across as Bukov watched, tense and impatient.
For a minute nothing happened; then the screen went dead. Bukov stared tautly, his lips moving as he seemed to count off seconds. The graph appeared again, and he ran a hand over his face, manifestly worried. He scurried back to the bastion, stopped the tape and wound it back. Once more he set it in motion.
By the time Bukov had returned to the screen, the graph was again moving across it. Once more he watched with small patience. He was like a man in the grip of a repeating pattern of thought, going over and over it in his head, until such time as it would cease to be a preoccupation and resolve itself into comprehension and an addition to his sum of knowledge.
* * *
In the Director’s office, the blue screen activated, and the caption clicked across:
* * *
DIRECTOR TO COMPUTER .. . DETAIL MEMORY BANK 11.00 HOURS JULY 17th ... HA57 DOSAGE IN RESPECT E.JOYNTON MANUFACTURED STRICTEST CONFORMITY INSTRUCTION TAPES ... NO EVIDENCE ERROR IN OPERATIONAL PROCESS ... SUGGEST DEPTH CHECK .. . ENDS ...
* * *
Beth was bewildered. ‘But that’s the computer’s answer. Director,’ she declared. ‘No evidence of error in the operational process. So Larry couldn’t have been responsible.’
‘Odd,’ replied Devereaux, frowning. ‘One could even say provoking. But the computer doesn’t make mistakes.’ He seemed piqued rather than in any way disconcerted. ‘A depth check — yes, that’s what
we need. But wait a moment : how shall we angle it?’
Beth’s hand was poised over the control panel to preempt this operation from the computer, but Devereaux began to pace up and down his office, rubbing his chin. He stopped before the door to the back room.
‘You know, Beth,’ he said reflectively, ‘I meant it when 1 told you I needed a personal assistant. But I must be sure of you.’
She was taken aback that his mind should have gone in this direction so apparently arbitrarily, but quickly replied, ‘Director, I’ve done everything I know to prove to you I’m utterly loyal.’
‘Yes, that’s true.’ He nodded, as though weighing up a number of variables. ‘I’ve given you the servicing of the inner computer here because there was nobody else I could possibly trust with the task. But do you know what that computer is actually for, Beth?’
A little shiver ran through Beth. She could not completely understand why mention of this private task she performed for the Director should so trouble her; she had understood that it was a confidential commission when she had taken it on; now it was like betraying secrets even to call it to mind. Devereaux had apparently not expected an answer to his question, for he turned and moved to Beth, his eyes shrewd.
‘You doubted — you still doubt — that those volunteers, Liz and Simon, were properly selected by the computer,’ he stated.
‘There were reasons for that,’ Beth returned hesitantly. But I’ve come to think—’
‘You trusted your own intuition as against the clear terms of the directive. Yet as it happens ... that isn’t always reprehensible, Beth.’
Now Beth didn’t understand at all. Devereaux seemed to be smiling at her, somehow pleased. ‘I believe when the truth is finally known, you may simply find you’ve been suspicious of Liz and Simon for the wrong reasons,’ he went on. ‘Larry wasn’t responsible for an error in the operational process today. It therefore automatically follows — that someone else must have been.’
In spite of herself, a little gasp rose in Beth. ‘Liz and Simon?’
‘Someone who deliberately interfered — and then carefully covered tracks. We’d better angle our depth check around the complete history of those volunteers, hadn’t we? Because, Beth, we must get at the truth.’
His smile was broader now; as lightsome perhaps as Beth had ever seen it. But as she turned back to the control panel, she was possessed by a movement of fear. For the first time since she came to the ice-box, Beth realized, she didn’t like the turn things had taken.
Strong lights beat down in a square all about them; pillars of fire, Simon thought idly. The pillars’ part was right anyway, for the light quite locked him and Liz in. The rest of the Fantasy Room was visible all round them, but they could not move beyond those shafts of light. Invisible walls restrained them.
For the hundredth time, Simon poked at the electronic shield. ‘I wonder how they do it?’ he muttered. ‘Force field of some sort, I suppose...’
‘Oh, who cares?’ Liz grunted back, busy languishing. ‘If you haven’t got anything helpful to say, then don’t talk at all.’
Simon didn’t mind this injunction, for he was busy with his thoughts. It had come to him eventually that he had been a little naive to think that Devereaux’s testament — which in spite of everything he still hoped to find — would be something written down. In fact it now seemed that the really extraordinary thing would be if it were. The ice-box and its electronic gadgets offered much better means of recording information than inscribing it on paper. Which brought him logically back to that computer ... the small computer in the Director’s back room...
‘Liz.’
They both turned at the soft call. Beyond the imprisoning lights was Jean. She hastened over.
‘You’ve got to get away from here.’ She seemed a little frantic. ‘We must find a way.’
‘But I can’t leave you here, can I?’ Liz wanted to know. ‘And what about Daddy?’
‘Darling, all that doesn’t matter now! They’re going to give you new arms and legs, and—'
‘No,’ said Simon suddenly. Liz and her mother both blinked at him; there seemed something new in his tone. But it only lasted a second, for he was almost apologetic as he went on: ‘I mean, they’d like to. It’s even on the schedule. But I don’t think it can happen. This is the future time for Liz and me, right? Well, I don’t see how anything can happen to you in a future time that isn’t actually going to happen one day. In other words, unless we’re truly meant to come to the ice-box in 1990 — then we’ll stay as we are, no matter what.’
‘But perhaps we are meant to come to the ice-box in 1990,’ objected Liz.
‘No,’ said Simon, assertive again.
Liz was beginning to get irritated with him. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because if you’re coming here at all, you’re coming as Beth. And she hasn’t got new arms and legs.’
Liz was less impressed by the logic of this than by the fact that he seemed to be saying she had no choice but to be Beth one day. She turned to flare at him, but Jean had spoken.
‘No, Liz, be still. Perhaps there’s something in what Simon says ... The future’s always a mystery. I can’t even remember why things happened to me as they did. Coming here was a terrible mistake.’
‘You mean, it could have been different, Mrs Skinner?’ Simon frowned.
‘Well of course, Simon. If I hadn’t let Beth take that intelligence-enhancement course, say. We could just have stayed and somehow helped Frank build up his business again. Kept on living normally.’
Simon clicked his fingers sharply. ‘Then that’s it!’ he cried. ‘It’s got to be.’
‘What is what?’ a baffled Liz asked.
‘Liz, don’t you see? Commander Traynor said when we went into the past that it was because of the energy that still existed—’
‘Oh, him again. Why will you keep bringing Traynor up?’
‘But this is the future. The real energy doesn’t exist yet. So it’s got to be energy of another sort. Energy not even outside someone’s mind as yet. Maybe ... not outside your mother’s mind.’
They stared at him. This time the conviction of his tone didn’t fail, and even though it remained essentially inexplicable, what he had said held for both Liz and Jean a ring of truth. ‘Then — then I don’t have to be Beth after all,’ said Liz slowly.
‘No.’
‘And I wouldn’t have to be here...’ This from Jean. She looked to them behind the electronic shield, a new urgency in her eyes. ‘Simon, you and Liz have got to get back through the time barrier. It’s more important than ever. I must be—’
‘Warned.’ Simon nodded, accepting the novelty of his own deductions with complete savoir-faire. ‘Yes, that’s right, Mrs Skinner. We’ve got to get back to our own time and tell you all about this. So that it will never happen.’
29
Having obediently closed himself up in his quarters, presetting the electronic lock outside, Larry was idly watching an old film re-run when he heard a loud click, and, like Liz, found his door open again. Like Liz, too, he found no one had come formally to release him. He made his way back to the computer room, reflecting that this was the justice of the ice-box; guilty until you’re proved innocent, innocent as soon as nobody wants to call you guilty any more.
‘The Director giveth, the Director taketh away,’ he announced to Bukov, but then paused, for the other’s face was singularly grim as he marked a number of computer tapes, placing them in a large case. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Larry,’ said Bukov thoughtfully, ‘did you know that Edith Joynton and I had a special job here in the ice-box? To keep the Director under observation?’
‘What?’
‘It’s true. The details don’t matter.’
‘But—’'
‘What matters is that I’m going to trust you,’ declared Bukov more loudly. ‘I have to trust someone with poor Edith gone. These tapes’ — he held up the case — ‘they’re
vital to a report I must make. Remember it. In case anything should ever happen to me.’
Larry felt his grip on reality slipping. ‘Bukov, old comrade, you’re talking like a pre-ice-box movie. What’s going to happen to you?’
‘It happened to Edith,’ replied Bukov shortly, and proceeded with the case to a locker, where he put it in, indicating to Larry that he was secreting the key on a chain round his neck.
* * *
Devereaux seemed tired all at once. ‘Come along, Beth,’ he protested irritably. ‘Haven’t you got that depth check on Liz and Simon yet?’
It was certainly taking more time than he had supposed. Replying only ‘Proceeding. Director’, Beth turned back to depress a button marked ‘Priority imperative’. It was almost impossible to hurry the computer in its operations, but one could at least let it know one was still patiently waiting. The delay meant, of course, that the computer had discovered some sort of problem in investigating Liz and Simon, and was probing it through to the bitter end. Again Beth experienced her frisson of fear.
The Director scowled, looked to the back-room door. Suddenly he crossed to this, operated the control in the jamb so that it opened. Then he disappeared into the darkness.
Beth saw none of this, for, at the same moment, the blue screen had begun to activate. The message chattered out:
* * *
DETAIL MEMORY BANK 14.20 HOURS JULY 8TH .. . REFERENCE VOLUNTEERS FOR AB EXPERIMENT .. . ERROR IN PREVIOUS INSTRUCTION REPEAT ERROR IN PREVIOUS INSTRUCTION ... DO NOT EXPECT ARRIVAL AS SCHEDULED . . . CHANGE OF PLAN . . . ENDS . . .
* * *
Beth gasped in astonishment. ‘Director,’ she cried, operating a switch so that the message, instead of fading, froze on the screen. ‘Director, come and look! ’ But then a glance behind showed both that Devereaux was nowhere to be seen and that the back-room door was open. Beth paused instinctively, but only for a moment. If anything was an emergency, this was. She hurried through into the other room.
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